Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Ruchell Magee Must Be Set Free!
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
26 Jul 2023
🖨️ Print Article

Ruchell Magee Must Be Set Free! 

Elder, brother, comrade…Been gone 

too long…

Wanted in the Black Community—

Watts writ large!

 

If 1619 started it—ebony/ivory—

teenage attraction 

Jim Crow’s watch—upped the ante!

Deep South apartheid stench/Emmett

Till terror/Pitched battles on blood rivers…

What could the boy be but Black rapist?

 

Bullwhip warped minds of white men— 

What could this be but ‘Master’s’

midnight visits to slave quarters—Prying

apart Black thighs—overruling cries, pleas,  

Love?

What could the boy be but Black rapist?

 

Crackers coveted Choctaw land—

Black soil mattered…

More than visiting terror—or

Another muddy, mutilated body in Mississippi

or another Dixie river. Crackers coveting

Choctaw land put the boy in his plantation place… 

 

Crackers coveting Choctaw land gifted 8 Angola yrs,

Under horseback-ridin, shot-gun-totin, tobacco-spittin

gaze; Under King Cotton’s rule; Gifted target embroidered

Jacket— Gifted exile to: City of Angels/ruled by devils…

 

Elder, brother, comrade…Been gone 

too long…

Wanted in the Black Community—

Watts writ large!

 

His numbers are no longer:

“6-3-4-5-7-8-9”

no longer:

“Beechwood 4-5-7-8-9” 

far too long his numbers been:

#A92051 #T115— 83—Caged since ’63—

60 yrs of vengeance-driven torture!

 

Elder, brother, comrade…Been gone 

too long…

Wanted in the Black Community—

Watts writ large!

 

Visualize him home—sun splashing light comic 

book bright colors of L.A. murals!

Visualize him home, pulling three-deep lines snaked 

‘round crooked corners…holding youth centers, senior

centers, libraries, bookstores captive.

Visualize him home—space, light, air, freedom to stretch 

out in sensory overload!

 

Elder, brother, comrade…Been gone 

too long…

Wanted in the Black Community—

Watts writ large!

 

No mo’ Golden State gulag/COVID 

concentration camp—

No mo’ Octogenarian barrister behind bars

law book-lifting—iron-pumping mind:

 

No mo’ memoranda, motion, writ and plea

No mo’ heroic, litigious—War of the Flea—

No mo’ symbol of strength/wisdom of tree—

People, Ruchell Magee must be set Free!

Governor, Ruchell Magee must be set Free!

People, Ruchell Magee must be set Free!

 

Š 2023. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.



 

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  •  Corporate Baseball’s “Feeble” Gesture to Negro Leagues
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Corporate Baseball’s “Feeble” Gesture to Negro Leagues
    29 Dec 2020
    Major League Baseball’s recent moves to recognize the contributions of the Negro league teams they once excluded amount to only “the beginning stages of any kind of restitutive or reparative justic
  • Capitalism + Covid-19 = Mass Death in US
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Capitalism + Covid-19 = Mass Death in US
    29 Dec 2020
    “The US health system has failed utterly and completely to protect the people” in this country, said veteran activist Sara Flounders, co-editor with Lee Siu Hin of the new, 50-writ
  •  South African Police More Lethal Than US Cops
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    South African Police More Lethal Than US Cops
    29 Dec 2020
    “South African police kill between two and three times as many people as US police do, per capita,” said Paul Clarke, a doctoral candidate in African and American Studies who has d
  •  Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 21, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 21, 2020
    22 Dec 2020
    Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Meets African Liberation
  •  Sex was Central to Dutch West Indies Anti-Colonial Politics
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Sex was Central to Dutch West Indies Anti-Colonial Politics
    22 Dec 2020
    Sexual issues were loudly debated among anti-colonial activists in the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curaçao and Aruba, said Chelsea Shields, a history professor at the City Universi
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us