Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska to the parents of J. Early Little and Louise Norton. He recounted his childhood, as living in a nightmare everyday, due to white supremacy. Terrorized by the local Ku Klux Klan, Malcolm and his family relocated to Michigan. However, the nightmare didn’t end, his home was destroyed and father murdered by a white hate group. His mother was left alone to support eight children without government assistants. Malcolm and his siblings were then placed in foster care, and separated again due to white supremacy. Growing up, Malcolm witnessed first-handed …show more content…
According to the article, Malcolm was a very smart child, however, lost faith in the school system. He was told because of the color of his skin, he wouldn’t accomplish anything in life. After dropping out of school, Malcolm became another statistic of a black man living in American. He was involved in a series of crimes, which led to his imprisonment for ten years. According to the article, while incarcerated he learn the teaching of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. For the first time in Malcolm’s life, he felt empowered to be black, and knew he couldn’t live another day while whites were suppressing blacks. He knew he must take on the role to unite blacks, and encouraged them to fight for their rights. Unlike the other black leaders before him who wanted to sympathized with the white man. According to the text, Malcolm said, “You can't negotiate upon freedom"; "you either fight for it or shut up.” To Malcolm those words were a preparation for the battlefield. Malcolm knew the days for begging, crying, and protesting for equality were over. He knew resolution involved a bloody fight. However, Malcolm became very unpopular in the black communities, as well as within the Nation of Islam …show more content…
Biography in Context, db11.linccweb.org
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. Commonly known as, one of African American’s civil rights leaders, who fought for a peacefully way to protest against inequality. Even though Martin Luther King’s approach to equality in American was much different from Malcolm X. However, they shared a common goal, which were to end oppression in American.
X, Malcolm. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay, Eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Pg. 79-90 [V2] 3rd ed. New York: Norton,