Malcolm X

The family of Malcolm X, the militant civil rights leader who was assassinated almost 60 years ago on 21 February 1965, have filed a $100m federal lawsuit accusing the FBI, the CIA and the New York police department (NYPD) of allowing his murder and concealed evidence that they knew of the plot to kill him but did not act to stop it.

The lawsuit has been brought by Malcolm X’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and other family members. Shabazz was just two years old when she, her mother and her siblings witnessed her father being shot and killed while preparing to make a speech.

“They all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X”

Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family, told a press conference last Friday at a memorial centre on the site of the old Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights neighbourhood of Manhattan in New York City, where Malcolm X was killed in 1965, “We believe that they all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, one of the greatest thought leaders of the 20th century.”

Malcolm X visited Kenya in 1959 and met with Pio Gama Pinto who was also assassinated, on February 25 1965, just three days after Malcolm X was shot dead.

The wrongful death lawsuit, Ben Crump said, ‘seeks to answer questions surrounding the assassination, and paint an accurate history of the events.’ The suit is also intended to bring reparations to the family of over $100 million.

“This cover-up spanned decades”

The lawsuit states: “As a direct result of the Defendants’ intentional, bad faith, wilful, wanton, reckless, unreasonable and/or deliberately indifferent acts and omissions, Malcolm X was deprived of his federal constitutional rights, was robbed of his life and freedom, and sustained severe physical, emotional, and monetary damages, including conscious physical pain and suffering.”

Crump said in a statement: “This cover-up spanned decades, blocking the Shabazz family’s access to the truth and their right to pursue justice… We are making history by standing here to confront those wrongs and seeking accountability in the courts.”

The Nation of Islam

Malcolm X became prominent as the national spokesperson of the Nation of Islam an African American Muslim group that espoused Black separatism.

However, following over a decade with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X publicly broke with the group in 1964. Later he moderated some of his previously espoused views on racial separation which angered some Nation of Islam members and leading to death threats.

Talmadge Hayer, then a member of the Nation of Islam, later confessed in court to being one of three assassins but there has always been speculation that government agencies may have been aware of the assassination plan and allowed it to happen.

Kenya Forum readers may also be interested in the article, Malcolm X ‘assassins’ exonerated 56 years later (Kenya Forum November 22, 2021)