. Before any of these activities could get under way he was
killed. Malcolm X was gunned down by four blacks, probably associated
with the Black Muslims, while addressing a meeting in New York City early
in 1965.

To Malcolm X the Civil Rights Movement was in need of a new
interpretation. The degree of segregation existing in schools and in the
rest of society, he contended, had actually increased in the decade since
the Supreme Court decision in 1954. It seemed to him to be particularly
true in the case of the de facto segregation practiced in the North. The
spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, he pointed out, had been one of
asking and pleading for rights which should have belonged to
Afro-Americans by birth:

"I said that the American black man needed to recognize that he had a
strong, airtight case to take the United States before the United Nations
on a formal accusation of 'denial of human rights'--and that if Angola
and South Africa were precedent cases, then there would be no easy way
that the U.S. could escape being censured, right on its own home ground."

Malcolm was also critical of the Civil Rights Movement, contending that
its interracial makeup and its emphasis on integration undercut the real
goals of the black masses. "Not long ago," he said, "the black man in
America was fed a dose of another form of the weakening, lulling and
deluding effects of so-called 'integration.' It was that 'Farce on
Washington,' I call it." Malcolm held that the famous March on
Washington in 1963 had begun as a very angry, grass-roots movement among
poor black people. He said that whites took it over and turned a genuine
protest into a sentimental, interracial picnic.

Finally, Malcolm made it clear that he, too, was willing to resort to
violence although he did not favor initiating it. He held that, when the
rights of blacks were violated, they should be willing to die in the
struggle to secure them:

"If white America doesn't think the Afro-American, especially the
upcoming generation, is capable of adopting the guerrilla tactics now
being used by oppressed people elsewhere on this earth, she is making a
drastic mistake. She is underestimating the force that can do her the
most harm.

"A real honest effort to remove the just grievances of the 22 million
Afro-Americans must be made immediately or in a short time it will be too
late."

The slogan "Black Power" exploded from a public address system in
Greenwood, Miss