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Malcolm x photo gun4/19/2023 ![]() ![]() This was unheard of among Negroes in those days."Įlla landed Malcolm a job shining shoes at the Roseland Ballroom. She was plainly proud of her very dark skin. 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 15.Īfter 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. you need to think of something you can be. ![]() His teacher responded, "One of life's first needs is for us to be realistic. He excelled academically and was well-liked by his classmates, who elected him class president.Ī turning point in Malcolm Little's childhood came in 1939 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. He attended Mason High School where he was one of only a few Black students. 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. ![]() In 1938, Malcolm was kicked out of school and sent to a juvenile detention home in Mason, Michigan. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes. In 1937, she was committed to a mental institution where she remained for the next 26 years. Malcolm X's mother never recovered from the shock and grief over her husband's death. 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. Two years later, in 1931, Earl Little's dead body was discovered lying across the municipal streetcar tracks. Earl Little moved the family to East Lansing where he built a new home. "The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned to the ground," Malcolm X later remembered. Shortly after the Littles moved in, a racist mob set their house on fire in 1929, and the town's all-white emergency responders refused to do anything. However, the racism the family encountered in Lansing proved even greater than in Omaha. To protect his family, Earl Little moved them from Omaha to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926 and then to Lansing, Michigan, in 1928. The harassment continued when Malcolm was four years old, and local Klan members smashed all of the family's windows. "Brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out." "When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, 'a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home,'" Malcolm later remembered. In fact, Malcolm Little had his first encounter with racism before he was even born. He was the fourth of eight children born to Louise, a homemaker, and Earl Little, a preacher who was also an active member of the local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and avid supporter of Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.ĭue to Earl Little's civil rights activism, the family was subjected to frequent harassment from white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and one of its splinter factions, the Black Legion. Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. ![]() The fiery civil rights leader broke with the Nation of Islam shortly before his assassination in 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he had been preparing to deliver a speech. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960.Ī naturally gifted orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary," including violence. Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. ![]()
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