Malcolm X
African-American nationalist

There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity.

In March of 1964, Malcolm X, who had been ordered to remain silent by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, formally left the Black Muslims and founded his own mosque. The son of a murdered black nationalist, Malcolm Little was imprisoned in 1946 on a burglary conviction. It was in prison that he encountered the Nation of Islam, which advocated African-American nationalism and racial separatism. Elijah Muhammad's teachings had a strong effect on Malcolm, who entered into an intense program of self-education and took the last name of X to symbolize his stolen African identity. After six years, Malcolm left prison and became an effective minister of the Nation of Islam in New York City's Harlem area. In contrast to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X advocated self-defense and the liberation of African Americans ‘by any means necessary.’ A fiery orator, Malcolm was admired by the African-American community in New York and around the country. In the early 1960s, he began to develop a more outspoken philosophy than that of Elijah Muhammad, whom he felt was lacking in his support of the civil rights movement. In December of 1963, Muhammad suspended him from the Nation of Islam. The following March, Malcolm formally left the Nation, and in April, made a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, where he was profoundly affected by the lack of racial discord among orthodox Muslims. Upon his return to the United States, Malcolm founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which advocated black identity and held that racism, not the white race, was the greatest foe of the African American. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot to death by Nation of Islam members while speaking at a rally of his organization in New York City.