Earl Little (29 July 1890-28 September 1931) was an African-American Baptist minister and UNIA organizer. He was the father of Malcolm X.
Biography[]
Earl Little was born in Reynolds, Georgia on 29 July 1890, and he became a Baptist lay minister. Little was left with a hatred for white people, as four of his brothers had been killed by white men, with one of them being lynched. He later married Louise Little and settled in Omaha, Nebraska, where they became involved with the local UNIA chapter. Both Earl and Louise Little were staunch supporters of Marcus Garvey's black nationalist ideology, and Louise was said to have married Earl because, as a fair-complexioned woman, she sought out a dark-skinned husband with the goal of producing darker children. Earl preached in favor of the "Back-to-Africa" movement, arguing that African-Americans had no opportunities in the United States and that they should return "home". The Little family made enemies with the Ku Klux Klan due to their political activism, and they relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1926 and shortly thereafter to Lansing, Michigan. In 1929, the family home was burned down by the white supremacist "Black Legion", and, in 1931, Little was killed in what was said to have been a streetcar accident, but was later alleged to be murder at the hands of the white supremacist group. He was supposedly struck in the back of the head with a hammer and thrown onto the tracks of a streetcar at night, and the streetcar ran him over. His death was passed off as a suicide by the coroners.
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