Wave Staff Report
CRENSHAW — The city of Los Angeles, in partnership with the Foundation for Arts, Mentorship, Leadership and Innovation (FA-MLI, Inc.), will commemorate the 100th birthday of Malcolm X May 17 by unveiling street signs for the Malcolm X Route along Crenshaw Boulevard.
The unveiling ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. at the intersection of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards.
It will be followed by the 33rd annual Malcolm X Festival from noon to 7 p.m. in Leimert Park Village.
City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Councilwoman Heather Hutt and Torrence Brandon-Reese, founder and CEO of FA-MLI Inc., will speak at the street sign unveiling ceremony.
The festival that will follow will feature live musical performances, poetry, spoken word, fashion designs, African art and literature, film screenings, children’s activities, a variety of ethnic dishes, and discussions about the life and legacy of Malcolm X.
The festival’s theme is “Human Rights, By Any Means Necessary.”
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska.
As a young man he served a prison sentence for burglary and larceny. While incarcerated, he joined the Nation of Islam and changed his named to Malcolm X and became a Muslim minister and human rights activist who played a prominent role during the civil right movement. In the 1960s, he left the Nation of Islam and founded the Islamic Muslim Masque and the Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity.
He was assassinated in New York City in 1965 at the age of 39, by three members of the Nation of Islam.
Brandon-Reece launched the first Malcolm X Festival in 1993. A year later he began the campaign to rename Crenshaw Boulevard after Malcolm X. In 2023, the City Council agreed to rename a five-mile segment of the street after him.
He joins other Black figures who have had parts of streets or highways named after them in the Black community here such as Rosa Parks, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nipsey Hussle.
