Malcolm X assassinated in Harlem
On this day · 21 February 1965
The fiery civil rights leader was gunned down mid-speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom, his pregnant wife and daughters watching from the front rows.
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X stepped to the podium of the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, upper Manhattan, to address his newly formed Organization of Afro-American Unity. Moments after he greeted the crowd, a disturbance broke out near the front. As attention shifted, gunmen rushed the stage and opened fire.
He was struck repeatedly and pronounced dead soon after. He was 39. His pregnant wife, Betty Shabazz, and their daughters had been seated near the front when the shooting began.
A leader who had once preached separation had, in his final year, begun reaching toward a broader human solidarity.
Three men were convicted of the killing, but the case never settled. Decades later, in 2021, two of the convicted men, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, were exonerated after a review found evidence had been withheld. Malcolm X’s autobiography, published months after his death, turned him into one of the most enduring voices of twentieth-century America.
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