The Backgrounds of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

    On May 19, 4 years before the Great Depression began, Malcolm Little was born to  young, African-American parents, Earl and Louise Little in Omaha, Nebraska. He grew up in a family of 7 children with a father who was a minister and a big part of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) and an educated mother who had come from the British Island of Grenada. When Malcolm was 4, his family moved to a farmhouse in Lansing, Michigan. However, whites who were opposed to having black neighbors burnt down the house on a cold, November night. The family moved again, only to be met with similar challenges. In 1929, Earl Little began to fear for his family's safety and moved again to the outskirts of Lansing. As the son of the head of a U.N.I.A. chapter, Malcolm grew up listening to his father speaking at many public functions about the problems that faced black people who lived in America. 

    However, when Malcolm was 6 years old, his father was crushed by a trolley and killed. Around this time, Malcolm started school in a mainly white elementary school. He struggled through this time of his life, as did his mother and the rest of America. His mother, as smart as she was, could not keep a job and support her family. Malcolm and the rest of the Little children were sent to different foster homes in Michigan.

    As a young teenager, Malcolm began to have troubles in school, and was transferred to a county juvenile home 12 miles from his mother's home. At the juvenile home, Malcolm was pushed to get good grades, and succeeded. However, one time one of his highly respected asked him what he wanted to do with his life. Malcolm responded by saying that he wanted to be a lawyer. His teaches seemed displeased, and said,

  "We all here like you, you know that. But you've got to be realistic about being a nigger. A lawyer- that's no realistic goal for a nigger. You need to think about something you can be. You're good with your hands. Why don't you plan on carpentry?"

  This was a turning point in Malcolm's life. To make a change in his life, he moved to boston in 1941 to live with his half-sister, Ella. Boston was a completely different city than Lansing, with many more black people. In this town, Malcolm began to hang out with different people, an they influenced him greatly. After awhile,  he moved to Harlem in search of more respect as a black man. The new Malcolm believed that this respect would be found only in a black community. He began to steal things, and he was eventually caught. He was sentenced to a State Prison for eight to ten years. While in prison, he received letterd from his brothers and sisters, especially from his brother, Renigald, who was a minister in the Nation of Islam. After talking and corresponding with several Islamists, Malcolm decided to convert to the religion in 1947. 

  Five years later, Malcolm was released from prison and moved to Detroit. A month later, he heard the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, speak. Afterwards, he gave up his English last name of Little  X, to symbolize his African roots, and became a minister in a New York temple. There, Malcolm used his knowledge from his days in Harlem to spread the religion of Islam. He met a young, beautiful, black woman called Betty and they married in January, 1958. Ten months after, their first daughter, Attallah, was born. Her sister Qubilah followed two years later. They also had a third daughter after another two years named Ilysah. During this time, the rapidly-growing Nation of Islam was being represented more and more in America by a militant Malcolm. He once proclaimed at a public speech, " Our enemy is the white man! . . .Oh, yes, that devil is our enemy."

In the late 1950s, while many black people in the North were speaking of the strength of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, the people in the South were talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., and the strength of his nonviolent methods to fight racial discrimination. The F.B.I. began to take tabs on Malcolm, especially after he spoke with the leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro. Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm began to not quite see eye-to-eye. After Malcolm publicly commented on President Kennedy's assassination against the wishes of the Nation of Islam, he split from the Nation in 1964. He soon formed a new organization, Muslim Mosque, Inc., and met Martin Luther King. In order to fulfill his religious quest, he completed a pilgrimage to Mecca and returned with another new name, and many new ideas. The same year, his fourth daughter, Gamilah, was born.

Sadly, Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21st, 1965 when he was delivering a speech in Harlem's Audobon Ballroom. He lived to be the mere age of 40. That fall after his death, his twin daughters (numbers five and six) were born. More than a year after Malcolm's assassination, Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson were convicted of his murder,  and sentenced to life imprisonment.

However, Malcolm's goal and dream of racial equality was not his alone. Another man that was born 4 years after him, and assassinated 3 years after him, was a civil rights activist in the South, while Malcolm was the activist of the North. This man's name was Dr. Martin Luther  King, Jr. While Malcolm X in the northern United States was preaching the religion of Islam and for blacks to become equal "by any means necessary", Martin was being influenced by men such as Mohandas Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau, and preaching civil disobedience and non-violence. Both of these very famous men had very different approaches to the same goal due to their early influences and experiences.

As mentioned, one of Malcolm's early traumatic memories was having his family home burnt down. His father was killed, possibly by the Ku Klux Klan. He watched his mother struggle to feed all of her children during the Great Depression, and eventually she had a mental breakdown. As a young, bright student, Malcolm was taken away from his mother and suffered through integrated schooling. Once a respected teacher told him he could not be a lawyer and crushed his dreams. Subsequently, he dropped out of school, became involved with crime, and ended up in prison. No wonder Malcolm once said that whites were "agents of the devil"! He grew up in an atmosphere of violence, and most of that was due to white men. 

Martin Luther King, however, was raised in the exact opposite environment, where dreams and love existed in his middle-class family with loving parents who both had  professions. They taught him strong values that nurtured his sense of self-worth. Martin skipped two grades and graduated high school at the age of 15. With an A average, he entered and Ivy League college and quickly graduated. A few years after, he became a minister in the Baptist religion, and moved on to being a black civil rights activist  that will be famous for centuries.

Can you see how these two men's histories are so different? They both grew  up in very different environments, and I think this significantly affected their strategies  of how to win equality between races. Because Malcolm grew up with so much violence and fighting in his life, I believe that helps to explain why he believed the only way  to gain equality was by "any means necessary", including violence. He was taught of as an extremist and once said he believed in "black supremacy". Martin, however,  grew up knowing love and peace, and believed in the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He was taught by a supportive family that there are other other ways to solve things, as long as you use patience. These two great leaders of the civil rights movement both had very different tactics that seem to be influenced by their opposite backgrounds.