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Guests at the three-dollar-a-night Hacienda Motel didn t notice the shots that rang out just after 3 AM on the morning of December 11th, 1964.
Gun violence was disturbingly common in this part of South-Central Los Angeles. Even the cops seemed slightly blasé at the sight of a dead man lying bloody and naked, save for a sport coat and single shoe, propped up against the door of the motel manager s office. The attitude was, Oh well, another n - got shot, Norman Edelen, one of the few men of color to serve the precinct for the LAPD in 1964, tells PEOPLE in this week s issue. It would be hours before authorities learned the man s identity. That s when the shock set in.
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Nobody gave Cassius Clay a hope in hell, but Malcolm X had faith. Why wouldn t he? Not only had the young upstart been training harder than his rival, World Heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston, but he also had Allah in his corner. “This fight is the truth,” Malcolm told his protégé in the days before the 1964 title bout. “It’s the Cross and the Crescent fighting in the prize ring for the first time. It’s a modern Crusades – a Christian and a Muslim facing each other with television to beam it off Telstar for the whole world to see what happens!”