BOSTON — The former Roxbury residence of Malcolm X was recently added to National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of endangered places. 

Years before Malcolm X became Malcolm X, he was Malcolm Little, a troubled teenager living in Roxbury. His one-time home sits on a busy side street in Roxbury. He came to 72 Dale Street as a teen in 1941 to live with his half-sister Ella Little-Collins, her husband and their son Rodnell.

“The top floor, where those two windows are, the two windows are Malcolm’s quarters,” said Rodnell Collins, pointing to the two top windows of a shabby, brown house.

Collins grew up in this house, at times sharing it with his uncle Malcolm, although at the time, he didn’t know Malcolm was his uncle.

“I thought he was my brother. I did not get that until the '50s. I knew him as my brother because I remember as a small child, barely 24 months old, my uncle had me in his arm, holding me in the kitchen while my mother was cooking,” said Collins.

He moved back into his childhood home a few years ago, putting nearly $80,000 into renovations hoping to preserve both the building and its memories.

Fond memories

While Malcolm’s time in Boston was tainted with trouble — he spent 6 years in prison for a string of robberies and was a known drug dealer — Collins says he remembers his uncle’s more playful side.

“When Uncle Malcolm was here he was the one that I would be playing with,” said Collins. “He’s just tickling, playing little games. He’d tickle you and you’d wrestle with him or some little thing.”

It was during his time in a Massachusetts prison that Malcolm was first exposed to the Nation of Islam. Collins remembers his uncle spending hours in wooden Shaker rocking chair, the red velvet cloth worked to the bone.

“That was his favorite chair and he worked it in enough to squeak,” said Collins. “That’s the same cushion, the same cloth. I won’t ever change the cloth on that chair. He liked rocking, and you’d see him rock in that chair and thinking while he was rocking and reading, and he did that a lot.

But Collins said his fondest memories of his uncle were made on the third floor, in Malcolm’s modest living quarters. It’s an attic apartment, made smaller by a slanted roof. There’s a small bedroom with a twin bed off to the right, a kitchenette to the left and a living room and bathroom.

“I’d see him standing here shaving,” said Collins, standing at the kitty-corner sink. “I remember as a child, me looking up at him as he was doing the shaving. At the time, I couldn’t understand why anyone had to shave.”

After Uncle Malcolm moves on

Malcolm left the house, and Boston, in the early 1950s, and became one of the most controversial and influential black figures in American history. Peniel Joseph, a professor of history at Tufts University, said Malcolm was greatly influenced by his time in Boston.

“He falls in love with jazz. The Savoy Café is where he becomes a shoeshine boy. He listens to jazz, and he meets jazz musicians like Duke Ellington. So this is the place that he first becomes Malcolm Little, the juvenile delinquent, the person who is wayward but on his way to becoming Malcolm X,” said Joseph.

A house revived

When Malcolm was assassinated in 1965, Collins said the family was too distraught to stay in the Dale Street home. It sat vacant for decades, falling into disrepair: the roof needs replacing and water damage has made the first floor uninhabitable.

But in June 2012, the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the Malcolm X house to its list of endangered historic places. It hopes to raise $750,000 to revamp the building into graduate school housing. 

“I had my issues with not wanting to go to school, not wanting to learn,” said Collins. “I wasn’t interested in that kind of thing until listening to my uncle. And his speeches and him talking to me personally, telling me [I] should continue education.”

That door may soon be opened to a lot more people when the house is fully restored.

> > WATCH: We go inside the Malcolm X Ella Little Collins House