The Assassination of Malcolm X
Who was Malcolm X?
Who were the two men wrongly convicted for Malcolm X’s assassination?
What led to the exoneration of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam?
Malcolm X, the fiery and controversial American Muslim leader, was shot and killed on February 21, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. More than 50 years after his death, two of the three men convicted in his assassination were exonerated. The enduring debate about who fired the fatal shots—and perhaps more importantly, who orchestrated the killing—make the question “Who killed Malcolm X?” one that continues to intrigue historians, lawyers, and activists.
Wrongfully accused: Read about other times when we got it all wrong
Who was Malcolm X, and why was he killed?
Forsaking family names and adopting X as a surname is customary among many Nation of Islam followers, who consider their family names to be linked to white slaveholders.
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Nebraska in 1925 and spent his childhood in Michigan. He was involved in petty crimes as a teenager and became a drug dealer and leader of a gang of thieves in New York City. He spent six years in prison from 1946 to 1952 for robbery. During that time he converted to the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with Black nationalism. He read voraciously, studied debate, and quit smoking, gambling, and eating pork. He also adopted the name Malcolm X.
Released from prison in 1952, Malcolm X met Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and rose quickly and steadily through the organization’s ranks. A charismatic speaker, Malcolm X was Muhammad’s heir apparent by 1961, and he made frequent appearances on college campuses and television debates. But his preaching of Black supremacy stirred concern in both the white community and the civil rights movement. He called the March on Washington—during which Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech—a “farce.” And as Malcolm X’s profile grew, his relationship with Muhammad began to cool. In the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when Malcolm X said that the killing of the president was a case of “chickens coming home to roost,” Muhammad ordered him to not speak publicly for three months. The schism between Muhammad and Malcolm X was never repaired; Malcolm X was suspended from the Nation of Islam, spoke publicly against Muhammad, and endured death threats. On February 14, 1965, the home he shared with his wife and four young daughters was firebombed. Malcolm X charged that the bombing was done “upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad.”
The assassination
On the afternoon of February 21, 1965, Malcolm X stood on the stage of the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. He had just begun addressing the crowd of 400 when shots from multiple gunmen rang out. He was pronounced dead shortly after at a local hospital. A New York Times account of the assassination published the next day disclosed that a lead police investigator told reporters less than two hours after the death that “this is the result, it would seem, of a long-standing feud between the followers of Elijah Muhammad and the people who broke away from him, headed by Malcolm X.”
One gunman, Talmadge Hayer, a member of the New Jersey temple of the Nation of Islam, was shot in the leg and arrested at the Audubon Ballroom. In the coming weeks, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were also arrested and charged in the assassination. All three were members of the Nation of Islam. Over time Talmadge Hayer would change his name to Mujahid Abdul Halim, Norman 3X Butler would become known as Muhammad Aziz, and Thomas 15X Johnson would be called Khalil Islam.
Rush to judgment?
Halim, Aziz, and Islam stood trial in 1966. Aziz and Islam had maintained their innocence since their arrests. At trial prosecutors painted Islam, who had at one time been a driver for Malcolm X, as the one who fired the initial, and fatal, shotgun blast. Halim and Aziz, according to prosecutors, had quickly followed suit, shooting Malcolm X with pistols. Ten witnesses testified that they had seen Aziz, Islam, or both at the Audubon Ballroom that day. But, as is often the case amid the chaos of a violent act, the eyewitness statements sometimes contradicted each other. Both Aziz and Islam had alibis, with multiple witnesses corroborating their stories that they were at home at the time of the shooting.
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The defense also had a witness who described the shooter with the shotgun as bearded, stocky, and dark-skinned. Islam, whom the prosecution identified as that shooter, did not match the description. On February 28, 1966, Halim took the stand and confessed to killing Malcolm X; he also testified that his codefendants were innocent. On March 11, 1966, a jury found all three men guilty in the murder of Malcolm X, and a month later they were sentenced to life in prison.
Exoneration and lingering questions
In 1977 Halim reiterated that Aziz and Islam had no part in the assassination and named four coconspirators. In June 1985, more than 19 years after his conviction, Aziz was granted parole. Two years later, in 1987, Islam also won parole. Halim was freed on parole in 2010, 45 years after the assassination. Yet questions continued to linger about Aziz and Islam’s guilt. It wasn’t until the 21st century, when a book and a TV series surfaced new evidence, that a serious reinvestigation into the handling of the case was launched.
Columbia University historian Manning Marable’s 2011 biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention asserted that all the shooters were from a New Jersey mosque. The book connected William X, the identity of one of the coconspirators Halim had named in 1977, with police records of a dark-skinned, stocky, bearded New Jersey man named William Bradley. Bradley, who was also known as Al-Mustafa Shabazz, denied involvement. The book won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for history, but the Justice Department refused to reopen the case. In February 2020 Netflix aired a six-party documentary titled Who Killed Malcolm X?. It prominently featured Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, who had worked with Marable on his book. The documentary made the case, again, that Aziz and Islam were innocent, asserted Bradley’s guilt, and named other coconspirators. By the time the series had finished airing, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., said that he would reopen the investigation.
Nearly two years later, in November 2021, Vance announced the staggering findings of his investigation, which was conducted with the Innocence Project.
- FBI documents indicated the guilt of other suspects and the innocence of Aziz and Islam. Documents also revealed that some of the witnesses were FBI informants—information kept from New York police.
- The FBI withheld information indicating that Bradley was a suspect.
- A threat against Malcolm X’s life had been called in to the New York Daily News the morning of the assassination.
- The testimony to prosecutors of a witness who supported Aziz’s alibi was withheld from the defense.
- The presence of undercover federal agents serving as bodyguards to Malcolm X on the day of the shooting had not been disclosed.
The investigation did not, however, name any individuals beyond Halim as the shooters, nor did it explore who ordered the assassination—a key point for many historians. It also did not find evidence of a government conspiracy to kill Malcolm X. The investigation was significantly hampered by lost or destroyed evidence and the deaths of key witnesses, police officials, and prosecutors. In the end, Vance’s team concluded that if the evidence they discovered had been presented to a jury, Aziz and Islam would probably not have been convicted. Vance said:
This points to the truth that law enforcement over history has often failed to live up to its responsibilities. These men did not get the justice that they deserved.
The news came too late for Islam, who died in 2009. Bradley would never be charged or face trial—he died in 2018. The other suspected coconspirators were also dead. When Halim, then 80, learned of the investigation’s finding about the two men he had said all along were innocent, he told a New York Times reporter, “God bless you. They’re exonerated.” Aziz stood in court for the bittersweet moment of exoneration, saying:
While I do not need this court, these prosecutors, or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent, I am very glad that my family, my friends, and the attorneys who have worked and supported me all of these years are finally seeing the truth that we have all known officially recognized.
