Malcolm X founded the newspaper, Muhammad Speaks , which he printed in the basement of his home. Recognized as an engaging speaker, elite universities, like Harvard and Oxford, invited Malcolm X to speak and debate.
Malcolm X changed his name a second time. After breaking away from the Nation, Malcolm X announced that members who remained loyal to Elijah Muhammad , the founder and leader of the Nation, were plotting to kill him. One week before he was killed, someone threw Molotov cocktails into his Queens, New York home.
The growing hostility between the Nation and Malcolm X ended with gunmen fatally shooting him at the Audubon Ballroom on Feb. All Rights Reserved. Civil Rights Leaders , Malcolm X.
The rights of a person in a society are called their civil rights. Civil rights include things like the right to freedom, the right to education, the right for adults to vote, and the right to a fair trial. For a long time in the US, African Americans were denied their civil rights. They were forced into being slaves and were bought and sold for money, in the same way animals and property were bought and sold.
Life as a slave was extremely hard and very difficult to imagine now. Most slaves were treated appallingly by their white owners and had no rights at all.
Many had to change their name - sometimes to that of their owner. Though slavery was abolished or ended in England in , and in America in , black people still weren't treated fairly because of laws - or rules - of segregation keeping black and white people separate.
This mistreatment of black people, or anyone considered non-white, led to the civil rights movement in the s - when African Americans began to resist this inequality. They wanted to be treated the same way as white people. Huge protests of tens and often hundreds of thousands of people, put pressure on the government to change unfair, racist laws. Famous civil rights leaders at that time included Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm wanted to fight for the rights of black people because of the racist abuse he and his family had suffered.
He spoke passionately at rallies - big gatherings - and events and lots of people listened to his messages. We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us. But his message was different to that of Martin Luther King Jr. Unlike Martin Luther, who encouraged non-violent protests, Malcolm X said that black people should protect themselves "by any means necessary". And he also disagreed with Martin Luther King Jr's ambition of an America where black and white people lived together - Malcolm didn't believe in that vision and wanted a separate nation just for black people.
Malcolm X had a difficult childhood and felt like he had no real opportunities. His father was killed when he was young and Malcolm's family didn't have a lot of money and he turned to crime. He was sent to prison for being caught with stolen goods.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. When he was in prison, his brother sent him a letter about a political and religious group he'd joined called the Nation of Islam. Malcolm decided to join too, and changed his name to Malcolm X to mark this change.
The Nation of Islam was led by a man named Elijah Muhammad. Members of the Nation of Islam believed that black people were superior to white people. Shortly after the Littles moved in, a racist mob set their house on fire in , and the town's all-white emergency responders refused to do anything.
Earl Little moved the family to East Lansing where he built a new home. Two years later, in , Earl Little's dead body was discovered lying across the municipal streetcar tracks. Although Malcolm X's family believed his father was murdered by white supremacists from whom he had received frequent death threats, the police officially ruled Earl Little's death a streetcar accident, thereby voiding the large life insurance policy he had purchased in order to provide for his family in the event of his death.
Malcolm X's mother never recovered from the shock and grief over her husband's death. In , she was committed to a mental institution where she remained for the next 26 years. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes. In , Malcolm was kicked out of school and sent to a juvenile detention home in Mason, Michigan. The white couple who ran the home treated him well, but he wrote in his autobiography that he was treated more like a "pink poodle" or a "pet canary" than a human being.
He attended Mason High School where he was one of only a few Black students. He excelled academically and was well-liked by his classmates, who elected him class president.
A turning point in Malcolm Little's childhood came in when his English teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he answered that he wanted to be a lawyer. His teacher responded, "One of life's first needs is for us to be realistic Having thus been told in no uncertain terms that there was no point in a Black child pursuing education, Malcolm X dropped out of school the following year, at the age of After quitting school, Malcolm X moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, Ella, about whom he later recalled, "She was the first really proud Black woman I had ever seen in my life.
She was plainly proud of her very dark skin. This was unheard of among Negroes in those days. Ella landed Malcolm a job shining shoes at the Roseland Ballroom. However, out on his own on the streets of Boston, Malcolm X became acquainted with the city's criminal underground and soon turning to selling drugs. He got another job as kitchen help on the Yankee Clipper train between New York and Boston and fell further into a life of drugs and crime.
Sporting flamboyant pinstriped zoot suits , he frequented nightclubs and dance halls and turned more fully to crime to finance his lavish lifestyle. In , Malcolm X was arrested on charges of larceny and sentenced to 10 years in jail. To pass the time during his incarceration, he read constantly, devouring books from the prison library in an attempt make up for the years of education he had missed by dropping out of high school.
Also while in prison, Malcolm was visited by several siblings who had joined the Nation of Islam, a small sect of Black Muslims who embraced the ideology of Black nationalism — the idea that in order to secure freedom, justice and equality, Black Americans needed to establish their own state entirely separate from white Americans. He changed his name to Malcolm X and converted to the Nation of Islam before his release from prison in Now a free man, Malcolm X traveled to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad , to expand the movement's following among Black Americans nationwide.
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