Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African American revolutionary, civil rights activist, and Muslim minister who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement until his assassination in 1965. He discovered the new religious movement the Nation of Islam (NOI) while in prison and served as a spokesperson from 1952 until he transitioned to Sunni Islam in 1964. He is often regarded as one of the most significant Muslim figures in the history of the United States. A controversial figure accused of preaching violence, Malcolm X is also a celebrated figure within the African American community for his pursuit of racial justice and equality.
Malcolm spent his adolescence living in a series of foster homes and with various relatives, after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. In 1946, he was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison for larceny and burglary. While there, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopting the name Malcolm X to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while discarding "the white slavemaster name of 'Little'", and after his parole in 1952, he quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders. He was the public face of the organization for 12 years, advocating black empowerment and separation of Black and white Americans, as well as criticizing Martin Luther King Jr. and the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on non-violence and racial integration. Malcolm X also expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements such as its free drug rehabilitation program. From the 1950s onward, Malcolm X was subjected to surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
In the 1960s, Malcolm X began to grow disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad. He subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the mainstream civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca and became known as "el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz", which roughly translates to "The Pilgrim Malcolm the Patriarch". After a brief period of travel across Africa, he publicly renounced the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic MMI and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Throughout 1964, his conflict with the Nation of Islam intensified and he was repeatedly sent death threats. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated in New York City. Three Nation members were charged with the murder and given indeterminate life sentences. In 2021, two of the convictions were vacated. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was conceived or aided by leading or additional members of the Nation, or with law enforcement agencies, has persisted for decades.
Malcolm was posthumously honored with Malcolm X Day on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States, with Berkeley and Oakland city offices and schools closed. Hundreds of streets and schools in the United States have been renamed in his honor, while the Audubon Ballroom, the site of his assassination, was partly redeveloped in 2005 to accommodate the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. His thought was greatly influential to the Black power movement. His autobiography, on which he collaborated with Alex Haley, was published posthumously in 1965.
Malcolm X was born May 19, 1925, at University Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the fourth of seven children of Louise Little (née Langdon), born in Grenada, and Reverend Earl Little, born in Reynolds, Georgia. Earl was an outspoken Baptist minister and both he and Louise, a seamstress, were admirers of Pan-African activist Marcus Garvey. Malcolm had ten siblings; his older siblings were Wilfred, Hilda and Philbert and his younger siblings were Reginald, Wesley, Yvonne (1929–2003), and Robert. Malcolm also had older half-siblings from his father's first marriage, Ella (1914–1996), Mary and Earl Jr. Earl was the local leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and Louise served as secretary and "branch reporter", sending news of local UNIA activities to Negro World; they inculcated self-reliance and black pride in their children.
The family home was located at 3448 Pinkney Street and was designated a historical site by the National Register of Historic Places. Malcolm later said that white violence killed four of his father's brothers. Due to threats by members of the Ku Klux Klan that Earl's UNIA activities were said to be "spreading trouble", the family were forced to flee to Milwaukee in 1926, and shortly thereafter to Lansing, Michigan. In Lansing, his parents were sued for eviction from their newly purchased home due to a covenant that prevented the sale to non-white buyers. They were frequently harassed by the Black Legion, a white supremacist group who Earl later accused of burning down their family home in 1929. No fire truck was dispatched to their home to extinguish the blaze.
In 1931, when Malcolm was six years old, his father Earl died unexpectedly, in what has been officially ruled a streetcar accident. His mother Louise believed Earl had been murdered by the Black Legion. Rumors that local members were responsible for his father's death were widely circulated and were very disturbing to Malcolm X as a child. As an adult, he expressed conflicting beliefs on the question. After a dispute with creditors, Louise received a life insurance benefit (nominally $1,000 —about $21,000 in 2025) in payments of $18 per month; the issuer of another, larger policy refused to pay, claiming her husband Earl died by suicide. To make ends meet, Louise rented out part of her garden and her sons hunted game.
During the 1930s, white Seventh-day Adventists witnessed to the Little family; later on, Louise Little and her son Wilfred were baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Malcolm said the Adventists were "the friendliest white people" he ever saw.
In 1937, a man Louise had been dating—marriage had seemed a possibility—vanished from her life when she became pregnant with his child. In late 1938, she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital. The children were separated and sent to foster homes. Malcolm and his siblings secured her release 24 years later.
Malcolm attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School in Mason, Michigan, but left high school in 1941 before graduating. He 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." Later, Malcolm X recalled feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented black man regardless of talent.
From ages 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.
After a short time in Flint, Michigan, Malcolm moved to Harlem in 1943, where he found employment on the New Haven Railroad and engaged in drug dealing, gambling, racketeering, robbery, and pimping. According to biographer Bruce Perry, Malcolm also occasionally had sex with other men, usually for money, though this conjecture has been disputed by those who knew him. He befriended John Elroy Sanford, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Harlem who aspired to be a professional comedian. Both men had reddish hair, so Sanford was called "Chicago Red" after his hometown, and Malcolm was known as "Detroit Red". Years later, Sanford became famous as comedian and actor Redd Foxx.
Summoned by the local draft board for military service in World War II in late 1943, he feigned mental disturbance by rambling and declaring: "I want to be sent down South. Organize them nigger soldiers ... steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers". He was then declared "mentally disqualified for military service".
In late 1945, Malcolm returned to Boston where he and four accomplices committed a series of burglaries targeting wealthy white families. In 1946, he was arrested while picking up a stolen watch he had left at a shop for repairs, and in February began serving a sentence of eight to ten years at Charlestown State Prison for larceny and breaking and entering. In 1947, he was transferred to Concord Reformatory where he served 15 months before transferring again to Norfolk Prison Colony.