A Harborfields student went to a Harlem mosque in 1962 to invite Malcolm X to her school. He agreed

How brave are you?

Before you answer, time travel back to the era of segregation in America, particularly the 1960s, when civil rights activists were sometimes beaten, jailed and even killed. In such a space, what would your teen spirit be like?

For Nancy Howe, a white woman who in 1962 was a 17-year-old senior at Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, the courage ran strong.

That year, she told her history teacher, George Kruse, that she wanted to join the Freedom Rides — protests by mixed racial groups organized on buses that drove young people into the South to challenge segregation in interstate travel following a 1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The Freedom Rides provoked violent reactions that included mob attacks by the KKK, beatings by other opponents of integration and the firebombing of one of the Greyhound buses transporting Freedom Riders. Those risks concerned Kruse, who suggested an alternative: a speaker series for the school’s senior elective course, “Problems of Democracy,” bringing civil rights leaders to speak with students. Howe agreed and invited the organizer of the Freedom Rides — James Farmer, who years earlier had co-founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) — to address the class, but he declined. Undeterred, she envisioned another civil rights icon.

“I knew immediately who I wanted as the final speaker,” said Howe, now 81 and living in Palo Alto, California.

Malcolm X.

And she made it happen.

In January 1962, the Nation of Islam minister traveled from Manhattan 40 miles east to Greenlawn to speak to a small group of high school students, all but one of them white, and ended up opening the minds of many of the teens. He left them charmed, intrigued and enlightened, they recalled more than 60 years later.

Other speakers in the series included Percy Sutton, a Black attorney arrested for attempting to use a whites-only bathroom in Hawkins Field, Mississippi, and Angela Butler, an organizer of Nashville sit-ins. But Malcolm X is the one who left a lasting impression.

An activist in her own right

Howe was born in Brooklyn and moved to Greenlawn when she was 3. Her father, an engineer with the military equipment manufacturer Sperry Gyroscope in Brooklyn, and mother, an educator who helped found the Huntington Cooperative Nursery School, encouraged civic engagement.

“They were human rights activists,” she said. “They didn’t discriminate against anyone. They saw everyone’s humanity. They would often discuss the civil rights issues of the day with me and my siblings.”

Malcolm X, the charismatic national spokesman for the Nation of Islam, was a fierce voice for Black empowerment, Black nationalism and self-determination. He offered an alternative to Civil Rights Movement leaders’ nonviolent strategy — self-defense when confronted with physical violence.

Howe knew that to secure the guest star for her series, she would have to travel to Harlem to the Nation of Islam’s Mosque No. 7 on 116th Street. After riding the Long Island Rail Road to Penn Station, she took the subway to 125th Street and Lenox Avenue and walked south. She said she felt a steady resolve — not a trace of fear — as she reached her destination. Howe said she was intent on exposing her classmates to the full spectrum of the Civil Rights Movement, and she believed Malcolm X was a clarifying voice they needed to hear. At the top of the stairs, she knocked. A Black man opened the door and asked if he could help her.

She told him she wanted to invite Minister Malcolm X to speak to her high school on Long Island. He told her to wait. When he returned about two minutes later, he told her the minister would be there. They set a date and she gave him her phone number.

As the day drew near, someone from the organization phoned to confirm the details. Listening to the conversation, Howe’s mother suggested that she invite Malcolm X to dinner at their home. The voice on the phone thanked her but declined. It seemed so unreal to Howe, she recalled. She wasn’t sure that Malcolm X really would come to her high school.

Much-anticipated visit

On a cold January day in Greenlawn, Malcolm X arrived at the school accompanied by a security guard. Waiting at the school’s front entrance, students alerted their arrival by shouting, “They’re here! Look, they’re here,” Howe recalled. She said she introduced herself and shook hands with the men. She said she remembers that Malcolm X, dressed in a dark suit with a skinny necktie, was handsome and respectful. He asked to meet the principal, Thomas Dight, and she took him to his office. Dight was equally polite when she introduced him to Malcolm X, and the two men shook hands. Then she, Malcolm X and his bodyguard made their way to the library. Kruse joined them, which Howe said made her feel relieved. He was excited; she was nervous.

In the library awaited 25 to 30 students and a few teachers who had a free period.

Malcolm X then stood in front of the group and began to speak. Howe said she sat up front. Bruce Adams, her classmate and a student photographer, was farther back, where he took a photo of Malcolm X addressing the group. They described the hourlong session as intimate and said he held a Q&A session at the end.

Greenlawn’s population of 5,400 was more than 97% white and less than 2% Black at the time, according to the 1960 U.S. Census, and the high school’s senior class included about 150 students.

The demographics would have been familiar to Malcolm X, who was the only Black student in his class at Mason High School in Mason, Michigan. He had been placed in a detention home there following the death of his father and the institutionalization of his mother. He defied his circumstances to earn both top grades and the title of class president.

As the Nation of Islam’s spokesman, he frequently addressed predominantly white capacity audiences in auditoriums on college campuses across the country.

What they remember 64 years later

Attendees interviewed 64 years later said they did not know at first what to make of the civil rights activist, whose rousing speeches were known for their defiance and urgency. They said they expected him to act angry and were surprised when he didn’t.

“I didn’t think that Black men were supposed to be articulate,” said Ray Faustich, 81, now of Seymour, Connecticut. “I liked what he said. . . . We understood the people that he associated with were very militant . . . [that] they weren’t like us. When he got done with his talk, I found out he was exactly like us. It’s just that he had been brought up a little bit differently than we had.”

I found out he was exactly like us. It’s just that he had been brought up a little bit differently than we had.

— Ray Faustich, 81

Lynn Bingman, 80, now of Kalaheo, Hawaii, a student who later became a lawyer, said she was struck by the presence of the bodyguard. “I had no idea that he [Malcolm X] was at risk back then. You could see them relax [once] they realized this was not a threatening situation.”

Adams, the student photographer, said he learned something about segregation and inequality in his own town that day. “He made me aware of some of the gerrymandering . . . that had gone on,” recalled Adams, 81, of Northport. “He specifically mentioned the area up and around Park Avenue [in Huntington], an area that I knew. . . . There was a potato farm there, and [school district boundaries] cut the migrants out. They wound up in the South Huntington district. He mentioned that little bit of gerrymandering, which I was unaware of until I checked into it, and it was true at the time.”

Candy Dabi, 79, now of Park Ridge, New Jersey, recalled the intimate feeling as the audience sat in a horseshoe around the speaker. She said she knew Malcolm X’s name but wanted to know more about his views. He spoke of a topic she hadn’t previously given much thought to.

“The whole segregation thing wasn’t really on my radar because it just wasn’t around me,” she said. “It was just sort of underneath the façade of the white suburbs.”

Howe recalled a conversation she had with Patricia Nelthropp, the lone Black student in the class who later became a flight attendant for United Airlines. Howe had asked her if she remembered Malcolm X’s visit to their class. Nelthropp responded, “Oh, my God, how could I forget?”

“Right away, he noticed that I was the only Black student,” Howe said Nelthropp told her. He approached her and said something that stayed with her throughout her life: “Little sister, keep your chin up and you’ll be OK.”

Little documentation, parents’ opposition

There is no documentation for this session other than Adams’ photo. No recording was made. There is no school newspaper article in the archives, or a plaque on the school library wall.

Some who attended had a negative opinion of Malcolm X and were not open to his message, and there were parents who were upset that he was allowed to speak at the school, Faustich recalled.

Howe remembered a conversation she had during a visit a year later with Kruse, who died in 2019. She said he was visibly jarred.

“He’d gotten in trouble for Malcolm X’s visit and had almost lost his job,” Howe said.

When contacted regarding the visit, Rory J. Manning, superintendent of the Harborfields Central School District, said, “While Malcolm X’s visit to Harborfields High School in 1962 predates my tenure, it is certainly a notable moment in the district’s history. Harborfields has long valued opportunities for students to engage with history and hear diverse perspectives. That commitment to meaningful learning experiences continues to shape our work with students to this day.”

‘That was my Freedom Ride’

On Feb. 21, 1965, when Malcolm X was assassinated at age 39, many of these alums said they thought about that January day in 1962 in the library. Howe, who had continued to follow Malcolm X in the media and purchased a recording of one of his speeches, was in Puerto Rico studying art. “I was upset and shocked,” she recalled. “It felt personal because I had met him and brought him to Harborfields.”

On May 19, 2025, Howe thought about him again as she realized it would have been his 100th birthday.

“I had posted [on social media] about his speaking to my class a few years ago, but I thought this warranted posting one more time,” she said. At 8:59 p.m., one minute before midnight on the East Coast, she posted Bruce Adams’ photo once again.

“The fact that he came . . . that was my Freedom Ride,” Howe said. “It was much bigger than that. It was something that we all shared in together.”