Fifty-six years ago today, the racial justice activist and icon Malcolm X was shot and killed while addressing a crowd in New York City’s Audubon Ballroom.
On this same day, a young Black organizer from Alabama named John Lewis turned 25. Just a few months later, he would lead a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and would himself become a civil rights icon.
Their struggles — and the struggles of countless others — helped advance justice and equality in the United States. They fought for voting rights and desegregation, and while they succeeded on those fronts, the fight for fair and equal treatment of Black people across this country continues today.
This Black History Month, as we reflect on the progress that has been made since the abolition of slavery and the Civil Rights Act, we also recognize that we have a long way left to go.
“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”
Malcolm X
Malcolm X waits at Martin Luther King press conference in 1964. (Image: Library of Congress/Public Domain)
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
