WISE WORDS
Revolutionary Action
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WISE WORDS Revolutionary Action |
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Black Power was a political movement that arose in the middle 1960s, that strove to express a new racial consciousness
among Blacks in the United States. Robert Williams, who revived the Monroe, NC chapter of the NAACP and later entered exile
in Cuba and China, was the first to put the actual term to effective use in the late 1950s. Williams, who was also the first
to publish the poetry of Ray Durem, used the phrase "Black Power" in the American political context.
The movement stemmed from the earlier civil rights movements, but its meaning was vigorously debated. To some African Americans,
Black Power represented racial dignity and self-reliance (i.e. freedom from white authority in both economic and political
arenas). To others, it was economic in orientation.
Led in some ways by Malcom X, who supplied the rhetoric, style, and attitude, the Black Power Movement encouraged the improvement
of African American communities, rather than the fight for complete integration. The Black Panther Party for Self Defense
were truly the vanguard of the Black Power Movement. In addition to Robert Williams, Stokely Carmichael played a key role
in the formation of the ideas of Black Power. Carmichael made Black Power more popular, largely through his use of the term
while reorganizing the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) so that whites would no longer possess leadership
responsibilities.
Some African Americans sought cultural heritage and history and the true roots of black identity as their part of the movement.
This was thought of as the "consciousness" aspect of the Black Power Movement. The classic phrases belonged to the musicians:
"Free your mind and your ass will follow" (George Clinton/Funkadelic) and "Say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud" (James Brown).
The recognition that standards of beauty and self-esteem were integral to power relations was also a significant aspect of
the movement.
Other interpreters of the Black Power Movement included Harold Cruse and Amiri Baraka who dealt with the cultural-nationalist perspective of Black Power as related to the artistic realm. In his essay "The Black
Arts Movement," Larry Neal explains the effects of the Black Power Movement on the Black Arts Movement One main point of the Black Power Concept was the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms. At
times this included a call for revolutionary political struggle to reject racism and imperialism in the United States. As
the Black Power Concept began to grow, it also began to build resistance and condemnation from whites and from several African
American organizations, including the NAACP, because of the anti-white message associated (often unfairly) with Black Power.
When the Black Panther Party began to grow in the late 1960s, it became the largest Black organization advocating Black
Power. Eventually because of the continual condemnation of the theory of Black Power as a separatist and anti-white movement,
along with the destruction of the Black Panthers in the early 70s, the Black Power Concept seemed to disappear. Yet, scholars
of African American art and politics still see the idea of Black Power as a strong effect on the consciousness of Black America
today, though its institutions have been destroyed and the radical politics largely discredited and defused. In essence, the
focus on cultural autonomy and self-esteem of the Black Power Movement has survived and, not surprisingly, grown in strength.
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Vanguard In any social movement there is a vanguard and a mass. On one side, the vanguard, are groups of people who are more resolute
and committed, better organised and able to take a leading role in the struggle, and on the other side, the mass, are larger numbers of people who participate in the struggle or are involved simply by their social position, but are less
committed or well-placed in relation to the struggle, and will participate only in the decisive moments, which in fact change
history. The Marxist theory of the vanguard, in relation to class struggle under capitalism, stipulates that the working class, the mass, needs to be militantly
lead through revolutionary struggle against capitalism and in the building of Socialism. The Communist vanguard is theoretically
made up of the forefront of workers who are engaged in direct struggles against the capitalist state, and who occupy an advanced
position in constructively and creatively building the socalist movement.
Hosting donated by MutualAid.org Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who chronicles
the human condition. He has been a resident of Pennsylvania’s death row for twenty-five years. Writing from his solitary
confinement cell his essays have reached a worldwide audience. His books "Live From Death Row", "Death Blossoms", "All Things
Censored", “Faith of Our Fathers” and the recently released “We Want Freedom” have sold over 150,000
copies and been translated into nine languages. His 1982-murder trial and subsequent conviction have been the subject of great
debate.
Now available for immediate delivery, the 3 CD complete set recording
of this master performance address on the "State of the Union"
Attacks Increase On Revolutionaries
The Panthers rolled eastward, establishing offices in each major northern ghetto. As they went, they set up
revolutionary programs in each community that were geared to provide community control of schools, tenant control of slum
housing, free breakfast for school children, free health, day-care, and legal clinics, and free political education classes
for the community. They also initiated campaigns to drive dope pushers and drugs from the community, and campaigns to stop
police murder and brutality of Blacks. As they went about the community organizing these various programs they were frequently confronted, attacked,
or arrested by the police, and some were even killed during these encounters. Other revolutionary organizers suffered similar
entrapments. The Revolutionary Action Movement's (RAM) Herman Ferguson and Max Stamford were arrested in 1967 on spurious
charges of conspiring to kill Civil Rights leaders. In the same year Amiri Baraka (the poet and playwright LeRoi Jones) was
arrested for transporting weapons in a van during the Newark riots and did a brief stint in Trenton State Prison until a successful
appeal overturned his conviction. SNCC's Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, and other orators were constantly threatened or charged with "inciting
to riot" as they crisscrossed the country speaking to mass audiences. Congress passed so-called "Rap Brown" laws to deter
speakers from crossing state lines to address mass audiences lest a disturbance break out, leaving them vulnerable to federal
charges and imprisonment. And numerous revolutionary organizers and orators were being imprisoned. This initial flow of revolutionaries
into the jails and prisons began to spread a revolutionary nationalist hue through New Afrikans behind the walls. New Afrikan prisoners were also influenced by the domestic revolutionary atmosphere and the liberation struggles
in Afrika, Asia, and Latin America. Small groups began studying on their own, or in collectives, the works of Malcolm X, Huey
P. Newton, The Black Panther newspaper, The Militant newspaper, contemporary national liberation struggle leaders Kwame Nkrumah,
Jomo Kenyatta, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Tse-tung, plus Marx, Lenin, and Bakunin too.
Increasing numbers of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners became more conscious of national liberation politics.
The percentages of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners increased while the percentage of White prisoners decreased throughout
US prisons. Under this onslaught of rising national liberation consciousness, increased percentages of New Afrikan and Third
The Rise Of Prison Struggles
Like the Panthers, most of those arrested brought their philosophies with them into the prisons. Likewise,
most had outside support committees to one degree or another so that this influx of political prisoners linked the struggle
behind the walls with the struggles in the outside local communities. The combination set off a beehive of political activity
behind the walls, and prisoners stepped up their struggle for political, Afrikan, Islamic, and academic studies, access to
political literature, community access to prisons, an end to arbitrary punishments, access to attorneys, adequate law libraries,
relevant vocational training, contact visits, better food, health care, housing, and a myriad of other struggles.
The forms of prison struggle ranged from face-to-face negotiations to mass petitioning, letter-writing and
call-in campaigns, outside demonstrations, class action law suits, hunger strikes, work strikes, rebellions, and more drastic
actions. Overall, all forms of struggle served to roll back draconian prison policies that had stood for centuries and to
further the development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls. These struggles would not have been as successful,
or would have been much more costly in terms of lives lost or brutality endured, had it not been for the links to the community
and community support that political prisoners brought with them into the prisons.
Although that support was not always sufficient in quantity or quality,
or was sometimes nonexistent or came with hidden agendas or was marked by frequent conflicts, on the whole it was this combination
of resolute prisoners, community support, and legal support which was most often successful in prison.
The Changing Complexion Of Prisons
As the 60's drew to a close New Afrikan and Third World nationalities made up nearly 50 percent of the prison
population. National liberation consciousness became the dominant influence behind the walls as the overall complexion neared
the changeover from white to black, brown, and red. The decade-long general decrease in prisoners, particularly whites, brought
a drop of between 16,000 and 28,000 in total prison population. The total number of white prisoners decreased between 16,000
and 23,000 while the total number of New Afrikan prisoners increased slightly or changed insignificantly over the same period.
Yet the next decade would begin the period of unprecedented new prison construction,
as the primary role of US prisons changed from "suppression of the working classes" to "suppression of domestic Black and
Third World liberation struggles inside the US.
Enter The 70's
A California guard, rated as an expert marksman, opened the decade of the 70's with the January 13th shooting
at close range of W.L. Nolen, Cleveland Edwards, and Alvin "Jug" Miller in the Soledad prison yard. They were left lying where
they fell until it was too late for them to be saved by medical treatment. Nolen, in particular, had been instrumental in
organizing protest of guard killings of two other Black prisoners - Clarence Causey and William Powell - at Soledad in the
recent past, and was consequently both a thorn in the side of prison officials and a hero to the Black prison population.
When the guard was exonerated of the triple killings two weeks later by a Board of Inquiry, the prisoners
retaliated by throwing a guard off the tier. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Cluchette were charged with the guard's
death and came to be known as the Soledad Brothers. California Black prisoners solidified around the chain of events in the
Soledad Brothers case and formed the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF). The Panthers spearheaded a massive campaign to save the
Soledad Brothers from the gas chamber. The nationwide coalescence of prisoners and support groups around the case converted the scattered, disparate
prison struggles into a national prison movement. On the night of March 9, 1970, a bomb exploded killing Ralph Featherstone
and Che Payne in their car outside a Maryland courthouse where Rap Brown was to appear next day on "Inciting to Riot" charges.
Instead of appearing, Rap went underground, was captured a year later during the robbery of a Harlem so-called "dope bar",
and was sent behind the walls. He completed his sentence and was released from prison.
On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, younger brother of George, attempted to liberate Ruchell Cinque Magee,
William Christmas, and James McClain from the Marin County courthouse in California. Jonathan, McClain, Christmas, and the
trial judge were killed by SWAT teams who also wounded the prosecutor and paralyzed him for life. Miraculously, Ruchell and
three wounded jurors survived the fusillade. Jonathan frequently served as Angela Davis's bodyguard. She had purchased weapons
for that purpose, but Jonathan used those same weapons in the breakout attempt. Immediately afterward she became the object of an international "woman hunt". On October 13, Angela was captured
in New York City and was subsequently returned to California to undergo a very acrimonious trial with Magee. She was acquitted
on all charges. Magee was tried separately and convicted on lesser charges. He remains imprisoned to date. On August 21, a
guard shot and killed George Jackson as he bolted from a control unit and ran for the San Quentin wall. Inside the unit lay
three guards and two trustees dead. The circumstances surrounding George Jackson's legendary life and death, and the astuteness of his published
writings, left a legacy that inspires and instructs the New Afrikan liberation struggle on both sides of the wall even today,
and will for years to come. September 13, 1971, became the bloodiest day in U.S. prison history when New York's Governor Nelson
Rockefeller ordered the retaking of Attica prison. The previous several years had seen a number of prison rebellions flare
up across the country as prisoners protested widespread maltreatment and inhumane conditions. Most had been settled peaceably with little or no loss of human life after face-to-face negotiation between
prisoners and state and prison officials. At Attica black, brown, white, red, and yellow prisoners took over one block of
the prison and stood together for five days seeking to negotiate an end to their inhumane conditions. Their now-famous dictum
declared "We are men, not beasts, and will not be driven as such." But Rockefeller had presidential ambitions. The rebelling
prisoners' demands included a political request for asylum in a nonimperialistic country. Rockefeller's refusal to negotiate foreshadowed a macabre replay of his
father John D's slaughter of striking Colorado miners and their families decades earlier. Altogether 43 people died at Attica.
New York State trooper bullets killed 39 people, 29 prisoners and 10 guards in retaking Attica and shocked the world by the
naked barbarity of the U.S. prison system. Yet the Attica rebellion too remains a milestone in the development of the New
Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls, and a symbol of the highest development of prisoner multinational solidarity
to date.
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S.
government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party
was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation
— a party whose agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality
across gender and color lines. Black Panther Theory: The practices of the late Malcolm X were deeply rooted in the theoretical foundations of the Black Panther Party. Malcolm had represented both a militant
revolutionary, with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities; while
also being an outstanding role model, someone who sought to bring about positive social services; something the Black Panthers
would take to new heights. The Panthers followed Malcolm's belief of international working class unity across the spectrum
of color and gender, and thus united with various minority and white revolutionary groups. From the tenets of Maoism they
set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system,
embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production. Black Panther History: On April 25th, 1967, the first issue of The Black Panther,
the party's official news organ, goes into distribution. In the following month, the party marches on the California state
capital fully armed, in protest of the state's attempt to outlaw carrying loaded weapons in public. Bobby Seale reads a statement
of protest; while the police respond by immediately arresting him and all 30 armed Panthers. This early act of political repression
kindles the fires to the burning resistance movement in the United States; soon initiating minority workers to take up arms
and form new Panther chapters outside the state. In October of 1967, the police arrest the Defense Minister of the Panthers, Huey Newton, for killing an Oakland cop. Panther
Eldridge Cleaver begins the movement to "Free Huey", a struggle the Panthers would devote a great deal of their attention
to in the coming years, while the party spreads its roots further into the political spectrum, forming coalitions with various
revolutionary parties. Stokely Carmichael, In the beginning of 1968, after selling Mao's Red Book to university students in order to buy shotguns, the Party makes the book required reading. Meanwhile, the FBI,
under J. Edgar Hoover, begins a program called COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) to break up the spreading unity of
revolutionary groups that had begun solidifying through the work and examaple of the Panthers — the Peace and Freedom
Party, Brown Berets, Students for a Democratic Society, the SNCC, SCLC, Poor People's March, Cesar Chavez and others in the
farm labor movement, the American Indian Movement, Young Puerto Rican Brothers, the Young Lords and many others. To destroy
the party, the FBI begins with a program of surgical assassinations — killing leading members of the party who they
know cannot be otherwise subverted. Following these mass killings would be a series of arrests, followed by a program of psychological
warfare, designed to split the party both politically and morally through the use of espionage, provocatures, and chemical
warfare. On April 6, 1968, in West Oakland, Bobby Hutton, 17 years old, is shot dead by Oakland police. In a 90 minute gun battle,
an unarmed Bobby Hutton In January, 1969, The first Panther's Free Breakfast for School Children Program is initiated at St.
Augustine's Church in Oakland. By the end of the year, the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over
10,000 children every day before they went to school. A few months later, J. Edgar Hoover publicly states that the Panthers are the "greatest threat to the internal security
of the country". In Chicago, the outstanding leader of the Panthers local, Fred Hampton, leads five different breakfast programs on the
West Side, helps create a free medical center, and initiates a door to door program of health services which test for sickle
cell anemia, and encourage blood drives for the Cook County Hospital. The Chicago party also begins reaching out to local gangs to clean up their acts, get them
away from crime and bring them into the class war. The Parties efforts meet wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organised contingent grow by the day. In the summer
of 1969, the alliance between the Panthers and SNCC begins ripping apart. One of the main points of dispute is the inclusion
of whites in the struggle for minority liberation, a dispute which is pushed into an open gun fight at the University of California
in Los Angeles against the group US, led by Maulana Karenga, which leaves two Panthers dead. In September, in the government's
court house, Huey Newton is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 to 15 years in prison; by 1970 the conviction
is appealed and overturned on procedural errors. On November 24, 1968, Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver flee the US, visit Cuba
and Paris, and eventually settle in Algeria. Earlier in the year Cleaver published his famous book Soul on Ice. By
the end of the year, the party has swelled from 400 members to over 5,000 members in 45 chapters and branches, with a newspaper
circulation of 100,000 copies. In 1969 Seale is indicted in Chicago for protesting during the Democratic national convention of last year. The court refuses
to allow Seale to choose a lawyer. As Seale repeatedly stands up during the show trial insisting that he is being denied his
constitutional right to counsel, the judge orders him bound and gagged. He is convicted on 16 counts of contempt and sentenced
to four years in prison. While in jail he would be charged again for killing a cop in years past, a trial that would end in
1971 with a hung jury. In March, 1970, Bobby Seale publishes Seize The Time while still being held in prison, the story of the Panthers
and Huey Newton. On April 2, 1970, in New York, 21 Panthers are charged with plotting to assassinate police officers and blow
up buildings. On May 22nd, Eight members, including Ericka Huggins, are arrested on a variety of conspiracy and murder charges
in New Haven, Connecticut. Meanwhile, Chief of staff David Hilliard is on trial for threatening President Richard Nixon. The
party does little to separate its legal and illegal aspects, and is thus always and everywhere under attack by the government.
In 1971, the Panther's newspaper circulation reaches 250,000. On Huey Newton's release from prison, he devotes more effort to further develop the Panther's socialist survival programs
in black communities; programs that provided free breakfasts for children, established free medical clinics, helped the homeless
find housing, and gave away free clothing and food.
In March, 1970, the FBI begins to soe seeds of factionalism in the Black Panthers, in part by forging
letters to members. Eldridge Cleaver is one of their main targets — living in exile in Algiers — they gradually
convince him with a steady stream of misinformation that the BPP leadership is trying to remove him from power. Cleaver recieved
stacks of forgered FBI letters from supposed party members, criticising Netwon's leadership, and asking for Cleaver to take
control. An example of such a forged letter, written using the name of Connie Matthews, Newton's personal secretary: I know you have not been told what has been happening lately.... Things around headquarters
are dreadfully disorganized with the comrade commander not making proper decisions. The newspaper is in a shambles. No one
knows who is in charge. The foreign department gets no support. Brothers and sisters are accused of all sorts of things...
I am disturbed because I, myself, do not know which way to turn.... If only you were here
to inject some strength into the movement, or to give some advice. One of two steps must be taken soon and both are drastic.
We must either get rid of the supreme commander or get rid of the disloyal members... Huey is really all we have right now
and we can't let him down, reglardless of how poorly he is acting, unless you feel otherwise. Cleaver receives similarly forged letters across the spectrum, from groups outside the Panthers, to
Panthers themselves, from rank and file members to Elbert "Big Man" Howard, editor of the Black Panther. The split comes when
Newton goes onto a T.V. talk show for an interview, with Cleaver on the phone in Algiers. Cleaver expresses his absolute disdain
for what has happened to the party, demands that David Hilliard (Chief of Staff) be removed, and even attacks the breakfast
program as reformist. Cleaver is expelled from the Central Committee, and starts up his own Black Liberation Army. In 1973,
Seale runs for mayor of Oakland. Though he receives 40 percent of the vote, he is defeated.
With such great struggles, seeing the party being ripped apart by factions and internal hatred, Huey,
like many members, becomes disillusioned. He no longer wants to lead the party, though so many expect and demand otherwise,
while he spins into a spiral of self-doubt. He becomes heavily dependent on cocaine, heroin, and others. It is not clear this
was his own doing, and very probable the work of the FBI. Huey remarked in one of his public speeches in the 1980s, where
he would often have spurts of his brilliant clarity but then become entirely incoherent and rambling, that he was killing
himself by reactionary suicide, through the vices of drug addiction. On August 22, 1989, Newton
is shot dead on the streets of Oakland in a drug dispute. Bobby Seale resigns from the party; while Elaine Brown takes the lead in continuing the Panther community
programs. In the fall of 1975, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver return from exile as born-again Christians. In 1979, all charges
against Cleaver are dropped after he bargains with the state and pleads guilty to assault in a 1968 shoot out with the cops.
He is put on five years probation. In the dimming years of his life, Cleaver assimilates a political outlook similar to Martin
Luther King, engages in various business ventures, and becomes heavily addicted to cocaine. By the beginning of the 1980s, attacks on the party and internal degradation and divisions, cause the
party to fall apart. The leadership of the party had been absolutely smashed; its rank and file constantly terrorized by the
police. Many remaining Panthers were hunted down and killed in the following years, imprisoned on trumped charges (Mumia Abu-Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, among many others), or forced to flee the United States (Assata Shakur, and others). As Cleaver would later explain in an interview a year before his death: "As it was [the U.S. government]
chopped off the head [of the Black liberation movement] and left the body there armed. That's why all these young bloods are
out there now, they've got the rhetoric but are without the political direction... and they've got the guns." Origin Of The Five Percenters
Clarence 13X (Smith) was expelled from Harlem's Nation of Islam Temple No. 7 in 1963 because he wouldn't conform
to NOI practices. He frequently associated with the numerous street gangs that abounded In New York City at the time and felt
that the NOI didn't put enough effort into recruiting these youth. After being expelled he actively recruited among these
street gangs and other wayward youth, and by '64 he had established his own "movement" called "The Five Percenters". The name comes from their belief that 85 percent of Black people are like cattle, who continue to eat the
poisoned animal (the pig), are blind to the truth of God, and continue to give their allegiance to people who don't have their
best interests at heart; that 10 percent of Black people are bloodsuckers - the politicians, preachers, and other parasitic
individuals who get rich off the labor and ignorance of the docile exploited 85 percent; and that the remaining 5 percent
are the poor righteous teachers of freedom, justice, and equality who know the truth of the "Black" God and are not deceived
by the practices of the bloodsucking 10 percent.
Attacks Increase On Revolutionaries
The Panthers rolled eastward, establishing offices in each major northern ghetto. As they went, they set up
revolutionary programs in each community that were geared to provide community control of schools, tenant control of slum
housing, free breakfast for school children, free health, day-care, and legal clinics, and free political education classes
for the community. They also initiated campaigns to drive dope pushers and drugs from the community, and campaigns to stop
police murder and brutality of Blacks. As they went about the community organizing these various programs they were frequently confronted, attacked,
or arrested by the police, and some were even killed during these encounters. Other revolutionary organizers suffered similar
entrapments. The Revolutionary Action Movement's (RAM) Herman Ferguson and Max Stamford were arrested in 1967 on spurious
charges of conspiring to kill Civil Rights leaders. In the same year Amiri Baraka (the poet and playwright LeRoi Jones) was
arrested for transporting weapons in a van during the Newark riots and did a brief stint in Trenton State Prison until a successful
appeal overturned his conviction. SNCC's Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, and other orators were constantly threatened or charged with "inciting
to riot" as they crisscrossed the country speaking to mass audiences. Congress passed so-called "Rap Brown" laws to deter
speakers from crossing state lines to address mass audiences lest a disturbance break out, leaving them vulnerable to federal
charges and imprisonment. And numerous revolutionary organizers and orators were being imprisoned. This initial flow of revolutionaries
into the jails and prisons began to spread a revolutionary nationalist hue through New Afrikans behind the walls. New Afrikan prisoners were also influenced by the domestic revolutionary atmosphere and the liberation struggles
in Afrika, Asia, and Latin America. Small groups began studying on their own, or in collectives, the works of Malcolm X, Huey
P. Newton, The Black Panther newspaper, The Militant newspaper, contemporary national liberation struggle leaders Kwame Nkrumah,
Jomo Kenyatta, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Tse-tung, plus Marx, Lenin, and Bakunin too.
Increasing numbers of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners became more conscious of national liberation politics.
The percentages of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners increased while the percentage of White prisoners decreased throughout
US prisons. Under this onslaught of rising national liberation consciousness, increased percentages of New Afrikan and Third
The Rise Of Prison Struggles
Like the Panthers, most of those arrested brought their philosophies with them into the prisons. Likewise,
most had outside support committees to one degree or another so that this influx of political prisoners linked the struggle
behind the walls with the struggles in the outside local communities. The combination set off a beehive of political activity
behind the walls, and prisoners stepped up their struggle for political, Afrikan, Islamic, and academic studies, access to
political literature, community access to prisons, an end to arbitrary punishments, access to attorneys, adequate law libraries,
relevant vocational training, contact visits, better food, health care, housing, and a myriad of other struggles.
The forms of prison struggle ranged from face-to-face negotiations to mass petitioning, letter-writing and
call-in campaigns, outside demonstrations, class action law suits, hunger strikes, work strikes, rebellions, and more drastic
actions. Overall, all forms of struggle served to roll back draconian prison policies that had stood for centuries and to
further the development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls. These struggles would not have been as successful,
or would have been much more costly in terms of lives lost or brutality endured, had it not been for the links to the community
and community support that political prisoners brought with them into the prisons.
Although that support was not always sufficient in quantity or quality,
or was sometimes nonexistent or came with hidden agendas or was marked by frequent conflicts, on the whole it was this combination
of resolute prisoners, community support, and legal support which was most often successful in prison.
The Changing Complexion Of Prisons
As the 60's drew to a close New Afrikan and Third World nationalities made up nearly 50 percent of the prison
population. National liberation consciousness became the dominant influence behind the walls as the overall complexion neared
the changeover from white to black, brown, and red. The decade-long general decrease in prisoners, particularly whites, brought
a drop of between 16,000 and 28,000 in total prison population. The total number of white prisoners decreased between 16,000
and 23,000 while the total number of New Afrikan prisoners increased slightly or changed insignificantly over the same period.
Yet the next decade would begin the period of unprecedented new prison construction,
as the primary role of US prisons changed from "suppression of the working classes" to "suppression of domestic Black and
Third World liberation struggles inside the US.
Mumia Abu-Jamal
#AM 8335, Sundiata Acoli #39794-066, Charles Simms Africa #AM4975, Edward Goodman Africa #AM4974, Janet Holloway Africa #006308, Michael Davis Africa #AM4973, William Phillips Africa #AM4984, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin #EF492521, Zolo Azania #4969 Silvia Baraldini Herman Bell #79C0262, Kojo Bomani Sababu Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) #77A4283,
Marilyn Buck #00482-285, Rubén Campa #58738-004, Marshall Eddie Conway #116469, Bill Dunne #10916-086, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald #B-27527,
William Gilday # W33537 David Gilbert #83A6158, Antonio Guerrero #58741-004 , B. Hameed/York #82-A-6313, Eddie Hatcher #0173499, Robert Seth Hayes #74-A-2280, Gerardo Hernández #58739-004, Freddie Hilton (Kamau Sadiki) # 115688 Sekou Kambui (William Turk) #113058, Yu Kikumura #090008-050, Mohamman Geuka Koti 80A-0808 Jaan Karl Laaman #W41514, Matthew Lamont #T90251, Maliki Shakur Latine # 81-A-4469 Oscar López Rivera #87651-024 Jeffrey Luers (Free) #13797671, Ojore Lutalo # 59860 Ruchell Cinque Magee # A92051 Abdul Majid (Anthony Laborde) #83-A-0483,
Thomas Manning #10373-016, Luís Medina #58734-004 Sekou Odinga #05228-054, Sara Olson #W94197, Hugo "Dahariki" Pinell # A88401 Ed Poindexter #110403 Luis V. Rodríguez # C33000 Hanif Shabazz Bey (Beaumont Gereau) #295933,
Wallens Ridge State Prison, Mutulu Shakur #83205-012, Byron Shane Chubbuck #07909-051, Russell Maroon Shoats #AF-3855, Carlos Alberto Torres #88976-024, Gary Tyler # 84156 Herman Wallace #76759 Gary Watson #098990, Vieques, PR resisters are listed at: |
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the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a nationally known proponent of Black Power,
is recruited into the party through this struggle, and soon becomes the party's Prime Minister in February, 1968. Carmichael
is adamantly against allowing whites into the black liberation movement, explaining whites cannot relate to the black experience
and have an intimidating effect on blacks; a position that stirs opposition within the Panthers. Carmichael explains: "Whites
who come into the black community with ideas of change seem to want to absolve the power structure of its responsibility for
what it is doing, and say that change can only come through black unity, which is the worst kind of paternalism..... If we
are to proceed toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people..... [otherwise] we will find ourselves
entwined in the tentacles of the white power complex that controls this country." 
is shot ten times dead, after his house is set ablaze and he is forced to run out into a fire of bullets. Just two days earlier,
Martin Luther King is assasinated, after he had begun rethinking his own doctrines of non-violence, and started to build ties
with radical unions. Two months later on the day of Bobby's death, Robert Kennedy, widely recognised in the minority commmunity
as one of the only politicians in the US "sympathetic" to the civil rights movement, is also assasinated. 
On December 4th, at 4:00 a.m. in the morning, thanks to information from an FBI informant , Chicago
police raid the Panthers' Chicago apartment, murdering Fred Hampton while he sleeps in bed. He is shot twice in the head,
once in the arm and shoulder; while three other people sleeping in the same bed escape unharmed. Mark Clark, sleeping in the living room chair, is also murdered
while asleep. Hampton's wife, carrying child for 8 months, is also shot, but survives. Four panthers sleeping in the apartment
are wounded, while one other escapes injury . Fred Hampton was 21 years old when
he was executed, Mark was 17 years old. According to the findings of the federal grand jury, Ninety bullets were fired inside
the apartment. 1 came from a Panther — Mark — who slept with a shotgun in his hand. All surviving Panther members
were arrested for "attempted murder of the police and aggravated assault". Not a single cop spent a moment in jail for the
executions. 