As a young woman, Shabazz left the comfortable home of her adoptive parents in Detroit to study at the Tuskegee Institute, a well-known historically black college in Alabama. She later went to New York, where she became a registered nurse. In New York friends invited her to lectures by Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. He gave all his followers the last name "X" representing the African american name they will never know. It was in 1956 that Betty X met Malcolm X, then a rising star in the Nation of Islam. Two years later they married, and within five years they had four daughters. After splitting from Muhammad in 1964, Malcolm and Betty X adopted the Muslim surname Shabazz. In early 1965, Malcolm was gunned down while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. Betty Shabazz, pregnant with twins, was in the audience and covered her girls on the floor as the bullets flew. "Sister Betty came through the people, herself a nurse, and people recognizing her moved back; she fell on her knees, looking down on his bare, bullet-pocked chest, sobbing, 'They killed him!" Betty was left to raise six daughters alone.