Source: Mirrorpix / Getty
Malcolm X’s assassination is one of the most devastating losses that the civil rights era took alongside his often-compared colleague Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is one of the most significant deaths in American history and the discourse on how and why it happened persists to the this day. Who set in motion the events that led to X’s public execution at the Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965? Brotha Malcolm’s family believes they have a good idea of who should receive the blame.
According to USA Today, ubiquitous civil rights attorney Ben Crump has announced a $100 million lawsuit against several United States government, FBI, CIA, and NYPD that accuses them of conspiring not only on X’s death but also the subsequent decades-long coverup. Crump stood alongside Malcolm’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, at a press conference held at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in New York.
“It is not lost on us that justice has been delayed in this matter, and on this momentous occasion, we stand ready to lay out our complaint very soundly,” Crump said. “The government fingerprints are all over the assassination of Malcolm X. And finally, we believe we have the evidence to prove it.”
Two of the men who were ultimately convicted of the murder, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, were exonerated in 2021. Both men maintained that they were innocent during their over twenty year prison stint.
That same year, former and now-deceased NYPD officer Raymond Wood wrote a letter in which he confessed that he was ordered to coerce members of Malcolm’s security team into crimes so that they would be arrested and thus unable to attend the event at the Audubon.
“It was my assignment to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s door security on Feb. 21, 1965,” Wood wrote. “At that time, I was not aware that Malcolm X was the target.”
It’s a dirty game and someone needs to uncover the truth. Hopefully, attorney Crump and his associates have all the evidence they need to do so.