Why the Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Why the Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg… The system of this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system period. It is impossible for it , as it now stands, to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country — it is impossible. And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken. . . .” — Malcolm X, Harlem ‘Hate Gang’ Scare Militant Labor Forum, May 29, 1964

The Audio for this Essay is several cha-ters in
The Government Assassinated Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (Audio Book)

I first started to write about Malcolm X’s assassination, after I watched the 1992 CBS documentary, The Real Malcolm X, An Intimate Portrait of the man, narrated by Dan Rather. I then saw that Spike Lee’s documentary movie, Malcolm X, had left out the most of the events in the last year of Malcolm’s life, starting with March 12, 1964 Press Statement By Malcolm X.
When Denzel Washington, acting as Malcolm X, is shown addressing this press conference, right after Malcolm’s statement: “There can be no black-white unity until there is first some’ black unity”, Denzel Washington did not state what Malcolm X said next, which was “There can be no workers solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity,” The statement about ‘workers solidarity’ showed some of Malcolm’s thinking and outlook at that time — he was becoming anti-capitalist in his political thinking.
I felt compelled to write this essay to show why this government, “the assassination leader of the world” assassinated Malcolm X. But when I began to read more of what King had stood for at the end of his life, that he also was becoming anti-capitalist in his political thinking, before his life was ended, I realized the United States Government had the same motive to kill both Malcolm X Martin Luther King. When I discovered and realized the complicity, of the government, in both assassinations, I then felt compelled to write this essay, based upon what I learned and my own personal experience.
I regularly attended Malcolm X’s meetings in Harlem and was present at the meeting when Malcolm X was assassinated. I was in charge of defense when Malcolm X spoke at the Militant Labor Forum in New York City from 1964 to 1965. I have written several articles, spoken to various groups, and been interviewed about Malcolm X. This essay is an update of a paper that was accepted by City College of New York’s (CCNY) Black Studies Program for The Third Symposium of Institution Building in Harlem: The Malcolm X Legacy: A Global Perspective, held on Friday, May 20, 2005 at CCNY. It was first written as the February, 2001 Monthly Feature for the Holt Labor Library website.
This essay is based on my presentation at a forum in Boston in 2000, on the same subject. The other speaker at the forum was Minister Don Muhammad of the Boston Nation of Islam. ( I have updated this essay as more data becomes available in the internet.)
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To say that U.S. government agencies killed Martin Luther King on the verge of the Poor People’s Campaign is a way into the deeper truth that the economic powers that be (which dictate the policies of those agencies) killed him. In the Memphis prelude to the Washington campaign, King posed a threat to those powers of a nonviolent revolutionary force. Just how determined they were to stop him before he reached Washington was revealed in the trial by the size and complexity of the plot to kill him.” —Jim Douglass, The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis

Jim Pepper went a step beyond saying government agencies were responsible for the assassination. To whom in turn, were those murderous agencies responsible? Not so much to government officials per se, Pepper asserted, as to the economic power holders. they represented who stood in the even deeper shadows behind the FBI, Army Intelligence, and their affiliates in covert action. By 1968, Pepper told the jury, ‘And today it is much worse in my view’ — ‘the decision making processes in the United States were the representatives, the footsoldiers of the very economic interests that were going to suffer as a result of these times of changes [being activated by King]!
Almost 32 years after King’s murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, l968, a Memphis court extended the circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat James Earl Ray to the United States government. According to the Memphis jury’s verdict on December 8,1999, a jury of twelve citizens of Memphis, Shelby County, TN, concluded in Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, III, Bernice King, Dexter Scott King and Yolanda King Vs. Loyd Jowers and Other Unknown Conspirators that Loyd Jowers and governmental agencies including the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the federalgovernment were party to the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As Coretta Scott King stated: “There is abundant evidence of a major high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr.. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for the truth itself. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. . . . .” In the 1970s, the public became aware of the COINTELPRO disruption operations of the government against the Civil Rights movement, the antiwar movement, radicals and socialists. Under COINTELPRO the different United States spy agencies used informers, agents, and agents provocateurs to disrupt these organizations. One of the stated purposes of this program was to neutralize Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Elijah Muhammad to prevent the emergence, to use the government’s term, of a Black Messiah who would have the potential of uniting and leading a mass organization of Black Americans in their struggle for freedom and economic equality. This policy was still being continued in 1978 and probably still going on.

The Assassination of Malcolm X

I witnessed Malcolm X’s assassination at the Audubon Ballroom, on February 21, 1965. I am writing with the benefit of first hand knowledge of what took place that day, what Malcolm X stood for at the time of his death, and the hope for the future that inspired all who heard or knew the man.
I remember the mass media, reflecting their class hatred of Malcolm X, gloating and cheering his assassination. I remember the response to his death by the tens of thousands in Harlem, who for several days went to view his casket. I remember the Malcolm X Eulogy by Ossie Davis that silenced the hyenas of the press when he said “Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man— but a seed-which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is —a Prince – our own black shining Prince!—who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.” In spite of all the attacks by the mass media, Malcolm X has grown increasingly popular as a martyred leader of his people and an uncompromising advocate of human rights and freedom.

The Government’s Motive To ‘Neutralize’ Malcolm X

In his last year, Malcolm X came to the conclusion that it was impossible for African Americans to be integrated into this system because racism was profitable and an integral part of capitalism. His words on the worldwide oppression of nonwhites by white Europeans were very similar to what Karl Marx wrote about how the original capitalist fortunes were obtained. In Capital, Volume One, Part VIII, Chapter 31, “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist,” Marx wrote: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. . . . If money. . . comes into the world with a congenital bloodstain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. . . .“
Malcolm X was the first mass leader in the United States to oppose the war in Vietnam and to identify the oppression of African Americans in this country with the struggles of the oppressed throughout the world. In all probability, Malcolm X would have spoken at the first mass demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1965. His powerful oratory alone, as well as his standing among inner-city Blacks, would have given the Vietnam Antiwar Movement a far different character and the history of that period in the United States and the world would have been greatly changed. I had the opportunity to hear Malcolm X speak at meetings in Harlem at the Audubon Ballroom and elsewhere. His power as an orator was his ability to make complex ideas simple and clear. He was not a
demagogue. His speeches were always an appeal to reason.

Malcolm X at 1199 Rally

One example of the power of his oratory was when he spoke at an organizing rally for Hospital Workers Local 1199 in New York City 1962. The following is a famous quote from that speech: “The hospital strikers have demonstrated that you don’t get a job done unless you show the Man you’re not afraid to go to jail. If you’re not willing to pay that price, then you don’t deserve the rewards or benefits that go along with it.”
He gave the best speech at the rally, and when he finished speaking, all the workers – Black, white, and Puerto Rican – cheered wildly. The response was the same whether he spoke in Harlem or in a debate at Oxford University in England. Malcolm X addressing students at the London School of Economics, 1965
One can hear the response that Malcolm got by watching the video of MALCOLM X’s OXFORD UNION DEBATE (December 3, 1964), when he ended his speech quoting Shakespeare:
“I read once, passingly, about a man named Shakespeare. I only read about him passingly, but I remember one thing he wrote that kind of moved me. He put it in the mouth of Hamlet, I think, it was, who said, “To be or not to be.” He was in doubt about something. Whether it was nobler in the mind of man to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, moderation, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. And I go for that. If you take up arms, you’ll end it, but if you sit around and wait for the one who’s in power to make up his mind that he should end it, you’ll be waiting a long time. And in my opinion, the young generation of whites, blacks, browns, whatever else there is, you’re living at a time of extremism, a time of revolution, a time when there’s got to be a change. People in power have misused it and now there has to be a change and a better worldhas to be built and the only way it’s going to be built is with extreme methods. And I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition that exists on this earth. Thank you.” Malcolm X viewed the struggle of African Americans as an economic and social struggle for human rights and not limited to just a struggle for civil rights. He identified with the Colonial Revolution, at that time, in Africa and throughout the world, including the struggle of the Vietnamese people and the Cuban revolution; in direct opposition to the policies of the United States government both then and now. He had met with Che Guevara and the Cuban delegation to the United Nations in December 1964 and a firm bond was established between them. Contrary to Friedly and Perry’s assertions, Malcolm had become a very real threat to the very foundations of capitalism in the United States, The truth is that the United States government had a very good motive for the assassination.