Political activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 24, 1954. Born Wesley Cook, he took the name
Mumia (“Prince”) in high school while taking a class on African cultures. In
1971, he added Abu-Jamal (“father of Jamal”) after the birth of his first son,
Jamal. He has been married three times.
Abu-Jamal's first encounter with the police came when he was
14. He was beaten by a white Philadelphia police officer for disrupting a
“George Wallace for President” rally in 1968. Eventually he dropped out of high
school and joined the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. Jamal
was appointed BPP’s “Lieutenant of Information,” putting him in charge of the
organization’s media relations and placing him on the radar for surveillance by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He eventually earned his graduate
equivalency high school degree (GED) and briefly attended Goddard College in Vermont.
In 1975 Abu-Jamal began working for a series of radio stations, using his commentary on issues of the day to
advocate for social change. Due to his growing popularity he was elected
president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Despite his
popularity, Abu-Jamal was forced to take a second job as a taxi driver to
supplement his income.
Abu-Jamal became nationally prominent, however, when he was
arrested for the murder of Philadelphia policeman Daniel Faulkner. On
December 9, 1981, Faulkner was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop
involving Jamal’s brother, William Cook. During the scuffle between Faulkner
and Cook, Abu-Jamal also was shot and taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
He was treated and then arrested and charged with first-degree murder. In June
1982, Abu-Jamal was tried. Despite conflicting testimony from key
witnesses, Abu-Jamal was found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1994,
Abu-Jamal returned to radio once again as a commentator for Prison Radio and
for National Public Radio. His NPR commentaries were compiled in 1995 as part
of Live from Death Row, which resulted in Abu-Jamal’s punishment of solitary
confinement for engaging in entrepreneurship from prison.
In 1999, Arnold Beverly admitted that he and an unnamed
assailant, not Abu-Jamal, had shot Faulkner as part of a contracted killing
because the officer was interfering with graft and payoff to corrupt police.
Soon afterwards some prosecutors’ witnesses in the trial came forward and
admitted that they lied under oath. Abu-Jamal and his supporters pressed
for a new trial based on these recent developments. Their efforts
paid off in 2008 when a three-judge panel reopened the case. The panel
however chose to uphold the conviction, and Jamal is still in prison awaiting
the death penalty. Mumia Abu-Jamal still maintains his innocence, and many
people believe him, thus making him one of the most closely followed convicts
in the world.
Sources:
Daniel R. Williams, Executing Justice: An Inside Account of the Case of
Mumia Abu-Jamal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001); Mumia
Abu-Jamal and Noelle Hanrahan, All Things Censored (New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2000), Mumi Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life In The
Black Panther Party (Cambridge, Massachusettes: South End Press,
2004); Mumia Abu-Jamal and John Edgar Wideman, Live from Death Row (Reading,
MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995); “Mumia Abu-Jamal”, Contemporary Black
Biography, Vol. 15 (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1997).
Contributor:
- Patterson, Vanessa LeAnne
University of Washington,
Seattle
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