Full Name = Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz). Profession = Muslim minister, human rights activist, civil rights leader, and Black nationalist revolutionary. Nationality = American Born = May 19, 1925 Birthplace = Omaha, Nebraska, United States Generation = Silent Generation (often defined as births from 1925 to 1945) Chinese Zodiac = Wood Ox (1925 is the year of the Wood Ox in the Chinese zodiac, with the Ox year beginning January 24, 1925) Zodiac Sign: Taurus (the Sun is in Taurus on May 19). Age in 2026: 101 (he would have turned 101 on May 19, 2026). Marital Status=Married (to educator and civil rights advocate Betty Shabazz, born Betty Dean Sanders, from January 14, 1958, in Lansing, Michigan, until his death in 1965). Children: Six daughters—Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, and twins Malikah and Malaak Shabazz—born between 1958 and 1965. Cause of Death: Assassinated by gunfire at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, New York City, on February 21, 1965, when gunmen shot him multiple times as he prepared to address a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he died at age 39 from his wounds. Description=Malcolm X emerged from a childhood marked by racial terror, poverty, and family disruption—his father, Earl Little, a Baptist minister and Garveyite organizer, died violently when Malcolm was young, and his mother, Louise, was later institutionalized—experiences that exposed him early to white supremacist violence and the fragility of Black family life in the United States. After drifting into street life and crime as a young man, he was imprisoned in 1946, where he underwent a profound transformation through intensive self-education and his conversion to the Nation of Islam, adopting the surname “X” to reject the “Little” name he regarded as a legacy of enslavement. Upon his release, Malcolm became one of the Nation of Islam’s most dynamic ministers and organizers; through his rhetorical brilliance, discipline, and uncompromising message about Black pride, self-defense, and separation from an oppressive white power structure, he helped expand the movement from a few hundred followers to tens of thousands in temples across the country by the mid‑1950s. Unlike some contemporaries who emphasized nonviolence and integration, Malcolm X excoriated systemic racism, colonialism, and economic exploitation, arguing that Black people had the right to defend themselves “by any means necessary” and insisting that American racism was not simply a Southern aberration but a national and global problem. His pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964 catalyzed a major shift in his worldview: encountering Muslims of many races and backgrounds led him to broaden his understanding of Islam and to reframe his politics toward an internationalist human-rights perspective, in which he envisioned solidarity among oppressed peoples worldwide while still centering Black self-determination. Breaking with the Nation of Islam, he founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, preparing to bring the United States before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African Americans and connecting the Black freedom struggle to anti-colonial movements in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. His life ended when he was assassinated in New York in 1965. Yet, his posthumously published “Autobiography of Malcolm X” and countless recordings of his speeches cemented him as a prophetic voice whose critiques of white supremacy, capitalism, and state violence profoundly influenced later generations of Black activists, the global Black Power and Pan-African movements, and the hip-hop generation’s political and cultural consciousness.