The presence of Malcolm X is still a threat to them (in more ways than one)..
Garner Cops Raided a Black Woman’s Home, Seized Her Phones and Computers, and Charged Her With Loudly Playing Malcolm X Speeches
"I’m a second-class citizen in the eyes of Garner and the Garner PD,” she told the
INDY in April, after the police seized her stereo. “It feels like the things that Malcolm X spoke about in the sixties are exactly the same in 2019.”
She recorded her encounter with the police on April 22 and posted it online. An officer told her she was playing the speeches—by Malcolm X and Angela Davis, which she was listening to while she cleaned the back patio, she says—too loudly. In the recording, the speeches are vaguely audible in the background but don’t overpower Thompson and the officer’s conversation.
Though the Garner police say they were only concerned with “how loud the noise was,” the May 16 search warrant notes twice that Thompson was playing Malcolm X.
Jones says that “just sets of all sorts of red flags that perhaps there’s some animus here about the actual content as opposed to just the noise level.” If the content played a role in the police’s action—consciously or subconsciously—that would be a violation of the First Amendment. Courts have ruled that all restrictions on speech have to be content-neutral."