On this Day in 1925, Malcolm X was born. Growing up in Michigan, Malcolm X experienced the violence of white supremacy from an early age. His parents, Earl and Louise Little, were supporters of Marcus Garvey’s movement for Black self-determination. Because of their political commitment, the family faced repeated racist harassment. Their home was burned down, his father died under suspicious circumstances, and his mother was later institutionalized, leaving the children separated in foster care.
As a young adult in Boston and Harlem, he lived the life of a small-time “hustler” before being imprisoned. There, he joined the Black nationalist Nation of Islam and replaced his surname “Little,” a name tracing back to a former slaveholder, with an “X” standing for the unknown. Following his release, he emerged as a brilliant speaker and organizer.
While Martin Luther King Jr. invoked the “American Dream,” Malcolm X saw only an “American nightmare.” With fierce rhetoric, he denounced the historic crimes of white America, from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery to segregation and ongoing racial oppression. His radical critique struck at the heart of US society.
Yet Malcolm X’s primary concern was not white America, but Black emancipation. To achieve it, he argued, African Americans had to stand up for themselves decisively, “by any means necessary.”
In 1964, Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He increasingly placed the struggle for Black liberation in the context of African decolonization and global anti-colonial movements, working more closely with the left wing of the civil rights movement.
On 21 February 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. But his fundamental critique of racism lives on.