Malikah Shabazz was found unconscious by her daughter inside their Brooklyn home on Monday afternoon, New York police said.
Malikah Shabazz, a daughter of the revolutionary Black civil rights leader Malcolm X, has died. She was 56.
Shabazz was found unconscious by her daughter inside their home in Brooklyn on Monday afternoon, New York police said.
“At this point in time, working with other authorities, the medical examiner, and speaking to the family, she had been ill for a period of time, and at this point, nothing appears suspicious,” the NYPD commissioner, Dermot Shea, told a local news outlet.
Malikah Shabazz and her twin sister, Malaak, were the youngest of Malcolm X’s six daughters with his wife, Dr Betty Shabazz. Betty Shabazz was pregnant with the twins when Malcolm X was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, a New York neighborhood, on 21 February 1965.
Bernice King, a minister and daughter of the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr, shared her condolences on Twitter. ” I’m deeply saddened by the death of #MalikahShabazz. My heart goes out to her family, the descendants of Dr. Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X. Dr. Shabazz was pregnant with Malikah and her twin sister, Malaak, when Brother Malcolm was assassinated. Be at peace, Malikah.
Ms. Shabazz’s death was the latest in a series of tragedies to befall the family, whose matriarch, Betty Shabazz, died from injuries sustained in a fire at her home in Yonkers in 1997. She was 61.
Her 12-year-old grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, pleaded guilty to charges that he set the fire and served five years in juvenile detention. In 2013, Mr. Shabazz, then 28, was beaten and killed in Mexico during a dispute over a bar tab while in the country to advocate for construction workers’ rights.
