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A Brother set Up Malcolm X

H. Michael Harvey, JD
6 min readFeb 23, 2021

And The FBI Ran The Scheme To Kill A Black Leader

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

By all accounts, Malcolm X was a peace-loving brother; at least, he did not advocate violence as an act of aggression. Malcolm believed that all humans had a right to defend themselves if attacked, but no one had a right to inflict violence on a person who came in peace.

When he was shot down in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem that cold February day in 1965, many people said that it was a case of living by the gun and dying by the gun. The faithful mourned, the majority showed indifference.

Living by the gun is an inappropriate metaphor for Malcolm because he did not live by the gun. His whole persona desired to secure equality for Africans living in America in a perpetual state of slavery since 1619. His crime was publicly speaking the truth about powerful men in the government and corporate America.

In the days when Blacks lived with their enslavers on the plantation, there could be found one among them who helped Massa keep the rest enslaved to a system that denied them their humanity. If one enslaved person said, “let’s organize and get away from here,” there was a brother who carried the message back to the big house. You could usually find them pretending to be sad when the organizer received the whip or the rope.

So, it does not come as a big surprise that a brother set Malcolm X up to die just as Malcolm released plans for the Organization of Afro-American Unity. This was a group which would include the religious and secular segments in the Black community and unite them with Africans on the continent.

“At the time, I was not aware that Malcolm X was the target,” Raymond A. Wood said in a written statement dated January 11, 2011.

Wood, a self-proclaimed “black New York City undercover police officer from April 1964 through May of 1971,” uttered his statements in hopes of clearing the name of Thomas Johnson, one of three men convicted of the slaying of Malcolm X.

New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance has re-opened Johnson’s case and has met with the Innocent Project members who represent Johnson, now deceased.

If Wood’s confession is credible, he was hired on April 17, 1964, by the New York City police department around…

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H. Michael Harvey, JD
H. Michael Harvey, JD

Written by H. Michael Harvey, JD

Harvey is Living Now Book Awards 2020 Bronze Medalist for his memoir Freaknik Lawyer: A Memoir on the Craft of Resistance. Available at haroldmichaelharvey.com

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