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Alex Haley. Malcolm X. New York. 1964.

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In 1929, which he refers to as "the nightmare night," Malcolm  X was awaken by pistol shots, shouting, smoke, and flames. Their house was burning down. The white fireman had just watched as it burned down.
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"Shortly after Yvonne was born came the nightmare night in 1929, my earliest vivid memory." Page 3

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After their father was found dead, possibly by Klan members, his mother eventually had a complete breakdown, and was sent to the State Mental Hospital Kalamazoo, and stayed there for 26 years. This caused Malcolm and his siblings to be sent to foster homes, and they separated. Which led to Malcolm living a dangerous lifestyle.

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After dropping out of highschool, he was in a relationship with a white women, Laura. She would give him money. Him being with someone like her, (a "Hill" girl) elevated his status among other African American men.

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After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Malcolm X got a railroad job which he was fired from, which led him to work at a well known nightclub in Harlem. He began to fall into the trap of Harlem's nightlife. He got into criminal work and became a hustler. Engaging in things such as gambling, drug selling, robbing.

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The life of being a criminal eventually came to an end when he was arrested by the police in 1946 due to burglary. It was hard on him because he suddenly couldn't take drugs anymore. This is a very important moment which led up to who he became later in his life, after his religious conversion in prison.
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"I had put a stolen watch into a jewelry shop to replace a broken crystal...two days later, when i went to pick up the watch, that things fell apart" Page 151

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He met the first person in prison to make a positive impression on him, "Bimbi," in 1947. He told him that he had some brains, and should use it and use the library and prison correspondence courses. Malcom listened and soon was able to write a letter and expanded his knowledge more.
"Bimbi told me flatly, as was his way, that I had some brains, if I'd use them." Page 157

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To officials in the Massachusetts Department of Correction, he was prisoner #22138 - a tall, slender "light Mulatto," whose personality was described by his prison caseworker as "intelligent, studious ... influential among other colored inmates."

To society, he was a career criminal - a man with a lengthy arrest record that extended coast-to-coast. Some charges were legit (breaking and entering); others (loitering, vagrancy) likely the result of him simply being a black man in America.

To Malcolm X, he was Bimbi - a man whose influence played a significant role in altering the life path of the famed Muslim minister and human rights activist. As Malcolm X wrote in his autobiography, Bimbi was "the first man I had ever seen command total respect ... with his words."

To me, he was blood. My father's oldest brother, John Elton Bembry. Uncle Elton.

Although I spent less than 10 times with him in my life, Uncle Elton remains the most brilliant man I've ever encountered. My personal connection with him came up during a discussion of Black History Month at The Undefeated. I wanted to write about him in connection with the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X on Feb. 21. After the staff meeting, I contacted the Massachusetts Department of Correction and placed a public records request for his file. Three days later, I received a response: " Good Afternoon Jerry, Please see attached."

I'll be honest, that email gave me chills. I clicked on the attachment labeled "Bembry record," and what materialized was a PDF file that was 89 pages long. For the next few hours, I dove in. That began my first real introduction to the man and the world from which he emerged.

Edenton, North Carolina, is a picturesque town of just over 5,000 people that sits on the north side of the Albemarle Sound, about a 90-minute drive west of the more popular Outer Banks. It feels like entering a time warp when you travel through the streets of Edenton's historic district, an eclectic collection of colonial and plantation-era homes, a charm that earned the town one of the 11 spots on Forbes magazine's list of the prettiest towns in America. Strip the area of the modern cars, and I would imagine Edenton's historic district looking similar to the way it did in 1912, the year Uncle Elton was born to Joseph and Eva Bembry - my grandparents.

Uncle Elton (I always referred to him by his middle name; to some of my cousins he was Uncle Johnny) was the first of seven children raised in what he described to prison officials as a loving, stable household not far from the waterfront and less than two blocks from the Lane House, a 1719 structure on East Queen Street that's believed to be the oldest surviving home in the state. Joseph Bembry was a barber in a town where - even in a segregated Southern state - there's evidence of a few success stories among black people: the most notable being Josephine Napoleon Leary, a barber (along with her husband), who was freed from slavery at the end of the Civil War and purchased six properties in town by the time she was 25. By 2014 calculations, that would have put her economic wealth at $2.3 million.

The property she built on Broad Street in 1896 (the original structure she purchased in 1875 was destroyed by a fire) still bears her name and sits just over a block away from a monument to Confederate soldiers that was constructed in 1900.

It's quite possible that a string of tragic family events altered Uncle Elton's life. His father died in 1924 of a kidney disorder at the age of 30, just one month before the last of his seven kids was born. His grandmother, Bettie Bembry, died a year later of heart disease. She was just 51.

His mother, Eva, remarried in 1928. By 1930, she and her husband had moved to New York, where she worked as a domestic. But Eva died in 1933 at the age of 39.

By that time, the family was scattered throughout New York. Uncle Elton's two youngest brothers (my uncles Dave and Clinton) were shipped to an upstate New York orphanage where they were eventually "retrieved" by my father, Joseph, and his brother, Charles.

There was more tragedy in 1935: The youngest girl of the seven siblings, Mary Bembry, died on Valentine's Day at the age of 13.

Within months of his sister's burial in the same plot as their parents back in Edenton, Uncle Elton was officially introduced into America's criminal justice system.

The Great Depression, which began with the stock market crash in 1929 and lasted a decade, left a nation devastated. None in America suffered more than black people.

That's the era Uncle Elton was raised, a time where the economic downturn eliminated the lower-paying jobs (in his case, losing his job as a waiter and porter at a tourist cottage in Virginia Beach in 1929) that most black people were stuck working.

Uncle Elton went into survival mode. He followed the family to New York, where he worked odd jobs at a barbershop and at a shoe repair shop in lower Manhattan as a bootblack (he shined shoes). In 1933, he began a long stretch of unemployment, making occasional money in card games in New York.

His criminal history began in August 1935, when he was arrested for vagrancy in New Rochelle, New York. He was loitering in a business district during the early morning hours, which earned him a suspended sentence and an order to leave the city.

With no job, no home and a scattered family, Uncle Elton began a journey to the West Coast, an eight-year stretch where he picked up a few odd jobs along the way, as well as earning an FBI file number while being arrested 13 times in 11 different states.

The first offense that earned him serious time behind bars came in 1937 when he was charged with two counts of grand theft after snatching two purses near the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. That resulted in a prison sentence of between one to 10 years in San Quentin. (He served just over three years before his release on May 26, 1940).

When I discovered his processing photo taken as he entered what's long been one of America's most notorious prisons at the age of 25, I studied it for a good 10 minutes. I had never seen a picture of him as a young man.

His 1937 arrest in California earned him his longest possible sentence.

His 1943 arrest in West Springfield, Massachusetts, earned him historical and cultural significance.

On the night of Feb. 18, 1943, a housekeeper in West Springfield called police to report a break-in. Uncle Elton was picked up in the neighborhood by officers who responded. The next day, according to the documents, he admitted to ringing the front door of the home and, when no one responded, entering the house through a side window. He initially denied the theft, according to files, but later admitted to stealing jewelry that included two gold wedding rings, two watches and cash. Also in his possession when he was arrested: six tickets for pawn shops in New York.

Elton was committed to the Massachusetts State Prison on May 12, 1943 (his sentence was 5-7 years), and worked as a license plate laborer. A tall, skinny man (he was 5-feet, 11 inches and weighed 165 pounds when he entered prison), Elton stood out for his light-complected face that was filled with freckles. He did his work with pride and always received high praise. These are comments from several prison reports:

"Reads biographies and good fiction.""Devotes a fair share of his spare time studying English and other kindred subjects ... always uses his spare time constructively.""A studious chap, well-meaning, polite but a little too sure of himself in his assertions.""Very good worker, proficient and intelligent."

That intelligence earned Elton a transfer to the state prison colony Norfolk, a medium security prison community for model prisoners that was launched in 1927 by Harvard professor Howard Belding Gill, whose intent with the facility was to rehabilitate motivated inmates in an environment that was more college campus than institution. Inmates were often taught by college professors representing some of the esteemed universities in the Boston area, including Harvard.

Elton took classes while at Norfolk, earning a certificate after completing a correspondence course in Elementary English and Rhetoric, and followed that by taking Vocabulary Building, Part 1. He worked in the tailor shop there, pitched on the unit's baseball team, served on the inmate council and regularly attended religious services. He was a member, according to documents, of the prison's esteemed debate team, and during the period between 1933 and 1966 when the inmates had a record of 144-8 while competing against schools that included Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

For Elton, Norfolk represented a best-case scenario behind bars. It gave him the ability to gain recognition for his intellect, something that was denied him outside of the prison walls.

The status and privileges he enjoyed at Norfolk ended on April 15, 1946, when 20 inmates - including Elton - refused to work, telling guards, "No food, no work." As the prison superintendent was called to the scene, a guard read off each of the prisoners' names and asked if they wished to work. Five inmates said yes and reported to their work stations. Several verbally stated they would not work. Elton was among a group who remained silent.

A guard who prepared a report of the incident wrote about Elton and what he perceived to be his reluctant participation: "This man could be sucked in on this. ... He was in a tough spot. ... Is not a bad inmate but is in this group and will have to be punished with him."

Elton was deemed unfit for open type institution and sent back to the state prison in Charlestown.

By the time he arrived back to the maximum security facility, Malcolm Little was already there, having arrived in February 1946 after being sentenced to 10 years in prison for breaking and entering, and larceny.

Uncle Elton would often express to his family his fondness for the man who Malcolm X became, but rarely spoke of the time they served together aside from a letter to my cousin, Clinton, in which he said he introduced the future Muslim leader to the work of Henry David Thoreau.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X says the two met while stamping license plates: my uncle, who was 13 years older, ran the machine that stamped out the numbers, while Malcolm X "worked along the conveyor belt where the numbers were painted."

Malcolm X, in his autobiography, described the prison workers gathering after reaching their license plate quota:

"We would sit around, perhaps 15 of us, and listen to Bimbi. Normally, white prisoners wouldn't think of listening to Negro prisoners' opinions on anything, but guards, even, would wander over to hear Bimbi on any subject. ... I wasn't the first inmate who had never heard of Thoreau until Bimbi expounded upon him. Bimbi was the library's best customer."Out of the blue one day, Bimbi told me flatly, as was his way, that I had some brains, if I'd use them. ... I might have cursed another convict, but nobody cursed Bimbi."

While Uncle Elton's influence on Malcolm X has been well-documented, there was only one historian who appears to have actually spoken to him about their relationship. That was Bruce Perry, who interviewed more than 400 people over a span of 20 years during research for his 1991 book Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America.

Perry noted in his book that Malcolm X borrowed my uncle's dictionary so many times - so thirsty to expand his vocabulary - that my uncle eventually gave it to him. Malcolm X began tailing my uncle, and as Perry wrote, "plied him with questions about everything under the sun." At one point Malcolm X, according to Perry, told my uncle:

"When I get out of this place I'm going to be a bad n--, but I'm going to be...a smart bad n--."

Jed Tucker, the director of Reentry and Alumni Affairs at Bard who has been conducting research on Malcolm X's prison years, describes my uncle as "one of several unsung heroes of the story of Malcolm X." Tucker mentioned Elton several times in his 2017 research paper: Malcolm X, The Prison Years: The Relentless Pursuit of Formal Education.

"Your uncle plays a key role in the popular story of Malcolm already," he wrote in an email to me and my cousin, "though I fear it is more caricature than the in-depth treatment he deserves."

On March 31, 1948, Malcolm X was transferred from Charlestown to the Norfolk facility where he, too, was a member of the debate team that likely helped him shape his skills as a great orator. Malcolm X, who converted to Islam while in prison, was released in 1952.

Malcolm X walked away from his life of crime.

Seven months after Malcolm X was transferred to Norfolk, my uncle was discharged from prison where, in the five years he served there, he never had a visitor. He returned to New York and entered a world of illegal activity - his brothers, including my father, ran the numbers, and a sister-in-law would later operate a network of brothels.

His life of crime, according to documents, continued.

He was arrested at least two more times after his 1948 release and was never able to get his life on track.

While living in Brooklyn in 2005, I came across an article announcing an exhibit at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem: Malcolm X: A Search for the Truth. My interest in the exhibit was two-fold: to see the never-before-seen items that made up the 250-item exhibit, and to see if there was any acknowledgment of my uncle.

Halfway through the exhibit, the answer to my second question emerged on a text on the southern wall:

"The 'Detroit Red' who entered prison in February 1946 gained a place for himself there as the angry, irreligious 'Satan,' as Malcolm X describes him in the Autobiography. But an older prisoner, John Elton Bembry, recognized Malcolm's intelligence and encouraged him to read."

Reading that made me swell with pride. I felt like screaming, "That's my uncle!" to the dozens of people who were experiencing the exhibit.

In reality, Elton was the uncle that I barely knew. The Bembry brothers from Edenton were loosely connected in New York, spending much of their time together at the racetracks or off-track betting parlors.

Uncle Elton briefly stayed with my cousin, Clinton, who lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side. My cousin recalls the time they spent together. "I used to go to the pool hall and watch my father and Uncle Johnny run the table," said Clinton, whose family had an interesting dynamic: His father, Clinton, was a big-time numbers runner in Harlem while his mother, an immigrant from Russia, operated brothels throughout the city. "He moved in with us in 1971, and Johnny helped raise me."

Uncle Elton would take my cousins who lived in New Jersey - Charles, Clinton, Ronnie and Timothy - on excursions into the city, a hand-off from their dad, Charles (aka Uncle Specky) when he came to New York to check on the numbers operation run by the Bembry brothers. "I remember my father dropping us off and [Elton] would take us to the matinee show at the Apollo and leave us there," my cousin, Charles, told me. "My dad saw Uncle Elton in Harlem and said, 'Where the kids at?' That made my father mad."

My time with Uncle Elton was scarce. My parents separated when I was 6, so the time I spent with my father - and his family - depended on whether he won money at racetrack. He didn't win enough.

Occasionally I would see Uncle Elton at family birthday parties in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Asking him about Malcolm X never crossed my mind, for this reason: One of my earliest childhood memories is the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. I have no recollection of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X (I was 3), and zero knowledge of who the Muslim leader was and his connection to my family.

I'd see him and speak to him, briefly, at funerals. He wrote the obituary when my father died in 1979. Spoke to him briefly at my dad's funeral. The few real, extensive conversations I had with Elton came in 1989, the final year of his life. My sister, Mary, and I visited him in the hospital in Harlem, where he was terminally ill with cancer. I vividly remember him sitting up in his hospital bed and discussing a wide range of topics with an incredible intellect that helped me understand why everyone who stepped into his orbit - including Malcolm X - was so impressed.

I promised myself that day that I would visit him more often. But the next time I saw him was months later at my cousin's wedding. His health had deteriorated. Within a matter of months, Uncle Elton was dead.

He had no wife and no kids that I know of. Few in our family attended his memorial service.

I wish he had more time.

I wish we had more time.

The search to discover Uncle Elton has been therapeutic. In a matter of months, I visited the hometown where my family grew up, found the graves of my grandparents, aunt and great grandmother who died decades before I was born, and walked the same streets that my father and his siblings inhabited in the early years of their lives.

Exploring Edenton made me wonder how different Uncle Elton's life would have been had he grown up in a time when he had a real shot at being successful.

To many, looking at his long rap sheet, he'll be viewed as a thug who wasted his talents.

To me, while I have long appreciated the man who had a huge impact on one of the most iconic figures in this nation, I now have a better understanding of the challenges in his life, the decisions he was forced to make and the lives he was able to impact.

Including the life of Malcolm X who, with a little guidance, emerged as one of the most influential leaders in American history.

Jerry Bembry is a senior writer at Andscape. His bucket list items include being serenaded by Lizz Wright and watching the Knicks play a MEANINGFUL NBA game in June.

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The untold story of the inmate who helped shape Malcolm X's future

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To officials in the Massachusetts Department of Correction, he was prisoner #22138 - a tall, slender "light Mulatto," whose personality was described by his pri...

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1948, he got a letter from his brother Philbert about how --"he had discovered the natural religion for the black man" (page 158). -- And how he is apart of the Nation of Islam now and told Malcolm to pray to Allah. He had multiple letters from other family members too, but only listened until Reginald sent him a letter saying he can get out of prision if he quit cigarettes and eating pork. This letter transformed his life completely.

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He first started to stop smoking, and hasn't ever since 1948. When pork was served for the noon meal, Malcolm said "I don't eat pork." He felt proud after that. This came as a shock to the other prisoners.

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It all began with Malcolm sending a letter to Elijah Muhammad.  He was welcomed by the "Messenger" and was told how black men were thrown into life of crime due to white society.

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Malcolm X was released from jail and moved in with his brother in Detroit. Malcolm X had met Elijah Muhammad in the year 1952. This led to him being invovled in the Nation of Islam and he began organizing temples for the Nation of Islam.

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"Hilda said that The Honorable Elijah Muhammad came to Detroit.."  Page 167

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Malcolm X chooses to reject the last name "Little" which is his family last name given by white opressors. This small decison empowered him and made him known as "Malcolm X."

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"For me, my "X" replaced the white slavemaster name of "Little" which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears." Page 203

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He began preaching his beliefs to Harvard and Oxford students. He had challenged Martin Luther King's beliefs, he believes there are more crutical things than being able to sit in a restaurant and eat. Instead he called for black power, black self-defense and black economic autonomy, and also racial pride.

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Malcolm X spoke to the students on January 1963 about how East Lansing harassed his family out of town and how he had a reunion with his brother Robert after a long time.

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Malcolm X Speaks At Michigan State University

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Malcolm X founded a Black nationalist organization referred to as The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in the year of 1964.

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Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad had disagreements about the direction of the Nation and Malcolm damaged the Nation's image after John F Kennedy's assassination in 1963. He had said "chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad." Page 362. He was silenced for 90 days by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and moved on.

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Malcolm held a press conference about his new organization, "Muslim Mosque Inc." Despite the title, his intention was to have all black people of different faiths to be apart of it. But before doing so, Malcolm believed he needed to make a pilgrimage to Mecca to reaffirm his spiritual beliefs.

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Malcolm X Establishes Muslim Mosque Inc.

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Malcolm decided to make a pilgrimage to Mecca after being told by many students visiting the United States in colleges he spoke at that he should visit Mecca. He was told that if he would make him exposed to true Islam and he would understand it and embrace it. He listened when Wallace Muhammad told him that "yes, certainly, a Muslim should seek to learn all that he could about Islam." Page 325.

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He met pilgrims of all different kinds of races and saw the brotherhood between them. The trip to Mecca changed his attitude on race and began his ideas to change. He wrote a letter describing his thoughts after his trip to Mecca.

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"But on this pilgrimage what I have seen and experienced has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought patterns previously held." Page 347

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Moments In Time | Welcome to my website!

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Mecca, Saudi Arabia - April 26th, 1964

I have just completed my pilgrimage (Hajj) here to the Holy City of Mecca, the hollyiest City on earth, which is absolutely forbidden for non-Muslims to even rest their eyes upon. This pilgrimage is the most important event in the life of all Muslims, and there are over 226,000 who are here right now from outside of Arabia. From Turkey came the largest contagion, around 50,000 in over 600 buses. This refutes Westerner propaganda that Turkey is turning away from Islam.

I know of only 2 others who have made the actual Hajj to Mecca from America, and both of them are West Indians who also converts to Islam. Mr. Elijah Muhammad, 2 of his sons, and a couple of his followers visited Mecca outside the Hajj season, and their visit is known as the "Omra", or Lesser Pilgrimage. It is con-

(Page 2) -sidered a blessing in the Muslim World even to make the "Omra". I very much doubt that 10 American citizens have ever visited Mecca, and I do believe that I might be the first American born Negro to make the actual Hajj itself. I'm not saying this to boast but only to point out what a wonderful accomplishment and blessing it is, and also to enable you to be in a better position intellectually to evaluate it in its proper light, and then your own intelligence can place it in its proper place.

This pilgrimage to the Holliest of Cities as been a unique experience for me, but one which as made me the recipient of numerous unexpected blessings beyond my wildest dreams.

Shortly after my arrival in Jeddah, I was met by Prince Muhammed Faisal who informed me that his illustrious father, his Excellency Crowned Prince Faisal had decret that I be that I The ruler of Arabia be his Guest. What has happened since then would take several books to described, but through the ***** of his Excellency I have since stayed in ***** hotels in Jeddah, Mecca, Mina - with a private car, a driver, a religious guide, and many servants at my disposal.

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Never have I been so highly honored and never had such honor and respect made me feel more humble and unworthy. Who would believe that such blessing could be heaped upon an American Negro!!! (But) in the Muslim World, when one accepts Islam and ceases to be white or Negro, Islam recognizes all men as Men because the people here in Arabia believe that God is One, they believe that all people are also One, and that all our brothers and sisters is One Human Family.

I have never before witnessed such sincere hospitality and the practice of true brotherhood as I have seen it here in Arabia. In fact all I have seen and experienced on this pilgrimage as forced me to "re-arrange" much of thoughts pattern and to toss aside some

(Page 4)
of my previous conclusions. This "adjustment to reality" wasn't to difficult for me to undergo, because despite my firm conviction in whatever I believe, I have always tried to keep an open mind, which is absolutely necessary to reflect the flexibility that must go hand in hand with anyone with intelligent quest for truth never comes to an end.

There are Muslims here of all colors and from every part of this earth. During the past days here in Mecca (Jeddah, Mina, and Mustaliph) while understanding the rituals of the Hajj, I have eaten. From the same plate, drank from the same glass and slept on the same bed or rug - with Kings, potentates and other forms of rulers - ******* with fellow Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes was the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blond - I could look into their blue eyes and see that they regarded me as the same (Brothers), because their faith in One God (Allah) had actually removed "white" from their mind, which automatically changed their attitude and their behavior (towards) people of other colors. Their beliefs in the Oneness as made them so different from American whites that their colors played no part in my mind in my dealing with them. Their sincere

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To One God and their acceptance of all people as equals makes them (so called "Whites") also accepted as equals into the brotherhood of Islam along with the non-whites.

If white Americans could accept the religion of Islam, if they could accept the Oneness of God (Allah) they too could then sincerely accept the Oneness of Men, and cease to measure others always in terms of their "difference in color". And with racism now plaguing in America like an incurable cancer all thinking Americans should be more respective to Islam as an already proven solution to the race problem.

The American Negro could never be blamed for his racial "animosities" because his are only reaction or defense mechanism which is subconscious intelligence has forced him to react

(Page 6)
against the conscious racism practiced (initiated against Negroes in America) by American Whites. But as America's insane obsession with racism leads her up the suicidal path, nearer to the precipice that leads to the bottomless pits below, I do believe that Whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, through their own young, less hampered intellects will see the "Handwriting on the Wall" and turn for spiritual salvation to the religion of Islam, and force the older generation to turn with them-

This is the only way white America can worn off the inevitable disaster that racism always leads to, and Hitler's Nazi Germany was best proof of this.

Now that have visited Mecca and gotten my own personal spiritual path adjusted to where I can better understand the depth of my religion (Islam), I shall be living in a couple days to continue my journey into our African Fatherland. Allah willing, by May 20th before my return to New York, I shall have visited Sudan, Kenya, Tanguanyika, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Ghana, and Algeria.
You may use this letter in anyway you desire,

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbazz
(Malcolm X)

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THE MOST REMARKABLE REVELATORY LETTER EVER WRITTEN BY MALCOLM X | Moments In Time

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Mecca, Saudi Arabia - April 26th, 1964 I have just completed my pilgrimage (Hajj) here to the Holy City of Mecca, the hollyiest City on earth, which is absolutely forbidden for non-Muslims to even rest their eyes upon. This pilgrimage...

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Malcolm has article after article written about him casting him as a "symbol of the revolt and violence of the American black man." Page 367. During the press conference in 1964 he expressed how when white youth were killing victims it was seen as a sociological problem, but when a black youth did, "the power structure was looking to hang somebody." Page 368.  He also had a speech regarding his "Letter From Mecca"

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After Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and tensions began to worsen. This led to death threats and he faced violence. Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights was where he was killed while he was delivering a lecture. 3 members from the Nation of Islam were suspected and arrested.

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Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, was gunned down by three men while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York City on February 21, 1964. He was 39.