Most Americans picture Malcolm X in Harlem, at a podium in New York or on the road in Africa and the Middle East. But the man later known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz came of age in Massachusetts. He arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, as a teenager, went to prison here at 20, taught himself to read and write in three Massachusetts prisons, and came back to lead a congregation in Boston. For Muslims in Massachusetts, his story runs through places we still drive past every week.
A teenager on Dale Street
Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925. His childhood in Michigan was marked by loss. His father, Earl Little, died in 1931, and his mother, Louise, was committed to a state mental hospital in 1938, according to the PBS American Experience timeline of his life. The children were split among foster homes.
In the summer of 1940, 15-year-old Malcolm visited his half-sister, Ella Little-Collins, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. "I didn't know the world contained as many Negroes as I saw thronging downtown Roxbury at night," he later said. In February 1941, Ella gained custody of him and he moved east.
The city of Boston's archaeology program says Ella bought the house at 72 Dale Street in 1941, and Malcolm moved in that same year. He lived on the top floor, his nephew Rodnell Collins told WBZ-TV in 2024. Over the next few years Malcolm worked odd jobs on railroads, in restaurants and at shoeshine stands, and drifted into hustling in Boston, New York and Detroit.
Prisoner number 22843
In January 1946 he was arrested in Boston after trying to pick up a stolen watch from a pawnshop. He was sentenced to eight to ten years. In February 1946, at 20, he entered Charlestown State Prison in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and was assigned prisoner number 22843. He was transferred to the Concord Reformatory in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1947 and to the Norfolk Prison Colony in Norfolk, Massachusetts, in 1948, the PBS timeline says.
It was in prison that his life turned. A fellow inmate he called "Bimbi" pushed him to study. His siblings, several of whom had joined the Nation of Islam, introduced him to the teachings of its leader, Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm wrote to him, kept studying, and, according to PBS, wrote to the governor of Massachusetts demanding the right to practice Islam in prison. He also joined the prison debate team.
A homemade education in Norfolk
The Town of Norfolk, Massachusetts, still claims this chapter with pride. Its historical commission page credits "a tremendous variety and selection of materials to read in the Norfolk Prison Colony library" for his transformation. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written with Alex Haley, he describes how frustrated he was that he could not write the way he spoke. So he asked the prison school for a dictionary, tablets and pencils, and began copying the dictionary, page by page.
"Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I've said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade," he said. "This impression is due entirely to my prison studies."
Those six and a half years are the subject of Malcolm Before X by Patrick Parr, published by the University of Massachusetts Press in Amherst in December 2024. Parr drew on nearly 2,000 pages of prison records that had never been used before. The book was named a Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2024.
Back to Boston as a minister
Malcolm was paroled on August 7, 1952. He spent one night with Ella, then went to Detroit, joined the Nation of Islam and took the name Malcolm X. In September 1953, Elijah Muhammad sent him back to Boston as the first minister of its Temple No. 11. By June 1954 he had moved on to lead Temple No. 7 in Harlem, but for the rest of his life he kept returning to his sister's house on Dale Street, the city's archaeology page notes.
The road to Mecca
The teachings Malcolm followed in those years differed sharply from mainstream Islam. In March 1964 he broke with the Nation of Islam. That April he made the Hajj to Mecca, took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and embraced Sunni Islam. In Mecca he wrote that he saw "pilgrims of all colors from all parts of this earth displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before." He was assassinated in Harlem on February 21, 1965, at age 39.
The house today
The Dale Street house is still standing and still owned by the family. The Boston Landmarks Commission made it a city landmark in 1998, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When city archaeologists surveyed the yard, they found 18,207 artifacts. Those include objects from Malcolm and Ella's family in the 1940s to 1960s, from the Irish immigrants who rented the house in the late 1800s, from the 18th-century Seaver estate, and a handful of stone tool pieces left by Native people before Europeans reached Boston.
Rodnell Collins, Ella's son, is leading a restoration. He told WBZ-TV in 2024 that the family needed to raise $4.5 million, and he plans to turn the house into a home for graduate students and interns doing community service. In 2025 he told GBH News the house would not become a fully public museum, but that the second and third floors, where Malcolm lived, would open to the public on special occasions. Until then, the house is closed to visitors, so please view it from the sidewalk.
Nearby, Boston has named a park and a boulevard after him: Malcolm X Park, just down the block from Dale Street, and Malcolm X Boulevard. As GBH noted on the 60th anniversary of his death, the city still has no monument to him.
Why it matters here
For Muslims in Massachusetts, especially young people, Malcolm's story is close to home. A boy who lost his parents, a young man in a Charlestown cell, a student copying a dictionary in Norfolk, and a pilgrim in Mecca are all the same person. Much of that change happened a short drive from where many of us live, work and pray.
If you want to go deeper, start with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, then read Parr's Malcolm Before X. Your local library likely has both.