Family of Malcolm X sues US authorities over 1965 assassination
The family of iconic militant and civil rights leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated almost 60 years ago, has filed a $100-million federal lawsuit that accuses the FBI, CIA as well as the New York Police Department (NYPD) of allowing his murder to be carried out.
The lawsuit filed on Friday by Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X (real name: Malcolm Little), and other family members, alleges that these government agencies had concealed evidence showing they had knowledge of a plot to kill him but did nothing to stop it.
“We believe that they all conspired to assassinate Malcolm X, one of the greatest thought leaders of the 20th century,” Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the family, said at a press conference.
The wrongful death lawsuit was announced at a memorial center on the site in New York City where Malcolm X, 39, was shot multiple times by armed men on Feb. 21, 1965.
Shabazz, 62, was only 2 years old when she, her mother and siblings witnessed her father killed while preparing to speak at New York’s Audubon Ballroom.
The lawsuit also seeks to answer questions surrounding the assassination and paint an accurate history of the events, Crump said. It is also intended to bring reparations to the family.
A spokesperson for the NYPD was not immediately available for comment. But the department previously told Reuters it would not comment on the litigation when it was announced last year.
The FBI and the CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Black separatism
Malcolm X became prominent as the national spokesperson of the Nation of Islam (NOI), an African American Muslim group that espoused Black separatism.
After more than a decade with the group, he publicly broke with it in 1964. He moderated some of his earlier views on racial separation, angering some NOI members and drawing death threats.
Talmadge Hayer, then a member of the Nation of Islam, confessed in court to being one of the three assassins. But speculation has persisted for decades that the government may have been aware of the plot against Malcolm X yet allowed it to happen.
