Opposition to King

     Not everyone was on the same page with King.  Obviously there were many whites who were invested in segregation and balked at change.  The accounts of violence are numerous.  However, there were blacks too, who disagreed with King’s nonviolent protest.  Many blacks were becoming increasingly impatient and wanted change quicker.  The splitting of the black community over how to cause change would hurt the overall movement.  One leader who contrasted with King in many ways was Malcolm X.

Malcolm X

     Malcolm X was an African American leader and a prominent leader of the Nation of Islam who proposed concepts of racial pride and black nationalism. 

     Malcolm X was born in Nebraska.  His father, the Reverend Earl Little, a Baptist minister and supporter of the nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, was killed when hit by a streetcar.  Many suspect that this was a murder by whites.  After the father’s death, the family was so poor that the mother cooked dandelion greens to feed her children.  She was committed to an insane asylum in 1939, and Malcolm and his family were sent to either family members or foster homes to live. 

     Malcolm dropped out of school in the eighth grade.  He was a rebellious young man, and moved from the Michigan State Detention Home to live with an older half sister from his father’s previous marriage.  Here he became involved in criminal activities in his teenage years where he became a street hustler, drug dealer, and leader of a gang of thieves.  Malcolm was in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952, and he eventually changed his life, joining the Nation of Islam.  He spent much of his time in prison reading books.  After he was released from prison, Malcolm helped lead the Nation of Islam.  In Chicago in 1952, he met Elijah Muhammad and began organizing temples for the Nation.  He also began articulating the racial doctrine of the evil of whites and superiority of blacks.  Malcolm X was an articulate speaker with a very charismatic personality.  He was able to express for many the anger and frustration felt by African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.  He challenged Martin Luther King’s philosophy of integration and nonviolence.  Malcolm felt that there was more at stake than the civil rights of voting or sitting in a restaurant and that the more important issues were actually independence, integrity, and black identity.  Malcolm was further contrasted to Martin as he urged his followers to defend themselves by “any means necessary.”  Malcolm X also helped to change the terms used to describe African Americans from “Colored” and “Negro” to “black” and “Afro-American.”

    Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam had some disagreements which lead to Malcolm’s departure.  First, Malcolm was devastated to learn that Muhammad had fathered children by six of his personal secretaries.  Malcolm angered Muhammad, when he stated that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was an example of “chickens coming home to roost”.  Muhammad ordered Malcolm to observe a 90 day period of silence, and this led to their departing of ways.  In March of 1964, Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and founded Muslim Mosque Inc.  When he made his pilgrimage to Mecca, he experienced another conversion, and embraced the Sunni Islam.  He adopted a new name, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.  He now renounced his separatist beliefs of the Nation and stated that the solution to racial problems in the United States would be found in orthodox Islam.  There was growing hostility between Malcolm and the Nation.  This led to death threats and violence against him.  He was assassinated on February 21, 1965 while giving a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.  Convicted of the murder were three members of the Nation of Islam.  He was survived by his six daughters and wife, Betty Shabazz. 

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