who was malcolm X?

He was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Wisconsin but moved to Lansing michigan as a boy. His father was the vice president in Detriot of Marcus Garvey's UNIA organization which lasted from 1914 to about 1925 or maybe as late as 1940. He grew up in Lansing but was a troubled young boy and was when his father was killed by a northern sect of the Klu Klux Klan he was removed from his mother and became of a ward of the state. He moved two or three times during his next few years most notably moving into his Auntie Ella's house in Roxbury, Boston which is a upscale ***** neighborhood.His first real job was a shoe shine man in a downtown dance theater but he wanted more out of life and so he started to search for something new. He lived there for a while and soaked in the life of the city learning how to hustle,gamble, steal, drink and smoke. All the skills would be valuable as he moved into one the most notable of all black communities in the North....Harlem. In Harlem, Malcolm X was a two bit gangster and thug who sold weed to various musicians and addicts. He was very smart in school at a young age but while in middle school his teacher told him as a ***** boy he had no chance of becoming a lawyer and that is why he orginally left for Boston. By the time he was in Harlem he was uneducated and had no real sense of his purpose until he was arrested in connection with several burglaries around the city. While in jail, He began talking to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad who was the leader of the "Black" Muslims in America who followed the teachings of a mysterious man known as W.D Fard. Muhammad brought Malcolm out of the ignorance and poverty of the Harlem Streets into a respectable man. Long story short Elijah Muhammad cheated on his wife and fathered several other children which disturbed Malcolm X. He was ousted in 1963 after several comments on the assassination of President Kennedy. Malcolm X died in the Audobon in Manhattan on Feb 21, 1965 by several gunman. He is remebered as a man who brought another side of black racial conciousness to the fore front which deviated from the conventional peaceful teachings of Martin Luther King. However, both men's common goal was the restoration of pride in the minds and hearts of blacks and humans in general the world over.

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an American Black Muslim minister and a spokesman for the Nation of Islam.

After leaving the Nation of Islam in 1964, he made the pilgrimage, the Hajj, to Mecca and became a Sunni Muslim. He also founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Less than a year later, he was assassinated in Washington Heights on the first day of National Brotherhood Week.

Historian Robin D.G. Kelley wrote, "Malcolm X has been called many things: Pan-Africanist, father of Black Power, religious fanatic, closet conservative, incipient socialist, and a menace to society. The meaning of his public life — his politics and ideology — is contested in part because his entire body of work consists of a few dozen speeches and a collaborative autobiography whose veracity is challenged. Malcolm has become a sort of tabula rasa, or blank slate, on which people of different positions can write their own interpretations of his politics and legacy. Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas can both declare Malcolm X their hero."

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (ISBN 0-345-35068-5) was written by Alex Haley between 1964 and 1965, as told to him through conversations with Malcolm conducted shortly before Malcolm X's death (and with an epilogue after it), and published in 1965. The book was named by Time magazine as one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Malcolm X was a mentor of Muhammad Ali, a World Heavyweight Boxing Champion.

Theres a book on his life from his perspective called the Autobiography of Malcolm X that could help you out

Malcolm was not a civil rights leader. Instead, he fought for freedom and justice for people of African ancestry. He didn't fight for civil rights which could be either given or yet taken away by the simple passing of legislation, but rather for human rights which any white immigrant enjoyed upon reaching Ellis Island yet were not the entitlement of 22,000,000 decendents of former black slaves. He spoke openly against black people being violated by a country they themselves helped build. The same country that falsely presented itself as the vanguard of democracy and the free world. Malcolm was an orator who had a program of waking up, cleaning up, and then standing up as a free proud and productive people. Anger? I don't think so...that's such a one dimensional and inadequate description of man who mastered the English language by first completely memorizing the dictionary word-for-word. His speech was not angry, but impassioned with conviction and faith in the righteous of his cause and struggle. He taught thru his speeches all levels of consciousness simultaneously raising awareness.

Malcolm X was an intransigent opponent of the US government and its imperialist policies.

He was a civil rights leader with a very angry edge, who became a famous black Muslim. (Sunni, by the way.) He had a right to be angry because his father was murdered, the police called it suicide, one insurance company refused to pay for a suicide and it all caused his mother to spend 26 years in the same mental hospital my grandfather was in. He was at the top of his class and his teachers told him there was no place for a "smart n.i.g.g.e.r" in society.

His rhetoric was angry, his thoughts were angry, he was apparently a socialist, and all this made him a government target of espionage. Then he was murdered. The angry Louis Farahkan took his place in the Black Muslim organization.