50 Facts About Malcolm Little

Malcolm Little committed various crimes, being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and burglary.

Malcolm Little was the public face of the organization for 12 years, advocating Black empowerment and separation of Black and white Americans, and criticizing Martin Luther King Jr.

Malcolm Little X expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements, such as its free drug rehabilitation program.

Malcolm Little subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca, and became known as "el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz".

Controversial figure accused of preaching racism and violence, Malcolm Little X is a widely celebrated figure within African-American and Muslim American communities for his pursuit of racial justice.

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Malcolm Little was posthumously honored with Malcolm X Day, on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States.

MalcolmX was born May 19,1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of seven children of Grenada-born Louise Helen Little and Georgia-born Earl Little.

When Malcolm Little was six, his father died in what has been officially ruled a streetcar accident, though his mother Louise believed Earl had been murdered by the Black Legion.

Malcolm Little attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School in Mason, Michigan, but left high school in 1941, before graduating.

Malcolm Little excelled in junior high school but dropped out of high school after a white teacher told him that practicing law, his aspiration at the time, was "no realistic goal for a nigger".

From age 14 to 21, Malcolm held a variety of jobs while living with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins in Roxbury, a largely African-American neighborhood of Boston.

Malcolm Little befriended John Elroy Sanford, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Harlem who aspired to be a professional comedian.

In late 1945, Malcolm Little returned to Boston, where he and four accomplices committed a series of burglaries targeting wealthy white families.

In late 1948, Malcolm Little wrote to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm Little established temples in Springfield, Massachusetts ; Hartford, Connecticut ; and Atlanta.

Malcolm Little met Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress.

In 1961, Malcolm Little X spoke at a NOI rally alongside George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party; Rockwell claimed that there was overlap between Black nationalism and white supremacy.

Malcolm Little called the 1963 March on Washington "the farce on Washington", and said he did not know why so many Black people were excited about a demonstration "run by whites in front of a statue of a president who has been dead for a hundred years and who didn't like us when he was alive".

Malcolm Little proposed that African Americans should return to Africa and that, in the interim, a separate country for Black people in America should be created.

Malcolm Little rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence, arguing that Black people should defend and advance themselves "by any means necessary".

Malcolm Little's speeches had a powerful effect on his audiences, who were generally African Americans in northern and western cities.

Malcolm Little was largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s.

Malcolm Little inspired the boxer Cassius Clay to join the Nation, and the two became close.

Malcolm Little revealed an assassination attempt made on his life, through a discovered explosive device in his car, as well as the death threats he was receiving, in response to his expose of Elijah Muhammad.

Malcolm Little said he was planning to organize a Black nationalist organization to "heighten the political consciousness" of African Americans.

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Malcolm Little expressed a desire to work with other civil rights leaders, saying that Elijah Muhammad had prevented him from doing so in the past.

Malcolm Little was delayed in Jeddah when his US citizenship and inability to speak Arabic caused his status as a Muslim to be questioned.

Malcolm Little had received Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam's book The Eternal Message of Muhammad with his visa approval, and he contacted the author.

Malcolm Little especially hated Moise Tshombe of the Congo as an "Uncle Tom" figure.

Tshombe's decision in 1964 to hire white mercenaries to put down the Simba rebellion greatly offended Malcolm Little, who accused the mercenaries of committing war crimes against the Congolese.

Malcolm Little X maintained that there was a double standard when it came to white and Black lives, noting it was an international emergency when the lives of whites were in danger, making Dragon Rouge necessary, but that nothing was done to stop the abuses of the Congolese at the hands of "Tshombe's hired killers".

Malcolm Little only mentioned his religion twice during his Oxford speech, which was part of his effort to defuse his image as an "angry Black Muslim extremist", which he had long hated.

Malcolm Little X charged that the Cuban emigre pilots hired by the CIA to serve as Tshombe's air force indiscriminately bombed Congolese villages and towns, killing women and children, but this was almost never mentioned in the media while the newspapers featured long accounts of the Simbas "raping white women, molesting nuns".

Malcolm Little X stated that what he regarded as the extremism of the Tshombe government was "never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the West, it is financed by America, it's made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labelled as extremism".

Malcolm Little spoke regularly at meetings held by MMI and the OAAU, and was one of the most sought-after speakers on college campuses.

Malcolm Little was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race.

Malcolm Little was still turning and growing at the time of his brutal and meaningless assassination.

Malcolm Little's philosophy is known almost entirely from the many speeches and interviews he gave from 1952 until his death.

Malcolm Little said that the Nation of Islam followed Islam as it was practiced around the world, but the Nation's teachings varied from those of other Muslims because they were adapted to the "uniquely pitiful" condition of Black people in the United States.

Malcolm Little taught that Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation, was God incarnate, and that Elijah Muhammad was his Messenger, or Prophet.

Malcolm Little rejected the civil rights movement's strategy of nonviolence, advocating instead that Black people should defend themselves.

Malcolm Little felt that calling the movement a struggle for civil rights would keep the issue within the United States while changing the focus to human rights would make it an international concern.

Malcolm Little said that he and the other members of the OAAU were determined to defend themselves from aggressors, and to secure freedom, justice and equality "by whatever means necessary".

Malcolm Little emphasized the "direct connection" between the domestic struggle of African Americans for equal rights with the independence struggles of Third World nations.

Malcolm Little said that African Americans were wrong when they thought of themselves as a minority; globally, Black people were the majority.

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Malcolm Little X has been described as one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.

Malcolm Little is credited with raising the self-esteem of Black Americans and reconnecting them with their African heritage.

Malcolm Little is largely responsible for the spread of Islam in the Black community in the United States.

In 1986 Ella Malcolm Little-Collins merged the Organization of Afro-American Unity with the African American Defense League.

The Marvel Comics writer Chris Claremont confirmed that Malcolm X was an inspiration for the X-Men character Magneto, while Martin Luther King was an inspiration for Professor X Malcolm X inspired the character Erik Killmonger in the film Black Panther.