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Image of Malcolm X & His Assassination

On February 26, 1965, a breakaway member of the Black Muslim movement was preparing to deliver a speech at the Audobon auditorium in Harlem. As he stepped out onto the podium to speak, a disturbance broke out in the audience. Amid the disorder three gunmen--by some unconfirmed reports, there were more--reached the stage and opened fire on the speaker (Perry, 1991, pp. 366-67). When the firing ended, their target had been hit by 16 shotgun pellets and pistol rounds (Lord and Thornton, 1992, p. 84). He died almost instantly.

The slain speaker was Malcolm X, and the assassins were Black Muslims. Though conspiracy theories implicating whites, some including the FBI, have continued to revolve around the events in the Audobon, no credible evidence for such conspiracies has ever been found. Whether the assassination was ordered by the Black Muslim leadership also remains unproven, though there is strong reason for suspecting that this was the case (Perry, 1991, pp. 370-74).

Many other black leaders were to be gunned down in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, from Martin Luther King, assassinated by a white supremacist (again with unproven allegations of conspiracy), to militant Black Panthers gunned down by police. Among these, Malcolm X might appear to be a somewhat unlikely figure to have been taken up by the African-American community as its leading martyr figure of the age. He was, after all, killed not by white racists or a white authority structure, but by fellow African-Americans.

Yet a generation after his death, Malcolm X occupies a unique position within the African-American community as a prophet, martyr, and symbol of pride. His works, and memorabilia associated with him, are far more sought-after by African-Americans than are works or memorabilia commemorating Martin Luther King. His prestige was undoubtedly amplified by the 1992 motion picture directed by Spike Lee, but Lee's decision to ...

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Image of Malcolm X & His Assassination. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:00, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692582.html