Photo credits: A. Theodorakis/The NY Daily News/TNS via Getty Images
In late 2021, the Shabazz Family of Malcolm X is bereaved, yet again.
Malikah Shabazz (pictured), the youngest daughter of civil rights icon Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz, was found unconscious and unresponsive by her daughter on Monday in her Brooklyn, New York, home (Nov. 23). She was ultimately pronounced dead by police. She was only 56 years old.
Shabazz never met her illustrious father. She and her twin sister Malaak were born seven months after her father’s February 1965 assassination, making them the children’s youngest siblings. Three former members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of plotting Malcolm X’s murder.
Shabazz’s death comes 55 years later, after a two-year investigation in which two men convicted of her father’s killing, (Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson) are acquitted. Talmadge Hayer, another culprit, admitted to his role but said in a 1977 statement that he was not involved with the other two.
He was released from prison in 2010.
Shabazz had her own run-ins with the authorities over the years. She had previously feuded with her sisters over their mother Betty Shabazz’s fortune when she died in 1997. Reuters reported that Malikah joined her family in casting doubt on the official explanation of her father’s death and demanded a reopening of the investigation early this year.
The family has not made a formal statement or published a statement.
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