Ilyasah Shabazz didn’t duck the past as she delivered the University of Chicago’s annual George E. Kent Lecture. She shared poignant personal stories, including about the day in 1965 that her father, civil rights leader Malcolm X, was assassinated. But she didn’t linger there.
Instead, the New York-based author and educator pulled her audience into the present, challenging them to step up and “engineer a new future” by working together.
“Inequality still stands in the way of progress,” Shabazz said April 28 at a packed Keller Center event. “And as we gather to fight for justice, we must ask if not now, then when?”
“Dr. [Martin Luther] King's words still ring true: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. But we need to add Malcolm's caveat: The arc of the moral universe won't bend on its own. It requires individual and collective effort. We must work together, pray together, walk together, and stand together,” she said. “We must continuously seek to support one another and push to find our way forward together.”
Shabazz, co-chairperson of the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is the latest of leading Black scholars, writers, and activists to headline the lecture, which has been given since 1984. It honors Kent, a literature scholar who died in 1982 and was one of the first Black professors to receive tenure at the University of Chicago.
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This story was first published by UChicago News.