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ghettos were filled with a terrible sense of desperation. As feared, riots broke out in New York later in the summer—a single incident was all that was needed to set off a neighborhood already seething with frustration and hatred for anoverbearingpolice force that acted more like an occupyingarmy thananagency of justice. A 15-year-old student in the black district of Harlem was shot and killed by a police officer on July 16, 1964. For the nextweek, the streetsofHarlem and the Bedford-Stuyvesant

New York police officers subdue an African-American protester during the 1964 race riots in Harlem.

section of Brooklyn became a battle zone filled with gunfire and flaming buildings. The cities had begun to burn, and the fury felt by blacks in the ghettos would soon cause many more cities to be set ablaze. This was Malcolm X’s world—a violent world, seething with tension, like a time bomb about to explode. Once the fuse was lit, the changes he had been longing for seemed close at hand.

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C I V I L R I GH T S L E A D E R S : MA LCO L M X