May 19: Malcolm X is born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of Earl and Louise Little's seven children. Earl, a Baptist minister, is a follower of Marcus Garvey's black nationalism and serves as Omaha chapter president of Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. Louise Little serves as the division secretary.

December: The Littles leave Omaha and move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Littles move again, this time to Lansing, Michigan. Settling in a white neighborhood, they are sued for eviction on the basis that a restrictive covenant prevents their home from being sold to any non-Caucasians.

November 7: The Little house is burned to the ground. No fire wagon is dispatched to the scene. Looking back Malcolm believes that a local white supremacist group was behind it.

December: Earl Little moves his family to East Lansing and builds a new home there.

September 28: Louise has a premonition about her husband and asks him not to leave the house. Later that night, Earl Little is killed in what police term a streetcar accident, but Malcolm later says that the Ku Klux Klan was behind it. After Earl's death, his wife and children struggle to make ends meet and must apply for public assistance.

December 23: Louise Little is diagnosed as mentally ill and sent to the Kalamazoo State Mental Hospital, where she will stay for 26 years.

The state places the Little children with various foster families, and Malcolm, who has been kicked out of school in the seventh grade, is sent to a juvenile home in the nearly all-white community of Mason, Michigan. He does well at school there, earning straight A's and being elected president of his 8th-grade class, but his teacher discourages him about pursuing his goal of becoming a lawyer.

Summer: Fifteen-year-old Malcolm visits his half-sister Ella Collins in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston and is entranced. "I couldn't have feigned indifference if I had tried to," he later says. "I didn't know the world contained as many Negroes as I saw thronging downtown Roxbury at night."

February: Ella Collins gains custody of Malcolm and he moves to Boston. Over the next few years, he works a number of odd jobs on railroads, in restaurants and bars, at shoeshine stands, and in a jewelry store. Malcolm learns to dress like a hipster, dyes his hair, and starts hustling in Boston (where he's known as "New York Red"), New York (where the nickname is "Detroit Red"), and Detroit.

October 25: Malcolm, who has responded to his draft notice by loudly proclaiming that he wants to "fight for the Japanese" and kill whites, is found mentally unfit for military service and classified 4F.

Malcolm has his first run in with the courts. He is sentenced to four months in jail and one year of probation for larceny.

December: Malcolm, who has moved back to Boston, goes on a stealing spree with his black friend Malcolm Jarvis and three white women, one of whom he has been dating.

January: Malcolm tries to retrieve a stolen $1000 watch from a pawnshop and is arrested and charged with grand larceny, breaking and entering, and firearms possession. He is convicted and, along with Jarvis, receives an eight-to-10-year sentence. The white women have their sentences suspended, but Malcolm's girlfriend serves seven months in prison. The women refused the police suggestion to charge Malcolm and Malcolm Jarvis with rape.

February: At the age of 20, Malcolm is sent to jail in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and assigned prisoner number 22843. He will remain behind bars until 1952.

Malcolm is transferred to Concord Reformatory for fifteen months.

Malcolm meets a fellow convict he calls "Bimbi," who convinces Malcolm to study and learn to develop his mind. In Jarvis' words, in prison "the only way we knew how to rebel was to cram some knowledge into our brains."

Malcolm is transferred to Norfolk Prison Colony in Massachusetts

Malcolm's siblings, four of whom have converted to Islam, introduce him to the words of the Nation of Islam's leader, Elijah Muhammad, who is himself in prison for sedition and violation of the draft laws. The two men correspond, and Malcolm continues his course of study, eventually writing to the Massachusetts governor and demanding the right to practice Islam in prison. He also joins the prison debate team and begins attracting attention for his oratory.

Malcolm is denied parole.

August 7: Malcolm is released on parole, spends one night with Ella Collins, then goes to Detroit to live with his brother Wilfred. He quickly joins the Nation of Islam and attends meetings at Detroit's Temple No. 1, one of the four temples that the Nation operates at the time. Malcolm rejects the surname "Little" as a slave name given to his family by white oppressors, and he becomes known as "Malcolm X."

August: Having tripled the membership of the Detroit temple in under a year, Malcolm is appointed assistant minister there.

September: Elijah Muhammad sends Malcolm back to Boston to serve as first minister of its Temple No. 11. He goes on to organize temples along the East Coast, including in Hartford and Philadelphia, attracting new members wherever he speaks.

June: Elijah Muhammad gives Malcolm his highest appointment to date, chief minister of Harlem's Temple No. 7.

Malcolm X attends the first Conference of the Non-aligned Nations in Bandung, Indonesia.

Malcolm's future wife Betty Sanders becomes a member of the Harlem Temple and adopts the name "Betty X." They will marry two years later, after Malcolm proposes by phone from a Detroit gas station, and take up residence in East Elmhurst, Queens.

April 14: New York Temple member Johnson Hinton is savagely beaten by police. Alerted by other followers, Malcolm joins a contingent of Muslims at the 28th Precinct headquarters in Harlem, where he demands that Hinton receive medical attention.

Malcolm and Betty X's first child, Attalah, is born.

Spring-Summer: Malcolm makes his first trips abroad, visiting Ghana, Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Syria, Egypt, and the United Arab Republic; illness prevents him from traveling to Mecca. Meets with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.

Malcolm establishes a newspaper Muhammad Speaks to promote the Nation of Islam's message.

Elijah Muhammad, who has moved from Chicago to Phoenix for health reasons, makes Malcolm national representative of the Nation of Islam.

April 27: An altercation leads to police entering the Los Angeles Temple and killing its unarmed secretary, Ronald Stokes. "They're going to pay for it," Malcolm declares, and goes to Los Angeles to eulogize Stokes at a funeral attended by 2,000 people. He says the police shot "innocent unarmed Black men in cold blood" and urges action.

April: Malcolm flies to Phoenix with Elijah Muhammad's son Wallace to confront the Nation of Islam's leader.

January 6: Malcolm goes to Phoenix to meet with Elijah Muhammad, who orders him to "put out the fire you've started" about the leader's adultery. Malcolm is also removed as the Nation's national representative and as minister of the Harlem Temple No. 7.

April: Malcolm delivers his famous election year "Ballot or the Bullet" speech, then leaves for a five-week tour of Egypt, Lebanon, Liberia, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia, where he makes a pilgrimage to Mecca and receives a new Islamic name: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, as well as expresses a somewhat different attitude about race.

February 21: Malcolm X is assassinated while speaking at an OAAU rally in Harlem; three members of the Nation of Islam are later convicted despite the fact that the assailant apprehended at the scene Talmadge Hayer insisted that his two co-defendants are innocent.

Later that year, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is published, and Betty Shabazz, who was pregnant at the time of Malcolm's murder, gives birth to his last two daughters.