Black History Month - Malcolm X

February is Black History Month in the United States and one of the most controversial African Americans was Malcolm X. He was born in 1925 and assassinated in 1965, and he advocated a
radical response to what he perceived as white racism than did Martin Luther King, Jr. who was a contemporary. King preached nonviolent resistence to segregation and envisioned peaceful coexistence while Malcolm X labeled all whites as evil and derisively referred to King as "Revered Doctor Chicken Wing." 

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska and his father was a Christian minister.His father died under violent circumstances and his mother was committed to a mental institution when he was 12 years old. He drifted across the country eventually ending up in Boston, where he was sent to prison for burglary in 1946.

In prison he converted to lslam and abandoned his "slave name" in favor of Malcolm X. Upon his release in 1952, he became an organizer for the Nation of Islam sometimes referred to as the Black Muslims. In the early 1960's Malcolm X achieved notoriety for railing against white "devils" and suggesting that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a case of "chickens coming home to roost." In 1964 he broke with the Nation of Islam to start his own black Muslim group the Muslim Mosque. He went on a pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city of Mecca that year and when he returned he embraced Sunni Islam and renounced his earlier beliefs about the inherit evils of whites. His conversion to mainstream Islam outraged the Nation of Islam and a few months after his return, he was assassinated as he stepped to the podium to deliver a speech at a theater in Manhattan. He was a transformative figure in American black history and he himself was transformed by the very interesting life that he lead.