Malcolm+X

Malcolm X." //Contemporary Heroes and Heroines//. Vol. 2. Gale, 1992. //Gale Biography In Context//. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.


 * Introduction & Biographical Information**
 * **Born:** May 19, 1925 in Omaha, United States, Nebraska
 * **Died:** February 21, 1965 in United States, New York, New York
 * **Nationality:** American
 * **Occupation:** Civil rights activist
 * Malcolm X was a Black nationalist and Muslim leader whose militant advocacy of Black pride, separatism, and armed self-defense foreshadowed the Black Power movement of the late 1960s.
 * "A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself."
 * Exactly one week later, on February 21, Malcolm X was preparing to address several hundred of his followers in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom when three Black men rushed up the center aisle toward him and opened fire with a shotgun and two pistols, striking him more than a dozen times. He died a short time later while undergoing surgery at a nearby hospital. The shotgun-toting man was quickly tackled and subdued by onlookers, and the other two suspects were apprehended some time later. All three men had ties to the Nation of Islam, but one of them later insisted that he had been paid by someone else to kill Malcolm X. A jury subsequently convicted them of murder, for which they were sentenced to life in prison.
 * Biographical Information part II**
 * Life lesson's turned Malcom Little to Malcom X
 * Parents names or Earl and Louise Little
 * Father was found dying on September 28, 1931, on some streetcar tracks in Lansing
 * Mother was put into the State Mental Hospital in Kalamazoo, on January 9, 1939
 * While in highschool Malcom told an English teacher he would like to be a lawyer to help down-and-out families like his. The teacher discourage Malcom from that career path. The teacher said, "We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to be realistic about being a nigger. A lawyer... that's no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think about something you can be . . . . Why don't you plan on carpentry?"
 * Little dropped out of school not long after that and headed to Boston, where he worked at a series of menial jobs and drifted into petty crime, and then to Harlem around 1942. As a street hood nicknamed "Detroit Red" he ran a gambling operation, sold and used marijuana and cocaine, and hustled business for brothels. Returning to Boston, he organized a burglary ring, an activity that eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1946.
 * Once in prison, Little--dubbed "Satan" by his fellow convicts because he was so full of hate and anger--set about transforming his life through a process of self-education. But __**THE REAL TURINING POINT**__ came when one of his younger brothers introduced him to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, better known as the Black Muslims. The core of Muhammad's philosophy held that Whites were nothing but a "devil race" created to torment the Black race and that in order to flourish Blacks had to separate themselves culturally, economically, politically, and physically from Western, White civilization.
 * By the time Little was paroled in 1952, he had taken the Muslim surname "X" in place of the "slave name" Little and had whole-heartedly embraced the beliefs of the Black Muslims. Accepted into the movement after impressing Elijah Muhammad with his quick intelligence and forceful personality, Malcolm X was soon ordained a minister and given a position at a Detroit mosque. He followed that with a period of private study under Muhammad himself and was then sent to Philadelphia to establish a new congregation. From there he went on to serve as leader of the Harlem mosque, although he was frequently called upon to start new congregations across the country.
 * Rising Status in Field**
 * Throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the charismatic Malcolm X took the Nation of Islam from an insignificant splinter group of about 400 people to an organization that boasted some 10,000 official members and an untold number of sympathizers. A talented and articulate speaker whose fiery, intense style bordered on demagoguery, he was by far the Nation of Islam's most effective and prominent preacher and was in almost constant demand on college campuses, at meetings of various associations, and on radio and television programs.
 * The message he shared with his audiences was the exact opposite of what people were accustomed to hearing from more "main-stream" civil rights activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King, who called for the integration of American society through nonviolent means. Malcolm X advocated Black separatism, and he advised Blacks to take up arms in self-defense against White hostility. As a result of his fiercely militant stance, he was hated and feared not only by most Whites but also by many Blacks, who worried that his tirades against "White devils" would provoke a catastrophic race war. The media enhanced this perception by consistently portraying him as a dangerous rabble-rouser and outlaw.
 * But the more famous Malcolm X became, the more tension and jealousy he provoked among the leaders of the Nation of Islam, who were also wary of his growing uneasiness with some of the more cultish aspects of the Black Muslim faith. If Elijah Muhammad were looking for an excuse to get rid of such a formidable threat to his own power, he found it in December, 1963, when Malcolm X publicly described the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a case of "chickens coming home to roost" in a society that tolerated White violence against Blacks. Muhammad suspended his protege and forbid him from speaking on behalf of the Nation of Islam for ninety days. The estrangement became permanent in March, 1964, when Malcolm X announced that he was quitting the Nation of Islam to form two new groups of his own, the Harlem-based Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the multinational Organization of Afro-American Unity.
 * Key Accomplishment**
 * The initial reaction to Malcolm X's death was mixed; the White press took the opportunity to moralize that those who live by the sword die by it, while Black leaders acknowledged his moderating views and termed the loss of his brilliance and passion a setback for the civil rights movement. It was not until the end of the year, after the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (an as-told-to work he collaborated on with writer Alex Haley), that his message of Black unity, self-respect, and self-reliance truly began to strike a responsive chord. (The book has remained an enduring bestseller, posting a 300 percent gain in sales from 1988 to 1991 alone.) Later he was hailed as the first true Black revolutionary and the inspiration for the Black Power movement of the late 1960s.
 * That same spring, Malcolm X made a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca and followed it with a prolonged period of study in the Middle East and Africa. Impressed by the sight of people of all races coming together as one in the name of Islam, he returned to the United States in late 1964 a changed man, proclaiming himself a convert to orthodox Islam and adopting a new name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. His new philosophy combined elements of his religious faith with socialism, anticolonialism, and what eventually came to be known as "Black consciousness"--a sense of pride in being Black and a desire to foster links with other Blacks around the world based on a shared racial and cultural heritage. He softened his stance on a wide variety of issues and tried to downplay his menacing image. He admitted he had once been a racist but insisted that he no longer accepted Elijah Muhammad's belief that all White people were evil; economics, not color, was what kept Blacks from succeeding. He also condemned separatism as counterproductive and expressed a willingness to work within the system to secure political and civil rights for Blacks, and to that end he began making overtures to moderate Black leaders and progressive Whites.


 * Conclusion**

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 * African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X articulated concepts of race pride and black nationalism in the early 1960s.
 * In the immediate aftermath of Malcolm X's death, commentators largely ignored his recent spiritual and political transformation and criticized him as a violent rabble-rouser. However, Malcolm X's legacy as a civil rights hero was cemented by the posthumous publication in 1965 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to [|Alex Haley]. At once a harrowing chronicle of American racism, an unsparing self-criticism and an inspiring spiritual journey, the book, transcribed by the acclaimed author of Roots, instantly recast Malcolm X as one of the great political and spiritual leaders of modern times. Named by Time magazine as one of ten "required reading" nonfiction books, The Autobiography of Malcolm X has enshrined Malcolm X as a hero to subsequent generations of radicals and activists.

Burlingame, Jeff. __Malcom X__. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc, 2011. Print.


 * "I Believe in The Brotherhood of Man, All Men"
 * Malcom X was born Malcom Little
 * Life lesson's turned Malcom Little to Malcom X
 * Parents names or Earl and Louise Little
 * Father was found dying on September 28, 1931, on some streetcar tracks in Lansing
 * Mother was put into the State Mental Hospital in Kalamazoo, on January 9, 1939
 * While in highschool Malcom told an English teacher he would like to be a lawyer to help down-and-out families like his. The teacher discourage Malcom from that career path. The teacher said, "We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to be realistic about being a nigger. A lawyer... that's no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think about something you can be . . . . Why don't you plan on carpentry?"