By BlackmansStreetToday
Three daughters of Malcolm X have charged the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), FBI, the New York Police Department, and others in a $100 million lawsuit Friday of playing roles in the 1965 assassination of their father, claiming his murder was prompted by then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
In the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, the daughters — along with the Malcolm X estate — claimed that the agencies were aware of and were involved in the assassination plot and failed to stop the killing.
Attorney Ben Crump stood with family members as he described the lawsuit, saying he hoped federal and city officials would read it “and learn all the dastardly deeds that were done by their predecessors and try to right these historic wrongs.”
Ilyasah Shabazz, the third oldest daughter of Malcolm X, filed a lawsuit against the US Government and NYPD for the wrongful death of her father and the alleged cover-up of his murder. Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz died on June 23, 1997.
Malcolm X’s other daughters are Qubilah Shabazz, Attallah Shabazz, Gamilah Lumumba Shabazz, Malaak Shabazz, and Malikah Shabazz.
The law enforcement agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, which was also sued, declined comment.
That same year, a letter written by a former NYPD officer alleged that the NYPD and FBI covered up details of the assassination.
The officer, Raymond Wood, wrote that he was ordered to coerce members of Malcolm X’s security team to commit felonious federal crimes “so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from managing Malcolm X’s door security on Feb. 21, 1965.”
The lawsuit alleges that under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, the entities “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.”
For decades, more questions than answers have arisen over who was to blame for the death of Malcolm X, who was 39 years old when he was slain on Feb. 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom on West 165th Street in Manhattan as he spoke to several hundred people during a speech.
Just before Malcolm X was assassinated, a man in the crowd yelled “Get your hands out of my pocket,” which served as a signal to the assassins to begin firing their guns. Three men were arrested and convicted for the murder of Malcolm X in 1966: Muhammad Abdul Aziz, Khalil Islam, and Mujahid Abdul Halim
However, two of the men, Aziz and Islam, were exonerated in 2021 after a reinvestigation of the case. Muhammad Abdul Aziz spent 20 years in prison. Khalil Islam spent 22 years in prison and died in 2009.
The third man, Abdul Halim, admitted to shooting Malcolm X but said the other two men were innocent. He was released from prison in 2010.
The city and state of New York paid Aziz and Islam a reported $36 million in compensation.
Malcolm X’s family charged that the CIA, FBI, and NYPD suppressed information about the assassination.
The family’s lawsuit claims that there was a “corrupt, unlawful, and unconstitutional” relationship between law enforcement and the killers. They also charged that police and other agencies withheld information concerning the murder.
Malcolm X’s birth name was Malcolm Little. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Rev. Earl Little, was an organizer for Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association.
Rev. Little was murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Malcolm Little grew up in foster homes after his father’s murder and his mother was relegated to a psychiatric hospital.
He committed various crimes, being sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and burglary.
In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, adopting the name Malcolm X to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while discarding “the white slavemaster name of ‘Little,’ and after his parole in 1952, he quickly became one of the organization’s most influential leaders.
He was the public face of the organization for 12 years, advocating Black empowerment and separation of Black and White Americans, criticizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the mainstream civil rights organizations for their emphasis on non-violence and racial integration. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King met once. Malcolm X became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and resigned from the organization.
At the time of his death, Malcolm X was trying to develop a new organization Pan-African Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).