Assassination of Malcolm X (1965) at the Audubon Ballroom

The assassination of Malcolm X took place on 21 February 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, New York, where the Black nationalist leader was shot dead as he began to address a meeting. He was 39. Malcolm X had broken with the Nation of Islam a year earlier, and three of its members were convicted of his murder, but in 2021 two of them were exonerated after decades of doubt about the investigation.

Early life: from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on 19 May 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher and supporter of Marcus Garvey’s Black nationalist movement, and the family faced threats from white supremacists. After moving to Michigan, Earl Little died in 1931 under a streetcar in Lansing; the death was ruled an accident, though his family believed he had been murdered. Malcolm’s mother, Louise, was later committed to a state mental hospital, and the children were split among foster homes.

As a young man Malcolm lived in Boston and Harlem, where he became involved in crime. In 1946 he was sentenced to prison for burglary. Behind bars he read widely and joined the Nation of Islam, a religious movement led by Elijah Muhammad that taught Black self-reliance and described white people as inherently evil. On his release in 1952 he replaced his surname with “X”, standing for the African family name he said had been lost through slavery.

Rise in the Nation of Islam

Malcolm X proved a brilliant speaker and organiser. As minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem from 1954 and the Nation’s national spokesman, he helped it grow from a few hundred members to many thousands. In 1957 he gained a reputation in Harlem when he led a disciplined crowd of Nation members to a police station to demand medical care for Johnson Hinton, a member beaten by officers. He also helped launch the newspaper Muhammad Speaks around 1960. A 1959 television documentary, “The Hate That Hate Produced”, made him nationally known.

He criticised the mainstream civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s strategy of nonviolence and integration, and urged Black Americans to defend themselves and build their own institutions. His sharp critique of American racism made him one of the most quoted and controversial figures of the era, admired in Black urban communities and feared by many white Americans.

The break with Elijah Muhammad

By the early 1960s relations with the Nation’s leadership were strained. Malcolm X was troubled by reports, which he came to believe were true, that Elijah Muhammad had fathered children with several young secretaries. Some officials also resented his fame. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, he remarked that it was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost”. Elijah Muhammad suspended him from public speaking for 90 days.

On 8 March 1964 Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam. He founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., and in June the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), which aimed to unite people of African descent and take the case of Black Americans to the United Nations as a human rights issue. In his April 1964 speech “The Ballot or the Bullet”, delivered in Cleveland, he urged Black Americans to use their votes as a weapon while insisting on their right to self-defence, signalling a new willingness to engage with electoral politics and other civil rights groups.

In April 1964 he made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. He wrote that worshipping alongside Muslims of every colour changed his view that all white people were enemies. He adopted Sunni Islam and the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and travelled widely in Africa and the Middle East, meeting heads of state.

Threats and the firebombing

The Nation of Islam’s newspaper and leaders denounced him as a traitor, and Malcolm X said openly that he expected to be killed. The Nation sued to evict his family from their house in East Elmhurst, Queens, which it owned. In the early hours of 14 February 1965 the house was firebombed while he, his wife Betty Shabazz and their four daughters slept. They escaped unhurt. No one was charged. Days earlier, on 4 February, he had spoken in Selma, Alabama, during the voting rights campaign there, telling Coretta Scott King that he wanted to make white Americans more willing to deal with her husband.

The assassination: 21 February 1965

On Sunday afternoon, 21 February 1965, Malcolm X arrived at the Audubon Ballroom on Broadway at West 165th Street in Washington Heights to address an OAAU meeting. Several hundred people were present, including Betty Shabazz, who was pregnant with twins, and their children. Security was light, and attendees were not searched.

Shortly after he greeted the audience, a disturbance broke out in the crowd as a diversion. As Malcolm X tried to calm it, a man rushed forward and fired a sawed-off shotgun into his chest. At least two other men then fired handguns. He was hit many times and was pronounced dead soon after at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

One gunman, Talmadge Hayer (also known as Thomas Hagan), was shot in the leg by one of Malcolm X’s guards and beaten by the crowd before police took him into custody. Within two weeks police also arrested Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, both known Nation of Islam members.

Trial, confession and doubts

In March 1966 all three men were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial Hayer confessed and said that Butler and Johnson had not been involved. In sworn statements in 1977 and 1978 he named four other men from the Nation’s mosque in Newark, New Jersey, as his accomplices. The case was not reopened at the time.

Butler, later known as Muhammad Abdul Aziz, was paroled in 1985, and Johnson, later Khalil Islam, in 1987; both had always maintained their innocence. Hayer was paroled in 2010. Historians and researchers, including the biographer Manning Marable, argued that the man who fired the shotgun was a Newark Nation of Islam member who was never charged.

Questions also surrounded the role of government agencies. Both the FBI and the New York Police Department had informants close to Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, and critics asked why so little was done to protect him.

Exoneration in 2021

In 2020 the Manhattan District Attorney’s office began a review of the case with lawyers for Aziz and Islam. It found that the FBI and NYPD had withheld significant evidence from the defence and prosecutors, including FBI documents pointing to other suspects. On 18 November 2021 a New York judge vacated the convictions of both men at the request of District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who apologised on behalf of law enforcement. Aziz was then 83; Islam had died in 2009.

In 2022 New York City and New York State agreed to pay a total of 36 million dollars to settle lawsuits filed by Aziz and Islam’s estate. The case remains a notable example of a wrongful conviction in one of the most famous murders in American history.

Funeral and legacy

An estimated 14,000 to 30,000 people viewed Malcolm X’s body in Harlem. At his funeral on 27 February 1965 at Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, the actor Ossie Davis delivered a celebrated eulogy calling him “our own black shining Prince”. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, written with the journalist Alex Haley, was published later in 1965 and became one of the most influential American books of the 20th century. Malcolm X’s ideas of Black pride, self-determination and self-defence shaped the Black Power movement and groups such as the Black Panther Party, founded the following year. His killing was followed in 1968 by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., leaving the movement without its two best-known voices.

The Audubon Ballroom, which passed to the City of New York in the late 1960s, was later redeveloped with Columbia University as part of a biomedical research park. After community protests, its facade and part of the ballroom were preserved, and since 2005 it has housed the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. Spike Lee’s 1992 film “Malcolm X” introduced his life to a wide new audience.

Timeline

• 1925, 19 May: Malcolm Little is born in Omaha, Nebraska.
• 1952, August: Released from prison, he becomes Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam.
• 1963, 1 December: His remarks on Kennedy’s assassination lead to suspension.
• 1964, 8 March: He announces his break with the Nation of Islam.
• 1964, April: He performs the hajj and takes the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
• 1965, 14 February: His family home in Queens is firebombed.
• 1965, 21 February: He is shot dead at the Audubon Ballroom.
• 1966, March: Hayer, Butler and Johnson are convicted of murder.
• 2021, 18 November: The convictions of Aziz and Islam are vacated.

Why it matters

Malcolm X was one of the most powerful critics of American racism, and his murder silenced him at a moment when his views were changing. The flawed investigation, corrected only 56 years later, shows how official failures can shape history and how long injustice can last.