Sister Aisha: Queen Mother of Harlem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE-w_BTI5ZY&t=8s

Written by Hisham Aidi, Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of International and Public Affairs, Columbia SIPA; Filmed and edited by Sophie Schrago “Sister Aisha: Queen Mother of Harlem” tells the story of Aisha al-Adawiya, a prominent community leader and anti-war activist who for decades has served as a bridge between Columbia and Harlem. Sister Aisha, as she's known, moved to Harlem from Eufaula, Alabama in 1961 to pursue her dream of being a jazz vocalist. She was part of the music scene in the West Village in the 1960s – performing on stage with Curtis Mayfield. After attending a rally where Malcolm X spoke, she would embrace Islam and move to Harlem, and go on to become an internationally-renowned activist and grassroots diplomat. In the film, poet Sonia Sanchez compares Aisha to Queen Mother Moore, another legendary Harlem leader. Aisha is a long-standing member of the Columbia community -- she has been involved with the Black Student Organization, the Muslim Student Association and the School of International and Public Affairs since the early 1970s. Over the decades, she has organized dozens of panels and lectures at Columbia on women’s movements, structural racism, US foreign policy and humanitarian intervention, involving scholars like poets Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka, Kenyan historian (and SIPA alum) Ali Mazrui, and Palestinian scholar Edward Said. Aisha has organized events and protests at the United Nations, and led inter-faith missions to Africa and the Middle East. In 1994, following the genocide in Bosnia, she set up an organization called Women in Islam which has raised awareness and funds for conflicts around the world. She also founded the Malcolm X Museum. Aisha was very close to Betty Shabbazz, Malcolm X's widow and was around when Columbia tried to demolish the Audubon Center in 1992. With Betty and the Shabazz daughters, Aisha set up the Shabazz Center in what’s left of the Audubon, and called on Columbia to create the Malcolm X Scholarship fund for medical students. For 35 years she worked at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. She retired in September 2021 and left a rich personal archive of books, pamphlets, photographs, and recordings documenting her life in activism and art, that will now be housed at The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary. Aisha was involved in the Ford Foundation-funded “Muslims in New York” (MSNY) project based at SIPA from 1997 to 2003, and which produced numerous studies and dissertations on Muslim civic engagement in New York. After 9/11, Aisha was also involved in efforts to protect Columbia students from NYPD and FBI surveillance on campus. She and Imam Talib Abdur Rashid, a prominent Harlem-based religious leader, launched a lawsuit against the NYPD This project was funded through the “Addressing Racism: A Call to Action for Higher Education initiative of the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.”