Betty Shabazz: A Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X.

by Russell J. Rickford Sourcebooks, Inc., November 2003 $35.00, ISBN 1-402-20171-0

When great leaders die, the family left behind bears the heaviest burden. And often--though not always--they Lade into obscurity. But Betty Shabazz was a woman who refused to go away. Following her husband's assassination, Shabazz raised six daughters, earned a doctorate and found her place within a glittering coterie of black nationalists, intellectuals, civil rights leaders, politicians and entertainers. But who was she really? Russell J. Rickford attempts to answer that question in an ambitious first biography of one of black America's most iconic figures.

Betty Shabazz: A Life Before and After Malcolm X is the result of careful research and interviews with more than 70 people who knew her well. Exceedingly private when she was alive, it seems as though many of Shabazz's most precious secrets were buried with her. Still, Rickford succeeds in telling us more about her than anyone has done before, and he brings a reporter's eye to the fine details of her life. We "see" the young Betty as she moves front a middle-class, Christian home, to Tuskegee Institute, and on to New York--the city that would bring her to the extremes of joy and pain. We "hear" Malcolm's voice as he teases his daughters and faces the anguish of breaking with Elijah Muhummad. Rickford chronicles everything: Shabazz's conversion, the couple's relationship, her struggle to reinvent herself after her husband's death, her careful tending of his legacy, her most hearthbreaking moments as a mother, and the tragic circumstances of her death.

The book's strength ties in the author's ability to work information from disparate sources into a narrative that is fast moving, emotionally alive and interesting, throughout. Rickford's Betty is dynamic, yet flawed; softhearted, yet stoic; unforgiving, yet generous. But most importantly, she is human.