Left with the responsibility of raising six daughters as a widow, Shabazz pursued higher education, and went to work at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York.

Following the 1995 arrest of her daughter, Qubilah, for allegedly conspiring to murder Louis Farrakhan, Shabazz took in her ten-year-old grandson Malcolm.

Throughout her life, Betty Sanders maintained that she had been born in Detroit but early records — such as her high-school and college transcripts — show Pinehurst, Georgia, as her place of birth.

Helen Malloy was a founding member of the Housewives' League of Detroit, a group of African-American women who organized campaigns to support black-owned businesses and boycott stores that refused to hire black employees.

So long as she stayed on campus, she could avoid interacting with white people, but weekend trips into Montgomery, the nearest city, would try her patience.

Black students had to wait until every white person in a store had been helped before the staff would serve them — if they received any service at all.

While the racial climate in New York was better than the situation in Alabama, Sanders frequently wondered whether she had merely exchanged Jim Crow racism for a more genteel prejudice.

"[15] In 1992, she recalled how her demeanor changed when she caught a glimpse of Malcolm X: Then, I looked over and saw this man on the extreme right aisle sort of galloping to the podium.

The two had a long conversation about Sanders's life: her childhood in Detroit, the racial hostility she had encountered in Alabama, and her studies in New York.

[17] "I really had a lot of pent-up anxiety about my experience in the South," Shabazz recalled in a 1990 interview, "and Malcolm reassured me that it was understandable how I felt.

At first, their relationship followed the Nation of Islam's strictures concerning marriage; Malcolm X set the rules and Betty X obediently followed them.

"[24] Over time, the family dynamic changed, as Malcolm X made small concessions to Betty X's demands for more independence.

[32][33] On February 21, 1965, in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X began to speak to a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity when a disturbance broke out in the crowd of 400.

Police officers and Malcolm X's associates used a stretcher to carry him up the block to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

[46][47] Looking back, Shabazz said she initially made an "unrealistic decision" to isolate herself because of the injustice of her husband's assassination.

[48] Recalling the experience in 1992, Shabazz wrote: I really don't know where I'd be today if I had not gone to Mecca to make Hajj shortly after Malcolm was assassinated.

[49]Shabazz returned from Mecca with a new name that a fellow pilgrim had bestowed upon her, Bahiyah (meaning "beautiful and radiant").

For the next three years, she drove from Mount Vernon to Amherst, Massachusetts, every Monday morning, and returned home Wednesday night.

[56] In January 1976, Shabazz became associate professor of health sciences with a concentration in nursing at New York's Medgar Evers College.

[57] By 1980, Shabazz was overseeing the health sciences department, and the college president decided she could be more effective in a purely administrative position than she was in the classroom.

In 1984, Shabazz was given a new title, Director of Institutional Advancement and Public Affairs; she held that position at the college until her death.

They had the common experience of losing their activist husbands at a young age and raising their children as single mothers.

"[63] For many years, Shabazz harbored resentment toward the Nation of Islam—and Louis Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their role in the assassination of her husband.

"[67] In January 1995, Qubilah Shabazz was charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill Farrakhan in retaliation for the murder of her father.

[69] That May, Betty Shabazz and Farrakhan shook hands on the stage of the Apollo Theater during a public event intended to raise money for Qubilah's legal defense.

In the aftermath, Shabazz maintained a cool relationship with Farrakhan, although she agreed to speak at his Million Man March that October.

[70] Under the terms of the agreement, she was required to undergo psychological counseling and treatment for drug and alcohol abuse for a two-year period in order to avoid a prison sentence.

Shabazz suffered burns over 80 percent of her body, and remained in intensive care for three weeks, at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York.

Many prominent leaders were present, including Coretta Scott King and Myrlie Evers-Williams, poet Maya Angelou, actor-activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, New York Governor George Pataki, and four New York City mayors—Abraham Beame, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani.

[78] In a statement released after Shabazz's death, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said, "She never stopped giving and she never became cynical.