- 17 Aug 2005 15:03
#699491
Malcolm X
5/20/2004 6:32:00 PM GMT
Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Louise and Earl Little. Because of the father's advocacy for Garvey?s movement, the whole family was terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan.
To avoid any more harassment by these white racists, Little had to migrate with his family to Lansing, Michigan. But it didn't work. The white racists of Lansing murdered Malcolm's father and laid him on a railway track, claiming that he committed suicide.
Malcolm attended school until eighth grade living with different families. When his teacher stopped him from trying to become a lawyer, he dropped out of school and went to his older half sister, Ella, who lived in Boston.
There, he took a job as a shoeshine boy at the Roseland Ballroom. Settling in Harlem, New York, he became more and more involved in criminal activities. He robbed, worked as a pimp, and sold narcotics. Malcolm soon learned to survive in the hustler society, which was constantly threatened by internal wars that could render every man your enemy.
He returned to Boston in 1945 after falling out with another hustler, and continued a life of crime, forming his own house robbing gang. Arrested for robbery in February 1946, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for seven years.
Malcolm converted to Islam and became a strong and forceful champion of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of a small black cult, the "Nation of Islam", with branches in Detroit, Chicago and New York. He was trying hard to deliver the message of Islam to every nook and corner of the Black community in the United States. He started learning more about Islam and reading the Qur'an and followed strictly the Nation of Islam's laws and moral codes.
Minister Malcolm X founded mosques in Boston, Philadelphia, Harlem and elsewhere and made the national expansion of the movement possible, so that the membership reached approximately 30?000 in 1963. Malcolm X' vision was expressed in speeches, a newspaper column as well as radio and television interviews. In addition, he helped to found the Black Muslim newspaper "Muhammad Speaks". Minister Malcolm X was said to be the only Negro who "could stop a race riot -- or start one." In January 1958 he married Betty X, who was also a member of the Nation of Islam.
Because of his success, other Ministers of the "Nation of Islam" grew jealous. Elijah Muhammad also began to be afraid of his best Minister who proved to be more famous than he himself. So, partly because of these tensions within the Black Muslim movement, Malcolm became critical of Elijah Muhammad. He was eventually "silenced" for 90 days after commenting on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with the phrase "chickens come home to roost." But before his silence was lifted, Malcolm X began to advocate a more pragmatic black nationalism and said that blacks should control the politics within their own community and, through his speeches, encouraged his followers to make changes by voting.
At the height of his power Malcolm X was one of black America's most powerful voices. He had enormous influence among black youth and in progressive intellectual circles. He traveled widely in Europe and Africa and established his Organisation of Afro-American Unity. He saw the black American struggle partly as a segment of the efforts of third world nations for human rights. In 1964, Malcolm X went on his pilgrimage to Mekkah, and named himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. And there he began to consider changing his views towards integration, his personality started to change profoundly.
He started teaching the real Islam he experienced in the East. When he heard of the Black Muslim?s plot to kill him, he did not feel any fear. He just wanted his family to be safe. Before he died, he declared that he would be glad if he could have helped the black people, but that all credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes were his.
"...Awareness came surging up in me - how deeply the religion of Islam had reached down into the mud to lift me up, to save from being what I inevitably would have been: a dead criminal in a grave, or, if still alive, a flint hard, bitter, thirty-seven year old convict in some penitentiary, or insane asylum. Or, at best, I would have been an old, fading Detroit Red, hustling, stealing enough for food and narcotics, and myself being stalked as prey by cruelly ambitious younger hustlers such as Detroit Red had been. But Allah had blessed me to learn the religion of Islam, which had enabled me to lift myself up from the muck and the mire of this rotting world..."
extracted from "Autobiography of Malcolm X"
http://www.islamonline.com/cgi-bin/news_se...?service_id=648
Malcolm X
5/20/2004 6:32:00 PM GMT
Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Louise and Earl Little. Because of the father's advocacy for Garvey?s movement, the whole family was terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan.
To avoid any more harassment by these white racists, Little had to migrate with his family to Lansing, Michigan. But it didn't work. The white racists of Lansing murdered Malcolm's father and laid him on a railway track, claiming that he committed suicide.
Malcolm attended school until eighth grade living with different families. When his teacher stopped him from trying to become a lawyer, he dropped out of school and went to his older half sister, Ella, who lived in Boston.
There, he took a job as a shoeshine boy at the Roseland Ballroom. Settling in Harlem, New York, he became more and more involved in criminal activities. He robbed, worked as a pimp, and sold narcotics. Malcolm soon learned to survive in the hustler society, which was constantly threatened by internal wars that could render every man your enemy.
He returned to Boston in 1945 after falling out with another hustler, and continued a life of crime, forming his own house robbing gang. Arrested for robbery in February 1946, he was convicted and sentenced to prison for seven years.
Malcolm converted to Islam and became a strong and forceful champion of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of a small black cult, the "Nation of Islam", with branches in Detroit, Chicago and New York. He was trying hard to deliver the message of Islam to every nook and corner of the Black community in the United States. He started learning more about Islam and reading the Qur'an and followed strictly the Nation of Islam's laws and moral codes.
Minister Malcolm X founded mosques in Boston, Philadelphia, Harlem and elsewhere and made the national expansion of the movement possible, so that the membership reached approximately 30?000 in 1963. Malcolm X' vision was expressed in speeches, a newspaper column as well as radio and television interviews. In addition, he helped to found the Black Muslim newspaper "Muhammad Speaks". Minister Malcolm X was said to be the only Negro who "could stop a race riot -- or start one." In January 1958 he married Betty X, who was also a member of the Nation of Islam.
Because of his success, other Ministers of the "Nation of Islam" grew jealous. Elijah Muhammad also began to be afraid of his best Minister who proved to be more famous than he himself. So, partly because of these tensions within the Black Muslim movement, Malcolm became critical of Elijah Muhammad. He was eventually "silenced" for 90 days after commenting on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with the phrase "chickens come home to roost." But before his silence was lifted, Malcolm X began to advocate a more pragmatic black nationalism and said that blacks should control the politics within their own community and, through his speeches, encouraged his followers to make changes by voting.
At the height of his power Malcolm X was one of black America's most powerful voices. He had enormous influence among black youth and in progressive intellectual circles. He traveled widely in Europe and Africa and established his Organisation of Afro-American Unity. He saw the black American struggle partly as a segment of the efforts of third world nations for human rights. In 1964, Malcolm X went on his pilgrimage to Mekkah, and named himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. And there he began to consider changing his views towards integration, his personality started to change profoundly.
He started teaching the real Islam he experienced in the East. When he heard of the Black Muslim?s plot to kill him, he did not feel any fear. He just wanted his family to be safe. Before he died, he declared that he would be glad if he could have helped the black people, but that all credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes were his.
"...Awareness came surging up in me - how deeply the religion of Islam had reached down into the mud to lift me up, to save from being what I inevitably would have been: a dead criminal in a grave, or, if still alive, a flint hard, bitter, thirty-seven year old convict in some penitentiary, or insane asylum. Or, at best, I would have been an old, fading Detroit Red, hustling, stealing enough for food and narcotics, and myself being stalked as prey by cruelly ambitious younger hustlers such as Detroit Red had been. But Allah had blessed me to learn the religion of Islam, which had enabled me to lift myself up from the muck and the mire of this rotting world..."
extracted from "Autobiography of Malcolm X"
http://www.islamonline.com/cgi-bin/news_se...?service_id=648
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