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• 1 2016-11-06T15:45:25-08:00 Malcolm X's Repudiation of a Slave Name 14 plain 2017-04-18T09:17:05-07:00 Breaking language: use it to take control of naming practices (to use an autonym to represent your authentic self):
  
  Why did Malcolm X (1925-1965), christened Malcolm Little, refuse to acknowledge his last name and instead refer to himself as "Malcolm X" (then, after his conversion to Islam and his trip to Mecca, as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz?) 
  
  Because words effectively define (and constrain) identities, and because labels are offensive, many in the 1960s and 1970s took the struggle for Civil Rights into language itself. Malcolm X decided to adopt a last name "X" to signify his lost African name and to indicate that he repudiated the name Little that his great-grandparents and their forebears had been given by the slave owner.
  
  Here, Malcolm X explains his name . . .