Mumia Abu-Jamal: Former Death Row Inmate and Social Activist

By Isaac Hwang | March 2024

Mumia Abu-Jamal was arguably the best-known death row inmate of the beginning of the 21st century, but his life within social movements was brief and fortuitous. 

Abu-Jamal began his life as Wesley Cook, only taking a more African name after a lesson in high school. He was involved in the Black Panther Party (BPP) for only two years as a teenager, but was investigated through the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. While his life in the BPP was short-lived, his controversial arrest, death sentence and his books in prison have made him an activist for Black rights and prison reform. His memoir, Death Blossoms, delves into a his upbringing and motivations for activism, while also presenting a collection of internal thoughts and feelings. 

Abu-Jamal was born on April 24, 1954, and grew up in North Philadelphia during the 60s and 70s. During this time, police commissioner Frank Rizzo was having a meteoric political rise, relying on a stance strong on law and order against radical Civil Rights organizations. Rizzo’s reign was marked by a worsening in relations between the Philadelphia Police Department and Philadelphia’s residents who were a majority Black. His administration in Philly could be characterized as systemic lawlessness with police officers having little oversight and Black residents being continually targeted (Abu-Jamal 2020:96). For Abu-Jamal, this overt oppression by a government ostensibly built on freedom and equality led to a crisis of the soul. 

While he had always had a religious upbringing, the oppression of fellow Black Americans and the systemic racism he saw in Philadelphia led to him searching for a moral compass through religion.  His mother was Southern Baptist and his father was Episcopal, but in spite of crediting his religious experience to teaching him the art of preaching and performance, Abu-Jamal did not appreciate the coldness and sterility of the sermons. Because neither religion was what he was seeking, he embarked on his own spiritual journey; being rejected from a synagogue, and being glared at during Catholic mass (Abu-Jamal 2020:12-20). 

His views on race relations were shaped by these beginning interactions at church. While the Bible preached acceptance and universal love, there was a Father at church keeping his half-Black heritage a secret: “A half-Black priest! Ashamed of his race? Priests who were glad that King was killed?” (Abu-Jamal 2020:21). While his search for his own religion continued after early adolescence, the universal acceptance of a God-like figure in all religions made Abu-Jamal believe that there was an existence of the greatest good (Abu-Jamal 2020:24). Abu-Jamal’s childhood experience with a corrupt and unjust government led to him being disillusioned with power and politics throughout his entire life. This disillusionment and his openness to religious beliefs in his search for universal good influenced his political beliefs and his later involvement with the BPP and MOVE. 

In addition to seeing the systemic racism by the Philadelphia police, he also recognized that the media was “in the hip pocket of big business,” because of how large corporations were owning supposedly impartial news organizations (Abu-Jamal 2020:96). Recognizing that multinational corporations control the news by controlling the flow of paychecks and money, Abu-Jamal became interested in seeking the truth through journalism. He dropped out of high school and became a short-term activist with the BPP. He became a founding member of the BPP Chapter in Philadelphia and was appointed the Lieutenant of Information, responsible for spreading the news about the party to the public through the BPP’s newspaper (Abu-Jamal 2020:126). 

After this brief stint, he started his own radio shows, criticizing the police department and Mayor Rizzo’s handling of MOVE. These first encounters with the organization helped set the foundation for his following of John Africa and MOVE later in life. Abu-Jamal became a prominent Black journalist in Philadelphia, eventually becoming the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Association of Black Journalists (Cox 2022). However, his increasingly radical viewpoints made him unpopular and unhireable, leading to him having to become a taxi driver. 

It was during a night shift that Abu-Jamal saw his brother, William Cook, be pulled over by a police officer. Abu-Jamal went over to his brother and witnessed a highly contested altercation that ended with the police officer being shot and killed and Abu-Jamal also being shot and wounded. The prosecution relied on eye-witness testimony and conflicting ballistics reports by experts. There were claims by Abu-Jamal that he was tortured by the police before receiving medical attention after he was arrested (Cox 2022). Abu-Jamal and Amnesty International both claim that the trial was a violation of his rights to effective counsel due to the ineffectiveness of the state-appointed defense attorney. Abu-Jamal recounts that his own lawyer believed he was ineffective: “He later got up at a hearing and said ‘I was ineffective.’” (Abu-Jamal 2020:142). Despite the gross mistrial, Abu-Jamal was convicted of the murder of the police officer and sentenced to death on July 3, 1982, which became a life sentence in prison in 2011 after numerous appeals.

During his time as an activist in both the BPP and MOVE, Abu-Jamal contended with the idea of reform versus revolution but his experiences with the status quo propelled him into a more radicalized revolutionary. When viewing Christianity, he turned to its historical uses for oppression by white people. The U.S. was a nation founded on Christianity, where missionaries had used religion to subjugate natives and plantation owners had used Christianity to control their enslaved peoples (Abu-Jamal 2020:49). Abu-Jamal references white politicians paying Black preachers to encourage not voting in their congregations (Abu-Jamal 2020:55-56). While searching for meaning in religion, even the status quo of Christianity was tainted and needed revolution, not reform. Much in the same way, America needed revolution and not reform. 

The very foundation of the U.S., the Constitution, did not enumerate equal rights for everyone: “Africans were perceived as three-fifths of a person.” (Abu-Jamal 2020:140). If the foundation of the country treats Black Americans differently than white Americans, as less than people, then there can be no reform for that. While the country acts like it is founded on equality through legislative reform, it cannot change its tainted history and the system it has built. As Luxembourg argues, there can be no legislative reform for changing the entire system if the de facto system is not enumerated by law (Luxembourg 1900:63). The  segregation that occurs and the disproportionate imprisonment of Black men is not law, but a result of the unequal system upon which America is built. Furthermore, because of America’s foundation on materialism and inequality through capitalism, materialism in all aspects permeates how everyone lives, not just the upper class. Everyone, “rape[s] our Mother, Earth, for new toys to play with,” while giving no regard for the future and the lives of all living things (Abu-Jamal 2020:33). The capitalistic system does not rely on “acquired rights” but on the different classes built on economic relationships, such as argued by Luxembourg during the struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeois in the 1900s (Luxembourg 1900:63). The unequal system cannot produce a society that gives Black Americans and the poor workers better rights because those in power will maintain their power barring revolution. 

Reform relies on changing the current system, but to Abu-Jamal, the system upon which the nation is built was tainted with the blood of the oppressed and the blood of nature. He believed that the country needed change and to Abu-Jamal, “revolution means transformation; it means change.” (Abu-Jamal 2020:129). Change only occurs through revolution; American colonists went to war for their independence, Black enslaved peoples were freed from chattel slavery after the Civil War, and MLK and Malcolm X relied on the idea of revolution to gain equal rights for Black Americans (Abu-Jamal 2020:130). 

MOVE was an organization started by John Africa that believed in rejecting the social order and living in harmony with nature. MOVE activists believed that the system was created to oppress the poor and needy and that the universal good was to reject the constructs of society and live in harmony with nature by reverting to a pre-technological form of life (Abu-Jamal 2020:112-113). 

Abu-Jamal pairs his revolutionary ideas of Black American society with Marxist views on working-class struggles. In his memoir, Abu-Jamal emphasizes the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act passed by Bill Clinton as being a welfare destruction bill. To appease the bourgeois, Clinton, someone from poverty himself, passed a reform bill that reduced the number of welfare recipients and put a limit to the amount of welfare that someone could receive. Abu-Jamal believed this was passed because a fearful workforce is a dutiful workforce. The higher the unemployment is, the more diligently workers will work and the more profit that will be generated for the bourgeois. This class struggle is very reminiscent of Marx and Engels's beliefs that the owners of the means of production will always be in conflict with the working class and attempt to subjugate them using their political power. Abu-Jamal believes that Wall Street, “the power centers of capital,” dictates political actions that are a detriment to the average American citizen (Abu-Jamal 2020:117). While those relying on Marxist ideas generally agree on the class conflict, there are many schools of thought on the re-imagined system post-revolution. Abu-Jamal believes in the teachings of John Africa and MOVE. To restructure society, he believes that all life is sacred and that nothing should be exploited for profit. MOVE lived communally in Philadelphia, supporting themselves through having a neighborhood car wash and doing yard work. Everyone worked together and shared everything in the MOVE houses. Abu-Jamal believes that a society that is in harmony with nature and does not indulge in abusing land and animals is one in which everyone is equal and everything is shared (Abu-Jamal 2020:135). 

Abu-Jamal became entrenched in the idea of revolution over reform after he viewed the corruption and harm done by the American system. The foundations of the country were based on inequality and used Christianity as a justification for it. MOVE was a way of integrating Marxist ideas of a revolution against the class system into a harmonious life with nature and animals. 

Abu-Jamal’s memoir, Death Blossoms, was a series of short essays highlighting some key moments of his life such as his introduction to religion, his death sentence and short poems about slavery and Christ. While it was not entirely autobiographical, it showed the author’s inner thoughts more than his personal life. Abu-Jamal was not a largely active member of the Black Panther movement, making him a difficult activist to study, but his coverage of the MOVE bombings in Philadelphia highlighted the overstepping of government during this time. The memoir style of this book highlights how key moments in our upbringing can lead us down the path to certain forms of activism and certain ideological viewpoints. Abu-Jamal’s openness to religion and his hometown policing policies eventually led him to MOVE as his faith and movement. Had it not been for his passion for independent unbiased journalism he would not have become part of the BPP nor have become a journalist. I believe that Abu-Jamal could have covered some key moments of his life that were left out of the memoir such as his reaction and reporting when the MOVE house was bombed in 1985 and the events leading up to his arrest and conviction. Each page in this book was an inner look into who Abu-Jamal was as a person before prison and after. It's a deeper connection than an autobiography could have created and it has changed my views on my own life experiences. 

References

1. Abu-Jamal, Mumia. 2020. Death Blossoms, San Francisco, CA: City Lights

2. Cox, A. K. 2022. Mumia Abu-Jamal. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved Apr. 2, 2023 (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mumia-Abu-Jamal)

3. Luxembourg, Rosa. 1900. Reform or Revolution?, Paris, FR: Foreign Languages Press