FROM DEATH ROW: TO BROTHERS & SISTERS AT HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote the following statement on Aug. 28
Dear younger brothers and sisters:
For far too many of you, while the sound of my name may be somewhat familiar to you, you really have no solid idea what I’m about, what my real history is, or even what the Black Panthers were about. It is not truly surprising that students in historically Black colleges really have no significant knowledge of the Black liberation movement, or that the names Assata Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Huey P. Newton, Fred Hampton and the like means virtually nothing to them.
I am reminded of a startling conversation I had with a bright young man several years ago. Newly arrived on Death Row, he walked up to me, "Yo, Oldhead. I heard you was down with the Black Panthers back in the day. What was y’all, a gang or somethin’? Whassup?"
Now , while he wasn’t taught in a historically Black college (he went to community college and Temple University) I found his question shocking, and it showed me how fully that Black Panther Party history has been eradicated from the common, popular history of Black Philadelphia and Black America. I taught him the truth using old texts from the writings of Huey P. Newton, George Jackson and others.
There’s an old saying: "The victors write history." In the battles for Black liberation that raged in the late 1960s and the 1970s, those that won (the state) wrote (or erased) the history of these revolutionary times.
In the years that a new generation emerged, the forces of white supremacy and capitalist dominance waged a relentless war on Black America, to promote their vision of history, and to supplant, disparage and "disappear" the revolutionary movements of the past, to promote a more accommodationist, reformist history.
There are still brothers being held in U.S. dungeons for acts of resistance against the state almost 30 years ago, like Mondo We Langa, Ed Poindexter, Russell "Maroon" Shoate, "Cinque" Magee, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Herman "Hooks" Wallace, Albert Wood, et al. Many have been framed for crimes they did not commit; some were convicted in demonstrably unfair and heavily politicized trials; all were tried for being members of Black nationalist and African American resistance movements.
For many of you who are reading this letter, I think it is safe to say few know these names—names of soldiers and warriors in the longest American war: the war against Black America. It begs the question: How can highly educated Black college youth not know these names? Why don’t they know these names? Why don’t they know these movements?
The answer shows that this is not a mere mistake, but a matter of design. For the men and women who built, defended and expanded the Black Panther Party, and tried to raise the right of revolution were young people—just like you. They wanted to free an oppressed people, and to establish a free nation.
They are your immediate ancestors, ones you should know about—that is, if you want to know our people’s true history. Let us begin.
Ona Move!
Revolution is the only solution!
(c) 1999 MAJ