By Abayomi Azikiwe
Malcolm X, later known as El Hajj Malik Shabazz, was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska during an era now described as the “Harlem Renaissance.”
His parents, Earl and Louise Little, were members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) formed in 1914 in Jamaica.
Earl and Louise met at a UNIA Conference in Montreal, Quebec in 1919. In subsequent years they would work on behalf of the organization which was dedicated to the unity, emancipation and development of African people worldwide.
Malcolm’s mother was born in the eastern Caribbean island-nation of Grenada. His father was from Reynolds, Georgia. Louise migrated to Montreal where her relatives introduced her to the work of the Garvey Movement.
Later, after the marriage between Louise and Earl in 1919, they moved to Omaha, Nebraska where they continued their political work. Earl was a Baptist minister and craftsman while Louise worked as a secretary for the UNIA-ACL and wrote reports on the work of the Garvey Movement in Omaha and later in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The family, like millions of other African Americans, were subjected to harassment and violence from white racists. During the years after WWI, there were numerous large-scale attacks by racists against African American communities not only in the South but in many other areas of the U.S.
Louise Little wrote articles for the “Negro World” newspaper which was widely distributed across the United States and the world. The paper was founded in 1918 and published in several languages. At its peak the distribution was 500,000 as the paper was circulated heavily by Black seamen who traveled throughout the world including Europe and Africa.
The period during the First Imperialist War (WWI) and its aftermath witnessed the flowering of African literary efforts with the advent of numerous journalists, poets, songwriters, novelists and scholarly writers. A number of these prominent figures of the post World War I period were associated with the UNIA-ACL through the Negro World newspaper.
According to the official website of the UNIA-ACL, it says of the Negro World:
“The most important of Garvey’s papers and possibly his single greatest informational device was the Negro World. The Negro World was founded August 17, 1918 as a weekly newspaper to express the ideas of the organization. Garvey contributed a front-page editorial each week in which he developed the organization’s position on different issues related to people of African ancestry around the world, in general, and the UNIA, in particular. Eventually with a circulation of five hundred thousand, the newspaper was printed in several languages. It contained a page specifically for women readers, documented international events related to people of African ancestry, and was distributed throughout the African Diaspora. It would become such an asset to the uplift of the race that the British and French colonial authorities would ban the Negro World from its colonies.”
Garvey’s successful organizing work and his propaganda calling for African liberation brought him to the attention of the U.S. government. Several attempts were made to charge Garvey with criminal activities. Eventually in 1923 he was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to pay a $1,000 fine and serve five years in federal prison.
He filed an appeal of the conviction however it was denied resulting in his incarceration for two years between 1925-1927. In 1927, then President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey’s sentence and ordered him deported to Jamaica in the same year.
In the aftermath of his conviction, Garvey delivered an address at Liberty Hall in New York City on June 17, 1923, where he stated:
“What does the world think … that we are going back to sixty years ago in America … going back to eighty-five years ago in the West Indies … going back to 300 years ago in Africa? The world is crazy if they indulge that thought. We are not going back; we are going forward … forward to the emancipation of 400,000,000 oppressed souls; forward to the redemption of a great country and the re-establishment of a greater government.”
Although Garvey was deported and his absence had a devastating impact on the UNIA-ACL leading to the cessation of publication of the Negro World in 1933, the work done by the Movement would serve as a benchmark for future decades regarding the liberation struggles of African people internationally. Garvey died in London in 1940, yet the efforts aimed at Black Emancipation would continue unabated during the successive decades of the 20th century.
The Great Depression and Race Terror
In September 1931, Earl Little was found dead on the streetcar tracks in Lansing, Michigan where the family had settled. Although an inquest by the local authorities ruled his death as an accident or possible suicide, the family including Malcolm believed that their father was lynched by a corporate-financed white terrorist grouping known as the Black Legion.
It was not surprising that the family of Earl Little would believe his death was not an accident due to the fact that lynchings were common during this period. Between the 1880s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, estimates suggest that more than 5,000 African Americans were extrajudicially murdered by white mobs and law-enforcement personnel.
The Black Legion is reported to have been a split from the Ku Klux Klan which had a large membership in Michigan, particularly Detroit. Its origins were in Ohio during the mid-1920s and over the course of a decade the organization was said to be involved in at least 50 murders of political adversaries within the African American community along with labor organizers, Catholics, immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, Jewish people, communists and socialists.
As in Omaha, Nebraska, the organizing work of Earl Little drew strong opposition from racist power structure in Michigan. In Lansing, Earl Little purchased a home in a white area and was later sued by a real estate firm which said his purchase violated restrictive covenant laws.
The home was burned down and Earl Little was charged with arson. However, the family of Malcolm claimed that their home was destroyed by the Black Legion. The arson charges were eventually dropped and the family moved to an area near East Lansing.
By September of 1931 the tensions between Earl Little and the authorities in the Lansing area had intensified. On the 28th of that month, Louise Little feared her husband’s life was threatened. The night he died, according to the autobiography of Malcolm X, Louise begged him not to leave the house.
After the death of Earl Little the family struggled to survive economically. The stress of the situation in the Lansing area was such that Louise Little suffered a psychological breakdown and was eventually committed to a mental health institution in Kalamazoo in 1939 where she remained until 1963. The family was broken up and Malcolm would move to Boston to live with his older sister, Ella Collins, during 1941.
With the U.S. entry into the Second Imperialist War on December 7, 1941, eventually Malcolm was drafted into the military. He was declared unfit when he told selective service officials that he could not wait to get his hands on a rifle so he could shoot the first whites he saw.
After drifting into petty crime rackets and drug abuse, Malcolm was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to 8-10 years in the Massachusetts prison system in 1946. He would spend six years behind bars before being paroled in 1952.
Malcolm began to read voraciously while in prison and would follow four of his siblings into the Nation of Islam led by Elijah Muhammad. When he was paroled, he soon went back to Michigan to live with his older brother Wilfred in Inkster. He rose rapidly within the NOI and was later appointed as the minister of the Harlem branch of the organization in 1954.
Malcolm X Centenary Comes at Critical Conjuncture in U.S. History
Today, a century after the birth of Malcolm X, the situation in the U.S. has left open the potential for widespread racial and class-oriented violence. The rise of the second Trump administration has resulted in the inauguration of a white supremacist presidency and cabinet.
The Republican Party dominates both Houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. At present the Republican Party is no more than a political cult surrounding the erratic personality of President Donald Trump.
Therefore, the mission of those following Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and other African revolutionary leaders is to organize and mobilize the masses to fight the national oppression and economic exploitation which continues to characterize the world capitalist and imperialist system. In future articles the role of Malcolm X during the 1950s and 1960s will be examined within the context of its ongoing relevance.
Undoubtedly, the Trump administration’s domestic and foreign policy will cause further suffering of the African American people and other oppressed nations throughout the world. The central challenge is what will be the response of the workers and oppressed to these renewed threats to their well-being and very existence.
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