Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm X: A Journey of Strength from Wife to Widow to Heroine
(The gunmen rose from the crowd and set their sights on Ma...)
The gunmen rose from the crowd and set their sights on Malcolm X. The thunder of shotgun blasts ripped through the ballroom, and Betty Shabazz turned to see her husband float backward, keel over and crash to the ballroom stage. She grabbed her children, hurling them beneath a booth and shielding them with her body while the room erupted into screams and chaos. As she lay there squeezing her family, the Betty Shabazz who was the dutiful and obedient wife of the Civil Rights Movement's most feared leader ceased to be, and the woman who emerged would become one of the greatest heroines of our day.
Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm X is the first major biography of Dr. Betty Shabazz, the unsung and controversial champion of the Civil Rights era. From her early marriage to black liberation's raging voice through her evolution into a powerful and outspoken African-American leader, Betty Shabazz was in constant struggle to bring freedom and justice to her people. Yet, at times her greatest fight was to struggle through tragedy and hold on to her faith amidst the stereotypes forced on her by a culture of racism and the very people she was trying to liberate.
To read Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm X is to experience this remarkable life. With eloquent and intimate prose, Russell J. Rickford puts you on the scene as a young Betty Sanders is taken in by foster parents after a troubled childhood. You are there as Malcolm X comes home from a hard day of railing against oppression to hug his children, dote on his wife and laugh. You dive under the table at the Audubon Ballroom as bullets strike Malcolm down. You struggle with Betty Shabazz as she fights to raise six girls alone while earning a doctorate. You stand triumphant with her as she claims her own individuality and fights to build respect for Malcolm. And you stand watch with her daughters as Betty passes away, a victim of yet another tragedy, but this time after a life lived full.
Russell J. Rickford has conducted extensive research to compile this biography, interviewing more than seventy of Betty Shabazz's family members, friends, colleagues and contemporaries as well as researching countless records and documents, including recently declassified FBI, CIA and New York Police files. This is the first complete look at the life of Betty Shabazz and a new insight into the man who was known as Malcolm X.
Betty Shabazz is the story of a strong woman who faced incredible tragedy and emerged triumphant, compassionate and always full of life. In the end, it is the story of a nation torn apart by hatred learning to heal and forgive.
Betty Shabazz, born Betty Dean Sanders and also known as Betty X, was an American educator and civil rights advocate.
Background
Shabazz was born on May 28, 1936, in Detroit, Michigan, United States. As an adopted child who grew up in a fairly sheltered, middle-class household in Detroit, her early social life consisted of the local Methodist church with her parents on Sundays, parties on some Saturday nights with church friends, and movies on Fridays.
Education
While attending Northern High School, she joined the Del Sprites, a sorority affiliate. After high school graduation, she attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and encountered her first racial hostilities, which she didn't understand, and her parents refused to acknowledge. After two years in Alabama, she moved to New York City to attend nursing school at Brooklyn State Hospital.
Although raising and educating her daughters took up most of her time, Shabazz still managed to further her education. Between 1970 and 1975, she completed a master's degree in public health administration and received a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Career
After returning from Mecca (recovery from the death of her husband), Shabazz did not allow herself to grieve further - at least not visibly; her children needed her strength. She threw herself into their care and education. They studied French and Arabic, as well as ballet. Attallah even took classes in medicine offered to children by Columbia University. The Shabazz children also studied black history.
In 1976, she joined the faculty of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn as associate professor of health administration. Shortly thereafter, she became director of the school's Department of Communications and Public Relations. Although Shabazz made occasional appearances on behalf of civil rights, she remained a private person, preferring the intimacy of her family and close friends to any suggestion of public life. She wanted to protect his image from base commercialization. She served as a consultant on the Spike Lee film Malcolm X, which opened in 1992, and also hired a licensing firm to help maintain some control over the use of his name. In the following years, she entered into several legal battles over copyright infringements of his writings, name, and the symbol X. As she told the Washington Post, the marketing of his image had "gotten out of hand. "
In 1994, nearly 30 years after the assassination of Malcolm X, Shabazz spoke out in a television interview for the first time against the Nation of Islam and linked Nation leader Louis Farrakhan to his death. It was known for years, however, that she had suspected Farrakhan of some involvement in the killing. Farrakhan denied the allegations, claiming only that the turbulent, racially hostile atmosphere of the 1960 was responsible for Malcolm's end.
Then in January of 1995, Shabazz's daughter, Qubilah, was accused of hiring a hit man to murder Farrakhan, whom she said was planning to kill her mother. Charges were later dropped when Qubilah signed a plea agreement maintaining her innocence but admitting some responsibility in the plot against Farrakhan. In May of 1995, Betty Shabazz and Farrakhan shook hands at a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, thus ending decades of hostile feelings.
Shabazz, who saw her husband assasinated and sought to preserve his memory and teachings in life that became a symbol of perseverance to African Americans, died on June 23, 1997, at a Bronx hospital, three weeks after suffering extensive burns in a fire apparently set by her troubled 12-year-old grandson. Her death was met with an outpouring of grief and solemn statements by her family, political and civil rights leaders, colleagues and friends, and hundreds of ordinary people whose lives she had touched.
(The gunmen rose from the crowd and set their sights on Ma...)
Religion
"I'm a Sunni [orthodox] Muslim and as observant as I can be. .. . I've made pilgrimage. I acknowledge the oneness of God. I pray. I contribute to charity. I fast. And I work hard. "
Views
Quotations:
"After the shock, as I became aware again, I tried to soothe my children. I couldn't let them see hysteria on my part. Later, I learned that I had to adopt a personality of positiveness and high humor. For, if I laughed, they laughed. .. . I learned that I couldn't even express sadness around them. I didn't want them to worry. "
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Writing about Shabazz, Evers-Williams described her as a "free spirit, in the best sense of the word. When she laughed, she had this beauty; when she smiled, it lit up the whole room. "
Connections
While at school in New York, a friend invited her to hear Malcolm X speak at an Islamic temple. Soon after she finished nursing school, Malcolm, who was traveling the country at the time, called her from Detroit and proposed. Before the week was out, they were married. They were not together as long as either had hoped.
On February 21, 1965, while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, Malcolm X was gunned down. Shabazz had brought their four daughters to hear him speak that day. As the first of the gunshots rang out, she threw her children down and covered them with her own body. After the shooting ended, she tried to help her husband, but someone held her back. When she finally did reach him, he was dead, and she wondered if she would survive herself.
She also had six daughters to raise. (The twin daughters were born seven months after their father's death; Attallah, Malcolm and Betty's eldest daughter, was only six at the time of the assassination. )