An Updated History
Of The New Afrikan
Prison Struggle

by Sundiata Acoli
1998
Tins ante was it writen theres ofthe New Akan Peoples Organization (VAPO)
Is vigil le was “Te Rise and Development of the New Afkan Liberation Straggle Behind
th Wall" Iwas fist published as“ Brit History of te New Akan Prison Stl and
then updated sever yeas ater poset for

 

Although this work focuses almost exclusively on New Afiikan prisoners and their struggles, it
is by no means intended to discount the many long heroic prison struggle and sacrifices by all
other nationalities ~ the Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Whites, Asians, and others,
Rafael Cancel Miranda, who led the work stoppage of the USP Marion (United States
Penitentiary in Marlon Ilinois) in 1972 in response to the beating of a Mexican prisoner, has
been one of my heroes and role models since I first became aware of him, long ago. The Same
can be said of Lolita Lebron, with whom Assata Shakur did time in the Alderson Women’s
Penitentiary ~ and of numerous other prisoners of all different nationalities with whom I've done
time and struggled together with during the long years of my imprisonment,

There are so many deserving prisoners ofall nationalities that it would extend this article
indefinitely to include them all ~ and I did not feel justified in including some if I coulda’t
include all. Nor did I feel presumptuous enough to write a prison history of other nationalities
who are best suited to record their own history. My main intent is to chronicle the history of the
New Afikan prison struggle which for too long has been written by others who often took it
"upon themselves to read out of history those Black prisoners and Black prison organizations
who did not fit their molds as fit to print about in the history of Black prison strugele.

The New Arikan liberation struggle behind the walls refers to the struggle of Black prisoners,
“behind the walls” of U.S. penal institutions, to gain liberation for ourselves, our people, and all
‘oppressed people, We of the New Arikan Independence Movement spell “Aftikan” with a “k”
as an indicator of or cultural identification with the Afrikan continent and because Afrikan
linguists originally used "k” to indicate the “c" sound in the English language. We use the term
“New Arikan’ instead of Black, to define ourselves as an Afikan people who have been
forcibly transplanted to a new land and formed into a “new Afrikan nation” in North America
But our struggle behind the walls did not begin in America

 

THE 16TH CENTURY
THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR

Tire rtnan prison stuglebgan on te shores of Aka Behind he wall of medieval pens
that eld apives fo ships bound west into slavery continues today behind the walls of
trode US. penitent where all prisoners ae held slg lives a ltt ilo of
international law, sis the present U.S. poy of enceuting minors end he metal ip

The conception of prison ideology began to take form as far back asthe reign of Louis XIV of
France (1643-1715) when the Benedictine monk Mabillon wrote that: .... Penitents might be
socluded in cells like those of Carthusian monks and there being employed in various sorts of|
labor.” In 1790, on April Sth, the Pennsylvania Quakers actualized this concept as the capstone
of their 14-year struggle to reform Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail. No longer would corporal
punishment be administered. Henceforth, prisoners would be locked away in their cells with a
Bible and forced to do penitence in order to rehabilitate themselves. Thus was born the
Penitentiary

 

 

 

‘The first prison physically designed to achieve total isolation of each prisoner was the 3
Eastern State Penitentiary, better known as Cherry Hil, in Philadelphia, constructed in 1829
with cells laid out so that no prisoner ever saw another person but his guards. This “separate
system” represented by Cherry Hill was being rivaled by an alternative, the “silent system,
which was designed specifically for exploiting mass convict labor. Under the latter system,
prisoners were housed in solitary cells but worked together all day as an ideal source of cheap
reliable labor, under rigorous enforcement of the rule that all convicts must maintain total
silence. The model for this system was set up at Auburn, New York, in 1825, where they
initiated the “lock step” so that guards could maintain strict control as the prisoners marched
back and forth between their cells and thir industrial workshops.

 

By 1850, approximately 6,700 people were found in the nation’s newly emerging prison system,
Almost none of the prisoners were Black. They were more valuable economically outside the
prison system because there were other means of racial contol. Duting this time most New
Arikan (Black) men, women, and children were already imprisoned for life on plantations as
chattel slaves. Accordingly, the Affikan struggle behind the walls was carried on primarily
behind the walls of slave quarters through conspiracies, revolts, insurrections, arson, sabotage,
work slowdowns, poisoning of the slave master, self maiming, and runaways. Ifslaves were
recaptured, they continued the struggle behind the walls ofthe local jails, many of which were
first built to hold captured runaways. Later they were also used for local citizens,

 

Even before the end of the Civil War, a new system had been emerging to take the place ofthe
older form of slavery ~ the conviet lease system. Thus, shortly after 1850, the imprisonment rate
increased, then remained faitly stable with a rate of between 75 and 125 prisoners per 100,000
population. The A\fikan struggle continued primarily behind the slave quarter’s walls down
through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a declaration issued by
President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the height of the Civil War. It declared the slaves.
{ree only in those states still in tebellion and had litle actual liberating effect on the slaves in
question. Their slave masters, still engaged in war against the Union, simply ignored the
<eclaration and continued to hold their slaves in bondage. Some slave masters kept the
declaration secret after the war ended following Lee's surrender on April 9, 1865. As a result,
news of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach slaves in Texas until June 19, 1865. This
date, called “Juneteenth’” is celebrated annually by New Aftikans in Texas and outlying states as
“Black Independence Day.

 

  

POST CIVIL WAR
‘TO THE 20TH CENTURY

Trnmetsey ate the Civil War anda the endo avery, vst umbes of Black mals were
imprisoned fer everything from not signing save ik labor contrat wit plantation owners
Iooking te “wrong way at ome Whit peron or or some simi “pety ere" Any
“tangiesion pursed by Whites fo be ata more seus nate wos normal deat with on
the spotvth a anor op, proved the Black nas outabeted and out amed. “Blackon
Black” crime was then as nw conideted oe “petty erime” bythe U.S. jsce pte, But
petty orn pon are most New Akan wee given lng hash sentences at hard let

 

Within five years after the end of the Civil War, the Black percentages of the prison population
‘went from close to zero to 33 percent. Many of these prisoners were hired out to Whites at less
than slave wages. This new convict lease system appeared to have great advantages for the
landowners: they did not own the convicts, and hence could afford to work them to death. (The
movie “Gone With The Wind” actually uses this new form to glorify the older system by
comparison.) The President of the Board of Dawson, discovered that in 1869 the death rate

4
among leased Alabama Black convicts was 41 percent. Some restraints were obviously
necessary: Mississippi managed to reduce its annual death rate for leased Black conviets|
between 1882 and 1887 to a mere 15 percent. Ovemight prisons had become the new slave
quarters for many New Affikans. Likewise, the Afrikan prison struggle changed from a struggle
behind the walls of slave quarters to a struggle behind the walls of county workhouses, chain
gain camps, and the plantations and factories that used leased convies as slave laborers

THE 20TH CENTURY
THROUGH WORLD WAR 2

Foon 1910 trough 1950, lacks made up 25 0 4 percent ofthe prisoner inthe US. prison

system, Most people conditioned by the prison movies “The Defiant Ones’ (starring Sidney
Poiter, a Black, and Tony Curties, a White) or ‘Escape From The Chain Gang” (starring Paul
Muni a White in an integrated chain gang), or “Cool Hand Lake’ (starring Paul Newman, @
White, in a southern chain gang) erroneously assume that earlier U.S. prison populations were
basically integrated. This isnot so, The U.S. was a segregated society prior to 1950, including
the prisons; even the northern ones. Roger Benton’s 1936 overview of Louisiana's Angola prison
and its historical background states

There were actually six camps at Angola,
Five of which were composed of men and
One for women. Only in the women’s
Camp were whites and coloreds mixed.
Camps A, B, C, and D were all colored and
Constituted by far the bulk of the population,
Fumishing the state withthe cheap

Convict labor so sorely needed to raise and
Harvest the mammoth sugar cane crop
Necessary to satisfy the hungry maws of
The gigantic and profitable grinding and
Refining plant. Once you saw the operation
Of the plant, the tertfie busyness of
Everybody during grinding time — once you
Leaned what the plant meant to the state in
Dollars and cents profit, you understood
Why it was so easy to conviet and imprison
ANegro in the South, and gained a new
Understanding of the whole basis for the
Subjugation of the Negroes. Although only
40 percent of the entte population of
Louisiana at this time was colored, 83,
Percent ofthe prison population was made
Up of Negroes.

 

Blacks were always, atleast from the time of Emancipation, the majority population in the
southem state prisons, but elsewhere, the early populations ofthe more well known or
“mainline” state and federal prisons ~ Attica, Auburn, Aleatraz, and Atlanta — were
predominantly White and male. Whenever New A frikans were sent to these “mainline” prisons
they found themselves grossly outnumbered, relegated to the back of the lines, to separate lines,

 
‘oF to no lines at all. They were often denied outright what meager amenities existed within the
prisons. Racism was rampant, New Afrikans were racistly suppressed by both White prisoners
‘and guards, All ofthe guards were White; there were no Black guards or prison officials atthe
time.

In the period between the Civil War and World War 2, the forms of convict labor spilled over
and intermingled with “free” labor. Thus, we find Virginia convicts being worked by a canal
‘company. Tennessee worked a part of its conviets within the prison walls, a parton farms, and
the rest were leased to railway companies and coal mines. North Carolina and South Carolina
employed a portion oftheir conviets with the walls. The rest were scattered under various
lessees. Much of the tunneling of the Western Carolina Railroad through the Blue Ridge was
accomplished by convict labor. Georgia convicts were leased to lumber camps and brick yards
Alabama employed hers in railroad building, in mines and saw mills. Mississippi convicts were
leased to railway contractors and planters. Until 1883, the leasees of Texas conviets employed a
portion of them in a cotton mill and at other times within the walls ofthe penitentiary and placed
the remainder in railway construction camps. Arkansas convicts were let to plantation owners
and coal miners. In Florida, the majority of the convicts were leased to turpentine farms ~ a
smaller number were employed in phosphate mines. ‘The Afrikan prisoners continued to
struggle behind the walls of these segregated convict lease system, county workhouses, chain
‘gang camps, and state and federal prisons, yet prison conditions for them remained much the
same through World War 2. Inside conditions accurately reflected conditions inthe larger society
‘outside the walls, except by then the state's electric chair had mostly supplanted the Iynch mob’s
rope,

   

 

 

POST WORLD WAR 2
TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA

Traine began to change inthe wake of Work War 2, Fou for flowing ogeter ushered

these changes. They were the ghetto population explosion, the drug influx, the emergence of |
independent Affikan nations, and the Civil Rights Movement,

‘The Ghetto Population Explosion

Plentiful jobs during the war, coupled with a severe shortage of White workers, caused U.S. war
industries to hire New Afrikans in droves. Southern New Afrikans poured north to fill these
unheard of job opportunities, and the already crowded ghetto populations mushroomed,

Drug Influx

New Affikan soldiers fought during the war to preserve European democracies. They returned
home eager to join the fight to make segregated America democratic too. But the U.S. had
witnessed Mareus Garvey organize similar sentiments following World War I into one of the
greatest Black movements in the western hemisphere, This time the U.S. was more prepared to
contain the new and expected New Arikan assertiveness. Their weapon was “King Heroin.” The
USS. employed the services of the Mafia during World War 2to gather intelligence in Italy to
defeat Fascist Mussolini

Before World War 2, Mussolini embarked on a major campaign against the Mafia which enraged
the group's leaders. Fascism was a big Mafia so it couldn’t afford another Mafia to exis.
Mussolini's activities tured Mafiosi into vigorous anti-Fascists, and the American Government
‘cooperated with the Mafia both in the United States and in Sicily. In the eyes of many Sicilians,
6

 
 

nited States helped restore the Mafia’ lost power. The Americans had to win the war, so
they couldn’t pay much attention to these things. “They thought the Mafia could help them, and
perhaps they did” said Leonard Sciascin, perhaps the best known living Sicilian novelist and
student of the Mafia,

 

During World War 2, the Office of Strategie Service (OSS), the forerunner ofthe Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), helped to commute Lucky Luciano's sentence in federal prison and
arrange for his repatriation to Sicily. Luciano was among the top dons in the mafia syndicate and
the leading organizer of prostitution and drug trafficking. The OSS knew that Luciano had
excellent tiesto the Sicilian mafia and wanted the support of that organization forthe Allied
landing in Sicily in 1943, When Luciano let the U.S., numerous politicians and mafia dons were
together at the Brooklyn docks to wave him goodbye in what was the frst of many occasions
that international drug dealers were recruited by the U.S. government to advance its foreign
policy interests

After the war, in return for “services rendered,” the U.S. looked the other way as the Mafia,
flooded the major U.S. ghettos with heroin, Within six years after World War 2, due to the
Mafia’s marketing strategy, over 100,000 people were addicts, many of them Black.

‘The Emergence of
Independent Afrikan Nations

Atikans from Afrika, having fought to save European Independence, returmed to the Affikan
continent and began fighting for the Independence of their own colonized nations. Rather than
fight losing Asfikan colonial wars, most European nations opted to grant “phased” independence
to their Affikan colonies. The U.S. now faced the prospect of thousands of Afrikan diplomatic
personnel, their sta, and families, coming to the U.N. and wandering into a minefield of racial
Incidents, particularly on state visits to the rigidly segregated D.C. capita. That alone could push
each newly emerging independent Afrikan nation into the socialist column. To counteract this
possibility, the U.S. decided to desegreyate. As a result, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme
Court declared school segregation illegal

In its landmark Brown Vs. Board of Education case, which heralded the beginning of the end of
official segregation in the United States, the Supreme Court had been made fully aware of the
relations between America’s domestic policies and her foreign policy interest by the federal
government's amicus curiae (ie, fiend of the court) brief, which read:

“Itis in the context of the present world
Struggle between freedom and tyranny that

‘The problem of racial discrimination must

Be viewed... (for) discrimination against

Minority groups inthe United States has an

Adverse effect upon our relations with

Other countries. Racial discrimination

Fummishes grist forthe communist propaganda mill, and it raises
Doubts even among,

Friendly nations as to the

Intensity of our devotion

To the democratic faith.”

 

Malcolm X provides similar insight into the reaso 3s to desegregate,
During his February 16, 1965, speech at Rochester, New York's Corn Mill Methodist Church, he
said! 7

 
From 1954 to 1964 can be easly looked upon as the era ofthe emerging Aftican state, And as
the African state emerged.... What effect did it have on the Black American? When he saw the
Black man on the [African] continent taking a stand, it made him become filled withthe desire
to also take a stand... Justas [the U.S.] had to change their approach with our people on this
continent. As they used tokenism... on the African continent... they began to do the same thing,
with us here in the States... Tokenism... every move they made wasa token move... They came
‘up with a Supreme Court desegregation decision that they haven't put into practice yet, Not even
in Rochester, much less in Mississippi (Applause. "

 

Origin of the Civil Rights Movement

(On December 1, 1955, Ms. Rosa Parks defined Montgomery, Alabama’s bus segregation laws by
refusing to give her seat to a White man. Her subsequent arrest and the ensuing mass bus
boycott by the Montgomery New Afrikan community kicked off the Civil Rights Movement,
Martin Luther King,Jr, a young college-educated Baptist minister, was chosen to coordinate
nd lead his boycott primarily because he was a new arrival in town, intelligent, respected, and
hhad not accumulated a list of grudge enemies as had the old guard. His selection for leadership
catapulted him upon the stage of history. The 381 day boycott toppled Montgomery's bus
segrevation codes,

Reverend Joseph E. Lowery was part of a group of young activist ministers who had begun to
test segregated public transportation laws in addition to Martin Luther King, J. and Robert
Abernathy in Montgomery, Alabama; Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham, Alabama; Theodore
(°T4,") Jemison in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Charles K. Stee! in Tallahassee, Florida. “The
earliest boycotts were in Baton Rouge and Tallahassee, but they were unsuccessful,” says
Lowery. “We used to meet monthly in Montgomery to share our pain...” After the success of
the Montgomery but boycott, the ministers met in New Orleans in February 1957 and formed
the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences (SCLC) with Martin Luther later nominated as
chairman ofthe board, Months later, in 1957, Ghana became the first ofa string of sub-Saharan
Arikan nations to be granted independence.

 

As northern discrimination, bulging ghettos, and the drug influx were sett
Arikan numbers behind the walls, Southern segregation, the emergence of Independent Affikan
nations, and the resulting Civil Rights Movement provided those inereasing numbers with the
general political agenda; equality and ant-discrimination.

 

CIVILRIGHTS THROUGH
‘THE BLACK POWER ERA
Religious Struggles in Prison

Mesos, neind he wal, smart segments of New Afikns bean sejsting West

Christianity; they tumed to Islam as preached by Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam (NOI) and
Noble Drew Ali’s Muslim Science Temple of America (MST). The NOI preached that Islam was
the true religion of Black people, that Blacks were the original people on earth, and that Blacks
in America were a nation needing land and independence. The MST preached thatthe Asiatic
[Black people in America must proclaim their nationality as members of the ancient Moors of
Northern Africa. These new religions produced significant suecess rates in helping New Arikan
prisoners rehabilitate themselves by instilling them with a new found sense of pride, dignity,
piety, and industriousness. Yet these religions seemed strange and thus threatening to prison
officials. They moved forthwith to suppress these religions, and many early Muslims were
viciously persecuted, beaten, and even killed for practicing their beliefs. The Muslims fought

8 back fiercely,
Civil Rights Struggles in Prison

Like American society, the prisons were rigidly segregated. New Aftikans were relegated 10
perform the heaviest and dirtiest jobs ~ farm work, laundry work, dishwashing, garbage disposal
~and were restricted from jobs as clerks, straw bosses, electricians, or any position traditionally
reserved for White prisoners. Similar discriminatory rules applied to all other areas of prison
life. New Affikans were restricted to live in certain cell blocks or tiers, eat in certain areas of the
‘mess hall, and sit in the back at the movies, TV room, and other recreational facilities.

Influenced by the anti-discrimination aspect ofthe Civil Rights Movement, a growing number of
Now Atfikans behind the walls began stepping up their struggle against discrimination in prison,
Audacious New Arikan began violating longstanding segregation codes by siting in the front
seats at the moves, mess hall, or TV areas ~ and more than a few died from shanks in the back.
Others gave as good as they got, and better. Additionally, New Affikans began contesting
<iscriminatory job and housing policies and other biased conditions. Many were set up for attack
and sent to the hole for years, or worse. Those who were viewed as leaders were dealt with most
harshly. Most of this violence came from prison officials and White prisoners protecting their
privileged positions; other violence came from New Atikans and Muslims protecting their lives,
taking stands and fighting back, From these silent, unheralded battles against racial and religious
discrimination in prisons emerged the New Afikan liberation struggle behind the walls during
the °50 Civil Rights era, Eventually the cours, influenced by the “equality/ant-discrimination”
aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, would rue that prisons must recognize the Muslims’
religion on an “equal” footing with other accepted religions, and that prison racial discrimination
codes must be outlawed.

 

   

BLACK POWER THROUGH
THE BLACK LIBERATION ERA

A ite civ Rights Movement advanced into the “0s, New Afrika college students waded

othe sgl with innovative hanch counter ing, fedom ides, ad voter regia
projets. On Apri 5,196, stant conference was called under he auspices of Ms Ella
Baker, fld worker forthe SCLC. The Student Noniclnt Coordinating Commitee (SNCC)
was formed during this prod to coordinate and nsrct student volute in novilen
methods of oganiing voter regotaten projets and other Civil Rights werk, These energie
Young students andthe youth in neal eve asthe foot soir ofthe Movement. They
provided indispensable services, support and preetion to loa emmuniy leaders sich
Fannie Lou Hamer, Ela Bake, Soptma Clark Bob Moses, Amie Moore, Daisy Bats, and
other eoins and Heres of the Ci Rights Movement. Although they met wth measured
sueces Whifes rcs atotes mounted daly on dfensles Gl Rights workers

     

 

 

‘Young New Afrikans in general began to grown increasingly disenchanted with the nonviolent
philosophy of Martin Luther King. Many began to look increasingly towards Malcolm X, the
fiery young minister of NOI Temple No. 7 in Harlem, New York. He called for “self defense,
freedom by any means necessary, and land and independence.” As Malcolm Lille, he had been
xroduced to the NOT doctrine while imprisoned in Massachusetts. Upon release he traveled to
Detroit to meet Elijah Muhammad, converted to Islam, and was given the sumame “X” t0
replace his discarded slavemaster’s name. The “X” symbolized his original surname lost to
history when his fore parents were kidnapped from Afrika, stripped of their names, language,
and identity, and enslaved in the Americas. As Maleolm X he became one of Elijah
Muhammad's most dedicated disciples, and rose to National Minister and spokesperson for the
9

 

 

 
NOI. His keen intellect, uncorruptible integrity, staunch courage, clear resonant oratory, sharp
debating skills, and superb organizing abilities soon brought the NOL 1o a position of
prominence within the Black ghetto colonies across the U.S.

 

 

Ori

 

in of the Revolutionary Action Movement

During the fall of 1961, an off campus chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
formed at Ohio’s Central State College, called Challenge. Challenge was a black radical
formation having no basic ideology. Part ofits membership was students who had been expelled
from southern schools for sit-in demonstrations; students who had taken freedom rides and
students from the north, some of whom had been members of the NOI and Atikan nationalist
organizations. Challenge’s main emphasis was struggling for mote students’ rights on campus
and bringing a Black political awareness tothe student body. Inthe year long battle with the
college's administration over student rights, members of Challenge became more radicalized
Challenge members attended student conferences in the south and participated in demonstrations
in the north. Donald Freeman, a Black student at Ohio's Case Wester Reserve College
‘maintained correspondence with Challenge’s cadre who discussed the ideological aspects of the
civil rights movement

In the Spring of 1962, Studies ofthe Left, a radical quarterly, published Harold Cruse’s article
“Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American.” Freeman wrote a letter to the Challenge
cadte telling them to seriously study the artile. He also said Black radicals elsewhere were
studying the article and that a movement had to be created in the north similar to the NOI, using
the tacties of SNCC but outside of the NAACP and CORE.

 

‘After much discussion, the cadre decided to form a board condition to take over student
government at Central State. Meetings were held with representatives from each class, fraternity
and sorority. A slate was drafted and a name for the party was selected, It was called RAM,
later to be known as the Revolutionary Action Movement.

‘The Challenge cadre met and decided to dissolve itself into RAM and become the RAM
leadership. RAM won all student government offices. After the election, the inner RAM core
discussed what to do next, Some said that all that could be done at Cental State had already
‘occurred, while other disagreed. Some of the inner core decided to stay at Central State and run
the student government, while a few decided to retum to their communities and attempt to
organize around Freeman's basic outline. Two of the returning students were Wanda Marshall
and Max Stanford, now name Akbar Muhammad Ahmad, who transplanted RAM from
Cleveland to the ghettos of Philadelphia, New York, and other urban areas.

‘The March on Washington

In 1963, Malcolm X openly called the March on Washington a faree. He explained thatthe
desire for a mass march on the nation’s capital originally sprang from the Black grassroots: the
average Black man/woman in the streets, It was their way of demonstrating a mass Black
demand for jobs and freedom. As momentum grew for the March, President Kennedy called a
‘meeting of the leaders of the six largest Civil Rights onganizations, dubbed “The Big Six”
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], Souther Christian
Leadership Conference [SCLC], Congress of Radical Equality (CORE), National Urban League
[NUL], Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC], and the National Brothethood of
Sleeping Car Porters [NBSCP] and asked them to stop the proposed march. They answered
saying that they coulda’t stop it because they weren't leading i, didn’t stat it, and that it hand
sprung from the masses of Black people

10
Since they weren't leading the march, the President decided to make them the leaders by
distributing huge sums of money to each of the “Big Sis,” publicizing their leading roles in the
‘mass media, and providing them with a script to follow regarding the staging of the event. The
script planned the March down tothe smallest detail, Malcolm explained that government
officials told the Big Six what time to begin the March, where to march, who could speak at the
March and who could not, generally what could be said and what could not, what signs to carry,
where t0 goto the toilets (provided by the government), and what time to end the most of the
200,000 marches were never the wiser: By then SNCC’s membership was also criticizing the
March as too moderate and decrying the violence sweeping the South. History ultimately proved
Malcolm’ claim of “farce” correct, through books published by participants in the planning of
the march and through exposure of government documents on the matter,

   

 

 

Origin of The Five Percenters

Clarence 13X (Smith) was expelled from Harlem's Nation of Islam Temple No. 7in 1963
because he wouldn’t conform to NOI practices. He frequently associated withthe numerous
street gangs that abounded in New York City atthe time and felt that the NOI didn’t put enough
effort into recruiting among these street gangs and other wayward youth, and by “64 he had
established his own “movement” called “The Five Percenters.” The names comes from their
belief that 85 percent of Black people ar 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 thei best interests at heat; 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 ofthe “Black” God and are not deceived by
the practices of the bloodsucking 10 percent. The Five Percenters movement spread throughout
the New York State prison system and the Black ghettos of the New York metropolitan area,
Meanwhile the New York City Police Department's Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), who
kept their eyes on radicals and dissidents, put Clarence 13X atthe top of their lst of “Black
Militants.”

Origin of the New World Nation of Islam

In December 1965 Newark's Mayor Hugh Addonizio witnessed a getaway car pullin away from
1 bank robbery and ordered his chauffeur to follow with siren blasting. The fleeing robbers,
crashed into a telephone pole, sprang from their car and fied a shot through the Mayor's
windshield. He sereeched toa halt, and police cars racing to the scene captured Muhammad Ali
Hassan, known as Albert Dickens, and James Washington. Both were regular attendees of
Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25, handed by Minister James 3X Shabazz. All Hassan and
‘Washington were members of the New World Nation of Islam (NWI). Ali Hassan, its leader and
Supreme Field commander, dates the birth of the New World Nation of Islam as February 26,
1960. he tates that on that date Elijah Muhammad authorized the New World Nation of Islam
under the leadership of Field Supreme Minister Fard Savior and declared that the Field Minister
had authority over all the NOI Muslims. Ali Hassan and Washington were convicted for the bank
robbery and sent to Trenton State Prison

 

The NWI’s belief in the supreme authority of Fard Savior was rejected by NOI Minister
Shabazz, and thereafter an uneasy peace prevailed between the followers of Shabazz, who
remained control of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25, and the Followers the NWI who sought to
gain control of it
Meanwhile, Ali Hassan published a book te ran the NWI from his prison
cell. Along withthe more established and influential NOI, the influence of the NWI spread
throughout the New Jersey state prison system and the metropolitan Jersey ghettos. The NWI
began setting up food co-ops, barbershop, houses to teach Islam, and printing presses and
purchased land in South Carolina, all in furtherance of ereaing an independent Black Nation

 

James Meredith was shot on June 6, 1966, while on his march against fear in Mississippi. A civil
rights group decided to complete the march. One night during the march’s rally, SNC.
organizer, Willie Ricks (°Mukassa”) raised the ery of Black Power. Stokely Carmichael, SNCC
Chairman repeated the slogan the next night at a mass rally and the Black Power Movement
began to sweep the country.

‘THE BLACK LIBERATION ERA
Black Panthers Usher in The Black Liberation Movement

Misti thos, on February 21,1965, Malotm was asad but his tar contin o

rise and his seeds felon fete soil. The following year, October 1966, in Oakland, California,
Huey P, Newton and a handful of armed youths founded the Black Panther Party for Self
Defense on principles that Malcolm had preached — and the Black Liberation Movement (BLM)
was born,

Subsequently the name was shortened to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and a 10 point program
‘was ereated which stated:

1 We want freedom, We want power to det
2. We want full employment for our people.
53. We want an end tothe robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black con
4 We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.

‘5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature ofthis decadent An
‘We want education that teaches us our tue history and our role inthe present day society
6, We want all Black men to be exempt from

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black peopl.
8, We want freedom forall Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails

9, We want all Black people when brought to tial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group oF
people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

10, We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. And as our major pol
objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in wl
only Black colonial subjects will be allowed o participate, for the purpose of determining the will of
Black people as fo their national security

ne the destiny of our Black community

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

‘The Panthers established numerous programs to serve the Oakland ghetto ~ free breakfasts for
children, free health care, free day-care, and free political education classes. The program that
rivaled the ghetto’s attention was their campaign to “stop police murder and brutality of Blacks.”
Huey, a community college pre-law student, discovered that it was legal for citizens to openly
carry arms in California. With that assurance the Black Panther Party began armed car patrols of
the police eruisers that patrolled Oukland’s Black colony. When a cruiser stopped to make an
arrest, the Panther car stopped. They fanned out around the seene, arms atthe ready, and.
observed, tape recorded, and recommended a lawyer to the arestvietim, It didn't take long for
the police to retaliate. They confronted Huey late one night near his home. Gunfire erupted,
Teaving Huey critically wounded, a policeman dead and another wounded. The Panthers and the
2

 
Oakland/Bay community responded with a massive campaign to save Huey from the gas
chamber. The California Senate began a hearing to rescind the law permitting citizens to openly
carry arms within city limits. The Panthers staged an armed demonstration during the hearing at
the Sacramento Capitol to protest the Senate's action, which gained national publicity. That
publicity, together with the Panthers’ philosophy of revolutionary nationalism, self defense, and
the “Free Huey” campaign, catapulted the BPP to nationwide prominence.

 

 

 

But not without cost. On August 25, 1967, J. Edgar Hoover issued his infamous Counter
Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) memorandum which directed the FBI (and local police
officials) to disrupt specified Black organizations and neutralize thei leaders so as to prevent
“the rise ofa Black messiah.”

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 clinis, 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 onganizing these
various programs they were frequently confronted, attacked, or arested by the police, and some
were even killed during these encounters.

 

Other revolutionary organizes 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. Inthe same year Amiri Baraka a.k.a. LeRoi
Jones (the poet and playwright) was arested for transporting weapons ina van during the
Newark riots and did a brie stint in Trenton State Prison until a successful appeal overturned his
conviction. SNCC’s Rap Brown, Stokely Carmicheal, 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 an imprisonment. And numerous revolutionary organizers and orators were being
imprisoned,

 

‘This initial low of revolutionaries into the jails and prisons began to spread a revolutionary
nationalist hue through New Afrikans being the walls. New Afikan prisoners were also
influenced by the domestic revolutionary atmosphere and the liberation struggles in Afrika, Asia,
and South 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 leader Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Frantz
Fanon, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Tse-tung, plus Marx, Lenin, and
Bakunin to. Increasing numbers of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners increased while the
number of White prisoners decreased throughout U.S. prisons. Under this onslaught of rising
national liberation consciousness, inereased percentages of New Afrikan and Third World
prisoners, and decreased numbers of White prisoners, the last ofthe prisons’ overt segregation
polices fell by the wayside.

 

‘The New Afrikan Independence Movement

“The seeds of Malcolm took further root on March 29, 1968. On that date the Provisional
Government of the Republic of New Aika (RNA) was founded ata e

 
Black-owned Twenty Grand Motel in Detroit. Over 500 grassroots activists came together to
issue a Declaration of Independence on behalf of the oppressed Black Nation inside North
America, and the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) was bor. Since then Blacks
desiring an independent Black Nation have referred to themselves and other Blacks inthe U.S.
as New Affikans

 

That same month, March "68, during Martin Luther King’s march in Memphis, angry youths on
the fringes of the march broke away and began breaking store windows, looting, and
firebombing. A 16-year-old-boy was killed and 50 people were injured inthe ensuing violence.
This let Martin profoundly shaken and questioning whether his philosophy was still able to hold
the youth to a nonviolent commitment. On Apsil 4th, he returned to Memphis, seeking the
answer through one more march, and found an assassin’s bullet. Ghettos exploded in flames one
after another across the face of America. The philosophy of Black Liberation surged to the
forefront among the youth.

 

But not the youth alone. Following a series of police provocations in Cleveland, on July 23,
1968, New Libya Movement activists there set an ambush that killed several policemen, A.
“fortyish” Ahmed Evans was convicted of the killings and died in prison ten years later of |
“cancer.” More CIA dope surged into the ghettos from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia,
Revolutionaries stepped up their organizing activities on both sides ofthe walls. Behind the
walls the New Atrikan percentage steadily increased.

 

‘The Street Gangs

 

‘There were numerous Black, White, Puerto Ricans and Asian street organizations, ic. “gangs,”
in New York City during the 1950s.Among the more notorious Black street gangs ofthe era,
were the Chaplains, Bishops, Sinners, and! Corsair Lords; also there was the equally violent
Puerto Rican Dragons. All warted against each other and other gangs that crossed their paths.

By the 1960s, the post- World War 2 heroin influx had taken its toll. Most of the New York street
gangs faded away. Their youthful members had succumbed to drugs, either through death by
overdose, or had ceased gang activities in order to pursue fulltime criminal activities to feed
their drug habit or were in prison because of drug-crime activites or youth gang assaults and
killings.

 

Lumumba Shakur, warlord ofthe Bishops and Sekou Odinga, leader ofthe Sinners, were two
such youths who had been sent to the reformatory for youth gang assaults, They graduated up
through the "Gladiator Prisons” -Woodbum and Comstock ~ to mainline Attica, became
politicized by the stark brutal racism in each prison and at age 21 were spit back upon the
streets. When the Panthers reached the east coast in 1968, Lumumba and Sekou were among the
first youths to sign up. Lumumba opened the Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party as its
Defense Captain. Sekou opened the Queens Chapter as a Lieutenant and later transferred to
Harlem to co-head it with his boyhood pal, Lumumba,

 

Origin of the Gangster Disciples Street Gang

The Gangster Disciples were founded in the 1960s in Chicago under the name “Black Disciples”
by the late David Barksdale, known historically in gang circles as King David. The group’s
name was later changed to “Black Gangster Disciples” and later sill the name was shortened to
“Gangster Disciples,” or simply as "GD." Its gang colors are blue and black.

 

 

 

4
COINTELPRO Attacks

In 1969 COINTELPRO launched its main attack on the Black Liberation Movement in eamest
It began with the mass arrest of Lumumba Shakur and the New York Panther 21. It followed
witha series of military raids on Black Panther Party offices in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New
Have, Jersey City, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, Sacramento, and San Diego, and was
capped off with an early moming 4 hour siege that poured thousands of rounds into the Los
Angeles BPP office. By mid morning, hundreds of angry Black residents gathered atthe scene
and demanded thatthe police cease fie. Fortunately Geronimo ji-Jaga, decorated Vietnam vet,
had earlier fortified the office to withstand an assault, and no Panthers were seriously injured.
However, repercussions from the outcome eventually drove him underground. The widespread
attacks left Panthers dead all across the country ~ Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Bunchy Carter,
John Higgins, John Savage, Walter Toure Pope, Bobby Hutton, Sylvester Bell, Frank "Capt.
Franco” Diggs, Fred Bennett, James Carr, Larry Robeson, John Savage, Spurgeon “ake”
Winters, Alex Rackley, Arthur Morris, Steve Bartholemew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis,
Nathaniel Clark, Welton Armstead, Sidney Miller, Sterling Jones, Babatunde Omawali, Sameul
Napier, Harold Russle, and Robert Webb among others. Inthe three years afer J. Edgar
Hoover's infamous COINTELPRO memorandum, members of the BPP were killed, nearly a
thousand were arrested, and key leaders were sent to jail, Others were driven underground, Still
others, like BPP field marshal Donald “D.C.” Cox, were driven ito exile overseas.

 

 

 

The RNA was similarly attacked that year. During their second annual convention in March °69,
held at Reverend C.L Franklin's New Bethel Church in Detroit, a police provocation sparked a
siege that poured 800 rounds into the church. Several convention members were wounded; one
policeman was killed, another wounded, and the entire convention, 140 people, was arrested en
masse. When Reverend Franklin (father of “The Queen of Soul” singer Aretha Franklin) and
Black State Representative James Del Rio were informed of the incident they called Black Judge
George Crockett, who proceeded tothe police station where he found total legal chaos. Almost
150 people were being held incommunicado. They were being questioned, finger printed, and
given nitrate tests to determine iFthey had fied guns, in total disregard of fundamental
constitutional procedures. Hours after the roundup, there wasn't so much as alist of persons
being held and no one had been formally artested. An indignant Judge Crockett set up court right
inthe station house and demanded thatthe police either press charges or release their captives.
He had handled about fifty cases when the Wayne County prosecutor, called in by the police,
intervened. The prosecutor promised thatthe use ofall irregular methods would be halted.
Crockett adjourned the impromptu court, and by noon the following day the police had released
all but a few individuals who were held on specific charges. Chaka Fuller, Rafael Vierra, and
Alfred 2X Hibbits were charged with the killing. All three were subsequently tried and

acquitted. Chaka Fuller was mysteriously assassinated a few months afterwards

On Friday the 13th of June 1969, Clarence 13X, founder of The Five Pereenters was
mysteriously assassinated inthe elevator of a Harlem project building by three male Negroes.
His killers were never discovered but his adherents suspect government complicity in his death
Nows reports atthe time hinted that BOSS instigated the assassination to try to ferment a war
between the NOI and The Five Percenters

 

 

Revolutionaries nationwide were attacked and/or arrested ~Tyari Uhuru, Maka, Askufo, and the
‘Smyrma Brothers in Delaware, Jolo Muhammad Bowens and Fred Burton in Philadelphia, and
Panthers Mondo Langa, Ed Poindexter, and Veronza Daoul Bowers, Jr, in Omaha

Police mounted an assault on the Panther office in the Desiree Projects of New Orleans which
resulted in several arrests. similar atack was made on the Peoples Party office in Houston.

 
1d another, Lee Otis Johnson, was
prison for alleged possession

One of their leaders, Carl Hampton, was killed by the police
arrested later on an unrelated charge and sentenced to 41 years,
of one marijuana cigarette.

 

  

‘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 |
politcal prisoners linked the struggle behind the walls with the struggles in the outside local
‘communities. The combination set off a beehive of politcal activity behind the walls, and
prisoners stepped up their struggle for political, Aftikan, Islamic, and academic studies, access to
politcal literature, community access to prisons, an end to arbitrary punishments, access 0
attomeys, 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. Overal,all forms of strugele served to roll back draconian prison policies that had stood
for centuries and to further the development of the New Arikan 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 the
‘community support and legal 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 struggles.

‘The Changing Complexion of Prisons

 

As the "60s drew to a close, New Afrikan and Third World nationalities made up nearly $0
percent of the prison population, National liberation consciousness became the dominant
influence behind the walls asthe 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 23,000 while the total number of New Afrkan prisoners
increased slightly or changed insignificantly over the same period. Yet the next decade would
begin the petiod of unprecedented new prison construction, asthe primary role of U.S. prisons
changed from “suppression of the working classes” to suppression of domestic Black and Third
‘World liberation struggles inside the U.S.

 

Origin of Crip

There existed street organizations in South Central, Los Angeles, before te rise of the Black
Panther Party. These groups, criminal in essence, were indeed the wells from which the Panthers
‘would recruit their most stalwart members. Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, who chartered the frst
L.A. Chapter of the Party was the leader of perhaps the most violent stret organizations of that
time ~ The Slausons, James Carr, former cell mate of Comrade Geonge Jackson, and author of
BAD, was a member of the Farmers. There were the Gladiators, the Businessmen, the Avenues,
Blood Alley, and the Rebel Rousers to name but a few:

After the 1965 rebellion in Watt, there eame an unsteady truce of sorts that eaused the street
‘organizations to focus on a larger, more deadly enemy. - The Los Angeles Police Department.
16

 
So, by the time the Black Panther Party came to L.A., in 1968, a shaky peace existed about the
direction in which the vent their anger, espond to injustice, and represent their neighborhoods,

By and large, the Party usurped the youthful rage and brought the street organizations ofthat
time to an end. Of course, the U.S, government also did its share by drafting young brothers into
the Vietnam War.

These, however, were the storm years of COINTELPRO and the Party was the focal point. Thus,
by late 69, the above ground infrastructure of the BPP was in shambles due to its own internal
contradictions and subsequently the weight of the state. Confusion set in among the people
creating, if you will, a window of opportunity of which both the criminals and the counter
evolutionists in the government took advantage.

 

Community Relations for an Independent People (CRIP) was a city funded team post (meeting
place) on the eastside of L.A. that played host to some of the area's most rowdy youth. One
such brother was Raymond Washington, who at the time belonged to a young upstart clique
called the Baby Avenues. The team post became center ground to an ever widening group of
youth who eventually took its ttle, CRIP, as a name and moved westward with it. With the
‘vanguard in shambles and the local pigs turing a deliberate deaf ear, the CRIPs flourished
rapidly. Init formative years, the Party's influence was evident, For the same uniform/dress
code of the Party’s was that of the CRIPs. Yet, a sinister twist developed where as New Affikan
people were targets of the young hoodlums, And with no vanguard forces readily available to
teach and train these youth, they spiraled out of contol, taking as their nemesis the Brims who
later developed into the city wide Bloods. The founding of the CRIPs is established as 1969,
‘Their gang color i blue, and sometimes also the color white

ENTER THE ‘70S

 

A California guard, rated as an expert marksman, opened the decade of the “70s with the January
13th shooting at close range of W.L. Nolen, Cleveland Fawards, and Alvin “Jug” Miller in the
Soledad prison yard. They were left lying where they fll until it was too late for them to be
saved by medical teatment, 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 inthe side of prison officials and a hero to
the Black prison populations. When the guard was exonerated ofthe triple killings two weeks
later by a Board of Inquiry, the prisoners retaliated by throwing a guard of the ter.

 

 

 

George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Cluchette were charged with the guard's death and
came to be known asthe Soledad Brother. California Black prisoners solidified around the
Soledad Brother case and the chain of events led to the formation ofthe 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 August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, younger brother of George, attempted to liberate Ruchell
Cingue Magee, William Christmas, and James McClain from the Marin County courthouse in
California, Jonathan, MeClain, Christmas, and the tral judge were killed by SWAT teams who
also wounded the prosecutor and paralyzed him for life. Miraculously, Ruchell and three
\wounded jurors survived the fusllade. 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. 17
Magee was tried separately and convicted on lesser charges. He remains imprisoned to date;
over four decades all total, and is our longest held politcal prisoner.

 

 

in of the Bloods

 

Most South Central stret organizations, commonly called “gangs,” “sets,” or “orgs,” take their
‘names ftom prominent streets: Slauson, Denver Lane, Piru, Hoover, etc, that run thought their
neighborhood. The CRIPs had already formed, were massed up and rolling together. Their
strength attracted other sets to become CRIPs. As they moved into territories occupied by other
South Central organizations they clashed with and met stiff resistance from those neighborhood
sets who did not want to align with or be taken over by them,

  

Among those gang leaders resisting the CRIP invasion were Peabody of the Denver Lanes,
Puddin of the Westside Pirus, Rooster of the 30 Pirus, and the Westside Brims, perhaps the most
‘well known and respected ofthe lot, although their eader is unknown today. Using their prestige
and influence, the Brim families and to recruit other sets to join their side in opposition tothe
CCRIPS. The various sets began hooking up with each other's neighborhoods to start other Brim
families and to recruit other sets to join ther side in opposition to the CRIPS. Inthe early 1970s,
the federation solidified and formally united into the citywide Bloods. They adopted the color
red as their banner; they also use the colors green or brovn,

Prison is @ normal next stop for many gang members. The frst Bloods sent to Chino, a mainline
California prison, are commonly referred to in Blood circles as the “First Bloods to walk the line
at Chino.” To increase their prison membership and recruitment, they created a Bloodline (BL)
Constitution patterned after the constitution ofthe BGF: a Panther influenced group already
established in the California prison system at the time. The BL. Constitution contained the
Bloods code of conduct, history, and by-laws and was requited reading for each new recruit. To
speed up recruitment, the older “First Bloods” made reading the constitution an automatic
induction into their ranks and thereafter began tricking young prisoners into reading it. Once
read, the new recruit could only reject membership at the risk of serious bodily harm.

 

“The press-ganging of young recruits at Chino set off ripples of dissatisfaction and breakaways
among Bloods in other California prisons. Those disaffected centered around Peabody at Old
Folsom prison who took parts from the BL and the BGF constitutions are created a new United
Blood Nation (UBN) Constitution designed to unify all Bloods in prison. Since then, Bloods
have chosen which constitution they would come under,

Blood member under either the BL or UBN Constitution held toa higher standard than other
‘members; they hold positions and are similar to the Officer's Corp of a military organization.
‘Those Bloods not under a constitution are the foot soldiers. The BI. and UBN organization
spread throughout the California prison system, and are strictly prison organizations. Once a
[Blood leaves prison he returns to his old neighborhood set. From South Central, the Bloods
spread to Pasadena, Gardenia, San Diego, Sacramento, Bakersfield, and throughout the state and
its prison system,

 

California Bay Area Gangs

San Francisco's Bay Area gangs or “cliques” can be traced back tothe early 1960s and are
usualy identified by, or named after, their neighborhoods or communities. Most of those
functioning today came from splinter groups of the BPP after it broke up

‘In Oakland, the 69th Street Mob, founded by Felix Mitchell in the early 1970s, stil exists
18
despite the government’ best efforts to derail it, In East Oukland the Rolling 20s and the 700
Club, along with the Acorn Gang in West Oakland, ae the powerhouse cliques on the strets

In San Francisco, there is Sunnydale and Hunters Point, the city’s largest street zang which is
divided into several cliques ~ Oakdale, Harbor Road, West Point, etc. East Palo Alto is the home
of the Professional Low Riders (PLR) who are a major influence in the South Bay Area and in
Vallejo there isthe North Bay Gangsters and Crestview.

 

 

Most Bay Area gangs don’t have colors but align primarily on the basis of money and hustling
endeavors. Many are associated with the Rap music industry and with various prison groups ~
the 415s, BGF or ANSARs.

 

Growth of the Gangster Disciples

In 1970, Gangster Discipline (GD) Larry Hoover was convicted fora gang related murder and
sentenced to a 150 to 200 year state sentence, He’s the current leader of the GD's and runs the
syndicate from an Illinois prison eel.

‘As drugs flooded into the Chicago ghettoes, young black men flooded into the Illinois prisons
where they were give GD application forms to fill out I their references roved solid, they were
indoctrinated into the gang. Everyone who joined had to memorize the GD’s 16 rule code. The
GD's spread throughout the Illinois and Midyest prison systems. The flow of GDs back into the
streets enabled then expand ther street network which isan intricate command and control
structure, similar to a military organization,

Comrade George Assassinated

(On August 21, guard shot and killed George Jackson as he bolted from a control unit and ran
for the San Quentin wal. 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 eft a legacy that inspires and instructs the New Arikan 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 ever one block of the prison and stood together for five days seeking to negotiate
tan end to thei 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 ofhis 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 Arikan liberation struggle
behind the walls, and a symbol of the highest development of prisoner multinational solidarity to
date

 

New World Clashes With the Nation of Islam

In 1973 the simmering struggle for conteol of Newark's NOI Temple No. 25 erupted into the
open. Warren Marcello, a New World member, assassinated NOI Temple No. 25 Minister
‘Shabazz. In retaliation several NWI members were attacked and killed within the confines ofthe
New Jersey prison system, and before the year was out the bodies of Marcello and a companion
were found beheaded In Newark's Weequahic Park, Ali Hassan, still in prison, was tried as one
of the coconspirators in the death of Shabazz and was found innocent.

  

‘The Black Liberation Army

COINTELPRO’s destruction ofthe BPP forced many members underground and gave rise to the
Black Liberation Army (BLA) ~ a New Afrikan guerrilla organization. The BLA continued the
struggle by waging urban guerilla war across the U.S. through highly mobile strike teams. The
‘government’ intensified search for the BLA during the early 1970s resulted in the capture of
Geronimo ji Jaga in Dallas, Dhoruba Bin-Wahad and Jamal Josephs in New York, Sha Sha
Brown and Blood McCreary in St. Louis, Nuh Washington and Jalil Muntagim in Los Angeles,
Herman Bell in New Orleans, Francisco and Gabriel Torres in New York, Russel Haroum Shoats
in Philadelphia, Chango Monges, Mark Holder, and Kamau Hilton in New York, Assata Shakur
and Sundiata Acoli in New Jersey, Ashanti Alston, Tarik, and! Walid in New Haven, Safiya
Bukhari and Masai Gibson in Virginia, and others. Left dead during the governments search and
destroy missions were Sandra Pratt (wife of Geronimo ji Jaga, assassinated while visibly
pregnant), Mark Essex, Woodie Changa Groen, Tyman Kakuyan Olugbala Meyers, Frank
"Heavy" Fields, Anthony Kimu White, Zayd Shakur, Melvin Rema Kerney, Alfred Kambui
Butler, Ron Carter, Rory Hithe, and John Thomas, among others. Red Adams, left paralyzed
from the neck down by police bullets, would die from the effects a few years late.

 

Other New Arikan freedom fighters atacked, hounded, and captured during the same general
cera were Imari Obadele and the RNA-I1 in Jackson, Mississippi, Don Taylor and De Mau Mau
‘of Chicago, Hanif Shabazz, Abdul Aziz, and the VI-S in the Virgin Islands, Mark Cook ofthe
George Jackson Brigade (GIB) in Seattle, Ahmed Obafemi of the RNA in Florida, Atiba Shanna
in Chicago, Mafundi Lake in Alabama, Sekou Kambui and Imani Harris in Alabama, Robert
Aswad Duren in California, Kojo Bomani Sababu and Dharuba Cingue in Trenton, John Partee
and Tommie Lee Hodges of Alkebulan in Memphis, Gary Tyler in Los Angeles, Kareem Saif
Allah and the Five Percenter-BLA-Islamie Brothers in New York, Ben Chavis and the
‘Wilmington 10 in North Carolina, Delbert Afiica and MOVE members in Philadelphia,
others doubiless too numerous to name.

id

   

Political Converts in Prison

Not everyone was political before incarceration. John Andaliwa Clark became so, and a freedom
fighter par excellence, only after being sent behind the walls. He paid the supreme sacrifice
during a hail of gunfire from Trenton State Prison guards. Hugo Dahariki Pinell also became
politcal after being sent behind the California walls in 1964. He has been in prison ever since.
oan Little took an ice pick from a white North Carolina guard who had used it to force her to
perform oral sex on him, She killed him, escaped to New York, was captured and forced t0
retum to the same North Carolina camp where she feared for her life. Massive public vigilance
and support enabled her to complete the sentence in relative safety and obtain her release,

 

 

Dessie Woods and Cheryl Todd, hitching through Georgia, were given a ride by a white man
‘who tried to rape them. Woods took his gun, killed him, and was sent to prison where officials
drugged and brutalized her. Todd was also imprisoned and subsequently released upon
completion ofthe sentence. Woods was denied parole several times then finally released.

Political or not, each arrest was met with highly sensationalized prejudicial publicity that
continued unabated to and throughout the trial. The negative publicity blitz was designed to
20
guarantee a conviction, smokesereen the real issues involved, and justify immediate placement

the harshest prison conditions possible, For men this usually means the federal penitentiary at
Marion, Illinois. For women it has meant the control unit in the federal penitentiary at Anderson,
West Virginia, or Lexington, Kentucky.

 

 

Effect of Captured Freedom
Fighters on Prisons

In 1988 politcal prisoners Silvia Baraldini, Alejandrina Torres, and Susan Rosenberg won a
D.C. District Court lawsuit brought by attomeys Adjoa Alyetoro, Jan Susler, and others. The
legal victory temporarily halted the practice of sending prisoners to contol unit strictly because
of theie political status. The ruling was reversed by the D.C. Appellate Coust a year late. Those
political prisoners not sent o Marion, Alderman, or Lexington control units are sent to other
control units modeled after Marion/Lexington but located within maximum security state
prisons. Normally this means 23-hour-a-day lockdown in long-term units located in remote
hinterlands far from family, friends, and attorneys, with heavy censorship and restrictions on
communications, visits, and outside contacts, combined with constant harassment, provocation,
and brutality by prison guards

‘The influx of so many captured freedom fighters (ie. prisoners of war - POWs) with varying
degrees of guertilla experience added a valuable dimension to the New Arikan liberation
struggle behind the walls. Inthe first place it accelerated the prison strugeles already
particularly the attack on control units. One attack was spearheaded by Michael Deutsch and
Jefirey Haas of the People’s Law Office, Chicago, which challenged Marion’s HUnit boxcar
cells. Another was spearheaded by Assata Shakur and the Center for Constitutional Rights which
challenged her out-of-state placement in the Alderson, West Virginia, control unit.

   

Second, it stimulated a thoroughgoing investigation and exposure of COINTELPRO's hand in
‘waging low intensity warfare on New Afrikan and Third World nationalities in the U.S. This was
spearheaded by Geronimo j- Jaga with Stuart Hanlon's law office in the West and by Dhoruba

Bin- Wahad with atomeys Liz Fink, Robert Boyle, and Jonathan Lubell in the East. These
COINTELPRO investigations resulted in the overturn of Bin-Wahad’s conviction and his release
from prison in March 1990 after he had been imprisoned 19 years fora crime he did not commit,

‘Third, it broadened the scope of the prison movement tothe international arena by producing the
initial presentation ofthe US. political prisoner and prisoner of war (PP/POW) issue before the
UN's Human Rights Commission. This approach originated with Jalil Muntagim, and was,
spearheaded by him and attomey Kathryn Burke on the West Coast and by Sundiata Acoli and
attorney Lennox Hinds ofthe National Conference of Black lawyers on the East Coast. This
Petition sought relief from human rights violations in U.S. prisons and subsequently asserted a
colonized people's right to fight against alien domination and racist regimes as codified in the
Geneva Convention

Fourth, it intensified, clarified, and broke new ground on political issues and debates of
particular concer to the New Arikan community, i., the "National Question,” spearheaded by
Aba Shanna in the Midwest.

All these struggles, plus those already in process, were earried out with the combination in one
form or another of resolute prisoners, and community and legal support. Community support
when present came from various sources ~ family, comrades, friends; political, student, religious,
and prisoner rights groups: workers, professionals, and progressive newspapers and radio

21
 

Some of those involved over the years were or are: the National Committee for Defense

1 Prisoners, the Black Community News Service, the Atrican Peoples Party, the
Republic of New Afrika, the African Peoples Socialist Party, The East the Bliss Chord
Communication Network, Liberation Book Store. WDAS Radio Philadelphia, WBLS Radio
New York, Radio New York, Third World Newsree!, Libertad (political journal ofthe Puerto
Rican Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional [MLND) the Prarie Fire Organizing Committe, the
May 19th Communist Organization, the Madame Binh Graphics Collective, The Midnight
Express, the Northwest lowa Socialist Party, the National Black United Front, the Nation of |
Islam, Arm the Spirit, Black News, International Class Labor Defense, the Real Dragon Project,
the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the National Prison Project, the House ofthe Lord
Church, the American Friends Service Committe, attorneys Chuck Jones and Harold Ferguson
of Rutgers Legal Clinic, the Jackson Advocate newspaper, Rutgers law students, the Committee
to End the Marion Lockdown, the American Indian Movement, and others.

of Politi

 

‘The End of the 70s

As the decade wound down the late 70s saw the demise of the NOI following the death of Elijah
‘Muhammad and the rise of orthodox Islam among significant segments of New Affikans on both
sides ofthe wall, By 1979 the prison population stood at 300,000, a whopping 100,000 Increase
within a single decade. The previous 100,000 increase, from 100,000 to 200,000, had taken 31
yeats, from 1927 to 1958. The initial increase to 100,000 had taken hundreds of years. Since
‘America’s original colonial times. The ‘60s were the transition decade of white fight that saw a
significant decrease in both prison population and white prisoners. And since the total Black
prison population increased only slightly or changed insignificantly over the decade of the
{insurgent ‘60s thru 1973, it indicates that New AGfrikans are imprisoned least when they

hardest

 

 

 

ht

‘The decade ended on a masterstroke by the BLA's Multinational Task Foree, with the November
2, 1979, prison liberation of Assata Shakur - "Soul ofthe BLA" and preeminent political
prisoner of the era, The Task Force then whisked her away tothe safety of political asylum in
(Cuba where she remains to date.

 

‘THE DECADE OF THE ‘80s

 

In June 1980 Ali Hassan was released after 16 years in the New Jersey state prisons. Two
‘months later, five New World of Islam (NW1) members were arrested after a North Brunswick,
New Jersey, bank robbery ina car with stolen plates. The car belonged to the recently released
‘Ali Hassan, who had loaned it to a friend. Ali Hassan and 15 other NWI members refused to
participate inthe resulting mass trial which charged them in a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt
Organization (RICO) Indictment with conspiracy to rob banks for the purpose of financing
various NWI enterprises in the furtherance of creating an independent Black Nation, All
defendants were convicted and sent behind the walls

‘The '80s brought another round of BLA freedom fighters behind walls - Basher Hameed and
Abdul Majid in'80; Sekou Odinga, Kuwasi Balagoon, Chui Ferguson-El, Jamal Josephs again,
‘Mutulu Shakur, and numerous BLA Multinational Task Force supporters In'81; and Terry
Khalid Long, Leroy Ojore Bunting, and others in '82. The government's sweep left Mtyari
Sundiata dead, Kuwasi Balagoon subsequently dead in prison from AIDS, and Sekou Odinga
brutally tortured upon capture, torture that included pulling out his toenails and rupturing his
pancreas during long sadistic beatings that left him hospitalized for six months.

2
But this second round of captured BLA freedom fighters brought forth, perhaps forthe first time,
a battery of young, politically astute New Afikan lawyers: Chokwe Lumumba, Jill Soffiyah
Elijah, Nkechi Taifa, Adjoa Aiyetoro, Ashanti Chimurenga, Michael Tarif Warren, and others.
‘They are not only skilled in representing New Arikan POWs but the New Arikan Independence
Movement too, all of which added to the further development of the New Arikan liberation
struggle behind the walls

The decade also brought behind the walls Mumia Abu-Jamal, the widely respected Philadelphia
radio announcer, popularly known as the "Voice of the Voiceless." He maintained a steady
«drumbeat of radio support for MOVE prisoners. While moonlighting as a taxi driver on the night
of December 9, 1981, he discovered a policeman beating his younger brother. Mumia was shot
and seriously wounded, the policeman was killed. Mumia now sits on death row in greatest need
cof mass support from every sector, if he's to be saved from the state's electric char.

Kazi Toure of the United Freedom Front (UFF) was sent behind the walls in 1982. He was
released in 1991

 

The New York 8 - Coltrane Chimurenga, Viola Plummer and her son Robert "RT." Taylor,
Roger Wareham, Omowale Clay, Lateefah Carter, Colette Pean, and Yvette Kelly were arrested
‘on October 17, 1984, and charged with conspiring to commit prison breakouts and armed
robberies, and to possess weapons and explosives. However the New York 8 was actually the
New York 8+ because another 8 or 9 persons were jailed as grand Jury resisters in connection
With the ease. The New York 8 were acquitted on August S, 198.

‘That same year Ramona A rica joined other MOVE comrades already behind the walls, Her only
crime was that she survived Philadelphia Mayor Goode's May 13, 1985, bombing which
cremated I] MOVE members, including their babies, families, home, and neighborhood

The following year, November 19, 1986, a 20-year-old Bronx, New York, youth, Larry Davis,
now Adam Abdul Hakeem, would make a dramatic eseape during a shootout with police who
hhad come to assassinate him for absconding with their drug-sales money. Several policemen
\were wounded in the shootout. Adam escaped unscathed but surrendered weeks later in the

presence of the media, his family, and a mass of neighborhood supporters. After numerous
charges, trials, and acquittal in which he exposed the existence of a New-York police-controlled
drug ring that coerced Black and Puerto Rican youths to push police-supplied drugs, he was sent
behind the walls on weapon possession convictions, Since incarceration, numerous beatings by
guards have paralyzed him from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair.

 

On July 16, 1987, Abdul Hagg Muhammad, Arthur Majeed Bares, and Robert "RT." Taylor, all
‘members of the Black Men's Movement Against Crack, were pulled over by state troopers in
upstate New York, arrested, and subsequently sent to prison on a variety of weapon possession
convictions.

Herman Ferguson at 68 years old voluntarily returned tothe U.S. on April 6, 1989, after 20-
year’s exile in Ghana, Afrika, and Guyana, South America. He had fled the U.S. during the late
‘60s after the appeal was denied on his sentence of 31/2 to 7 years following a conviction for
conspiring to murder civil rights leaders. Upon return he was arrested at the airport and was
‘moved constantly from prison to prison for several years asa form of harassment

 

The '80s brought the Reagan eras rollback of progressive trends on a wide front and a steep tise
in racist incidents, White vigilantism, and police murder of New Afrikan and Third World
people. It also brought the rebirth and reestablishment ofthe NOI, a number of New Arikan

23
POWs adopting orthodox Islam in lieu of revolutionary nationalism, the New Alikan People’s
Organization's (NAPO) and its chairman Chokwe Lumumba’s emergence. From the RNA as.
banner carier for the New Afikan Independence Movement (NAIM), the New Orleans,
assassination of Lumumba Shakur of the Panther 21, and an upsurge in mass political
demonstrations known as the "Days of Outrage” in New York City spearheaded by the
December 12th Movement, and others.

The end of the decade brought the death of Huey P. Newton, founder ofthe Black Panther Party,
allegedly killed by a young Black Guerilla Family adherent on August 22, 1989, during a
dispute over "crack." Huey taught the Black masses socialism and popularized it through the
slogan "Power to the People!” He armed the Black struggle and popularized it through the
slogan "Political power grows out ofthe barrel of @ gun.” For that, and despite his human
shortcomings, he was a true giant of the Black struggle, because his particular contribution is
‘comparable to that of other modern- day giants, Mareus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X,
and Martin Luther King.

 

AIDS, crack, street ctime, gang violence, homelessness, and arrest rates have all exploded.
throughout the Black colonies. The prison population on June 30, 1989, topped 673.000, an
incredible 372,000 increase in less than a decade, causing the tripling and doubling of prison
populations in 34 states, and sizable inereases in most others. New York City prisons became so
overcrowded they began using ships as ails. Wiliam Bennett former U.S. Secretary of
Education and so-called Drug Czar, announced plans to convert closed military bases Into
‘concentration camps.

 

‘The prison building spree and escalated imprisonment rates continue unabated, The new
prisoners are younger, more volatile, have long prison sentences, and are overwhelmingly of
New Afrikan and Third World nationalities. Itis estimated that by the year 1994 the U.S. will
have over one million prisoners. Projections suggest that over 75 percent of them will be Black
and other people of color. More are women than previously. Their percentage rose to 5 percent
in 1980 from a low of 3 percent in 1970. Whites are arrested at about the same rate as in Western
Europe while the New Affikan arrest rate has surpassed that of Blacks in South AVfica. Infact,
the US. Black imprisonment rate is now the highest in the world, Ten times as many Blacks as
‘whites are incarcerated per 100,000 population.

 

‘THE ‘90S AND BEYOND

As we began to move through the "90s, the New Afikan liberation struggle behind the walls
found itself coalescing around campaigns to free political prisoners and prisoners of war, helping
to build «national PP/POW organization, strengthening its links on the domestic from, and
building solidarity in the international area. 1991 brought the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the end of the Cold War. It freed many of the C1A’s Eastern European personnel for
redeployment back to America o focus on the domestic war against people of color. Inthe same
‘manner that COINTELPRO perfected techniques developed inthe infamous Palmer raids at the
end of World War I and used them against Communist Party USA, SCLC, NCC, BPP, NOI,
RNA, and other domestic movements, repatriated CIA operatives used destabilization
techniques developed in Eastem Europe, South Africa, Southeast Asia, et., to wreak havo in
New Affikan and other domestic communities of color today.

 

Although the established media concentrated on the sensationalism of ghetto erack epidemics,
street crime, drive by shootings, and gang violence, there was a parallel long, quiet period of

consciousness rising in the New Afrikan colonies by the committed independence forees. The
4
heightened consciousness of the colonies began to manifest itself through apparent random
sparks of rebellion and the rise of innovative cultural trends, ic, RAP/HIP “message” music,
culturally designed hair styles, dissemination of poitical/cultural video cassettes, resprouting of
insurgent periodicals, and the resurrection of forgotten heroes; all of which presaged an
oppressed people getting ready to push forward again. Meanwhile, the U.S. began building the
ADX Control Prison at Florence, Colorado, which would both supersede and augment USP
Marion, Illinois. ADX at Florence combined, in a single hi-tech control prison complex, all the
repressive features and techniques that had been perfected at USP Marion.

 

In 1992, Fred Hampton, Jr, son of the martyred Panther hero, Fred Sr., was sent behind the
walls. He was convicted of firebombing of a Korean “deli” in Chicago in the aftermath of the
Simi Valley, California, verdict that acquitted four policemen of the Rodney King beating which
set off the Los Angeles riots,

{In 1994, Shiviki Uganisha responded to the call of POW Jalil Muntagim, Sekou Odinga,
Geronimo Ji Jaga, and Mutula Skakut, by hosting a national conference in Kansas City,
Missouri, where various NAIM organizations discussed forming themselves into a National
Front. After a year of holding periodic negotiations in various cities, the discussion bore fruit in
Atlanta, Georgia. On August 18, 1995, NAPO, the December 12th Movement, MXGM, The
Malcolm X Commemoration Committee (MXCC), the Black Cat Collective (BBC),
International Campaign to Free Geronimo, the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign (SAFC), and
various other POW and grassroots organizations formally unified under the banner of the New
Afrikans Liberation Front (NALF), headed by Herman Ferguson.

Te mid 90s brought the World Trade Center bombing, which signaled the success of the U.S.
strategy to substitute Islam for the former Soviet Union as the world's new Bogeyman. It
produced the first foreign Islamic PP/POWs ~ Amir Abdelgani, Rasheed ClementEl, Sheik Omar
Eahman, and others.

The mid decade also brought forth a growing right wing White militia movement that had
obviously studied the guerilla tactics and political language of the “60s left wing movements but
1not its philosophy of avoiding innocent deaths — and which culminated in the bombing of the
Okalahoma City Federal Building causing 168 deaths. Upon arrest, Tim MeVeigh, a right-
winger and by then the chief suspect usurped the language of the left by claiming POW status,
He was subsequently convicted, but largely overlooked in the media coverage of his case was
MeVeigh’s first hand verification of U.S. government’s involvement in bringing drugs into this
country (and the ghettos) and it use ofthe police in carrying out assassinations, notable because
the overwhelming majority of people killed or assassinated police in this country are people of
color

Timothy McVeigh had been ALL-American boy a blond haired, blue-eyed patriot who enlisted
in the army to defend the American way of life that he so fervently believed in, he rose rapidly
through the military ranks (private to sergeant) in two years, and was accepted into the Special
Forces: the elite, top 4 percent ofthe military's forces. There he learned something that average
thinking persons of color have known most of ther lives but found difficult to prove. MeVeigh's
‘own words provide the proof.

 

In an October 1991, letter to his sister and confidant, Jennifer, MeVeigh disclosed his revulsion
ng told that he and nine other Special Forces commanders might be ordered to help the

“lly drugs into the U.S. to fund covert operations” and “work hand in hand with civilian

police agencies” as “government pain assassins.” 25

 

 
Disillusioned and embittered withthe U.S. government, MeVeigh soon afterwards left military
service, gravitated deeper into the right wing militia service, surfaced four years upon his arrest
in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

‘The mid *90s found White anarchists Neil Batelli and Mathias Bolton collaborating with Black
POWs Ojore Lutalo, Sekou Odinga, and Sundiata Acoli which resulted in the transformation of
their local New Jersey Anarchist Black Cross into an ABC Federation (ABCF) which now

serves as a role model of the proper way for organizations to provide political and financial
support to PP/POWs of all nationalities. The period also witnessed the resprouting of Black
revolutionary organizations patterned after the BPP the Black Panther Collective, the Black
Panther Militia ~ along with the NOls Minster Louis Farrakhan's emergence atthe October 16,
1995 Million Man (MMM) in Washington, D.C., as an undeniable force on the New Aftikan,
Islamic and world stage. Inthe meantime, the US. moved further to the right with the passage of
8 series of racist, anti-worker legislation. The government passed the NAFTA bill to legitimize
the private corporations’ policy of sending U'S. jobs overseas. California passed Proposition 209
which killed Affirmative Action programs throughout the state. Then, it floated Proposition 187,
whose purpose was to implement statewide racist anti-immigration legislation but failed to pass.
The Federal government killed Black voting districts and passed Clinton’s Omnibus Crime Bill
which greatly increased the number of crime statutes, death penalty statutes, policemen and
armaments; arest of people of color; youths tried as adults; 3-strike convietions, and prison
expansion projects,

 

  

 

The so-called "War on Drugs” sent Blacks and other people of color, more commonly associated
with crack cocaine, to prison in droves while allowing white offenders to go free. Five grams of
crack worth a few hundred dollars is punishable by a mandatory 5-year prison sentence, but it
takes 500 grams, or $50,000 worth of powered cocaine, more commonly associated with
‘wealthier Whites, before facing the same 5 years. In the mid '90s, 1600 people were sent to
prison each week, every three out of four were Black or Latino, with the rate of Arikan women
Imprisonment growing fester than the AGfikan men,

Blacks were 90 percent ofthe Federal crack convietions in 1994, the normal assumption follows
that Blacks are the majority of crack users. Wrong! Whites are the majority of erack users but
‘were less than 4 percent ofthe crack convictions and no White person had been convicted of a
federal crack offense in the Los Angeles area since 1986 or ever in Chicago, Miami, Denver, or
16 states according tothe 1992 survey. As.a result, there are now more A‘fikan men in prison
than in college and 1 out of every 3 Affikan men aged 20-29 are in prison, jail, or on probation
‘or parole. Most of the convictions were obtained by an informant’ tainted testimony only, no
hhard evidence, in exchange for the informant’s freedom from prosecution or prison.

After lobbying Congress for a few years, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a
predominately White lobby group, succeeded in getting a harsh mandatory sentences lowered
for marijuana and LSD convictions. Both drugs are more commonly associated with White
offenders and FAMM's success resulted in the release of numerous White offenders from long
prison sentences,

 

 

Blacks and other prisoners of color patiently waited for similar corrections to be made to the
gross disparity between crack and powered cocaine sentences. Several years passed before the
answer came during a 1995 C-SPAN TV live broadcast of the Congressional session debating
the disparity in sentencing. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) member, Maxine Waters’
‘summation speech, typical of those made by Congresspersons in favor of correcting the disparity
following:

 

26
Mr. Chairman, we have been before this body this evening pointing out the disparity, pointing
cout the inequality, pointing out the injustice of the system as it operates now. I am surprised at
‘much of the rhetoric and all ofthese so-called conversations that my friends on the other side of
the aisle have been having in minority communities. lam glad to know that my colleagues are
going there. I am glad to know that they communicating. But let me tell my colleagues what the
‘mothers in my community say where [live

 

     

They say: Ms. Waters, why do they not get the big drug dealers? What is this business under
Bush that stopped resources going to interdiction? Why is it lange amounts of drugs keep
flowing into inner cities? Where do they come from and why do not they get the real criminals,
Ms. Waters, why is it 19-year olds who wander out into the community and get a Few rock erack
cocaine. Why it they end up the Federal system why is is it they end up with these 5- year
‘minimum mandatory, up to 10 years mandatory sentences? Why can you not get the big guys?

 

‘They say: We believe there is a conspiracy. This is what mothers in these communities say. We
believe there is a conspiracy against our children and against our communities. They do not
understand it when policymakers get up and say, Oh, its not interdiction that we should be
concerned about. As long as there is a desire for drugs, they are going to continue to flow and
hat we have got to do is just concentrate on telling them, Just say no,

They say: Ms. Waters, we do not understand that and we do not know why a first time offender,
\who happens to be black or Latino, ends up with a 5 year sentence. And why is the Federal
Government targeting our communities? They aren't targeting white communities who are the
‘major drug abusers. They are targeting our communities from the Federal Level. Thus, our kids
40 into the Federal system and the whites, who are drug abusers and traffickers, go into the State
systems, They get off with their fancy lawyers with probation, with | years, with no time and
our kids are locked up.

  

Mr. Chairman, for those of my colleagues who say, well we know itis unfair but just keep
letting it go on for a while and we will take a look at it are they out of their minds? How ean
they stand on the floor of Congress pretending to support a Constitution and a democracy and
say, “We know itis not fair, but just let it continue and we may take another look ati?”

 

When I give them the facts and they know them to be true, and I will say it again. In Los
Angeles, the U.S. District Court prosecuted no whites, none, for crack offense, between 1988
and 1994. and my colleagues tll me that they think it may be applied unequally? This is despite
the fact that two-thirds of those who have tried erack are white and over one-half of crack
regular users are white. This isa faimess issue and its a race issue,

Mr. Chairman, Ido not care how they try and paint it, I do not care what they say. This is
patently unfait. 1 is blatant and my colleagues ought to be ashamed of themselves. Its racist,
because thei litle white sons are not getting up in the system, They are not targeted. Our
children are.

 

 

Mr. Chairman, they are going into the Federal system with mandatory sentences and itis a race
issue, It isa racist policy.

Despite the best arguments and passionate pleas of CBC member Waters, Jackson-Lee, Conyers,
Watts, Fatah, Fukes, Lewis, Mfume, Payne, Rush, Stokes, Scot and similar speeches by non-
CBC members Clayton, Baker, Frank, Schroeder and Traficant, the Congress voted 316

   

21
0 96 to continue the same 100 0 1 disparity between erack and power cocaine sentences.
Instantly, prisons exploded in riots, 28 in all, although most were whited-out of the news media
while across the county, prison officials instituted a nation wide federal prison lock down, The
disparity in crack/powder cocaine sentencing laws remains to date; the only change made was
the removal of the C-SPAN TV channel from all federal prisons’ TVs,

 

Only two prison elements grew faster than the Afrikan prison population. One was the number
of jobs for prison guards and the other was prison slave labor industries. A California guard with
high schoo! diploma makes $4,000 after 7 years which is more than the state pays its PhD
public university Associate Professors and is $10,000 more than its average public schoo!
teacher's salary. The national ratio for prisons is one guard for each 4.38 prisoners, usually
Black or others of color, they hire another prison guard, usually White, since most prisons are
builtin depressed, rural White areas to provide jobs to poor, unemployed White populations.

‘After decades of the U.S. loudly accusing China of using prison labor in their export products,
the USS., prison products to the public. Itset off a stampede by Wall Street and private
corporations ~ Smith Bamey, INM, AT&T, TWA, Texas Instruments, Dell Computers, Honda,
Lexus, Spalding, Eddie Bauer, Brill Manufacturing Co., and many others ~ to shamelessly invest
in prisons, set up slave labor factories in prisons and to exploit every facet of the prison slave
labor industry for super profits while callously discarding civilian workers for prison slave
laborers

From 1980 to 1994, prisoners increased 221 percent, prison industries jumped an astonishing
2358 percent, and prison sales skyrocketed from $392 million to $1.31 billion. By the year 2000,
itis predicted that 30 percent of prisoners (or $00,000) will be industry workers producing $8.9
billion in goods and services.

 

Although crime has been decreasing for 5 straight years, as we approach the new millennium,
‘we find that prison expansion has continued at record pace and thatthe prison population has
‘mushroomed over the last deeade to an astonishing 1.75 million souls ~ the majority of whom
tare Black period — not counting the 675,000 on parole and the 3,400,000 on probation for a
grand sum of 6 million people under the jurisdiction of the Criminal “Justice” System. The
prisons‘ails have been majority Black since 1993 when Blacks ascended to $5 percent. Other
prisoners of color made up 18 percent and Whites shrunk to 27 percent ofthe prison population.
‘There are now over 2 Blacks for every White prisoner, and the ration inereases daily

 

   

The incarceration of women continues to accelerate. There are over 90,000 women in prison
today, $4 percent are women of color and 90% of women in prison are single mothers. Upon
imprisonment they lose contact with their children, sometimes forever. There are 167,000
children in the U.S. whose mothers ate incarcerated.

 

The term “crime” has become a code word for “Black and other people of color." The cry for
“law and order,” “lock “em up and throw away the key,” and for “harsher prisons” is heard
everywhere. Nothing is to0 cruel to be done to prisoners. Control units and control prisons
bound across the landscape and prison brutality and torture isthe order ofthe day. The “War on.
Drugs: continues apace, by now transparent to all as a “war, actually a pre-emptive strike, on
people of color” to knock out our youth ~ our warrior cass ~ and to decrease our birth rate,
Aestabilize our families, re-enslave us through mass imprisonment, and ultimately to eliminate
us. The threat is serious and real. To ignore it would be at our own peril

 

28
Despite government mass imprisonment of our youth and covertly fomenting deadly internecine
\wars among Black street gangs, the abhorrence of the Afrikan community and persistent
‘Summits” sponsored by Afrikan spiritual, community, and prison leaders have produced,
somewhat positive, although checked results,

    

As we begin to move through the 90s the New A frikan liberation struggle behind the walls finds
itself coalescing around campaigns to free political prisoners and prisoners of war, helping to
build a national PP/POW organization, strengthening its links on the domestic front, and
building solidarity in the international arena. Although the established media concentrates on the
sensationalism of ghetto crack epidemics, street crime, drive-by shootings, and gang violence,
there has been a long quiet period of eonsciousness-raising in the New Aftikan colonies by the
commited independence forces. This heightened consciousness of the colonies is just beginning
‘to manifest itself through seemingly random sparks and the rise of innovative cultural tends,
i.e,, Rap/Hip Hop, "message" music, culturally designed hair styles, dissemination of
politcal/cultural video cassettes, resprouting of insurgent periodicals, and the resurrection of
forgotten heroes; all of which presage an oppressed people getting ready to push forward again.

 

    

 

The New Arikan liberation struggle behind the walls now follows the laws of ts own
evelopment, pad for in its own blood, intrinsically linked to the struggle of its own people, and
rooted deep in the ebb and flow oF its own history. To know that history is already to know its
future development and direction

Sundiata Acoli
USP Allenwood
White Deer, Pa
December 7, 1998

Current location as of June, 2010:

Sundiata Acoli
+#39794-066 (Squire)
P.O. Box 1000

FCI Otisville

Otisville, NY 10963-1000

My sincere appre yah Rashada, Naney Kurshan, Steve Whitman, Joan
‘MeCarty, and Wale Shakur, for providing prison source data used in this writing. Any
incorrect interpretations of the data are strictly mine. Also my warm gratitude to Mtumwa
imani for her typing, editing and helpful suggestions in the updating of the original

 

 

     
Sundiata Acoli (born in 1939, as Clark Edward Squire), a New Avfiikan political prisoner of war,
‘mathematician, and computer analyst, was born January 14, 1937, in Decatur, Texas, and raised.
in Vernon, Texas. He graduated from Prairie View A & M College of Texas in 1956 with a B.S.
in mathematics and for the next 13 years worked for various computer-oriented firms, mostly in
the New York area

 

During the summer of 1964 he did voter registration work in Mississippi. In 1968 he joined the
Harlem Black Panther Party and did community work around issues of schools, housing, jobs,
child care, drugs, and police brutality

In 1969 he and 13 others were arrested in the Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was held in jail
‘without bail and on trial for two years before being acquitted, along with all other defendant, by
‘jury deliberating less than two hours.

Upon release, FBI intimidation of potential employers shut off all employment possibilities is
the computer profession and stepped-up COINTELPRO harassment, surveillance, and
provocations soon drove him underground.

In May 1973, while driving the New Jersey Turnpike, he and his comrades were ambushed by
NJ. state troopers. One companion, Zayd Shakur, was killed, another companion, Assata
Shakur, was wounded and captured. One state trooper was killed and another wounded, and
Sundiata was captured days later.

After a highly sensationalized and prejudicial trial he was convicted of the death ofthe state
trooper and was sentenced to Trenton State Prison (TSP) for life plus 30 years consecutive.

Upon entering TSP he was subsequently confined to a new and specially created Management
Control Unit (MCU) solely because of his political background. He remained in MCU almost
five years, let out of the cell only ten minutes a day for showers and two hours twice a week for
recreation,

 

In September 1979, the International Jurist interviewed Sundiata and subsequently declared him
political prisoner. A few days later prison officials secretly transferred him during the middle
of the night to the federal prison system and put him en route to the infamous federal
concentration camp at Marion, Illinois, although he had no federal charges or sentences. Marion
is one of the highest security prisons in the U.S., also one ofthe harshest, and there Sundiata was
Tocked down 23 hours a day. In July 1987 he was transferred to the Federal penitentiary at
Leavenworth, Kansas.

In the fall of 1992, Sundiata became eligible for parole. He was not permitted to attend his own
parole hearing and was only allowed to participate via telephone from USP Leavenworth,
Despite an excellent prison work, academic, and disciplinary record, despite numerous job offers
in the computer profession, and despite thousands of letters on his behalf, Sundiata was denied
parole. Instead, atthe conclusion of a 20 minute telephone hearing, he was given a 20-year hit,
the longest hit in New Jersey history, which dictates that he must do at least 12 more years
before coming up for parole again.

‘The Parole Board's stated reason for the 20-year hit was Sundiata’s membership in the Black
Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army prior to his arrest, the receipt of hundreds of “Free
‘Sundiata” form letters that characterized him as a New AMikan Prisoner of War, and the feeli
that the punitive aspects of his sentence had not been satisfied and that rehabilitation was not
sufficiently achieved. The real reason for the 20-year hit i to attempt to force Sundiata to
renounce his political beliefs and to proclaim to the world that he was wrong to struggle for the
liberation of his people

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