An early home of civil rights leader Malcolm X has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The site in Inkster, Michigan, serves as the home for Malcolm X after he was released from prison, and is where he started to formulate his religious walk in the Nation of Islam and met the Honorable Elijah Muhammad for the first time.
According to a press release from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the National Register of Historic Places, with the State Historic Preservation Office serving as the administers, have named the home a landmark site.
Michigan’s State Historic Preservation Officer Mark A. Rodman said, “A key aspect of the National Register program is to document and honor places that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history. People and places in Michigan played important roles in the Civil Rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. We are honored to join the city of Inkster in celebrating one of those roles with the listing of this home.”
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Malcolm X lived in this house in Inkster, located at 4336 Williams Street, near Annapolis Ave. from 1952 to 1953.
His older brother Wilfred X and his family allowed the 27-year-old to come live with them after his release from a Massachusetts prison. He stayed in a second-floor bedroom, an area where the whole family would congregate to ritually pray together.
Malcolm Little, the freedom fighter’s birth name, was incarcerated in 1946 for burglary in a Charlestown state prison in the commonwealth. While there, in 1948, he was introduced through his siblings to the Nation of Islam and started to communicate with its founder, Hon. Elijah Muhammad. During his time there, he opted to change his life by developing himself as a reader — tackling books in the prison’s library in the areas of philosophy, history, literature and science.
He also started a writing campaign to the Massachusetts governor, where he demanded the right to practice Islam in prison. He participated in several activities that would shape his role in American history, including joining the prison debate team and working on his oratorical skills. His purposeful effort to change his life led to his eventual parole in 1952, Massmoment.org reports.
After his parole, his brother welcomed him into his home and his faith, introducing him to the Nation of Islam Temple No. 1 in Detroit. He joined the temple, one of only four in the country at the time, and by the end of that year, met the man he had been communicating with, Elijah Muhammad, face-to-face. At that meeting, he received from him the “X,” a symbol of his shedding of the slave master’s name he received as a child.
Source: Home of Malcolm X Is Named a National Landmark and Will Be Made Into a Museum
