On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death inside Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom in New York while both his wife and children were present.
Malcolm X was shot dead on stage at a New York ballroom as he prepared to deliver a speech to his Organization of Afro-American Unity. His wife and children were in the audience. Three men convicted of his murder were all members of the Nation of Islam, the political and religious body that, a year earlier, Malcolm X had left amid acrimony. One of the men was caught while attempting to flee, and confessed to the murder, but the other two convictions resulted in a long-running miscarriage of justice campaign. In 2021, a New York state judge agreed, and their convictions were quashed. Both men were later fully exonerated after New York's attorney general found prosecutors had withheld evidence that, in all likelihood, would have cleared them of blame for the murder.
Too bad Elon Musk appropriated Malcolm's moniker to promote white supremacy.
The acknowledgment by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney who is among the nation’s most prominent local prosecutors, recasts one of the most painful moments in modern American history.
And at a time when racism and discrimination in the criminal justice system are once again the focus of a national protest movement, it reveals a bitter truth: that two of the people convicted of killing Malcolm X — Black Muslim men hastily arrested and tried on shaky evidence — were themselves victims of the very discrimination and injustice that he denounced in language that has echoed across the decades.
Open thread below...
