Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little), a gifted orator and advocate for radical political action to advance black interests, appeared in Page’s Auditorium on Roxboro Street on April 18, 1963. He debated Durham resident Floyd McKissick, an NAACP lawyer and civil rights activist, before a standing-room-only crowd, roughly 75 percent black and many of whom were students. Originally scheduled at W. D. Hill Recreation Center, the program was moved after city officials canceled the reservation on the grounds that the Black Muslims were not a religious group, as they had stated. McKissick declared that the city “stomped on the first amendment” to the Constitution when it denied the use of the hall for the debate. (photograph by Harold Moore, courtesy of the Herald-Sun)