Learning From Malcolm X: Housing Covenants, King and X, and What's in a Name

Malcolm X at Martin Luther King Jr.'s press conference at the U.S. Capitol on the Senate debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Library of Congress

Background

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His childhood was marked by racial violence: the Ku Klux Klan drove his family out of Omaha, and in Lansing, Michigan, another white supremacist group burned their house down. His father died soon after in mysterious circumstances; when his mother's mental health failed, the state committed her to Kalamazoo State Hospital, and the children were split among foster homes.

Without a stable home, Malcolm left school to survive and was eventually imprisoned for theft. In prison he studied Islam and wrote to Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) — an Islamic and Black nationalist movement founded in 1930 by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad, closely tied to Black separatism and empowerment. Released in 1952, he committed to the NOI and took the surname "X" to mark the loss of his African ancestry, as many NOI members did.

As an NOI minister, he preached weekly at Temple Number 7 in New York and wrote for Black newspapers. Like Bayard Rustin and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he wanted Black Americans free from prejudice — but while they preached nonviolence and welcomed white allies, he argued for self-defense against white violence and a Black nationalism that largely excluded white society. Malcolm X and the NOI uplifted and empowered many in Black communities, but also faced accusations of bigotry, including antisemitic teachings.

In 1964, Malcolm X split from the NOI, wanting a larger role in the struggle for Black civil and human rights through his own organization; made the hajj — the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of Islam's five pillars — under the name Malik El-Shabazz; and became a Sunni Muslim. He was assassinated on February 21, 1965, while speaking in Manhattan.

Objectives. Learners will explore the role of individuals in civil rights activism, examine primary sources for central ideas and evidence, and combine visual, print and digital sources.

Inquiry question. The violence Malcolm X faced as a child shaped who he became. What are your earliest memories, and how have they shaped how you see the world and who you are?

Activity 1: Racially restrictive covenants

Many American cities had racially restrictive covenants. Library of Congress

The cities where the Littles lived — Omaha, Milwaukee, Lansing — had designated neighborhoods for African Americans, enforced in part by racially restrictive covenants: agreements among white owners not to sell to people of color. Sometimes owners ignored or didn't know about them and sold to Black buyers anyway.

The Littles deliberately moved into white areas; Malcolm's oldest brother, Wilfred, recalled that their father was known for moving where theirs was the only Black family. Families like theirs were harassed and threatened — and, as Malcolm described in his autobiography, the Littles' Lansing home was burned.

In St. Louis, the J. D. Shelley family bought a two-story rowhouse in 1945 under a covenant white residents had signed 34 years earlier, barring anyone "not of the Caucasian race" for fifty years. A neighbor, Louis Kraemer, sued to keep them out, and Shelley v. Kraemer reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in May 1948:

• private agreements to exclude people by race don't themselves violate the Fourteenth Amendment;
• but state courts enforcing them is state action that denies equal protection — so courts can't enforce them;
• that courts might also enforce covenants excluding white people doesn't change this, because Fourteenth Amendment rights belong to individuals.

Read the full ruling.

The Shelley House, St. Louis. Photo by FrancisNancy, CC BY 3.0

Questions. Research the Fourteenth Amendment: When was it passed, and why? What rights does it protect? How could lawyers use it against restrictive covenants? Why do you think the Court ruled as it did?

The ruling reinforced the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection, including the right to acquire, own and sell property. It showed African Americans they could win change in the courts, and — with cases like Brown v. Board — strengthened the civil rights movement. The Shelley House became a National Historic Landmark in 1990 and joined the African American Civil Rights Network in May 2019.

Activity 2: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

King and Malcolm X after King's press conference at the U.S. Capitol, 1964. Library of Congress

Both men were central to the Black civil rights movement, with different visions of how to reach equality — yet each watched the other closely and recognized the national importance of what the other was doing. Their lives help explain the difference:

Murals. Look at Library of Congress photographs of murals by Camilo J. Vergara — of King (Brooklyn, Los Angeles), of Malcolm X (Harlem, Detroit), and of both together (Detroit, Brooklyn). How do they portray the two men? What details stand out? Then make your own artwork of each, thinking about how they may have influenced each other.

Activity 3: What's in a name?

Malcolm X changed his name several times. He took "X" to stand for his family's original African name, lost to slavery: Africans brought by force to North America in the 17th to 19th centuries weren't allowed to keep their names and were given their enslavers' surnames. After emancipation — the Civil War (1861–1865) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) — many kept those names in hope of finding loved ones who had been sold.

The writer Ralph Ellison observed that names are how we first place ourselves in the world, and that a name given to us by others must be made our own.

Discuss. What name were you given at birth, and do you still use it? What does your name say about you? Why do people change their first or last names? Do you know anyone who has? If you chose a new name, what would it be, and why?

Sources

Based on "Learning from Malcolm X," researched and written by Dr. Katherine Crawford-Lackey, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The article's footnotes cite The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Les and Tamara Payne's The Dead Are Arising and other works. It says Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam after returning from Mecca, while its own footnote dates his renunciation to March 1964, so the order of those events isn't given here.