Malcolm X

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. His father, a Baptist preacher and Garveyite organizer, was likely murdered by white supremacists; his mother was later institutionalized, and Malcolm passed through foster care and juvenile detention before a stint in the criminal underworld of Boston and Harlem led to his imprisonment in 1946. In prison he encountered the Nation of Islam, underwent a rigorous program of self-education, and emerged in 1952 transformed intellectually and spiritually.

As the Nation of Islam's most effective minister and national spokesman through the late 1950s and early 1960s, Malcolm X built the organization from a few thousand members into a mass movement, founded the newspaper Muhammad Speaks, and became the most visible proponent of Black nationalism in America, famously channeling the anger of Black urban communities through speeches like "Message to the Grass Roots" (1963) and his repeated insistence that freedom be won "by any means necessary."

In March 1964 he broke publicly with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and later the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and undertook the Hajj to Mecca, an experience recounted in his autobiography that reshaped his views on race and orthodox Islam. His travels through Africa and the Middle East in 1964 deepened his internationalist analysis, linking the African American freedom struggle to anti-colonial movements and proposing that the United States be brought before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against Black people.

He was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem while delivering a speech. His collaboration with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), became one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, and his speeches remain foundational texts of Black nationalist, Pan-Africanist, and human rights thought, shaping the Black Power movement, the Black Panther Party, and generations of activists and scholars who followed.