Early Life
On May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm Little was born
to Reverend Earl and Louise Little. Rev. Little, who believed in
self-determination and worked for the unity of black people.
Malcolm was raised in a background of ethnic awareness and
dignity, but violence was sparked by white racists trying to
stop black people such as Rev. Little from preaching the black
cause.
The history of Malcolm's dedication to black people, like
that of his father, may have been motivated by a long history of
oppression of his family. As a young child, Malcolm, his
parents, brothers, and sisters were shot at, burned out of their
home, harassed, and threatened. This culminated in the murder of
his father by white racists when Malcolm was six.
Malcolm became a drop-out from school at the age of fifteen.
Learning the ways of the streets, Malcolm became acquainted with
hoodlums, thieves, dope peddlers, and pimps. Convicted of
burglary at twenty, he remained in prison until the age of
twenty-seven. During his prison stay he attempted to educate
himself. In addition, during his period in prison he learned
about and joined the Nation of Islam, studying the teachings of
Elijah Muhammed fully. He was released, a changed man, in 1952.
The Nation of Islam
Upon his release, Malcolm went to Detroit, joined the daily
activities of the sect, and was given instruction by Elijah
Muhammad himself. Malcolm's personal commitment helped build the
organization nation-wide, while making him an international
figure. He was interviewed on major television programs and by
magazines, and spoke across the country at various universities
and other forums. His power was in his words, which so vividly
described the plight of blacks and vehemently incriminated
whites. When a white person referred to the fact that some
Southern university had enrolled black freshmen without
bayonets, Malcolm reacted with scorn:
When I "slipped," the program host would leap on
the bait: "Ahhh! Indeed, Mr. Malcolm X -- you can't deny
that's an advance for your race!"
I'd jerk the pole then. "I can't turn around without
hearing about some 'civil rights advance'! White people seem
to think the black man ought to be shouting 'hallelujah'! Four
hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the
black man's back -- and now the whit man starts to wiggle the
knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be
grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's
still going to leave a scar!
Although Malcolm words often stung with the injustices against
blacks in America, the equally racist views of the Nation of
Islam kept him from accepting any whites as sincere or capable
of helping the situation. For twelve years he preached that the
white man was the devil and the "Honorable Elijah
Muhammad" was God's messenger. Unfortunately, most images
of Malcolm today focus on this period of his life, although the
transformation he was about to undergo would give him a
completely different, and more important, message for the
American people.
The Change to True Islam
 On
March 12, 1964, impelled by internal jealousy within the Nation
of Islam and revelations of Elijah Muhammad's sexual immorality,
Malcolm left the Nation of Islam with the intention of starting
his own organization:
I feel like a man who has been asleep somewhat and under
someone else's control. I feel what I'm thinking and saying
now is for myself. Before, it was for and by guidance of
another, now I think with my own mind.
Malcolm was thirty-eight years old when he left Elijah
Muhammad's Nation of Islam. Reflecting on reflects that occurred
prior to leaving, he said:
At one or another college or university, usually in the
informal gatherings after I had spoken, perhaps a dozen
generally white-complexioned people would come up to me,
identifying themselves as Arabian, Middle Eastern or North
African Muslims who happened to be visiting, studying, or
living in the United States. They had said to me that, my
white-indicting statements notwithstanding, they felt I was
sincere in considering myself a Muslim -- and they felt if I
was exposed to what they always called "true Islam,"
I would "understand it, and embrace it."
Automatically, as a follower of Elijah, I had bridled whenever
this was said. But in the privacy of my own thoughts after
several of these experiences, I did question myself: if one
was sincere in professing a religion, why should he balk at
broadening his knowledge of that religion?
Those orthodox Muslims whom I had met, one after another,
had urged me to meet and talk with a Dr. Mahmoud Youssef
Shawarbi. . . . Then one day Dr. Shawarbi and I were
introduced by a newspaperman. He was cordial. He said he had
followed me in the press; I said I had been told of him, and
we talked for fifteen or twenty minutes. We both had to leave
to make appointments we had, when he dropped on me something
whose logic never would get out of my head. He said, "No
man has believed perfectly until he wishes for his brother
what he wishes for himself."
The Effect of the Pilgrimage
Malcolm further continues about the Hajj:
The pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, is a
religious obligation that every orthodox Muslim fulfills, if
able, at least once in his or her lifetime.
The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of
God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God;
those who are able, make the journey." (3:97)
Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men;
they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they
will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).
Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave
for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a
peasant and no on e would know. Some powerful personages,
who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I
had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently
calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here
I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown,
red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky
red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God,
all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .
That is when I first began to reappraise the "white
man." It was when I first began to perceive that
"white man," as commonly used, means complexion only
secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In
America,"white man" meant specific attitudes and
actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white
men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white
complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had
ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration
in my whole outlook about "white" men.
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the
world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to
black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the
same ritual displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that
my experiences in America had led me to believe never could
exist between the white and the non-white...America needs
to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that
erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my
travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even
eaten with people who in America would have been considered
white -- but the "white" attitude was removed from
their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen
sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together,
irrespecitve of their color.
Malcolm's New Vision of
America
Malcolm continues:
Each hour here in the Holy Land enables me to have
greater spiritual insights into what is happening in America
between black and white. The American Negro never can be
blamed for his racial animosities -- he is only reacting to
four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American
whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path I do
believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that
the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and
universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of
them will turn to the spiritual path of truth
-- the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that
racism inevitably must lead to. . . .
I believe that God now is giving the world's so-called
'Christian' white society its last opportunity to repent and
atone for the crimes of exploiting and enslaving the world's
non-white peoples. It is exactly as when God gave Pharaoh a
chance to repent. But Pharaoh persisted in his refusal to give
justice to those who he oppressed. And, we know, God finally
destroyed Pharaoh.
I will never forget the dinner at the Azzam home with Dr.
Azzam. The more we talked, the more his vast reservoir of
knowledge and its variety seemed unlimited. He spoke of the
racial lineage of the descendants of Muhammad (PBUH) the
Prophet, and he showed how they were both black and white. He
also pointed out how color, and the problems of color which
exist in the Muslim world, exist only where, and to the extent
that, that area of the Muslim world has been influenced by the
West. He said that if on encountered any differences based on
attitude toward color, this directly reflected the degree of
Western influence.
The Oneness of Man Under One
God
It was during his pilgrimage that he began to write some letters
to his loyal assistants at the newly formed Muslim Mosque in
Harlem. He asked that his letter be duplicated and distributed
to the press:
Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the
overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by
people of all colors and races here in this ancient Holy Land,
the House of Abraham, Muhammad, and all the other Prophets of
the Holy Scriptures. For the past week, I have been utterly
speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed
all around me by people of all colors. . . .
You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on
this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced
me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns
previously held, and to toss aside some of my
previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me.
Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who
tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new
experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an
open mind, which necessary to the flexibility that must go
hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I
have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and
slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to
the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the
bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and
whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in
the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims,
I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African
Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana.
We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their
belief in one God had removed the "white" from their
minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and
the 'white' from their attitude.
I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans
could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could
accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to
measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their
"differences" in color.
With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the
so-called "Christian" white American heart should be
more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive
problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from
imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany
by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.
They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the
most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people
of all races, color, from all over the world coming to gether
as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . .
All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the
pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One
God.
Malcolm returned from the pilgrimage as El-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz.
He was afire with new spiritual insight. For him, the struggle
had evolved from the civil rights struggle of a nationalist to
the human rights struggle of an internationalist and
humanitarian.
After the Pilgrimage
White reporters and others were eager to learn about El-Hajj
Malik's newly-formed opinions concerning themselves. They hardly
believed that the man who had preached against them for so many
years could suddenly turn around and call them brothers. To
these people El-Hajj Malik had this to say:
You're asking me "Didn't you say that now you accept
white men as brothers?" Well, my answer is that in the
Muslim world, I saw, I felt, and I wrote home how my thinking
was broadened! Just as I wrote, I shared true, brotherly love
with many white-complexioned Muslims who never gave a single
thought to the race, or to the complexion, of another Muslim.
My pilgrimage broadened my scope. It blessed me with a new
insight. In two weeks in the Holy Land, I saw what I never had
seen in thirty-nine years here in America. I saw all races,
all colors, -- blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned
Africans -- in true brotherhood! In unity! Living as one!
Worshipping as one! No segregationists -- no liberals; they
would not have known how to interpret the meaning of those
words.
In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all
white people. I will never be guilty of that again -- as I
know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some
truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The
true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white
people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments
against blacks.
To the blacks who increasingly looked to him as a leader,
El-Hajj Malik preached a new message, quite the opposite of what
he had been preaching as a minister in the Nation of Islam:
True Islam taught me that it takes all of the
religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial
ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and
the Human Society complete.
Since I learned the truth in Mecca, my dearest friends have
come to include all kinds -- some Christians, Jews,
Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, and even atheists! I have
friends who are called capitalists, Socialists, and
Communists! Some of my friends are moderates, conservatives,
extremists -- some are even Uncle Toms! My friends today are
black, brown, red, yellow, and white!
I said to my Harlem street audiences that only when mankind
would submit to the One God who created all -- only then would
mankind even approach the "peace" of which so much
talk could be heard...but toward which so little action
was seen.
Too Dangerous to Last
El-Hajj Malik's new universalistic message was the U.S.
establishment's worst nightmare. Not only was he appealing to
the black masses, but to intellectuals of all races and colors.
Now he was consistently demonized by the press as
"advocating violence" and being "militant,"
although in actuality he and Dr.
Martin Luther King were moving closer together in outlook:
The goal has always been the same, with the approaches to
it as different as mine and Dr. Martin Luther King's
non-violent marching, that dramatizes the brutality and the
evil of the white man against defenseless blacks. And in the
racial climate of this country today, it is anybody's guess
which of the "extremes" in approach to the black
man's problems might personally meet a fatal catastrophe first
-- "non-violent" Dr. King, or so-called
"violent" me."
El-Hajj Malik knew full well that he was a target of many
groups. In spite of this, he was never afraid to say what he had
to say when he had to say it. As a sort of epitaph at the end of
his autobiography, he says:
I know that societies often have killed the people who
have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having
brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that
will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in
the body of America -- then, all of the credit is due to
Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.
The Legacy of Malcolm X
Although El-Hajj Malik knew that he was a target for
assassination, he accepted this fact without requesting police
protection. On February 21, 1965, while preparing to give a
speech at a New York hotel, he was shot by three black men. He
was three months short of forty, the age of maturity according
to the Qur'an. We may never know for sure who was behind
El-Hajj Malik's murder, or, for that matter, the murder of other
national leaders in the early 1960s.
Malcolm X's life has affected Americans in many important
ways. His reversion must have had an influence on Elijah
Muhammad's son, Wallace Muhammad, who, after his father's death,
led the Nation of Islam's followers into orthodox Islam.
African-Americans' interest in their Islamic roots has
flourished since El-Hajj Malik's death. Alex Haley, who wrote
Malcolm's autobiography, later wrote the epic Roots
about an African Muslim family's experience with slavery. More
and more African-Americans are becoming Muslim, adopting Muslim
names, or exploring African culture. Interest in Malcolm X has
seen a surge recently due to Spike Lee's movie, X. El-Hajj Malik
is a source of pride for African-Americans, Muslims, and
Americans in general. His message is simple and clear:
"I am not a racist in any form whatever. I don't
believe in any form of racism. I don't believe in any form of
discrimination or segregation. I believe in Islam."
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