The day Malcolm X came to Smethwick

When Malcolm X came to Smethwick 60 years ago, it was to witness at first hand the racial discrimination being endured by Black and Asian communities.

For many local residents, what was happening in the area amounted to an apartheid, with ethnic minorities prohibited from renting and buying houses in certain areas or getting jobs.

The civil rights activist visited Marshall Street on 12 February 1965, just days before his assassination, after he was invited by Avtar Singh Jouhl from the Indian Workers' Association (IWA).

On the day of his visit, Malcolm X was taken to the local Blue Gates pub - and he didn't get served.

Sohan Singh, who has lived on Marshall Street for 33 years, remembered how people were kept in separate areas of the pub.

"You can go there, but they said not in smoke room, only the bar," he said.

"There were two sort of glasses, one is straight, one is with a handle. They give the glass, [the] handle one to the Indians, a straight one for the Europeans."

Malcolm X had visited the small industrial town in the Black Country at a time when it was considered to be a hotbed of racial tension, with some residents lobbying the council to buy up empty houses and make them available to white families only.

The area had experienced a high proportion of immigration from Commonwealth communities after World War Two, with Peter Griffiths elected as Smethwick's Conservative MP in 1964, amid a racist campaign.

Anti-racism campaigner Mr Jouhl had invited Malcolm X to witness the racial discrimination, while the BBC brought him to Marshall Street, where he was interviewed by reporter Julian Pettifer.

The interview remains one of the last recorded before the assassination.

Malcolm X told newspapers at the time he was "disturbed by reports that coloured people in Smethwick are being treated badly".

After his visit, he returned to the US and was shot dead on 21 February while preparing to give a speech in Harlem, New York.

Mr Jouhl's son said his father, who died in 2022, was determined that his guest should see how bad things were in the town.

"Malcolm when he came here expressed that things are worse here than they are in Harlem and he also sort of said let's not wait for them to erect the gas ovens as they did with the Jews in Germany," said Jagwant Johal.

"So that was the seriousness of if you don't actually oppose these things, that things can get out of hand."

During the visit, Malcolm X walked side-by-side with members of the IWA down Marshall Street.

Mr Johal told the BBC his father had achieved what he wanted to do.

"He definitely hit the mark, because the purpose was to bring Malcolm here to shine a light on what was going on in Smethwick," Mr Johal said.

"Even now, 60 years later, people are still asking the same questions and also looking at what was Malcolm's legacy lessons that could be applied to what's going on today."

In 1964, Malcolm X, who had taken on the name when he joined the Nation of Islam group, was one of the most famous and most polarising figures in the US.

Like Martin Luther King, he was a powerful orator, but unlike his contemporary he did not advocate only peaceful means to achieve his aims.

Film-maker Stephen Page, from Darlaston, has spent decades exploring his legacy and in 2005, created a film called Malcolm X: A Day In Smethwick as part of a community project.

"Reading the autobiography of Malcolm X had a big impact on me," he said.

Mr Page said not many people, including activists in the area, knew about the visit at the time, but it was later that its impact would be felt, "when Malcolm's legacy was kind of realised".

Malcolm X's visit came just months before the UK's first laws to address race discrimination.

The 1965 Race Relations Act banned discrimination in public places and made the promotion of hatred on the grounds of "colour, race, or ethnic or national origins" an offence.

However, it would be another three years before discrimination in employment and housing was also made illegal.

At the time, racial tensions in the area were high, culminating in Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech in Birmingham in 1968.

Ilene Chigwende, from Bilston, said Malcolm X visited at a time "where there was so much racism".

"I think things have changed now, but I believe that racism still exists, but in a different form," she said,

"It exists in education, it exists in the workplace, it exists in the NHS, because I worked in the NHS I know it's there. I don't think we can get rid of it but it's at a point where things have improved a lot."

A blue plaque was erected on the side of a house in Marshall Street in 2012 to mark Malcom X's visit.

Youth worker Miffy Ball, who lives in Walsall, agreed that racism remained a problem today.

"We're so much more of a multicultural country, that it's not just one specific group it's affecting, it's affecting everybody on a daily scale, but I think it's sad as a country that we're still fighting it," she said.

Mr Johal said it was important to build relationships, but there would not be a change in the long-term, unless "structural racism" was dismantled.

"Over time you get to know your neighbour and through your neighbour you get to know your neighbour's neighbour," he said.

"Things are sort of changing - it's only because we are continuing to campaign and raise the issues that still exist to be changed."

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