As expected, there was a massive turnout for the centennial birth of Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) Monday evening at the Shabazz Center. “Malcolm 100” was an appropriate title for the celebration because it was about that number of early arrivals, with hopes of securing a prime seat. To some extent, the program booklet was helpful, particularly with a photo of the special guest Lauryn Hill upfront, but for unaccounted reasons, the lineup of speakers and performers was unreliable, which had no consequence since a screen noted clearly who was on the stage.
At the very top of the evening, as in the recent past, the African Healing Circle, followed by Ayanna Gregory, united to make a call to the ancestors, as they turned libations into an exhilarating performance. Then followed Will Liverman, the American baritone, with his stirring rendition of the Black National Anthem, this time completing all the poetic stanzas. Marc Lamont Hill, a prized regular at the center, with the stunning Kennedy Lucas, Miss Black USA, who was on stage to accompany him, presented the Vanguard Awards.
The stage was set for Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, the chairwoman of the Board of Directors to deliver her welcome speech, as well as a bevy of board members, which on this occasion, along with her sister, Malaak, including councilman Yusef Salaam, who, accompanied by his fellow Central Park exoneree, Kevin Richardson, received a resounding ovation. One of the highlights of her address was her quote from her father’s vast collection of unforgettable comments, one about the so-called political progress –– after someone pulls a nine-inch knife out of your back to six inches, that is not progress. “He said that isn’t progress,” she said, “and nothing to celebrate. Progress is healing the wound.” She reiterated that her father gave voice to the unheard and that from her mother, she and her sisters “were exposed to lessons that empowered us.”
A similar background and upbringing may have occurred for the first Vanguard Award winner, Dr. Vee Kativhu, who, as a British-Zimbabwean education activist, personified the succession of awardees, though few could match her Oxford-Harvard CV. At this point, the published schedule was interrupted to allow remarks from Rev. Al Sharpton. Countering all the published differences between Malcolm and Dr. King, the minister, focused on how they became close. He pointed to the time when Malcolm visited Selma, Alabama, hoping to meet with Dr. King, who was in jail. That’s when he reportedly told Coretta, “you tell your husband that we have his back.” He then noted how Coretta and Dr. Betty Shabazz, both widowed, began to commiserate, and when Dr. Shabazz was in the hospital struggling for survival, he said Coretta visited her.
“We need to stop the infighting and deal with those against us,” he continued. “We should have enough sense to know if they can come together and put a convicted felon in the White House, we should have enough intelligence and humanity to stand together.”
There was a call to action by Steven Barter who shared the stage with special guest Fredrika Newton, the widow of Huey Newton, after she discussed how the Black Panthers continued the revolutionary conviction of Malcolm X. Guests included District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County, Georgia, and basketball great Kyrie Irving, with his baby daughter in tow. Things were relatively calm up to this moment until rap immortal Lauryn Hill began her special performance. After being coaxed into singing a birthday salute to Malcolm, she took it all the way up, practically converting the space into a party, with Attorney Benjamin Crump directing folks to wave their arms and sway to the music.
The evening should have concluded on this high note but there was still an hour of presentations on the agenda, including awards for notables like Dr. Ron Daniels, who received a Vanguard Award and looked exhausted from leading a delegation on a pilgrimage to Grenada to pay tribute to the birthplace of Malcolm’s mother, Louise Langdon Little. Similar honors were bestowed on antiracist educator and producer Ernest Crim III, Dr. Monica Miller of Barnard College who is an eminent scholar in Africana Studies; Jerry Lorenzo, founder of the Fear of God, a fashion brand; and Dr. Hisham Aidi, a deeply informed scholar, filmmaker and academic adviser to the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
The time was also up for me since, like Dr. Daniels, I was still waiting for the rest of my body to join me after the pilgrimage to Grenada, though I was there long enough to hear the keynote speaker Imam Omar Suleiman’s rewarding context of Malcolm’s Islamic pursuits.
Thankfully, the human warmth from the center prepared me, to some extent, to the chilly winds up and down Broadway, where Malcolm must have ventured interminably during his adventurous days in Manhattan.