The influence of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X on hip hop: "… success and prosperity for the majority of black Americans in the 21st century only will be achieved by a strong coalition of Christians and Muslims who are dedicated to the values of democracy and social justice."

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2004 by Richard Brent Turner

By 1956, a great deal of black blood had been spilled challenging the Jim Crow system, but the civil rights movement had achieved some major victories on the path to full black citizenship. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Pres. Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty established the promise for full integration of African-Americans into society.

However, one year later, when King, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, brought his nonviolent protest campaign to impoverished urban ghettos in northern cities such as Chicago and Cleveland, he was compelled to expand his critical thinking about the persistence of racism and the need for a global human rights struggle. King's moral opposition to the Vietnam War and military spending are important aspects of his work that many Americans choose to ignore. Moreover, he provided profound analysis of poverty as it related to the corporate capitalist exploitation of black America and people of color throughout the world. The latter concept coincides with Malcolm X's international ideals. However, neither leader saw his goals to total fruition, as Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, and King three years later.

Malcolm X was the national spokesperson for the Nation of Islam in the early 1960s, and founder of the Sunni Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964. He was bum Malcolm Little, in Omaha, Neb., on May 19, 1925, to parents who were black nationalist organizers for activist Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. His father was murdered by white supremacists in 1931. He and his siblings were dispersed to separate foster homes by the public relief authorities in Lansing, Mich., in 1939. Malcolm became a troubled teenager, involved in criminal activities in Boston and New York during the 1940s.

His spiritual transformation from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X occurred in a Massachusetts prison from 1947 to 1952, as he became a self-educated, disciplined convert to the Nation of Islam. The young male membership of the religion had been decimated by FBI persecution in the 1940s, so leader Elijah Muhammad used Malcolm's youthful charisma and spirited oratory to reinvigorate the community. As a result of Muhammad's successful black nationalist economic programs and Malcolm's militant speeches and television appearances, the Nation of Islam achieved national prominence as the richest black organization in American history.

However, in the wake of Pres. John Kennedy's assassination in 1963, a public controversy over the politics of religious identity in African-American Muslim communities between Muhammad and Malcolm evolved into a permanent separation. Establishing a new spiritual and political identity, Malcolm abandoned the heterodox, racial-separatist philosophy and converted to the multiracial Sunni Islam during the last year of his life.

In March, 1964, he founded the Sunni Muslim Mosque, Inc., in Harlem, N.Y., as the base for a spiritual program to eliminate economic and social oppression against black Americans. Then, Malcolm made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in April, 1964. There, he changed his name from Malcolm X to El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, which signified a new link to mainstream Islam. Malcolm's Sunni Muslim persona became a significant model for many African-Americans who had converted to mainstream Islam.