WI:Malcolm Little,Lawyer?

I'm reading Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, and early in the book, it talks about how Malcolm was quite a doog student in his early days and got good grades, and even had dreams of becoming a lawyer, before a school teacher of his told him something along the lines of, "A Negro can't become a lawyer." This eventually marked his downward slide, which eventually lead to him becoming a criminal and going to jail, joining the NOI, and everything that fallows.

If Malcolm avoids this teacher, would he be able to become a lawyer? Assuming he did, would he still become involved in the Civil Rights Movement, albeit on a different path? Might he still become involved in Islam and Pan-Africanism? How would the NOI develop without Malcolm as one of their foremost Ministers?
 
Think of everything involved in the progression from grade school to law school. Malcolm Little would have no time to get into the sort of trouble that landed him in jail, basically he would end up being a totally different person from OTL. As further opportunities opened up in the sixties and seventies he would be increasingly upwardly mobile, though his tendency to be outspoken would still result in controversy.
 
I think he would still wind up as a part of the Civil Rights Movement. However, it's doubtful he would be nearly as important as in OTL.
 
I don't buy it. The Nation of Islam was and is full of crazies. With anyone else in Malcolm X's position their reputation is likely to be worse.

Yeah, at least Malcolm X's reputation in America, even among non-blacks, is a net positive.
 
I don't buy it. The Nation of Islam was and is full of crazies. With anyone else in Malcolm X's position their reputation is likely to be worse.

Actually, without Malcolm's charisma and passion, I'm not sure the NOI would be able to rise to the level of prominence they did in OTL. He could take alot of the credit for their expansion in the 50's and early 60's. They may remain even more of a fringe group then they were. Cassius Clay for one likely wouldn't have joined them if it wasn't for Malcolm.
 
Keep Malcom Little out of trouble and get him a law degree and he could have been the MLK of the north, fighting segregation there. MLK might have stuck to the south instead of going north and denouncing Chicago, starting the poor people's movement, and might not have spoken out so much against Vietnam.

We might not have so much fear of so-called "socialism" if Malcom fought in the north and MLK never broadened his agenda.

We might have a single payer mostly privately provided health care system today.
 
Malcolm also made its doctrine more radicalized than it'd been under Elijah Muhammad, not to mention creating a schism in the group that further contributed to that radicalization.
 
Top