Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Neb. He was the son of Earl and Louisa Little and younger brother of Ella Collins, his father’s daughter from an earlier marriage.
In 1998, Rodnell Collins, Ella Collins’ son and Malcolm X’s nephew, wrote a book about his famous uncle called Seventh Child. While giving details not revealed before about his Uncle Malcolm, Collins gives even more about his mother. It is her autobiography that we should have been reading all these years.
Who was it that got Malcolm X transferred to the Norfolk Penal Colony in Massachusetts, a progressive facility where he achieved his astounding success in self-education?
Ella Collins.
When Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam in March 1964 and needed money to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, who financed him?
Ella Collins.
When a young Malcolm Little left Michigan for Boston, whom did he live with?
Ella Collins. According to Rodnell Collins, she did all that and more. Ella Collins brought more than 20 of her Georgia relatives to Boston during the Depression years, often working several jobs to help them survive. She also helped poor kids who weren’t relatives. She showed her business acumen by buying property in Boston and pressured city educators to include black history in the curriculum, practicing what her younger brother preached long before he preached it.
Spike Lee, the black director of the movie about Malcolm X, managed to avoid the name Ella Collins for the 201-minute length of the film. Regrettable, but not surprising. We African-Americans are notorious for forgetting our women. We praise Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott and ignore the women who led and sustained it.
We know that Medgar Evers was the first Mississippi field secretary of the NAACP. But how many of us know that assisting him every step of the way in his Jackson office - and raising three children - was his wife, Myrlie Evers, now Myrlie Evers-Williams?
We’ve heard of Earl Little’s involvement in the Marcus Garvey movement, but hear little of how Louisa Little assisted him as bookkeeper, secretary and writer of several articles for the Negro World, the official publication of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Many of us have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The autobiography we should have been reading all these years is that of Ella Collins, the most extraordinary Little of them all.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2002-08-07/news/0208070160_1_autobiography-of-malcolm-malcolm-x-ella-collins
Rodnell Collins, nephew of Malcolm X (right), speaks with Edmund Barry Gaither, director-curator of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA), during a March 2008 event at the Museum of the NCAAA on Walnut Street in Roxbury. Collins spoke about his book, “Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X” and shared insights about the relationship between Malcolm X and his mother, Ella Little-Collins, whom he likened to the archetypal warrior woman Queen Hatshetsup. (Lolita Parker Jr. photo)
Join me with Imam Suhaib Webb, Dr. Altaf Husain, Imam Ibrahim Abd Al Rahim, Khalid Latif, Shaykh AbdulNasr Jangda, Shaykh Muhammed Sayanvala, Shaykh Suheil Laher, Shaykh Taha Abdulbasser, Sister Ibtihaj Muhammad, and most importantly, YOU!, on December 28-30 in Boston (pronounced ‘Baahstan’): http://ellacollinsinstitute.org/.
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