Wars, politics & history

Birth of Malcolm X

19 May 1925

Malcolm X was born on 19 May 1925 in Omaha. An American Black Muslim minister and human rights activist, Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little and became the most prominent spokesman of the Nation of Islam in the 1950s. He argued for Black pride, self-defense and separation, in contrast to the integrationist, nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King Jr. After a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, he left the Nation of Islam, embraced Sunni Islam and began to speak of racial solidarity, founding the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was assassinated in New York at a speaking event, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley, became a classic.

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