Posted: Thursday, February 21, 2008 12:00 am
1965: Malcolm X was killed. He was assassinated by three gunmen while on stage at the Manhattan Audubon Ballroom.
Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska to the Rev. Earl and Louise Little. He did not have an easy childhood. The family was frequently terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan, and Rev. Little apparently dealt with the stress by beating his wife, Louise, and the children.
By the time Earl Little was killed under mysterious circumstances in 1931, the family was living in Lansing, Michigan. Badly stricken by her husband's death, and unable to cope with nine children on her own, Louise suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized in 1934.
Malcolm and his siblings were split up and placed in foster homes. At the end of his eighth-grade year, Malcolm dropped out of school entirely and moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, Ella.
In Boston Malcolm fell in with a bad crowd and began peddling narcotics. From Boston he moved to Harlem and took up the trades of a street thug - thievery, drug-peddling and pimping.
In 1946 he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 10 years for burglary. During his time in prison he came into contact with the ideas of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam for the first time.
When Malcolm was released from jail in 1952, he truly was a changed man. He became one of the Nation of Islam's foremost preachers, and spent the next 10 years speaking on their behalf.
In 1963, Malcolm discovered that his mentor, Elijah Muhammad, had been punishing other members of the Nation for transgressions such as adultery, while carrying on an affair himself. Muhammad's hypocrisy and conflicts on several other issues finally led to a public break between the two men.
In 1964, Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam to form his own groups, the Muslim Mosque and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Around this same time he changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca.
When he returned from this trip, he told waiting reporters "The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks."
This new stance did not sit well with some members of the Nation of Islam. On Feb. 21, 1965, El-Shabazz was assassinated by three members of the Nation while giving a speech in Harlem, N.Y.
1863: The pro-Union Cherokee government issues an emancipation proclamation abolishing slavery in the nation. The Cherokees were the only Indian Nation to end slavery before 1865.