Malcolm X the thinker, brought into focus

As she surveyed the letters from prison, an eighth-grade notebook and dozens of photographs, Ilyasah Shabazz remembered growing up with her dead father's shoes. She was 2 when her father, Malcolm X, died, and the shoes were among the possessions that her mother, Betty Shabazz, kept scattered about the family home in Mount Vernon, N.Y., hoping to keep Malcolm a vivid presence for his six daughters.

''They were so big,'' Ms. Shabazz, now 42, said with a laugh. ''I stuck my feet in those shoes. They were a size 14.''

The memories surfaced the other day at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where a major exhibition on Malcolm X will open on Thursday. The exhibition, a public look at his personal and professional papers and other artifacts, represents the opening of a vast trove that many scholars say will prompt new interpretations of the life and thinking of the onetime Nation of Islam leader, assassinated 40 years ago in Washington Heights, who was one of the most important black figures of the 20th century.

For the members of the Shabazz family, the exhibition also represents an end to a wrenching public struggle over their ownership of Malcolm X's personal effects. After almost being auctioned in 2002, most of the items were reclaimed by the family, which deposited them with the Schomburg in 2003.

''I think people will find something in the objects to provoke new levels of interest and new levels of scholarship,'' Howard Dodson, chief of the Schomburg, said in an interview. ''We've consciously tried to stay away from putting a heavy interpretative line on it and to let Malcolm X speak for himself.''

Since his death, Malcolm X has largely become an iconic figure, ending up on a postage stamp in 1999. But he was highly controversial during his lifetime and feared by some blacks and whites because of his calls for black separatism and his advocacy of wresting rights ''by any means necessary.'' Toward the end of his life, Malcolm X parted with the Nation of Islam and denounced racism.

Ms. Shabazz said scrutiny of her father's letters and journals would show scholars that his thinking was rooted in experiences that predated his appearance on the political stage in his 20's. They also show the seeds of his conversion to Islam, around 1948. Ms. Shabazz pointed to a Dec. 12, 1949, letter that her father wrote from prison ''to my dear brother'' that reads in part: ''We were taught Islam by Mom. Everything that happened to her happened because the devils knew she was not 'deadening' our minds.''

Malcolm X was shot down at age 39 at the Audubon Ballroom on Broadway between 165th and 166th Streets on Feb. 21, 1965. Ilyasah Shabazz was in the audience with her family. The opening of the 250-item exhibition, ''Malcolm X: A Search for Truth,'' coincides with the 80th anniversary of her father's birth in Omaha.

In addition to family-owned material, some of the property in the exhibition comes from a collection at Washington University in St. Louis and from the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History in Detroit. The items in the exhibition represent only a tiny percentage of the cache of thousands of pages of documents donated by the family, a trove that will be available in its entirety at the Schomburg in the fall, Mr. Dodson said.

•	Malcolm X the thinker, brought into focus The New York Times, Saturday, May 14, 2005 Byline: Felicia R. Lee

•	Malcolm X. photographer: Laurence Henry opens Art Daily, Wednesday, May 18, 2005 Byline: NO BYLINE

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