Malcolm X's Repudiation of a Slave Name
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 . . .
