Shabazz, Hajj Bahiyah Betty (1936-1997)

Shabazz, Hajj Bahiyah Betty (1936-1997), American educator and widow of black leader Malcolm X, who became an international black cultural icon symbolizing the growing influence of Malcolm’s name and nationalist message.

There is some uncertainty about Betty Shabazz’s origins and early life. Reportedly the daughter of Shelman Sandlin and a woman named Sanders, she was born Betty Sanders and grew up as a foster child in the Detroit, Michigan, home of a black family named Malloy. As a youth she was active in her local African Methodist Episcopal Church.

She briefly attended Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, but moved to New York City to escape Southern racism and to study at the Brooklyn State Hospital School of Nursing. During her junior year, she attended the Nation of Islam’s Temple No. 7 in Harlem. There she taught a women’s health and hygiene class and was noticed by Malcolm X, who was a minister at the temple. He proposed by telephone from Detroit, and they eloped and were married in 1958.

Shabazz converted to Islam and became a dutiful Muslim wife. She left Malcolm temporarily on several occasions, however, presumably over disagreements caused by his extensive travel schedule as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. They became the parents of six daughters, Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, Malaak, and Malikah. Shabazz was pregnant with the twins Malaak and Malikah when Malcolm was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on February 21, 1965, an event she and her other children witnessed.

After Malcolm’s death, Shabazz raised her children and continued her education, which culminated in a Ph.D. degree in educational administration from the University of Massachusetts in 1975. She taught health sciences and then became head of public relations at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.

She left the Nation of Islam at Malcolm’s death, but took the hajj, the sacred Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, and considered herself a Sunni Muslim. She believed that Malcolm had been murdered by the Nation and said so in interviews until a public reconciliation in 1995 with Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam and a rival of Malcolm’s at the time of his assassination.

Her reconciliation with Farrakhan helped to establish his legitimacy in the black community, but Shabazz’s presence aided even more in the rehabilitation of Malcolm X himself. During the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm was considered by many blacks and whites to be a nationalist, a separatist, even a racist.

After his death, however, Malcolm's ideas took on increasing authority as integration failed to solve the crisis of the black urban underclass. Betty Shabazz’s existence helped keep Malcolm’s name and message fresh, although she personally espoused the more accommodationist self-help doctrine of Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute. She was also active in black social organizations such as the Links, Delta Sigma Theta, and Jack and Jill of America.

On June 1, 1997, Betty Shabazz’s only grandson, 12-year-old Malcolm Shabazz, set fire to her apartment in Yonkers, New York. A troubled child, he was staying with his grandmother because his own mother, Qubilah, had problems of her own, including substance abuse and involvement in a plot to kill Farrakhan. In the fire, Shabazz received third-degree burns over 95 percent of her body, and she died three weeks later. Shabazz was widely honored at her death, especially by black women, in part because the once-reviled Malcolm X had now become a cultural hero, but primarily because her own life had come to exemplify extraordinary courage and perseverance in the face of great difficulties.