American activist Malcolm X was BOTD in 1925. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. The fourth of seven children, his parents were prominent members of Black civil rights causes, moving frequently to avoid harassment by the Ku Klan Klan. When Malcolm was six, his father died in what may have been an assassination. His mother subsequently had a nervous breakdown, and Malcolm and his siblings were raised in foster homes. He became a petty criminal, before being jailed in 1946 for burglary. While in prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopting the name Malcolm X to symbolise his unknown African ancestry and discard the “white slavemaster” of “Little”. On his release in 1952, he rapidly became a public spokesman for the Nation of Islam. A charismatic orator, he advocated Black self-determination and separatism from white society by any means necessary, putting him at odds with the pacifist and integrationist policies of Martin Luther King Jr. Disillusioned with the Nation of Islam, he converted to Sunni Islam, took the name El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz and co-founded the Pan-African Organisation of Afro-American Unity. A long-term target of FBI surveillance, he received repeated death threats. He was assassinated in 1965, aged 39. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, co-authored with Alex Haley, was published after his death, becoming a national bestseller. A controversial and polarising figure, he became a hero of the radical left and the Black Panther movements. Malcolm married Betty Dean Sanders in 1958, with whom he had six children. In 2011, biographer Manning Marable claimed that Malcolm had a number of same-sex encounters throughout his life, including a relationship for several years with a white businessman – allegations vigorously denied by Malcolm’s family. He has been portrayed frequently onscreen, most notably by Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic Malcolm X.