She sure could get people riled up.
Like the time she suggested that if John McCain beat Barack Obama for president of the United States, "look for a full-fledged race war."
The reaction hit the fan!
Fatimah Ali, who dared to make such a prediction in a column in the Daily News, was deluged with mail that would singe the eyebrows, little of it printable.
DrudgeReport.com headlined the story about her column: "Philadelphia columnist warns if McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race war."
Was she remorseful. Did she back down?
That was not Fatimah's style. In a subsequent column, she said she'd been "dead wrong" in her prediction: "We don't have to wait until after the election for a race war. We're in one now."
Fatimah Ali, born Susan Hughes in Philadelphia to a doctor and a teacher, a fierce advocate for social justice who broadcast her views on local radio and wrote a column for the Daily News from 2006 to 2011, died in her sleep in her North Philadelphia home Monday night. She was 56.
"She lived life on her own terms," said her former husband, state Sen. Vincent Hughes. "She was very thoughtful, very insightful, very intelligent and very committed to social change.
"She was a child of the Sixties and that spirit never left her. She discussed issues that others didn't want to talk about."
Like many others, her death shocked him.
"She lived a very healthy life," he said. "She was always very health-conscious."
One of her daughters, Khadija Ahmaddiya, said the cause of death was not known.
Fatimah was best known locally for her Daily News column and her two-hour daily broadcasts on WURD 900 AM, where she called her show "The Real Deal with Fatimah Ali."
It began in March 2011, and her last broadcast was a report on the activities of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.
Fatimah described herself as a "God-loving mother of five and grandmother. I'm a journalist, a radio head, who loves her family, her roots, people, art, food, news and information and culture."
She never hesitated to tell it like it was, or at least the way she saw it. Far ahead of the Occupy Wall Street gang, she wrote in 2008 with George W. Bush in the presidency: "The politics of the current White House have brutalized our economy, yet the wealthiest think that everything is fine."
