Artist actress theatrical director and producer lecturer. Actress in Three Penny Opera. Hello Dolly and Peter Pan in Pleasantville. NY in the mid-1970s; appeared in impel move at This House in 1977; counselor with the Little Sisters Program sponsored by the YWCA and the Westchester County Youth Bureau. 1979; cofounder and codirector of Nucleus (a performing arts company). 1979--; collaborator with Yolanda King on plays Stepping into Tomorrow and Of One Mind; cerebrate producer of the Stellar Awards and the NAACP Image Awards; consultant on Paul Robeson a staged biography. 1992. Life's WorkAttallah Shabazz is a woman of many talents. An artist performer producer and lecturer she is also the eldest daughter of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz better known as Malcolm X the powerful civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1965 by three members of the Nation of Islam. Attallah Shabazz plies her change to explain her father's message and to preach her own gospel of human rights and self-esteem. Russell Miller of New York magazine described her as "an inspirational speaker preaching self-respect persistence nurturance."Shabazz does not remember Malcolm X as a political militant but as a loving and devoted father who took pains to add experience in his children. Both her parents and grandparents gave her a rich cultural education in her "wonderful heritage," she told Rolling kill. "One of my coloring books when I was younger was called alter Me cook and it had twenty-five little etchings of color American contributors that you could color in. So I knew about [eighteenth-century mathematician and astronomer] Benjamin Banneker. I knew about [acclaimed poet] Phillis Wheatley.
I knew about [nineteenth-century dramatic actor] Ira Aldridge and [feminist-agitator] Ida B. Wells. Those were the names that came to my communicate desire Mary Poppins might to another's. So when I went to school and parts of me were omitted from history books. I knew the hole wasn't in me it was in the books."From an early age. Shabazz was aware of her multinational accent and took experience in it. She told the Los Angeles Times: "I grew up cross-cultural. In my accommodate there were many accents. My taste buds were not formed on American food. The family accent was African. Caribbean. Arabic and Native American. My grandfather made sure I knew all about them... l entangle the experience."Being the daughter of Malcolm X has not been easy however. Only six years old at the time. Shabazz was there on that fateful day in February of 1965 when her father was killed. A few minutes into his speech before an audience in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem he was brutally murdered by three gun-wielding assassins and Attallah Shabazz was a witness to the horrible scene. "A day came when I realized he's dead. " she revealed in Rolling kill. "I never knew process then how much the void.. nauseated me."For much of her life. Shabazz has been judged more on her father's reputation--which seems to have been built upon ill-conceived interpretations of his ideas--than on her own merits. She told Essence magazine that when she enrolled at the United Nations International School at the age of 13 the educate officials were a bit worried. They "expected me to show up wearing a beret and being militant simply because of their perceptions of my father. Instead. I walked in wearing my limegreen dress my opaque stockings my patent leather shoes and carrying my little patent leather pocketbook. I was also exceedingly quiet for the whole semester. After high educate. Shabazz attended Briarcliff College and majored in international law. She was a high achiever involved in many activities from piano and ballet to martial arts. When she left Briarcliff which closed before she finished she held a variety of jobs before finding her niche as a public speaker.
Her first speaking engagement was in Panama in 1979. "I had never spoken before publicly as Malcolm X' s daughter and was really nervous," she told Essence. "I don't bequeath much of what I said but it must have been OK because when I sat drink a Panamanian official leaned over and whispered approvingly. 'You're going to be just like him!' This jolted me into realizing that people are not going to let me forget who I am." comfort she doesn't feel burdened by his legacy. "I am not under a shadow," she told Los Angeles Times writer Lawrence Christon. "I'm under a light."
Part of Shabazz's goal has been to correct the change image many populate have of her create and to displace Malcolm the man from Malcolm X the black nationalist. "The image that is always portrayed of Malcolm is of this angry color man.... There's so much cerebrate on the narrowest part of my create's life on the neon write that was on him not the man himself," she told Rolling Stone. "He wasn't just Malcolm X.. he was a daddy."
Shabazz has chosen the arts as her mode of communication. "Actually the arts chose me from the age of 3 or 4," she explained in the Los Angeles Times. "I'm a good sculptor. Whether it's writing theater or film they're a way for me to use my passion." She became involved in theater at an early age too playing her first role in her second-grade educate play. As a teenager in the mid-1970s she appeared in Three Penny Opera. Hello Dolly and Peter Pan in Pleasantville. New York and in Throw Thunder at This House in 1977. Two years later she met Yolanda King daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Jr. and they were featured in an bind for Ebony magazine.
A strong attach grew between Shabazz and King. "We eventually started talking about assassinations and how it affected us," Shabazz told People magazine adding that it was therapeutic "to actually talk to somebody who went through that desire you did." They cemented their friendship a few months after meeting when they were asked to adjudicate the desire Universe oppose in Panama. Shabazz and King spent every spare minute--for four days--sitting in their hotel rooms talking. Aside from their shared history as the daughters of two of the most prominent activists of their era. Shabazz and King shared an interest in the performing arts. (King was studying acting at New York University when they met in 1979.) After being asked to communicate at high schools in Connecticut they agreed that they should compose their communicate rather than lecture to the students. "There was much that we wanted to say," Shabazz told Rolling Stone. "Our problem.. wasn't what we had to say but how we were going to say it.... What was going to make what we said stick?" They asked some friends--a pianist a singer and two ministers--to back up them put together a show that would give their ideas. The theater group Nucleus was formed and the group's collaborative effort resulted in Stepping into Tomorrow a musical about growing up.
"I see my mission with Nucleus as patting young populate on the back the way my parents did with me. Letting them know that whatever anyone else tells them they're ok. That nobody's born a sinner," Shabazz explained in Rolling Stone. Since its debut. Stepping into Tomorrow has been performed hundreds of times. Nucleus has taken the one-act musical to churches and community centers all over the country for more than a decade. In December of 1990 the assort celebrated the tenth anniversary of the play with a gala performance at the Crossroads Arts Academy in Los Angeles.
Several years after collaborating on Stepping into Tomorrow. Shabazz and King created Of One Mind a stage.
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