> Be Malcolm X > Born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, as the son of a Baptist minister who supports Marcus Garvey. > White supremacists threaten the family, and they keep moving. In 1929, their home in Lansing, Michigan, burns down. > When he is six, his father is found dead beside the streetcar tracks. The family believes he was murdered. > His mother is committed to a state mental hospital in 1939 and so the children are scattered among foster homes. > One of the top students in his class and tells a teacher he wants to be a lawyer, but the teacher tells him that isn't a realistic goal for a Black man and suggests carpentry instead. > Drops out after eighth grade. > Moves to Boston to live with his half-sister, then later to Harlem. > Spends the next few years hustling: selling drugs, running numbers, burglary. > In 1946, at 20, he is arrested for burglary and sentenced to up to ten years in prison. > In prison, he converts to the Nation of Islam. > Frustrated that he can barely put his thoughts into writing, he starts copying a dictionary by hand, page by page, beginning with A. > Reads his way through the prison library and joins the prison debate team. > Released in 1952 and becomes a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. > Under his preaching, the Nation reportedly grows from about 500 members to about 30,000. > In 1964, he breaks with the Nation of Islam and begins receiving death threats. > Travels to Mecca for the Hajj and prays beside Muslims of every race. > Writes home that the pilgrimage forced him to reject the racism that had shaped his views of white people. Many of his followers can't believe it. > Takes a new name: el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. > Spends much of the next year abroad, traveling through Africa and the Middle East, and keeps revising his thinking. > February 21, 1965: he is shot and killed at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan as he takes the stage. He is 39. His wife and four daughters are in the front row. > The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley, is published that October and becomes an immediate bestseller. And Malcolm X remains the clearest proof that a person can rebuild their own mind one page at a time, and that the bravest thing you can do with a belief is revise it when you learn better. Malcolm X was unhinged.