Malcolm used the time behind bars to educate himself in the prison library where he learned the fundamentals of grammar and increased his vocabulary. It was here that a few inmates introduced Malcolm to a new religion and movement, The Nation of Islam. Malcolm's younger brother, Reginald, already a member, visited him and told him about Islam and about Allah.
Much of what Reginald said confused Malcolm, but two phrases took root in his head, "The white man is the devil" and "The black man is the brainwashed". Malcolm learned that if he wanted to join, he would have to accept its theology and submit completely to its founder and leader, Elijah Muhammad.
Inspired by the new direction his life was taking, Malcolm wrote Elijah Muhammad a heartfelt letter about himself and why he wanted to join. Elijah wrote back welcoming Malcolm to the faith. He instructed Malcolm to drop his last name, which his ancestors inherited from a slave owner and replace it with the letter X which symbolized that his true African name had been lost.
When Malcolm was four, the family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where Earl attempted opening a store while continuing his preaching. But a group of white supremacists calling themselves the Black Legion a sub-branch of the Ku Klux Klan became irate to him.
Two years later, Earl Little was found dead on the trolley tracks in town after a streetcar ran over him.
Despite the police report that Earl's death was an accident, Malcolm strongly believed that his father was murdered by the Black Legion who placed his father's body on the tracks to make it look like an accident.
Following Earl's death, Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, tried to support her eight children on her own. Malcolm started stealing food and candy from neighborhood stores to support his brothers and sisters. After being caught a few too many times, a local court ruled that Louise was unable to control Malcolm and had him removed from her care and placed in a friendly white couple's home who knew Louise. Two years later, on account of severe stress in raising her children, Louise suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to the state mental hospital where she remained for the remaining 26 years of her life.
After finishing eighth grade, Malcolm dropped out of school and traveled to Boston where his older sister, Ella, resided. Soon after, two other men drew pistols and ran to the stage. Thomas Hayer, a twenty-two-year-old member of the Newark Mosque, fired insurance rounds at the prostrate Malcolm, hitting him in his left ankle.
Leon Davis, another young member, shot two 9-mm rounds, hitting his thighs. A tape recorder on the podium caught what it could of the drama before the physics of the blasts shut down its revolving reels. Goodman hit the floor. The hand of his twisted right arm grasped at his belt in a defiant street pose.
And those people were trying to revive him, but I knew it was no use. I just knew it. Malcolm had once credited the Nation with saving his life. He grew up in Lansing, Michigan, and spent a troubled youth engaged in criminal enterprises like drug-dealing and racketeering. But in prison, in , he discovered the teachings of the Nation, and wrote a letter to Elijah Muhammad, pledging his loyalty.
Since then, he had maintained a tough, analytical approach to all matters except those pertaining to his religious beliefs, some of which were eccentric. Eventually, there would be a global war—or Armageddon—in which Africans vanquished the devils.
Fard, was believed to be the human incarnation of Allah. Fard claimed to come from Mecca, though, according to police records, he seems to have been a white con-artist from New Zealand who had spent time in San Quentin for selling narcotics. Elijah Muhammad was believed to be his divine Messenger. Wallace confirmed that, indeed, Muhammad had fathered children with several young secretaries, and had then denied the paternity and kicked the women out of the Nation for premarital sex.
As a minister, Malcolm had faithfully informed the Messenger of every development related to the sect. So, soon after the meeting, he confronted Muhammad about his adultery. In , after speaking out of turn about the assassination of John F. It seemed clear that he would not be invited back into the fold, and, in March, , he announced that he was leaving the Nation.
After the split, Malcolm went through an intense period of deprogramming. He disavowed Black separatism, and gained confidence that a cross-racial coalition could work together to fight a broad range of evils, including racism, colonialism, and the ravages of capitalism.
In , Malcolm had been forced to attend a meeting where Klansmen proposed working together to assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm declined. Muhammad, meanwhile, was growing impatient with Malcolm. His car was tailed at high speeds in Los Angeles, and police had to scare off attackers in New York. If Malcolm had been first around the corner. Malcolm was awakened when the bombs exploded, and he managed to escort Betty and their children outside to safety.
The task fell to the Newark mosque, whose goon squad included several accomplished bank robbers with access to caches of pistols, rifles, shotguns, and other weapons. The mission was assigned to Hayer, Davis, and to Bradley—who had trained as a Green Beret and was known as the most cold-blooded member of the squad.
He outlined that the brothers in the back were to create a disturbance soon as [Malcolm] walked out. It was there he encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, whose members are popularly known as Black Muslims. After six years, Malcolm was released from prison and became a loyal and effective minister of the Nation of Islam in Harlem, New York.
In contrast with civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. In the early s, he began to develop a more outspoken philosophy than that of Elijah Muhammad, whom he felt did not sufficiently support the civil rights movement. A few months later, Malcolm formally left the organization and made a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, where he was profoundly affected by the lack of racial discord among orthodox Muslims. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
After George On February 21, , Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a con man who went by the alias Clark Rockefeller and passed himself off as an American blueblood, is born in Germany.
Three Nation members were charged with the murder and given indeterminate life sentences. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was conceived or aided by leading or additional members of the Nation, or with law enforcement agencies, have persisted for decades after the shooting.
A controversial figure accused of preaching racism and violence, Malcolm X is also a widely celebrated figure within African-American and Muslim American communities for his pursuit of racial justice.
He was posthumously honored with Malcolm X Day, on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States. Hundreds of streets and schools in the U. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
0コメント