Malcolm slowly climbed the stairs up to the main ballroom, taking long, heavy steps. By the time he reached the second floor, he looked exhausted, “harried,” an OAAU member recalled, “not fearful . . . but just [like] somebody who had a lot on their mind.” Backstage, Malcolm sank into a metal folding chair and rested his elbow on a counter in front of an old vanity mirror. From the anteroom, he could hear the noisy crowd filling the ballroom. When he learned that the guest speakers had not arrived and that no one had printed his official program, he snapped at his assistants, “Get out! Everybody! Get out!”44
Restless, he bounded from the chair and began pacing, occasionally peeking out at the audience. “He was more tense than I’d ever seen him,” Benjamin 2X remembered. Without an official platform or a guest speaker, he sent Benjamin to give the introduction. “Make it plain,” Malcolm instructed. A few moments later, he apologized to the aides who had returned to the green room. Anxious, he admitted, “I don’t feel right about this meeting. I feel that I should not be here. Something is wrong, brothers.”45
After improvising for more than twenty minutes, around three o’clock, Benjamin brought Malcolm on stage. Wearing a dark brown suit and a solemn expression, Malcolm stood behind the plywood lectern, a few feet away from an old white grand piano, a drum set, and a row of folding chairs. For more than a minute the audience gave him a standing ovation. Right before he began, Gene Roberts retreated from his position near the stage and headed toward the back of the ballroom, leaving only two bodyguards standing in front of the rostrum. As the crowd continued clapping, Malcolm cracked a crooked smile. When the audience quieted down, he greeted them. “As-Salaam-Alaikum,” he announced. “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,” the crowd rejoined.46
Taking a long deep breath, like a boxer moving out of his corner before the first round, Malcolm began, “Brothers and sisters . . .” Then it happened.
A man in a black overcoat jumped from his seat, tossed a homemade smoke bomb, and shouted, “Get your hand out of my pocket!” Suddenly, two men in the middle of the audience were on their feet, entangled in a shoving match. Startled and confused, the spectators began yelling. Immediately, the two rostrum guards dashed toward the commotion, leaving Malcolm unprotected. Gene Roberts and several other security guards standing in the rear left their posts too.47
“Now, now, brothers,” Malcolm urged, “break it up. Be cool, be calm.”
At that moment a large black man stepped into the aisle and raised a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. “Hold it!” Malcolm pleaded, extending his arm in the air. “Hold it!”
Boom! The gunman pulled the trigger, blasting shotgun pellets through the plywood lectern, cutting a crater of holes in the center of Malcolm’s chest.
Malcolm staggered, rocking back on his heels. His body swayed backward, crashing into two empty chairs. His head slammed onto the hardwood, making a loud thud.
The gunman fired again into his jerking body. Two more shooters, Talmadge and Leon, streaked toward the stage and sprayed him with bullets.48
Within seconds, it was over. Fleeing, the man with the shotgun fired above the crowd. “Get out of the goddamn way!” one of them yelled. Screaming and cursing, people ran for the exits, colliding into each other. Others helplessly dove onto the floor, tossing chairs aside. Covering her girls, Betty tried to shield them from the horror. “They’re killing my husband!” she cried.49
Hurdling chairs, Talmadge ran right at Gene Roberts, firing a shot at the undercover agent, grazing his coat. Roberts flung a chair at his legs, knocking Talmadge down. Rising from the floor, he sprinted toward the exit. Just as he reached the top of the stairwell, Reuben Francis fired three shots, clipping him in the left thigh. “Oh!” Talmadge screamed. Writhing in pain, he tumbled down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, a mob seized him. “Kill him! Kill him!” the horde shouted.
Rushing toward the crowd, patrolman Hoy grabbed on to the suspect’s arm, yanking it “like the rope in tug-o’-war.” “They were trying to pull him apart the way you pull a drumstick off a turkey,” one witness recalled.50
Moments later, two more patrolmen emerged from a squad car. When one of the officers realized that the crowd was winning the tug-of-war, he fired his revolver into the air, ordering them to disperse. Quickly, the patrolmen shoved Talmadge into the back of the cruiser. The suspect, identified in the press as “Thomas Hagan,” was the only assassin caught at the scene.51