Ahead of the 60th anniversary of Pan-Africanist Malcolm X’s assassination, Dr Ilyasah Shabazz, his third daughter, said at a New York City press conference on 15 November that the family had filed a $100 million lawsuit against the US government.
Speaking at the Malcolm X & Dr Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in Manhattan, previously the Audubon Ballroom where her father was shot on 21 February 1965, @ilyasahshabazz (X) said they have engaged legal experts to seek justice and ensure ‘the truth will be recorded in history.’
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump will lead the lawsuit. The five sisters want answers and accountability from the New York Police Department (NYPD), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for what they allege was a conspiracy to assassinate Malcolm X (1925-65).
Disclosures from a documentary series, ‘Who Killed Malcolm X?’ (2020), and the 2021 exonerations of two men jailed for allegedly shooting Malcolm X—Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam—revived public interest in the unresolved assassination. A New York judge dismissed their convictions following a re-investigation, with the city of New York agreeing to pay the men $26 million and the state settling on $10 million.
Malcolm X founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity to bring together the African diaspora in the Americas in the struggle for liberation. He traveled to numerous countries to promote African liberation, attempting to internationalise a human-rights case on behalf of Black people suffering in the US to be brought before the United Nations.
Video credit: @attorneycrump (IG)
SOURCES:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/nyregion/malcolm-x-killing-exonerated.html
https://www.si.edu/object/malcolm-xs-daughters%3Anmaahc_2021.33.4
https://abcnews.go.com/US/malcolm-xs-family-files-100-million-wrongful-death/story?id=115894702
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/national/unpublished-black-history/malcolm-xs-home-firebombed-in-queens-1965-racism
Justice Delayed, Justice Pursued: Malcolm X’s Daughters Demand Accountability
https://www.passblue.com/2020/06/16/the-human-rights-council-confronts-racism-in-the-usa