The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Broché)

Born Malcolm Little in Omaha in 1925, Malcolm X was the son of a Baptist preacher. At an early age he moved to Lancing, Michigan, with his parents, both of whom were lost to him in childhood. Leaving school early, he made his way to New York and worked for a time as a waiter in Harlem. Soon part of the underworld, he began selling marijuana, became addicted to cocaine, turned to burglary, and in 1946 was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.
While in prison he became acquainted with Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslim sect and was converted to its utopian and strongly racist point of view. Paroled in 1952, he became an outspoken defender of Muslim doctrines and, unlike Muhammad, sought and received considerable publicity. In 1963 Muhammad dismissed him from the Black Muslim movement, and Malcolm X formed his own protest group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
The group had built up only a small following at the time of Malcolm X's murder in 1965. He was buried as Al Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, the name he had taken in 1964 after making his holy pilgrimage to Mecca.