Press your hand on the glass partition. The proud, Dread locked Black man on the other side lifts his shackled hands and touches the glass.

Shake hands with Mumia Abu Jamal at S.C.I. Huntingdon, in the hills of southern Pennsylvania. That’s how he received visitors when I met him there in the early ‘90s–through inch-thick glass, via a telephone. He would read several commentaries for radio broadcast. We would record with a crude microphone arrangement we had to improvise. The prison authorities did not want to accommodate him in any way. They did not want him publicizing his cause to supporters all around the world. They feel he’s a cop killer. Continue reading →

There is hardly one credible list of the Top 10 Black Leaders who’ve emerged in the 400 year history of the United States which does not include either Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali or both. Sadly, the name of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the mentor of both men, is usually missing from those same lists.

Most white people in America, find it hard to understand why Blacks still honor Brother Malcolm now, more than ever before even though in 1999 a U.S. postage stamp was issued in his honor. His family’s “slave name” was “Little,” but in Harlem’s after-hours street life, he was anointed “Detroit Red,” for his complexion, his reddish brown conked hair, his hometown.

In prison he was “resurrected from the dead,” as Brother Malcolm when he accepted the religion of Islam as taught by Mr. Muhammad. He earned the “X” in his name after passing a rigorous examination of Mr. Muhammad’s “Lessons.” he had to recite–with 100 percent accuracy–a list of 23 “Actual Facts” concerning the planet Earth, its astronomy, physics and geography, as well as a list of 10 questions and their answers called “Student Enrollment.”

The “X” symbolized the Blackman’s lost Muslim name and the mathematical term for the “unknown quantity.” It also symbolized rejection of the American culture. He was an “ex” American so-called Negro. Continue reading →

When I was attending San Jose State College with schoolmates Tommy Smith and John Carlos, Dr. Harry Edwards was an instructor, and the director of some type of “poverty program,” an “equal opportunity program.” He once told me when I asked for a job in his agency, that I was not qualified because I was “latent bourgeoisie.” I only recently figured out what he meant by that. Continue reading →