Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [280]
The principal rostrum guards that afternoon were Charles X Blackwell and Robert 35X Smith, unusual choices as they did not usually serve in this role and had little experience guarding Malcolm. William 64X George had guarded Malcolm at the rostrum many times, yet on this day he had been stationed outside. When the commotion broke out, Blackwell and Smith made a tactical blunder: they moved from their posts and began walking toward the two bickering men. Gene Roberts, George Whitney, and several other security personnel approached the men from the rear. Malcolm was now completely alone and unguarded onstage. At that precise moment, an incendiary smoke bomb ignited at the extreme rear of the ballroom, instantly creating panic, screams, and confusion. It was only then that Willie Bradley, sitting in the front row, got to his feet and walked briskly toward the rostrum. When he was fifteen feet away, he elevated his sawed-off shotgun from under his coat, took careful aim, and fired. The shotgun pellets ripped squarely into Malcolm’s left side, cutting a seven-inch-wide circle around his heart and left chest. This was the kill shot, the blow that executed Malcolm X; the other bullets caused terrible damage but were not decisive.
This single shotgun blast oddly failed to topple Malcolm. As Herman Ferguson recalled, “There was a loud blast, a boom that filled the auditorium with the sound of a weapon going off.” On cue, two men—Hayer in the first row, with a .45 next to his stomach, and Leon X Davis sitting next to him, also holding a handgun—stood up, ran to the stage, and emptied their guns into Malcolm. Ferguson, still sitting only feet from the stage, took in everything that happened next:
Malcolm straightened up momentarily . . . his hand came up and he stiffened. The shotgun blast [had been fired] at him by one of the assassins, who fired from the crook of his elbow. . . . He hit Malcolm point-blank in his left chest. . . . Then a fusillade of shots rang out. . . . This kept up for several seconds. And I remember saying, “If they would just stop firing, maybe he could survive. . . .” And when they did, Malcolm toppled over backwards . . . and the back of his head hit the floor with a crash.
Ferguson was perhaps the only eyewitness who had not fallen to the floor to escape the line of fire. He continued his account:
After so much noise, shooting and so on and the screaming of people, there was this sudden silence. . . . I could see all of the chairs and the people lying on the floor. There were three men standing in the center aisle, facing the door. And one of them appeared to have some sort of weapon in his hand. They [were] standing in a row, one behind the other. And they stood frozen in time [and] space for another few seconds, and then they took off, running and hopping over chairs and people’s bodies.
Most of the MMI security force had also scrambled for cover at the first shot, making no effort to protect Malcolm or to apprehend his murderers. Rostrum guards Charles X Blackwell and Robert 35X Smith both had pulled out of position and had rolled to the floor seeking their own safety. John X Davis, nominally the chief of MMI’s rostrum detail, subsequently admitted to police that when the shooting started, he, too, “fell to the ground.” Charles 37X Kenyatta had also flopped to the floor and later claimed that he “did not see anything.”
Several eyewitness accounts suggest that Bradley then pivoted to his left and may have fired a second blast above the heads of the audience, narrowly missing Ferguson. He then ran down the right corridor of the ballroom and quickly ducked into the women’s lavatory, located barely sixty feet from the stage. Discarding his shotgun, he and perhaps a second conspirator descended a narrow, seldom-used flight of stairs leading down to the street, making an easy escape. The other two gunmen, Hayer and Leon X Davis, inexplicably chose to run a virtual gauntlet, leaping over chairs