RESPECT BY ALL MEANS
MALCOLM X (1925-1965) - UNITED STATES
Born in 1925 to a Garveyite father murdered in 1931 by the Ku Klux Klan and a mother interned by social services, he was placed in foster care before a stint in prison where he re-educated himself through intensive reading. Replacing the name given under slavery with the letter X, Malcolm X joined the Black nationalist religious organization Nation of Islam, becoming its spokesperson. His fiery speeches against integrationist Blacks and white supremacists appealed to young people and forged the concept of Black Power.
In 1960, he hosted Fidel Castro and several anti-colonialist leaders in Harlem. Expelled from the NOI for his remarks linking John Kennedy's assassination to the violence of white America, Malcolm X went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, then toured Africa and the Middle East. Influenced by Kwame Nkrumah's Pan-Africanism, he understood that the struggle for civil rights in the United States was a struggle for human rights.
Seeking support to condemn the American government before the United Nations, he created the Organization of Afro-American Unity a few months before his assassination on February 21, 1965, in Harlem.
A creation by the artist Camille Laforcenéé
