September 23, 1955: The Murderers of Emmett Till Are Acquitted

September 23, 1955: Two men are found not guilty of murder. They went on to brag about how they got away with it.

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941 in Chicago. His father, Louis, would enter the U.S. Army after his mother, Mamie, kicked him out of the house for being abusive. He would be executed in Italy following a 1945 court-martial for the murder of a local woman.

Mamie was born in Mississippi, and, as a small child, moved north with her family in what has become known as the Great Migration of African-Americans in search of better civil rights and working conditions. They lived on the South Side of Chicago, in a sub-neighborhood called Argo, a.k.a. Little Mississippi. When Emmett was 6 years old, he contracted polio, leaving him with a stutter. He and his mother moved to Detroit, where she married a man named Pink Bradley. The marriage didn't last, and they moved back to Chicago, although she kept the name Mamie Till Bradley.

Statistics on lynchings began to be collected in 1882. Between then and 1955, more than 500 African-Americans had been killed by extrajudicial violence in Mississippi alone, and more than 3,000 across the South. Most of the incidents took place between 1876 and 1930. Though far less common by the mid-1950s, these racially motivated murders still occurred.

Flag flown outside NAACP headquarters in New York,

1936 to 1938. They stopped when the owner of the building

threatened them with eviction.

Throughout the South, interracial relationships were prohibited, as a means to maintain white supremacy and "purity." Even the suggestion of sexual contact between black men and white women could carry severe penalties for black men. 

In 1955, Mamie's uncle, 64-year-old Mose Wright, visited her and Emmett in Chicago during the Summer, and told stories about living in the Mississippi Delta. Emmett wanted to see for himself. Wright planned to accompany Till with a cousin, Wheeler Parker; another cousin, Curtis Jones, would join them soon after.

Wright was a sharecropper and part-time minister who was often called "Preacher." He lived in Money, a small town in the Delta that consisted of three stores, a school, a post office, a cotton gin, and a few hundred residents, 8 miles north of Greenwood. Before Emmett departed for the Delta, his mother cautioned him that Chicago and Mississippi were two different worlds, and he should know how to behave in front of whites in the South. He assured her he understood.

Emmett took the Illinois Central Railroad down, and arrived in Money on August 21, 1955. On August 24, a cousin, Maurice Wright, drove Emmett and some other black boys, relatives and neighbors, to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, to buy candy. The Market was owned by Roy Bryant, 24, and his wife, Carolyn, 21. Carolyn was in the front of the store. Her sister-in-law, Juanita Milan, was in the back, watching some white children.

What happened next is in dispute. One witness said that one of the boys dared Emmett to flirt with Carolyn. Another said that this did not happen. Emmett's cousins Simeon Wright and Wheeler Parker both said that Emmett "wolf-whistled" at Carolyn. His mother would later tell a reporter that, because of his stutter, Emmett had trouble pronouncing the letter B, and that whistling sometimes helped. This backs up the suggestion that he had tried to order bubble gum. 

At the trial, Carolyn testified that Emmett grabbed her hand and said, "How about a date, baby?" She said she got away, and that he then grabbed her waist and said, "What's the matter baby, can't you take it?" And then one of the other boys grabbed Emmett and got him out of there.

In 2008, 53 years later, Bryant admitted that she had made this up, and said, "Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him." Supposedly, there was a white man in the store, who confirmed that Emmett said nothing inappropriate to her. There was a checkers game going on out front, and one of the white men involved said that Emmett did whistle, but at an impressive move made in the game, a completely harmless gesture.

Roy Bryant was on a hunting trip, and did not return until August 27. He heard about what happened from one of the checkers players, and was angry at Carolyn for not telling him herself. In the middle of the night on August 28, Roy and his half-brother, John William Milam, broke into Mose Wright's house with a gun, and kidnapped Emmett.

Emmett was found 3 days later, by boys fishing in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett's face had been beaten beyond recognition, and his body had been weighted down with an electric fan whose cord was tied around it. He had just turned 14 years old.

Mamie Till Bradley demanded an open-casket funeral in Chicago: She wanted people to see what was done to him. Gruesome postmortem photos appeared in Jet magazine.

This time, the rednecks had gone too far. Governor Hugh White sent a telegram to the NAACP, saying, "Mississippi does not condone such conduct," and saying that local authorities should pursue a "vigorous prosecution." Leflore County Deputy Sheriff John Cothran stated, "The white people around here feel pretty mad about the way that poor little boy was treated, and they won't stand for this." Letters to the editor appeared in local newspapers, admitting that white actions like these did more damage to the South than any black actions did.

The bigots, naturally, fought back. They falsely reported riots in the funeral home in Chicago. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam appeared in photos smiling and wearing military uniforms, and Carolyn Bryant's beauty and virtue were extolled.

Bryant and Milan were indicted for murder on September 3. The trial was held at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. District Attorney Gerald Chatham was the prosecutor, and he was pessimistic about getting a conviction from an all-white jury. The jury was all-white because jurors are selected from voter rolls, and black people were not permitted to vote in Mississippi, despite the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States officially guaranteeing them that right.

County Sheriff Clarence Strider served as the defense attorney. He said, "The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those peckerwoods. But I just had no choice about it."

The main defense argument was that the body pulled from the river could not be definitively identified, and that Emmett Till might be still alive and missing, perhaps in hiding, to set up the good white people of Mississippi.

Sheriff Strider was told that there were 2 black witnesses who could back up the prosecution's case. He had them found, and kept them in jail for the duration of the trial, to keep them from testifying. This should have not only produced a mistrial, but gotten Strider disbarred. In contrast, Judge Curtis Swango was hailed for his even-handedness, and no one has ever alleged any misconduct on his part.

Mose Wright did not see the murder, but he did identify Milam as one of the kidnappers. It was said to be the first time in the South that a black man had testified to the guilt of a white man in court and lived.

On September 23, the all-white, all-male jury acquitted both defendants, after a deliberation of 1 hour and 7 minutes. One juror said, "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long." Basically, they took just enough time to make it look like they had to give it some thought, when they didn't: They were never going to vote to convict, no matter what the evidence said.

Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam struck a deal with Look magazine in 1956, to tell their story to journalist William Bradford Huie for between $3,600 and $4,000. The interview took place in the law firm of the attorneys who had defended Bryant and Milam. Huie did not ask the questions; Bryant and Milam's own attorneys did. Neither attorney had heard their clients' accounts of the murder before.

According to Huie, the older Milam was more articulate and sure of himself than the younger Bryant. Milam admitted to shooting Till, and neither of them believed they were guilty or that they had done anything wrong. Milam said, "What else could I do? He thought he was as good as any white man."

Emmett Till was as good as any white man. Certainly, he was better than the two white men who premeditatedly murdered him in cold blood.

D.A. Chatham's health suffered as a result of the trial, and he died a little over a year later, only 50 years old. His son, Gerald Chatham Jr., who was 11 years old at the time of the trial, would later serve two terms as District Attorney in the same district. Judge Swango died in 1968.

Unrepentant to the end, Clarence Strider died in 1970; J.W. Milam, in 1981; Roy Bryant, in 1994. Carolyn Bryant divorced Roy in 1981, remarried, and became known as Carolyn Bryant Donham. As of September 23, 2022, she is still alive. None of these 4 guilty people ever spent a day in prison. A historical marker now stands outside the remnants of the grocery store, which has yet to be torn down. 

Mose Wright left Mississippi for Chicago, never to return. He lived until 1977. Mamie Till-Mobley, having remarried, lived until January 6, 2003, at the age of 81.

The treatment of Emmett Till by the State of Mississippi, both before and after his death, inspired 2 young black men to become civil rights activists. You might know their birth names: Malcolm Little and Cassius Clay. You surely know the names they chose for themselves, the names by which they became better known: Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

One more analogy: Trent Lott was born on October 9, 1941 in Grenada, Mississippi. In 1972, he was elected to Congress. In 1989, he was elected to the Senate. In 1996, he became the U.S. Senate's Majority Leader.

In 2002, Lott spoke at a dinner in celebration of the 100th birthday of Strom Thurmond, the longtime Senator who, in 1948, as Governor of South Carolina, led a 3rd-party campaign for President on an anti-civil rights platform. Lott said, "Let me say something about my home State: When Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." The backlash was such that Lott had to step down as Majority Leader, although he served in the Senate for another 4 years.

Trent Lott was elected to Congress at age 31, to the Senate at 47, and Majority Leader at 55. As of September 23, 2022, he is approaching his 81st birthday.

Emmett Till would be the same age. It is possible he could have died at any time in the interim. He could have served in Vietnam and been killed there. He could have fallen victim to illness or accident. Or, some other bigot could have taken matters into his own hands. But it would hardly be out of the ordinary for him to still be alive in 2022.

He should have had a full life. Instead, he was murdered as a boy of 14 -- not because he thought he was as good as a white man, but because an evil white man believed he wasn't.

The historical marker marker for Emmett Till's murder is a short walk from a bridge over the Tallahatchee River. But this is not the bridge that country singer Bobbie Gentry would later write about in her 1967 Number 1 hit "Ode to Billie Joe." That bridge, which collapsed in 1972 and was replaced, is 9 miles downstream.

The historical markers marking the locations of the murders of Emmett Till and of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, 9 years later, are 117 miles apart.

UPDATE: In 2022, Carolyn Bryant Donham gave a 99-page memoir, titled I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle, to the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, with an agreement that UNC would hold it privately until the year 2036. She died on April 25, 2023. As far as is known, she was the last surviving person who knew what really happened.

*

September 23, 1955 was a Friday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees played a doubleheader against their arch-rivals, the Boston Red Sox, at Fenway Park in Boston. The Red Sox won the opener, 8-4. Bob Cerv hit a home run. The Yanks won the nightcap, 3-2. Gil McDougald hit a home run. Mickey Mantle was injured, and did not play in either game. Over the 2 games, Ted Williams went 2-for-7 with a walk. Jackie Jensen homered in both games for the Sox.

* The New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1 at the Polo Grounds. Willie Mays went 0-for-4.

* The Washington Senators swept a doubleheader from the Baltimore Orioles, 6-4 and 7-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 12-4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-2 at the first Busch Stadium (formerly the last Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Warren Spahn was the winning pitcher, and hit a home run. So did Eddie Mathews, and George Crowe hit 2. Hank Aaron, however, went 0-for-4. Stan Musial went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates were rained out at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Pirates swept, 4-3 and 6-1. It didn't matter, as the Dodgers had already clinched the National League Pennant.

In the opener, Dick Hall went the distance for the win. Carl Erskine started for the Brooks, and was shaky. The Dodgers blew a 3-0 lead, and Gene Freese hit what turned out to be a game-winning home run off Don Bessent in the bottom of the 8th inning. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4, and then did not play in the nightcap.

In that game, Bob Friend went the distance for the win. Billy Loes started for Dem Bums, but it would be a rookie named Sandy Koufax who turned out to be the losing pitcher.

* The Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers were rained out at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (The ballpark was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Indians swept, 8-2 and 7-0. In the 1st game, American League Rookie of the Year Herb Score outpitched Frank Lary. Hank Aguirre had an unusual shutout in the 2nd game: He allowed only 3 hits, but walked 10 batters, and only struck out 3. Al Kaline went 2-for-7 over the 2 games.

* And the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Redlegs (as the Reds were known from 1954 to 1958) were not scheduled.

March 26, 1964: Martin Luther King & Malcolm X Meet

Martin was 5-foot-7. Malcolm was 6-foot-4.

March 26, 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the opposing poles of the Civil Rights Movement, meet face-to-face for the first time. It will turn out to be the only time.

They both had the goal of making life better for black Americans. They disagreed as to the means. Martin preferred nonviolent resistance. Malcolm wanted a tougher stance. He called Martin "a 20th Century Uncle Tom." Martin said of Malcolm's ideas, "Fiery, demagogic oratory in the Black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief."

Nevertheless, in July 1963, Malcolm invited Martin to join a rally in Harlem. He called for a period of racial unity to fight white oppression, writing, "If capitalistic Kennedy and communistic Khrushchev can find something in common on which to form a United Front despite their tremendous ideological differences, it is a disgrace for Negro leaders not to be able to submerge our 'minor' differences in order to seek a common solution to a common problem posed by a Common Enemy." But Martin never responded to the invitation, and didn't show up.

On one occasion, Malcolm called Martin a "chump," and called other civil rights leaders "stooges of the white establishment." He called the August 28, 1963 March On Washington, ending at the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. King's finest moment, "the farce on Washington," and "a demonstration run by whites in front of a statue of a President who has been dead for a hundred years, and who didn't like us when he was alive."

On March 26, 1964, both men were on Capitol Hill in Washington, watching a U.S. Senate hearing regarding legislation aimed at ending segregation in public places and racial discrimination in employment. The bill had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy following intense lobbying by King and others, and, following JFK's assassination, was being shepherded through Congress by President Lyndon B. Johnson, despite harsh opposition by many Southern elected officials.

As Martin was wrapping up a press conference, he was approached by Malcolm, and the two shook hands and exchanged greetings. As cameras clicked away, Malcolm expressed his desire to become more active, saying, "I'm throwing myself into the heart of the civil rights struggle." Then, just as quickly as it began, the brief meeting between the two legends was over.

The Kennedy civil rights bill passed Congress, and Johnson signed it into law as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2. Johnson invited King to the signing ceremony, and gave him one of the signing pens. He did not invite Malcolm X, and it's unlikely that Malcolm would have accepted, anyway. There is no record of him ever having visited the White House, or of him ever having met a President.

By that point, Malcolm had returned from an extensive visit to North Africa and the Middle East, including a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Having seen Muslims of every race and color, from all over the world, the trip fundamentally shifted his thinking on the issue of race in America. While not entirely denouncing his earlier positions, he adopted a more conciliatory approach, writing, "I was no less angry than I had been, but, at the same time, the true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision."

Malcolm X was assassinated in New York on February 21, 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Each man was 39 years old at the time of his death. In the years to come, their widows, and then their children, would build strong friendships that uplifted the cause of civil rights.

*

March 26, 1964 was a Thursday. This was also the day the musical Funny Girl premiered on Broadway. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. No games were scheduled in the NBA. There were 2 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-0 at the Montreal Forum. And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-1 at the Chicago Stadium. However, the the Leafs and the Wings would both bounce back, and would face each other in the Finals, where the Leafs would win.

February 21, 1965: Malcolm X Is Assassinated

February 21, 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City. He was 39 years old -- the same age at which his competitor for the hearts and minds of black Americans, Martin Luther King Jr., would be, 3 years later.

He was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, with the name Malcolm Little. His parents were admirers of Marcus Garvey, a believer in self-determination for black Americans through building their own economy within the larger American economy.

But when Malcolm was 6 years old, and the family was living in Lansing, Michigan, his father died under mysterious circumstances. Officially, he was hit by a streetcar. Both suicide and murder were suggested, as he had willingly run afoul of a local Ku Klux Klan offshoot. When Malcolm was 12, his mother had a nervous breakdown, and was committed.

He did well in school, but dropped out of high school at age 16, after telling a white teacher he wanted to become a lawyer, and the teacher told him that was "no realistic goal for a (N-word)." He moved in with his sister in Roxbury, a mostly-black neighborhood in Boston, then to the most classically black neighborhood of them all, Harlem in Upper Manhattan.

He worked for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, then as a restaurant dishwasher. Another dishwasher was also a black man with red hair, and was known as Chicago Red because he was from Chicago. Malcolm became known as Detroit Red, because he had lived in Michigan, even though he'd never actually lived in Detroit. Chicago Red's real name was John Sanford, but he went into comedy, and became Redd Foxx, later taking then name Fred Sanford for his TV sitcom Sanford and Son.

Malcolm developed side hustles, the kind normally associated with organized crime. When he was drafted to serve in World War II, he convinced the U.S. Army that he was mentally unstable, and received an exemption. In 1945, he went back to Boston, and built a gang that robbed the homes of wealthy white families.

But it was a smaller crime that got him sent to prison: In 1946, he went to a jewelry shop, to pick up a watch he'd left to be fixed. The watch was stolen, and he was caught, and was sentenced to 8 to 10 years.

In 1948, his brother Reginald wrote to him, telling him of the Nation of Islam, a black-oriented offshoot of mainstream Islam. Malcolm wrote to the Nation's leader, Elijah Muhammad, and the response he got led him to a regular correspondence and conversion. He began using the name "Malcolm X," the X, being a symbol of the unknown, taking the place of the family name he would have had if his family hadn't been taken out of Africa in slavery.

Malcolm was paroled in 1952, and went to Chicago, the NOI's headquarters, and met Elijah Muhammad face-to-face. He visited Detroit for the first time when Muhammad sent him to establish a Temple there. Much like an old-style Protestant "circuit rider," he was moved around quickly, to Boston, to Philadelphia, and settled in Harlem, where he led Temple Number 7 starting in 1954.

With his close-cropped hair, horn-rimmed glasses and sharp suits, he looked every inch the intellectual he was. He was 6-foot-3, and at 180 pounds, slim but strong. He was already one of the country's most effective public speakers, and had charisma to spare. Through his efforts, the NOI gained hundreds of new black members every month through the latter half of the 1950s.

That got the attention of the FBI. At the time, "Islamic terrorism" was unknown in North America, but Director J. Edgar Hoover didn't like it when black people demanded more power or, dare they say it, equality with white people. He considered both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King to be Communists, though neither was true.

In 1958, Malcolm married Betty Sanders, who took the name Betty X. They had 6 children, all daughters. Malcolm had also begun using the name Malik el-Shabazz, though he was still usually referred to as "Malcolm X" in public. His wife Used the name Betty Shabazz for the rest of her life. In 1959, he was interviewed by Mike Wallace for a televised documentary, which was titled The Hate That Hate Produced.

That hate included calling white people "devils," and using lines like, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us!" He called Dr. King "a chump," and the 1963 March On Washington "the farce on Washington."

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the NOI sent a message of condolence to the Kennedy family, whose work in electing the country's 1st President who was not a Protestant had moved the cause of religious freedom forward. Elijah Muhammad ordered his ministers not to comment on the assassination.

Malcolm did: On December 1, he cited the assassination, the bombing of a Birmingham church that killed 4 girls 2 months earlier, the murder of NAACP official Medgar Evers 3 months before that, and the assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba 2 years before that, as "chickens coming home to roost." This statement seemed to infuriate everybody, and Elijah Muhammad suspended him from public speaking for 90 days.

The following month, Malcolm went to Miami, where he met with Cassius Clay, who was training to fight Sonny Liston for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. They became close, and after Clay won, he announced his conversion to the NOI, and took the name Muhammad Ali, which Elijah Muhammad had given him.

Something else was going on: Malcolm had begun to hear about Elijah Muhammad taking advantage of women in the NOI, including his secretaries. When Malcolm confronted him, Muhammad not only admitted it, but justified it, through his interpretation of prophecy.

On March 8, 1964, 12 days after Ali's win, Malcolm X announced that he had broken with the NOI. This caused a schism from which the NOI has never recovered. Ali sided with Elijah Muhammad. So did Malcolm's protege, Louis X, who later took the name Louis Farrakhan. Ali would eventually publicly regret his choice; Farrakhan, still alive at this writing, never has.

On March 26, Malcolm was at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, observing the debate over the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dr. King was also there, and the two men met for the only time. They were together for only a minute or so, but photographs suggest that the meeting was cordial.

In April, he traveled to Saudi Arabia, to do what Islam demands that all of its followers able to do so do: Make a pilgrimage to the faith's the holiest site, the Kaaba in Mecca, a city that prohibits non-Muslims from entering. Ironically, given his intelligence and his chosen faith, he had never learned how to speak Arabic, and that caused Saudi officials to question his sincerity. Prince Faisal, who became King later in the year, intervened, and the pilgrimage was made.

Malcolm saw Muslims from all over the world there, from the darkest-skinned natives of Africa to pale, blue-eyed white people, to Asians from the nations of Indonesia and Malaysia. He soon dropped his "white devils" rhetoric, and began to speak of mainstream Sunni Islam as a unifying influence.

Upon his return, threats against him from the NOI -- far more from them than from white supremacists -- increased. In 1963, he had begun meeting with journalist Alex Haley, for the writing of an authorized biography. He told Haley, "If I'm alive when this book comes out, it will be a miracle." On December 4, 1964, Muhammad Speaks, the NOI's official newspaper, published a column by Farrakhan, saying, "Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death."

And on February 14, 1965, his house in East Elmhurst, Queens, New York City was burned down. On February 19, he told photojournalist Gordon Parks, who would later direct the film Shaft, that the NOI was actively trying to kill him.

On February 21, he prepared to address a new organization he had founded, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, at the Audubon Ballroom at 165th Street and Broadway, in the Washington Heights section of Upper Manhattan. Before he could begin his speech, a man yelled out for another man to get his hand out of his pocket. There was some pushing, and Malcolm's bodyguards came forward to try to stop the disturbance.

It was a ruse. Malcolm said, "Cool it, brothers!" They did not: Talmadge Hayer, a NOI member, took out a sawed-off shotgun, and shot Malcolm in the chest. Two other gunmen opened fire with pistols. Malcolm was taken across the street, to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, but he had no chance. He was pronounced dead at 3:30 PM.

Dr. King did not attend his funeral, but other civil rights leaders did, including Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Andrew Young and John Lewis. Actor Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy, and would repeat it for Spike Lee's 1992 film Malcolm X, in which Malcolm was played by Denzel Washington. Davis' wife, actress Ruby Dee, and actor Sidney Poitier's wife Juanita raised money for a new home for Betty and the 6 Shabazz daughters. Malcolm was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York.

Hayer was convicted, and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, where he took the name Mujahid Abdul Halim. He was paroled in 2010, after 45 years. As of February 21, 2025, he is still alive, and has never identified his accomplices, only saying that the other 2 men convicted in the shooting were innocent. He is still a practicing Muslim, but has left the Nation of Islam, no longer agreeing with their ideology. He has expressed "regrets and sorrow" for having shot Malcolm X.

Norman Butler, later Muhammad Abdul Aziz, served 20 years, and his conviction was later overturned. Thomas Johnson, later Khalil Islam, served 22 years, and maintained his innocence until his death in 2009.

In 1975, Malcolm's widow, who had been studying to be a nurse when they met, completed her doctorate in nursing, and was known as Dr. Betty Shabazz from then on. She occasionally joined Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, for joint appearances until her death in 1997. Afterward, their daughters Bernice King and Attallah Shabazz, each having followed their father into their respective faiths' clergy, have worked together.

In 1992, most of the Audubon Ballroom was demolished, but its outer facade was kept, and Columbia University's Audubon Business and Technology Center was built on the site. On May 19, 2005, which would have been Malcolm's 80th birthday, the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center opened in the building's lobby.

Other nearby memorials include the renaming of 6th Avenue in Harlem, which had already been Lenox Avenue, as Malcolm X Boulevard; and the renaming of Newark's South Side High School for him.

*

February 21, 1965 was a Sunday. Although Martin Luther King was a baseball fan, I know of no source that connects Malcolm X to sports. However, many athletes were named Malcolm or Malik after him, including basketball star Malik Sealy, a New Yorker, who was killed in a car accident in 2000, and also buried in Ferncliff Cemetery.

Baseball and football were out of season on the day of the assassination. There were 4 games layed in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Cincinnati Royals, 109-104, 115 blocks downtown at the old Madison Square Garden. Oscar Robertson scored 40 points for the Royals, but the Knicks had a more balanced attack, with Willis Reed leading the way with 22 points and 22 rebounds.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 107-106 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now the CFG Bank Arena). Wilt Chamberlain had 40 points and 18 rebounds.

* The St. Louis Hawks beat the Detroit Pistons, 112-107 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics, 129-114 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. Jerry West led all scorers on the day with 47 points.

And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* Also at the old Garden, the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens played to a 2-2 tie.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 7-0 at the Chicago Stadium.