February 21, 1965, 60 years ago: Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City. He was 39 years old -- the same age at which his competitor for the hearts and minds of black Americans, Martin Luther King Jr., would be, 3 years later.
He was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, with the name Malcolm Little. His parents were admirers of Marcus Garvey, a believer in self-determination for black Americans through building their own economy within the larger American economy.
But when Malcolm was 6 years old, and the family was living in Lansing, Michigan, his father died under mysterious circumstances. Officially, he was hit by a streetcar. Both suicide and murder were suggested, as he had willingly run afoul of a local Ku Klux Klan offshoot. When Malcolm was 12, his mother had a nervous breakdown, and was committed.
He did well in school, but dropped out of high school at age 16, after telling a white teacher he wanted to become a lawyer, and the teacher told him that was "no realistic goal for a (N-word)." He moved in with his sister in Roxbury, a mostly-black neighborhood in Boston, then to the most classically black neighborhood of them all, Harlem in Upper Manhattan.
He worked for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, then as a restaurant dishwasher. Another dishwasher was also a black man with red hair, and was known as Chicago Red because he was from Chicago. Malcolm became known as Detroit Red, because he had lived in Michigan, even though he'd never actually lived in Detroit. Chicago Red's real name was John Sanford, but he went into comedy, and became Redd Foxx, later taking then name Fred Sanford for his TV sitcom Sanford and Son.
Malcolm developed side hustles, the kind normally associated with organized crime. When he was drafted to serve in World War II, he convinced the U.S. Army that he was mentally unstable, and received an exemption. In 1945, he went back to Boston, and built a gang that robbed the homes of wealthy white families.
But it was a smaller crime that got him sent to prison: In 1946, he went to a jewelry shop, to pick up a watch he'd left to be fixed. The watch was stolen, and he was caught, and was sentenced to 8 to 10 years.
In 1948, his brother Reginald wrote to him, telling him of the Nation of Islam, a black-oriented offshoot of mainstream Islam. Malcolm wrote to the Nation's leader, Elijah Muhammad, and the response he got led him to a regular correspondence and conversion. He began using the name "Malcolm X," the X, being a symbol of the unknown, taking the place of the family name he would have had if his family hadn't been taken out of Africa in slavery.
Malcolm was paroled in 1952, and went to Chicago, the NOI's headquarters, and met Elijah Muhammad face-to-face. He visited Detroit for the first time when Muhammad sent him to establish a Temple there. Much like an old-style Protestant "circuit rider," he was moved around quickly, to Boston, to Philadelphia, and settled in Harlem, where he led Temple Number 7 starting in 1954.
With his close-cropped hair, horn-rimmed glasses and sharp suits, he looked every inch the intellectual he was. He was 6-foot-3, and at 180 pounds, slim but strong. He was already one of the country's most effective public speakers, and had charisma to spare. Through his efforts, the NOI gained hundreds of new black members every month through the latter half of the 1950s.
That got the attention of the FBI. At the time, "Islamic terrorism" was unknown in North America, but Director J. Edgar Hoover didn't like it when black people demanded more power or, dare they say it, equality with white people. He considered both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to be Communists, though neither was true.
In 1958, Malcom married Betty Sanders, who took the name Betty X. They had 6 children, all daughters. Malcolm had also begun using the name Malik el-Shabazz, though he was still usually referred to as "Malcolm X" in public. His wife Used the name Betty Shabazz for the rest of her life. In 1959, he was interviewed by Mike Wallace for a televised documentary, which was titled The Hate That Hate Produced.
That hate included calling white people "devils," and using lines like, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us!" He called Dr. King "a chump," and the 1963 March On Washington "the farce on Washington."
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the NOI sent a message of condolence to the Kennedy family, whose work in electing the country's 1st President who was not a Protestant had moved the cause of religious freedom forward. Elijah Muhammad ordered his ministers not to comment on the assassination.
Malcolm did: On December 1, he cited the assassination, the bombing of a Birmingham church that killed 4 girls 2 months earlier, the murder of NAACP official Medgar Evers 3 months before that, and the assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba 2 years before that, as "chickens coming home to roost." This statement seemed to infuriate everybody, and Elijah Muhammad suspended him from public speaking for 90 days.
The following month, Malcolm went to Miami, where he met with Cassius Clay, who was training to fight Sonny Liston for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. They became close, and after Clay won, he announced his conversion to the NOI, and took the name Muhammad Ali, which Elijah Muhammad had given him.
Something else was going on: Malcolm had begun to hear about Elijah Muhammad taking advantage of women in the NOI, including his secretaries. When Malcolm confronted him, Muhammad not only admitted it, but justified it, through his interpretation of prophecy.
On March 8, 1964, 12 days after Ali's win, Malcolm X announced that he had broken with the NOI. This caused a schism from which the NOI has never recovered. Ali sided with Elijah Muhammad. So did Malcolm's protege, Louis X, who later took the name Louis Farrakhan. Ali would eventually publicly regret his choice; Farrakhan, still alive at this writing, never has.
On March 26, Malcolm was at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, observing the debate over the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dr. King was also there, and the two men met for the only time. They were together for only a minute or so, but photographs suggest that the meeting was cordial.
In April, he traveled to Saudi Arabia, to do what Islam demands that all of its followers able to do so do: Make a pilgrimage to the faith's the holiest site, the Kaaba in Mecca, a city that prohibits non-Muslims from entering. Ironically, given his intelligence and his chosen faith, he had never learned how to speak Arabic, and that caused Saudi officials to question his sincerity. Prince Faisal, who became King later in the year, intervened, and the pilgrimage was made.
Malcolm saw Muslims from all over the world there, from the darkest-skinned natives of Africa to pale, blue-eyed white people, to Asians from the nations of Indonesia and Malaysia. He soon dropped his "white devils" rhetoric, and began to speak of mainstream Sunni Islam as a unifying influence.
Upon his return, threats against him from the NOI -- far more from them than from white supremacists -- increased. In 1963, he had begun meeting with journalist Alex Haley, for the writing of an authorized biography. He told Haley, "If I'm alive when this book comes out, it will be a miracle." On December 4, 1964, Muhammad Speaks, the NOI's official newspaper, published a column by Farrakhan, saying, "Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death."
And on February 14, 1965, his house in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City was burned down. On February 19, he told photojournalist Gordon Parks, who would later direct the film Shaft, that the NOI was actively trying to kill him.
On February 21, he prepared to address a new organization he had founded, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, at the Audubon Ballroom at 165th Street and Broadway, in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan. Before he could begin his speech, a man yelled out for another man to get his hand out of his pocket. There was some pushing, and Malcolm's bodyguards came forward to try to stop the disturbance.
It was a ruse. Talmadge Hayer, a NOI member, took out a sawed-off shotgun, and shot Malcolm in the chest. Two other gunmen opened fire with pistols. Malcolm was taken across the street, to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, but he had no chance. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 PM.
Dr. King did not attend his funeral, but other civil rights leaders did, including Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Andrew Young and John Lewis. Actor Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy, and would repeat it for Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X, in which Malcolm was played by Denzel Washington. Davis' wife, actress Ruby Dee, and actor Sidney Poitier's wife Juanita raised money for a new home for Betty and the 6 Shabazz daughters. Malcolm was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York.
Hayer was convicted, and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, where he took the name Mujahid Abdul Halim. He was paroled in 2010, after 45 years. As of February 21, 2025, he is still alive, and has never identified his accomplices, only saying that the other 2 men convicted in the shooting were innocent. He is still a practicing Muslim, but has left the Nation of Islam, no longer agreeing with their ideology. He has expressed "regrets and sorrow" for having shot Malcolm X.
Norman Butler, later Muhammad Abdul Aziz, served 20 years, and his conviction was later overturned. Thomas Johnson, later Khalil Islam, served 22 years, and maintained his innocence until his death in 2009.
In 1975, Malcolm's widow, who had been studying to be a nurse when they met, completed her doctorate in nursing, and was known as Dr. Betty Shabazz from then on. She occasionally joined Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, for joint appearances until her death in 1997. Afterward, their daughters Bernice King and Attallah Shabazz, each having followed their father into their respective faiths' clergy, have worked together.
In 1992, most of the Audubon Ballroom was demolished, but its outer facade was kept, and Columbia University's Audubon Business and Technology Center was built on the site. On May 19, 2005, which would have been Malcolm's 80th birthday, the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center opened in the building's lobby.
Other nearby memorials include the renaming of 6th Avenue in Harlem, which had already been Lenox Avenue, as Malcolm X Boulevard; and the renaming of Newark's South Side High School for him.
