Assassination of Malcolm X still demands answers

It may take time for the entirety of concealed facts about major social injustices in our society to be divulged, but eventually scraps of truths emerge, letting justice breathe.

Case in point: Last week's column by Marc H. Morial was about a lawsuit filed recently by Malcolm X's daughters seeking withheld official information surrounding the 1965 assassination of their father in New York City's Audubon Ballroom that has been kept officially hidden for 59 years.

Perhaps the truth will be revealed about suspected FBI complicity in that event. What is known but was rarely emphasized is that at the time, the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, was not sympathetic to the desire of Black America to gain racial justice, a task that, as the record shows, he approached with minimal enthusiasm. Events forced his hand, such as the murder of the three civil rights workers, one Black, two white, in Mississippi in the turbulent '60s.

America's opinion of Hoover and the FBI of that era may diminish once the facts of this fateful Malcolm X event are at last revealed.

Hoover was an unenthusiastic enforcer of racial equality as is constitutionally guaranteed, though he did carry out such duties as and when the pressures of exigent circumstances required.

But to any adult at the time who kept up with those events, Hoover was no champion of the rights of minorities, which he approached half-heartedly at best, judging from the record.

Let us see what the pending lawsuit brings to light. As ancient wisdom reminds us, "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine."

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park

More coverage of girls and women’s college sports, please

Hmm. I see that three collegiate women’s sports teams in the Chicago area won championships recently: Northwestern University women’s field hockey team won the NCAA Division I tournament; Loyola University women’s volleyball team won the Atlantic 10 Conference title and are on their way to the NCAA tournament; and Chicago State’s women’s volleyball team won the Northeast Conference title and also are headed to the NCAA tournament.

So my question: Does the Sun-Times plan to cover upcoming events other than a mention in the Monday sports wire?

What about some background info on the field hockey MVP, Maddie Zimmer? Did she play in a Chicago-area high school? Or a feature on Loyola’s Bree Borum, named Most Outstanding Player in the Atlantic 10 tourney?

And my main point: How much local coverage is there of girls high school or women's collegiate sports?

Virginia Gilbert, Andersonville

Enough with giant U.S. flags at NFL games

Is Detroit in America? I got confused about this question until I saw the giant American flag displayed at the beginning of the Bears-Lions football game played at Ford Field in Detroit on Thanksgiving.

It was only when I saw the flag, which was almost as large as the entire football field, that I realized, "Hey, that's the American flag, isn't it? So, this game is probably being played in America, right?"

The display of these obscenely large American flags at football games is what I call "forced patriotism." It is the same type of sham "love of country" that we saw when Donald Trump literally hugged an American flag onstage.

And this behavior is coming from the same guy who dodged serving in the military during the Vietnam War due to a very questionable diagnosis of "bone spurs" from a podiatrist whose office was in a Trump-owned building, as reported by The New York Times in 2018. How convenient.

Hey, NFL, can we please stop with the giant flags? It's overkill, and it's not necessary. We know we're all Americans, and we all love our country. When we attempt to "prove" our patriotic fervor with such an obscene display, it only serves to have the opposite effect. Enough.

Bob Chimis, Elmwood Park

Merrick Garland messed up

If Attorney General Merrick Garland had done his job, Donald Trump would be headed to the big house instead of the White House.

However, Garland dithered because he worried that prosecuting a former president could have unpredictable consequences. When he finally was embarrassed enough by the mountain of evidence collected by the Jan. 6 committee and Trump’s obvious crime of stealing the documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, Trump was already a candidate.

He didn’t consider the consequences of Trump becoming president again, and now, we’re all stuck with this criminal and incompetent president once again, much to the delight of our enemies who realize how easily he can be manipulated. God help America!

Ken Weiss, Palatine

Dark times in America

Barring the obvious reasons for feeling despondent and hopeless after this last presidential election, I think one of the saddest and most difficult things to accept is how the history books will read years from now.

These years will be looked upon as very dark times in America: the years the greatest country in the world had leaders who chose greed, nepotism, favor, blackmail and ego over everything and everyone America stood for since the day we became this great nation.

There's no regard by leaders for the actual American people, and even more disheartening are the voters who supported every single one of those attributes. How will the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren feel about their ancestors who had a hand in that?

Louise Bajorek, Burbank