Atallah Shabazz speaks on dad, Malcolm X

The cracks of the shot-gun resonate in her mind four decades after the assassination of her father, Malcolm X, but Atallah Shabazz refuses to be hardened by it.

Shabazz speaks on the state of Jamaica, her father, the ‘gentle’ man, and even tells how she and Spike Lee-the producer of the Hollywood film on her father-are at odds.

“What is your dedication to the next person?” she asked, probing scores of persons gathered at UTech auditorium in Kingston last week to hear the lecturer, activist and producer. Then she told all to stand up and meet and greet.

“I now pronounce you brothers and sisters,” she laughed. But it was indicative of her philosophy, that people need to become more neighbourly and that each ought to aid the less fortunate. A view that she says changes a nation from the inside out.

“So if you think about the people around you whose life looks (doomed) and everytime their chest is down, what you have to do is give them a bit of strength and continuity because we go through it as a people on a regular basis,” she said.

People are like a “village”, she says, connected by a “common culture” but never yet able to connect on a personal level with each other.

“We are united not individually but as a culture and something causes the disconnect,” she said.

“How are we measuring our wealth and our worth, how are we measuring our value?” she asked. “What is the task that will make this household and family work not just if the father did his 50 per cent, maybe his 50 per cent is a little different than yours, maybe his 20 per cent represents 100 per cent for someone else it is all arbitrary.”

Her teachings are coloured with life experiences from both father and mother, speaking with the passion of her father, and the striking beauty of her mother. But it is her mother’s will that is truly beautiful, raising six children without a father.

“They kept introducing my mother as the widow of Malcolm X and one day one of my sisters said ‘mommy what is a widow can I be one when I grow up?” she joked then became stern. “(But) she did not see surviving as an option, she made a vow to my father that she would take care of the children and when he was killed she went back to work and got her degrees.”

For Shabazz, the words gentle and Malcolm X are not contradictory. In fact, her father’s stern public persona was not the man she knew.

“I wish that people could get a sense of the gentle man he was, that embracing man, the man who you could share anything of value with without risk, the man that loved my mother in front of us,” said Shabazz, who is the eldest of six children.”People say everytime you talk about the gentle Malcolm it robs me of the militant Malcolm. I say to them that is your problem.”

“I did not realise the difficulty that some people had going to their fathers for expertise or a message of warmth or inspiration. I learnt that later in my young adult life that men could not do that, it did not happen in my household,” she said.

When Malcolm X was killed, the family was alienated by friends and even family members, fearing for their lives, she said. But Hollywood actor, Sidney Poitier kept the Shabazz children for three weeks.

“Poitier is in my life because of the alliance of the parents when my father was killed before my eyes. My mother could not figure out what to do with her children,” she said. “The onslaught of press, the news, the fear and preparation for the funeral…I stayed at the Poitier home at a time when it was not fashionable and the risk of doing so high. Just by association they were threatened.”

Both families are still close today. However, she is as close to Poitier as she is distant to another person in Hollywood-US producer Spike Lee. Vexed over Lee’s portrayal of the then-young Malcolm as preferring white women, she said that it was an embellishment.

“We told him make sure you do not make my father prefer one colour over the other, do not have him dump a black girl for a white girl. He thought it made for ‘good movie,” she fumed. “If you have an artistic license, why not paint that brush and inspire people instead of putting in your issues. I do not care if he dated white women, truth is truth, but do not make him show preference.”

She also said that Malcolm X’s Garveyite routes were never highlighted. His father was a Garveyite that was killed by the Klu Klux Klan. She noted that Malcolm X’s earlier years influenced his radicalism and not only his years with the Nation of Islam.

“Up to that point when her husband had been killed by the Klan they did not tell you that in the middle of the night they would wake up to the torches by the house,” she said. “I do not think the truth of my grandmother was clear. They certainly do not recognise the strength and the significance of her role. They did not tell you that my grandmother raised those children to make sure they were exposed to their global selves as children of the African diaspora.”