LINCOLN- After three nominations and many attempts, Malcolm X has officially been chosen to be inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame.

Ron Hull, the chairman of the Hall of Fame Committee and a longtime public television broadcaster, cast the deciding vote, saying that Malcolm X continues to have influence worldwide with his story of transformation and reformation.

Applause broke out among most of the 30 people attending the commission meeting at the State History Museum in Lincoln.

Yshall Davis, a volunteer with the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, pumped her fist in the air and wiped away tears as Hull stated his vote, which gave Malcolm X a majority of the seven-member commission.

“It says a lot about what Nebraska is becoming,” Davis said of the vote by the commission, which has no members of color.

Malcolm X will become the first African-American to be inducted into the Nebraska Hall of Fame. The hall currently has 26 members, of which five are female and three are Native American.

The initial vote by the commission was four votes for Malcolm X and three votes for Louise Pound, an educator, folklorist and author at the University of Nebraska — and the only woman in NU history to earn a letter in a men’s sport (tennis). Howard Hanson, the third finalist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, did not receive a vote.

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