On this day, 21 February 1965, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, instrumental speaker and activist of the US civil rights and Black power movements, was assassinated while preparing to address a crowd of supporters in New York.
Formerly a member of the Nation of Islam (NoI), Malcolm X publicly split with the organisation due to issues such as NoI leader Elijah Mohammed failing to approve action to respond to police attacks on Black Muslims in Los Angeles. Instead he founded his own mosque, as well as the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity. Already a target of both the police and FBI, NoI activist Louis Farrakhan also declared Malcolm to be “worthy of death”.
On February 21, Malcolm stepped up to speak at the Audubon ballroom when he was shot. Mujahid Abdul Halim, a NoI member from New Jersey was apprehended fleeing the scene with a clip from one of the murder weapons, and admitted his participation in the killing. However, two other Black Muslims from the Harlem mosque were subsequently arrested and convicted of the crime: Khalil Islam and Muhamad Abdul Abdul Aziz. This was despite a lack of evidence and the fact that they, and Halim, protested their innocence. In an effort to win the freedom for Islam and Aziz, Halim even filed affidavits naming his four co-conspirators – all from the New Jersey mosque. But prosecutors repeatedly refused to reopen the case.
After the case gained new attention following the 2020 release of a Netflix documentary series on the murder, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr agreed to review the case. The review revealed that evidence suggesting Islam and Aziz were innocent had been withheld from the defence, in part following pressure from FBI director J Edgar Hoover. Their convictions were eventually overturned in November 2021.
More info, sources and map on our Stories web app: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9371/assassination-of-malcolm-xhttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2215199071998564/?type=3
not to be all “think of the children” but the fact that companies can openly admit to using methods to intentionally form addictions in children and we’re not killing their ceos in the streets yet is astounding
when I say “kids now don’t know how to disconnect” or “kids don’t know how to be bored anymore” i don’t mean “kids should sit in a white room in a solitary chair eating saltines and never touch technology” i mean “kids are losing the essential ability to imagine and create their own play because they have a constant 24/7 stream of more overstimulating material than they could ever watch at their fingertips, and when this stimulation is removed they literally don’t know what to do with themselves”
when I say “kids are addicted to video games” I don’t mean “ah these darn kids and their dag-blasted Ataris” I mean “video games are being purposefully designed to squeeze as much money/ad engagement out of the individual consumer as possible and mechanisms like lootboxes and season passes are intentionally engineered to create addiction”
i know it’s purely anecdotal but every time i think about that toddler who told his dad “don’t forget to like and subscribe” at bedtime because he thought it was how you said goodbye to people i feel sick
Fox News lies to its viewers. Its most prominent personalities, among the most influential in the industry, tell their viewers things they know not to be true. This is not accusation, allegation, or supposition. Today, we know it to be fact.
