10 Martyrs That Furthered The Civil Rights Cause

The US has a gun problem. It’s as simple as that. More than 35,000 die every year from gunshot wounds. But even by American standards, the murder of Malcolm X was an act of particularly evil butchery.

Malcolm Little didn’t have an envious youth, going into foster care during his adolescence following his father’s death and his mother’s hospitalisation. At 21, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for burglary. It was during his sentence that he turned his life around, becoming the face of the controversial Nation of Islam once paroled, unbeknown to the fact that it would be his downfall.

Aside from his promotion of Islam, Malcolm X’s legacy is more commonly associated with expressing the anger and frustration felt by African Americans more so than the mainstream civil rights movement. Famously, he suggested that if denied the right to vote, black Americans should take up arms. It was this pursuit of human rights that made him disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, falling out with its leader in 1964. A year later, three of its members fired 21 bullets into his chest. Yet again, the punishment for being a proponent of basic human rights was death.

Many oppressed black communities felt that Malcolm X articulated their feelings more realistically and greatly than any leader in history and indeed, movements such as Black Power and Black Lives Matter can all trace their roots back to him.