Ilyasah Shabazz

Ilyasah Shabazz
Shabazz at the 2014 Brooklyn Book Festival
Born	(1962-07-22) July 22, 1962 (age 54) Queens, New York, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Author, motivational speaker, community organizer, social activist

Ilyasah Shabazz (born July 22, 1962) is the third daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz. She is an author, most notably of a memoir, Growing Up X, community organizer, social activist, and motivational speaker.

Shabazz was born in Queens, New York, on July 22, 1962. She was named after Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, the religious and Black nationalist group to which her parents belonged.

In February 1965, when she was two years old, Shabazz was present, with her mother and sisters, at the assassination of her father. She says she has no memory of the event.

Shabazz had an apolitical upbringing in a racially integrated neighborhood in Mount Vernon, New York. Her family never took part in demonstrations or attended rallies. Together with her sisters, she joined Jack and Jill, a social club for the children of well-off African Americans. She considered an acting career, though her mother was not supportive. Her mother instead took interest in trying to keep her father's presence alive, and baked her cookies, which she would break a piece off to give the impression that her father had eaten it before she came.

Concerning her father, Shabazz told an interviewer, "My mother always talked about our father, her husband, but ... she didn't talk about these things that defined my father as the icon." To learn about her father, Shabazz read his autobiography as a college student, and enrolled in a class to learn more.

Shabazz was a student at Hackley School. After high school, she attended State University of New York at New Paltz. When she arrived, other African-American students expected her to be a firebrand. They had already elected her an officer of the Black Student Union.