Malcolm X — People — Black-History.com

Malcolm X rose from a prison cell to become the most forceful voice of the Nation of Islam, indicting American racism and the strategy of integration before audiences in Harlem, on college campuses, and on national television. In the last year of his life he left the Nation, made the pilgrimage to Mecca, embraced Sunni Islam, and sought to connect the Black American struggle to movements for independence in Africa and to international human rights, before he was assassinated at the age of thirty-nine.

At a Glance

Born: 19 May 1925, Omaha, Nebraska
Died: 21 February 1965, New York, New York
Birth name: Malcolm Little; later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz
Known for: Minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem; “The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964); Organization of Afro-American Unity; The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
Fields: Civil Rights · Religion
Era: Civil Rights Era

Early Life

Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on 19 May 1925, to Earl Little, a Baptist preacher and organizer for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, and Louise Norton Little, who had been born in Grenada. The family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where white hostility followed them; their house burned in 1929. In 1931 Earl Little was killed by a streetcar. Authorities ruled the death an accident, but the family believed he had been murdered by white supremacists.

The family sank into poverty. In January 1939 Louise Little was committed to a state mental hospital in Michigan, where she remained until 1963, and the children were separated and placed in foster homes. Malcolm was a strong student, but by his own account a white teacher, using a racial slur, told him that becoming a lawyer was no realistic goal for him. In 1941 he moved to Boston to live with his half-sister Ella Little Collins, and later to Harlem, where he worked at a series of jobs and became involved in hustling and burglary.

Life and Work

Arrested in Boston for larceny and breaking and entering, he began serving a prison sentence in February 1946. In prison, influenced by letters from his brothers and sisters, he converted to the Nation of Islam, led by Elijah Muhammad, and undertook an intense program of reading and self-education. On his parole in August 1952 he took the surname X, rejecting Little as a name imposed by slaveholders.

Malcolm X rose quickly as a minister. By 1954 he led Temple No. 7 in Harlem, and he helped establish mosques in other cities; in 1957 Elijah Muhammad named him the Nation’s national representative. That year, after police in Harlem beat a Nation member named Hinton Johnson, Malcolm X led a disciplined crowd to the station house and secured medical care for him, a display that brought him wide attention. In January 1958 he married Betty Sanders, a nurse who had joined the Nation as Betty X; they had six daughters. The 1959 television documentary The Hate That Hate Produced introduced him to a national white audience, and he helped launch the newspaper Muhammad Speaks.

He attacked the goal of integration and the nonviolent tactics of the Southern movement, and called for Black self-defense and separation. In a November 1963 speech in Detroit, “Message to the Grass Roots,” he distinguished a “Black revolution” from what he dismissed as the “Negro revolution” of the March on Washington. Tensions with the Nation’s leadership had been growing, and after he described President John F. Kennedy’s assassination as a case of “chickens coming home to roost,” Elijah Muhammad suspended him from public speaking.

In March 1964 Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. On 3 April 1964, in Cleveland, he delivered “The Ballot or the Bullet,” urging Black Americans to use their votes and to defend themselves. In April he made the hajj to Mecca, where he embraced Sunni Islam and took the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; he wrote that worshipping alongside Muslims of every color had changed his view of race. Returning in May, he founded the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity, modeled on the Organization of African Unity, and spent much of the summer and fall travelling in Africa and the Middle East, meeting heads of state and seeking support for bringing the treatment of Black Americans before the United Nations. He returned to the United States in November 1964.

He was under constant threat. His house in Queens was firebombed on 14 February 1965. One week later, on 21 February 1965, as he began to speak at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, Manhattan, he was shot and killed by several gunmen in front of an audience that included his wife and children.

Legacy

More than 1,500 people attended his funeral in Harlem on 27 February 1965, where the actor Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of the murder in 1966. One, Mujahid Abdul Halim (Talmadge Hayer), admitted his role and maintained that the other two were innocent. On 18 November 2021, after a reinvestigation found that the FBI and New York police had withheld evidence, a Manhattan court vacated the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, who had spent decades in prison; Islam had died in 2009.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley and published in 1965, became one of the most widely read American books of its century. Manning Marable’s biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011), drawing on new archival material, won the Pulitzer Prize for History and prompted debate over how much the Autobiography shaped his image. His arguments for self-determination, self-defense, and international solidarity became foundational to the Black Power movement and remain central to debates over strategy in the Black freedom struggle.

For Educators

Malcolm X repeatedly reinvented himself, and his arguments for self-determination, self-defense, and international solidarity shaped the Black Power movement and debates over strategy that continue today. Open the classroom lesson →

Key Dates

19 May 1925 Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska.
1931 His father, Earl Little, is killed in Lansing, Michigan.
February 1946 Begins serving a prison sentence in Massachusetts; converts to the Nation of Islam while incarcerated.
August 1952 Paroled; takes the name Malcolm X.
1954 Becomes minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem.
January 1958 Marries Betty Sanders (Betty Shabazz).
March 1964 Announces his break with the Nation of Islam.
April 1964 Makes the hajj to Mecca; adopts the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.
1964 Founds the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
21 February 1965 Assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.

Sources and Further Reading

Clayborne Carson, “Malcolm X,” American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Link
National Archives, “Malcolm X.” Link
National Public Radio, report on the dismissal of the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, 17 November 2021. Link
Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965).
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011).

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MLA: “Malcolm X.” Black-History.com, 30 Sept. 2026, https://black-history.com/people/malcolm-x/.
APA: Black-History.com Editors. (2026, September 30). Malcolm X. Black-History.com. https://black-history.com/people/malcolm-x/
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Editorial Note

By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.