Little-Collins, Ella Lee

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 340

Ella Lee Little-Collins (Muslim name Alziz A. Hamid) was the half sister of MALCOLM X, who credited her with playing a major role in his life. She supported the black revolutionary leader both emotionally and financially throughout his short but highly influential life. Malcolm lived with Little-Collins, who served essentially as a surrogate mother for him, off and on from 1940 until 1946, a period that left an indelible imprint on him. Little-Collins also sponsored Malcolm in his pilgrimage to Mecca in the early 1960s?another important, formative period of his life.

Though Malcolm credited Little-Collins for being only a positive influence in his life, at least one of his biographers suggests that she was a negative influence as well, asserting that she taught Malcolm his lifestyle of petty thievery. And Malcolm's widow, Betty Shabazz, has stated that she had no respect for Little-Collins because of her poor influence on Malcolm. Little-Collins did not

Page 341

dispute that she had many run-ins with the law, resulting in ten convictions for offenses including petty LARCENY and ASSAULT AND BATTERY. But Little-Collins's family asserts the run-ins occurred when she was defending others who were being harassed or taken advantage of by people in positions of authority. Little-Collins emerges as a major figure in Malcolm's life, one of few people who knew him and remained by his side throughout all of his many philosophical incarnations.

Little-Collins was born December 4, 1912, in Butler, Georgia, the eldest of three children of the Reverend Earl Lee Little and his first wife, Daisy Mason. Her parents had two more children, Mary and Earl, Jr., and divorced in 1917 or 1918. Little-Collins's mother moved to Boston around 1920, taking Earl Jr. with her. Ella and Mary were left in Butler, Georgia, with Earl Sr.'s parents, John and Ella Little, who raised them to adulthood.

Little-Collins left Georgia in 1929 with very little to her name, and went to New York to earn a living. She worked at first as a church secretary at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, the parish at which the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. was minister. This position led to a long-standing professional relationship with the minister's son, ADAM CLAYTON POWELL JR., a CIVIL RIGHTS activist and Harlem's first African American congressional representative. After a short period in New York, Little-Collins moved to Boston to work at a grocery...