The Malcolm X—Ella Little-Collins House is a historic house at 72 Dale Street in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts. Built in 1874, it was for many years home to

Ella Little-Collins Ella Little-Collins (1914 – 1996) was an American civil rights activist and the half-sister of Malcolm X. She was born in Butler, Georgia, to Earl Little and Daisy Little (née Mason); her paternal grandparents were John (Big Pa) Lee Little and E ...

, a prominent local civil rights activist, and was home to her younger brother Malcolm X during his later teenage years. During this period Malcolm X was exposed to Islam, beginning his path to involvement in the

Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...

. The house was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2021, at which time it was still owned by the Collins family.

Description and history

The Malcolm X—Ella Little-Collins House is located southwest of Roxbury's Nubian Square, on the south side of Dale Street just east of

Malcolm X Park Meridian Hill Park, also known as Malcolm X Park, is a structured urban park located in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Columbia Heights; it also abuts the nearby neighborhood of Adams Morgan. The park was designed and built between 1912 a ...

. The house is a -story wood-frame structure, set on a foundation of

Roxbury puddingstone The Roxbury Conglomerate, also informally known as Roxbury puddingstone, is a name for a rock formation that forms the bedrock underlying most of Roxbury, Massachusetts, now part of the city of Boston. The bedrock formation extends well beyond t ...

and covered by a gabled roof. Its exterior includes remnants of its original Queen Anne styling, while the interior retains a number of original period features. An

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

brick garage stands at the rear of the property. The house was built in 1874 by William Rumnil, a local builder, on land that had previously been a country estate and farm. It was purchased in 1941 by Ella Little-Johnson, an African-American native of Georgia who moved to Boston as part of a major migration of African-Americans out of the southern United States. In that year, she also took in her brother Malcolm, who had been effectively orphaned by the institutionalization of his mother in 1939. It was Malcolm's primary residence until 1944. Malcolm's conversion to Islam (and adoption of the name "Malcolm X") began with exposure to the religion in Roxbury, and he returned to the neighborhood to establish a temple of the Nation of Islam in the 1950s. His sister Ella (who married Kenneth Collins in 1942) was also active in the Nation and other community organizations, and died here in 1996.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Malcolm X-Ella Little-Collins House Houses in Boston Roxbury, Boston Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Suffolk County, Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Boston Malcolm X African-American history in Boston

Description and history

See also

References