(ThyBlackMan.com) A feud over the estate of Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, has created divisions among the couple’s six daughters and has resulted in something none of them had intended: keeping part of their father’s legacy from the public.
The daughters have traded accusations of irresponsibility, mental incapacity and fiscal mismanagement of the estate, which is worth about $1.4 million. But the greater value may reside in a trove of unpublished works from Malcolm X and Dr. Shabazz.
As the dispute drags on in Westchester County Surrogate’s Court, efforts to publish the works have been thwarted by the daughters’ bickering; all must sign off on any plan to sell and release the material, which includes four journals that Malcolm X kept during trips to Africa and the Middle East in 1964, a year before his assassination.
The battle represents the latest turn in the complex journey of a family that has come to define the struggle and pride of blacks in America. The clash also underscores the difficulty of preserving the legacy of a prominent figure, especially when it requires uniting competing personalities and visions.
Dr. Shabazz died in 1997, three weeks after suffering extensive burns in a house fire set by one of her grandsons. No will was found, even though some believed that one had existed.
The matter of her estate moved to Surrogate’s Court, where proceedings often take years. But the Shabazz family’s fight has gone on for more than a 
decade, prolonged by disputes over what to do with the potentially valuable relics of the parents, as well as objections to the various accountings of the estate’s assets.
A lawyer appointed by the Westchester court to represent one of the daughters, Malikah Shabazz, has accused the two daughters assigned to administer the estate, Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz, and their former lawyer of spending estate money on themselves while allowing property and other estate assets to languish and a tax bill to skyrocket.
Their failure to account for money and property in the estate has made it difficult to work out the specifics of any licensing pacts, said Malikah Shabazz’s lawyer, Lori Anne Douglass.
Dr. Shabazz “worked very hard to try to leave her daughters in a better position,” Ms. Douglass said. “They did not get their inheritance. This estate made money for years. What happened?”
But L. Londell McMillan, the current lawyer for Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz, blamed Ms. Douglass for prolonging the estate dispute and delaying a publishing deal. Mr. McMillan said she “has poisoned the well and attempted to prevent the matter from closing and Malikah from communicating and cooperating.”
It is nothing new for siblings to bicker over their parents’ estate or any number of other issues. But the Shabazz family has been faced with unusual challenges.
Some of the daughters witnessed their father’s assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights more than four decades ago. Then came the death of their mother at age 61 after the fire, set by Dr. Shabazz’s grandson Malcolm, who was 12 at the time. Heartache and tension within the family followed.
“My recollection is that there were a lot of problems in this family, to put it mildly,” said Frank W. Streng, a lawyer who represented Malikah Shabazz in 2002.
Sprinkled throughout letters and e-mails filed in Surrogate’s Court are references by the sisters’ lawyers to the siblings’ tense relationship.
The first public indication of problems with the estate began in 2002, after a collection of Malcolm X items turned up at Butterfields, the San Francisco auction house. Malikah Shabazz was accused of taking some of her father’s unpublished writings — including letters, speeches and journals — to Florida without permission. She allegedly placed the items in storage but allowed her bill to go unpaid, and her father’s work wound up at auction.
The estate had to pay more than $300,000 to get the items back, Joseph Fleming, the former lawyer for Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz, wrote in a court petition in 2004. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem paid more than $400,000 in 2003 to borrow the collection for 75 years, and the center is currently the only place where the works can be viewed.
In a petition attached to the accounting, Mr. Fleming questioned Malikah Shabazz’s mental capacity and blamed her for losing potential licensing deals.
That petition eventually led to the appointment in 2007 of Ms. Douglass as Ms. Shabazz’s guardian ad litem, someone who represents a person’s interests in court but may not make decisions on the person’s behalf.
Two years later, Ms. Douglass issued a 30-page report accusing Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz of misappropriating assets, citing examples like the women’s advancing shares of their inheritance to their sisters and prepaying themselves commissions even when their lawyers advised against it.
The estate’s tax bill, meanwhile, more than doubled over the years because of penalties and interest. At more than $2 million, the bill is now greater than the tangible value of the estate, according to an accounting filed last year by Mr. McMillan.
Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz are not guilty of anything “other than, perhaps, giving the lawyers and accountants too much authority,” Mr. McMillan said, “under circumstances when their pain and suffering was at an all-time high.”
Despite their past disagreements over what to do with the estate, all the sisters other than Malikah Shabazz are now on the same page, Mr. McMillan added.
Mr. McMillan did not make Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz available for comment. Malikah Shabazz could not be reached for comment, but in a letter to the judge last year, she wrote that she had been subject to “overly dramatic bullying” to compel her to agree to a settlement, suggesting that “every bit of everything has been taken from my daughter and I.” But, she added, she did not “plan to at any time participate in any so-called settlements, or negotiations.”
One example of how difficult negotiations have become was the inability of the administrators, Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz, to produce an uncontested accounting of the estate’s assets. After Malikah Shabazz requested an accounting nearly a decade ago, it took two years and a contempt order from Judge Anthony A. Scarpino Jr. of Surrogate’s Court to get the administrators to produce one, which has since been revised at least four times.
Ms. Douglass said that because the administrators did not perform an inventory of Dr. Shabazz’s belongings shortly after her death, it would be impossible to determine if anything had gone missing since then.
While many items were destroyed in the fire that killed Dr. Shabazz, Mr. McMillan said, the property in her estate had been inventoried. He suggested that there was material that would provide new glimpses into Dr. Shabazz’s life, but would not confirm if that included a manuscript of an autobiography that Dr. Shabazz had told a friend, Leroy Wilson Jr., a trusts and estates lawyer, she was working on.
The overall inventory will be included in a final accounting in the coming months, as will proof of every transaction over the life of the estate, Mr. McMillan said.
The lawyer said he hoped that would be enough to persuade opponents to close out the estate and to move forward with publishing deals.
“We’ll be able to have these very important works curated and presented to the public worldwide,” Mr. McMillan said, “with the dignity and integrity that Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz deserve.”
Written By JOHN ELIGON
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