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Not until numerous of court cases about segregation of the races in the United States, blacks were limited by law from public venues such as restaurants, neighborhoods, golf courses, schools, and movie theaters. The U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954 made separating schools illegal. In later years, the Supreme Court handed down decisions of invalidating segregation of golf courses, swimming pools, and beaches.
Rosa Parks’s in 1955 refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, as the first step in the American civil rights movement. She was arrested and fined for violating the city’s segregationist laws about where blacks were allowed to sit. A few days later Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put together a local bus boycott. The boycott supporters won a small critical battle when the federal district court made a change to the racial segregation of buses in Montgomery.
Due to the success of the boycotts, it threw Dr. King into the national limelight as a civil rights leader. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence grew a large following in the late 1950s and 1960s. His leadership included peaceful demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, and a willingness to go to jail. While the Nation of Islam or Malcolm X advocated violence to achieve their goals, neither did they ever reject the possibility that violence could be necessary.
Through 1950s and 1960s, African Americans and whites supporters engaged in sit-ins and freedom marches risking their lives. Many of the demonstrations were met with violence out comes. The largest civil rights demonstrations of that era was the 1963 march, which was led by Dr. King. Almost a quarter-million Americans from assorted backgrounds in front of the Washington Monument to hear his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Reverend Earl Little, Malcolm’s father, a Baptist minister who preached the “back-to-Africa” teachings of Marcus Garvey. With the killing of there of his six brother by white men, he believed that “freedom, independence and self-respect could never be achieved by the Negro in America.” Louise Little was the mother Malcolm born to a black woman who was raped by a white man, says Malcolm.
Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha and shortly moved to Milwaukee. He was the seventh born from his father, which had three from a previous marriage, and four younger than him. Malcolm always wondered if his father showed him favoritism because his skin was lighter than all of Earl’s other children.
Louise had her own ideas about what her family should eat. She would refused to allow the children eating rabbit or pork. Very often times were the source of fights that happen between her and Earl.
The Little’s had to move their large family around more than Earl would have liked but most of his preaching angered many local whites. She had visions, and the day her husband was killed she had a vision of his death right after he left the house. Earl was killed in 1931 by a white racist group in Lansing, Michigan, when Malcolm was six years old.
The fact that she was often mistaken for a white woman helped her get jobs as a maid after her husband died, but later as the white employers realized that she was black often due to the children dropping by where she worked she would be soon fired.
The state welfare officials were trying to taking the children away. One day she broke down under the stress and the house fell apart, and the state placed all of her children in different homes and placed her in a mental asylum for twenty-six years. Malcolm went to live with the Gohannas family, who used to fed him when his mother didn’t have any food.
Mr. Ostrowski was his English teacher at Mason Junior High School. Him and other teachers he made racist jokes during class. When Malcolm was in eighth grade, Mr. Ostrowski asked Malcolm what he wanted to do with his life, when Malcolm replied, ‘‘be a lawyer,’’ Mr. Ostrowski told him thats “no realistic goal for a nigger.”
Malcolm eventually moves to Harlem and takes a job as a waiter at his favorite bar Small’s Paradise. He would go out at night, dancing, drinking, and smoking marijuana. Malcolm then turns to robbery with his friend Sammy. Which the friendship didn’t last long after Sammy pulls a gun on Malcolm during a fight. Then he starts to use cocaine on a regular basis. Malcolm begins a number of other illegal pursuits.
Malcolm met Shorty at a Boston pool hall soon after he moved there to live with Ella. Shorty found a job for him as a shoeshine boy at the famous Roseland State Ballroom where he took name “Red.”
Malcolm mentioned enjoying Jazz and swing while he was street hustler in both Boston and Harlem. In the 1930s and 1940s most dance establishments and nightclub were racially segregated. Blacks were allowed in white establishments it was usually on one specific night a week.
Sophia was attractive white woman who fell for Red after she saw him and Laura dance together in Boston. Sophia gave him money that helped him to move out of Ella’s house and move in with Shorty. Malcolm said that “having a white, attractive girlfriend was an important status symbol for a black man during that period in Boston.” After he moved to Harlem, Sophia came to visited him. She was arrested along with Shorty and Malcolm for armed robbery.
The other inmates consider him to be so mean and irreligious that they call him “Satan.” Until he met Bimbi an old burglar, encouraged him to read and study and was the first man Malcolm had ever met who commanded respect Justus with his words. Bimbi influences him the importance of learning, which motivates Malcolm to take a few extension courses while in jail. Various family members start converting to the Nation of Islam and mention to him that leader, Elijah Muhammad, who teaches that “the white man is a devil.” The converted Malcolm recognizing Allah’s divine plan for his life. A genuine prayer: ‘‘All praise is due to Allah.’’ Well Malcolm states that if it hadn’t been for Allah, he believes that he would have become “a brainwashed Black Christian.’’ Malcolm is released from prison in the summer of 1952, and moves to Detroit to be near his family and their local Nation of Islam temple. For Malcolm the learning and self-discovery doesn’t stop once he converts to Islam and leaves prison.
He becomes involved in recruiting more members, meanwhile becoming closer to Muhammad. Malcolm becomes an assistant minister of Temple Number One n 1953.
Sister Betty was an instructor for women members of the Nation of Islam in housekeeping and hygiene. When Malcolm first noticed her and began to consider the possibility of their marriage she was a nursing student. He didn’t waste much time courting her, disregarding the concept of romance. He asked her to marry him in a 1958 telephone conversation after the two had spent lease allotted time together. They had four daughters named Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, and Amilah. He saw her as a good Muslim wife who stood by him through the ups and downs.
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, a documentary about the Nation and several newspaper articles are exposing increasingly people to the organization. Malcolm come into view on television and radio debates, where he speaks against integration and for separation of races. Muhammad, because of his own declining health, gives Malcolm a larger role in the running of a Nation. He literally sits at the feet of his mentor and learns the of the essence pieces of history that will form his theories about race relations and politics. Malcolm believes all that Muhammad tells him.
Which made it just that much harder when he discovers the have qualms about nature of Muhammad’s explanation of history, as well as his moral imperfection. Malcolm is introduce to another phase of discovery this time he seems to get even closer to his true and is ejected from the Nation of Islam. During his hajj in Saudi Arabia he is impressed with the sense of brotherhood he feels and also with the “color-blindness” of the Muslim world’s religious society. In response, he softens his previously strong stance against whites and issues. So during his hajj he takes the Arabic name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He was treated as a visiting Muslim during a different trip he takes to other parts of the Middle East and Africa. A number of different conclusions come from this trip. That African-American leaders should travel overseas to give them auxiliary solutions to “the American black man’s problems.’’ In addition, he admits that his previous statements about white people were too narrow. Malcolm sees that his philosophy changed and how he look forward to the change will affect the organization he is starting, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He mentions the great possibility of his political execution.