The legacy of Malcolm X will be revisited on February 21, 2013, the 47th anniversary of his murder, at Howard University with a panel of prominent scholars and speakers. In addition to celebrating Malcolm’s life, it will also delve into the circumstances of his death and the state forces lined up against him in COINTELPRO and Operation CHAOS. The event begins at 6 P.M. in the Blackburn Center Room 155.
Emceed by former Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, the lineup features author Dr. Jared Ball, author Dr. Baba Zak Kondo, former Black Panther and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army Dhoruba Al-Mujahid Bin Wahad, COINTELPRO expert and attorney Nkechi Taifa, author John L. Potash, Malcolm X murder eyewitness Roland Sheppard, and John Judge, the executive director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations and the Museum of Hidden History. In addition to the latter two organizations, other sponsors of the event include the Muslim Student Association (Howard), Black is Back (DC), and Students Against Mass Incarceration (UDC).
"We cannot continue to celebrate the life and legacy of Malcolm X if we will not work to address his death, who murdered him, how and why and to hold people responsible to history if not to justice," said John Judge, whose organization COPA has been holding conferences for more than twenty years addressing history that the state would prefer to stay dead and buried.
Malcolm X was himself killed in 1965, in the middle of a decade that saw a number of other political assassinations of leaders such as John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, as well as several members of the Black Panther Party and civil rights activists. For many people, these represent casualties of a bygone era; however, as a few key researchers have shown, the machinery that put Malcolm X to death survives to the present day.
“I think it's important to hash out and educate about the tactics the wealthiest and their U.S. Intelligence foot soldiers used to assassinate Malcolm X,” said John Potash, author of The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders, “As they continued using them against other leftist black leaders. They particularly targeted the Shakur family since Abba Shakur was one of Malcolm's closest associates. They continued murderously targeting the Shakur Panther leaders and evidence showed that they then orchestrated the murder leftist cultural leader Tupac Shakur. Tupac had headed The New Afrikan Panthers at 18 and was only pretending to be a "gangsta" to further the Panthers' politicization of gangs nationwide.”
Howard University, founded in 1867, is an appropriate location to host this distinguished collection of professors and independent researchers to honor Malcolm's life and investigate his death. Previous Howard graduates have included luminaries such as the novelist Toni Morrison and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
"Living assassins remain at large and records remain hidden in this case as in so many others," said John Judge. "We are hoping to shed light on this issue on the 47th anniversary of his death."
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