MUMIA ABU-JAMAL TEACH-IN
Last Revised: 4/30/99
An excerpt from:
Live from Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal
New York: Avon Books, 1995
Preface
Don't tell me about the valley of the shadow of death. I live there. In south-central Pennsylvania's Huntingdon County a one-hundred-year-old prison stands, its Gothic towers projecting an air of foreboding, evoking a gloomy mood of the Dark Ages. I and some seventy-eight other men spend about twenty-two hours a day in six- by ten-foot cells.(1) The additional two hours may be spent outdoors, in a chainlink-fenced box, ringed by concertina razor wire, under the gaze of gun turrets.
Welcome to Pennsylvania's death row.
I'm a bit stunned. Several years ago the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed my conviction and sentence of death, by a vote of four justices (three did not participate). As a black journalist who was a Black Panther way back in my yon teens, I've often studied America's long history of legal lynchings of Africans. I remember a front page of the Black Panther newspaper, bearing the quote "A black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect," attributed to U.S. Supreme Court chief justice Roger Taney, of the infamous Dred Scott case,(2) where America's highest court held that neither Africans nor their "free" descendants are entitled to the rights of the Constitution. Deep, huh? It's true.
Perhaps I'm naive, maybe I'm just stupid-but I thought the law would be followed in my case, and the conviction reversed. Really.
Even in the face of the brutal Philadelphia MOVE' massacre of May 13, 1985, that led to Ramona Africa's frame-up, Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Clement Lloyd, Allan Blanchard, and countless other police slaughters of blacks from New York to Miami, with impunity, my faith remained. Even in the face of this relentless wave of antiblack state terror, I thought my appeals would be successful. I still harbored a belief in U.S. law, and the realization that my appeal had been denied was a shocker. I could understand intellectually that American courts are reservoirs of racist sentiment and have historically been hostile to black defendants, but a lifetime of propaganda about American "justice" is hard to shrug off.
I need but look across the nation, where, as of December 1994, blacks constituted some 40 percent of men on death row,(3) or across Pennsylvania, where, as of December 1994, 111 of 184 men on death rowover 60 percent-are black, to see the truth, a truth hidden under black robes(4) and promises of equal rights. Blacks constitute just over 9 percent of Pennsylvania's population and just under 11 percent of America's.(5)
As I said, it's hard to shrug off, but maybe we can do it together. How? Try out this quote I saw in a 1982 law book, by a prominent Philadelphia lawyer named David Kairys: "Law is simply politics by other means."(6) Such a line goes far to explain how courts really function, whether today, or 138 years ago in the Scott case. It ain't about "law," it's about "politics" by "other means." Now, ain't that the truth?
I continue to fight against this unjust sentence and conviction. Perhaps we can shrug off and shred some of the dangerous myths laid on our minds like a second skin-such as the "right" to a fair and impartial jury of our peers; the "right" to represent oneself; the "right" to a fair trial, even. They're not rights - they're privileges of the powerful and rich. For the powerless and the poor, they are chimeras that vanish once one reaches out to claim them as something real or substantial. Don't expect the media networks to tell you, for they can't, because of the incestuousness between the media and the government, and big business, which they both serve.
I can.
Even if I must do so from the valley of the shadow of death, I will.
From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
December 1994
Note: In December 1994 the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections began transferring death row inmates to SCI Greene County, a new supermaximum (or control unit) prison which is expected to house the vast majority of Pennsylvania death row inmates. Mumia was transferred there on January 13, 1995.
1.Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Persons in the State Correctional System Sentenced to Execution as of December 20, 1994.
2.Dred Scott v. Sanford 19 U.S. (How.) 393, 407,15 L. Ed. 691 (1857). "'The MOVE organization surfaced in Philadelphia during the early 70's. Characterized by dreadlock hair, the adopted surname 'Africa,' a principled unity, and an uncompromising commitment to their belief. Members practice the teachings of MOVE founder John Africa.'' From Twenty Years on a Move.
3.Death Row USA, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Fall 1994.
4.Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Persons in the State Correctional System sentenced to Execution as of December 20, 1994.
5.Census Profile Race and Hispanic Origin. Profile No. 2, June 1991. Bureau of Census, U.S. Department.
6.D. Kairys, Legal Reasoning in Politics of Law, D. Kairys, ed. 1982 24 16-17. From Foley, M.A., Critical Legal Studies 91 Dickinson Law Review 467, at 473 (Winter 1986).
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