African-Americans should explore Malcolm X's black nationalist legacies to become a more self-sufficient and powerful community, several University community members said last night.

A panel of University administrators, faculty, staff and student leaders gave the assassinated leader's perspective on students, women, economic thought and cultural legacy to an audience of about 100 people in the HUB Ballroom.

Vanessa Wright, president of the University's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said the advancement of African-Americans lies in the hands of black students, because they have the opportunity to gain knowledge and inform those less aware of their heritage than themselves.

"(Students) have to be mature and look at past examples," Wright said. "Malcolm X wanted us to be the freedom fighters and the revolutionaries."

When he was in prison, Malcolm X discovered the power he believed his African heritage represented, said Vernis Welmon, assistant dean of the Smeal College of Business Administration.

Welmon added that Malcolm X then began to educate African-Americans on how to mobilize themselves to become a more united people through the organization Nation of Islam. Later Malcolm X went on to found the African-American Unity Organization.

His assassination in 1965 prevented him from formulating more ideas that may have lead to a concrete plan for achieving unity among people of African descent, many panelists said.

Laverne Gyant, director of the Black Studies Program, revealed Malcolm X's little known attitudes concerning the role of black women in the liberation movement.

"Many people viewed Malcolm X as a revolutionary, a nationalist and a sexist," Gyant said."They tend to overlook the humanside of him. I see Malcolm X as a revolutionary, but I do not see him as a sexist."

Although Malcolm X used derogatory language towards women in his early days, he began to see women as having an active role in the liberation movement when he became a conscious revolutionary, Gyant said.

One member of the audience found the program enlightening.

"I liked the different perspectives they had," Warner Sabio said. "I'm glad they had (Malcolm X's) women perspectives. That's something they usually don't include."