Therese De Angelis - Louis Farrakhan

Harlem's historic Apollo Theater, site of the public reconciliation between Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X.

Source: UPI/Corbis-Bettmann.

But on May 6, 1995, the Apollo Theater was the setting for history of another kind. After 30 years of open and public hostility, two prominent black figuresBetty Shabazz, public relations director at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York, and widow of the slain activist Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, met onstage in an emotional reunion. TV journalist Mike Wallace of CBS's news program 60 Minutes, who had covered the Nation of Islam since it began drawing national attention in the 1950s, called the event a "very meaningful and, indeed, historic moment."

Until that time, Betty Shabazz had repeatedly maintained that Farrakhan, a Nation of Islam minister in New York at the time of Malcolm X's assassination, had been responsible in part for her husband's death. During a television appearance only a few years earlier, she had been asked whether she believed that Farrakhan was directly involved. "Yes," she responded. "Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honor. Everybody talked about it." In June 1994less than a year before her appearance at the Apolloshe had appeared at a black leadership summit in Boston, Massachusetts, to which Farrakhan had also been invited. Although both were seated on the same stage, they did not speak to one another. Afterwards, her remarks to the press about the minister were decidedly cold; she reiterated her belief that he was involved in her husband's death and declared that she had not changed her position on the subject since the murder.

Their meeting at the Apollo, however, was the result of another tragic twist of fate affecting the personal lives of both leaders. In January of that year, Betty Shabazz's daughter Qubilah, who as a four-year-old had witnessed her father's death, was charged with conspiring to assassinate Louis Farrakhan.

Qubilah Shabazz (center) is led from federal court after a preliminary hearing on charges stemming from her alleged attempt to hire a hit man to kill Louis Farrakhan.

Source: AP/Wide World Photos.

A quiet, intelligent woman, Qubilah is the second-oldest of Malcolm and Betty Shabazz's four daughters and the least likely, family and childhood acquaintances said, to have reacted to her father's death by becoming involved in an assassination plot. But David Lillehaug, a U.S. attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota, charged that Qubilah had spent seven months negotiating with a hit man to murder Farrakhan and had in fact moved to Minnesota to make a "down payment" on the crime. Lillehaug and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed to have audio- and videotapes that proved her involvement. If convicted, Qubilah would have received a sentence of up to 90 years and would have been fined up to $2.5 million.

Although the conspiracy-murder charge itself was unexpected, Louis Farrakhan's response may not have been. Earlier that year, he had held a press conference specifically to address the charges against Qubilah Shabazz. Rather than holding the daughter of Malcolm X responsible for the plot, he accused the FBI of its own conspiracy to frame Qubilah in an attempt to discredit him, the Nation of Islam, and by extension, all African Americans. At the same time, he was filled with compassion for the daughter of his former mentor. "Qubilah is a child I knew and held in my arms as a baby," Farrakhan announced to a crowd of 2,500 gathered in the Nation of Islam's Chicago temple. He continued:

I do not believe that Qubilah is an evil woman. Qubilah is a child who loves her father, who grieves over the loss of her father's life; a life cut short not by Louis Farrakhan but by the same evil forces who throw stones and hide their hands, and who wash their hands and allow just men to go to an undeserved destruction.My wife is a righteous woman, my daughters are righteous women. They do not engage in unlawful acts. However, I assure you that if anyone were to do harm to me, they would not hesitate to avenge me. And they would not hire someone to do it for them, they would do it themselves! I believe that no power but Allah [God] could stop them.

Betty Shabazz wipes a tear from her eye during a news conference announcing the establishment of a defense fund for her daughter Qubilah, January 25, 1995.

Source: Reuters/Corbis-Bettmann.

If Qubilah were guilty of the charges against her, Farrakhan continued, she deserved forgiveness, not condemnation. The federal government had taken advantage of her grief and had "tricked" her into the appearance of an assassination plot.

The event at the Apollo Theater that May had been organized by Farrakhan himself in an effort to help pay for Qubilah's legal fees. The thousands of guests who witnessed the reconciliation had paid between $15 and $100 to attend. Only a few days before the event, the FBI had dropped the charges against Qubilah in exchange for two years of probation and counseling. Qubilah and her lawyers continued to maintain that she was the victim of entrapment by her friend Michael Fitzpatrickan FBI informantand the hit man that she had allegedly hired.

Under a banner that read in part, "All praise is due to Allah, Celebrating Unity," Betty Shabazz and Louis Farrakhan embraced warmly. Comparing the meeting to the first step in a long journey toward peace, Farrakhan prayed that Allah would bless their families with "total reconciliation." The government's plot against Qubilah, he continued, was "supposed to lure me into a fight with Betty Shabazz. Let us open the [government] files; they know that Farrakhan had nothing to do with the murder [of Malcolm X]."

"I never expected what I experienced here today," Betty Shabazz said in her speech. She thanked Farrakhan for his "original, gentle words of assurance" for her family and expressed gratitude "for the suggestion of support, as he said 'We will help brother Malcolm's family.' I like the way he said that. And I hope he continues to see my husband as brother Malcolm."