The USC Bass Lab Welcomes Ilyasah Shabazz this Black History Month

by Sasha Jackson

Dr. Shabazz digitally greets the USC Bass Lab’s student interviewers from New York, as Catherine Gao of USC Digital Repository steadies the iPad.

Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, will visit the University of Southern California to ring in the second annual Charlotta Bass Day.

Shabazz will debut her cutting-edge interview in the next installment of the AI-powered Second Draft Project.

Last year, the Bass Lab collaborated with the USC Digital Repository to develop an artificial intelligence-driven oral history collection. The Second Draft Project centers the voices of Black Americans who are connected to the nation’s fight for racial and social justice movements in the U.S. Lora King — daughter of the late Rodney King and founder of the Rodney King foundation — helped launch the project as the first “virtual human” interviewee. This year, Shabazz is the star.

“So much of our history has a tendency to be placed in a box, and it is such an honor to be a part of not only preserving Black history, but shedding its misconceptions,” said Rafiq Taylor, a Senior Fellow at the Bass Lab. 

The Second Draft Project involves real subjects and real stories. It’s an interactive interview format of authentic recordings of people broken into conversational clips, enabling people to ask questions and engage with these important figures of social change movements of both the past and present. 

Dr. Richardson and Dr. Shabazz take a photo in front of a Malcolm X mural

In October 2023, The Charlotta Bass Lab’s founding director, Dr. Allissa V. Richardson, spent a day at The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in New York, talking to Shabazz and asking more than 200 questions about her life, her family, their legacy and her work today. Richardson and Professor Jameela Hammond’s Fall 2023 special topics course also participated in the project by learning how to use this exciting technology while creating a supplemental podcast.

“Interviewing Dr. Shabazz was one of the highlights of my career. I admired her ability to discuss difficult topics, such as how her father has been misunderstood throughout history, with such grace,” said Dr. Allissa Richardson.

Shabazz is the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center's co-chairperson. She's also an award-winning author who has written five historical novels, a project advisor for the Prince Among Slaves PBS documentary, and is currently producing a television series with Sony Pictures Television's TriStar from her latest book, The Awakening of Malcolm X.

The USC community will welcome Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz on February 13, 2024, from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm, in Wallis Annenberg Hall. The event is free, and open to the public. USC Black Alumni Association, an official Bass Lab partner, will serve lunch on the patio immediately following the talk.