Pregnant with twins and already the mother of four girls, Betty Shabazz fell to her knees at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom and sobbed "They killed him!" after gunmen fired 16 shots into Malcolm X.
But the legacy of her husband did not die with him on Feb. 21, 1965. The life and preachings of the civil rights leader were reborn - recounted in his wife's own quiet way, distinct from his fervent style.Shabazz died Monday from burns she suffered in a June 1 fire apparently set by her troubled 12-year-old grandson. She was 61.
"Today America and the world has lost a champion of solid dignity and quiet strength," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said.
At her hospital bedside were her six daughters, in whom she said she tried to instill the determination that drew her to Malcolm X and stirred her to attend college, excel in academia and her career and speak out on race and the relevance of her husband today.
"Her living life was very strong, and her fight here showed that endurance," said eldest daughter Attallah Shabazz, as she stood with her sisters outside Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx.
Born Betty Sanders in Detroit, she was adopted and raised by a Methodist family and went to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama before heading to nursing school in New York.
She was 20 when she met the 30-year-old Malcolm X in 1956 at one of the Nation of Islam's main mosques. He was a minister and rising star, attracting converts and enemies for demanding black civil rights "by any means necessary" and referring to whites as "devils."
She married him two years later, convinced of the importance of his work.
"Betty's a good Muslim woman and wife," Malcolm X said in the autobiography he wrote with Alex Haley. "I don't imagine many other women might put up with the way I am."
By 1964, Malcolm X had broken with church leaders and was vilified for it, most notably by his replacement, the Rev. Louis Far-ra-khan. Seeking rebirth, he went to Mecca, became a Muslim and chose a new name, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Upon his return to America, he softened his stance against whites and preached a message of self-reliance and determination for blacks. Former allies were not pleased.
One week after his home in Queens was firebombed, he lay dead at the hands of three men with ties to the Nation of Islam. They were eventually convicted.
Shabazz was left a 28-year-old widow with little money and six children.
She raised their daughters alone in Mount Vernon, just outside New York City, while earning a bachelor's degree in public health education at Jersey State College and a master's degree in early childhood education.
She continued on, receiving a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and became director of public relations at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn and later director of the school's office of institutional advancement.