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Example research essay topic: Civil Rights Leaders Nation Of Islam - 1,442 words

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Malcolm X has been called many things: Pan-Africanist, father of Black Power, religious fanatic, closet conservative, incipient socialist, and a menace to society. The meaning of his public life his politics and ideology is contested in part because his entire body of work consists of a few dozen speeches and a collaborative autobiography whose veracity is often challenged. Gunned down three months before his 40 th birthday, Malcolm Xs life was cut short just when his thinking had reached a critical juncture. Malcolm's life is a Horatio Alger story with a twist. His is not a rags to riches tale, but a powerful narrative of self-transformation from petty hustler to internationally known political leader. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Louise and Earl Little, who was a Baptist preacher active in Marcus Garveys Universal Negro Improvement Association, Malcolm, along with his siblings, experienced dramatic confrontations with racism from childhood.

Hooded Klansmen burned their home in Lansing, Michigan; Earl Little was killed under mysterious circumstances; welfare agencies split up the children and eventually committed Louise Little to a state mental institution; and Malcolm was forced to live in a detention home run by a racist white couple. By the eighth grade he left school, moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to live with his half-sister Ella, and discovered the underground world of African American hipsters. Malcolm's entry into the masculine culture of the zoot suit, the conked (straightened) hair, and the lindy hop coincided with the outbreak of World War II, rising black militancy (symbolized in part by A. Philip Randolphs threatened March on Washington for racial and economic justice), and outbreaks of race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and other cities. Malcolm and his partners did not seem very political at the time, but they dodged the draft so as not to lose their lives over a white mans war, and they avoided wage work whenever possible. His search for leisure and pleasure took him to Harlem, New York, where his primary source of income derived from petty hustling, drug dealing, pimping, gambling, and viciously exploiting women.

In 1946 his luck ran out; he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to ten years in prison. Malcolm's downward descent took a U-turn in prison when he began studying the teachings of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI), the black Muslim group founded by Wallace D. Fard and led by Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Poole). Submitting to the discipline and guidance of the NOI, he became a voracious reader of the Quran (Koran) and the Bible. He also immersed himself in works of literature and history at the prison library. Behind prison walls he quickly emerged as a powerful orator and brilliant rhetorician.

He led the famous prison debating team that beat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arguing against capital punishment by pointing out that English pickpockets often did their best work at public hangings! Upon his release in 1952 he renamed himself Malcolm X, symbolically repudiating the white mans name. As a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X rose quickly within the NOI ranks, serving as minister of Harlem's Temple No. 7 in 1954, and later ministering to temples in Detroit and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through national speaking engagements, television appearances, and by establishing Muhammad Speaks the NOIs first nationally distributed newspaper Malcolm X put the Nation of Islam on the map. His sharp criticisms of civil rights leaders for advocating integration into white society instead of building black institutions and defending themselves from racist violence generated opposition from both conservatives and liberals. His opponents called him violent, fascist, and racist.

To those who claimed that the NOI undermined their efforts toward integration by preaching racial separatism, Malcolm responded, It is not integration that Negroes in America want, it is human dignity. Distinguishing Malcolm's early political and intellectual views from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad is not a simple matter. His role as minister was to preach the gospel of Islam according to Muhammad. He remained a staunch devotee of the Nations strict moral codes and gender conventions. Although his own narrative suggests that he never entirely discarded his hustlers distrust of women, he married Betty Sanders (later Betty Shabazz) in 1958 and lived by NOI rules: men must lead, women must follow; the mans domain is the world, the womans is the home. On other issues, however, Malcolm showed signs of independence from the NOI line.

During the mid- 1950 s, for example, he privately scoffed at Muhammad's interpretation of the genesis of the white race and seemed uncomfortable with the idea that all white people were literally devils. He was always careful to preface his remarks with The honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches... More significantly, Malcolm clearly disagreed with the NOIs policy of not participating in politics. He not only believed that political mobilization was indispensable but occasionally defied the rule by supporting boycotts and other forms of protest. In 1962, before he split with the NOI, Malcolm shared the podium with black, white, and Puerto Rican labor organizers in the left-wing, multiracial hospital workers union in New York. He also began developing an independent Pan-Africanist and, in some respects, Third World political perspective during the 1950 s, when anticolonial wars and decolonization were pressing public issues.

As early as 1954 Malcolm gave a speech comparing the situation in Vietnam with that of the Mau Mau Rebellion in colonial Kenya, framing both of these movements as uprisings of the darker races creating a tidal wave against U. S. and European imperialism. Indeed, Africa remained his primary political interest outside of black America.

He toured Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana in 1959, well before his famous trip to Africa and the Middle East in 1964. Although Malcolm tried to conceal his differences with Elijah Muhammad, tensions between them erupted. The tensions were exacerbated by the threat Malcolm's popularity posed to Muhammad's leadership and by Malcolm's disillusionment with Elijah upon learning that the NOIs moral and spiritual leader had fathered children by former secretaries. The tensions became publicly visible when Muhammad silenced Malcolm for remarking after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that it was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. (Malcolm's point was that the federal governments inaction toward racist violence in the South had come back to strike the president. ) When Malcolm learned that Muhammad had planned to have him assassinated, he decided to leave the NOI.

On March 8, 1964, he announced his resignation and formed the Muslim Mosque, Inc. , an Islamic movement devoted to working in the political sphere and cooperating with civil rights leaders. That same year he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca and took a second tour of several African and Arab nations. The trip was apparently transformative. Upon his return he renamed himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, adopted from Sunni Islam, and announced that he had found the true brotherhood of man. He publicly acknowledged that whites were no longer devils, though he still remained a Black Nationalist and staunch believer in black self-determination and self-organization. During the summer of 1964 he formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).

Inspired by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) made up of independent African states, the Oaau's program combined advocacy for independent black institutions (e. g. , schools and cultural centers) with support for black participation in mainstream politics, including electoral campaigns. Following the example of Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm planned in 1965 to submit to the United Nations a petition that documented human rights violations and acts of genocide against African Americans.

His assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in New York carried out by gunmen affiliated with the NOI intervened, and the OAAU died soon after Malcolm was laid to rest. Although Malcolm left no real institutional legacy, he did exert a notable impact on the Civil Rights Movement in the last year of his life. Black activists in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who had heard him speak to organizers in Selma, Alabama, in February 1965, began to support some of his ideas, especially on armed self-defense, racial pride, and the creation of black-run institutions. He also gained a small following of radical Marxists, mostly Trotskyists in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

Malcolm convinced some SWP members of the revolutionary potential of ordinary black ghetto dwellers, and he began to speak more critically of capitalism. Was Malcolm about to become a civil rights leader? Could he have launched a successful Pan-Africanist movement? Was he turning toward Marxism? Scholars and activist have debated these issues, but no firm answers are yet possible.


Free research essays on topics related to: malcolm x, white mans, elijah muhammad, nation of islam, civil rights leaders

Research essay sample on Civil Rights Leaders Nation Of Islam

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