Life and Struggles of Malcolm X – a Combative Civil Rights Activist

This paper is focused on Malcolm X, a man who stands against the regular and normal civil rights act. Malcolm X was an activist who fought for people of color. In the US, people of color were restricted and isolated by the Jim Crow Laws which was created to enforce segregation of dark-skinned race from white people. The dark-skinned race did not have the same or nearly close rights as the Caucasians this generation. However, he was born Malcolm Little on May 19/1925 in Omaha city in the state called Nebraska and he was assassinated or killed on February 21/1965. In US history, Malcolm X was recognized as a violent person and as a black civil rights advocate.

However, when he was younger, his family had to move multiple times because of racism. They moved from Omaha, Nebraska, after they were being threatened by the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that believes that whites are superior to all other races. Their house was burned down while living in a white neighborhood in Michigan. His father was killed (murdered) when he was 6 years old and three of his four uncles were also killed (murdered) by racist white people. Things were hard for him and his family. At the age of twenty years old, He was sentenced to ten years in prison for stealing, while in prison, he found a new religion (Islam). After his released from prison, he changed his name to X. And then became the voice for the nation of Islam. Though, during this time, a movement was going on, to bring all the people together as one in a peaceful way but Malcolm and his community were only calling for a racial division .

Further, his only belief was that racial division was the unique way to strengthen and help his people’s lives in the US because he had that thought and thinking that only whites controlled the whole society and the country. Hence, he coached and informed the blacks that they need to have things of their own. For example, their own economy, their own community, and society. Of course, Malcolm X knew he wasn’t the only activist that there were some other black Americans civil rights activists that also fight for equality but in a peaceful way. However, Malcolm’s approach was different from them because he thought that if blacks wanted to get the same rights as the whites, then the dark-skinned races had to fight against the Caucasians. Thus, He believed that to get freedom in United State, it is necessary to fight against the Caucasians for the blacks to have the same rights as the whites and he thought that the black people should have their own things for example, society, community, and economy.

In fact, he taught his people that Caucasians were evils that indoctrinated the blacks. He refused to accept that whites and blacks can live peacefully in the same country. He was not the only civil rights activist during that period of time. There were many other, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. who used peaceable resistance to help his own people. He refused to get himself involved in their peaceful civil rights act. So, he thought that battling against the whites is the only possible way of helping the people of color that live in the United State. But later on, his conception of racial division was changed by his previous life encounters and also what they preach in the NOI. Nevertheless, He later found out that Caucasians and people of color can live together in peace. When he visited Mecca, no one discriminate against him. For example, Malcolm drank the same water, ate the same food, and slept with whites and colored people.

In conclusion, Jim Crow Laws were one sided laws that promotes white supremacy and prejudiced law against lacks. People of color were discriminated against in most public places, for example, restaurants, restrooms and so on. As seen from the essay, Malcolm X’s prior or early life encounters e.g., the effect of his school life style, his father, and also his life in the prison led him to become the type of person he became. And because of the type of father he had, that always spoke out regarding racism in the US and that’s where he got his views on races and moving to Boston changed his way of living. His early life experience led to become a combative civil rights activist during his lifetime.