By the mid-1960s, a new strand of the civil rights movement was emerging, focusing more on economic issues and, in particular, urban ghetto deprivation. This new strand did not seek integration with whites — they were from a black separatist tradition which rejected the calls for racial integration by the likes of Martin Luther King Jr.
One of the first leaders of this new strand to gain national attention was Malcolm X (the X was a marker for the African name that had been lost under slavery). He was born as Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925. His early life was troubled. His father, a Baptist preacher, believed in black separatism, and in 1931 he was murdered by white supremacists. Subsequently his mother, unable to cope, was placed in a mental hospital in 1939.
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