Malcolm+X

By: Imani
 * “THE TIMES OF MALCOLM”**

In the 1940's, Malcolm Little a k a Detroit Red (and, later, a k a Malcolm X, a k a El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) wanted to impress co-conspirators in petty crime with his ruthlessness and daring. He loaded his pistol with a single bullet, twirled the cylinder, put the muzzle to his head and fired. The gesture demonstrated that he was unafraid of death and therefore not afraid of much else. And when he recounts the story in his 1965 autobiography ("as told to" Alex Haley), the reader is also impressed - though evidence of his brilliance, fury and self-destructiveness is, by then, hardly necessary.

Malcolm X, 1925–65, militant black leader in the United States, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, b. Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb. He was introduced to the Black Muslims while serving a prison term and became a Muslim minister upon his release in 1952. He quickly became very prominent in the movement with a following perhaps equaling that of its leader, Elijah Muhammad. In 1963, Malcolm was suspended by Elijah after a speech in which Malcolm suggested that President Kennedy's assassination was a matter of the “chickens coming home to roost.” He then formed a rival organization of his own, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. In 1964, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, he announced his conversion to orthodox Islam and his new belief that there could be brotherhood between black and white. In his Organization of Afro-American Unity, formed after his return, the tone was still that of militant black nationalism but no longer of separation. In Feb., 1965, he was shot and killed in a public auditorium in New York City. His assassins were vaguely identified as Black Muslims, but this is a matter of controversy. In the civil rights movement he helped us black people learn that there is another way then getting treated like second class citizens. He worked hard to get us some where that was better than being treated like animals. That is what happened.