Malcolm Little was born in Omaha to Earl and Louise Little, civil rights activists who followed Marcus Garvey's Black nationalist movement. Death threats from white supremacists forced the family to relocate multiple times in his childhood. He would grow up to become Malcolm X, one of the twentieth century's most powerful voices for Black empowerment, transforming from a Nation of Islam minister into a global human rights advocate before his assassination in 1965.
Malcolm Little entered the world on May 19, 1925, in a house on Pinkney Street in Omaha, Nebraska. His father Earl was a Baptist preacher and outspoken organizer for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, an activism that brought the Ku Klux Klan to their door before Malcolm was even born—his mother, pregnant with him, faced down riders who circled the house on horseback threatening the family.
The violence did not stop. The family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where white supremacists burned their home in 1929. Earl Little died in 1931 under suspicious circumstances that Malcolm always believed was a racist murder disguised as a streetcar accident. His mother was later committed to a psychiatric institution, and the children were scattered into foster care and orphanages.
From this shattered childhood, Malcolm rose through prison conversion to the Nation of Islam, into national prominence as its fiery minister, and finally toward a broader, more universalist vision of Pan-African human rights after breaking with the organization and making his pilgrimage to Mecca. He was assassinated in Harlem in February 1965, but his autobiography and speeches remain foundational texts of Black political thought, still read and argued over sixty years later.
Key people: Malcolm X, Earl Little, Louise Little