Malcolm X’s Daughter on BLM, Sports Activism, and the ‘Right’ Way to Protest
Ilyasah Shabazz suggests we take her father’s advice and keep pushing for justice
Ilyasah Shabazz has seen enough.
The author, activist, and daughter of Malcolm X has seen some people assign more value to property than to Black lives. She’s seen George Floyd’s life ripped from the same lungs he used to call for his dead mother as the world faces a global pandemic that can only be thwarted by unity. She’s seen enough to make the connections between the present and the past, in part because she was raised within the essence of a revolutionary who fought a war we’re still waging.
“My mother kept her husband very much a part of our household,” says Shabazz, now 58, in an interview with Momentum. “She wanted all six of her daughters to grow up, understand and feel the importance of our father as a father figure.”
Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, the year Shabazz turned three years old, but she knows her father well. Shabazz also understands why the world is looking to past leaders for guidance in these uncertain times, which is why she green-lit a plan for Audible to work with legendary actor Laurence Fishburne on the first-ever narration of The Autobiography of Malcolm X some 55 years…
