Despite his boldness, the movement stagnated under Muhammad’s leadership. In the mid-forties “The Big X” came on the scene. And with the arrival of Malcolm Little--christened into Islam Malcolm X and elevated by Elijah Muhammad to be Malcolm Shabazz, but known to the pimps, prostitutes, and dope addicts as “Big Red”--the Black Muslim movement really began to move. _Big Red_ Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, and like Elijah Muhammad he was the son of a Baptist minister. The family soon moved from Omaha to Lansing, Michigan. Malcolm’s father was a follower of the Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey, who felt that all Negroes should return to Africa and escape the oppression of the white man. The Ku Klux Klan burned down the family home when Malcolm was only six years old. “The firemen came,” Malcolm says, “and just sat there without making any effort to put one drop of water on the fire. The same fire that burned my father’s home still burns in my soul.” Following Garvey’s teaching that the Negroes should go into business, Mr. Little then set out to build his own store. Soon after this, according to Malcolm, “my father was found with his head bashed and his body mangled under a streetcar.” Malcolm Shabazz to this day remains convinced that his father was lynched by white people who resented even the prospect of a Negro gaining some economic independence. With his father’s death, Malcolm’s family was forced to separate. In moving terms, clenching his fists, and at times breaking into tears, Malcolm has described to me how his mother boiled dandelion greens from day to day trying to keep her eleven children from starving to death. “We stayed dizzy and sick because we stayed hungry.” At night Malcolm and his brothers would go out and steal what food they could to fill their stomachs. The Littles were a clannish bunch. They struggled to stay together, but the pangs of hunger were too great, and they were ripped apart. Malcolm was sent to an institution for boys. This turned out to be the second molding factor in the life of Malcolm X. He was one of the few Negroes--if not the only one--in the institution and he developed a warm love for the white matron who defended him when other kids were “kicking him around.” In the only complimentary statement I have heard him make about a white person, Malcolm says of the matron, “She was good to me. I followed her around like a little puppy. I was a kind of mascot.” She arranged for him to attend a near-by school where, although he was the only Negro pupil, his keen mind put him at the head of the class, which only gained him the resentment of both the teacher and the pupils. “When I was in the eighth grade,” Malcolm says, “they asked me what I wanted to become. I told them I wanted to study law. But they told me that law was not a suitable profession for a Negro. They suggested that I think of a trade such as carpentry.”