Nappy Headed Black Child

I talked about this awhile back on twitter. Source1 Source2


Yesterday Thomas Hagan has been released on parole and is now a free man. Previously Hagan was on a work release which he started in 1988 where he only spends 2 days out of the week in prison and works the other 5. This arrangement has allowed him to be active in his family's life and earn a master's degree. He has expressed repeatedly remorse for his action and in 1977 Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices (not Muhammad Aziz or Kahlil Islam the two other men convicted for his murder who i believe are actually innocent) decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a “hypocrite” who had “gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam,” Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest with a shotgun, he and another man fired several more rounds at him.

A great many people i know were for lack of a better term were outraged when they learned about it. Honestly i can completely understand why this is so problematic for some folks. The love many of us have for Malcolm X and what he stood for makes it very difficult to muster any forgiveness for Malcolm's assassins. This lack of forgiveness translating into a desire to keep the assassins in jail forever.

I've run across several petitions and radio shows wanting to stop Hagan's parole and from a purely logically and law based standpoint that battle was lost when Aziz was paroled in '85 and Hagan was granted work release '88. Hagan had a sterling prison record and was 2/3 of the way out of the door anyway. Too little too late from a strategy perspective and as a result Hagan is in the streets. And still many are outraged and talking about "justice for Malcolm", but ultimately Hagan is irrelevant. First and foremost if anyone equating "justice for Malcolm" as doing something to a 69 year old man who is just trying to live out the little bit of time he has left has clearly not studied Malcolm X. At least to me Justice for Malcolm would be continuing Malcolm X's work of building a self sufficient black community working for justice for black people in this nation. Particularly considering the questions surrounding the scope of the conspiracy that ended up taking Malcolm X's life. Any retaliation against Hagan would make Malcolm's Legacy about his assassins instead of the great work he did. And that is something i am not prepared to do. That makes Hagan irrelevant to me. What he did was deplorable the absolute worst and im angry about what he did but there is nothing more that can be done about that except keeping Malcolm X's work moving forward

Nakumbuka Malcolm X