By Nayaba Arinde
Editor-at-Large
“What would Malcolm X do?”
Hundreds of New Yorkers asked as they came out to honor Malcolm X, who would have been 100 years old on Monday, May 19th, 2025.
From the Brooklyn Utica Avenue subway Malcolm X renaming request to the annual 125th Street, Harlem rally, to the Audubon Ballroom—now The Shabazz Center event—to the annual pilgrimage to Ferncliff Cemetery, New Yorkers commemorated the birthday of the man, the renowned actor Ossie Davis, called “Our Shining Black Prince.”
Sixty years ago, on February 21, 1965, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz—Malcolm X—was assassinated while giving a lecture in the Audubon Ballroom. Brooklyn’s December 12th Movement, other grassroots activists, and the community fought for the ornate building on 165th Street, Washington Heights, to be landmarked as the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
Brooklyn’s Assemblywoman Stefani Zinerman calls for “Renaming the Utica Avenue station after Malcolm X is about honoring one of our greatest civil rights leaders, where his legacy still lives—in the heart of Bed-Stuy,” she told Our Time Press. “This change is a powerful step toward cultural recognition and historical justice.”
The Friends of Malcolm X Plaza are asking for the same effort to be made for the 110th Street subway stop in Harlem.
Born in Nebraska, Malcolm Little began preaching to the masses in New York; he lived with his young family in Queens. Alongside hosts Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz, two of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz’s six daughters, singer Lauryn Hill and NBA star Kyrie Irving both attended the Centennial Celebration at The Shabazz Center (former Audubon) on May 19th.
There, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams presented the Shabazz family with a proclamation.
In the streets was a sea of red, black, and green black solidarity flags as New Yorkers remembered the internationally-respected Pan African, Black nationalist.
Then there was the annual shutdown of stores on 125th Street in Harlem.
Most of the stores closed. The couple who resisted received gentle–but loud encouragement by organizers December 12th leadership Omowale Clay and Attorney Roger Wareham to do so. Chick-Fil-A was one of the stores who refused, and even had a flank of NYPD uniformed and Community Police posted up outside the door.
Marchers shouted chants such as, “No Respect for Malcolm X,” as most stores on the 125th Street thoroughfare adhered to the 35-year tradition of closing down for a few hours in the afternoon to honor the man.
Barbara Ra traveled from Staten Island, “By bus, boat, and train to be with other people with the same mindset,” she told Our Time Press. “This is the anniversary of our beautiful, enlightening, eternal Malcolm. People come because of his sincerity, his dedication to the cause and his people collectively.”
As the 125th Street marchers gathered at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, Workers World Party’s Larry Holmes told Our Time Press that Malcolm “was the father of the modern Black liberation movement. Without Malcolm, we wouldn’t have the Black Panther Party, and that wing of the struggle. He would be pleased with the world because people of color are rising up–in Africa and the Middle East, in Asia and we are pushing back against US imperialism and colonialism–and Malcolm would be pleased.
“Young people are in the streets, whether it is fighting police brutality, or for fair or reduced fares, or to support Palestinians, or fighting to defend South Africa which is under attack. Malcolm is part of that inspiration. They took Malcolm from us before he was 40. Malcolm was not only evolving, he was forward looking. Just because a leader is cut down does not negate the forward looking legacy. The youth get that.”
A one time member of the Nation of Islam, Muslim minister, Malcolm X became a world renowned public speaker, and courageous advocate for the rights of African-Americans in the face of institutionalized racism, was a local, national, and world leader who was also a husband, a father, and a son. Malcolm X founded Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
Operation POWER co-founder Charles Barron told the paper, “Malcolm because he was a prophet in his own time. He introduced African liberation to us. He made the emphasis in his last speech when he came back from Africa, he met with Kwame Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, he met with Sekou Toure, he met with Gamal Abdel Nasser from Egypt, he met with Julius Nyerere, and he was admonishing to us that the thing that the white man feared most with their capitalism and imperialism was African liberation, and at that time he was saying to us that we should come together because we are over a 100 million strong in the Diaspora, 50 million in America, 30, 40, 50 million in Brazil and in the Caribbean.
If we have connected to Africa they would be scared to death their days would be numbered. I mentioned all of that because he has to be smiling in heaven because here he said that in 1965, and here we are in 2025 talking about the Sahel revolution. We’re talking about Ibrahim Traore Abraham. We are talking about African liberation and all over the world.
Africa is at the top. This is what Malcolm was talking about. It’s our job to connect our people in Brownsville, in Harlem, in Bedford Stuyvesant and in The Bronx with Africa and the Sahel revolution, and let them know when they win–we win.”
The 125th Street shut down co-organizer December 12th Movement chairman Omowale Clay told the crowd, “Malcolm’s struggle was a lifelong struggle.” He raised the case of Robert Brookes, the man incarcerated in Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County who was beaten to death on camera by several prison guards on December 10, 2024.
“You all saw them kill Robert Brookes on TV didn’t you?” The crowd bellowed in pained response. “We said this May 19th, this centennial, let’s remember that Malcolm went to prison. Malcolm wasn’t always a revolutionary…he said ‘Y’all still in prison.’..there is a high school to prison pipeline that is taking our children to jail forever, and the only fact they have is us in the street.”
Clay walked with the crowd of perhaps 100 plus back to Chick-fil-A, saying that “they just got here 5 minutes ago, and already they are disrespecting the Black community. But all we have to do is stand right here and be united, and Chick-fil-A won’t be here. All it requires is our discipline, consciousness, and love for El Hajj Malik El Shabazz.”
Chick-fil-A’s corporate office in Georgia said it was unaware of the incident but did not respond to an Our Time Press request for a comment by press time.
Chair of the Malcolm X Commemorative Committee Zayid Muhammad told the paper that young people are still drawn to Malcolm X because of his “clarity, his courage, his incorruptibility.”
Muhammad said they will ” do actions to honor Malcolm throughout the entire year.”
