Thomas Hagan, 69, the black man who admitted his role in the 1965 murder of black radical Malcolm X, was paroled Tuesday. Ironically as Hagan left the minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility at 11 a.m. it was impossible not to note that it is located at the intersection of West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.

Hagan had been in a full-time work-release program since March 1992 that allowed him to live at home with his family in Brooklyn five days a week while reporting to the prison just two days.

Malcolm X is best known as the fiery leader of the Nation of Islam who denounced whites as "blue-eyed devils." Near the end of his life, Malcolm X changed his views toward whites and discarded the Nation of Islam's ideology in favor of orthodox Islam. In doing so, he profetically feared for his own life from within the Nation. He was gunned down while giving a speech in New York's Audubon Ballroom in 1965.

Hagan, then known by the name Talmadge X Hayer, was 22 and a radical member of the Nation of Islam the day he entered the ballroom armed and ready to kill. His allegiance was to the Nation's founder, and he was outraged Malcolm X had broken from its ranks.