Don Wildman

If you were lucky

enough to be this old.

Earl Little was a Baptist lay preacher, leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, UNIA.

There was a chapter in Omaha.

So Malcolm is surrounded by these ideas of Garveyism as a youngster.

And when he's six, the Littles moved to Lansing, Michigan, and in the years following, run into that which so many Black families ran into in those days, the housing restrictions imposed upon them by municipalities in the North.

Can you explain how these experiences affected the family

and Malcolm?

All of this before he is 10 years old, death of his father, the breaking up the family, a lot of moving around, all against a very proud story of resistance and understanding this world through the eyes of self-determination and so forth.

And that's an incredible, what a brew, what a cauldron to grow up in.

His response to this, we will talk about in a moment, but I want to circle back to more discussion about what we were saying before, because we're going to run into something called the Nation of Islam.

And I want to understand, we're in Michigan at this point in his childhood, and Michigan is so much of what's going on in this world for black America.

Detroit is such a big center of all of this.

And at this time, there is a movement towards the creation of this element of black nationalism.

Can you describe how this happens?

Yeah.

And it's about turning the story over, flipping the story, if you will, about how black and white America and black and white people around the world have come to pass.

I mean, there's a mythology involved.

There's all kinds of stuff involved in this.

But it's very definitely saying this is our time.