Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of the iconic activist Malcolm X, spoke to a full room of… Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of the iconic activist Malcolm X, spoke to a full room of students, faculty and community members at the Black Action Society’s annual Indaba ceremony on Friday in the William Pitt Union.

She spread a message of self-empowerment to black students, encouraging them to learn about their rich African heritage and fight against injustice.

Shabazz learned her most valuable history lessons not from a teacher in a classroom, but from Ahmed Tawfa, a sheik and family friend, in her living room. “He told me the truth about my heritage,” she said.

Tawfa would teach Shabazz and her siblings of the great African civilizations of Nubia, the Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt and about the part they played in the rise of the Greek civilization.

These history lessons gave Shabazz valuable insight into her African roots. The version of history taught in school “made [my] people seem very, very small,” she said. “Ahmed Tawfa