Since his father was both a minister and an activist for Marcus Garvey' s Back-to-Africa movement and his mother had such light skin she could pass as a white woman, Malcolm X seemed almost predestined to a life of challenging America's racial status quo. Born on May 19,1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, as Malcolm Little, Malcolm X experienced a childhood marked by violence and poverty. While his mother was pregnant with him, white men threatened to burn down the family's house. When Malcolm was six, white supremacists murdered his father, plunging the family into years of hunger and deprivation.

Though Malcolm was a good student, a school career counselor told him that because he was black, he could aim only as high as a job as a skilled laborer. He soon set out on a path that led to a dead end period of his life, filled with...