FEBRUARY 21, 1965
Malcolm X, an African-American nationalist and Muslim leader, was assassinated as he began to address his newly formed Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City’s Washington Heights. He was 39 — the same age as Martin Luther King Jr. when he was killed.
A week before his assassination, Malcolm X’s home was firebombed while he and his family slept. They managed to escape, standing outside in the 20-degree weather. “Had that fire gone through that window, it would have fallen on a 6-year-old girl, a 4-year-old girl and a 2-year-old girl,” he told reporters. Asked if he was worried about his life, he replied, “I don’t worry, I’ll tell you. I’m a man who believed that I died 20 years ago, and I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.”
As he walked to the podium, he declared, “Peace be unto you” in Arabic. When a commotion arose in the audience, Malcolm urged them to “be cool, be calm.” The disturbance distracted the bodyguards, and three men opened fire on Malcolm X, one of them with a sawed-off shotgun, hitting him with at least 16 bullets. His wife, Betty Shabazz, already pregnant with their twins, threw her body on her children.
After the shooting stopped, she rushed the stage, screaming as she sank to her knees, “They killed him.” His legacy has continued to grow since his death. “Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression,” he once said. “Because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.