There would surely never have been a Malcolm X had the great black-rights leader's parents just stayed in Montreal.Malcolm Little, aka Malcolm X's parents met in Montreal in a sequence of events that began when Edgerton Langdon, described as a "labourer," invited his niece Louise Norton to come from Grenada to stay with him at his home at 150 St. Martin (see map and illustration below) in 1918.
Louise was the light-skinned product of a union between a black mother and a white father. She looked and spoke like a white person, according to Malcolm X, who later clearly disapproved of the grandfather he never knew.
Louise didn't know her white father and Malcolm, one of her seven children, described his maternal white grandpa as a "rapist" and said he was glad not to know him.
It probably wasn't a ton of fun for Louise in Montreal, as her uncle Edgerton was considered a "mean, mean man," according to Edgerton's granddaughter Sylvia Langdon of Coursol St, who I interviewed in 2003.
Louise found herself attending meetings of the newly-formed Montreal branch of the Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association, where she met Earl in 1918.
Earl Little had recently moved to Montreal from Reynolds, Georgia.
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| Malcolm X |
Earl, 29, and Louise, 22, married here in Montreal on May 10, 1919, thus beginning a stormy, brutal and historical union.
“An educated woman, I suppose, can’t resist the temptation to correct an uneducated man. Every now and then, when she put those smooth words on him, he would grab her,” wrote Malcolm X, describing their domestic violence.
The two eventually left Montreal for Philadelphia then Omaha and finally Lansing Michigan and had seven children along the way.
One of those children, Malcolm - born May 19, 1925 in Omaha - came out light-skinned and red haired. “Thinking about it now, I feel definitely that just as my father favored me for being lighter than the other children, my mother gave me more hell for the same reason,” he later wrote.
The union born in Montreal soon descended into tragedy. Earl went to court to defend the family’s right to live in a white neighbourhood in Lansing and soon after, the house was burnt down and Earl was mysteriously found dead, run over by a streetcar. Louise was committed to a mental institution in 1939.
The children were sent to foster homes, and Malcolm Little eventually became an academic and athletic star before running into troubles of his own. Rather than wallow in failure Malcolm Little became the great black civil rights leader Malcolm X.
Meanwhile in Montreal, Edgerton’s son Henry also became a black rights leader but right here in Montreal.
Henry, who despised his old man, went on to serve in the Air Force and led the local UNIA for decades until his death in 1997. Henry didn't think much of his cousin Malcolm Little, aka Malcolm X but eventually he came around and later spoke admiringly of him.
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| The home on St. Martin has long since been demolished |