Malcolm Little was born in 1925 in Nebraska, the son of a Baptist lay preacher who was an active member of Marcus Garvey’s civil rights organisation, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The family moved to Wisconsin and later Michigan during Malcolm’s infancy, but after his father’s death in a streetcar accident when Malcolm was 6 years old, he had a difficult childhood and eventually became involved in crime. In 1946, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for burglary.
While in prison, he changed his name to Malcolm X, rejecting the surname Little which had been imposed on his ancestors by a slaveowner and claiming that X stood for his unknown African name. He became a follower of Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of an organisation called the Nation of Islam. On his release on parole in 1952, Malcolm visited Muhammad in Chicago. His eloquence and charisma quickly led to his becoming a leading figure in the Nation of Islam, until by the mid-1950s, he was the best-known spokesman for the group.
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