King wants the same thing I want — freedom! Although both Black Muslims and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference had the same general goals of defeating white racism and empowering African Americans, Malcolm and King had different tended to speak at different venues street corners vs. Malcolm, who would publicly deny that he was even an American, worked for a Nation of Islam that sought to create a separate society for its members.
Malcolm rejected integration with white America as a worthwhile aim deriding it as "coffee with a cracker" and particularly opposed non-violence as a means of attaining it. Nothing But Scorn As for the apostle of non-violence, for years Malcolm showed him nothing but scorn. King was a "fool," a modern-day "Uncle Tom," and his march, where King gave his celebrated speech, just a "farce on Washington.
King would not debate, his secretary told Malcolm, because "he has always considered his work in a positive action framework rather than engaging in consistent negative debate. To be sure, the Nation of Islam talked a good game, but when Los Angeles Temple secretary Ronald Stokes, originally from Roxbury, was gunned down by police, Muhammad refused to permit an aggressive response, counting on God to avenge the incident. Despite his private doubts about the real source of his attacks, it was to prove a perfect setting for a Nation of Islam assassination conspiracy.
Of the four men involved in the successful assassination plot on Malcolm, only one was ever identified with any degree of certainty: Talmadge Hayer also known as Thomas Hagen , a member of the Fruits of Islam, a paramilitary organisation charged with the protection of the Nation of Islam. It was agreed that he would sit near the front of the auditorium with a.
Almost simultaneously, Hayer and his accomplice leapt up, stormed the stage, and discharged their own weapons at Malcolm. Malcolm received a total of 15 wounds from the three weapons. Hayer was not so lucky: a bullet wound in the leg slowed him down considerably, and he was arrested by a police officer outside the Ballroom.
The funeral of Malcolm X took place at the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, in Harlem, New York on 27th February , and was attended by fifteen hundred mourners, many of whom assembled in the streets outside the church. In the murder investigation that followed, Hayer was the only certain suspect. This seemed unlikely, however, as both were well known to OAAU members, and they would certainly have been recognised as hostile members of the audience on that evening.
Hayer also denied that Butler and Johnson had been involved, instead identifying his co-conspirators as Leon David and Wilbur McKinley, in a sworn affidavit. Despite this, the trials of Hayer, Butler and Johnson began on 12th January , and they were all convicted of the murder of Malcolm X, in March , and received life sentences. It is claimed that government agencies were uncomfortable with the international profile that Malcolm was building, and the potential racial tensions that were being fomented by his message, and that Roberts had been instructed by his superiors to engineer the assassination.
Roberts was not called to testify at the trials of Hayer, Butler and Johnson. Malcolm was therefore the victim of a mob hit, in the interests of protecting the business of organised crime. He was in Harlem to launch the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a new, secular group that he hoped would allow him to engage in mainstream civil-rights activism in a way that the Nation—which was both rigidly devout and expressly militant—had made difficult.
He envisioned the event as an afternoon of rousing rhetoric for a diverse crowd: a reverend campaigning for school desegregation would give opening remarks. Despite the potential dangers, he had called off the body searches, which set his advisers on edge. Malcolm had been the national spokesman of the Nation of Islam, and had become famous as a fierce and eloquent advocate of Black Nationalism.
He had grown tired of being pigeonholed as a violent agitator, and had begun to forge connections with the nonviolent civil-rights movement, which he had previously spurned. He attended a secret meeting of civil-rights leaders at the home of the actor Sidney Poitier, where he proposed working together to bring American race relations to the United Nations.
This transformation was not appreciated among the ranks of the Nation. His split with the group had been public and ugly, and there were rumors that his old colleagues were plotting to have him killed.
At the Audubon, four hundred people filed into the hall. Backstage, Malcolm learned that the opening act had cancelled, setting a vein pulsing in his forehead. He sent out Goodman, his assistant, to open for him instead.
Goodman stood behind a plywood rostrum, in front of a pastoral scene leftover from another event. As he spoke, he scanned the crowd. Near the front, he saw two dark-skinned men sitting with their coats folded over their arms. Malcolm walked to center stage and shuffled some notecards in his hand. The mock smoke bomb fizzled to the floor, releasing noxious smoke, and a woman screamed. Two security men moved toward the disturbance, leaving their posts in front of the stage. Malcolm moved to impose order, stepping from behind the podium with his arms raised and exposing the full length of his body.
In an instant, William 25X Bradley, a member of the Newark mosque of the Nation of Islam, charged the stage in a slight crouch from the fourth row. The blast lifted Malcolm backward off his feet and over a pair of wooden chairs. Seven of the buckshot pellets dug a series of craters above his navel. A piece of shrapnel tore the web between his thumb and index finger. Soon after, two other men drew pistols and ran to the stage. Thomas Hayer, a twenty-two-year-old member of the Newark Mosque, fired insurance rounds at the prostrate Malcolm, hitting him in his left ankle.
Leon Davis, another young member, shot two 9-mm rounds, hitting his thighs. A tape recorder on the podium caught what it could of the drama before the physics of the blasts shut down its revolving reels. Goodman hit the floor. The hand of his twisted right arm grasped at his belt in a defiant street pose. And those people were trying to revive him, but I knew it was no use.
I just knew it. Malcolm had once credited the Nation with saving his life. He grew up in Lansing, Michigan, and spent a troubled youth engaged in criminal enterprises like drug-dealing and racketeering. But in prison, in , he discovered the teachings of the Nation, and wrote a letter to Elijah Muhammad, pledging his loyalty. Since then, he had maintained a tough, analytical approach to all matters except those pertaining to his religious beliefs, some of which were eccentric. Eventually, there would be a global war—or Armageddon—in which Africans vanquished the devils.
Fard, was believed to be the human incarnation of Allah. Fard claimed to come from Mecca, though, according to police records, he seems to have been a white con-artist from New Zealand who had spent time in San Quentin for selling narcotics. Elijah Muhammad was believed to be his divine Messenger. Wallace confirmed that, indeed, Muhammad had fathered children with several young secretaries, and had then denied the paternity and kicked the women out of the Nation for premarital sex.
As a minister, Malcolm had faithfully informed the Messenger of every development related to the sect. So, soon after the meeting, he confronted Muhammad about his adultery. In , after speaking out of turn about the assassination of John F.
It seemed clear that he would not be invited back into the fold, and, in March, , he announced that he was leaving the Nation.
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