The Malcolm X. Connection

Did You Know

Louise Langdon, Malcolm’s mother was born (1897 – 1989 ) in La Digue, St. Andrews, Grenada to Edith Langdon. Edith was the daughter of Jupiter and Mary Jane Langdon, “liberated Africans” who were captured from what is now Nigeria, subsequently freed from the slave ship by the Royal Navy and then settled in the Grenadian village of La Digue. When she was 11 years old, Edith, one of six children of the Langdons, was raped by a “significantly older” Scottish man named Edward Norton, resulting in Louise, her only child.

Louise was raised by her grandparents, Jupiter and Mary Jane Langdon. Jupiter became a successful carpenter and landholder. Mary Jane was a devoted wife and mother who raised her children and worked as a domestic. Jupiter died in 1901 and Mary in 1916.

Descendants of Mary Jane and Jupiter Langdon still own the land where Jupiter Langdon is buried. Their graves are on the side of a hill outside the village of La Digue on the eastern side of the island. Their graves face the Atlantic Ocean which is so revealing because both Jupiter and Mary Jane came from Africa and represents the roots and routes of this family.

Louise stood as a major figure in twentieth-century black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and the African Diaspora. Passionately committed to black self determination and fiercely proud of African-descended people. She emerged as an important grassroots leader in the UNIA, which claimed six million members in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, Africa, and Europe during the 1920s.

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Louise was educated in a local Anglican school, and was fluent in English, French and Grenadian French Creole. After her grandmother’s death, she emigrated from Grenada in 1917 to Montreal Canada, where her uncle Edgerton Langdon introduced her to Garveyism and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Through the UNIA in Montreal, she met Earl Little, a craftsman and lay minister from Reynolds, Georgia. The couple married on May 10, 1919. The following year they moved to Philadelphia, and then to Omaha, Nebraska in 1921. While in Omaha, she became the secretary and “branch reporter” of the UNIA’s local chapter, sending news of local UNIA activities, led by Earl, to Negro World; they inculcated self-reliance and black pride in their children.

Their son Malcolm Little, who later became the famous Malcolm X, said that white violence killed four of his father’s brothers. Malcolm’s brother Wilfred remembered that Louise received letters from the leaders of the movement thanking her for the work she had done and praising her for her devotion to the cause. Earl and Louise had seven children together: Wilfred 1920 –1998, Hilda 1921 – 2015, Philbert 1923 – 1993, Malcolm 1925 – 1965, Reginald 1927–2001, Wesley 1928 – 2009 and Yvonne 1929 – 2003.

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The Klu Klux Klan was metastasizing and because of their threats, Earl’s UNIA activities were said to be “spreading trouble”. The family relocated in 1926 to Milwaukee Wisconsin and shortly thereafter to Lansing Michigan. There the family was frequently harassed by the Black Legion, a white racist group. When the family home was burned in 1929, Earl accused the Black Legion.

In 1931, Earl died in what was officially ruled as a streetcar accident, though Louise believed Earl had been murdered by the Black Legion. Rumors that White racists were responsible for Earl’s death were widely circulated and were very disturbing to Louise and the children. After a dispute with creditors, Louise received a life insurance benefit of $1,000 about $17,000 in today’s currency with payments of $18 per month. The issuer of another larger policy refused to pay claiming her husband Earl had committed suicide. To make ends meet Louise rented out part of her garden, and her sons hunted game.

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During the 1930s White Seventh Day Adventists witnessed to the Little family. Louise and her son Wilfred were baptized into the Seventh Day Adventist Church. In 1937, a man Louise had been dating and marriage had seemed a possibility vanished from her life when she became pregnant with his child, (Robert 1938 – 1999). In late 1938 she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to Kalamazoo State Hospital. The children were then separated and sent to foster homes.

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ANALYTICS

If you’ve read Malcolm X’s character analysis, you’ll remember that he was called Detroit Red because of his light skin. How did he get his light skin? From his mom. Here Malcolm describes her:

“Louise Little, my mother, who was born in Grenada, in the British West Indies, looked like a white woman. Her father was white. She had straight black hair, and her accent did not sound like a N****’s.”

But it’s not just her light skin that Louise passed on to Malcolm. She seems aware that light skin is considered a good thing in many parts of the black community (this is called shadeism) but wants to make sure that Malcolm never felt that way. Their skin color is the result of rape, after all. Malcolm says:

“I remember that she would tell me to get out of the house and “Let the sun shine on you so you can get some color.” She went out of her way never to let me become afflicted with a sense of color-superiority. I am sure that she treated me this way partly because of how she came to be light herself. “

So even though Malcolm X doesn’t mention his mother’s political views, it’s obvious that she is not completely ignorant to the struggles of Black people in America or the self defeating problem of Shadeism.

Even though Malcolm doesn’t say he remembered it. We are pretty sure her treatment of him probably made an impact on his future sensibilities, just like his father’s evangelism for Marcus Garvey. Malcolm’s mom is not just a teacher; she’s a warning.

In an interview shortly before his death, the Jamaica Gleaner asked Malcolm X about his mother’s influence on his thinking.

He responded: “Most people in the Caribbean area are still proud that they are black, proud of the African blood and their heritage, and I think this type of pride was instilled in my mother, and she instilled it in us too, to the degree that she could… In fact she was an active member of the Marcus Garvey movement…..It was Marcus Garvey’s philosophy of Pan-Africanism that initiated the entire freedom movement, which brought about the independence of African nations and had it not been for Marcus Garvey and the foundation laid by him, you would find no independent nations in the Caribbean today…”

THE BLACK WOMAN FACTOR

First and foremost, the importance and centrality of Black women to leading, building, and sustaining black movements is astonishing when researched. Black women have been the backbone of black protests and to the diasporic communities.

Second, the importance of Caribbean women to the making of Movers and Shakers like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, their politics and their legacies. Again, with no Louise Langdon Little, no Malcolm X. Not simply her role as his mother, but because she was critical to cultivating his black radical, Pan-Africanist worldview. She was foundational. Not only was Malcolm brilliant, but all his siblings were, Hilda, Wilfred, Philbert, Reginald, Wesley, Yvonne and Robert would all go on to do amazing things professionally and personally.

SUMMARY

Louise Little was a brilliant and dynamic woman, not some “crazy” or apolitical figure as she is often portrayed in the scholarship about Malcolm X. She was a committed Garveyite grassroots activist. She spoke multiple languages, English, French and Patois. She taught her children the French alphabet. She insisted that her children read newspapers such as the Negro World, the official periodical of the UNIA, and newspapers from Grenada. She was institutionalized at the Kalamazoo Mental Hospital from 1939 through 1963 but, she lived almost 30 more years after her family got her out of that hospital.

Her time in that hospital can be viewed as a form of incarceration because the state targeted her because she was proud, she was independent, she owned her own land, and she refused to bow down to white supremacy and patriarchy. For these reasons, she was placed in that hospital, her land was taken away from her, and her children were put in foster homes. Despite being hospitalized for 25 years, she survived. This Daughter of the Soil, was resilient and in her final years, she reconnected with family. She never forgot who she was and she remained strong. She died in 1989 at the age of 92.

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THE BLACK PERSPECTIVE