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African American Activist

Malcolm Little was born on May 19, 1925, the son of Louise and Earl Little of Omaha, Nebraska. Louise Little was a mulatto born in Grenada in the British West Indies, and Earl Little, a six-foot, very dark skinned man from Reynolds, Ga., was a Baptist minister and organizer for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. Louise, his second wife, bore six children: Wilfred, Hilda, Philbert, Malcolm, Yvonne, and Reginald. Earl Little also had three children by a first wife: Ella, Earl, and Mary. Little had migrated with his family from Philadelphia to the midwest, first to Milwaukee, then Omaha, and finally to East Lansing, Mich.
In 1929 the family house was burned down, allegedly by white supremacists. After Earl Little died in 1931 in a streetcar accident, Malcolm's mother eventually had a mental breakdown and entered an inside asylum. The siblings were dispersed to other families. Malcolm lived with a foster family before moving to Roxbury, Mass., in 1941 to live with a half sister, Ella Collins