US black nationalist leader Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965, at the age of 39. The BBC reported on the reaction in his adopted home of Harlem, New York, as thousands of people queued to pay their last respects.

At a time when black civil rights leaders were preaching peaceful integration, Malcolm X's uncompromising vision of black separatism inspired many people, while terrifying others. He was murdered in February 1965, and a reporter for the BBC's Panorama, Michael Charlton, stated at his funeral that he "spoke a vengeful message, as forthright and chilled as the winter morning they buried him". Amid tight security, the many thousands of people who had filed past his body were searched by police as a precaution against bombings. "To these people, he preached that if the white man didn't answer for the black man's frustration, he must answer for his fury," added Charlton.

He was internationally famous for his incendiary rhetoric, yet he had been developing a new, more moderate worldview. Asked what the death of Malcolm X meant to him by Panorama, one clearly upset man who was in the queue said: "It's a blow to every black person in the United States of America." A young man described him as a hero, saying: "He stood out among all black people. He showed the white man where it was at." This interviewee was one of several people who feared that more violence would follow. "Whoever did it, Muslims or whoever did it, there's going to be a whole lot of hurt," he predicted. One young woman said: "I don't believe it. Why would they kill another black man?" Another woman had no doubt who was responsible: "The white power structure in America is behind it. They quickly capitalised on it by saying that one of his own kind did it, but they put it up to be done. They know they had more to gain by getting Malcolm X out of the way than they had to let him live."

Malcolm X was shot dead on stage at a New York ballroom as he prepared to deliver a speech to his Organization of Afro-American Unity. His wife and children were in the audience. Three men convicted of his murder were all members of the Nation of Islam, the political and religious body that, a year earlier, Malcolm X had left amid acrimony. One of the men was caught while attempting to flee, and confessed to the murder, but the other two convictions resulted in a long-running miscarriage of justice campaign. In 2021, a New York state judge agreed, and their convictions were quashed. Both men were later fully exonerated after New York's attorney general found prosecutors had withheld evidence that, in all likelihood, would have cleared them of blame for the murder.

Still a controversial figure 60 years after his death, Malcolm X remains to some the ultimate symbol of rage and resistance in the face of oppression. Born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, he was the son of a Baptist preacher. When Malcolm was six years old, his father was killed in what many believe was a deliberate racist attack by white supremacists, although nobody knows for sure if this was the case. The shock of his father being killed led his mother to have a mental breakdown, and Malcolm and his seven siblings were shipped out to foster homes. He fell into a life of crime, and in 1946 he was jailed for burglary. While in prison, he discovered a love of learning and self-improvement. There, he encountered the ideas of the Nation of Islam, a political and religious body that argued that equality for black Americans could only be achieved through black........

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