Malcolm X’s family on Saturday released a letter written by a deceased police officer alleging that the New York Police Department and the FBI were behind the 1965 assassination of the black civil rights leader.
Why it’s important: Scholars and civil rights activists have said the men accused of killing Malcolm X, later known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, at New York’s Audubon Ballroom they were wrongly condemned. Some have alleged police and federal agents played a role in his death.
Driving the news: The family released the letter attributed to Raymond Wood, a former undercover NYPD officer, who confessed before he died that the NYPD and the FBI conspired in the murder.
- Wood wrote that he was ordered not to have security in Malcolm X in the Harlem building where he planned to speak.
- Malcolm X’s daughters disclosed the details of the letter at the previous site of their father’s murder and said they waited until Wood’s death to talk about it for fear of reprisals by authorities.
- “Any evidence that provides a greater insight into the truth behind this terrible tragedy should be thoroughly investigated,” Ilyasah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X’s daughters, told the news conference.
Flashback: Muhammad Aziz, Mujahid Abdul Halim and Khalil Islam were convicted of killing the civil rights leader and sentenced to life imprisonment.
- Aziz and Islam denied they were connected to any plot to kill Malcolm X. Halim had said the two were not involved.
- Malcolm X was assassinated after publicly breaking up with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, and while the FBI was watching closely.
Between lines: Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Cyrus Vance announced last year that his office would review the 1965 murder following the release of a Netflix series questioning the investigation into Malcolm X’s death.
NYPD he said in a statement that “he has provided all available records relevant to this case to the district attorney.”
- “The department remains committed to assisting with this review in any way.”
- The FBI declined to comment.
The big picture: Malcolm X sees renewed interest amid the Black Lives Matter movement and calls on advocates to diversify school history lessons to combat systemic racism.
- “The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X,” written by the late journalist, Les Payne, and his daughter, Tamara, won the 2020 National Nonfiction Book Award.
- The book shows how Malcolm X’s intellectual development as a black nationalist arose in part from his preaching father and his multilingual mother, who worked as a journalist.
- The book also uncovered Malcolm X’s experience attending a school with white students where he became popular and how he learned to grow the best marijuana from Mexican immigrants in Michigan.