Abu-Jamal, Mumia (1954–)

At the date of this writing, 2006, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been in police custody for the alleged murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner for more than 24 years. Most of this time, besides a brief stay in the hospital after the original December 9, 1981, incident in which Mumia was shot and brutally beaten by Philadelphia police, he has been the most notorious inmate on Pennsylvania's death row. But, whereas most inmates in this position have been silenced, censored, and defeated, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been and continues to resist the injustices practiced against him by using his position on death row as a pedestal to critique overarching hegemonic power and, at the same time, to organize and educate those fighting against oppression.

Born Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954, in Philadelphia, Mumia was involved with journalism and radical politics from a very early age. As an activist growing up in an era filled with racial tension, Mumia's first contact with the police happened when he was 14. Protesting at a 1968 rally for the openly racist and pro-segregationalist George Wallace, who was at that time running for president of the United States, Mumia was beaten by police and then arrested. In the summer of 1969, Mumia, along with others in Philadelphia, a city known at that point for its police brutality and racial profiling, founded a branch of the Black Panther Party (BPP). Mumia was named Lieutenant Minister of Information and began a journalism career that continues to the present day. He was all of 15 years old. It was at this point in Mumia's life that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began a file on the young revolutionary.

In 1970, a fresh-faced Mumia was asked to go to Berkeley to the BPP headquarters. It was across the bay in Oakland, where the BPP came into being when two young students at Merritt College, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, met and began searching, both vocally and organizationally, for ways to represent a collective voice questioning status quo politics, class inequalities, racial discrimination, and the importance of international solidarity in the pursuit of freedom and emancipation. Mumia was in the Bay Area helping to hawk the party's newspaper, the Black Panther, and to work at BPP community-wide free breakfast programs. After another brief stint in prison for jaywalking, Mumia, now more confident and better educated on revolutionary literature such as works by Marx, Lenin, Mao, Fanon, and Kim Il-Sung, was transferred back to Philadelphia and then to the Bronx as Minister of Information. Due to an illegal FBI program known as the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which violated constitutional rights in order to neutralize political dissidents, the BPP was split and ultimately disseminated. Mumia settled in Philadelphia to continue his style of guerrilla journalism.

He was an award-winning journalist for his critical and in-depth pieces on police brutality and other acts of racism. Nicknamed “the voice of the voiceless,” he was heard on such broadcasts such as National Public Radio, National Black Network, Mutual Black Network, WHYY Philadelphia, and other national outlets as well as being news director of the Philadelphia station WHAT. At the time of his arrest, he was serving as the president of the Association of Black Journalists. In the 1970s, Mumia became very critical of the Philadelphia police department and the mayor at that time, Frank Rizzo. Mumia, who was an eloquent writer and a testimonial reporter, was labeled by Rizzo as a new breed of journalist who was getting people to believe that his administration and the police department, of which Rizzo was formerly the commissioner, [Page 12]were involved in racial discrimination and other clandestine forms of illegal surveillance and militaristic operations. At a press conference in 1978, Rizzo threatened this “new breed” and publicly claimed that it would be his business and duty to make sure that journalists like Mumia, who at that point was someone both the police and politicians were watching, be held accountable and responsible for reporting what in fact was the truth.

...