The 110 St-Central Park North subway station has been formally renamed to honor one in every of Harlem’s greats: El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, identified to all as Malcolm X.
“Top-of-the-line methods to have a good time the wealthy historical past and neighborhood of Harlem is to acknowledge the contributions of Malcolm X and the Harlem Renaissance to New York and to the world,” mentioned Governor Kathy Hochul, who attended the invoice signing and commemoration occasion on Sunday, August 10.
The renaming falls throughout the 51st annual Harlem Week and the a hundredth anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance. “It’s particularly significant to be right here as we have a good time Harlem Week and mourn the passing of its co-founder, Lloyd A. Williams, whose life was devoted to championing this neighborhood,” continued Hochul.
The adjoining Malcolm Shabazz Plaza on West a hundred and tenth Avenue was designated for the civil rights chief greater than 20 years in the past. It’s been a vibrant gathering area for the neighborhood since, however many wished the subway station on the nook of the plaza to even be a everlasting landmark within the metropolis’s public transportation system.
Invoice Moore images
To get the ball rolling, State Senator Cordell Cleare launched Invoice S.1204/A.5339, renaming the 110 St-Central Park North 2/3 subway station to 110 St-Malcolm X Plaza, and Invoice S.7152A/A.8220A, which designates the Harlem Renaissance Cultural District as a area of cultural significance from a hundred and tenth St to a hundred and fifty fifth St and from fifth Avenue to the Hudson River. Each payments had been signed into legislation this week.
“I can’t inform y’all what number of instances I’ve cried at this time,” mentioned Cleare on the podium. “This can be a multi-level venture, and it means a variety of issues to this neighborhood. Whenever you see this occur, not solely is that this the signal of an accessible, modernized, stunning subway station, which is badly wanted. Not solely is that this a tribute to one in every of our biggest legends and heroes, it’s additionally a middle of enlightenment, and of upliftment of programming, of training, of data, providers, and assets.”
Malcolm X lived in Harlem for greater than a decade, first in 1943, after which from 1954 till his assassination at 39 within the Audubon Ballroom (now “The Shabazz Heart”) in Washington Heights in 1965. The signing ceremony was attended by Pals of Malcolm X Plaza, neighborhood leaders, and three of his daughters: Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, Malaak Shabazz, and Gamilah Lumumba Shabazz.
“The naming of a hundred and tenth Avenue in his reminiscence is greater than a signpost to his household and the neighborhood. It’s a image of hope rooted deep in Harlem’s soul. Harlem has at all times been greater than geography,” mentioned I. Shabazz on the occasion. “Harlem is an thought, a cultural epicenter, the birthplace on Black artwork, Black thought, Black spirituality, Black resistance, Black brilliance. The folks, these neighborhood blocks, these buildings and subway stations, they don’t simply maintain historical past, they make historical past. And this subway station now carries his identify and our shared legacy.”
Elected officers in attendance included State Assemblymember Jordan Wright, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, Senate Majority Chief Andrea Stuart-Cousins, Metropolis Councilmember Yusef Salaam, and Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) President Demitrius Crichlow, the primary Black particular person to carry his place.
“I grew up coming out and in of this station,” mentioned Wright, who sponsored the Meeting model of the laws. “And it means loads to me as a former educator, that once I used to stroll the road saying, ‘I’m going between Lenox and Seventh Avenues.’ Now younger folks say, ‘I’m between Malcolm X Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.”
“As we replicate on a second, on the lifetime of our brother, we have to replicate that proper right here amongst us are Malcolms,” mentioned Adams. “We have to reclaim our younger folks, who’re simply feeling as if society has deserted them.”
Senate Majority Chief Andrea Stewart-Cousins mirrored on her relationship with Dr. Betty Shabazz, who briefly lived in Yonkers, and her husband. “I used to be round in 1965. I used to be an adolescent. I knew the battle for our liberation as Black folks,” she mentioned. “And one of many issues that Brother Malcolm taught us is that you simply needed to free your thoughts.”
Crichlow, in his remarks, spoke about X’s historical past as a New Haven transit railroad employee in 1941. X labored a sequence of jobs on the railroads from Boston to New York, comparable to a restaurant employee, at a shoeshine stand, and in a jewellery retailer. “Malcolm understood that transit is the last word equalizer. It provides tens of millions of individuals the chance for freedom, to journey, the way in which you must get,” he mentioned. “So what higher option to honor Malcolm than to have this nice man, on this nice neighborhood, a transportation worker, an icon, have a station along with his identify on it.”
Cleare’s workplace mentioned that additional bold plans for the plaza and station embrace putting in a everlasting statue of Malcolm X, a totally renovated and accessible subway station at a hundred and tenth Avenue, and expanded beautification of the plaza.
Comparable laws to rename the Utica Avenue subway station on the A and C strains in Brooklyn after Malcolm X, proposed by Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman, can also be within the works.
