The Death That Galvanized Malcolm X Against Police Brutality, by Peniel Joseph and Accompanying Fiery Speech in Los Angeles in 1962

February 13, 2024February 29, 2024RBG Street Scholar 5 Comments

“On April 27th, 1962, Los Angeles police fatally shot Nation of Islam member Ronald Stokes. Officers mistook him and a group of Muslims removing clothes from a car outside a Los Angeles mosque for criminals. The conflict quickly escalated to a police raid inside the mosque, leaving a total of seven Muslims shot, one killed, and one paralyzed from a bullet wound to the back. Stokes’s death compelled Malcolm to engage in new dimensions of the black freedom struggle.” (From the article below)

In 1962, a confrontation with the LAPD outside a mosque resulted in the death of a Nation of Islam member. It was an event seized on by an outraged Malcolm X, who would condemn it in an impassioned speech..

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A ‘major disturbance’ broke out August 21 at San Quentin Prison after two convicts, one of them George Jackson (R), a Soledad Brother, tried to escape from their rock-walled enclosure. Jackson was killed in the escape attempt, the other prisoner gave up and was recaptured. The Soledad Brothers are three black convicts charged with slaying a guard at the Soledad State Prison in January 1970. They are (L-R): Fleeta Drumgo, 26; John W. Cluchette, 28; and Jackson, 29.