Yale historian Jonathan Holloway reexamines Malcolm X's life and legacy in this lecture from the course American History: From Emancipation to the Present. He situates Malcolm X within a longer lineage of black political thought running through Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and Robert Williams, and traces his rise as national spokesman for the Nation of Islam before his 1964 break with Elijah Muhammad. Holloway details Malcolm X's pilgrimage to Mecca, his renunciation of earlier racial views, his founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, his adoption of the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and his assassination in 1965. The lecture then turns back to Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, placing Malcolm X's arc alongside the broader civil rights movement's turning points. Recorded in Spring 2010 as part of Yale's AFAM 162 series.