On this day, February 21, in 1965

Malcolm X was assassinated. He was just about to deliver a speech In the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan when a man came forward from the crowd, shooting him in the chest with a shotgun. Malcolm X was a powerful civil rights and human rights leader in America, who associated himself with the Nation of Islam until right before his death. While the Nation of Islam is believed to be behind his assassination, Malcolm X’s radical race politics definitely intimidated a number people.