Malcolm X

Malcolm's life is a Horatio Alger story with a twist. His is not a "rags to

riches" tale, but a powerful narrative of self-transformation from petty

hustler to internationally known political leader. Born in Omaha,

Nebraska, the son of Louise and Earl Little, who was a Baptist preacher

active in Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association,

Malcolm, along with his siblings, experienced dramatic confrontations

with racism from childhood. Hooded Klansmen burned their home in

Lansing, Michigan; Earl Little was killed under mysterious

circumstances; welfare agencies split up the children and eventually

committed Louise Little to a state mental institution; and Malcolm was

forced to live in a detention home run by a racist white couple. By the

eighth grade he left school, moved to Boston, Massachussetts, to live

with his half-sister Ella, and discovered the underground world of

African American hipsters.

Malcolm's entry into the masculine culture of the zoot suit, the

"conked" (straightened) hair, and the lindy hop coincided with the

outbreak of World War II, rising black militancy (symbolized in part by

A. Philip Randolph's threatened March on Washington for racial and

economic justice), and outbreaks of race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and

other cities (see Detroit Riot of 1943). Malcolm and his partners did

not seem very "political" at the time, but they dodged the draft so as

not to lose their lives over a "white man's war," and they avoided

wage work whenever possible. His search for leisure and pleasure took

him to Harlem, New York, where his primary source of income derived

from petty hustling, drug dealing, pimping, gambling, and viciously

exploiting women. In 1946 his luck ran out; he was arrested for

burglary and sentenced