POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS: Murder in New York: Malcolm X and the birth of Afro-Americanism
Length 52 mins
It is in Omaha, Nebraska, that Malcolm Little is born in 1925 as the son of a Baptist minister and a West Indian mother. Malcolm is six years old when his father dies and his mother is confined to a psychiatric hospital. He grows up in different reformatories and, as a teenager, later as a young men, he very early comes into conflict with the law. In prison, he assigns himself an ambitious general education program and succeeds in catching up with the lost years. He also learns about, and is very impressed with the theses of the self-proclaimed prophet of the Islam, Elijah Muhammed, leader of the organisation “Nation of the Islam”, a then small religious group. When he leaves prison after six years, he integrates this movement and quickly becomes its number two. Whilst in the public arena, the “Nation of Islam” is undoubtedly the best supporter of the brilliant speaker he is, but the organisation will also become his worst enemy when later on, he distances himself from the doubtful methods of the “prophet”.