ASSASSINATION OF NEGRO EXTREMIST

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30682, 23 February 1965, Page 13

ASSASSINATION OF NEGRO EXTREMIST

Man Saved From Angry Mob Charged With Killing

(N Z.P.A.‘ Reuter —Copyright) NEW YORK, February 22. A 22-year-old Negro, Talmadge Hayer, has been charged with the murder of Malcolm X, the Black Nationalist leader. Malcolm, the 39-year-old former Black Muslim member, collapsed under a fusillade of bullets as he was about to address 500 of his followers in a ballroom meeting hall on the fringe of Harlem yesterday.

He had risen and said “Brothers and sisters . . .” when the shots slammed into him.

Malcom’s 37-y ear-old wife, Betty, was at the hall and saw her husband killed.

“They’re killing him! They’re killing him!” she screamed as at least four bullets—possibly seven —struck Malcolm in the chest and cheek and he slumped to the floor in a pool of blood. Police, summoned by screams and gunfire, charged into the gathering and grabbed two Negro men in danger of being lynched by the crowd in the emotion-charged hall.

Three men, including Hayer, were shot and wounded during the wild gunplay.

Police said the assassins used a shotgun and two pistols. Malcolm’s body had 16 wounds.

A police captain, Mr P. Glaser, alleges that Hayer—who is held in the prison ward of Bellvue Hospital—killed Malcolm with a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun and was himself later shot in the leg by one of Malcolm’s followers, Reuben Francis.

Francis was charged with being in illegal possession of a pistol. There was no immediate indication whether further charges would be brought in connexion with

the killing. After the shooting a senior police officer suggested that it was a result of a longsmouldering feud between Malcolm’s organisation of Afro-American Unity and the equally militant Black Muslim movement, headed by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm, who broke away from Muhammad’s group more than a year ago, w’as revealed last night to have repeatedly claimed, in private conversations with reporters and friends, that his life was in jeopardy from the Black Muslim movement. He had also alleged that a petrol bomb attack on his New York house a week ago was the work of the Muslim group he had once helped to lead. Malcolm —whose life, the “New York Times” said today, “was strangely and pitifully wasted"—said after his home was attacked: “It doesn’t frighten me. It doesn’t quiet me down in any way or shut me up.” Police are trying to reenact the events which turned a Sunday afternoon meeting in a faded hall into a scene of bloodshed and violence. Estimates of the number of shots fired varied from eight to 30. Police believe three weapons were used in. the hall.

Last night in Atlanta. Georgia. Dr. Martin Luther King, winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to seek civil rights by non-violence, said the shooting of Malcolm was an evil act.

“This vicious assassination should cause our whole society to see that violence and hatred are evil forces that must be cast into unending limbo." he said.

In Richmond. Virginia, a white businessman whose department store once practised racial segregation, yesterday received a “brotherhood and citizenship” plaque from a Negro minister who picketed the store four years ago. The Rev. H. G. Knight, pastor of a Baptist church which sponsors the annual commendation, presented the award to Mr William Thalhimer. whose store has been desegregated since 1961. Both men embraced.