..I never will forget how shocked I was when I began reading about slavery's total horror. It made such an impact upon me that it later became one of my favorite subjects when I became a minister of Mr. Muhammad's. The world's most monstrous crime, the sin and the blood on the white man's hands, are almost impossible to believe." (Malcolm X, p. 1)
It was upon these revelations that Malcolm X would unknowingly prepare to make the ultimate sacrifice. He tells that he was during this time in his personal development addicted to gaining any knowledge that might help him better understand the plight of his people and how he could help them advance. It was this orientation that would eventually launch him into a position of momentous influence and dangerous visibility. Malcolm X would sacrifice his life as a consequence of the things he had learned during his time….

Malcolm X: Director Spike Lee's Portrait Of An American Hero
Malcolm X was not a man who could be easily characterized and the same is true for Spike Lee's 1992 film. Malcolm X was a labor of love for Lee, who was only thirty-five at the time of the film's release. Lee had been a young child when Malcolm X was assassinated, so his knowledge of the man was not based on any personal recollections. Instead, he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X as a junior high school student and has said it changed his life forever (Hopkins, 2004). Lee's goal in making the film was to introduce Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X, to a new generation of African-Americans. He felt it was an important piece of history that may otherwise be forgotten. Lee realized that Malcolm X was a controversial figure, both in life and in death, and….

Even Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted that the Emancipation Proclamation promised more than it delivered. Both men knew that America had a long way to go before true freedom for African-Americans could be realized.
Malcolm X dealt drugs and hung out with the underground African-American artists and musicians during the Harlem Renaissance, one of the greatest periods in African-American cultural history. This section of Malcolm X's Autobiography is one of the most inspiring. Here, a young black man from the South moves his way up the social ladder in the Big Apple. He does not sell out; he does not deign to take on low-wage jobs that would perpetuate poverty. hat Malcolm X did was to forge a new identiy for himself and thus for all African-Americans.

Malcolm X saw in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad this concrete alternative identity for African-Americans. Rather than bow down to the oppressors by playing….

He began receiving death threats and his house was burned down. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm was shot dead while delivering a speech in Manhattan's Audubon allroom. Malcolm was shot 16 times. Three men were convicted for the shots and they were all members of the Nation of Islam.
The funeral service was attended by a very large number of people and thousands of people came to pay their respects to Malcolm's body. The great number of people that came to pay their respects shows that Malcolm managed to reach during his lifetime many lives and that there were many people that followed the same principles that Malcolm was preaching. He was clearly a representative figure of the black community in America as he was always a supporter of the rights of black people.

The death of Malcolm X left regret in the hearts of the black community, as his passion….

Malcolm X, the most influential Black Muslim leader, was a man whose views and personality underwent so many changes that the final version of him bore little or no resemblance to the original one. In the book, 'Autobiography of Malcolm X', Alex Haley has highlighted all the changes that his political and social ideologies encountered and this helps us understand the complex multi-faceted personality of the man who had a profound impact on Black Muslims in America. The paper covers all the changes and carefully analyzes the events and incidents that caused those changes.
MALCOLM X

Malcolm X is probably one of the most controversial Muslim leaders of America because there are so many shades to his personality that it takes some time to figure out who the real Malcolm X was and what was it that he actually stood for. It is important to understand that during the course of his….

However, many other strands of thought have converged to create a collective black identity and historiography. For example, the syncretic slave religions that merged African practices with Christianity allowed slave families and communities to hold on to their ancestry and traditions in the face of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual oppression. Similarly, the creation of the African Episcopal Church (AME) in the early nineteenth century marked a distinctive and unique sociological event in African-American history. African-American religious identity has been diverse but has always been defined by the ability to merge various historical and social realities within a collective spiritual framework.
The Nation of Islam and the embrace of Sunni Islam by African-Americans also reflect this tendency in African-American history. Malcolm X and others found in Islam a means by which to re-connect with their African roots and heritages. hile Islam was not the religion of their ancestors in Africa,….

He was eventually able to communicate directly with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X's oratory skills also developed through his participation in a prison debate team.
Spiritually and personally transformed, Malcolm X was released on parole, and moved to Detroit to live with his brother who, like many of their other siblings, had converted to Islam. Malcolm X soon rose through the ranks of the Nation of Islam, became its first national minister, and grew in political clout. As his social and political notoriety grew, rivals within the Nation of Islam plotted against him, sent death threats, and eventually exiled Malcolm X from the Nation. Undeterred, Malcolm X went on to found his own spiritual-political society and traveled abroad on spiritual and political pilgrimages. His encounters with Middle Eastern and African manifestations of the Muslim faith had a powerful impact on Malcolm X, who refined….

" (Malcolm X, p. 1)
That he segues here into a discussion on how education has so often been used to spread a mythological history casting white men as heroic underscores the latent hostility toward the traditional education he was never afforded. By contrast, Rodriguez is afforded this education and yet, for many of the same reasons, is moved to decry it. Rodriguez tells by sharp contrast to Malcolm X of a life given over to opportunities, accomplishments, familial support and cultural pressure in the context of education. Rodriguez tells that "although I was a very good student, I was also a very bad student. I was a 'scholarship boy,' a certain kind of scholarship boy. Always successful, I was always unconfident. Exhilarated by my progress. Sad. I became the prized student -- anxious and eager to learn. Too eager, too anxious -- an imitative and unoriginal pupil." (Rodriguez, p. 598)

And….

That is, my religion is still Islam. My religion is still Islam. I still credit Mr. Mohammed for what I know and what I am" (427). His philosophy was no pro-violence, he merely believed that one should not turn the other cheek when one was colonized: "The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community...The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that if you and I are going to live in a Black community -- and that's where we're going to live, 'cause as soon as you move into one of their -- soon as you move out of the Black community into their community, it's mixed for a period of time, but they're gone and you're right there all by yourself again," he said (427). Malcolm X was so frightening to hites not….

Malcolm X while in prison decides to start writing to friends he had been with in the thieving and doping world who unfortunately never replied to his letters because they were too uneducated to write a letter. Some of his friends who were slick and sharp-looking and could be mistaken for Wall Street big pots unfortunately hired people to read them letters if they received one. Malcolm X was also caught up in that similar situation and would never reply to letters that were written to them (Blesok, 2012). These experiences made him acquire homemade education. While Malcolm X struggled with lack of education, ichard odriguez who was living in a working class neighborhood in Sacramento had a slightly different experience. His parents could afford education for him and his siblings. His elder brother and sister left their books on the table next to the door closed firmly behind them….

" This decision would inevitably move him towards becoming one of the most important black leaders of American history. It was one made of free will and it deeply impacted him in his time in prison. He later reflected, "Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I had never been so truly free in my life." The effects of Black Islam were evident on him and it dramatically changed the direction and focus of his life.
The final turning point occurred when he left the Nation of Islam to start his own Muslim Mosque Inc. This occurred because he realized that Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam cheated on his wife. This decision was partly his own, but mostly the result of circumstance as it forced him to become disillusioned with the very organization and leadership that he devoted his life to.….

Malcolm X & Sophia
Malcolm first notices Sophia (a name given by Malcolm, we have no idea what her real name is) at a Negro dance at the Roseland Club in Boston, MA. Malcolm's date was Laura; Laura was an intelligent, well-brought-up, young, black woman. Laura is on her second date with Malcolm. Sophia walks into the club and immediately draws Malcolm's attention. The author describes her as a blond woman with shoulder length hair, well built -- but one can assume that she was well endowed. Sophia wears expensive clothes and drives a convertible. She is obviously well off. We see that Sophia, as a person, is self-assured -- almost brash. She walked into a venue for blacks to find a black man "for herself." This was unusual. Typically, white women who wanted alliances with black men often arranged it through agencies and pimps who exclusively catered to such needs….

Another angle into Malcolm's view of white America is presented in an article in the journal Phylon, in which the authors assert that after visiting Mecca in 1964 (according to Charles E. ilson), "...He became less and less doctrinairely antagonistic toward whites..." Malcolm is reported to have said, that morning in Mecca "...was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about 'white men'." Meanwhile, the Reverend Albert Cleage later said that it was "a myth" to believe that Malcolm had changed the way he felt towards whites; and C. Eric Lincoln, who wrote the book the Black Muslims in America, said that those who saw "a new Malcolm X" after he returned from Mecca "were at best probably premature in their judgments." "Until the day of his death he remained an opponent of what is generally...understood...as 'integration'," said George Breitman, a friend and confidante of Malcolm who….

Though one can only speculate about what would have happened to Malcolm Little if he had never been arrested, it seems fair to suggest that he would have died in a violent manner, given that he lived in a violent manner. It seems unlikely that he would have devoted time to pursue his education. On the contrary, he may have continued his life of criminality. However, once he was incarcerated, he was removed from his life of crime. ith nothing better to do in jail, Malcolm became a voracious reader, giving himself the education he had not attained in the outside world. It was during Malcolm's incarceration that he heard from his brother Reginald, who had recently converted to the Nation of Islam. Malcolm pursued learning about the Nation of Islam, beginning contact with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam.
In addition, Malcolm's street life helped him….

Malcolm X
In what ways was Malcolm X's individuality denied him because of his race? One important expression of his individuality was his desire to become a lawyer when he was young. When his teacher asked him what he wanted to be, and he told the teacher he wanted to be a lawyer, the teacher told him he needed to be "practical." It wasn't practical for a black young man to try to become a lawyer. Blacks couldn't get into law school and usually couldn't afford law school anyway. Blacks weren't considered smart enough to be lawyers.

What personal experiences made him open to accepting the teaching that "the white man is the devil?" What reading in history? In what way did his hajj change his attitude? When Malcolm Little was a young child, white supremacists came one night and burned down his house. The didn't like what his father was preaching.….