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Malcolm X Essay | Essay on Malcolm X for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Malcolm X Essay:  Known in Black History for being a man who handled his business by any means necessary. When talking about the Civil Rights Movement, we can’t skip this name called Malcolm X. Malcolm was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist born as Malcolm Little on May 19 in Omaha, NE.

Throughout 2020, dozens of statues dedicated to slave traders and slave owners were pulled down. It was a startling reminder of just how deeply embedded the slave trade, and the racism, which followed in its wake are in our society. And yet, even in the most unassuming places, you can find stories of black power and civil rights. You need to know where to look.

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Long and Short Essays on Malcolm X for Students and Kids in English

We provide the student with essay samples on a long argumentative essay of 500 words and a short argumentative essay of 150 words on Malcolm X.

Long Essay on Malcolm X 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Malcolm X is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

On February 2, 1847, an escaped American slave named Frederick Douglass, one of the fathers of the civil rights movement, readied himself to deliver a scorching lecture about the evils of slavery to the people of this city. He would trade bread with poor white children in return for that “more valuable bread of knowledge.” Armed with the power of knowledge, Douglass strived to educate others. In 1845 Douglass published his first autobiography. This harrowing account detailed his resistance in the face of brutal oppression from men like Edward Covey. A renowned “slave breaker.”

Moreover, the celebrity status also had to put Douglass at risk, and news soon reached him that his former master wanted him back. He would trick other kids into teaching him. But they delivered more than needlework: they raised funds to buy Douglass’ freedom and establish his newspaper. He continued to educate the American public about the realities and horrors of slavery. Inspired by the life he led and the clarity of his rhetoric, Coventry’s people responded by helping to purchase his freedom. Throughout his youth, he did everything he could to steal an education from those who would withhold it from him.

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He uses to tell local children that he could write just as well as them, and when they refused to believe him, he would challenge them to write letters in the mud and sound out the appropriate noises. Over weeks and months and years, he stole an education letter by letter, word by word. It was that experience that ultimately led Douglass to Britain and Coventry. His autobiography’s publication made Douglass a modern celebrity and highlighted the suffering that he and other slaves experienced. He asked the women of Coventry and beyond to donate needlework to the anti-slavery bazaar in Boston to help fund his anti-slavery work. With his freedom at risk Douglass toured Britain and Ireland. In packed auditoriums in places like St. Mary’s Guild Hall in Coventry, he found an audience eager to listen to his story and support his cause.

One hundred twenty years after Douglass came to Coventry, a very different sort of American Civil Rights leader found himself in the small town of Smethwick near Birmingham’s city in England. Here Malcolm X was faced with the type of racism that was disturbingly similar to what he might have found in Birmingham, Alabama. He was born in Malcolm Little in May of 1925. Malcolm X has been exposed to the concept of pan-Africanism, thanks to his parents’ adherence to the ideas of the Jamaican-born activist Marcus Garvey. Growing up in Michigan, X would later describe how he internalized that time’s racism, changing his appearance and attitudes to be more widely accepted by his white peers.

Malcolm was a part of a big family with his parents Louise Norton Little and his father, a Baptist minister Earl little, a civil rights activist. His father was continuously protesting for the rights of other black people.

Short Essay on Malcolm X 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Malcolm X is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Due to this continuous protesting, Malcolm X was killed and founded along the railroads. From there not being able to handle the mental stress, Malcolm’s mother had a mental breakdown, which forced all eight of her children to go to foster care and orphanages. He lost both father and mother. The only comforting thing is his friend Boston.

His conversion to the nation as a relatively new African-American reinterpretation of the Muslim belief system set him on a new path, reawakening his interest in the pan-African movement.

The racism that x found here was sadly all too familiar to so many black Americans like him. In 1964 Peter Griffiths, a Conservative MP, won a parliamentary seat for this region on the back of an openly racist campaign telling voters that if they wanted a black person for a neighbour that they should vote for Labour. During this time, Malcolm would go through a period of self-enlightenment, furthering his education and changing his religion to Islam and being a Muslim as a part of the Nation of Islam.

10 Lines on Malcolm X Essay in English

1. Malcolm X was a Minister and human-rights activist of African-American descent. 2. He was a prominent figure of the American civil rights movement, a political and social struggle by African 3. Americans to end racial segregation and discrimination that lasted more than a decade. 4. Malcolm X had a chaotic childhood because his family home was burned down by White Supremacists, and his father was also murdered. 5. He spent six-and-a-half years in prison due to multiple arrests and started his long interest in the Nation of Islam, a black self-reliance movement that aimed to return the African diaspore to their Motherland. 6. The “X” in Malcolm X stands for his unknown African Name/ Surname that he’d never know due to removed/ violated roots. 7. The FBI started maintaining a file on Malcolm X after he wrote a direct letter to President Harry Truman denouncing the Korean War while declaring himself as a Communist. 8. Muhammad Ali was inspired by Malcolm X to join the Nation of Islam. He primarily preached about Black Pride and the effective separation of the races. 9. He left the Nation of Islam after JFK’s assassination and had a significant change in his political views after v a pilgrimage to Mecca. 10. Malcolm X was Assassinated in 1965 by terrorists from the Nation of Islam.

FAQ’s on Malcolm X Essay

Question 1.  Why Malcolm X’s father was killed?

Answer:  His father was continuously protesting for the rights of other black people. So his father was killed.

Question 2. Where was Malcolm X born?

Answer:  He was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

Question 3. When was Malcolm X born?

Answer: He was born on May 19, 1925.

Question 4. How many people were born with Malcolm X?

Answer:  He was the 4th child of his parents among eight children in his family.

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Civil rights activist Malcolm X was a prominent leader in the Nation of Islam. Until his 1965 assassination, he vigorously supported Black nationalism.

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Who Was Malcolm X?

Quick facts, early life and family, time in prison, nation of islam, malcolm x and martin luther king jr., becoming a mainstream sunni muslim, assassination, wife and children, "the autobiography of malcolm x".

Malcolm X was a minister, civil rights activist , and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960. A naturally gifted orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism “by any means necessary,” including violence. The fiery civil rights leader broke with the Nation of Islam shortly before his assassination in 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he had been preparing to deliver a speech. He was 39 years old.

FULL NAME: Malcolm X (nee Malcolm Little) BORN: May 19, 1925 DIED: February 21, 1965 BIRTHPLACE: Omaha, Nebraska SPOUSE: Betty Shabazz (1958-1965) CHILDREN: Attilah, Quiblah, Lamumbah, Ilyasah, Malaak, and Malikah ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Taurus

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the fourth of eight children born to Louise, a homemaker, and Earl Little, a preacher who was also an active member of the local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and avid supporter of Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey .

Due to Earl Little’s civil rights activism, the family was subjected to frequent harassment from white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and one of its splinter factions, the Black Legion. In fact, Malcolm Little had his first encounter with racism before he was even born. “When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, ‘a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home,’” Malcolm later remembered. “Brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out.”

The harassment continued when Malcolm was 4 years old, and local Klan members smashed all of the family’s windows. To protect his family, Earl Little moved them from Omaha to Milwaukee in 1926 and then to Lansing, Michigan, in 1928.

However, the racism the family encountered in Lansing proved even greater than in Omaha. Shortly after the Littles moved in, a racist mob set their house on fire in 1929, and the town’s all-white emergency responders refused to do anything. “The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned to the ground,” Malcolm later remembered. Earl moved the family to East Lansing where he built a new home.

Two years later, in 1931, Earl’s dead body was discovered lying across the municipal streetcar tracks. Although the family believed Earl was murdered by white supremacists from whom he had received frequent death threats, the police officially ruled his death a streetcar accident, thereby voiding the large life insurance policy he had purchased in order to provide for his family in the event of his death.

Louise never recovered from the shock and grief over her husband’s death. In 1937, she was committed to a mental institution where she remained for the next 26 years. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes.

In 1938, Malcolm was kicked out of West Junior High School and sent to a juvenile detention home in Mason, Michigan. The white couple who ran the home treated him well, but he wrote in his autobiography that he was treated more like a “pink poodle” or a “pet canary” than a human being.

He attended Mason High School where he was one of only a few Black students. He excelled academically and was well-liked by his classmates, who elected him class president.

A turning point in Malcolm’s childhood came in 1939 when his English teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he answered that he wanted to be a lawyer. His teacher responded, “One of life’s first needs is for us to be realistic... you need to think of something you can be... why don’t you plan on carpentry?” Having been told in no uncertain terms that there was no point in a Black child pursuing education, Malcolm dropped out of school the following year, at the age of 15.

After quitting school, Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, Ella, about whom he later recalled: “She was the first really proud Black woman I had ever seen in my life. She was plainly proud of her very dark skin. This was unheard of among Negroes in those days.”

Ella landed Malcolm a job shining shoes at the Roseland Ballroom. However, out on his own on the streets of Boston, he became acquainted with the city’s criminal underground and soon turned to selling drugs.

He got another job as kitchen help on the Yankee Clipper train between New York and Boston and fell further into a life of drugs and crime. Sporting flamboyant pinstriped zoot suits, he frequented nightclubs and dance halls and turned more fully to crime to finance his lavish lifestyle.

In 1946, Malcolm was arrested on charges of larceny and sentenced to 10 years in prison. To pass the time during his incarceration, he read constantly, devouring books from the prison library in an attempt make up for the years of education he had missed by dropping out of high school.

Also while in prison, Malcolm was visited by several siblings who had joined the Nation of Islam, a small sect of Black Muslims who embraced the ideology of Black nationalism—the idea that in order to secure freedom, justice and equality, Black Americans needed to establish their own state entirely separate from white Americans.

He changed his name to Malcolm X and converted to the Nation of Islam before his release from prison in 1952 after six and a half years.

Now a free man, Malcolm X traveled to Detroit, where he worked with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad , to expand the movement’s following among Black Americans nationwide.

Malcolm X became the minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem and Temple No. 11 in Boston, while also founding new temples in Hartford and Philadelphia. In 1960, he established a national newspaper called Muhammad Speaks in order to further promote the message of the Nation of Islam.

Articulate, passionate, and an inspirational orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism “by any means necessary,” including violence. “You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-cheek revolution,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.”

His militant proposals—a violent revolution to establish an independent Black nation—won Malcolm X large numbers of followers as well as many fierce critics. Due primarily to the efforts of Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952, to 40,000 members by 1960.

By the early 1960s, Malcolm X had emerged as a leading voice of a radicalized wing of the Civil Rights Movement, presenting a dramatic alternative to Martin Luther King Jr. ’s vision of a racially-integrated society achieved by peaceful means. King was critical of Malcolm’s methods but avoided directly calling out his more radical counterpart. Although very aware of each other and working to achieve the same goal, the two leaders met only once—and very briefly—on Capitol Hill when the U.S. Senate held a hearing about an anti-discrimination bill.

A rupture with Elijah Muhammad proved much more traumatic. In 1963, Malcolm X became deeply disillusioned when he learned that his hero and mentor had violated many of his own teachings, most flagrantly by carrying on many extramarital affairs. Muhammad had, in fact, fathered several children out of wedlock.

Malcolm’s feelings of betrayal, combined with Muhammad’s anger over Malcolm’s insensitive comments regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy , led Malcolm X to leave the Nation of Islam in 1964.

That same year, Malcolm X embarked on an extended trip through North Africa and the Middle East. The journey proved to be both a political and spiritual turning point in his life. He learned to place America’s Civil Rights Movement within the context of a global anti-colonial struggle, embracing socialism and pan-Africanism.

Malcolm X also made the Hajj, the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during which he converted to traditional Islam and again changed his name, this time to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

After his epiphany at Mecca, Malcolm X returned to the United States more optimistic about the prospects for a peaceful resolution to America’s race problems. “The true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision,” he said. “America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.”

Just as Malcolm X appeared to be embarking on an ideological transformation with the potential to dramatically alter the course of the Civil Rights Movement, he was assassinated .

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X took the stage for a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. He had just begun addressing the room when multiple men rushed the stage and began firing guns. Struck numerous times at close range, Malcolm X was declared dead after arriving at a nearby hospital. He was 39.

Three members of the Nation of Islam were tried and sentenced to life in prison for murdering the activist. In 2021, two of the men—Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam—were exonerated for Malcolm’s murder after spending decades behind bars. Both maintained their innocence but were still convicted in March 1966, alongside Mujahid Abdul Halim, who did confess to the murder. Aziz and Islam were released from prison in the mid-1980s, and Islam died in 2009. After the exoneration, they were awarded $36 million for their wrongful convictions.

In February 2023, Malcolm X’s family announced a wrongful death lawsuit against the New York Police Department, the FBI, the CIA, and other government entities in relation to the activist’s death. They claim the agencies concealed evidence and conspired to assassinate Malcolm X.

Malcolm X married Betty Shabazz in 1958. The couple had six daughters: Attilah, Quiblah, Lamumbah, Ilyasah, Malaak, and Malikah. Twins Malaak and Malikah were born after Malcolm died in 1965.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

In the early 1960s, Malcolm X began working with acclaimed author Alex Haley on an autobiography. The book details Malcolm X’s life experiences and his evolving views on racial pride, Black nationalism, and pan-Africanism.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965 after his assassination to near-universal praise. The New York Times called it a “brilliant, painful, important book,” and Time magazine listed it as one of the 10 most influential nonfiction books of the 20 th century.

Malcolm X has been the subject of numerous movies, stage plays, and other works and has been portrayed by actors like James Earl Jones , Morgan Freeman , and Mario Van Peebles.

In 1992, Spike Lee directed Denzel Washington in the title role of his movie Malcolm X . Both the film and Washington’s portrayal of Malcolm X received wide acclaim and were nominated for several awards, including two Academy Awards.

In the immediate aftermath of Malcolm X’s death, commentators largely ignored his recent spiritual and political transformation and criticized him as a violent rabble-rouser. But especially after the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X , he began to be remembered for underscoring the value of a truly free populace by demonstrating the great lengths to which human beings will go to secure their freedom.

“Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression,” he said. “Because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.”

• Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.
• Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
• You don’t have a peaceful revolution. You don’t have a turn-the-cheek revolution. There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.
• If you are not willing to pay the price for freedom, you don’t deserve freedom.
• We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying “We Shall Overcome.” We’ve got to fight to overcome.
• I believe that it is a crime for anyone to teach a person who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself.
• We are non-violent only with non-violent people—I’m non-violent as long as somebody else is non-violent—as soon as they get violent, they nullify my non-violence.
• Revolution is like a forest fire. It burns everything in its path. The people who are involved in a revolution don’t become a part of the system—they destroy the system, they change the system.
• If a man puts his arms around me voluntarily, that’s brotherhood, but if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that’s not brotherhood, that’s hypocrisy.
• You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it. It’s the only way you’ll get it.
• My father didn’t know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slavemaster.
• To have once been a criminal is no disgrace. To remain a criminal is the disgrace. I formerly was a criminal. I formerly was in prison. I’m not ashamed of that.
• It’s going to be the ballot or the bullet.
• America is the first country... that can actually have a bloodless revolution.

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May 19, 1925 to February 21, 1965

As the nation’s most visible proponent of  Black Nationalism , Malcolm X’s challenge to the multiracial, nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King, Jr., helped set the tone for the ideological and tactical conflicts that took place within the black freedom struggle of the 1960s. Given Malcolm X’s abrasive criticism of King and his advocacy of racial separatism, it is not surprising that King rejected the occasional overtures from one of his fiercest critics. However, after Malcolm’s assassination in 1965, King wrote to his widow, Betty Shabazz: “While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had the great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem” (King, 26 February 1965).

Malcolm Little was born to Louise and Earl Little in Omaha, Nebraska, on 19 May 1925. His father died when he was six years old—the victim, he believed, of a white racist group. Following his father’s death, Malcolm recalled, “Some kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away our pride” (Malcolm X,  Autobiography , 14). By the end of the 1930s Malcolm’s mother had been institutionalized, and he became a ward of the court to be raised by white guardians in various reform schools and foster homes.

Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) while serving a prison term in Massachusetts on burglary charges. Shortly after his release in 1952, he moved to Chicago and became a minister under Elijah Muhammad, abandoning his “slave name,” and becoming Malcolm X (Malcolm X, “We Are Rising”). By the late 1950s, Malcolm had become the NOI’s leading spokesman.

Although Malcolm rejected King’s message of  nonviolence , he respected King as a “fellow-leader of our people,” sending King NOI articles as early as 1957 and inviting him to participate in mass meetings throughout the early 1960s ( Papers  5:491 ). Although Malcolm was particularly interested that King hear Elijah Muhammad’s message, he also sought to create an open forum for black leaders to explore solutions to the “race problem” (Malcolm X, 31 July 1963). King never accepted Malcolm’s invitations, however, leaving communication with him to his secretary, Maude  Ballou .

Despite his repeated overtures to King, Malcolm did not refrain from criticizing him publicly. “The only revolution in which the goal is loving your enemy,” Malcolm told an audience in 1963, “is the Negro revolution … That’s no revolution” (Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” 9).

In the spring of 1964, Malcolm broke away from the NOI and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned he began following a course that paralleled King’s—combining religious leadership and political action. Although King told reporters that Malcolm’s separation from Elijah Muhammad “holds no particular significance to the present civil rights efforts,” he argued that if “tangible gains are not made soon all across the country, we must honestly face the prospect that some Negroes might be tempted to accept some oblique path [such] as that Malcolm X proposes” (King, 16 March 1964).

Ten days later, during the Senate debate on the  Civil Rights Act of 1964 , King and Malcolm met for the first and only time. After holding a press conference in the Capitol on the proceedings, King encountered Malcolm in the hallway. As King recalled in a 3 April letter, “At the end of the conference, he came and spoke to me, and I readily shook his hand.” King defended shaking the hand of an adversary by saying that “my position is that of kindness and reconciliation” (King, 3 April 1965).

Malcolm’s primary concern during the remainder of 1964 was to establish ties with the black activists he saw as more militant than King. He met with a number of workers from the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee  (SNCC), including SNCC chairman John  Lewis  and Mississippi organizer Fannie Lou  Hamer . Malcolm saw his newly created Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) as a potential source of ideological guidance for the more militant veterans of the southern civil rights movement. At the same time, he looked to the southern struggle for inspiration in his effort to revitalize the Black Nationalist movement.

In January 1965, he revealed in an interview that the OAAU would “support fully and without compromise any action by any group that is designed to get meaningful immediate results” (Malcolm X,  Two Speeches , 31). Malcolm urged civil rights groups to unite, telling a gathering at a symposium sponsored by the  Congress of Racial Equality : “We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We've got to fight to overcome” (Malcolm X,  Malcolm X Speaks , 38).

In early 1965, while King was jailed in Selma, Alabama, Malcolm traveled to Selma, where he had a private meeting with Coretta Scott  King . “I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult,” he assured Coretta. “I really did come thinking that I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King” (Scott King, 256).

On 21 February 1965, just a few weeks after his visit to Selma, Malcolm X was assassinated. King called his murder a “great tragedy” and expressed his regret that it “occurred at a time when Malcolm X was … moving toward a greater understanding of the nonviolent movement” (King, 24 February 1965). He asserted that Malcolm’s murder deprived “the world of a potentially great leader” (King, “The Nightmare of Violence”). Malcolm’s death signaled the beginning of bitter battles involving proponents of the ideological alternatives the two men represented.

Maude L. Ballou to Malcolm X, 1 February 1957, in  Papers  4:117 .

Goldman, Death and Life of Malcolm X , 1973.

King, “The Nightmare of Violence,”  New York Amsterdam News , 13 March 1965.

King, Press conference on Malcolm X’s assassination, 24 February 1965,  MLKJP-GAMK .

King, Statement on Malcolm X’s break with Elijah Muhammad, 16 March 1964,  MCMLK-RWWL .

King to Abram Eisenman, 3 April 1964,  MLKJP-GAMK .

King to Shabazz, 26 February 1965,  MCMLK-RWWL .

(Scott) King,  My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. , 1969.

Malcolm X, Interview by Harry Ring over Station WBAI-FM in New York, in  Two Speeches by Malcolm X , 1965.

Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,”  in Malcolm X Speaks , ed. George Breitman, 1965.

Malcolm X, “We Are Rising From the Dead Since We Heard Messenger Muhammad Speak,”  Pittsburgh Courier , 15 December 1956.

Malcolm X to King, 21 July 1960, in  Papers  5:491 .

Malcolm X to King, 31 July 1963, 

Malcolm X with Haley,  Autobiography of Malcolm X , 1965.

Historical Material

Maude L. Ballou to Malcolm X

From Malcolm X

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Malcolm X — Malcolm X And His Legacy In Fighting For Equal Rights

Malcolm X and His Legacy in Fighting for Equal Rights

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Published: Mar 18, 2021

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Early years and conversion to Islam

Malcolm x and the nation of islam.

• Final years and legacy

What role did Malcolm X play in the emergence of the Black Power movement?

What was malcolm x’s early life like, when did malcolm x convert to islam, what was malcolm x’s relationship with the civil rights movement, how did malcolm x die.

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• Spartacus Educational - Biography of Malcolm X
• PBS - American Experience - Timeline of Malcolm X's Life
• National Park Service - Places of Malcolm X
• Stanford University - Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute - Malcolm X
• Muslims in Brooklyn - A Short History of Black American Islam
• Official Site of Malcolm X
• Malcolm X - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Malcolm X - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Malcolm X was one of the most significant figures within the American Black nationalist movement. Many of the ideas he articulated, like race pride and self-defense, became ideological mainstays of the Black Power movement that emerged in the 1960s and ’70s. He first rose to prominence in the late 1940s, as a member of the Nation of Islam , a religious organization that mixes elements of traditional Islam and Black nationalism. He continued his activism after leaving the Nation. His iconic status, if not solidified during his lifetime, was certainly achieved shortly after his death with the publication of the acclaimed The Autobiography of Malcolm X .

Malcolm X was born in 1925 as Malcolm Little. His father was killed while Malcolm was still very young, possibly by white supremacists . His mother was institutionalized for mental health issues, and the children of the family were dispersed among foster homes or the homes of relatives. Though an excellent student, Malcolm dropped out of school in the eighth grade because of the racial discrimination he faced from teachers. He was incarcerated in 1946 on charges of burglary. His time in prison would be an inflection point for the philosophical and political trajectory of his life.

After hearing about the Nation of Islam from his brother, who was already a member, Malcolm converted to the religion while serving prison time for burglary charges. Born in 20th-century America, the Nation combines elements from Black nationalism and traditional Islam. Malcolm X parted ways from the organization in 1964 and undertook the hajj —the traditional Islamic pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. It was then that he adopted Sunni Islam , along with the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

Malcolm X’s ideas were often at odds with the message of the civil rights movement . Martin Luther King, Jr. , for example, expounded nonviolent strategies such as civil disobedience and boycotting to achieve integration, while Malcolm advocated for armed self-defense and repudiated the message of integration as servile. But Malcolm X’s philosophy evolved. He pressed the Nation of Islam to involve itself more in the civil rights movement during his final years in the organization. He also renounced his previously held separatist views after converting to orthodox Islam, and he expressed a desire near the end of his life to work more closely with the civil rights movement.

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem , New York. Three members of the Nation of Islam —the religious group to which he had once belonged—were convicted of his murder. (Two were exonerated in 2021.) Prior to this, hostilities between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam had been mounting, the former having begun to receive death threats from the latter.

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Malcolm X (born May 19, 1925, Omaha , Nebraska , U.S.—died February 21, 1965, New York , New York) was an African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who articulated concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the early 1960s. After his assassination , the widespread distribution of his life story— The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)—made him an ideological hero, especially among Black youth.

Born in Nebraska, while an infant Malcolm moved with his family to Lansing , Michigan. When Malcolm was six years old, his father, the Rev. Earl Little, a Baptist minister and former supporter of the early Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey , died after being hit by a streetcar, quite possibly the victim of murder by whites. The surviving family was so poor that Malcolm’s mother, Louise Little, resorted to cooking dandelion greens from the street to feed her children. After she was committed to an insane asylum in 1939, Malcolm and his siblings were sent to foster homes or to live with family members.

Malcolm excelled in school, but after one of his eighth-grade teachers told him that he should become a carpenter instead of a lawyer, he lost interest and soon ended his formal education. As a rebellious youngster, Malcolm moved from the Michigan State Detention Home, a juvenile home in Mason, Michigan, to the Roxbury section of Boston to live with an older half sister, Ella, from his father’s first marriage. There he became involved in petty criminal activities in his teenage years. Known as “Detroit Red” for the reddish tinge in his hair, he developed into a street hustler, drug dealer, and leader of a gang of thieves in Roxbury and Harlem (in New York City).

While in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952, he underwent a conversion that eventually led him to join the Nation of Islam , an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with Black nationalism . His decision to join the Nation also was influenced by discussions with his brother Reginald, who had become a member in Detroit and who was incarcerated with Malcolm in the Norfolk Prison Colony in Massachusetts in 1948. Malcolm quit smoking and gambling and refused to eat pork in keeping with the Nation’s dietary restrictions. In order to educate himself, he spent long hours reading books in the prison library, even memorizing a dictionary. He also sharpened his forensic skills by participating in debate classes. Following Nation tradition, he replaced his surname, “Little,” with an “X,” a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated with white slaveholders.

After his release from prison Malcolm helped to lead the Nation of Islam during the period of its greatest growth and influence. He met Elijah Muhammad in Chicago in 1952 and then began organizing temples for the Nation in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and in cities in the South. He founded the Nation’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks , which he printed in the basement of his home, and initiated the practice of requiring every male member of the Nation to sell an assigned number of newspapers on the street as a recruiting and fund-raising technique. He also articulated the Nation’s racial doctrines on the inherent evil of whites and the natural superiority of Blacks.

Malcolm rose rapidly to become the minister of Boston Temple No. 11, which he founded; he was later rewarded with the post of minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem, the largest and most prestigious temple in the Nation after the Chicago headquarters. Recognizing his talent and ability, Elijah Muhammad, who had a special affection for Malcolm, named him the National Representative of the Nation of Islam, second in rank to Muhammad himself. Under Malcolm’s lieutenancy, the Nation claimed a membership of 500,000. The actual number of members fluctuated, however, and the influence of the organization, refracted through the public persona of Malcolm X, always greatly exceeded its size.

An articulate public speaker, a charismatic personality, and an indefatigable organizer, Malcolm X expressed the pent-up anger, frustration, and bitterness of African Americans during the major phase of the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1965. He preached on the streets of Harlem and spoke at major universities such as Harvard University and the University of Oxford . His keen intellect, incisive wit, and ardent radicalism made him a formidable critic of American society. He also criticized the mainstream civil rights movement, challenging Martin Luther King, Jr. ’s central notions of integration and nonviolence. Malcolm argued that more was at stake than the civil right to sit in a restaurant or even to vote—the most important issues were Black identity, integrity , and independence. In contrast to King’s strategy of nonviolence, civil disobedience , and redemptive suffering, Malcolm urged his followers to defend themselves “by any means necessary.” His biting critique of the “so-called Negro” provided the intellectual foundations for the Black Power and Black consciousness movements in the United States in the late 1960s and ’70s ( see Black nationalism ). Through the influence of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X helped to change the terms used to refer to African Americans from “Negro” and “coloured” to “Black” and “Afro-American.”

Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis Essay

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On 12 April 1964, Malcolm X delivered his famous “Ballot or Bullet” speech to inspire Black Nationalism and urge African Americans to fight for their rights. This essay analyses the many instances of rhetorical devices used by Malcolm X in his speech.

Malcolm opens his speech with a dramatic flourish when he states that “This afternoon we want to talk about “The ballot or the bullet.” The ballot or the bullet explains itself…”. Straight away, the speaker appeals to use Pathos by homing on to the emotions of his audience. Here Malcolm is quizzically talking about the choice of the Black people to either adopt peaceful means through the electoral process or take up arms to win their rights. The emotional appeal of the opening gambit is reinforced with Logos that Malcolm uses to build his case. Malcolm employs the ‘them versus us’ logic by identifying the white man as an “enemy” who had kidnapped the Black people and brought them to America. Malcolm then goes on to build his logic by asserting that the speech is about social and political rights and not religion which he urges his audience to “Keep it between you and your God”. Here Malcolm, in a convoluted way, is using the parameter of Ethos to separate the matters of the Church from that of the State. Malcolm then raises the emotional pitch of his rhetoric by arguing that “They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you ’cause you’re black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they attack me ’cause I’m black”. Here the emotional appeal is extremely strident where Malcolm strikes at the collective feeling of persecution that the Blacks in America felt during the 1960s that it was the color of their skin that made the White people look down upon them and treat them inferior.

Malcolm then builds up the logic to say that the Government had failed the Black people and now only ‘self-help’ was possible and he brings in the imagery of Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) to reinforce the next part of his argument of fighting it out and adhere to Black nationalism to claim their equal rights. Malcolm then calls America a “hypocritical colonial power” that is yet another emotional rhetorical point as he links it with the condition of Blacks as “20th-century slaves” and “second class citizens. Malcolm’s next development takes Pathos to a fever pitch when he states that there has never been blood- less revolution and that the choice of Ballot or the Bullet existed for the Black man which the White people should understand and prevent bloodshed by giving the Black man his rights.

The entire speech is built on sweeping generalities with no specificity in the accusations. Malcolm makes the least sense or logic when he talks about the White man’s “Atomic Bomb’, which is completely out of context with the general flow of his speech. There is nothing ethical in Malcolm’s urgings in his overt and covert ‘call to arms’ though he cleverly covers up by giving a choice of either using the ‘Ballot’ or the ‘Bullet’ when he actually is exhorting the Black people to use the ‘Bullets’. In the final analysis, using Aristotelian parameters of a rhetorical speech it can be stated that the entire speech is steeped in Pathos meant to whip up sentiments, with less emphasis on Logos ad the least on Ethos.

X, M., & Starr, S. (2018). The ballot or the bullet. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

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IvyPanda. (2021, November 15). Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/malcolm-xs-ballot-or-bullet-speech-an-analysis/

"Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis." IvyPanda , 15 Nov. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/malcolm-xs-ballot-or-bullet-speech-an-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis'. 15 November.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis." November 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/malcolm-xs-ballot-or-bullet-speech-an-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis." November 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/malcolm-xs-ballot-or-bullet-speech-an-analysis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Malcolm X’s “Ballot or Bullet” Speech: An Analysis." November 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/malcolm-xs-ballot-or-bullet-speech-an-analysis/.