"What do you think you would do after 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow and lynching? Do you think you would respond nonviolently?" Those were some of the key questions Malcolm X posed to American society.

Although slavery had been abolished in the US in 1865, the so-called Jim Crow laws continued to cement everyday discrimination against Black people until 1964. There were artificial barriers to their right to vote in some states, and in many they weren't allowed to sit next to white people on buses or in restaurants.

"Malcolm X addressed precisely the issues that were burning on the minds of oppressed African Americans," Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, author of the biography "Malcolm X: The Black Revolutionary," told DW.

His message to African Americans was clear: Be self-confident! Fight for your rights "by any means necessary" — even with violence.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne (1941-2018) recalled in his Malcolm X biography how a 1963 speech by the activist freed him, as if by a "flashing sword blow," from the "conditioned feeling of inferiority as a Black man" deeply rooted in his psyche.

That was precisely Malcom X's goal.

Born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm Little's childhood near Detroit was marked by poverty and violence. He was six years old when his father was found dead; according to various accounts, he had been murdered by white supremacists. With seven children and little money, Malcom's mother was completely overwhelmed and became mentally ill. Malcolm was placed in various foster families and institutions; he later spoke in his autobiography of the "terror of the very white social workers."

Despite his difficult beginnings, he was a good student, the only Black person in his class. A key........

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