Activist Khalid Muhammad was known for shaking things up, whether he was challenging the establishment or promoting Black nationalism. He rose to prominence in the Nation of Islam until he was removed from the organization following a controversial speech in 1993 at Kean College in New Jersey that some deemed anti-Semitic and racially insensitive.
Muhammad moved on to the New Black Panther Party, where he served as the National Chairman until his death in 2001 from a brain aneurysm.
On May 29, 1994, there was an assassination attempt on his life by former Nation of Islam member James Bess. He was shot after delivering a speech at the University of California, Riverside. He survived the attack.
Here are 10 things to know about the 1994 assassination attempt at U.C. Riverside on Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad.
During an interview with Milwaukee radio station WNOV, Muhammad reflected on the shooting. He noted that he’d had a foreboding sense that something might go wrong at the speech. First off, he said he failed to see any Nation of Islam “seasoned veterans” providing security.
“Both before and after the speech, he found himself avoiding use of the most logical entrance and exit point for a speaker: the backstage door, where he is convinced the would-be assassin at first waited,” The Chicago Tribune reported. Then, after the speech he left by the front door and continued a question-and-answer session with audience members. He looked up and saw the shooter coming at him “from 5 o’clock.”
A bullet hit Muhammad in the upper left leg as his bodyguards flung him to the ground. One bodyguard was hit in the chest and the shoulder. Two or three other people were also wounded, none of them seriously, according to police. Muhammad underwent two hours of surgery, Riverside Community Hospital said in a statement, according to AP News.
After the shooting, a crowd surrounded the gunman in the parking lot outside the university auditorium where Muhammad had spoken. The crowd beat the shooter before authorities could break up the fight, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Following the shooting, police said they were investigating why Muhammad deviated from security plans after his two-hour speech.
Police Chief Ken Fortier said police were trying to find out the source of a note that was handed to Muhammad on stage moments before the shooting. Muhammad read the note and then suggested that the crowd leave the auditorium. Muhammad unexpectedly left through an unguarded door.
But Fortier said, ″I don’t see it as a diversion. The note does not appear to be significant.″
The man who shot Muhammad is James Edward Bess, a defrocked minister in the Nation of Islam. He was arraigned on one count of attempted premeditated murder in the attack on Muhammad. He also charged with five counts of assault with a firearm with the infliction of great bodily injury, The Seattle Times reported. Bess pleaded innocent.
It was later revealed Bess had an extensive criminal record. He had shot and killed his own brother in 1975 and was acquitted by a jury that decided he acted in self-defense, the Fresno Bee reported at the time.
Prior to that, an all-white jury convicted Bess and another brother, Henry, in 1965 of felony assault on a man who refused to buy a Muslim newspaper. James and Henry Bess were also convicted in 1964 of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison in Caruthersville, Mo., then paroled the same day. No reason was given for the immediate parole, the Seattle Times reported.
While the police concluded the gunman acted alone, Muhammad’s camp doubted this was so.
″With this crime, we’re not dealing with a whodunit. We know whodunit, and there is no mystery about that,″ said Hank Rosenfeld, chief of campus police.
The police found three nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistols and a rifle with a scope near the shooting scene and the weapons were linked to Bess, AP News reported.
Muhammad claimed that more than one person was involved in the attempt on his life.
“We are not foolish enough to believe that this was a lone assassin, a lone killer,” Muhammad told an audience of 1,000 at Emmanuel Evangelistic Temple in his first public appearance since being shot, The Chicago Tribune reported. Muhammad said witnesses reported seeing two armed men running away and leaving in a red car after the shooting.
A local CBS affiliate TV station was broadcasting outside the venue when James Bess shot Muhammad. It was all caught on camera.
In a YouTube video posted by an organization called the New Testament Church of Global Family Unity that Bess appears to run, he explained his reasons behind the assassination attempt.
“I first met Dr. Khalid in 1978 and my impression was that he was a serious student and helper to the honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan,” Bess said.
When asked about why he wanted Muhammad dead, Bess said it was entirely personal.
“The constant interference and collaboration with my former wife and Dr. Khalid created problems for my children. The culmination was when my second oldest daughter…decided she wanted to marry a young white man. As far as I was concerned it was not a concern to [my wife] and it was certainly of no concern of Dr. Khalid. He had a relationship with my former wife and not my children,” he said.
According to Bess, he was upset with the views Dr. Khalid was trying to impose on his daughter. “I had a problem with that. That’s when I decided I wanted to eliminate him from [my daughter’s] life.”
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There were rumors that Bess was working with Jews who were angry over Muhammad’s statements about Jewish people.
“I never worked for hire with anyone to harm or kill anyone. I never worked with the Jews. This had nothing to do with the Jews,” Bess said. “(Rumors like that) could seduce some young Black person to harm me because they would feel like they are getting rid of some agent of the Jews,” Bess said.
