Truth wins out as 2 convicted in Malcolm X killing cleared
The recent revelation that two men convicted of assassinating Malcolm X were exonerated was like a breath of fresh air.
The Malcolm X assassination, like those of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, defined my generation’s era. It was an era in which bullets, not ballots, decided the direction of this nation.
In the 1960s, America lost its innocence. Even today, the revelation that the FBI knew for years the name of the man who wielded the shotgun that killed Malcolm, isn’t shocking.
I lived through an era that saw Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale survive only because of the power of the people . Millions petitioned that their lives be spared and they were.
The FBI had created its infamous counterintelligence program, or COINTELPRO as it was then called. Under this program, the government created dossiers on tens of thousands of people simply because of their political activities.
Thanks to the late Annapolis civil rights attorney Alan Hilliard Legum, I successfully sued the FBI and got access to my file. A file that included, among other things, a complete transcript of an interview that I did with Stokely Carmichael when I worked for Annapolis radio station WANN.
The revelation of the FBI’s misconduct in the case of Malcolm X has now resulted in the criminal records of two men who spent decades in prison for a crime that they did not commit being cleared. One of the men commented that he did not want to die having his descendants believe that he had murdered Malcolm.
The American people will never know the people whose lives were adversely affected by the untimely deaths of Malcolm X, Dr. King, Senator Kennedy and President Kennedy.
Just as they will never know what might have been had they lived. I am fortunate not only to have lived when these great men walked the earth, but to have been influenced by them.
Years ago, I met Alex Haley and James Baldwin, both renowned writers who knew Malcolm. The private Malcolm was far different from the public image we have of him.
He was more than our “shining Black prince” as described by Ossie Davis. He was and is our hero. A man who always understood that the price of freedom is death.
He did not hesitate to die for a people and cause greater than himself.
I remember once while traveling in Africa, I met a man who said, “Don’t pay attention to the shadows, but the people who created them, who you will never see.” Government operates like that.
There are things that people will never see. In the case of the assassination of
Malcolm X, however, I am delighted that I lived long enough to know what Dr. King meant when he said, “Truth crushed to the earth will rise again and no lie can live forever.”
To those of you who never knew Malcolm X, the reason it is important that the American people know who really killed him is because “no lie can live forever,” and his truth is marching on.
A Luta Continua, which in Portuguese means, the struggle continues.