Almost 56 years to the Feb. 21, 1965, assassination of Malcolm X, the slain leader\u2019s daughters and a noted civil rights attorney are shining a light on those whom they believe are responsible for the heartless murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The group gathered on Saturday, Feb. 20, at the old Audubon Ballroom \u2013 since renamed The Shabazz Center<\/a> \u2013 with lawyers Ray Hamlin and Paul Napoli and Reggie Wood, whose relative, NYPD Officer<\/a> Ray Wood<\/a>, allegedly confessed in a deathbed declaration letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gathering occurred in the same venue as the assassination and just one day before the heinous crime\u2019s anniversary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new allegations focus on Officer Wood and a conspiracy against organized civil rights groups that he said had been perpetrated by the New York City Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reggie Wood alleges that authorities conspired to assassinate Malcolm X in Harlem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRay Wood, an undercover police officer at the time, confessed in a deathbed declaration letter that the NYPD and the FBI conspired to undermine the legitimacy of the civil rights movement and its leaders,\u201d Crump stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWithout any training, Wood\u2019s job was to infiltrate civil rights organizations and encourage leaders and members to commit felonious acts,\u201d Crump noted in a news release before the gathering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was also tasked with ensuring that Malcolm X\u2019s security detail was arrested days prior to the assassination, guaranteeing Malcolm X didn\u2019t have door security while at the Audubon Ballroom, where he was killed on Feb. 21, 1965.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wood\u2019s purported death bed letter was delivered to three of Malcolm\u2019s daughters \u2013 Qubiliah, Ilyasah, and Gamilah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reggie Wood, the administrator of Ray Wood\u2019s estate, read the letter to Malcolm\u2019s daughters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ray Wood served as an undercover New York City police officer with the Bureau of Special Services and Investigation (BOSSI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reportedly, he earned a reputation for infiltrating the Bronx Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapter under the name Ray Woodall in 1964.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a report in The Guardian<\/a>, Wood posed as a 27-year-old graduate of Manhattan College studying law at Fordham University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was soon named CORE\u2019s housing chairman and oversaw a voter registration project,\u201d The Guardian reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWood earned his activist bonafides by getting arrested with two others at city hall while attempting a citizen\u2019s arrest of Mayor Wagner for allowing racial discrimination on a public construction project,\u201d the U.K.-based newspaper published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1965, Wood had been reassigned to infiltrate a group calling itself the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) and received credit for defusing a plot to bomb the Statue of Liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three men were convicted of Malcolm X\u2019s 1965 murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talmadge Hayer, who later changed his name to Mujahid Abdul Halim<\/a>, was the only one to admit guilt in the assassination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Norman Butler, who later changed his name to Muhammad Abdul Aziz<\/a>, and Thomas Johnson, later named Khalil Islam<\/a>, maintained their innocence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aziz won parole in 1985; Islam was released in 1987, and Halim was released in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Islam died in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Netflix documentary, \u201cWho Killed Malcolm X?,\u201d<\/a> was released last year and featured interviews conducted by Abdur-Rahman Muhammad<\/a>, an activist and investigator who said he dedicated his life to solving Malcolm\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the documentary\u2019s release, the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s office announced it would review the case and reopen it if they found new evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr., could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost 56 years to the Feb. 21, 1965, assassination of Malcolm X, the slain leader\u2019s daughters and a noted civil rights attorney are shining a light on those whom they believe are responsible for the heartless murder. The group gathered on Saturday, Feb. 20, at the old Audubon Ballroom \u2013 since renamed The Shabazz Center \u2013 with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1351,730,1517],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ben-crump","tag-malcolm-x","tag-nypd","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}