[ Source: BBC News ]

US black nationalist leader Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965, at the age of 39. The BBC reported on the reaction in his adopted home of Harlem, New York, as thousands of people queued to pay their last respects.

At a time when black civil rights leaders were preaching peaceful integration, Malcolm X’s uncompromising vision of black separatism inspired many people, while terrifying others.

He was murdered in February 1965, and a reporter for the BBC’s Panorama, Michael Charlton, stated at his funeral that he “spoke a vengeful message, as forthright and chilled as the winter morning they buried him”.

Amid tight security, the many thousands of people who had filed past his body were searched by police as a precaution against bombings.

“To these people, he preached that if the white man didn’t answer for the black man’s frustration, he must answer for his fury,” added Charlton.

He was internationally famous for his incendiary rhetoric, yet he had been developing a new, more moderate worldview. Asked what the death of Malcolm X meant to him by Panorama, one clearly upset man who was in the queue said: “It’s a blow to every black person in the United States of America.”

A young man described him as a hero, saying: “He stood out among all black people. He showed the white man where it was at.” This interviewee was one of several people who feared that more violence would follow.

“Whoever did it, Muslims or whoever did it, there’s going to be a whole lot of hurt,” he predicted. One young woman said: “I don’t believe it.”

Why would they kill another black man?” Another woman had no doubt who was responsible: “The white power structure in America is behind it.”

They quickly capitalised on it by saying that one of his own kind did it, but they put it up to be done.

“They know they had more to gain by getting Malcolm X out of the way than they had to let him live.”

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