PROFILE : Going Her Way : Attallah Shabazz finds fulfillment participating in the arts and giving the world a truer picture of her father, Malcolm X

In film clips we see of fallen African-American leaders, Malcolm X remains a vivid first among equals. To see this glowing filament of a man rake his audiences with passionate rhetoric is to wonder what would have come to pass had he not been gunned down in New York’s Audubon Ballroom in 1965 at age 39.

That wonder can easily translate into an infinite variety of posthumous claims, particularly with a figure as volatile as his. The task of speaking for someone who can no longer speak for himself has fallen to 32-year-old Attallah Shabazz. As Malcolm X’s oldest daughter, she travels the lecture circuit to talk about who the actual Malcolm X was, as opposed to how she sees his image exploited.

“My father said and left a lot,” she says. “He motivated, moved and taught. He was an honest, clear, immaculate speaker. Only he could speak for himself. Still, I try to give people a full portrait. I tell them about the years he was incarcerated, the changes he went through. People only see pieces, the fiery speaker, the street hustler of Boston and New York. But it seems that every five years of his life he went through a radical change. In the end, he was so much more than anyone knew. I can tell you, no picture on a T-shirt captures him.”

Most people who lose a parent at an early age go through life as though carrying out unfinished business. If completion of the Malcolm X portrait has become a large part of Shabazz’s raison d’etre, she’s gone about the rest of his legacy in a different way. Instead of following his political activist path, she’s chosen the arts as an expression of her people’s history and identity.

“Actually, the arts chose me, from the age of 3 or 4,” she says. “I’m a good sculptor. Whether it’s writing, theater or film, they’re a way for me to use my passion, for laughing, thinking, feeling hugged.”

While commuting back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, Shabazz has recently worked as associate producer on gospel music’s Stellar Awards and the NAACP Image Awards programs, as well as the production of “Paul Robeson” that last month closed a successful run at the Westwood Playhouse.

As a theatrical producer, she’s also conferred with playwright-director Les Weider on his new play about interracial love. Titled “Voices,” the story is set against a backdrop of taped interviews with American slaves compiled in the ‘30s by the Library of Congress, and has just opened a workshop run at Moorpark College.

In one respect, “Voices” is very much in keeping with the Malcolm X message. Says Shabazz: “What’s inspiring is that if you listen to the actual tapes, the voices don’t express ‘woe is me’ slavery. They express the humor and wisdom that get you through the day.

“Les Weider created a (premise) based on his experience as a white man married to a black woman and his responsibility towards their multicultural child. But I didn’t feel that the voices behind them needed to be haunting, as in ‘eerie.’ The voice of your great-great-grandmother is that of a friend, not someone under the bed. I have never felt like a slave. If all the slaves felt like slaves, there never would’ve been an underground railroad, or rebellion, or the creation of a new music and a new language. I’m part of the pulse of people who never functioned as slaves.”

Shabazz still feels the need for a more direct form of address about her father, however, particularly since the lingering image of El-Hajj-Malik-El-Shabazz--born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Neb., in 1925--has been caught up once again in a riptide of current racial politics. The vibrancy of his figure lends a starkness to the two questions left in his wake: What would American race relations and the condition of African-Americans be had he--and Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he was forging a mounting accord--lived? And who will speak for the “real” Malcolm X today?

No one knows the answer to the first. Different people make claim to the second, ranging from Nation of Islam leader and black separatist Louis Farrakhan, to playwright and polemicist Amiri Baraka (who represents the United Front to Preserve the Legacy of Malcolm X), to filmmaker Spike Lee, whose latest movie, “Malcolm X,” is due out later this year.

Coincidentally, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Yolanda, has followed a similar path in discovering, at least for herself, an effectiveness of art over political rhetoric. Partly because no one else has shared their experience quite the way they have, King and Shabazz formed a theatrical company called Nucleus, Inc., which has been touring the country since 1980 with a show called “Stepping Into Tomorrow.”

“With the arts you can impact on hearts and minds in a form no one else can do,” King said recently, while preparing her own one-woman, multimedia show written by Ron Stander Thompson, called “Tracks” (she’s also cultural affairs director for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta). “You can penetrate the psyche. Because of the legacy Attallah and I share, we realized it made sense. We grew up as the daughters of great communicators. We’re both artists, and we’re both first-born.

“We had no choice in following this calling in our lives,” she added. “It’s very difficult being an artist in a country where art is not valued, but at the same time, when one is successful, like actors or singers who become popular, you can have more influence on people even than education. Kids know more about songs than historical facts.”

King believes that both her father and Malcolm X were agreeing more and more in principle toward the end of their lives. “They were moving closer in their analysis of the problem. They were beginning to see racism, sexism and ethnic division as symptoms of a deeper conflict, the haves versus the have-nots.”

Whatever is made of Malcolm X publicly, the private impact of his influence and loss is incalculable: He left behind a wife and six children (including unborn twins) when he died. Nowhere is this more evident than in Attallah Shabazz’s demeanor.

Alex Haley, who co-wrote the remarkable “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” was Shabazz’s godfather, and said of her the week before he died: “I think the world of Attallah. I like to call her ‘Little Red,’ because her father was ‘Big Red.’ She looks like her father, acts like her father, even grins like him. You won’t see it often, but it’s pure Malcolm. Even the enigmatic, elusive quality is Malcolm. I don’t know if it’s inherent or studied, but her father had the same thing. In the early part of our work on the book, he would not talk about himself.”

It’s difficult to get Attallah Shabazz to talk about herself as well, at least in detail. She prefers to express herself elliptically. A tall, slender woman with coppery Caribbean skin and eyes the color of dark amber, her posture is so erect that her back and shoulders appear to balance like the impeccable junction of a T-square. She has a longish, grave, somewhat censorious face that doesn’t look as though it readily suffers fools for long. Her voice is low and smoothly modulated, her diction precise. She dresses tastefully in smart-looking, tailored clothes, invariably topped off with a fez.

“I have a wonderful extended family of friends, but I’m exceedingly private,” she said in the first of several meetings, this one outdoors in a park.

“I grew up cross-cultural. In my house there were many accents. My taste buds were not formed on American food. The family background was African, Caribbean, Arabic and Native American. My grandfather made sure I knew all about them. Instead of feeling one-fourth of something, I felt 400%. I felt the pride. I never knew there were problems in the outside world. My father introduced internationalism to his family. I never felt uncomfortable, even in school and even if I was the only Islamic person, or black person, or the tallest girl in class. I never felt insecure. Negritude wasn’t hammered into my heart.”

In a 1989 interview with The Times, she acknowledged some concern about her personal safety. Asked if she’d chosen to meet in the park now for the same reason, she said: “I don’t think about danger. There is an element out there capable of doing something. It could be anybody. But I have good karma. I don’t worry about what I don’t trust. It’s too much work.”

This self-contradiction is analogous to someone perpetually on the move and constantly reassessing her surroundings and her experience (in addition to her bi-coastal existence, she travels to southern Europe and North Africa annually). At the moment, she was feeling dubious about what Spike Lee was up to in his film.

“There should be a protocol about respect,” she said. “Before a movie is shot, they should consult with my mother. Too often ‘public domain’ is thrown in my face. My mother raised us alone, with little support, for 20 years. I don’t say this resentfully, but I was always Malcolm’s daughter whether he was popular or not. How can they do this movie without consulting with myself or my mother?”

(Betty Shabazz, Attallah’s mother, offered this disclaimer: “Spike Lee had consulted with me. But what you need to understand is she (Attallah) has a right to be upset with the way people view her father. For the longest time we were his audience and his cheerleaders--myself and the girls.”)

“I don’t question the earnestness of producer Marvin Worth’s devotion to my father--he’s had the rights to the Malcolm X story for 23 years,” Attallah said. “I question who’s come on board afterward. More than Malcolm X’s maturity, there was the human surrender, the pain and vulnerability. A man can cry and a macho boy can love. There’s no way in the world that the man you see on the podium was the same 24 hours a day. He was very private, but at home he was boyish and sensitive and romantic to my mother. He could take off his tie and act silly. How is anybody going to know about that?”

Later, in another meeting, this time in a restaurant, her attitude had changed.

“Right now I’m in a still place, hopeful that tugs on (Lee’s) conscience as a result of the controversy will manifest itself in an earnest attempt to show Malcolm Shabazz as he was, not as created by someone else. It’s not enough for me to protest what I don’t know. To predict a violation is conjecture. I was there on the second day of shooting. I was treated with respect.”

Like her father, Attallah has chosen to go her own way. “I was never indoctrinated in the Nation,” she continued. “After my father was excommunicated, my childhood was freer, more comfortable. I’ve always been Islamic by origin and rearing; Arabic was my second language. But it’s more cultural than religious. I’m not a member of the Nation.”

She was educated at the United Nations International School, and then Briarcliff, where she majored in international law (the private school closed down before she could graduate). After Briarcliff, she took a variety of jobs (one as a beauty school instructor) before continuing an interest in acting begun in school. Her first roles were in “Hello, Dolly” and “The Threepenny Opera” in Pleasantville, N.Y., in the mid-’70s. “Right now I have a couple of films in development, but I still hope someday to get on with my studies in international law.”

Although she keeps busy, she also keeps to herself. “A lot of people only know the serious side of me and don’t know that I laugh,” she said. “I don’t go out socially. I don’t go to bars or social functions. I get bored. My home is always comfortable. I’ve always had an early curfew, from the days when I was told, ‘When the street light’s on, you’re in for the night.’ I’m a reader, writer, imaginer. I don’t smoke.”

Yolanda King offers this observation on both Shabazz’s elusiveness and sense of purpose: “Part of what Attallah has had to deal with is that her father became estranged from the people he was closest to in his earlier years. He didn’t have the same kind of visible support, organizational, congregational, that grew around my father. At the same time, everything around her is a constant reminder of her father. It’s the same with my family and me. There’s Daddy the spokesman, Daddy the national hero, the private Daddy who’s there for your birthday. I started delivering speeches my mother had written by the time I was 12. We had no choice.”

Attallah Shabazz wears a wedding ring. Asked about being married, she replied, “Am I married?” Could there be a question about that? She touched the ring and a smile came and left in a flash, leaving a ripple of open emotions in her face that made her seem for a split second extremely vulnerable.

“Re-piecing my life has been an ongoing process,” admitted Shabazz. “To reiterate, I’m fortunate to have a lot to work with. My parents are wonderful people. I mean that, not as a stroke. The more I hear people talk--I have tragedies people can’t relate to--I know I’m blessed.

“We’re all disciples of something. We have a destiny. Notoriety doesn’t determine the wealth of a person. What makes me smile is feeling related to Toussaint Louverture, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, people like them who didn’t do what they did for rewards. When you think of what they were able to articulate, you realize what preceded you, what’s ongoing and everlasting; you know there are people who loved you before you were born.”

Said Haley: “Obviously the greatest trauma of Attallah’s life is the death of her father, which she witnessed. (Attallah and her sisters were in the front row of the Audubon Ballroom when the shots rang out; their mother pushed them to the floor.) I think she is consciously wanting to be the daughter of whom he would have approved. And he would have approved of her.”

Does this mean that she labors in the shadow not only of his fame and notoriety, but of his intentions for her?

“I’m not under a shadow,” she answered. “I’m under a light.”