Daughter of Malcolm X found dead in Brooklyn home
FILE — Malcolm X speaks at a news conference in the Hotel Theresa, in New York, May 21,1964. Two of the three men convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X are set to be cleared Thursday after insisting on their innocence since the 1965 killing of one of the United States’ most formidable fighters for civil rights, Manhattan’s top prosecutor said Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021. Prosecutors now say authorities withheld evidence that favored the defense in the trial of Muhammad Aziz, now 83, and the late Khalil Islam. (AP Photo, File)
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MIDWOOD, Brooklyn (WPIX) — A daughter of Malcolm X was found dead in a Brooklyn home, according to police.
Malikah Shabazz was found dead at a Brooklyn home Monday; officials received a 911 call from Shabazz’s daughter at about 5 p.m., police said.
Officials said they do not suspect criminal activity.
Bernice King, daughter of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., tweeted her reaction to the news just after midnight on Tuesday.
“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,” King wrote.
Malcolm X — the civil rights leader who was killed more than 50 years ago — was in the news just last week, when two of his convicted killers were exonerated Thursday after decades of doubt about who was responsible for the civil rights icon’s death.
A Manhattan judge dismissed the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam, after prosecutors and the men’s lawyers said a renewed investigation found new evidence that the men were not involved with the killing and determined that authorities withheld some of what they knew.
“The event that has brought us to court today should never have occurred,” Aziz, 83, told the court.
He and Islam, who maintained their innocence from the start in the 1965 killing at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, were paroled in the 1980s. Islam died in 2009.
Malcolm X gained national prominence as the voice of the Nation of Islam, exhorting Black people to claim their civil rights “by any means necessary.” His autobiography, written with Alex Haley, remains a classic work of modern American literature.
Near the end of Malcolm X’s life, he split with the Black Muslim organization and, after a trip to Mecca, started speaking about the potential for racial unity. It earned him the ire of some in the Nation of Islam, who saw him as a traitor.
He was shot to death while beginning a speech on Feb. 21, 1965. He was 39.