Malcolm X Assassinated While I Was in the Womb

February 21, 1965 – the date Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik Shabazz) was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom, New York City. The date was also my mother’s 25^th birthday and she was 8 months pregnant with her 4^th child from my father …. ME. I’d sometimes wondered, as an adult, what effects that tragic event had on my mother and what emotions she was experiencing which, automatically, would have affected the unborn life in her womb.

Today, [Feb. 21, 2011], I finally asked my mother, on her 71st birthday, what she went through that day. She said it was “depressing” and that television reports about the murder were replayed over and over and over into that Sunday afternoon and night. It was sad, she said, that his own people were the ones who caused his death and went on to say that she really thought it went right to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI). She recounted the main points of what many people know about Malcolm X’s life based on his autobiography and what is commonly listed in regards to his history: how he left the NOI after disagreements with Elijah Muhammad, traveled to Mecca, Arabia, became enlightened, returned to the U.S. on a new path but still encountering NOI opposition which played a big part in his tragic end. That’s the story many people and my mother knew/know about Malcolm X.

It was 28 years later, however, that the child in her womb … ME … became a registered NOI member. This after becoming disenchanted with the “Christianity” I’d experienced in life and coming to know of and read the autobiography of Malcolm X, both things leading me to two life decisions, (1) I was through with “religion” and (2) if I did get involved with one again, it would be the one advocated by the NOI. Eventually I met a brother who shared messages of Minister Louis Farrakhan with me and later invited me to Muhammad Mosque #15, in Atlanta, Georgia. That’s the place where I first “stood up,” accepted my own and began a new path in life guided by the “teachings” and theology of the Nation.

In talking with my mother, I shared that sometimes I’d wondered why I was the only one in the family who became somewhat “militant,” taking on a new name and belief system, and whether that had anything to do with what was going on around. me when I was in the womb. She said that I got it from her and that, in the 1960s, she began wearing her hair in an Afro which seemed to frighten some of her White neighbors, (this was around the time of the rise of the Black Panther Party).

She surprised me in stating it was she who told me and my siblings that we didn’t have to say the Pledge of Allegiance, salute the flag or sing the national anthem. It was in my mind that we got that from our dad, so what a pleasant revelation to know it was “Mom.” She told us that, after watching how the Black soldiers were treated upon coming back from the Vietnam War, and taught us not to pledge allegiance to any country that would allow its fighters and defenders to be spat upon and mistreated in the streets.(Some White soldiers were also treated the same way, she added, because the sentiment of many anti-war protesters was that they despised what any returning soldiers represented and the fact that they went to fight in the first place.)

Adding to the “depression” my mother felt that day in 1965, were lingering memories of the 1963 assassinations of civil rights leader Medgar Evers (in June) and President John F. Kennedy (in November); the latter murder, she said, “traumatized” the nation. She recalls that just as news stations replayed reports of Malcolm X’s murder, the same was done when Kennedy was shot dead in Texas. She and my father wanted to turn the TV off but decided that because it was “history” in the making, they should keep watching. (There were no VCRs back then to record things.)

She remembers exactly what she was doing when journalist and news anchor Walter Cronkite came on the air and announced “President Kennedy has been shot.” She had been watching one of her favorite soap operas – As the World Turns – and was feeding my older brother, (who was then only two weeks old), from a bottle filled with formula. My mother began to cry. Later, my father, who was at work called during his lunch break, as he normally did. Of course they talked about the news and he relayed that one of the White men on the job had told him, “They got your boy,” in reference to JFK.

As if it wasn’t enough – the assassinations of Evers and JFK in 1963 and then Malcolm X in 1965; my mother recounted the grief that came in 1968 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee in April and then Robert “Bobby” Kennedy was shot down in California in June of the same year. She believes that a larger conspiracy was in play, particularly concerning the Kennedy assassinations and said “we won’t know the truth on a lot of this.” At least, the full truth may not come out for a long time, she said. I agreed.

I took a minute to bring up the COINTELPRO program of the federal government and how the FBI had a hand in infiltrating and disrupting all the Black organizations of that time with the official stated goal of preventing the “rise of a Black messiah.” The hidden hand of that agency in all the above mentioned assassinations cannot be overlooked.

My mother went on to tell of the racism and discrimination she experienced in 1960 when a Waukegan, Illinois hotel refused to let her have a room because she was a “negro” and this despite the fact she was in her military uniform, as she was enlisted in the Navy. But still, that wasn’t good enough for her to be afforded the right to stay at an American hotel. That same year, she and several of her White Navy counterparts stopped at a restaurant in Maryland to sit down and have a meal. The group was told that the staff would serve food to the White individuals but not my mother. The group was disgusted and refused to stay or eat there, choosing to be on the side for my mother’s rights. That was only 51 years ago and only five years before my mother gave birth to me.

My mother is a survivor who gave birth to five children between 1960-1966. I thank her very much for carrying and caring for me in the womb and being the source and incubator in which strength and ability to rise out of the darkness of grief and adversity was instilled into me. On another side, she’s also “kooky” and has found a way to keep laughter in her life – despite the many depressing things that go on everyday. I’m a lot like that too and have that determination to always find a way to keep some silliness and joy in my world.

- Adeeba Folami -

© 2011 – All Rights Reserved – The Black House News
Unlimited online distribution allowed with acknowledgement of bhonline.org as the source

>>>>>

>>>>>