The Violent End of Malcolm X
Intimate rarely-seen photos from the assassination of the enigmatic civil rights icon, taken by a close friend.
Earl Grant loved Malcolm X.
On February 21, 1965, moments before giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City, Malcolm asked Grant for a favor — he needed a phone call placed on his behalf to a fundraiser and insisted Grant make it from a phone booth away from the stage.
“Do this for me, brother,” Malcolm pled, trying to smile.1
Grant was inside the phone booth when the first shot rang out.
“There was a pause, then a long series of shots,” Grant wrote. “I jumped up on the stage to see if I could help Brother Malcolm. He was lying on his back; his eyes and mouth were slightly open.
“I took one look and knew that it was too late. No man could have that many bullet holes in his chest and still survive. Really, there was nothing I could do for Malcolm now. I thought to get my camera and get some photographs. They might be useful later.”2
Grant was one of Malcolm’s closest friends and advisors, but was compelled to document his final moments. Those photos he made in the aftermath of the assassination are miraculous, yet overlooked, rarely published, and never credited. Until now.
The empty chair facing the wall is an unsettling detail.
Unbelievably, the man performing mouth to mouth resuscitation is Gene Roberts, an undercover police officer for the NYPD who infiltrated Malcolm’s camp.
Afterwards, other NYPD officers questioned Roberts on why he was trying to save Malcolm. “Nobody deserves to be gunned down like that,” Roberts responded. “And I'm a cop and supposed to save lives, and help save or try to save lives anyway…I just thought I was doing my job.”
The following photo by Earl Grant has never been published. It’s chaotic and incredibly layered, with Malcolm and Roberts subtly relegated to the background.
Grant captured Malcolm’s wife, Betty Shabazz, grieving over the body of her husband. “She fell on her knees looking down on his bare, bullet-pocked chest, sobbing, ‘They killed him,’” Alex Haley wrote.3
Another remarkable rarely-seen photo by Grant. The slow shutter with a pop of flash adds to the turmoil, as does the range of expressions.
This was the only photo Grant made outside of the Audubon Ballroom, as police wheeled Malcolm’s body towards the hospital. The shadow of the hand cast on the back of the police officer is notable, as is the cop on the far right with the baton.
“Although we were directly across the street from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, it took almost half an hour for a stretcher to arrive,” Grant wrote.4
LIFE boldly published Grant's photos in its March 5, 1965, issue.
The written story is offensive, derogatory — par for the times — and filled with errors. But, they published photos from the assassination that no one else would or could.
Sadly, Earl Grant’s name is nowhere to be found. It wasn’t entirely clear who’d shot the photos, where they came from, or how LIFE acquired them until years later.
“It was Earl Grant who shot the picture of Malcolm lying on the floor, not me,” Robert Haggins, Malcolm’s official photographer, told Spike Lee in 1992. “But everybody thinks I shot those pictures because I sold them to LIFE magazine. I was the one who made the deal.”5
Side note: the similarities between Grant’s photo of Malcolm…
…and Ron Bennett’s photo of Robert F. Kennedy, taken moments after his assassination on June 6, 1968, are eerily striking.
From the open shirt and angles of their heads to the random feet surrounding them, the parallels are remarkable. Even the use of direct flash with an element in the foreground echo each other. Bennett, shooting for UPI, earned a Pulitzer nomination and a World Press Photo award — Earl Grant didn’t even get a byline.
The day after the assassination of Malcolm X, photos of the scene outside the ballroom, distributed by UPI, were widely published.
The UPI photo was heavily-cropped by the Daily News. Its true brilliance and dimension are unclear until the rest of the frame is revealed.
The details are incredible: the woman in the passing car, the smirking white cop, the other white cop gripping a baton, Malcolm X’s tilted-back head and empty expression, mouth slightly open, his supporters trailing from behind. Look at that perfect shadow of the cops head on the ground by the car.
It’s unclear exactly who made these photos. I’ve reviewed the WCBS-TV footage — a photographer can be seen shooting a Hail Mary at 9:03, but it’s not Earl Grant (he wore glasses).
Almost sixty years later, the botched investigation into the assassination embodies confusion and injustice. The Netflix series “Who Killed Malcolm X” masterfully dissects this complexity. Still though, no mention of Earl Grant.
Grant didn’t photograph Malcolm’s funeral. “As I stood by his coffin, I looked down upon a face that I had loved so much,” he wrote. “The tears were streaming down my face as I said ‘As Asalaam Alaikum’ to him for the last time. I asked his forgiveness for my being unable to have done more for him.”6
John Henrik Clarke, ed., Malcolm X: The Man and His Times (New York: Collier Books, 1969), 95.
Ibid., 96.
Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 436.
John Henrik Clarke, ed., Malcolm X: The Man and His Times (New York: Collier Books, 1969), 96.
Spike Lee, By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X (New York: Hyperion, 1992), 40.
John Henrik Clarke, ed., Malcolm X: The Man and His Times (New York: Collier Books, 1969), 104.
There's a typo in the email version of this story - the assassination of Malcolm X was on February 21, 1965, not February 25, 1965.
The last stretcher photo by Anonymous should the in the canon of top news photojournalism images in history.
Excellent report.