Malcolm X

by Manning Marable

  “When the shots rang out,” James 67X recalled, “Benjamin . . . dived down to the floor. I then walked out. . . . People were up on the stage, Malcolm was laying down, and I saw the life go out of his body.” A film taken of the assassination’s aftermath shows James kneeling over Malcolm and apparently removing something from the body. Then, inexplicably, without giving orders to subordinates or assuming command, he promptly walked through what remained of the disoriented crowd, passed by several police officers who were just arriving, and left the building. James 67X would claim years later that his immediate intention was “to shoot [Captain] Joseph” in retaliation.

  Patrolmen Gilbert Henry and John Carroll had been assigned to the smaller Rose Ballroom, the farthest distance from the shooting site. When the sounds of gunfire erupted, Henry frantically attempted to call for police backup, but “couldn’t get an answer” on his walkie-talkie. Both officers scrambled toward the Audubon’s entrance, the only direct route into the main ballroom, but they were blocked by hundreds of screaming, jostling people fleeing down the main stairwell into the street. In the chaos and confusion, it was impossible for the two officers to identify a fleeing assailant.

  At approximately 3:05 p.m., less than two minutes after the shooting, Lieutenant Bernard Mulligan of BOSS learned that Malcolm had been shot. NYPD detectives Henry Suarez and Kenneth Egan were immediately dispatched to the crime scene.

  Several minutes later, the two men arrived at the Audubon, where they were met by several other officers desperately attempting to restore order. Informed that Malcolm had been taken to Columbia Presbyterian, Suarez and Egan promptly went over to the hospital, where they consulted with NYPD detectives Ferdinand “Rocky” Cavallaro and Thomas Cusmano of the 34th Precinct. The officers jotted down the names of all those who had gone to the hospital from the ballroom; they also learned that although the assassination had occurred only ten minutes earlier, a wounded suspect, “Tommy Hagan,” was already being interrogated at the 34th Precinct. At 3:14 p.m., doctors told them that Malcolm had been “dead on arrival” upon reaching the emergency room.

  At the hospital, Egan and Suarez secured the personal items found in Malcolm’s clothing. They carefully cataloged them: “One 1965 Red Diary which had been in his breast pocket, had 3 bullet holes; one tear gas pen devise [sic] ‘Penguin’ with two TG-4 cartridges for same, one of which was in the pen for immediate use.”

  By 3:35 p.m., Cavallaro and Cusmano had returned to the Audubon, where they learned that one of the probable murder weapons, a sawed-off J.C. Higgins shotgun “wrapped in a man’s suit jacket,” had been found lying on a table in the left rear of the stage. Together with other officers they proceeded to comb the vacant ballrooms for additional physical evidence related to the crime. Locations of bullet holes and other ballistics debris were duly marked off, and the NYPD’s photo unit was called up. Investigators also learned that several others had been wounded during the assassination, all of whom were relocated to the hospital, and proceeded to interrogate them. The fifty-one-year-old OAAU member Willie Harris had been sitting three rows from the back of the ballroom when the trouble started. After the barrage of gunshots, he had tried to flee through the ballroom’s main entrance. As he explained to detective James Rushin, “I was hit by a bullet. I then left the hall and went to a patrolman . . . and told him I had been hit.”

  NYPD detective James O’Connell took the statement of another man receiving medical attention, thirty-six-year-old William Parker, a building superintendent in Astoria, Queens. Parker had taken his six-year-old son Nathaniel to the rally just “to see what the meeting was all about.” Sitting three rows back from the stage near the middle aisle, he had grabbed his son and dropped to the floor when the first shot was fired. As the fusillade continued, Parker felt a sharp pain in his left foot. It was only after he and the boy walked down the crowded stairwell that he realized that he had been shot. Given the number of bullets fired in an enclosed space, it was remarkable that, apart from minor wounds such as this, Malcolm’s was the sole fatality.

  As the remaining MMI and OAAU members still inside the Audubon surveyed the initial stages of the NYPD’s investigation, most officers at the crime scene appeared apathetic about the shooting. Earl Grant recalled that the first police officers who entered the Audubon were “strolling at about the pace one would expect of them if they were patrolling a quiet park. . . . Not one of them had his gun out!” A few cops “even had their hands in their pockets.” As many as 150 members of the audience who had initially fled into the street by now had returned to the Grand Ballroom. One frustrated black man cried out, “There ain’t no goddamn hope for our people in this lousy country. You got to fight them lousy whites and fight the stupid niggahs too.” An elderly West Indian woman confronted reporter Welton Smith: “Don’t you menfolk let them get away with it. They done hurt Malcolm and don’t you let them get away with it. They can’t stop us. And the white man can’t stop us. We know the white man put them up to it.” Another man angrily declared to Smith, “I know the cops had a hand in it. . . . [L]ook how long it took the cops to get up to the hall after this happened. It must have been ten minutes, and it took the ambulance almost half an hour to come from the hospital right across the street. Now you tell me that this wasn’t nothing but coincidence.”

  The deep skepticism about the NYPD’s unprofessional behavior was not without merit. Most street cops were contemptuous of Malcolm, whom they considered a dangerous racist demagogue. Many believed that Malcolm had firebombed his own house in some kind of publicity stunt. Besides, they thought, given Malcolm’s incendiary rhetoric, it was inevitable that the black leader would be struck down by the very violence he had promoted. Most police officers generally treated his murder case not as a significant political assassination, but as a neighborhood shooting in the dark ghetto, a casualty from two rival black gangs feuding against each other.

  Shortly before four p.m., James 67X returned to the Audubon, where police officers demanded to know where he had been. He replied, “I was going up . . .” Then James asked himself, “How do they know that I left? . . . They must have photographed this whole thing.” Days later the police showed him “a seating plan . . . where everybody was seated in the Audubon Ballroom.” The police demanded that both James and Reuben X accompany them to the 34th Precinct, where they were driven by a detective named Kitchman. Apparently, either Reuben or James left some ammunition in the rear seat of Kitchman’s car, for the following day the detective found five .32 caliber bullets there. Reuben was charged with felonious assault and possession of a deadly weapon in the shooting of Hayer. At 8:20 p.m., New York County assistant district attorney Herbert Stern and police detective William Confrey began James’s interview, which yielded little. At 8:32 p.m., the police report noted, “Mr. Warden stopped talking.” James was released, going immediately to the Hotel Theresa, where he met with some MMI and OAAU members.

  Two hours later, Stern interrogated Reuben X; police detectives John J. Keeley and William Confrey witnessed this interview. Reuben’s story was only slightly less obscure than James’s. He asserted that he had “arrived at the ballroom before Malcolm, and stood in the rear of the hall.” After the gunfire had stopped, he said, he “saw two men running back towards the exit.” He “ran after them and saw that one had been captured by the police.” Reuben claimed that he then had just “returned to the ballroom” and that “he could offer nothing of any further value.” Several days later, Reuben was released on bail. “Brother Reuben” was immediately hailed as a “hero” by MMI and OAAU members and other black activists as the sole bodyguard who had displayed the courage to return fire at Malcolm’s killers.

  Meanwhile, back at the Audubon, the NYPD photo unit was well into its forensic work. The detectives caucused informally to evaluate the evidence they had obtained so far, concluding that the open hostilities between two “black hate groups” could spark a riot throughout Harlem—and the possibility of having to quell such
a major uprising was something they feared far more than the public slaying of a single black man. To forestall any act of vengeance by Malcolm’s followers, officers promptly ordered the Nation’s Harlem restaurant to close.

  For the detectives working the case, too many facts didn’t make sense. The request from Malcolm’s team that the usual police detail be pulled back several blocks from the Audubon seemed strange, as did the police’s agreement to do so in light of the recent firebombing. The detectives were also suspicious when they learned that nearly all of the MMI and OAAU security personnel had been unarmed and that none of the audience had been checked for weapons. Yet time would not be on the side of justice. As the forensic team continued its work, the Audubon’s management asked that the police vacate the building as quickly as possible. A dance sponsored by a local black church had been scheduled for later that evening. Remarkably, the police never completed a full forensic analysis of the crime scene: the back wall of the stage was literally pockmarked with bullet holes of different calibers; Malcolm’s blood still covered part of the shattered stage—yet the officers agreed to leave. By six p.m. three women workers were mopping up Malcolm’s blood, moving chairs, and cleaning the ballroom floor. The festive George Washington Birthday Party dance was held at the Audubon Ballroom, as advertised, at seven p.m., only four hours after the assassination.

  Meanwhile, the FBI was trying to piece together its own interpretation of what had happened. At least five undercover informants had been in the ballroom at the time of the shooting. One of them reported that the first assailant had been a man standing near or at the front row. He “put his left hand in his left pocket of his jacket and removed something. He then extended his arm toward Malcolm X.” According to this informant, Malcolm “said, excitedly, 'Don't do it,’ and stepped further to his left.” This first gunman then fired four or five shots.

  Another informant, Jasper Davis, placed the initial disturbance in the seventh or eighth row back from the stage. Others seated around the two quarreling men also stood up “and added to the confusion.” Only then, reported Davis, did he hear “a shot coming from the front of the room.” A third informant estimated that four to five individuals had been involved in the shooting. Two of the gunmen ran “past him,” and two others ran “out [through] the ballroom.” An FBI memo dated February 22 describes Reuben X Francis as having “shot one of the quote decoys unquote,” which suggests that the FBI believed Hayer was one of the two men involved in the initial altercation, just before the first shot. The same memorandum reports that four other individuals had also been hit. Several hours after the shootings, one informant reported, “trusted members of the MMI met at the Hotel Theresa,” where James 67X “stated that he had never headed an organization but would do all he could to preserve the idea and keep the program alive. He stated that a lesson had been learned by the group in that now they must tighten up the security of both members and leaders, and stated, ‘We are at war.’ ”

  Other important FBI evidence was connected with OAAU member and FBI informant Ronald Timberlake. Several hours after the shooting, Timberlake telephoned the Bureau’s New York office to report that he had picked up one of the murder weapons. He specified that he would turn over the gun only to the FBI, not to the NYPD. The next day, however, February 22, he gave an account of the murder to the NYPD, specifying that he had arrived at the Audubon at approximately 2:10 the previous afternoon, where he had “hung out at the rear of the hall.” When the audience disruption began, Malcolm had instructed the audience to “keep your seats.” Shots were fired at Malcolm from four or five assailants, who then attempted to flee. Timberlake claimed that he had thrown a “body block” at the gunman closest to him. His general description of the man he had attempted to block was detailed: black, six feet in height, wearing a dark gray tweed coat and blue pants. Timberlake had tripped him and both of them had tumbled to the floor. A second assailant, whom Timberlake described as also black, approximately twenty years old and five feet, seven inches tall, wearing a dark brown three-quarter-length jacket, jumped over them and fled down the central stairway and out the main door. Seconds later, as the stairway was clogged with people, Timberlake pulled out his gun but found it impossible to locate the other shooters, or even to exit the front door. He put his handgun back in his pocket and returned to the ballroom to look for his coat. After waiting a few minutes, he simply returned home. Timberlake subsequently identified “Tommy Hagen [Hayer]” as one of the two shooters he had seen.

  The news of Malcolm’s murder was broadcast by the media within minutes, nationally and internationally. At the Nation of Islam Chicago headquarters, Elijah Muhammad was stunned, according to an account provided by a grandson. “Oh my God! . . . Um, um, um!” Muhammad reportedly murmured. The emotional split with his “lost-found” disciple had finally come to a tragic end. “You know, I really want to go home now,” Muhammad told his grandson and other NOI subordinates. It was a wise decision. Undoubtedly, Muhammad’s dedicated security force, the Fruit of Islam, realized that Malcolm’s murder would almost certainly trigger an act of retaliatory violence against their leader. The Chicago office, while protected by a corps of highly trained men, could still be difficult to defend from a frontal assault, but Muhammad’s Hyde Park mansion had been carefully constructed to be virtually impregnable. Several family members and other devoted followers owned residences adjacent to Muhammad’s mansion, and NOI security men routinely prowled the sidewalks surrounding the property. Muhammad and his advisers retreated to his fortress and waited.

  The terrible news of Malcolm’s murder quickly reached Alex Haley at his home in upstate New York. Less than two hours later, his grief was pushed aside by practical concerns. Haley typed a letter to Paul Reynolds, fearing their lucrative deal might now be in jeopardy. “None of us would have had it be this way,” Haley wrote, “but since this book represent’s [sic] Malcolm’s sole financial legacy to his widow and four little daughters . . . I’m just glad that it’s ready for the press now at a peak of interest for what will be international large sales, and paperback, and all.” He also advised Reynolds that Doubleday should be alerted to a potential financial problem: I am almost certain that within the next two or three days Malcolm’s widow, Sister Betty, will contact me asking for some advance money from Doubleday or some other would be possible for her, to tide her through the immediate weeks. She hasn’t a home since last week they moved in the middle of the night, just ahead of the next day’s legal eviction to return the home to the Muslims. And Malcolm, talking with me yesterday, said that he had “two or three hundred dollars ” which would be the total extent of Sister Betty’s funds.

  A few days later, Haley had another thought. Again writing to Reynolds, he suggested, “Maybe some magazine might wish to pay well enough for a probing interview of Elijah Muhammad. I could accomplish this.” Haley proposed something along the lines of his earlier personal interviews with Malcolm and Martin Luther King, Jr., featured in Playboy. Haley assured Reynolds that he would not be at any personal risk from such an assignment. “I know there would be no danger from the Muhammad faction side of the fence; they would want me to do it. They associate me with major publicity done with dignity, which they desperately want.” Some of Malcolm’s friends might “feel nettled that I was in Chicago with Muhammad,” but they could be handled. Get the contract first, Haley advised; he would then “contact Sister Betty and also a couple of Malcolm’s close lieutenants and tell them that I had the order, which is a professional job.” Another benefit for Haley would be to maintain his line of communications with the Nation’s leadership. “It would give me a chance to say to Muhammad some things I’d like to regarding the book—that he isn’t attacked as he might think, that he actually is praised by Malcolm.” Haley insisted that “some other writers might presently have bigger ‘names’ (Baldwin, Lomax, Lincoln) . . . [but] actually I have the very best inside track to the Muslims’ confidence.” Nothing came of these overtures, and Haley
and Reynolds’s fears were fully justified. Within two weeks, in a terribly shortsighted move, Doubleday’s owner, Nelson Doubleday, abruptly canceled the contract.

  On the day of the assassination, NOI enforcer Norman Butler was still out on bail for the Benjamin Brown killing. That morning he’d visited a doctor to obtain treatment for leg injuries, which had come from his violent beating by the police during his recent arrest. Butler had spent most of Sunday watching television at home. When he saw the news reports about Malcolm’s murder, he phoned Mosque No. 7 and finally reached Captain Joseph, who strongly advised him to get himself seen by others as soon as possible—to walk to the corner store and “buy a quart of milk,” to speak to several neighbors in his building, and so on. Butler decided not to follow Joseph’s advice; after all, he had not attended the event at the Audubon. He slumped back in his chair and continued watching television. That decision would cost him two decades of his life.

  Thomas 15X Johnson, like Butler, had not known that Malcolm “was going to get hit that Sunday.” At the time, he lived in a top-floor apartment across from the Bronx Zoo. A neighbor called up to Johnson and yelled, “Turn your TV on . . . Big Red just got hit!” Since the Benjamin Brown shooting and Johnson’s arrest, Captain Joseph had forbidden Johnson from attending Mosque No. 7 functions. For weeks Joseph had met with him privately, giving him orders. Johnson was not at all surprised by Malcolm’s murder: “I already knew—John Ali made it known.” He found himself pleased that Malcolm was finally dead.