By Jeff Burgess © 1979
He grew up in Lansing and was admired throughout much of the world. His last name was Little but he dropped it because it was a name given his ancestors by slave masters. He adopted the letter X as his last name. The X symbolized his true African family name which he could never know. He was Malcolm X.
He was born in 1925, the fourth of eight children, in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother, Louise, was a mulatto from the island of Grenada. She spoke with shame of her white father. She had an education and often used it to argue with Malcolm's father. His father's militant attitudes made the family a target for white hostility. His father, Earl, was a freelance Baptist minister and a follower of Marcus Garvey, the first American black nationalist leader.
In 1927 the family moved to Lansing. It didn't take long for Malcolm's father to upset some local whites with his militancy. In 1929 the family home was burnt to the ground. They relocated to East Lansing, where in those days blacks weren't allowed on the streets after dark. They were soon harassed into moving again.
Malcolm's father decided to build a house out in the country south of Lansing. There is a state historical marker, Lansing's only monument to Malcolm, at the site today. It's on the corner of Logan and Vincent Court, in those days two miles outside of the city.
Being out in the country, where they were able to raise vegetables and chickens and hunt, the family was better off than the blacks in Lansing. Back then an elite job for a black man in Lansing was to be a shoeshine boy at the state capitol. Growing up Malcolm liked to play along the small creek that still runs behind the homesite. He enjoyed raising peas in his own garden plot too. When Malcolm began grade school he went to the Pleasant Grove School, which still stands at the corner of Pleasant Grove and Holmes Road.
Malcolm was proud of his father's work for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. He sometimes went with him to the meetings in Lansing. In 1931 Malcolm's father was run over and killed by a streetcar in Lansing. The rumors were he had been pushed in front of it.
His mother was faced with taking care of eight children by herself. The larger of his father's life insurance policies never paid out because the company claimed he had committed suicide. The family began to disintegrate when Malcolm's mother couldn't make ends meet. They were forced to scrounge for food and go on welfare. Malcolm later recalled it got to the point where it seemed all the food was stamped "NOT TO BE SOLD." He remembered they would get so hungry they were dizzy. State welfare people began to show up to investigate the situation of the children. Malcolm blamed them when his mother finally broke under the combined strain of caring for the family and fending them off. It was 1938 when she was put into the state mental hospital in Kalamazoo. The children were split up.
Malcolm went to live with the Gohannas family who lived at 1010 William Street, now an Oldsmobile factory parking lot. Malcolm got along well with the Gohannas and enjoyed going fishing with them along the Grand River. Malcolm and his brothers and sisters all remained close to each other even though they were spread throughout Lansing. There was an ongoing rivalry between Malcolm and his older brother Philbert. Malcolm was big for his age and he resented the fact that he was shut out of Philbert's social circle. Richard Letts, of Lansing's Human Relations Department, was close to Philbert.
"Philbert and I were tight. We trained for boxing together," Letts said.
"Philbert was good and became the central Michigan lightweight Golden Gloves champion. Malcolm was envious of him and decided to try boxing but he wouldn't train and when he fought he got whipped. Malcolm drew attention because he was tall, red haired, light skinned and freckled. He was always getting into fights and Philbert would have to stop them or finish them. We didn't like Malcolm hanging around with us because he was a mean, antisocial kid."
Philbert, now Abdul Omar, was a Black Muslim before Malcolm. He was a local Black Muslim leader and now lives in Detroit.
Malcolm began going to school at West Junior High, the building still stands at the corner of Lenawee and Pine. In 1939 Malcolm was sent to reform school for putting a tack on his teacher's chair. First, he was sent to a detention home in Mason, south of Lansing. The people who ran the detention home, the Swerlins, liked Malcolm and he liked them. Instead of going on to reform school he ended up staying with the Swerlins and going to Mason Junior High. Malcolm did well in Mason but he realized he was being accepted in the white community because he was a novelty, a "mascot" as he put it.
When his half-sister Ella, by his father's previous marriage, came from Boston to visit him and the other children, she suggested that Malcolm visit her in Boston. He did, and the sophisticated urban black community he saw in Boston captured his imagination. When he returned to Mason he found himself restless and in 1940 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with Ella.
He was an impressionable 15-year-old who looked much older and the big city street life drew him in. For the next six years he lived in Boston and New York and became a professional criminal known as Detroit Red. Malcolm was sent to prison in 1946 and served six years. The other prisoners named him Satan.
His brothers and sisters had become involved in Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslims. They wrote to Malcolm trying to convert him to what they saw as the, "natural religion for the black man." Malcolm ignored them until his younger brother Reginald presented the religion as a scam Malcolm could use to get out. Thus hooked, Malcolm listened and was, "saved."
The Black Muslim religion made Malcolm a proud black man. He had hit rock bottom in his life but he was to rise and become a leader of American black nationalism as a Black Muslim spokesperson. He used his remaining time in prison to educate himself. As a Black Muslim leader, Malcolm's verbal assaults upon white America stirred up hatred and fear. Still, he served a purpose.
"Malcolm articulated the emotional frustrations that blacks had for so long bottled up inside themselves," Harry Reed, Michigan State University history professor, said.
"He had a brilliant mind. He was a great thinker and orator."
Many dismissed Malcolm as a rabble rouser, a demagogue and a hate monger. In his autobiography Malcolm responded to these charges.
"When I am dead-I say it that way because, from the things I know, I do not expect to live long enough to read this book in its finished form-I want you to just watch and see if I am not right in what I say: that the white man, in his press, is going to identify me with hate. He will make use of me dead, as he has made use of me alive, as a convenient symbol of hatred-and that will help him to escape facing the truth that all I have been doing is holding up a mirror to reflect, to show, the history of unspeakable crimes his race has committed against my race. You watch. I will be labeled as, at best, an irresponsible black man. I have always felt about this accusation that the black leader whom white men consider to be responsible is invariably the black leader who never gets any results."
Malcolm's personal evolution never stopped. He eventually became disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad and his Black Muslims and quit them in 1963. Malcolm decided to make the pilgrimage to Mecca to learn of the orthodox Islamic religion. What impressed him most on his journey was the absence of racism among the Moslem pilgrims. The people were of every color but there was no friction, as they were all equal under Allah. The Saudi Arabians welcomed Malcolm as a visiting foreign dignitary while he was there on his pilgrimage. The friends Malcolm made while he was there encouraged him to continue his travels to some black African Muslim countries. Where ever Malcolm went he was greeted as a guest of state.
Malcolm returned to the United States a changed man, his travels had opened his mind. He came to the realization that his foe was not people with white skin but the social system which turned out white racists. He saw a need for a strong Pan-African movement, meaning greater understanding between American and African blacks of their common problems. Malcolm, even though he had lost much of his power base when he quit the Black Muslims, began to promote orthodox Islam as a non-racist religion through his Muslim Mosque Inc. He set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to promote Pan-Africanism.
When he was assassinated in 1965 he, was trying to get African nations to present the plight of American blacks to the United Nations for discussion as a violation of basic human rights.
Harry Reed remembers seeing Malcolm in person.
"People would hang around just to listen to him. Malcolm had an aura of power that wasn't obnoxious but fit well with him," Reed said.
"He took in everything that went on in the room. Yet, he was a very calm and humble person. He tried to reach some core of humanity in everyone."
Of the assassinations which rock the nation in the 1960s, Malcolm's remains the most unexplained and the most overlooked.
His widow, Betty, who he married on a visit to Lansing on January 14, 1958, lives in New York with their children.
END
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NOTE: Many leads for this story were obtained from Alex Haley's book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
