Professor X

As a member of the fiercely polemical hip-hop collective X-Clan, Professor X spearheaded rap music's embrace of Black Nationalist politics, later continuing his activism with a series of solo efforts. The son of Civil Rights' pioneer Sonny Carson, Professor X was born Lumumba Carson in Brooklyn in 1956. As a child, he met Malcolm X and regularly accompanied his father in traveling to political rallies both at home and abroad. But as a teen, Carson drifted into gang life, and was shot, stabbed, and imprisoned before re-dedicating his life to politics, vowing to introduce his fa...