In 1925 Omaha, Louise Little courageously faced down the KKK when they came after her husband. Although she was pregnant with Malcolm and had three small children in the house, she went outside and told them that he was preaching out of town. Although the klansmen broke every window in the house before riding off, neither she nor her children were harmed.
Little immediately corrected her children at home if they were taught something anti-Black in school, and sometimes she went up to the school herself to chew out their teachers. She never lost that fiery spirit that she had brought to her earlier activism.
In 1929, white supremacists burned down her home in Michigan. After the death of her husband, she fought the state to keep her eight children. Although the world seemed to be against her, she was determined to raise strong, proud children with a thorough understanding of Pan-Africanism.
Before marrying Earl Little and raising a family, Louise Langdon had helped establish Universal Negro Improvement Association chapters in Nebraska, Michigan, and Wisconsin. She was also a reporter for Marcus Garvey’s newspaper, The Negro World.
Louise Little passed on her spirit of resistance to her children and her son Malcolm X has passed it on to us. Black mothers like her who model resistance can raise leaders of the future.