Malcom X

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             Malcom Little was one of six children who grew up in various houses in the northern part of the country. His mother, a woman who could pass for white, stayed at home with the children while her husband, Earl, went around preaching the word of Marcus Garvey. Growing up in Michigan, where his family moved after he was born, was an experience for Malcom. His father as a follower of Marcus Garvey was constantly a target for white supremacist that wanted to suppress the black man in America. While his mother was pregnant with Malcom, the Ku Klux Klan smashed the windows of their house in Nebraska. After moving to Lansing, right after the sixth child was born, their house burned to the ground one night with the entire family inside, the fire was started by people who wanted Earl Little out of town. All of them made it out safely.
             Malcom sensed that his father favored him while his mother resented him, both basing their feelings on his light skin and red hair. Malcom's grandmother was raped by a white man and his mother was the product of that rape, she passed onto Malcom the light coloring that he would resent later in his life. Malcom's father was eventually killed by white supremacist. He was shot and then left on a pair of train tracks to suffer a terrible death, which was eventually ruled a suicide. The death of his father left his mother in a terrible predicament. She was now a single woman with six children; she had no job and only one of two life insurance policies paid up after the death was ruled a suicide. .
             Malcom's mother worked in various white households under the assumption of her employers that she was white. It would take the arrival of her children, or rumors about town to finally bring them to the reality that the lovely young woman they hired was black. It was hard for Louise Little to take care of her family and she finally had to ask for help from the government relief program.