Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little in 1925; died, as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabaz, in 1965) was an African American civil rights leader. After a dissolute life lived on the edge (described in his 1965 Autobiography of Malcolm X), Malcolm came to prominence once he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and, as its most articulate public spokesman, began spreading its teaching of black supremacy and black separatism. Disillusioned with NOI’s founder, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm left the organization in March 1964, and within the year, after a trip to Mecca and a conversion to the “true Islam,” he publicly renounced racialist thinking and embraced a multi-racial search for human betterment. Before he had a chance to develop his new ideas in America, he was assassinated in February 1965 by members of the NOI.