Qubilah Shabazz facts for kids

Qubilah Bahiyah Shabazz (born December 25, 1960) is the second daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz.

Early years

Shabazz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960. Her father named her after Kublai Khan. Photographer and film-maker Gordon Parks was her godfather.

In February 1965, when Qubilah was four years old, she roused her parents in the middle of the night with her screams: the family's house had been set on fire. One week later, together with her mother and sisters, she witnessed the assassination of her father.

As a youth, Qubilah Shabazz attended a Quaker-run summer camp called "Farm and Wilderness" in Vermont. At age 11, she became a Quaker, converting from Islam. With her sisters, she joined Jack and Jill, a social club for the children of well-off African Americans. As a teenager, Shabazz attended the United Nations International School in Manhattan.

After high school, she enrolled at Princeton University but was uncomfortable there, feeling that the white students were shunning her and that the African-American students resented her apparent lack of interest in their efforts to force the university to divest its investments in South Africa. She left Princeton after two semesters and moved to Paris, where she studied at the Sorbonne and worked as a translator. In Paris, she met an Algerian man with whom she had a child, Malcolm, in 1984. Their relationship subsequently ended.

When Malcolm was a few months old, Qubilah Shabazz moved with him to Los Angeles. In 1986, they went to New York City, where they lived in a series of apartments in bad neighborhoods. Shabazz drifted from city to city and job to job, supporting herself by waiting tables, selling advertising for a directory, telemarketing, and proof-reading texts at a law firm. Her mother and sisters often cared for Malcolm while Shabazz lived with various friends.

Arrest and charges

In 1965, she witnessed the assassination of her father by three gunmen. She was arrested in 1995 in connection with an alleged plot to kill Louis Farrakhan, by then the leader of the Nation of Islam who she believed was responsible for the assassination of her father. In January 1995, Shabazz was indicted on charges of using telephones and crossing state lines in the plot to kill Farrakhan. If convicted, she faced a possible sentence of 90 years in prison and fines in excess of $2 million. Shabazz accepted a plea agreement with respect to the charges on May 1. Under the terms of the plea, she maintained her innocence but accepted responsibility for her actions. She was required to undergo psychological counseling for a two-year period in order to avoid a prison sentence.

Death of Betty Shabazz and Malcolm Shabazz

Shabazz moved to San Antonio to undergo treatment. She worked at a radio station owned by Percy Sutton, a family friend. She married in December 1996, but the marriage was over by the end of the following month.

For the duration of Shabazz's treatment, her son Malcolm, then ten years old, was sent to live with her mother Betty in Yonkers, New York. Two years later, on June 1, 1997, Malcolm set a fire in his grandmother's apartment. Betty Shabazz suffered burns over 80% of her body and died from her injuries three weeks later. Then, in 2013, at the age of 28, her son Malcolm died in Mexico City.

See also

In Spanish: Qubilah Shabazz para niños