Social networks have changed journalism because they offer another point of view, non-official, less manipulated, and they always offer another explanation different to the official sources.
On a day like today in 1965, Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist was assassinated. He was an uncomfortable voice for the power. The Grandma wants to remember the life of a man who said something like If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. This sentence is nowadays more alive than ever in the streets of Catalonia.
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 is best known for his time spent as a vocal spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
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.
More information: Malcolm X
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 non-violence and
racial integration.
Malcolm X also expressed pride in some of the Nation's social welfare achievements, namely its free drug rehabilitation program. Throughout his life beginning in the 1950s, Malcolm X endured surveillance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the Nation's supposed links to communism.
In the 1960s, Malcolm X began to grow disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, as well as with its leader Elijah Muhammad. He subsequently embraced Sunni Islam and the civil rights movement after completing the Hajj to Mecca, and became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.
After a brief period of travel across Africa, he publicly renounced the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI) and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
More information: The Atlantic
Throughout 1964, his conflict with the Nation of Islam intensified, and he was repeatedly sent death threats. On February 21, 1965, he was assassinated in New York City. Three Nation members were charged with the murder and given indeterminate life sentences. Speculation about the assassination and whether it was conceived or aided by leading or additional members of the Nation, or with law enforcement agencies, have persisted for decades after the shooting.
A controversial figure accused of preaching racism and violence, Malcolm X is also a widely celebrated figure within African-American and Muslim American communities for his pursuit of racial justice. He was posthumously honoured with Malcolm X Day, on which he is commemorated in various cities across the United States. Hundreds of streets and schools in the U.S. have been renamed in his honour, while the Audubon Ballroom, the site of his assassination, was partly redeveloped in 2005 to accommodate the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
Malcolm attended West Junior High School in Lansing and then Mason High School in Mason, Michigan, but left high school in 1941, before graduating. He excelled in junior high school but dropped out of high school after a white teacher told him that practising law, his aspiration at the time, was no realistic goal for a nigger. Later, Malcolm X recalled feeling that the white world offered no place for a career-oriented black man, regardless of talent.
In 1950, the FBI opened a file on Malcolm after he wrote a letter from prison to President Truman expressing opposition to the Korean War and declaring himself a communist. That year, he also began signing his name Malcolm X. Muhammad instructed his followers to leave their family names behind when they joined the Nation of Islam and use X instead. When the time was right, after they had proven their sincerity, he said, he would reveal the Muslim's original name.
In his autobiography, Malcolm X explained that the X symbolized the true African family name that he could never know. For me, my 'X' replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears.
More information: National Civil Rights Museum
After his parole in August 1952, Malcolm X visited Elijah Muhammad in Chicago. In June 1953 he was named assistant minister of the Nation's Temple Number One in Detroit. Later that year he established Boston's Temple Number 11; in March 1954, he expanded Temple Number 12 in Philadelphia; and two months later he was selected to lead Temple Number 7 in Harlem, where he rapidly expanded its membership.
In 1953, the FBI began surveillance of him, turning its attention from Malcolm X's possible communist associations to his rapid ascent in the Nation of Islam.
During 1955, Malcolm X continued his successful recruitment of members on behalf of the Nation of Islam. He established temples in Springfield, Massachusetts (Number 13); Hartford, Connecticut (Number 14); and Atlanta (Number 15). Hundreds of African Americans were joining the Nation of Islam every month.
Besides his skill as a speaker, Malcolm X had an impressive physical presence. He stood 1.91 m tall and weighed about 82 kg. One writer described him as powerfully built, and another as mesmerizingly handsome... and always spotlessly well-groomed.
By the late 1950s, Malcolm X was
using a new name, Malcolm Shabazz or Malik el-Shabazz, although he was
still widely referred to as Malcolm X. His comments on issues and events
were being widely reported in print, on radio, and on television, and
he was featured in a 1959 New York City television broadcast about the
Nation of Islam, The Hate That Hate Produced.
More information: ABC News
In September 1960, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, Malcolm X was invited to the official functions of several African nations. He met Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Kenneth Kaunda of the Zambian African National Congress. Fidel Castro also attended the Assembly, and Malcolm X met publicly with him as part of a welcoming committee of Harlem community leaders. Castro was sufficiently impressed with Malcolm X to suggest a private meeting, and after two hours of talking, Castro invited Malcolm X to visit Cuba.
On February 19, 1965, Malcolm X told interviewer Gordon Parks that the Nation of Islam was actively trying to kill him. On February 21, 1965, he was preparing to address the OAAU in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled, Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket! As Malcolm X and his bodyguards tried to quell the disturbance, a man rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun and two other men charged the stage firing semi-automatic handguns.
Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm, shortly after arriving at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The autopsy identified 21 gunshot wounds to the chest, left shoulder, arms and legs, including ten buckshot wounds from the initial shotgun blast.
The public viewing, February 23–26 at Unity Funeral Home in Harlem, was attended by some 14,000 to 30,000 mourners. For the funeral on February 27, loudspeakers were set up for the overflow crowd outside Harlem's thousand-seat Faith Temple of the Church of God in Christ, and a local television station carried the service live.
More information: The New Yorker
Malcolm X
