Betty X (Shabazz)
"Love yourself, appreciate yourself, see the good in you... and respect yourself."
Betty Shabazz (1934 – 1997), aka Betty X, was an American
civil rights advocate. Her husband, Malcolm X, is a much more well-known
figure, but actually his wife was a remarkable woman in her own right.
Betty Dean Sanders was born on May 28, 1934, to Ollie Mae
Sanders and Shelman Sandlin – an unmarried teenage couple. Despite her
self-proclaiming Detroit as her place of her birth, records show she actually
spent her early life in Georgia. It is generally accepted that her father
abused her, and when Betty was about 11 years old, she was taken in by Lorenzo
and Helen Malloy, a prominent businessman and his wife. Helen was a founding
member of the Housewives League of Detroit, a group of African-American women
who organized campaigns to support black-owned businesses and boycott stores
that refused to hire black employees. She was also a member of the National
Council of Negro Women and the NAACP. The Malloys were both active members of
their local Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Despite being such promiment black activists, her
foster-parents never discussed racism with betty. She later stated: "Race
relations were not discussed and it was hoped that by denying the existence of
race problems, the problems would go away. Anyone who openly discussed race
relations was quickly viewed as a 'troublemaker.'" However, racism was not
something that Betty could ignore given that during her childhood there were
two race riots. Thus, Betty argued that the reality of racism provided the
"psychological background for my formative years".
After she graduated from high school, Sanders left her
foster parents' home in Detroit to study at the Tuskegee Institute, a
historically black college in Alabama, where she intended to qualify as a
teacher. As she waved her goodbye, her foster mother mumbled and wept. Betty
recalled: "The minute I got off that train, I knew what she was trying to say.
She was trying to tell me in ten words or less about racism."
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“Find the good and celebrate”
Her childhood had not prepared Sanders for the horrors of
Southern racism. Within university campus, she was shielded from white
hostility. However, weekend trips to the nearest city betrayed the climate in
which she now found herself. For example, black students had to wait until every
white person in a store had been helped before the staff would serve them—if
they received any service at all. When she complained to the Malloys, they
refused to discuss the issue.
Sanders' frustration began to interfere with her studies and
she made the decision to switch from education to nursing. Thus, against her
foster-parents' wishes, she moved to New York in 1953. In New York, Sanders encountered a different
form of racism – black nurses were given the worst assignments and they faced
abuse from white patients. While the racial climate in New York was better than
the situation in Alabama, Sanders frequently wondered whether she had merely
swapped Jim Crow racism for more subtle prejudice.
During her second year of nursing school, Sanders was invited
by an older nurse's aide to a Friday-night dinner party at the Nation of Islam
temple in Harlem. After dinner, the
woman asked Sanders to come to the Muslims' lecture which she did. After the
speech, the nurse's aide invited Sanders to join the Nation of Islam; Sanders
politely declined – stating that she did not realise she was there to be
recruited and remaining dedicated to her childhood Methodist faith:
"Besides, my mother would kill me, and additionally I don't even
understand the philosophy." The nurse's aide told Sanders about her
minister". He's very disciplined, he's good-looking, and all the sisters
want him." Sanders enjoyed the food so much, she agreed to come back (LOL,
a woman after my own heart) and meet the woman's minister. At the second
dinner, the nurse's aide told her the minister was present and Sanders thought
to herself, "Big deal." However, when she met Malcolm X, she was
impressed. They met again at a dinner party where the two engaged in a deep
conversation about Sanders’ experiences of racism. He spoke to her about the
condition of African Americans and the causes of racism. This gave Betty a new
perspective on her life: "I really had a lot of pent-up anxiety about my
experience in the South and Malcolm reassured me that it was understandable how
I felt."
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“We would have little family talks. They began at first with Malcolm telling me what he expected of a wife. But the first time I told him what I expected of him as a husband it came as a shock."
Soon Betty was attending all of Malcolm X's lectures, after
which he would always seek her out to ask her questions. Betty was impressed
with his leadership, work ethics, and his selflessness. She worried that
despite his benefit to others, he himself had no one to lean on – and hoped she
could help with that. Malcolm began to pressure her to join the Nation of Islam
and in 1956, Betty converted to Islam. Like many members of the Nation of
Islam, she changed her surname to "X", which represented the family
name of her African ancestors that she could never know.
Betty X and Malcolm X did not have a conventional wooing.
Unchaperoned dates were frowned upon by the Nation, and thus the couple shared
their "dates" with dozens, or even hundreds of other members. Malcolm
X frequently took groups to visit New York's museums and libraries, and he
always invited Betty X.
Although they had never discussed the subject, Malcolm
eventually called and asked her to marry him (not quite the big romantic
proposal girls dream of but never mind). They were married on January 14, 1958
– the same day she became a licensed nurse. The couple went on to have six
daughters.
At first, their relationship followed the Nation of Islam's teachings concerning marriage; Malcolm X set the rules and Betty X obediently followed them. In 1969, Shabazz wrote that "his indoctrination was so thorough, even to me, that it has become a pattern for our [family's] lives." Over time, the family dynamic changed, as Malcolm made small concessions to Betty's demands for more independence. In 1969, Shabazz recalled:
After dinner one night he said, "Boy, Betty, something you said hit me like a ton of bricks. Here I've been going along having our little workshops with me doing all the talking and you doing all the listening." He concluded our marriage should be a mutual exchange.”
That she stood up to her husband even in the early days of
her relationship shows Betty’s strength of character, and disproves accusations
that she was just a weak woman who was easily influenced by her husband’s
ideology and power.
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On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X announced that he was leaving
the Nation of Islam. He and Betty X, now known as Betty Shabazz, became Sunni
Muslims.
On February 21, 1965, in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom,
Malcolm X began to speak to a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American
Unity when a disturbance broke out in the 400-strong crowd. As Malcolm X and
his bodyguards moved to quiet the disturbance, a man rushed forward and shot
Malcolm in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun. Two other men charged the stage
and fired handguns, shooting Malcolm 16 times.
Betty was in the audience with the daughters, whom she
shielded from the gunshots. When the
shooting stopped, Shabazz ran toward her husband and tried to perform CPR.
However, her efforts were in vain - police officers and Malcolm X's associates
used a stretcher to carry him to the nearby hospital, where he was pronounced
dead.
Angry onlookers caught and beat one of the assassins, who
was arrested at the scene. Eyewitnesses
identified two more suspects. All three men were members of the Nation of Islam
and were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Shabazz suffered from severe PTSD following her husband’s
assassination which she frequently relived in harrowing nightmares. She also
worried about how she would support herself and her family. This fear was
relieved slightly by the phe publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X
helped, for which Betty received half the royalties. The other half went to Alex
Haley, who assisted Malcolm X in writing the book. However, following the
publication of his best-seller Roots, Haley signed over his portion of the
royalties to Shabazz.
Actor and activist Ruby Dee and Juanita Poitier established
the Committee of Concerned Mothers, to raise funds to buy a house, and pay
educational expenses for the Shabazz family. The Committee held a series of
benefit concerts at which they raised $17,000.
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“Going to Mecca...was very good for me because it made me think of all the people in the world who loved me and were for me, who prayed that I would get my life back together. I stopped focusing on the people who were trying to tear me and my family apart.”
Looking back, Betty reflected that she had initially made an
"unrealistic decision" to isolate herself because of the injustice of
her husband's assassination. She realized, however, that: "It is
impossible to create an environment for children to grow in and develop in
isolation. It is imperative that one mix in society on some level and at some
time."
In late March 1965, Shabazz made the pilgrimage to Mecca
(Hajj), as her husband had the year before. Recalling the experience in 1992,
Shabazz wrote:
“I really don't know where I'd be today if I had not gone to Mecca to make Hajj shortly after Malcolm was assassinated... That is what helped put me back on track.”
Shabazz returned from Mecca with a new name that a fellow
pilgrim had bestowed upon her, Bahiyah (meaning "beautiful and
radiant").
She was physically and mentally drained from raising six
children alone – especially on the limited royalties she received for her
husband’s autobiography. In 1966, she sold the movie rights to the
Autobiography to film-maker Marvin Worth. She began to authorize the
publication of Malcolm X's speeches as another source of income.
However, Shabazz herself began to accept speaking
engagements at colleges and universities. She preached about the black
nationalist philosophy of Malcolm X, but she also spoke about her role as a
wife and mother. She also defended her husband’s reputation: “[The media]
attempted to promote him as a violent person, a hater of whites” but “he was a
sensitive man, a very understanding person and yes, he disliked the behavior of
some whites ... He had a reality-based agenda."
As her daughters grew older, Shabazz was able to send them
to private school – showing her success at driving the family from poverty.
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“Most people cant' deal with reality, but indulge heavily in fantasy and fear."
In late 1969, Shabazz enrolled at Jersey City State College
to complete the degree in education she left behind to pursue nursing.
Remarkably, she completed her undergraduate studies in one year, and went on to
earn a masters and a PhD in education and health administration. During her
studies, she drove from Mount Vernon to Amherst, Massachusetts, every Monday
morning, and returned home Wednesday night.
In January 1976, she became associate professor of health
sciences with a concentration in nursing at New York's Medgar Evers College.
The student body at Medgar Evers was 90 percent black and predominantly
working-class. 75% of the students were female, while the faculty were mostly
black women. Two-thirds of the students were mothers. Thus, Shabazz was drawn
to the university as she felt at home with the demographic.
By 1980, Shabazz was overseeing the health sciences
department, and the college president decided she could be more effective in a
purely administrative position than she was in the classroom. She was promoted
to Director of Institutional Advancement. In her new position, she became a
booster and fund-raiser for the college. A year later, she was given tenure. In
1984, Shabazz was given a new title, Director of Institutional Advancement and
Public Affairs; she held that position at the college until her death.
During the 1970s and 80s, Shabazz continued her volunteer
activities with black organisations and women’s right movements. She was asked
to introudce Nelson Mandela when he visited NYC.
Shabazz befriended Myrlie Evers-Williams and Coretta Scott
King, both of whom had also lost their husbands at a young age and raised their
children as single mothers. The press came to refer to the three, who made
numerous joint public appearances, as the "Movement widows". 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."
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“Have I gotten any threats? All I get is threats.
I get at least six or seven a day."
For many years, Shabazz harboured resentment toward the
Nation of Islam—and Louis Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their
role in the assassination of her husband. Farrakhan seemed to boast of the
assassination in a 1993 speech: “Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt
with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of
yours? A nation has to be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and
turncoats.” When Shabazz was asked whether Farrakhan had been involved with the assissination she asnwered: "Of
course, yes. Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honor. Everybody talked
about it, yes."Farrakhan denied the allegations, but admitted that he said
he had "created an atmosphere that allowed Malcolm to be assassinated."
In January 1995, Betty’s daughter Qubilah Shabazz was
charged with trying to hire an assassin to kill Farrakhan in retaliation for
the murder of her father. Much to the Shabazz family’s suprirse, Farrakhan
defended Qubilah, saying he did not think she was guilty and that he hoped she
would not be convicted. That May, Betty Shabazz and Farrakhan shook hands on
the stage of the Apollo Theatre during a public event intended to raise money
for Qubilah's legal defense. Some heralded the evening as a reconciliation
between the two, but others thought Shabazz was doing whatever she had to in
order to protect her daughter. Regardless, nearly $250,000 was raised that
evening and the pair remained associates – though never friends.
Qubilah accepted a plea agreement with respect to the charges,
in which she maintained her innocence but accepted responsibility for her
actions. Under the terms of the agreement, she would avoid prison only by
undergoing psychological counselling and treatment for drug and alcohol abuse
for a two-year period. For the duration of her treatment, Qubilah's
ten-year-old son, Malcolm, was sent to live with Betty at her apartment in
Yonkers, New York.
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"I wish you power that equals your intelligence and your strength. I wish you success that equals your talent and determination. And I wish you faith."
On June 1, 1997, her 12 year-old Malcolm set a fire in
Betty’s apartment. She suffered burns over 80 percent of her body, and remained
in intensive care for three weeks. She underwent five skin-replacement
operations as doctors struggled to replace damaged skin and save her life.
Shabazz died of her injuries on June 23, 1997. Malcolm Shabazz was sentenced to
18 months in juvenile detention for manslaughter and arson.
More than 2,000 mourners attended her memorial service at
New York's Riverside Church. Many prominent leaders were present, including
Coretta Scott King and Myrlie Evers-Williams, and poet Maya Angelou. U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman
delivered a tribute from President Bill Clinton
Following her death, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said, "She
never stopped giving and she never became cynical. She leaves today the legacy
of one who epitomized hope and healing."
Shabazz's funeral service was held at the Islamic Cultural
Center in New York City. Her public viewing was at the Unity Funeral Home in
Harlem, the same place where Malcolm X's viewing had taken place 32 years
earlier. Shabazz was buried next to her husband, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
(Malcolm X), at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
That one woman could suffer so much – at the hands of her
parents, her society, her political community, and finally her grandson – and
still remain hopeful, passionate, forgiving, and strong is a testament to the
power she held. Raising six kids as a single mother in the 20th
century was hard enough – without the added stigma of racism, poverty, and
political infighting. Her dedication to her faith, her chldren, and her
ideology – and her lasting loyalty to her husband all make her a beautiful
example of what a woman can be – a devoted wife and mother but also an
intelligent scholar, powerful activist, and femninist icon.
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