his head thudding hard on the floor. The first shot killed the Malcolm fairly quickly. "Seven of the twelve slugs from the first blast destroyed the speakers heart; others shredded his aorta, punctured both lungs and burrowed into his spine" (Goldman 277).The man with the shotgun unloaded a second shot. Simultaneously, two men wearing overcoats joined in. One man had a Luger, and the other had a .45 automatic (Goldman 5). They fired an absurd amount of bullets, squeezing in shot after shot into Malcolm's body (Carson 373). The assassins possibly intended to emphasize final humiliation, or their intense animosity with this dramatic overkill. Adding to the chaos, someone yelled "there's a bomb in here"(Carson 400), a clearly efficient bluff that caused the panic to skyrocket. Contrasting the fevered energy of the crowd, Malcolm's body lay limp on the floor of the Audubon Ballroom, 165 Street Washington Heights (McFadden 2). The immediate significance of Malcolm's assassination reflects tumultuous civil rights era. The death of another political leader during a time scared with intense suppression of rights, governmental abuse, social activism, and communist paranoia. The significance after his assassination is the loss of a critical leader and the explosive birth of an icon. Murder Theories and Time PeriodIn determining the significance of Malcolm's death one should examine the time frame and murder theories. Malcolm's death, February 1965, came during most vocal civil rights activism in United States history. The resistance to racial activism was meet with huge oppression. Fear of communism ran ramped, "there was a well-orchestrated, high priority program operating from the FBI to destabilize black organizations that were involved in the civil-rights movement and African- American struggle" (Chambers 41), civil rights leaders like Martin Luther king, Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Malcolm were assassinated (Gallen 83), and demonstr...
