On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X takes the stage at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, New York to address a rally of his Organization of Afro-American Unity — and is shot fifteen times by three gunmen before he can speak. Spike Lee's film frames the assassination as the culmination of Malcolm's journey from petty criminal to Black nationalist to, finally, an internationalist thinker in the middle of redefining his politics.