Mapping Malcolm: A Centennial Series, Part III

Join us on Sunday, July 13th from 2:00PM – 5:00PM for the third and final installment of Mapping Malcolm: A Centennial Series at The Africa Center, curated by Najha Zigbi-Johnson. This engaging, three-part public series dives deep into Malcolm X's lasting influence, examining his impact not only on the Harlem community but also on the broader landscape of New York City and beyond.

In Part III of this series, cultural organizer Najha Zigbi-Johnson and landscape architect Sara Zewde will lead a participatory public mapping exercise that invites Harlem residents of all ages to reflect on memory, place, and belonging. Inspired by the civic engagement work of artists like Candy Chang, the Africa Center’s public plaza will be transformed into a collective canvas—where participants can mark, map, and narrate their personal geographies of Harlem.

(Please note: if there is rain, the event will be moved indoors.)

This culminating activation brings the book’s themes into a lived form, inviting us to consider how Malcolm X’s legacy is inscribed not just in monuments or institutions, but in the spatial memory of a community. What results will be both an ephemeral expression and a lasting work of public art—offering a shared vision of Harlem as imagined by its people.

About Mapping Malcolm:

“For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought—his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are.” Nearly sixty years since the martyrdom of Malcolm X, these words from Ossie Davis’s eulogy remind us that Malcolm’s political and religious beliefs and conceptions of culture have profoundly shaped and been shaped by Harlem. Mapping Malcolm continues the project of reinscribing Malcolm X’s memory and legacy in the present by exploring his commitment to community building and his articulation of a global power analysis as it continues to manifest across New York City today. More specifically, the book explores the limits and possibilities of the archive, the political, material, and philosophical legacy of the Black radical tradition, the Black diaspora, and the state. Oriented toward sovereignty and liberation, Mapping Malcolm brings together artists, community organizers, and scholars to consider the politics of Black space-making in Harlem through a range of historical, cultural, and anti-imperialist worldviews designed to offer new, reparatory pedagogical possibilities. Together, they reconfigure how we understand, employ, and carry forward Malcolm X’s sociopolitical, cross-cultural analyses of justice and power as an everyday praxis in the built environment and beyond.

Program Facilitators:

Najha Zigbi-Johnson

Najha Zigbi-Johnson is a writer, educator, and cultural curator. Her Harlem-based practice sits at intersections of the built environment, contemporary Black art, and social movement history. She is the editor of Mapping Malcolm, a publication that brings together artists, transnational community leaders, and scholars who explore the politics of Black space-making. Najha teaches political science and architecture at The City College of New York, and has written for The Cut, New York Magazine, Essence, Artforum, SEEN Journal, White Cube Gallery and more. Najha holds a BA in Religious Studies from Guilford College and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where she graduated as a Presidential Scholar. Najha also served as a Fellow at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and is currently a Create Change Fellow at the Laundromat Project.

Sara Zewde

Sara Zewde is founding principal of Studio Zewde, a design firm practicing landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art. Named to Time Magazine’s TIME 100 Next, Architectural Digest's AD100, and *Wallpaper’s 300 People Shaping Creative America, her practice is celebrated for its design methods that sync culture, ecology, and craft. In parallel to her design practice, Sara serves as Assistant Professor of Practice at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and is currently writing a book on her research retracing Frederick Law Olmsted's journeys through the Slave South. Sara holds a master’s of landscape architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a master’s of city planning from MIT, and a BA in sociology and statistics from Boston University.

Events are free and open to all. Registration does not guarantee entrance, so we recommend that you arrive early.

Info: This event will be held on The Africa Center's Plaza. In the event of rain or extreme weather, the event will be moved indoors.

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