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He arrived back in New York on February 15, and spent part of the day checking on damage to the house and conducting interviews. The OAAU had planned to unveil its program that evening, but the firebombing had changed the agenda, bringing out a large crowd of seven hundred to hear what Malcolm had to say about it. Benjamin 2X opened up the evening meeting with a short talk. Malcolm’s speech, “There’s a Worldwide Revolution Going On,” was not his final public lecture, but it was certainly the most significant of those he gave in the last two weeks of his life. He began by mentioning the firebombing, and how stunned he was to see the Nation “using the same tactic that’s used by the Ku Klux Klan.” After bouncing through a few other topics, he circled back to offer his interpretation about how the Nation of Islam had lost its way. Before 1960, he explained, “there was not a better organization among black people in this country than the Muslim movement. It was militant. It made the whole strength of the black man in this country pick up momentum.” But after Muhammad’s return from Mecca in early 1960, things changed. Muhammad began to be “more interested in wealth. And, yes, more interested in girls.” The audience erupted with laughter. According to Malcolm, a conspiracy existed to “suppress news that would open the eyes” of NOI members about their leader. As long as Elijah Muhammad ran the Nation of Islam, “it will not do anything in the struggle that the black man is confronted with in this country.” One proof of this was the Nation’s failure to challenge the terrorist activities of the Ku Klux Klan. “They know how to do it. Only to another brother.” As the audience applauded, Malcolm added soberly, “I am well aware of what I’m setting into motion. . . . But I have never said or done anything in my life that I wasn’t prepared to suffer the consequences for.”

After a one-night trip to Rochester to deliver a speech, he returned to New York City to face the ugly business of emptying his ruined home. The court order to evict the Shabazz household was to be enforced on the morning of February 18, so just after one a.m. he and about fifteen MMI and OAAU members drove out to the house in advance of the city marshal’s arrival. In four hours they cleared the building of all items—furniture, clothing, files, desks, photographs, correspondence—and placed everything in a small moving van and three station wagons. When the marshal pulled up a few hours later along with several assistants, they discovered the house completely vacant.

For a second day, Malcolm was working without sleep, compelled forward through a whirlwind of activity by nerves and sheer will. Several weeks earlier, he had planned to travel to Jackson on February 19, to address a rally of Hamerʹs Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The firebombing forced him to reschedule, and instead of traveling, he gave more interviews. That morning he spoke with the New York Times, telling the paper that he lived “like a man who’s already dead.” The remarks he had been making for months about his own demise took on new gravity in light of the firebombing. “This thing with me,” he said plainly, “will be resolved by death and violence.”

Later that morning he was interviewed by an ABC camera crew. In the afternoon, Malcolm delivered his final public address, before fifteen hundred students at the Barnard College gymnasium, explaining that the black revolt in the United States “is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era.” His speech cast a wide net and suggested a breadth of reading in its echoes of Du Bois and even Lenin. “We are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor,” he declared, “the exploited against the exploiter.” Malcolm condemned Western industrialized nations for “deliberately subjugating the Negro for economic reasons. These international criminals raped the African continent to feed their factories, and are themselves responsible