Malcolm X Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

Malcolm X - Essay Example agencies were the incarnation of white oppression caused the BPP to believe that civil justice for the black community could be accomplished only through militant actions. It is not possible to comprehend the reason for the formation of the BPP or attempt to explain its violent tendencies without first examining the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s and the specific events leading up to its establishment. The person most credited with bringing the Black Panther Party to prominence was a man called Malcolm X. Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little) did not start the Black Panther Party, but he became a powerful speaker during the Civil Rights Movement, eventually becoming more important to the cause by his death than he was in life as he inspired the movements that took place in the cities of the country. As Martin Luther King Jr. had secured the character of the Southern black, Malcolm had become the messiah of city slums in the North, Midwest and West. The semi-militant organization he headed, the Nation, grew quickly under his leadership. Malcolm was most remembered for his passionate anti-white speeches. This was an idea that was emulated by other pro-autonomy organizations. He was the target of many death threats, one of which, in 1965, was successful. Soon after Malcolm’s death, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale began forming the Black Panthers (Hollaway, 1998). Malcolm seemed perfectly suited to become the new leader of the Black empowerment movement having been born in 1925 to a half-white mother, Louise Little, and a black father, Earl Little, who headed the local branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Perry, 1991). Regardless of what he might have thought of his father’s beliefs in the future, he never forgot the messages of Black pride and self-reliance he learned at his father’s knee. Although born in Nebraska, Malcolm grew up primarily in Michigan after his family fled, when he was still an infant, from the terrors