The Audubon Ballroom was the site of early efforts to organize the municipal transit workers of New York City. It had become the original meeting hall for the IRT Brotherhood the company union of the IRT which employees were forced to join. Michael J. Quill, the prominent and turbulent New York City labor leader, was an attendee. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X, the radical Black Muslim minister, participated at a rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and was assassinated while giving a speech. The assassination caused the failure of the complex and City of New York took over the building in 1967, due to a tax debt. Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center later purchased the property. There was a great controversy Columbia Presbyterian wanted to demolish the building. Today, only the facade of the original structure remains. There is a statue of Malcolm X in the lobby of the present structure. The 1912 building was designed by Thomas W. Lamb, in association with the Rambusch Studios, which did the interior design of the theater.
Malcolm X
(b. 1925 Omaha Nebraska – d. NYC 1965)
was the famous Black Nationalist leader who was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. One of eight children, his father was a Baptist preacher. Likely his father was assassinated by the Black Legion, a white-hate group in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929. Malcolm was left an orphan. He dropped out of school and later moved to Harlem where he became a self-described gangster. In 1946, in Boston, he was arrested and received a 10-year prison sentence for burglary. In prison he became a Muslim under the Nation of Islam (NOI), led by Elijah Muhammad. The NOI wanted a separate black state away from white people.Malcolm, when paroled in 1952, was a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad. A leader, he opened NOI mosques in Detroit and Harlem. He began to draw a large following. He became famous after being interviewed by Mike Wallace in a 1959 television special called 'The Hate That Hate Produced.' The NOI was infiltrated by the FBI, as it was considered a subversive group. By 1963, Malcolm lost faith in Elijah Muhammad, because of the latter's personal failings. Malcolm broke with the NOI and in 1964, he ended his relationship with them. Malcolm made his famous pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia in 1964, where he said he had met 'blonde-haired, blued-eyed men I could call my brothers.' He changed his views and embraced integration. His home was firebombed in 1965. A week later (February 21, 1965) at speaking engagement in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom, three gunmen rushed Malcolm. They shot him 15 times at close range. Malcolm was pronounced dead on arrival at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. He left an enduring civil rights legacy. His wrote the famous and best-selling 'Autobiography of Malcolm X' that is still in print. He is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
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1) Uptown Manhattan Map [26]
