What would Malcolm X say to the world on his 95th birthday? Likely that he’s proud we’ve woken up, that he’s inspired by the progress, but that there’s still so much more work that needs to be done.

When El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz left his humanly form, the society he ventured to change was not ready for his vision of equality. “People used to say, Malcolm—he was angry, he was violent,” daughter Ilyasah Shabazz tells ESSENCE. “Now we’re able to see he simply had a profound reaction to injustice.”