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By Root 1938 0

“I think that brother Malcolm was killed by trained killers,” he said, not “amateurs.” Bailey doubted that “the Muslims were capable of doing it.” Consequently, most OAAU and MMI members decided not to be cooperative with the police. What they failed to understand was that there was intense competition and mistrust between the NYPD and the FBI. Even within the NYPD itself, BOSS operated largely above the law, shielding its own operatives and paid informants from the rest of the police force. Consequently there was no unified law enforcement strategy in place to suppress the investigation of Malcolm’s death. In the end, cooperation with police detectives might have increased the likelihood that Malcolm’s real killers would have been brought to justice.

Ultimately, the police’s version of events gained credibility from the media’s sensationalizing of Malcolm’s antiwhite image. A New York Times news article, for example, was headlined “Malcolm X Lived in Two Worlds, White and Black, Both Bitter.” In its editorial, the Times described Malcolm as “an extraordinary and twisted man, turning many true gifts to evil purpose. . . . Malcolm X had the ingredients for leadership, but his ruthless and fanatical belief in violence not only set him apart from the responsible leaders of the civil rights movement and the overwhelming majority of Negroes. It also marked him for notoriety, and for a violent end.” The editorial implied that Malcolm’s break from the NOI was due to jealousy rather than political or ethical differences. It also suggested that black nationalist extremists, whether in the Nation or in some other group, had been responsible for the murder. “The world he saw through those horn-rimmed glasses of his was distorted and dark,” the editorial concluded. “But he made it darker still with his exaltation of fanaticism. Yesterday someone came out of that darkness that he spawned, and killed him.”

Several days later, Time magazine left no doubt regarding its interpretation : “Malcolm X had been a pimp, a cocaine addict and a thief. He was an unashamed demagogue. His gospel was hatred.” The magazine also concurred with the NYPD’s theory of the assassination. “Malcolm’s murder [was] almost certainly at the hands of the Black Muslims from whom he had defected.” But it was not enough just to condemn Malcolm on ideological grounds; Time went on to invent a story to ridicule his character. The Sunday afternoon program at the Audubon had started late, the magazine declared, because “characteristically [Malcolm] had kept his followers waiting for nearly an hour while he lingered over tea and a banana split at a nearby Harlem restaurant.”

Other publications expressed similar sentiments. The Saturday Evening Post’s obituary was more sensitive than most, but expressed frustration and confusion over the murdered black leader. “The ugly killing of Malcolm X prompted many people to attempt an assessment of this violent and baffling young demagogue. Was his death an inevitable part of the struggle for Negro equality?” the obituary asked. “His death resembled a martyrdom less than a gangland execution. But Americans have had too much of assassination, too much of the settlement of conflict by violence.”

The New York Herald Tribune’s initial headline story on Malcolm, printed that Sunday evening but dated as the first edition of February 22, read “Malcolm X Slain by Gunmen as 400 in Ballroom Watch: Police Rescue Two Suspects.” An accompanying article stated that Hayer had been “taken to the Bellevue Prison Ward and was sealed off by a dozen policemen. The other suspect was taken to the Wadsworth Avenue precinct, where the city’s top policemen immediately converged.” Several hours later, in the Herald Tribune’s late edition, the subhead of the article was changed: “Police Rescue One Suspect.” References to a second suspect being taken to the Wadsworth Avenue police precinct were deleted. Black nationalists and Trotskyists would subsequently charge that the NYPD “covered up” its own involvement in the assassination by suppressing evidence and