The daughters of slain civil rights icons Malcolm X and Medgar Evers say theirs is a club no one wants to join.
Reena Evers-Everette was 8 years old on June 12, 1963, when a sniper’s bullet felled her father, Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, in the driveway of their Jackson home.
Ilyasah Shabazz was 3 years old on Feb. 19, 1965, when her father was assassinated in the ballroom of a New York City hotel and never came home again.
It has left a lasting impact, and created bonds, they said.
“We belong to a club no one would want to join, a club we have suffered through pain, grief and tragedy,” said Evers-Everette Monday night before a packed audience listening in rapt attention at Ballroom B of the Jackson State University Student Center.
After each of the men was assassinated, the survivors were contacted by Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. Martin Luther King. She became like a member of the family, they said, part of their “club.” They called her “auntie.”
Even now, 50 years later, Shabazz said that she finds it difficult to speak about her father except for his accomplishments. Then, she refers to him as “Brother Malcolm, Malcolm, my father.”
“Even though I wrote books (about him), this is something that I don’t discuss,” she said. She is just “not comfortable,” but has “buried some of that pain.”
To her, personally, he is “Daddy,” she said. “So, when I talk about Daddy in an affectionate manner… it is about the man I know.”
The two women, however, opened up about their fathers in the JSU ballroom, where extra chairs had to be set up in the rear to accommodate the crowd.
It was part of the 2015 Black History Makers Forum titled “Celebrating the Life of Malcolm X” on the 50th anniversary of his death, presented by the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute @ COFO (the Council of Federated Organizations) and the College of Liberal Arts.
The meeting was an historic moment — the first time Shabazz has been to Jackson; the first time the two have met publicly together; and the first time they have spoken personally in public about the impact of the deaths on their fathers who were civil rights icons of the 1960s.
Answering questions submitted by the crowd or to the moderator, Dr. Perselfannie McDaniels, associate professor in the Department of English and Foreign Languages, the women spoke on a variety of topics, including how it felt to be under surveillance by police, what their mothers were like, and the role of women.
They also painted moving portraits of their fathers not seen in the history books or on faded news footage from the Civil Rights Movement.
“My parents loved each other like crazy,” said Evers-Everette. Although they had differences, like any married couple, “they held each other up.”
That support, of his wife, of his children, was essential after he died. Evers-Everette said he told her mother, Myrlie Evers, “You’re stronger than you think you are.”
“My father was loyal to his wife,” Shabazz told the audience. In an age when black men often seem portrayed as straying from their mates, she said, her father “loved a beautiful brown woman.”
“My mother,” said Shabazz, “had patience with her husband; she held him up high.” It leaves a lesson for men and women today, she said, that men and women should respect each other.
When Malcolm X was assassinated, her mother was only in her 20s, Shabazz said, with four children and pregnant with twins. But she was self-reliant, resourceful and managed to put her children through school.
Their mothers met after Malcolm X was killed. Evers-Everette and Shabazz first met when the City University of New York established the Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn in 1970.
Earlier Monday, Shabazz spoke to students at the Liberal Arts building and toured civil rights sites in the Jackson area. She also signed copies of her books.
At Monday night’s meeting, Shabazz, a devout Muslim, said that her father didn’t fear men, but feared God. He fought problems that did exist and still exist, she said.
“I’m sure their mission was divine,” Evers-Everette said.
View more photos at https://on.fb.me/1zR5smV.