BEFORE he was gunned down in the Audubon Ballroom 32 years ago, Malcolm X anticipated his own death, warning his wife that he expected to die violently. And he offered her advice on how she should live her life and raise their young daughters without him.
"Don't be bitter," he told his wife, Betty Shabazz, over and over again.
Over the next three decades, Dr Shabazz clung to those words. She hid books about her slain husband so her girls would not see the photographs of his bloodied body. She spoke of the importance of unity, peace and nonviolence. But tragedy continued to trail the family long after Malcolm X's assassination on May 21st, 1965.
Still devastated by the murder she had witnessed at the age of four, Qubilah Bahiyah Shabazz, the second oldest of the couple's six daughters, was indicted two years ago for trying to hire a hit man to kill Mr Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, who has always been suspected within the black community of playing a role in Malcolm X's murder.
And on Sunday, Dr Shabazz (61), was severely burned in a fire at her apartment in Yonkers. Law enforcement officials say that her grandson, Malcolm (12), who is Qubilah Shabazz's child, set the fire deliberately. The boy, who had been briefly removed from his mother's home by child welfare workers on suspicion of neglect, had been living with Dr Shabazz while his mother struggled to remake her life in Texas.
The news left friends of Dr Shabazz reeling. How, they wondered, could tragedy strike again?
As family friends and politicians, including former Mayor David Dinkins, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the Rev Al Sharpton, rushed to Jacobi Medical Centre, where Dr Shabazz was being treated, friends of the family feared for the wellbeing of the woman long revered as the torch carrier of her husband's memory and message.
Married for seven years when her husband was killed, Dr Shabazz was suddenly forced to raise her children on her own. She moved her family from Queens to a working class neighbourhood in Mount Vernon, New York. With the help of the money from her husband's estate, she received a doctorate degree in education and found a job at Medgar Evers College in 1976, where she has worked ever since and now heads the Office of Institutional Advancement.
She sent her daughters to good schools. Qubilah Shabazz, for instance, graduated from the elite United Nations International School and attended Princeton University. Her other five daughters achieved distinction as well. They count among them a play wright, a professional speaker and a singer.
But Qubilah Shabazz never seemed to settle down. She drifted from place to place, often living in poor neighbourhoods and renting single rooms for 560 a week. She worked odd jobs, as a proofreader for a legal firm in New York, as a translator in Paris. She was often short of money.
In 1995, Ms Shabazz, who was then 34, was indicted on charges that she had tried to hire a hit man to kill Mr Farrakhan. The arrest stunned her family and the nation. But Dr Shabazz withstood the shock and stood by her daughter.
What kept her going, a friend said, was "a profound belief in the maker of us all, the strength instilled in her by her belief in herself, in what Malcolm stood for and in the institution of the family".
Prosecutors later agreed to drop the charges against Ms Shabazz if she "agreed to accept responsibility" for her role in the plot, sought counselling and stayed out of legal trouble.
Last night, the New York state Assemblyman, Mr Lawrence Seabrook, urged people not to forget the young Malcolm in their prayers. "It is our hope that there will be prayers for the both of them, for the grandson as well as Betty," he said. "It is our hope that this family can pull through this because they've had to deal with a lot of tragedy."