“Malcolm Little”: Facts Over Fallacies, The Ilyasah Shabazz DMN Interview

Ilyasah as child with Malcolm

Oatmeal cookies, a rocking chair, a treasured baby doll and the smiling gentle giant with a commanding voice calling her name. To Ilyasah Shabazz, he was simply Daddy, but to the rest of the world, he was known as Malcolm X, the former felon turned Muslim Minister and human rights activist.

Betty and all the girlsIn the years following his brutal assassination in 1965, Shabazz’s mother, the late educator and civil rights activist, Betty Shabazz, did everything possible to preserve his memory for their six daughters, a tradition that Shabazz carries on today as a producer, motivational speaker and author of two acclaimed books, 2003’s Growing Up X and her first-ever chidren’s book Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up To Become Malcolm X, which was released in January.

“The media portrayed him to be something that he was not,” Shabazz said in a recent phone interview. The 51-year-old stopped at The Dock Bookshop in Ft. Worth on Friday and is scheduled to appear at The Armstrong Park D.L. Hopkins Senior Center this afternoon to promote her works. “He was always a beautiful and compassionate person who took up for us,” she said. “He didn’t do it solely for my family, he did it for the people, and it’s all of our responsibility to preserve his legacy.”

Malcolm Little is a remembrance of the childhood that molded the future icon. With artwork by local illustrator A.G. Ford, Malcolm Little describes his parents, Earl and Louise Little, the six siblings who called him as a kind and charismatic prankster and the harsh Jim Crow-era racism that permeated their lives. In language that is both eloquent and insightful, Shabazz describes the curious carefree youth who loved nature and books and became a charismatic and influential leader. Malcolm X’s evolution, according to Shabazz, is as important to today’s kids as it is for their parents and grandparents.

Ilyasah shabazz hair pulled back“There’s been plenty of misinformation about Malcolm and the social climate that created him, Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and even Solomon Northrup. I think that when [the public] is properly informed about my father, they will celebrate him because he simply fought against injustice, the bombing of children and other atrocious acts committed against innocent people by other human beings.

“I thought it was great to do a children’s story because all children start off great and with possibility and it’s up the adults around them to help with their development in a productive manner. If we’re not doing that, then we are failing them.”3 malcolms

The fact that many still see Malcolm X as a hateful and perpetually angry instigator is an image that his remaining family members are working hard to change. Yes, the man was often frustrated, Ilyasah acknowledges, but only because he saw himself as a defender of the disenfranchised.

Malcolm X [& Family]“It was the 1960s, so what people usually saw was my father’s reactions to the injustice of people being beaten and shot in the midst of non-violent protests, women and children being fire-hosed, with dogs sicced on them and innocent little girls being bombed in church,” she said.

“If we look at the climate of the day, how was this person able to have such compassion and be willing to take on such an enormous responsibility for the oppressed and repressed if he wasn’t already a compassionate man?” She asked. “Malcolm sought to inform the world of our history and the rich heritage on the continent of the people of the African diaspora. He presented a human rights agenda within the Civil Rights Movement and because his intentions were genuine, noble and for the people, they will live forever.”

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1 Comment

  • Reply Christine

    Loved this article. Thanks for the info.

    June 14, 2014 at 4:34 pm
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