Malcolm X Papers Find a Home at NYPL.

Private papers and personal effects covering two decades of the life of slain civil-rights leader Malcolm X were placed on long-term deposit at New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and will be available to researchers as early as May 19, 2004, which would have marked Malcolm X's 79th birthday. Two of Malcolm X's daughters, Ilyasah and Malaak Shabazz, turned over to the library for a 75-year period two large crates of hundreds of pages of materials--including letters, speeches, journals, and photographs--that had been the subject of an ownership dispute. Among the most significant items are diaries in which Malcolm X documented his trips to Africa and the Middle East, made soon after he broke with the Nation of Islam in 1964. The documents, which have yet to be assessed by scholars, were stored for years at the home of Malcolm's late wife, Betty Shabazz, in Mount Vernon, New York, and had been removed after her death in 1997. The Schomburg Center, located on Malcolm X Boulevard, is just a few blocks from the mosque where Malcolm X once preached.