he went out to speak.)
Then Brother Benjamin X's half-hour was up, and the young lady and Malcolm X, alone back
there in the anteroom, could hear him entering the introduction: "And now, without further
remarks, I present to you one who is willing to put himself on the line for you, a man who would
give his life for you-I want you to hear, listen, to understand-one who is a trojan for the black
man!"
Applause rose from the audience; at the anteroom door, Malcolm X turned and looked back at his
young lady assistant.
"You'll have to forgive me for raising my voice to you-I'm just about at my wit's end."
"Oh, don't mention it!" she said quickly, "I understand."
His voice sounded far away, "I wonder if anybody really understands-" And he walked out onto
the stage, into the applause, smiling and nodding at Brother Benjamin X who passed him en
route to the anteroom.
The young lady had picked up some paperwork she had to do when Benjamin X came in,
perspiring. She patted his hand, saying, "That was good!" Through the anteroom door, just ajar,
she and Benjamin X heard the applause diminishing, then the familiar ringing greeting,
"Asalaikum, brothers and sisters!"
"Asalaikum salaam!" some in the audience responded.
About eight rows of seats from the front, then, a disturbance occurred. In a sudden scuffling, a
man's voice was raised angrily, "Take your hand out of my pocket!" The entire audience was
swiveling to look. "Hold it! Hold it! Don't get excited," Malcolm X said crisply, "Let's cool it,
brothers-
With his own attention distracted, it is possible that he never saw the gunmen. One woman who
was seated near the front says, "The commotion back there diverted me just for an instant, then I
turned back to look at Malcolm X just in time to see at least three men in the front row stand and
take aim and start firing simultaneously. It looked like a firing squad." Numerous persons later
said they saw two men rushing toward the stage, one with a shotgun, the other with two
revolvers. Said U.P.I, reporter Stanley Scott: "Shots rang out. Men, women and children ran for
cover. They stretched out on the floor and ducked under tables." Radio Station WMCA reporter
Hugh Simpson said, "Then I heard this muffled sound, I saw Malcolm hit with his hands still
raised, then he fell back over the chairs behind him. Everybody was shouting. I saw one man
firing a gun from under his coat behind me as I hit it [the floor], too. He was firing like he was in
some Western, running backward toward the door and firing at the same time."
The young lady who was in the backstage anteroom told me, "It sounded like an army had taken
over. Somehow, I knew. I wouldn't go and look. I wanted to remember him as he was."
Malcolm X's hand flew to his chest as the first of sixteen shotgun pellets or revolver slugs hit him.
Then the other hand flew up. The middle finger of the left hand was bullet-shattered, and blood
gushed from his goatee. He clutchedhis chest. His big body suddenly fell back stiffly, knocking
over two chairs; his head struck the stage floor with a thud.
In the bedlam of shouting, screaming, running people, some ran toward the stage. Among them
Sister Betty scrambled up from where she had thrown her body over her children, who were
shrieking; she ran crying hysterically, "My husband! They're killing my husband!" An unidentified
photographer snapped shots of Malcolm X prone on the stage floor with people bent over him
snatching apart his bloody shirt, loosening his tie, trying to give him mouth-to-mouth artificial
respiration, first a woman, then a man. Said the woman, who identified herself only as a