Early Life

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. Malcolm was the fourth of eight children born to Louise (a homemaker) and Earl Little, a preacher who was also an active member of the local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and a supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.

As a result of Earl Little's civil rights activism, the family was subjected to frequent harassment from white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and one of its splinter factions, the Black Legion. Malcolm X on the other hand had his first encounter with racism before he was even born.

According to Malcom, "when my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, 'a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home,'" Malcolm later remembered. "Brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out." The harassment continued when Malcolm X was four years old, and local Klan members smashed all of the family's windows. Earl Little moved his family from Omaha to Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a means to protect them, in 1926 and later to Lansing, Michigan in 1928. However, the racism the family encountered in Lansing proved even greater than in Omaha.

Shortly after their relocation, in 1929, a racist mob set their house on fire, and the town's all-white emergency responders refused to do anything. The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned to the ground. Earl Little then moved the family to East Lansing where he built a news home.

Two years later, in 1931, Earl Little's dead body was discovered lying across the municipal streetcar tracks. Although Malcolm X's family believed his father was murdered by white supremacists from whom he had received frequent death threats, the police officially ruled Earl Little's death as a streetcar accident, thereby avoiding the large life insurance policy he had purchased in order to provide for his family in the event of his death. Malcolm X's mother never recovered from the shock and grief over her husband's death. In 1937, she was committed to a mental institution where she remained for the next 26 years. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes.