Malcolm X :: essays research papers

Malcolms life is a Horatio Alger story with a twist. His is not a "rags to riches" tale, but a compelling narrative of self-transformation from petty hustler to internationally known semipolitical leader. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Louise and Earl microscopical, who was a Baptist preacher active in Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association, Malcolm, along with his siblings, experienced dramatic confrontations with racialism from childhood. Hooded Klansmen burned their home in Lansing, Michigan Earl Little was killed under cryptical circumstances welfare agencies split up the children and eventually committed Louise Little to a state mental institution and Malcolm was forced to live in a detention home run by a anti-Semite(a) white couple. By the eighth grade he left school, travel to Boston, Massachussetts, to live with his half-sister Ella, and disc everywhereed the underground world of African American hipsters. Malcolms portal into the masculin e culture of the zoot suit, the "conked" (straightened) hair, and the lindy hop coincided with the outbreak of World state of war II, rising black militancy (symbolized in part by A. Philip Randolphs be March on Washington for racial and economic justice), and outbreaks of race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and other cities (see Detroit Riot of 1943). Malcolm and his partners did not seem very "political" at the time, but they dodged the draft so as not to lose their lives over a "white mans war," and they avoided wage work whenever possible. His search for leisure and pastime took him to Harlem, New York, where his primary source of income derived from petty hustling, drug dealing, pimping, gambling, and viciously exploiting women. In 1946 his luck ran out he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to ten years in prison houseMalcolms downward descent took a U-turn in prison when he began canvas the teachings of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI), the b lack Muslim group founded by Wallace D. Fard and led by Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Poole). Submitting to the discipline and guidance of the NOI, he became a voracious reader of the Quran (Koran) and the Bible. He also immersed himself in works of literature and history at the prison library. Behind prison walls he quickly emerged as a powerful orator and brilliant rhetorician. He led the famous prison debating aggroup that beat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arguing against capital punishment by pointing out that English pickpockets often did their best work at semipublic hangings