'He meant a great deal to me and my people': How the assassination of Malcolm X shook the US 60 years ago

US black nationalist leader Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965, at the age of 39. The BBC reported on the reaction in his adopted home of Harlem, New York, as thousands of people queued to pay their last respects.

At a time when black civil rights leaders were preaching peaceful integration, Malcolm X's uncompromising vision of black separatism inspired many people, while terrifying others. He was murdered in February 1965, and a reporter for the BBC's Panorama, Michael Charlton, stated at his funeral that he "spoke a vengeful message, as forthright and chilled as the winter morning they buried him". Amid tight security, the many thousands of people who had filed past his body were searched by police as a precaution against bombings. "To these people, he preached that if the white man didn't answer for the black man's frustration, he must answer for his fury," added Charlton.

He was internationally famous for his incendiary rhetoric, yet he had been developing a new, more moderate worldview. Asked what the death of Malcolm X meant to him by Panorama, one clearly upset man who was in the queue said: "It's a blow to every black person in the United States of America." A young man described him as a hero, saying: "He stood out among all black people. He showed the white man where it was at." This interviewee was one of several people who feared that more violence would follow. "Whoever did it, Muslims or whoever did it, there's going to be a whole lot of hurt," he predicted. One young woman said: "I don't believe it. Why would they kill another black man?" Another woman had no doubt who was responsible: "The white power structure in America is behind it. They quickly capitalised on it by saying that one of his own kind did it, but they put it up to be done. They know they had more to gain by getting Malcolm X out of the way than they had to let him live."

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.

Still a controversial figure 60 years after his death, Malcolm X remains to some the ultimate symbol of rage and resistance in the face of oppression. Born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, he was the son of a Baptist preacher. When Malcolm was six years old, his father was killed in what many believe was a deliberate racist attack by white supremacists, although nobody knows for sure if this was the case. The shock of his father being killed led his mother to have a mental breakdown, and Malcolm and his seven siblings were shipped out to foster homes. He fell into a life of crime, and in 1946 he was jailed for burglary. While in prison, he discovered a love of learning and self-improvement. There, he encountered the ideas of the Nation of Islam, a political and religious body that argued that equality for black Americans could only be achieved through black and white people living in separate states. 

Upon his release from prison in 1952, he formally changed his name to Malcolm X. It was a firm rejection of the surname that had been given to his family by the people who, generations earlier, had enslaved them. He toured the US, spreading the Nation of Islam's message, and discovered that he had the power and charisma to inspire people with his words. Public speaking was a skill he had learnt, having entered prison as a middle-school dropout who, he admitted, "didn't know a verb from a house". He was not afraid to use shock tactics to get his message across, condemning white people as the "white devil" for the historic oppression of black people. When US President John F Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, he said it was "chickens coming home to roost".

While Malcolm X attracted many followers, he also made a lot of enemies. In March 1964 he announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam, having become disillusioned with its leadership. That same month, he witnessed a debate in Washington DC about the Civil Rights Bill, and he finally met Martin Luther King, Jr, a civil rights leader whose belief in nonviolent protest was often seen as being in stark contrast with Malcolm X's more confrontational philosophy. 

To deepen his Muslim faith, he went on the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. He wrote about how he witnessed "pilgrims of all colours from all parts of this Earth displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood like I've never seen before". He also toured several countries in Africa, where he made the decision to form a new secular group that sought to reconnect African Americans with their heritage. Upon his return to the US, he renounced the teachings of the Nation of Islam. Around that time, Malcolm X's wife Betty Shabazz began receiving death threats over the phone, and their home was firebombed. 

Despite apparent threats coming from many directions, he continued making his electrifying public appearances. In June 1964, he officially launched his Organization of Afro-American Unity, telling the gathered audience: "We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary." The venue was the Audubon Ballroom in New York's Washington Heights neighbourhood; eight months later he was murdered on that same stage.

As mourners continued to file past Malcolm X's body in a Harlem funeral home, Charlton asked several prominent people about what sort of leader he might have become. Malcolm X had become a regular visitor to the United Nations headquarters in New York, according to Daniel Watts, the editor of black nationalist magazine The Liberator. Watts said that he had been highlighting discrimination against black people in the US to members of the Afro-Asian bloc. "I think for the first time in the history of the struggle here in this country, we had a molecule of hope – hope in the sense in knowing that we had a heritage, we had roots, we had a motherland to which we could look for," he said. 

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James Farmer, director of the Congress of Racial Equality, told Panorama that while Malcolm X had not been a part of the civil rights movement, his "more extreme stance" had boosted its position. He said: "The public saw very clearly that unless they did what the civil rights movement demanded, they might get Malcolm X. In fact, Malcolm said just that to me once after a debate we had. He said, 'You know you ought to stop pushing us around like this.' I asked why. He said, 'Because we help you. We make a lot of noise, people look at us and scream bloody murder, and then turn to you.'" Farmer said that Malcolm X had been successful in giving younger black people a sense of identity. "It has been very important because a person cannot have a sense of destiny for the future unless he believes he is somebody first."

Farmer also said that Malcolm X had been trying to broaden his appeal since his split with the Nation of Islam. "I feel that his position was in a state of flux, and that he was moving closer toward an integrationist and desegregationist position. He was over at my house just six weeks before he died, and there I asked him if his views had changed on racial issues and he indicated it was true, he was giving up black racism. Now he was prepared, he told me, to accept a man on the basis of his deeds rather than his genes. This was a switch."

Poet Maya Angelou was a friend of Malcolm X who had reconnected with him during his Africa trip when he visited Ghana, where she was living at the time. Speaking in 1992, she told the BBC: "He came to Ghana and said, 'I have found blue-eyed men who I'm able to call brother, so my prior statement that all whites were devils is erroneous.' It takes an incredible amount of courage to be able to say, 'Say everybody, you remember what I said yesterday? I've found out that's wrong.' And that's what he was able to do. That was amazing."

Charlton concluded his Panorama report on Malcolm X's funeral by observing that he "died too soon after his adoption of more moderate views for us to know what wider appeal he may have attracted". He said the "most arresting epitaph" he heard that week came from a black person who said, "I don't know how many followers he had, but he had a hell of a lot of well-wishers."

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