Malcolm X’s Family Files $100M Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against The United States Government

Attorneys for the family of late civil rights leader Malcolm X are officially moving forward with an explosive, $100 million lawsuit against the U.S. government and several government agencies.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed on Friday (Nov. 15), X’s attorneys have accused the government, Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, and NYPD of being complicit or turning a blind eye to X’s murder in 1965.

“The government’s fingerprints are all over the assassination of Malcolm X,” civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said during a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “We believe we have the evidence to prove it.”

Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, was also present alongside her family’s legal team at the press conference, noting the hurdles they’ve had to overcome in their quest for justice for her father.

Shabazz touched on her late mother and X’s widow, Betty Shabazz, giving her the motivation to press forward with their mission to hold those responsible for her father’s death accountable.

“It has taken us a long time to get to this point, and we fought primarily for our mother, who was here on Feb. 21, 1965,” said Shabazz. “My mother was pregnant but she came here to see her husband speak, someone who she just admired totally, and to witness this horrific assassination of her husband.”

The Shabazz family’s plans to take legal action against the government and its agencies were first announced by Crump in Feburary 2023, on the 58th anniversary of Malcolm X’s murder, which occurred at Harlem’s former Audubon Ballroom in 1965.

The lawsuit gained legs in 2021, when Nation of Islam members Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, two of threemen convicted of gunning down X, were exonerated and had their murder convictions overturned after it was determined the men were innocent.

Aziz and Islam’s release was largely due to the confession of Mujahid Abdul Halim, the third convicted gunman in the case, who told authorities that the pair was innocent and not involved in X’s assassination.

Aziz and Islam’s family would later receive a combined $36 million in lawsuit settlements related to their wrongful convictions.

That same year, the family of a deceased NYPD officer revealed that he had confessed to a plot to arrest Malcolm X’s security as a measure to make him vulnerable to an assassination attempt. Khaleel Sayyed and Walter Bowe, X’s chief guards at the time, would corroborate that statement, as they were both arrested and detained on bogus charges in the days leading up to X’s murder.

“Over the last three years every day, every week, every month, we have been unearthing new evidence — evidence of people never having spoken before about what they witnessed during those turbulent times in the 1960s,” Crump said of the ongoing developments regarding X’s death.