On this day in 1924, Novelist, playwright, poet and social critic, the late James Baldwin was born.
“To be African American is to be African without any memory and American without any privilege.” —James Baldwin
An Oklahoma judge dismissed the reparations lawsuit filed by Lessie Benningfield Randle, 108, Viola Fletcher, 109, and her brother, Hughes Van Ellis, 102, the last three known survivors of the Tulsa race massacre.
America has $70 Billion for Ukrainians in conflict with Russians but $0 for Black people murdered, brutalized, and dehumanized by white Americans.
June 23, 1997 — Malcolm X's widow Betty Shabazz passed away today 🕊️
Born Betty Dean Sanders, she was an educator, civil rights advocate and the wife of Malcolm X.
Dr. Shabazz grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where her foster parents largely sheltered her from racism. She attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where she had her first encounters with racism. Unhappy with the situation in Alabama, she moved to New York City, where she became a nurse.
It was in New York that she met Malcolm X. The couple married in 1958.
Along with her husband, Dr. Shabazz left the Nation of Islam in 1964. She witnessed his assassination the following year.
MEMORIALS:
•In late 1997, the Community Healthcare Network renamed one of its Brooklyn, New York, clinics the Dr. Betty Shabazz Health Center, in honor of Shabazz.
•The Betty Shabazz International Charter School was founded in Chicago, Illinois, in 1998 and named in her honor.
•In 2005, Columbia University announced the opening of the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. The memorial is located in the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated.
•In March 2012, New York City co-named Broadway at the corner of West 165th Street, the corner in front of the Audubon Ballroom, Betty Shabazz Way.
PORTRAYALS IN FILM:
🎬Yolanda King, the daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King, played Dr. Shabazz in the 1981 television movie Death of a Prophet.
🎬She was portrayed by Angela Bassett in the 1992 film Malcolm X.
🎬Bassett also played the part of Dr. Shabazz in the 1995 film Panther.
🎬Dr. Shabazz was portrayed by Victoria Dillard in the 2001 film Ali.
🎬Dr. Shabazz was the subject of the 2013 television movie Betty and Coretta, in which she was played by Mary J. Blige.
“Soooo you mean to tell me that someone down your ancestry line survived being chained to other human bodies for several months in the bottom of a disease-infested ship during the Middle Passage, lost their language, customs and traditions, picked up the English language as best they could while working free of charge from sunup to sundown as they watched babies sold from out of their arms and women raped by ruthless slave owners.
Took names with no last names, no birth certificates, no heritage of any kind, braved the Underground Railroad, survived the Civil War to enter into sharecropping... Learned to read and write out of sheer will and determination, faced the burning crosses of the KKK, everted their eyes at the black bodies swinging from ropes hung on trees... Fought in World Wars as soldiers to return to America as boys, marched in Birmingham, hosed in Selma, jailed in Wilmington, assassinated in Memphis, segregated in the South, ghettoed in the North, ignored in history books, stereotyped in Hollywood... and in spite of it all someone in your family line endured every era to make sure you would get here and you receive one rejection, face one obstacle, lose one friend, get overlooked, and you want to quit? How dare you entertain the very thought of quitting. People, you will never know survived from generation to generation so you could succeed. Don’t you dare let them down!
Give this to your young people who don’t know their history and want to get weak!
It is NOT in our DNA to quit!”
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Crisis is still far too prevalent in our communities, but we are making progress. It takes time to address the root causes of violence against Indigenous people that are centuries in the making but we are fierce in our commitment. #MMIP