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Despite the extensive research he conducted over his lifetime, Hansberry was very reluctant to have his work published. James Williams, one of his former students and later a Senior Professor of African History at Howard, recalled in 1972 that when his students urged publication of his work, Hansberry would smile, but always firmly reply, "I am not ready yet." Hansberry retired from Howard in June 1959.
He married Myrtle Kelso (September 24, 1908—May 1980) of Meridian, Lauderdale County, Mississippi, on June 22, 1937, in Chicago. She is the daughter of Wiley and Mamie Kelso. Two children were born to this union:
While visiting relatives in Chicago, Hansberry died at Billings Hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage on November 3, 1965.
In 1972, he finally received recognition from the university that had snubbed him when Howard named a lecture hall in his honor.
William Leo Hansberry was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
Elaine Brown (born March 2, 1943) is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman who is based in Oakland, California. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She withdrew from the party.
While in Los Angeles, Brown enrolled in the University of California Los Angeles. She later went on to briefly attend Mills College and Southwestern University School of Law.
In 1968, Brown joined the Black Panther Party as a rank-and-file member, studying revolutionary literature, selling Black Panther Party newspapers, and cleaning guns, among other tasks. She soon helped the Party set up its first Free Breakfast for Children program in Los Angeles, as well as the Party's initial Free Busing to Prisons Program and Free Legal Aid Program.
In 1968, Brown was commissioned by David Hilliard, the Party chief of staff, to record her songs, a request resulting in the album "Seize the Time". She eventually assumed the role of editor of "the" "Black Panther" publication in the Southern California Branch of the Party. In 1971, Brown became a member of the Party's Central Committee as Minister of Information, replacing the expelled Eldridge Cleaver. In 1973, Brown was commissioned to record more songs by Black Panther Party founder and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton. These songs resulted in the album "Until We're Free".
As part of a directive by Newton, Brown unsuccessfully ran for the Oakland city council in 1973, getting 30 percent of the vote. She ran again in 1975, losing again with 44 percent of the vote. When Newton fled to Cuba in 1974 to avoid criminal charges, he appointed Brown to lead the Black Panther Party. Brown was the only woman to do so. She chaired the Black Panther Party from 1974 until 1977. In her 1992 memoir, "A Taste of Power", she wrote about the experience:
"A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the black race. She was an enemy of the black people... I knew I would have to muster something mighty to manage the Black Panther Party". She dealt with regular sexism because the men were angered by the thought of taking orders from a woman.
During Brown's leadership of the Black Panther Party, she focused on electoral politics and community service. In 1977, she managed Lionel Wilson’s victorious campaign to become Oakland’s first black mayor. Also, Brown founded the Panther's Liberation School, which was recognized by the state of California as a model school.
Brown stepped down from chairing the Black Panther Party less than a year after Newton’s return from Cuba in 1977 when Newton refused to condemn the beating of Regina Davis, an administrator of the Panther Liberation School. Other male members of the party beat her and broke her jaw because she reprimanded a coworker when he did not do an assignment. Newton opted for solidarity with the men. This incident was the point at which Brown could no longer tolerate the sexism and patriarchy of the Black Panther Party. For many, Brown's leaving was seen as a turning point for the Party. She left Oakland with her daughter, Ericka, and moved to Los Angeles.
Brown recorded two albums, "Seize the Time" (Vault, 1969) and "Until We're Free" (Motown Records, 1973). "Seize the Time" includes "The Meeting," the anthem of the Black Panther Party.
After leaving the Black Panther Party in order to raise her daughter Ericka, Brown worked on her memoir, "A Taste of Power". She eventually returned to the struggle for black liberation, especially espousing the need for radical prison reform. From 1980 to 1983, she attended Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles.
In 2003, Brown co-founded the National Alliance for Radical Prison Reform, which helps thousands of prisoners find housing after they are released on parole, facilitates transportation for family visits to prisons, helps prisoners find employment, and raises money for prisoner phone calls and gifts.
Brown has continued her prison reform advocacy by lecturing frequently at colleges and universities in the US. Since 1995, she has lectured at more than forty colleges and universities, as well as numerous conferences.
In 2010, inmates in more than seven Georgia prisons used contraband cellphones to organize a nonviolent strike for better prison conditions, Brown became their "closest adviser outside prison walls." She "helped distill the inmate complaints into a list of demands. She held a conference call... to develop a strategy with various groups, including the Georgia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Nation of Islam."
Brown has one daughter, Ericka Abram, fathered by Black Panther member Raymond Hewitt, but he was mostly absent from his daughter's life. At Hewitt's funeral, Elaine Brown was in attendance.
Cecelia Antoinette Bruton (November 24, 1949 – May 28, 2020), known professionally as Cecelia Antoinette or CeCe Antoinette, was an American actress, comedian, and writer.
Cecelia Antoinette Bruton was born a twin in Dallas, in 1949, the daughter of Cicero Hamilton Bruton Sr. and Naomi Hartman Bruton. Her mother was an actress, and her father worked for the railroad. She was educated in Hamilton Park schools, graduating from high school in 1968. She earned a bachelor's degree at the University of Oklahoma. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Bruton began acting in Dallas and took acting classes in New York City. She appeared on Broadway in "Mule Bone", and in touring or regional companies of "The Wake of Jeremy Foster", "The Member of the Wedding", "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan", "St. Lucy's Eyes," and "Bronzeville". On television, she had small roles in , "Scrubs, Weeds, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Godfather of Harlem, The Punisher," "A Black Lady Sketch Show, Blue Bloods, 2 Broke Girls," "Mad Men", "Desperate Housewives", "Girlfriends", "Crossing Jordan", and "The Chris Rock Show". Her film credits included appearances in "After School" (2008), "Proud American" (2008), "Yes Man" (2008), "Dance Fu" (2011), "Different Flowers" (2017), and "Deadtectives" (2018).
Bruton published a book of poetry, "Just as I am", and a memoir, "Brown Gal's Rising", and an autobiographical one-woman show, "Watermelon: Git It While It's Hot!". She participated in the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in 1998, and performed at festivals about women in jazz in Hartford in 1999 and 2001. She was a member of the Women's Project Directors Forum. She taught theatre at various levels, including at the Pennsylvania State University and the New York City public schools.
Cecelia Antoinette Bruton was a practicing Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist.
She died in 2020, aged 70 years. She was honored posthumously at the Reel Sisters awards ceremony in November 2020.
Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad (born Richard Earl Moore; 1944) is an American writer and activist, who is a former political prisoner, Black Panther Party leader, and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army. "Dhoruba", in Swahili, means "the storm".
On May 19, 1971, Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti, two New York City Police Department officers who were guarding the home of Frank S. Hogan, the Manhattan district attorney, were fired upon in a drive-by shooting, with a machine gun. The officers survived, but were seriously injured, sustaining shots to the head, neck, chest, and abdomen.
The shootings took place during a period of intense violence between black activist organizations and the New York City police department. Two days later, NYPD officers Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini were shot and killed outside a housing project in Harlem.
Wahad was arrested and initially charged with robbing a South Bronx social club, and then was later charged with the attempted murders of Curry and Binetti.
Wahad's first trial ended in a hung jury; his second in a mistrial. Two years later, in 1973, his third trial resulted in a guilty verdict; he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life.
Wahad spent a total of nineteen years in prison. While incarcerated, he learned about Congressional hearings that disclosed the existence of a covert F.B.I. operation known as COINTELPRO. In December 1975 he filed a lawsuit against the F.B.I. and the police department of the City of New York.
As a direct result of his lawsuit, over the next fifteen years the F.B.I. released more than 300,000 pages of documents regarding COINTELPRO. The COINTELPRO documents were the basis on which Wahad appealed his conviction, and on March 15, 1990, Judge Peter J. McQuillan of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan reversed it, ruling that the prosecution had failed to disclose evidence that could have helped Mr. Wahad's defense.
While Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau stated that he planned to appeal the ruling, and would obtain a retrial if his appeal failed, Wahad was freed and released without bail.
Morgenthau's attempt to appeal was rejected by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, and on January 20, 1995, the Manhattan district attorney's office stated there would be no retrial, indicating that the current condition of the evidence would make this impossible.
In 1995, the F.B.I. settled with Wahad; the U.S. government paid him $400,000.
On December 4, 2000, Dhoruba's suit against the New York Police Department, seeking $15 million in damages was scheduled to begin. On December 8, 2000, the city of New York laid to rest a 25-year legal battle, and agreed to pay Wahad an additional $490,000 in damages.
Wahad lived in Accra, Ghana, where he organized on Pan-Africanism and the prison system. Using the funds from his settlements for personal damages from the FBI and City of New York, he established the Campaign to Free Black and New African Political Prisoners (formerly the Campaign to Free Black Political Prisoners and Prisoners-of-War) and founded the Institute for the Development of Pan-African policy in Ghana.
He currently lives in New York City and continues his work.
On August 19, 2015, Bin Wahad and an associate were assaulted by a faction of the New Black Panther Party. Bin Wahad had been attending a conference in Atlanta, Georgia held by the Nzinga faction of the "New" Panthers, where Bin Wahad confronted the group about their adoption of the Black Panther name and their rhetoric. The two were ordered to leave but when they refused, Bin Wahad was assaulted. Wahad was left with a concussion, a broken jaw and lacerations from the attack. The event led founding member of the original Black Panthers, Elbert "Big Man" Howard, to denounce the group as "reactionaries" and "thugs".
Barbara Cottman Becnel (born May 30, 1950) is an American author, journalist, and film producer. She was a close friend and advocate for Crips co-founder Stanley Williams (aka "Stan Tookie Williams"; a convicted murderer and former gang leader who would later become an anti-gang activist and writer), and editor of Williams's series of children's books, which spoke out against gang violence. Williams was executed in 2005. Becnel co-produced the Golden Globe-nominated film "", which starred award-winning actress Lynn Whitfield playing the role of Becnel.
Becnel was in attendance at Williams' execution as one of his chosen witnesses. After he was pronounced dead, she, along with two of his friends, television executive Shirley Neal and movie producer Rudy Langlais, stood up and yelled that California had executed an innocent man. After the execution, she said "We are going to prove his innocence, and when we do, we are going to show that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is, in fact, himself a cold blooded murderer."
Williams directed Becnel to make the arrangements for his funeral, which was held at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on December 20, 2005. More than 3,000 people attended Williams' memorial service. On Sunday, June 25, 2006, Becnel and Neal released Williams' ashes into a lake in Thokoza Park, located in the black township of Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa. In February 2009, Becnel and Neal released "Tribute: Stanley Tookie Williams, 1953-2005", a documentary they directed and produced about Williams.
Announcing her intention to defeat Schwarzenegger in the upcoming gubernatorial election, Becnel ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for Governor of California in 2006, the first black female to do so. She finished with 66,544 votes overall, which amounted to 2.7% of all ballots cast, coming in third out of eight Democrats behind Phil Angelides and Steve Westly. Her campaign attracted media attention, and she raised enough money in the last week of the campaign to run television and radio commercials.
She publicly denounced Democratic Gubernatorial candidates Phil Angelides and Steve Westly for supporting the death penalty. She is also outspoken on other social issues, such as the environment and immigration. Barbara's outspoken criticism of Angelides and Westly resulted in her not being invited to a number of key Democratic Party events during the general election season. This, coupled with differences over issues such as the death penalty, led Barbara to leave the Democratic Party. In the first weeks of 2007 Barbara left the Democratic Party and joined the Green Party of California, the state affiliate of the Green Party (GPUS). When asked why she joined the Green Party, Becnel responded, "The Green Party is right on the issues--no ifs, ands, or buts."
Shirley Graham Du Bois (born Lola Shirley Graham Jr.; November 11, 1896 – March 27, 1977) was an American author, playwright, composer, and activist for African-American causes, among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her works.
She was born Lola Shirley Graham Jr. in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1896, as the only daughter among five children. Her father was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and the family moved often due to her fathers work in parsonages throughout the country. In June 1915, Shirley graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington.
She married her first husband, Shadrach T. McCants, in 1921. Their son Robert was born in 1923, followed by David Graham DuBois in 1925. In 1926, Graham moved to Paris, France, to study music composition at the Sorbonne. She thought that this education might allow her to achieve better employment and be able to better support her children. Meeting Africans and Afro-Caribbean people in Paris introduced her to new music and cultures. Shirley and Shadrach divorced in 1927.
Graham served as music librarian while attending Howard University as a nonmatriculated student under the tutelage of Professor Roy W. Tibbs. He recommended her for a teaching position at Morgan College which led to her position as head of the music department from 1929 to 1931.
In 1931, Graham entered Oberlin College as an advanced student and, after earning her B.A. in 1934, went on to do graduate work in music, completing a master's degree in 1935. In 1936, Hallie Flanagan appointed Graham director of the Chicago Negro Unit of the Federal Theater Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. She wrote musical scores, directed, and did additional associated work.
Shirley Graham Du Bois composed the opera "Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro" which premiered in Cleveland, Ohio in 1932, commissioned by the Stadium Opera Company. Tom Tom featured an all Black cast and orchestra, structured in three acts; act one taking place in an Indigenous African tribe, act two portraying an American Slave plantation, and the final act taking place in 1920s Harlem. The music features elements of blues and spirituals, as well as jazz with elements of opera. The score of this opera was considered lost and has not been performed since its premiere until it was rediscovered in 2001 at Harvard University.
In the late 1940s, Graham became a member of Sojourners for Truth and Justicean African-American organization working for global women's liberation. Around the same time, she joined the American Communist Party.
Shirley Graham Du Bois attended the Second Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo in 1964 and consulted with Malcom X on the efforts of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to get support for the issues inside the U.S. among heads-of-state, the UN and national liberation movements. Graham announced the starting of a course on television screenwriting in Accra to create a group of writers for Ghana National Television.
During her first visit to China in 1959, Shirley Graham Du Bois, alongside her husband W.E.B Du Bois, was commemorated in China for their activism and commitment to Black Liberation, as well as for liberation of all people of color across the globe. The Communist Party of China in 1959 commemorated W.E.B Du Bois by publishing his book The Soul of Black Folk in Chinese languages. Shirley Graham Du Bois devoted her time in China to the women’s struggle and sought to bridge ties between the proletarian struggle in China with the struggle of Black Americans. The People’s Daily recognized her as a member of the World Peace Council and of the national committee for the Association of American-Soviet Friendship.
Following the right-wing military coup led by Joseph Aruther Ankrah, ousting Kwame Nkrumah, Shirley Graham Du Bois moved to Egypt and later moved to China again during the midst of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. During this time, Shirley Graham Du Bois sided with the Chinese Communists in the Sino-Soviet split. She had praised China’s music programs in Shanghai and she joined the Bureau of Afro-Asian writers. Shirley Graham Du Bois spent a good amount of time in Chinese Communes and with the Red Guards.
She was able to attain a visa to the U.S to give talks at Yale and UCLA in 1970, where she was able to speak on Imperialism, Capitalism and colonialism and her experiences in countries undergoing Socialist construction, such as China and Vietnam. She also gave W.E.B Du Bois’ writings to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
She produced a movie in China called “Women of the New China” in 1974. Shirley Graham Du Bois passed away in Beijing, China in 1977, where she is buried in the Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionary Heroes. Her funeral was attended by many important political figures in China, including Cheng Yonggui, Deng Yingchao, and Hua Goufeng, where they honored her as a hero for her internationalism and selflessness. The Communist Party Chairman memorial wreaths in honor of Graham Du Bois, as did the embassies of Tanzania, Ghana, and Zambia.
In 1967, she was forced to leave after a military-led coup d'état, and moved to Cairo, Egypt, where she continued writing. Her surviving son David Graham Du Bois accompanied her and worked as a journalist.
Shirley Graham Du Bois died of breast cancer on March 27, 1977, aged 80, in Beijing, China. She died as a Tanzanian. She had moved from Ghana to Tanzania after Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown on 24 February 1966, and became close to Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, and acquired Tanzanian citizenship.
Her alma mater Oberlin Conservatory of Music recently honored DuBois offering cluster courses and a conference devoted to reviving her remarkable legacy as a composer, activist and media figure. The conference was called "Intersections: Recovering the Genius of Shirley Graham Du Bois 2020 Symposium" on Thursday and Friday, February 27 & 28, 2020 that included a plenary lecture by Columbia professor and author Farah Jasmine Griffin. The event was co-sponsored by The Gertrude B. Lemle Teaching Center, StudiOC, a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dean of The College, Dean of the Conservatory, History Department, Oberlin College Libraries, Africana Studies Department, and the Theater Department.
After meeting Africans in Paris while studying at the Sorbonne in 1926, Graham composed the musical score and libretto of "Tom Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro" (1932), an opera. She used music, dance and the book to express the story of Africans' journey to the North American colonies, through slavery and to freedom. It premiered in Cleveland, Ohio. The opera attracted 10,000 people to its premiere at the Cleveland Stadium and 15,000 to the second performance.
According to the "Oxford Companion to African-American Literature," her theatre works included "Deep Rivers" (1939), a musical; "It's Morning" (1940), a one-act tragedy about a slave mother who contemplates infanticide; "I Gotta Home" (1940), a one-act drama; "Track Thirteen" (1940), a comedy for radio and her only published play; "Elijah's Raven" (1941), a three-act comedy; and "Dust to Earth" (1941), a three-act tragedy.
Graham used theater to tell the black woman's story and perspective, countering white versions of history. Despite her unsuccessful attempts to land a Broadway production as many African American women before and after her, her plays were still produced by Karamu Theatre in Cleveland and other major Black companies. Her work was also seen in many colleges and both "Track Thirteen (1940)" and "Tom-Tom" were aired on the radio.
Due to the difficulty in getting musicals or plays produced and published, Graham turned to literature. She wrote in a variety of genres, specializing from the 1950s in biographies of leading African-American and world figures for young readers. She wanted to increase the number of books that dealt with notable African Americans in elementary school libraries. Owing to her personal knowledge of her subjects, her books on Paul Robeson and Kwame Nkrumah are considered especially interesting. Other subjects included Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, and Booker T. Washington; as well as Gamal Abdul Nasser, and Julius Nyerere. One of her last novels, "Zulu Heart" (1974), included sympathetic portrayals of whites in South Africa despite racial conflicts.
Selections from her correspondence with her husband (both before and after their relationship began) appear in the three volume 1976 collection edited by Herbert Aptheker (ed.), "Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois". Shirley Graham Du Bois is the subject of "Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois".
Darius Gray is an African-American Latter-day Saint speaker and writer.
Gray was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1964. He attended Brigham Young University for one year and then transferred to the University of Utah. Gray worked for a time as a journalist.
Gray has traveled throughout the United States to make presentations. In 2007, he appeared in the PBS documentary "The Mormons". In February 2008, he made an invitation-only presentation at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit that was partly sponsored by New Detroit. He is also featured in the BYU Television series "Questions and Ancestors". Gray has also served as a developer of the website blacklds.org and on the advisory board of Reach the Children, a humanitarian organization designed to help people in Africa.
Gray was among those involved in Developing the "Race and the Priesthood" essay published on the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in December 2013. In 2014 Gray was given a special citation by the Mormon History Association for contributions to Mormon history.
Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook; April 24, 1954) is a political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He became widely known while on death row for his writings and commentary on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.
Beginning at the age of 14 in 1968, Abu-Jamal became involved with the Black Panther Party and was a member until October 1970. After he left the party, he completed his high school education, and later became a radio reporter. He eventually served as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He supported the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia and covered the 1978 confrontation in which one police officer was killed. The MOVE Nine were the members who were arrested and convicted of murder in that case.
Since 1982, the murder trial of Abu-Jamal has been seriously criticized for constitutional failings; some have claimed that he is innocent, and many opposed his death sentence. The Faulkner family, politicians, and other groups involved with law enforcement, state and city governments argue that Abu-Jamal's trial was fair, his guilt beyond question, and his death sentence justified.
When his death sentence was overturned by a Federal court in 2001, he was described as "perhaps the world's best-known death-row inmate" by "The New York Times." During his imprisonment, Abu-Jamal has published books and commentaries on social and political issues; his first book was "Live from Death Row" (1995).
He was born Wesley Cook in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. He has a younger brother named William. They attended local public schools.
In 1968, a high school teacher, a Kenyan instructing a class on African cultures, encouraged the students to take African or Arabic names for classroom use; he gave Cook the name "Mumia". According to Abu-Jamal, "Mumia" means "Prince" and was the name of a Kenyan anti-colonial African nationalist who fought against the British before Kenyan independence.
Abu-Jamal has described being "kicked ... into the Black Panther Party" as a teenager of 14, after suffering a beating from "white racists" and a policeman for trying to disrupt a 1968 rally for Independent candidate George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, who was running on a racist platform. From then he helped form the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party with Defense Captain Reggie Schell, and other Panthers. He was appointed as the chapter's "Lieutenant of Information," responsible for writing information and news communications. In an interview in the early years, Abu-Jamal quoted Mao Zedong, saying that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". That same year, he dropped out of Benjamin Franklin High School and began living at the branch's headquarters.
He spent late 1969 in New York City and early 1970 in Oakland, living and working with BPP colleagues in those cities; the party had been founded in Oakland. He was a party member from May 1969 until October 1970. During this period, he was subject to illegal surveillance as part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO program, with which the Philadelphia police cooperated. The FBI was working to infiltrate black radical groups and to disrupt them by creating internal dissension.
After leaving the Panthers, Abu-Jamal returned as a student to his former high school. He was suspended for distributing literature calling for "black revolutionary student power". He led unsuccessful protests to change the school name to Malcolm X High, to honor the major African-American leader who had been killed in New York by political opponents.
After attaining his GED, Abu-Jamal studied briefly at Goddard College in rural Vermont. He returned to Philadelphia.
Cook adopted the surname Abu-Jamal ("father of Jamal" in Arabic) after the birth of his first child, son Jamal, on July 18, 1971. He married Jamal's mother Biba in 1973, but they did not stay together long. Their daughter, Lateefa, was born shortly after the wedding. The couple divorced.
In 1977 Abu-Jamal married again, to his second wife, Marilyn (known as "Peachie"). Their son, Mazi, was born in early 1978. By 1981, Abu-Jamal had divorced Peachie and had married his third (and current) wife, Wadiya.
By 1975 Abu-Jamal was working in radio newscasting, first at Temple University's WRTI and then at commercial enterprises. In 1975, he was employed at radio station WHAT, and he became host of a weekly feature program at WCAU-FM in 1978. He also worked for brief periods at radio station WPEN. He became active in the local chapter of the Marijuana Users Association of America.
From 1979 to 1981 he worked at National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate WHYY. The management asked him to resign, saying that he did not maintain a sufficiently objective approach in his presentation of news. As a radio journalist, Abu-Jamal was renowned for identifying with and covering the MOVE anarcho-primitivist commune in West Philadelphia's Powelton Village neighborhood. He reported on the 1979–80 trial of certain members (the "MOVE Nine"), who were convicted of the murder of police officer James Ramp. Abu-Jamal had several high-profile interviews, including with Julius Erving, Bob Marley and Alex Haley. He was elected president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
Before joining MOVE, Abu-Jamal reported on the organization. When he joined MOVE, he said it was because of his love of the people in the organization. Thinking back on it later, he said he "was probably enraged as well".
In December 1981, Abu-Jamal was working as a taxicab driver in Philadelphia two nights a week to supplement his income. He had been working part-time as a reporter for WDAS, then an African-American-oriented and minority-owned radio station.
Traffic stop and death of officer Faulkner.
At 3:55 am on December 9, 1981, in Philadelphia, close to the intersection at 13th and Locust streets, Philadelphia Police Department officer Daniel Faulkner conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle belonging to and driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's younger brother. Faulkner and Cook became engaged in a physical confrontation. Driving his cab in the vicinity, Abu-Jamal observed the altercation, parked, and ran across the street toward Cook's car. Faulkner was shot in the back and face. He shot Abu-Jamal in the stomach. Faulkner died at the scene from the gunshot to his head.
Police arrived and arrested Abu-Jamal, who was found to be wearing a shoulder holster. His revolver, which had five spent cartridges, was beside him. He was taken directly from the scene of the shooting to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he received treatment for his wound. He was next taken to Police
Headquarters, where he was charged and held for trial in the first-degree murder of Officer Faulkner.
The prosecution presented four witnesses to the court about the shootings. Robert Chobert, a cab driver who testified he was parked behind Faulkner, identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter. Cynthia White testified that Abu-Jamal emerged from a nearby parking lot and shot Faulkner. Michael Scanlan, a motorist, testified that from two car lengths away he saw a man matching Abu-Jamal's description run across the street from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner. Albert Magilton testified to seeing Faulkner pull over Cook's car. As Abu-Jamal started to cross the street toward them, Magilton turned away and did not see what happened next.
The prosecution presented two witnesses from the hospital where Abu-Jamal was treated. Hospital security guard Priscilla Durham and police officer Garry Bell testified that Abu-Jamal said in the hospital, "I shot the motherfucker, and I hope the motherfucker dies."
A .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver, belonging to Abu-Jamal, with five spent cartridges, was retrieved beside him at the scene. He was wearing a shoulder holster. Anthony Paul, the Supervisor of the Philadelphia Police Department's firearms identification unit, testified at trial that the cartridge cases and rifling characteristics of the weapon were consistent with bullet fragments taken from Faulkner's body. Tests to confirm that Abu-Jamal had handled and fired the weapon were not performed. Contact with arresting police and other surfaces at the scene could have compromised the forensic value of such tests.
After three hours of deliberations, the jury presented a unanimous guilty verdict.
In the sentencing phase of the trial, Abu-Jamal read to the jury from a prepared statement. He was cross-examined about issues relevant to the assessment of his character by Joseph McGill, the prosecuting attorney.
In his statement, Abu-Jamal criticized his attorney as a "legal trained lawyer", who was imposed on him against his will and who "knew he was inadequate to the task and chose to follow the directions of this black-robed conspirator [referring to the judge], Albert Sabo, even if it meant ignoring my directions." He claimed that his rights had been "deceitfully stolen" from him by [Judge] Sabo, particularly focusing on the denial of his request to receive defense assistance from John Africa, who was not an attorney, and being prevented from proceeding "pro se". He quoted remarks of John Africa, and said:
Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death by the unanimous decision of the jury. Amnesty International has objected to the introduction by the prosecution at the time of his sentencing of statements from when he was an activist as a youth. It also protested the politicization of the trial, noting that there was documented recent history in Philadelphia of police abuse and corruption, including fabricated evidence and use of excessive force. Amnesty International concluded "that the proceedings used to convict and sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death were in violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty".
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on March 6, 1989, heard and rejected a direct appeal of his conviction. It subsequently denied rehearing. The Supreme Court of the United States denied his petition for writ of "certiorari" on October 1, 1990, and denied his petition for rehearing twice up to June 10, 1991.
On June 1, 1995, Abu-Jamal's death warrant was signed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. Its execution was suspended while Abu-Jamal pursued state post-conviction review. At the post-conviction review hearings, new witnesses were called. William "Dales" Singletary testified that he saw the shooting, and that the gunman was the passenger in Cook's car. Singletary's account contained discrepancies which rendered it "not credible" in the opinion of the court.
The six judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled unanimously that all issues raised by Abu-Jamal, including the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, were without merit. The Supreme Court of the United States denied a petition for "certiorari" against that decision on October 4, 1999, enabling Ridge to sign a second death warrant on October 13, 1999. Its execution was stayed as Abu-Jamal began to seek federal "habeas corpus" review.
In 1999, Arnold Beverly claimed that he and an unnamed assailant, not Mumia Abu-Jamal, shot Daniel Faulkner as part of a contract killing because Faulkner was interfering with graft and payoff to corrupt police. As Abu-Jamal's defense team prepared another appeal in 2001, they were divided over use of the Beverly affidavit. Some thought it usable and others rejected Beverly's story as "not credible".
Private investigator George Newman claimed in 2001 that Chobert had recanted his testimony. Commentators noted that police and news photographs of the crime scene did not show Chobert's taxi, and that Cynthia White, the only witness at the original trial to testify to seeing the taxi, had previously provided crime scene descriptions that omitted it. Cynthia White was declared to be dead by the state of New Jersey in 1992, but Pamela Jenkins claimed that she saw White alive as late as 1997. The Free Mumia Coalition has claimed that White was a police informant and that she falsified her testimony against Abu-Jamal.