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Remembering Malcolm X in the Place Where He Fell

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 24 February 2005
5 comments

Edito Movement Discriminations-Minorit. History

By COREY KILGANNON

Ilyasah Shabazz, 42, the third-eldest daughter of
Malcolm X, stared across the Audubon Ballroom in
Washington Heights at the spot where her father was
assassinated in front of her 40 years ago today.

She looked at the area that had held a stage where his
body lay riddled with bullets and pointed to the spot
where she, almost 3 years old, was sitting in a
banquette with two of her sisters and her mother, Betty
Shabazz, pregnant with twins.

Feb. 21, 1965, was a Sunday, and the low winter sun was
streaming in through the windows just as it was on
Saturday as she recalled that moment while she prepared
for a memorial to her father at the ballroom tonight.
Ms. Shabazz said this is the first memorial for her
father in the ballroom since his death.

"We were sitting stage right in a booth with one of
those curved seats," she said.

Immediately after Malcolm X took the podium, a man with
a shotgun rushed up and shot him in the chest at close
range, followed by two other gunmen, who also opened
fire at the black leader.

The ballroom erupted in chaos as Betty Shabazz shouted,
"They’re killing my husband!"

"But my mother threw herself over us when the shooting
started," her daughter recalled.

The Audubon Ballroom, at Broadway and 165th Street, has
been renovated and is preparing to open as the Malcolm
X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center.
The stage has been torn down, and the area it once
occupied is covered with a pristine wood floor running
up to huge floor-to-ceiling windows.

The new design is contemporary, but tonight’s memorial
will turn back time. As in 1965, some 400 people are
expected to gather, including three of Malcolm X’s six
children - all daughters - and some of his close
associates and followers who watched him die that day.
Many, like Benjamin Kareem, 72, are returning to the
Audubon for the first time since the assassination.

Mr. Kareem, Malcolm X’s assistant minister and the man
who introduced him onstage at the Audubon moments
before he was shot, said by phone Saturday that he
would travel to the ballroom from his home in Richmond,
Va.

"I didn’t want to go back to the Audubon because it was
a very traumatic experience for me," he said. "I
watched him lying out on that stage dying."

The memorial, at which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the
Rev. Al Sharpton and other notable New Yorkers are also
expected, is one of many planned for today in Harlem
and beyond, including events at Columbia University and
the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

After the death of Malcolm X, who famously urged black
Americans to use "any means necessary" to break the
shackles of white oppression, many of his followers
dispersed. His legacy, though, returned to the
spotlight several times, notably in Spike Lee’s 1992
film biography and in the death of Dr. Betty Shabazz in
a 1997 fire started by her 12-year-old grandson,
Malcolm Shabazz.

More privately, Malcolm X’s daughters have worked to
preserve his memory and to keep their family united. In
many ways, their lives remain defined by the moment of
his death at the Audubon in 1965.

Ilyasah Shabazz said she had no clear recollection of
the shooting itself, given her youth and the fact that
she was physically shielded from the gunfire by her
mother. But she added, "You still have to be
traumatized by all the noise and commotion and my
mother covering us up."

From that day, she said, her mother continued to shield

the girls from the scrutiny and controversy that
surrounded their father.

"She did all she could to make sure we grew up happy
and secure in a structured and organized environment,"
she said. "She had us in ballet and music lessons and
all kinds of camps."

But the violence in her early years, including the
firebombing of their home in Queens, is etched in her
memory.

"I have a memory of waking up in the middle of the
night, going to the window and pulling the Venetian
blinds wide apart in a moment of panic," she said.
"That was my first recollection of being really
frightened."

A New Rochelle resident who is the director of cultural
affairs for the City of Mount Vernon, Ms. Shabazz said
that her mother used to give them cookies to soothe
them while explaining the reasons for the violence they
experienced as small children.

"That explains why I’m still addicted to cookies," she
said, laughing.

On Saturday she walked through the renovated ballroom
with her sister Malaak Shabazz, 39, who lives in Upper
Manhattan, works at the United Nations and is the
youngest of the six, having been born six minutes after
her twin, Malikah, she said.

Their sister Qubilah was charged in 1995 with plotting
to kill Louis Farrakhan, whom she claimed had plotted
her father’s death and was a threat to her mother. The
indictment was dismissed, and she was required to get
psychiatric and drug treatment. In 1997, young Malcolm
set the fire that killed his grandmother.

After setting the fire, Malcolm Shabazz spent several
years in juvenile detention centers. After his release,
he was arrested in 2002 on robbery charges and is
currently serving a prison sentence in upstate New
York.

Her nephew, Ilyasah Shabazz said, is scheduled to be
released this year and is considering attending
college.

At 6-foot-2, "he’s thriving," she said. "He looks a lot
like his grandparents."

The two sisters stared at the large painting of their
father on the huge ballroom mural that depicts the
various stages of his life.

"It’s hard for people to come back to a place he was
assassinated," said Ilyasah Shabazz, who is planning to
attend tonight’s memorial with another sister, Gamilah,
and Malaak. "But we’ve taken a tragic place and turned
it into something beautiful."

The ballroom fell into disuse in the years after the
shooting, but a renovation began in the 1990’s. After
years of delays, she said, the center is scheduled to
open on May 19, which would have been Malcolm X’s 80th
birthday.

"It’s time New York recognized Malcolm," Mr. Kareem
said by phone from Richmond. He recalled that by early
1965, Malcolm X had split with Elijah Muhammad and the
Nation of Islam and was denounced by the group’s young
star Mr. Farrakhan. A week before the event at the
Audubon, the family’s house in Elmhurst, Queens, was
firebombed but they escaped injury.

"I know he had some kind of premonition about something
that day," Mr. Kareem recalled. "In the dressing room,
he said to me, ’I have a feeling I shouldn’t go out
there. I had never seen him like that before. I
remember him telling me, ’I went to get life insurance,
and they told me I was too much of a risk.’ "

"He stood behind me and said, ’Make it plain,’ which is
what he would tell me when he was ready to be
introduced."

Mr. Kareem did just that. He walked to the podium and
told people that they would next be hearing from "a man
who would give his life for you."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/n...

Forum posts

  • Shabazz? Shabazz??? Oh yeah, now I remember! "Shabazz" is the invisible planet that
    "Yakoob", the evil scientist that created the white race came from [this "Black Muslim" theology can be darned tricky stuff]. Darned pesky varmints them white people. Sometimes ya gotta wonder just what Yakoob was thinkin’ of. As for the "Shabazz" family, between setting their Grandma on fire and committing random felonies, ya hafta’ wonder why they just don’t get a job. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

  • Well the prior comment makes clear that Macolm X, one of the greatest Americans, was taken from us all too soon, and that while we often are lulled into thinking we have come far in forty years, we have not come nearly far enough at all.

    I grew up three blocks from the Audubon and though Malcolm was dead years before I was born, he was still very much present in Washington Heights in the 1970s. I am so pleased he and his work are being honored in this way.

    • Brother Malcolm’s murder was a damn shame. Did they ever catch those white guys that shot him?

    • Actually it was the black muslims who shot Malcolm X after he split with The Nation of Islam over their leaders conduct among other things.

    • You cannot believe that black muslims killed Malcolm. All groups have been infiltrated by the government. So just because it appeared to be black guys doing the shooting, I doubt it!