Daughter of Malcolm X Requests Congressional Investigation Into His Assassination

Malcolm X’s daughter is calling for a congressional investigation into her father’s 1965 murder.

ABC News explores the civil rights activist’s assassination in its new special Soul of a Nation Presents: X/onerated: The Murder of Malcolm X and 55 Years to Justice, which premiered Friday on Hulu.

Ilyasah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X’s six daughters, who was just two years old when her father was shot and killed at New York City’s Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965, is requesting a federal inquiry into their father’s death.

“We want to know the truth. We want to know why our father was killed and who did it,” Shabazz said. “I knew about my father. I knew about daddy. I knew about my mother’s husband. But I had never learned about Malcolm X the icon, and in college, I did.”

The news arrives just three months after Nation of Islam members Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, who were convicted of killing Malcolm X, were exonerated over evidence withheld by the FBI and the NYPD. Back in December, Muhammad filed a lawsuit against the state of New York for the “serious miscarriages of justice” that resulted in his wrongful conviction in connection to the killing. 

“There was so many who said that these men who were serving time were not the actual people who pulled the trigger,” Shabazz told ABC News.

When asked why Malcolm X was viewed as a threat, Shabazz said, “Because he held a mirror up to it all – the injustices.”

“He spoke truth to power and especially during a time when there was no one doing it,” she added.