Nipsey Hussle: A Short Essay

by Brittney “Chiney K” Powell

What Nipsey Hussle’s Death Taught Me

What Nipsey Hussle’s death has taught me is that we are our own detriment and many of us do not know our own history. As I look down my timeline and see so many posts in reference to Nipsey, I realize the impact he had on the black community. When we first heard the news, we wanted answers. We were angered to finally know it was one of our own; and in true social media fashion everyone became a detective. Out of all of the “detective” work, what stood out to me the most were the conspiracy theories and the doubters. Many people believe that Nipsey was assassinated because of his Dr. Sebi documentary, while many people think that is absolutely ridiculous. The people that thought these theories were so far fetched and ridiculous, lead me to believe many black people don’t know their history. So alas a short history lesson.

 

Abraham Lincoln, MLK, and JFK. What do they have in common? They each did something groundbreaking for black people in this country and influential to other countries. Lincoln freed the slaves with the Emancipation proclamation. MLK fought for Civil Rights for black people. JFK introduced the civil rights act of 1964 which would grant equal rights for black people. What else do they have in common? All of them were assassinated. (Hold on to this thought )

 

True story

 

In 1956 the FBI created COINTELPRO which long story short infiltrated many black progressives/activists and their organizations. This included MLK, The Nation of Islam, and the Black Panthers. Aside from MLK the most powerful leaders from these organizations were assassinated by one of our own through infiltration . For example Malcolm X was a powerful leader in the Nation of Islam and he was assassinated by a black man. Huey P Newton founder of the Black Panthers was assassinated by a black man. (Hold on to this thought)

 

Now we fast forward to modern day activist. Many of the key Ferguson/ Black lives Matter activists have ironically died from “suicide”. (These are facts). So now historical facts have shown us when black organizers make some noise they get assassinated or put up on some random charges. For example our sister Marielle Franco in Brazil fought for the poor and black people in Brazil and was later assassinated.

 

Now Nipsey was encouraging black people to invest in their own communities and start their own businesses (which is the solution for 90% of black issues but that’s another story for another day). He was also bringing attention to holistic medicine which is no good for pharmaceutical companies. We finally found out who killed Nipsey and alas it’s a black man who was also an informant.

 

To put this in perspective think about the 1998 film Belly. In one of the last scenes, a white cop approaches Tommy (DMX’s character) with blackmail to get him to assassinate a black leader. Tommy has already killed many of people, so to save his ass he has no problem killing the black leader. He infiltrated the organization and learned their ways and became a changed man. The white cop’s clear instruction was for Tommy to make sure the black leader did not give his speech, which I’m assuming was going to be a powerful one. In the end Tommy went to kill the leader (who already knew he was coming) but couldn’t pull the trigger.

 

All of these points made to say this: while we will never know if Nipsey’s death was an assassination or just some street shit, these conspiracy theories are not far fetched because

 

history 

 

Many people on social media are just jumping on bandwagons and not doing their own research. Dr. Sebi never said women are not supposed to have periods, he said periods are not supposed to last as long as they do. A simple google search could of shut that down, but leave it to our own to discredit another black man in a heartbeat.

 

The saddest part of this all is not that “they” try to tear us down, it’s the fact that they can get one of US to do it. They can kill a few but they can’t kill us all. UNITY y’all ; the word of the day.