Government conspiracy led to assassination of Malcolm X, lawsuit claims

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump announced he has filed a $100 million lawsuit against multiple government and law enforcement agencies for an alleged conspiracy that led to the 1965 assassination of civil rights activist and religious leader Malcolm X.

Crump was joined by one of Malcolm X’s daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz, in announcing the news on the family’s behalf on Friday morning at the The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, which now stands at the site where he was assassinated. Crump previously announced his intent to file the suit.

“It is not lost on us that justice has been delayed in this matter, and on this momentous occasion, we stand ready to lay out our complaint very soundly,” Crump said. “The government fingerprints are all over the assassination of Malcolm X. And finally, we believe we have the evidence to prove it.”

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The suit accuses the U.S. government, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA and the New York Police Department of being involved in the events that led to Malcolm X’s assassination and a decadeslong cover-up. It includes claims of excessive use of force against Malcolm X, deliberate creation of danger, failure to protect, denial of access to the courts for Malcolm X’s family, conspiracy, fraudulent concealment and wrongful death.

Malcolm X was 39 when he was shot 21 times by multiple gunmen who opened fire at him during a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York on Feb. 21, 1965. His wife and children were in the crowd at the time.

The announcement comes after Crump said new evidence was unveiled in recent years.

“Over the last three years, every day, every week, every month we have been unearthing new evidence,” Crump said. “Evidence of people never having spoken before about what they witnessed during those turbulent times in the 1960s.”

Of the three men initially convicted for the assassination, two were exonerated in 2021: Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, who spent over two decades in prison, both maintaining their innocence. An investigation found the FBI and New York Police Department withheld potentially exculpatory evidence at trial. The city and state of New York later settled lawsuits on behalf of both men for a combined $36 million. 

Also that year, relatives of former New York police officer Raymond Wood, who had since died, revealed a letter he wrote in 2011 that alleged the New York Police Department and the FBI covered up details of the assassination. Wood wrote that he was coerced into enticing members of Malcolm X’s security team to commit crimes so they could be arrested days before the assassination.

“It was my assignment to draw the two men into a felonious federal crime so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s door security on Feb. 21, 1965,” Wood wrote. “At that time, I was not aware that Malcolm X was the target.”

The suit claims that the government agencies had knowledge of credible threats to Malcolm X’s life and didn’t act to prevent the assassination, according to a news release. The suit claims the FBI coordinated with undercover informants within the Nation of Islam, from which Malcolm X separated before his assassination.

It accuses the agencies of removing security personnel from the ballroom, encouraging the assassination and failing to intervene, later taking steps to conceal their involvement after the assassination.

“(T)hese entities, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, went beyond mere allegedly illegal surveillance of Malcolm X, actively conspiring to reduce his protection and leaving him vulnerable to an attack they knew was imminent,” the release said.

Contributing: N’dea Yancey-Bragg, Marc Ramirez and Grace Hauck, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Government conspiracy led to assassination of Malcolm X, lawsuit claims