Nonfiction:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965 (with Alex Haley)
Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
The Speeches of Malcolm X at Harvard, 1968
By Any Means Necessary, 1970
The End of White World Supremacy, 1971
Malcolm X helped to restore the pride that made the emergence of black consciousness in the twentieth century inevitable and then went beyond anger and hatred to make the reemergence of hope possible. He was born as Malcolm Little (his mother’s father was white) and grew up on the outskirts of East Lansing, Michigan, where his family raised their own food until their house was burned down by white people when he was four. His father, Earl Little, a Baptist minister who believed in Marcus Garvey’s ideas that black people had to return to Africa to attain true freedom, was murdered by two white men when Malcolm was six. His mother sought consolation in another religion and became a Seventh-day Adventist before suffering a mental breakdown.
Malcolm X
Malcolm continued in school until the eighth grade, hoping to become a lawyer though he was advised to train as a carpenter. His family moved frequently, from rural to suburban to inner-city locations, and as a teenager Malcolm X settled in Boston. There he began to operate as a street hustler and learned about the underside of American society as a numbers runner, burglar, drug pusher, and addict. Known as “Detroit Red” because his family still lived in Michigan, he was arrested in 1946 for robbery and sentenced to ten years in prison. While in prison he studied as much as fifteen hours a day, taking correspondence courses in English, Latin, and German and joining a prison debate society. He converted to Islam after writing to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, the religious group also known as the Black Muslims. Upon his release he returned to Detroit and became an assistant minister, and in 1954 he became the minister of Temple Seven in Harlem. In 1963, by which time he had married Sister Betty X, he left the Nation of Islam. He then collaborated with Alex Haley on an interview for Playboy (May, 1963), which led to the writing of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
In 1964 he formed his own Muslim religious organization, and when he visited Mecca later that year he chose the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz to symbolize his strong beliefs in building a united front of African American organizations. He helped to form the Organization of African Unity. During the last year of his life he spoke extensively on issues concerning civil rights in the United States, international affairs, and black nationalism. His home in Queens, New York, was bombed the night before a major statement on the goals of the Organization of Afro-American Unity was to be released. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated as he addressed an audience of four hundred in a Manhattan ballroom. His killers were never found.
Many commentators view Malcolm X as a violent or negative version of Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet this judgment ignores the fact that his life was much more typical than that of King and that his experiences were broader and closer to the lives of many African American people. It also overlooks Malcolm X’s saying upon his return from Mecca, “In the past I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I will never be guilty of that again.” After that time he continued to fight racism but adopted a less confrontational approach.
Malcolm X’s autobiography still stands as the prime example of prison literature from the United States in the twentieth century, an inspiration to other prisoners trapped in ignorance and fear. His speeches and his interviews advocate a philosophy of political organization with precision, clarity, and force, employing the powers of language in spoken form in the tradition of the slave literature of the nineteenth century. The words of a social critic, his writing now seems remarkably prescient, his rhetorical style the model for protest movements through the 1970’s, his wit and ability to turn a phrase a precursor of the rhythms of diverse black American artists such as street-corner rap performers and leaders such as Jesse Jackson. An indication of his stature in the African American community is that he is the subject of more poetry than any other black American except John Coltrane. Malcolm X’s brief literary career suggests the promise that he was not permitted to fulfill.