Malcolm X was an American civil rights activist and Muslim minister who became a key figure in the US Civil Rights Movement.
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1923, Malcolm was steeped in politics from a young age. The son of a Baptist minister with Pan-African views, Malcolm saw firsthand the effect of racism and discrimination as the Little family was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and subjected to violent, sometimes deadly attacks (according to X, four of his paternal uncles were murdered in acts of racial violence by whites). When Malcolm was just 6 years old in 1931, his father was killed in a streetcar accident, though his mother suspected foul play.
Malcolm excelled in school, but dropped out of high school before graduating in 1941 when a white teacher told him that his aspiration to become a lawyer was “no realistic goal” for a black person, referring to him with a racial slur. These experiences shaped and hardened the teenage Malcolm into the man he would become.
As a young man, Malcolm went through a wayward period, adrift and alienated from society. He turned to crime, and was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of grand larceny, breaking and entering, and firearms possession. While incarcerated, Malcolm converted to Islam and adopted the name Malcolm X. He joined the black nationalist group Nation of Islam and rose to become one of the organization’s most influential and well-respected leaders by the time he was paroled in 1952.
After his release, Malcolm X used his platform to advocate for causes such as black empowerment and supremacy, and often criticized other civil rights leaders for their stance on nonviolent protests and the hope of racial integration throughout the country. Due to his status in the public eye and as an influential member of the Nation of Islam, he was subjected to years of surveillance from the FBI in an attempt to catch him on charges of communism, though they never found any actionable proof.
Malcolm X met his wife, Betty Sanders, in 1955 at one of his speaking engagements, and after attending many of his lectures and public gatherings, they soon became a couple. Betty changed her name to Betty X in 1956, joining the Nation of Islam at his request. Malcolm followed strict cultural norms when it came to courting her, making sure they would never be alone together on dates and instead taking her to dinner parties and other public events. Two years later, in 1958, Malcolm proposed to Betty over the phone, and they were married two days later. Together, they had six daughters — though his youngest twins, Malaak and Malikah, were both born after his death.
In the early 1960s, Malcolm X grew unhappy with the Nation of Islam and turned to Sunni Islam after completing a pilgrimage to Mecca. During his religious reawakening, he took on a second name, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Malcolm struggled to exist between two separate branches of Islam, and soon formed the Islamic Muslim Mosque, Inc. This tension came to a head in 1964, when X encountered conflicts within the Nation of Islam, reportedly receiving several death threats. A year later, in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in Manhattan when he was shot multiple times by Thomas Hagan, a member of the Nation of Islam, enraged that X had left the organization. He was thirty-nine. Two other members were also convicted of the murder but were exonerated decades later when it was established that Hagan had acted alone.
Concerning Malcolm X’s sexuality, there are conflicting accounts about how he lived his life. While Malcolm was a fervent supporter of equality and human rights, details about his sexuality remained hidden from his public persona.
Bruce Perry’s biography, Malcolm — The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America, dissected over four hundred interviews, interactions, and written accounts from Malcolm X’s close friends and family about everything from his childhood to his assassination. While some of the information reported in the book was regarded as controversial when it was published, over time, historians have come to consider Perry’s biography to be among the most complete and well-rounded accounts of Malcolm X’s personal life.
Perry spoke to several of Malcolm X’s childhood pals whose friendship with X continued well into adulthood, and many believed that his sexuality was fluid. The friends interviewed spoke about same-sex liaisons throughout his early adolescence and reported that Malcolm X operated as a sex worker in his late teens. X is reported to have often bragged about how he “earned money servicing queers” and how he was sexually involved with his boss, William Paul Lennon, for whom Malcolm worked as a butler.
It is difficult to unravel the story of a man who died so unexpectedly and so young. For religious reasons, many of his followers have also denied and attempted to cover up his sexual life before his marriage.
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have often been compared, not only as two of the most influential figures in the Civil Rights Movement, but as two men who occupied opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum on how to achieve political change. Although his activism and rhetoric were controversial at times, Malcolm X has become a celebrated figure in many circles over his advocacy for racial justice.
