Feb. 22, 1965, front page: Malcolm X is killed

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Malcolm X Killed At New York Rally

Assassin Rises From Audience

NEW YORK, Feb. 21. (AP) ─ Gunfire cut down the Negro extremist Malcolm X as he rose to address a rally Sunday in an upper Manhattan ballroom.

Police charged a 22-year-old Negro, Thomas Hagan, with firing the fatal shots. He was charged with homicide.

Hagan, shot in the leg in the melee that followed the assassination, was held in the prison ward of Bellevue Hospital.

Police Capt. Paul Glaser said Hagan killed Malcolm with a sawed-off double-barrelled shotgun, and was himself wounded by one of Malcolm 's followers, Reuben Francis.

Francis was charged with illegal possession of a pistol.

Police had said at least five men were believed involved in the assassination, after lurking amid the ranks of 500 of Malcolm's disciples at the rally.

Police blamed the slaying on a feud between Malcolm, 39, and the Black Muslim movement, with which he broke in 1963. The Muslims, however, denied any complicity.

A diversion in the rear of the ballroom drew attention from the stage long enough for the assassinations to race down an aisle and pump bullets into Malcolm's chest from three weapons. He had just begun to address his followers, starting, "Brothers and Sisters . . ."

Malcolm's wife, Betty, 37, was nearby. She screamed, "They're killing him ─ they're killing him."

The killers turned around and raced from the second floor ballroom with a mob shouting at their heels, "Kill them ─ don't let them get away."

Outside the hall, quickly converging police grabbed three Negroes, themselves suffering from gunshot wounds. They were hospitalized under guard for questioning.

'I Live Like A Man Who's Already Dead'

By Theodore Jones

© 1965 New York Times News Service

NEW YORK ─ "I live like a man who’s already dead," Malcolm X declared last Thursday in a two-hour interview in the Harlem office of his Organization for Afro-American Unity.

"I'm a marked man," he said slowly as he fingered his horn-rimmed glasses and leaned toward his visitor to give emphasis to his words, "it doesn't frighten me for myself as long as I felt they would not hurt my family."

Asked about "they," Malcolm smiled. Then shaking his head in mock astonishment, he said, "Those folks down at 116th Street and that man in Chicago."

The references, Malcolm quickly confirmed, were his former associates in the Black Muslim movement and Elijah Muhammad, the organizer and head of the movement. Before he left the movement 18 months ago, Malcolm was the minister of the Black Muslims' Harlem Mosque at 116th Street and Lenox Avenue.

"No one can get out without trouble," Malcolm continued, "and this thing with me will be resolved by death and violence."