Malcolm X

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, and a lifelong advocate for Black empowerment and critic of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.

Malcolm spent his adolescence living in a series of foster homes or with relatives after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. He engaged in several illicit activities, eventually being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering. In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopted the name Malcolm X (to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname), and quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders after being paroled in 1952. Malcolm X then served as the public face of the organization for a dozen years, where he advocated for Black empowerment, Black supremacy, and the separation of black and white Americans, and publicly criticized the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on nonviolence and racial integration.[2][3] Malcolm X also expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements, such as its free drug rehabilitation program. Throughout his life, beginning in the 1950s, Malcolm X endured surveillance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).