Betty Shabazz

Betty Shabazz (born May 28, 1934, Pinehurst, Georgia., U.S.—died June 23, 1997, Bronx, New York) was an American educator and civil rights activist who is perhaps best known as the wife of slain Black nationalist leader Malcolm X.

Betty Shabazz was born Betty Dean Sanders in the small town of Pinehurst, Georgia, to Ollie Mae Sanders and Shelman Sandlin, according to high school and college transcripts. Ollie Mae Sanders abused her daughter while she raised her in Detroit. At age 11, Betty Sanders was adopted by Lorenzo and Helen Malloy, a prominent Black Detroit couple who were advocates for civil rights in business and employment. Raised in a comfortable middle-class home, she was also active in a Methodist church.

Upon high school graduation, Sanders left Detroit to study elementary education at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama. There she experienced racism for the first time in her life, and after two years she left for New York City, where she became a registered nurse.

In 1956 she met Malcolm X at a Nation of Islam lecture in Harlem, and in 1958 she converted to Islam and married him. The assassination of her husband (who by this time had changed their last name to Shabazz) in 1965 was witnessed by Shabazz, who was pregnant with twins at the time, and their four daughters. After his death, she dedicated herself to raising her children and continuing her education, eventually earning in 1975 a Ph.D. in education administration from the University of Massachusetts.

In 1976 Shabazz began working at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, first as a professor, then as the director of its department of communications and public relations. She also lectured occasionally, addressing such topics as civil rights and racial tolerance.

Shabazz died in 1997 from severe burns suffered in a fire set by her 12-year-old grandson.