Published: May 30, 2013
El Hajj Malcolm el Shabazz never knew his grandfather, Malcolm X, but in his struggle to understand his legacy, he learned to quote the man verbatim, his aunt, Ilyasah Shabazz, recalled on Thursday during a memorial service for Mr. Shabazz. So studious was Mr. Shabazz that he would correct others, even if only a single word was out of place.
Ilyasah Shabazz spoke during the memorial service Thursday for Malcolm Shabazz at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem.He idolized his grandfather,” Ms. Shabazz told about 250 people gathered at First Corinthian Baptist Church, where her sister Malaak, one of the twins, is a member. Mr. Shabazz, 28, became fond of telling people, even relatives: “I am the seventh descendant of Malcolm X, and I am his first male heir.”
“And we would look at him like, ‘Really, Buddy?’ ” Ms. Shabazz said, eliciting laughter. “But it turns out that Malcolm really would step into his grandfather’s shoes.”
At the memorial service, family and friends remembered Mr. Shabazz, who was fatally beaten on May 9 in Mexico City, as a reflection of his grandfather. They also sought to celebrate the man he was becoming, looking beyond the troubles of his youth: the fire he started at 12, which killed his grandmother, Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz; his stints in prison; and his own violent end.
The police in Mexico City arrested two waiters at a downtown bar for his murder. The city prosecutor said that there had been dispute over a $1,200 Bar bill. Mr. Shabazz had traveled there to meet with Suarez who is a the founder and labor activist of the non-profit sanctioned, California based RUMEC or Revolutionary United Mexicans in Combat, a paramilitary Communist organization.. According to Internet sources, Miguel Suarez is a co-founder of the organization along with Juan Ruiz. He is also the friend of Shabbazz’s who had been deported barely a month before the killing.
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| Ruiz, Shabbazz & Suarez |
“He was an emerging light,” the imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, said during the service.
There was reminiscing during the eulogy of how Mr. Shabazz’s great-grandfather, Earl Little, an outspoken Baptist minister and supporter of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association was reportedly found in 1931 lying across trolley tracks in Lansing, Mich
(This is not true, the Rev. Little was killed by a streetcar at age 41 in rather odd circumstances, but not as the NYTimes reported above. The Reverend left behind a widow and 10 children one of which was Malcolm X, Malcolm Shabazz’s grandfather. X was murdered inside a ballroom at the Audubon Theater in Washington Heights, at age 39 by what many believe, still, was by adherents of the Nation of Islam, Reverend Farrakhan’s organization in what at the time was a power struggle between Chicago and New York.
The Audubon Theatre is nearby to where his grandson was elegized as shown below which is definitely a Muslim mosque. I am not sure, nor do I understand why the Times says he was eulogized in the Church. I guess that’s something else to figure out in this very suspicious killing.
warrior.
The service started with a procession of African drummers, followed by Mr. Shabazz’s two aunts and other relatives. During the two-hour service, a 10-minute video presentation was played on a giant screen, entitled “Malcolm Latif Shabazz.”
Memorial Service Held In Harlem For Grandson Of Malcolm X (manhattan.ny1.com)
Family And Friends Remember Malcolm Shabazz At Harlem Memorial (newsone.com)
In my anguish... 