When Malcolm X visited Smethwick after racist election
Fifty-three years after his assassination, Briton who welcomed Malcolm X remembers iconic figure's final foreign trip.
On February 12, 1965, Malcolm X, with his brow-line glasses perched high above his nose, walked along the terraced houses of Marshall Street in Smethwick, a small and bleak UK town in the West Midlands.
Nine days later, on February 21, 1965, he would be assassinated having returned to New York City.
His final foreign trip saw him travel to the relatively unknown English town, near the city of Birmingham, and home to a large Asian and West Indian immigrant population.
In the year before his arrival, Smethwick hosted Britain's most racist election.
In 1964, 800,000 immigrants lived in the UK, 70,000 of whom resided in Birmingham, dubbed "the British Harlem" by the pres...