Overview:
Radical in its time — and anxiety-provoking to white America , Malcolm X's fight or Black liberation worldwide was cut short when he wss gunned down on this date 60 years ago. Though three men were convicted, two were exonerated and the third was released on parole. Experts long suspect the federal government was involved.
His image, peering through curtains while holding a rifle, is iconic, seared into the collective memory of Black America. His message of racial progress — defiant, hopeful, or threatening, depending on whom you ask — still resonates, decades after his voice was stilled.
But the brutal, broad-daylight assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, on this date 60 years ago remains cloaked in shadow and doubt. Though three men served prison time for his murder, there is reason to believe the FBI — which considered Shabazz an imminent national security threat — helped orchestrate it.
That’s why Benjamin Crump, renowned civil rights attorney, has traveled to the spot where Shabazz was killed in 1965 to demand the declassification of files the government kept on him. Crump wants the public to know whether their government was involved in the slaying of Shabazz, a seminal figure in American history.
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Civil Rights Gains Reversed
Crump’s call for disclosure comes at a fraught time for Black America. Nearly two decades after the nation elected its first Black president — a milestone Shabazz could have scarcely imagined in his brief lifetime — the progress he and others in the civil rights movement fought and died for in the 1950s and 60s is under assault.
Just a month into his second term, President Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the nation’s civil rights infrastructure.
Largely through executive order, the president has hollowed out the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shut down affirmative action in government hiring, sidetracked all active federal investigations of civil rights violations, and terminated teacher training grants that touched on the value of diversity or honestly teaching about race in America.
Lerone Martin, a Stanford University professor, believes that if Shabazz were alive today, he would not be surprised that Trump, who succeeded President Barack Obama in 2016, wants to turn back the clock.
“There are too many ways in which this moment rhymes with the past,” says Martin, Stanford’s Centennial professor of religious studies and African and African American studies. “It feels like we’re still grappling with the lessons that Malcolm tried to teach us” more than half a century ago.
“He would have told us that in a certain sense, we ought to be appreciative of the fact that the enemies of justice and equality have made themselves known,” says Martin, who also is director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Center at Stanford. “It’s very clear who’s who. No more wolves hiding in sheep’s clothing.”
Shabazz Embodied Black Pride
A Black civil rights icon, Shabazz rocketed to fame in the 1950s as a charismatic member of the Nation of Islam and a top lieutenant to its leader, Elijah Muhammed. A gifted orator, his speeches plainly calling out white supremacy captivated Black America and placed him in sharp contrast with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who favored ending Jim Crow through nonviolent resistance.
But Shabazz’s core message — Black people must embrace their African heritage, join the global fight against colonialism and defend themselves against white aggression, by any means necessary — concerned the white American power structure. Considered a “messiah” who could galvanize Black political power, Shabazz was placed under government surveillance as informants and undercover agents infiltrated his inner circle.
On Feb. 21, just before a high-profile speech at the Audubon Ballroom in the heart of north Harlem, a group of assassins, purportedly sent by Muhammed after Shabazz split from the NOI, stormed the stage and shot him some 20 times.
Gunned down before his wife and daughters, Shabazz died three months shy of his 40th birthday. Three men were convicted, including one who confessed; two of them were eventually exonerated, and the third gunman was released on parole in 2010.
Martin, the Stanford professor, says that Shabazz would have been outraged by Trump’s dismantling of institutions that helped protect Black people and advance equality, like the Justice Department, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Department of Education. But, Martin says, Shabazz would not have been surprised.
“Time to Wake Up”
“He would be surprised that we’re surprised at everything that’s happening right now,” Martin says. “There’s nothing new about the (ongoing) white backlash. America has always had a schizophrenic relationship” with racial progress, which takes “two to three steps forward, three to four steps backwards. This is the pattern in American life.”
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Shabazz, however, would have been disturbed that Black people “have been lulled to sleep” by integration and incremental progress, including Obama’s election 17 years ago, Martin says. While he would have been appalled by Trump “equating a plane crash with DEI,” Martin says, Shabazz would also have argued that it is “well past time to organize” and fight back.
If the government bans teaching Black history in school, Shabazz would tell Black people to set up Black history classes in church or community centers, Martin says. He would have advised Black people to organize their vote and avoid depending on institutions “that never really served us, anyway.”
Shabazz, Martin says, would tell Black America that the cavalry isn’t coming; that it’s up to us to save ourselves. “He would want us to remove the kind of cynicism or nihilism that says, ‘What’s the point?’ He would say, “No, no, no — your ancestors went through worse than this and survived. And he would have found a willing audience.”
“He would say, ‘Some of you have fallen asleep. And some of you thought that 2008 was going to usher us into the promised land,” Martin says. “And I think he would have flashed that beautiful smile of his and say, ‘It’s time to wake up.’”