Malcolm X, one of the most influential African American leaders of the 20th Century, was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19 Shortly after Malcolm was born the family moved to Lansing, Michigan. Earl Little his father joined Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) where he publicly advocated black nationalist beliefs, prompting the local white supremacist Black Legion to set fire to their home. Little was killed by a streetcar in 1931. Authorities ruled it a suicide but the family believed he was killed by white supremacists.

Malcolm dropped out of high school after a teacher ridiculed his aspirations to become a lawyer. Malcolm worked odd jobs in Boston and then moved to Harlem in 1943 where he drifted into a life of “hustling.” He avoided the draft in World War II by declaring his intent to organize black soldiers to attack whites which led to his classification as “mentally disqualified for military service.”

Malcolm was arrested for burglary in Boston in 1946 and received a ten year prison sentence. There he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI). Upon his parole in 1952, Malcolm was called to Chicago, Illinois by NOI leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Like other converts, he changed his surname to “X,” symbolizing, he said, the rejection of “slave names” and his inability to claim his ancestral African name.

Recognizing his promise as a speaker and organizer for the Nation of Islam, Muhammad sent Malcolm to Boston and then in 1954 to Temple Number Seven in Harlem. Although New York’s one million blacks comprised the largest African American urban population in the United States, Malcolm noted that “there weren’t enough Muslims to fill a city bus. “Fishing” in Christian storefront churches and at competing black nationalist meetings, Malcolm built up the membership of Temple Seven. He also met his future wife, Sister Betty X, a nursing student who joined the temple in 1956.

Malcolm X quickly became a national public figure in July 1959 when CBS aired Mike Wallace’s expose on the NOI, “The Hate That Hate Produced.” This documentary revealed the views of the NOI, of which Malcolm was the principal spokesperson and showed those views to be in sharp contrast to those of most well-known African American leaders of the time.

Soon, however, Malcolm was increasingly frustrated by the NOI’s bureaucratic structure and refusal to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. His November 1963 speech in Detroit, “Message to the Grass Roots,” a bold attack on racism and a call for black unity, foreshadowed the split with his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad. However, Malcolm on December 1 was suspended from the NOI for his comments in responce to JFK Death, “chickens coming home to roost” which to Muslims meant that Allah was punishing white America for crimes against black people.

Malcolm used the suspension to announce on March 8, 1964, his break with the NOI and his creation of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. Three months later he formed a strictly political group, called the Organization of Afro American Unity (OAAU) which was roughly patterned after the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

His dramatic political transformation was revealed when he spoke to the Militant Labor Forum of the Socialist Worker’s Party. By April 1964, while speaking at a CORE rally in Cleveland, Ohio, Malcolm gave his famous “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech in which he described black Americans as “victims of democracy.”

Malcolm traveled to Africa and the Middle East in late Spring 1964 and was received like a visiting head of state in many countries including Egypt, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana. While there, Malcolm made his hajj to Mecca, Saudi Arabia and added El-Hajj to his official NOI name Malik El-Shabazz.

The transformed Malcolm reiterated these views when he addressed an OAAU rally in New York, declaring for a pan-African struggle “by any means necessary.” Malcolm spent six months in Africa in 1964 in an unsuccessful attempt to get international support for a United Nations investigation of human rights violations of Afro Americans in the United States. Upon his return to New York, his home was firebombed. Events continued to spiral downward and on February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

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  • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    20 hours ago

    Cat post: Cat snuggled up to me last night as the little spoon and tucked his head under my chin and began purring. The dream of every cat person.

    Then I posted it this vignette to the news mega presumably between ukraine and palestine stuff >.<

  • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    17 hours ago

    Just finished doing an entire semester of work for one of my classes in 2 days, got a B on the final exam time to drink pbr

  • Carl [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    17 hours ago

    (sees dodge charger)

    me: damn they finally made an EV that doesn’t look like trash can’t wait to buy it

    charger community: this car is a DISASTER

    me: oh shit and it’s gonna be so cheap as hell in like two years

  • Riffraffintheroom [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    19 hours ago

    Chat, how do we feel about Gold Dust? On the one hand the intent of the character is to play on the homophobia, and arguably transphobia, of the late 90s WWF audience. On the other hand the character fucking rules, and eventually became a good guy character while wearing even more sexually provocative and gender-bending costumes, although he dropped his breathy manner of speech.

  • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.net
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    24 hours ago

    The results are in and the tush push will stay. Men will continue to touch each other’s butts in professional football. Those big, strong men will still put their big hands on each others’ butts, and they will push. Turn on a football game and you will see those men butt pushing. Touching and pushing butts. Yeah, push those tushes, boys. Touch them. Push them. Put your hands on those tushes and push.

  • Moss [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Im watching a video about the last GTA6 trailer and there’s an insane amount of details. Like the liquid in beer bottles moves individually, Lucia can customize her nails, the weights on a barbell shake when they’re lifted. And I just can’t help but think… Why. What’s the fucking point. It’s such a waste of time and resources. The diminishing returns on graphics are becoming very apparent because I really haven’t been any more impressed by graphics in this generation that the last. RDR2 looked great, but when you looked at little things like grass up close it wasn’t hyper realistic. And I didn’t care. So why does anyone care about looking at blades of grass? Why is this what the biggest companies want to focus on?

    I’ve been replaying Deltarune and am consistently impressed with how much I like the visual style, and the game is less than a GB of storage. GTA6 will probably be 120GB at least. I don’t want it. I don’t care about the graphics. Stop doing this

  • Rojo27 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    21 hours ago

    Finally had the crash moment I knew was going to come after 7 straight days at work and who knows how many hours.

    Honestly I think I would have made it through mostly fine, but the last two hours were one fuck up after the next by various people and I was just so fucking over it. I did my best to mask it behind my usually over the top silly demeanor, but I think a bit of my rage did spill over.

    Like I’m glad I’m off tomorrow, but holy shit. It’s not things are getting much better because I’m working 6 days a week still.

  • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    The positivity you radiate will encourage more people than you can ever know. Something you say or post can make someone smile and you’d have no idea. So it’s curious why I’m not receiving more upbears than I could ever know…

  • Hohsia [any]@hexbear.net
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    23 hours ago

    Super cool to how my dumbass company is trying to get people to take advantage of the bullshit pay day loan instant wage access contract that they signed up for because they have billions of dollars to spare

    Death to America