- Posted in All University
- Category: Campus News
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA – Lincoln University hosts former aide to iconic slain Civil Rights leader Malcolm X during a four-day visit, Sunday, April 7 – Wednesday, April 10, which includes two university forums, classroom lectures, media interviews and meetings with faculty and administration.
Abdullah H. Abdur-Razzaq, also a 1958 Lincoln alumnus joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) a year after he graduated through its famed Mosque No. 7 then-led by the fiery Minister Malcolm X. He would later become a close aide to the Civil Rights leader when he founded and led Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity – the latter, a non-secular group which had planned to charge the United States with Human Rights violations against African Americans.
“It is a rare privilege to have a living legacy walk among us,” said Dr. Melvin Leaman, a religion professor at the University, who organized the visit. “Students will be able to peer into the past through the one person who says, ‘If you want to know more about the last year of the life of Malcolm X, I am the man to see.’ At 81 years of age, he is ready to tell-it-all regarding his years at Lincoln, connections that other Lincoln students had with Malcolm X, and of course, his own relationship with Malcolm and interpretations of the life experiences they shared.”
Abdur-Razzaq will speak at two university forums, “The Life and Times of James 67X: Life at Lincoln and Lincoln’s Connections with Malcolm X” on Monday, April 8 in Dickey Hall Auditorium and “Brothers: Perspectives on Malcolm X” on Tuesday, April 9 in Grim Hall Auditorium.
The forums, which are free and open-to-the public, are at 7 p.m.
Abdur-Razzaq, formerly James Monroe King Warden while at Lincoln, first changed his name to James 67x after he joined the NOI and then to James Shabazz and finally to the present. Since Malcolm X’s assassination, he has served as a staff consultant for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and consulted with several articles, films, exhibits and documentaries on the life and times Malcolm X.
Lincoln University of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, founded in 1854 as the nation’s first degree-granting Historically Black College and University (HBCU), combines the elements of a liberal arts and science-based undergraduate curriculum along with select graduate programs to meet the needs of those living in a highly-technological and global society. Today, the University enrolls a diverse student body of approximately 2,000 men and women. Internationally recognized for preparing and producing world class leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Lillian Fishburne, the first African American woman promoted to Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy, Langston Hughes, the noted poet, Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first President of Nigeria.