On Nov. 18, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam—convicted of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X—were exonerated after serving more than 20 years in prison. When I saw the news I thought, wow, this is significant. To get to this point of reexamination; to exonerate these two men—one posthumously because he is no longer with us and the other who is still alive—feels vindicating for all the scholarship that pointed to their innocence.
For decades, activists, scholars and community leaders have doubted the story presented by the state as to who was responsible for Malcolm X’s assassination. People just knew there was something wrong. And many have explored the possibility of other suspects, including historian Manning Marable in his 2011 book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, for which I was a lead researcher.
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Read more: The Enduring Mystery of Malcolm X’s Assassination
I’m glad to see two people who I believe are innocent vindicated. But it’s the state that is doing the vindication—so do we then look away from the state’s culpability? The state still has to be held accountable, but it has often not shown itself to be willing to critique itself. What does it mean to restore 55 years of damage not just to these men and their families, but to communities harmed because of their wrongful convictions?
And what of the state’s own involvement, not only in the investigation and prosecution of this case but in the events that led up to Malcolm’s assassination? Malcolm X came on the scene challenging police brutality and the violence of the carceral state. His legacy requires us to ask these questions.
This is like justice with an asterisk. Make no mistake, while Aziz and Islam have been exonerated, the state is still on the…
Source : time
