Mumia Abu-Jamal's Continuing Resistance-This Time, In The Black Spiritual Realm
Faith Of Our Fathers: An Examination
Of The Spiritual Life of African And African-American People.
By Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Africa World Press.
180 pages. $19.95.
Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs
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Faith is extremely important to Mumia Abu-Jamal, a death row inmate in Waynesburg, Pa. As a teenager, it was his faith in a people's resistance that made the Philadelphia resident, who was born with the name Wesley Cook, put down his beloved Spider-Man comicbooks and pick up the literature of the Black Panther Party. Abu-Jamal became a member of the BPP's Philadelphia branch. It was his faith in education that led him to Goddard College, then to the radio as a Philadelphia newscaster and news reporter. It was his faith in the teachings of the MOVE Organization that led him to become a supporter. It was his faith in family that caused him to charge into the justice system when his brother, William Cook, was being beaten by a white Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner in 1981. Shots were fired. Both Abu-Jamal and Faulkner were hit. Faulkner died. Abu-Jamal was convicted of Faulkner's murder in 1982. But the former Black Panther has never lost faith that he will one day receive a new trial. So he writes letters and Op-Ed pieces, records radio commentaries and commencement addresses, and compiles three anthologies of his articles.
Faith Of Our Fathers, Abu-Jamal's latest book, is his first full narrative work-his first published attempt at sustained, narrative scholarship. (The book's title comes from "Of The Faith Of The Fathers," a chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois' classic essay collection The Souls Of Black Folk, published 100 years ago this year.) It traces the collective African and African-American spiritual life during the last 400 years from cultural and historical perspectives in a simple but nuanced discussion of white supremacy and Black resistance. For example, he writes that for Blacks in America, achieving emancipation after the Civil War "was not so much the work of man as it was the work of God, as in a divine replication of the well-known biblical tale of the freedom of the children of Israel from a hard-hearted Pharaoh. In this connection, Black folk were God's chosen, and America was the powerful, yet power-drunk empire of Egypt."
Abu-Jamal discusses the difference in the spiritual life of enslaved Africans in America, whose names of their African gods were discarded, and enslaved Africans in the Diaspora-Haiti, Cuba and Brazil-who were allowed to keep their gods' names. The latter cases, he writes, took African spirituality and married it to Catholic "faces." In both instances, Africans in the New World adapted to a "new" (and subsequently transformed) religion in Western Christianity.
The Death Row journalist emphasizes that Blacks just didn't accept "white" Christianity; they took it and re-interpreted it for their own ends, using their "genius" in hiding or transforming religion. Black religion, argues Abu-Jamal, is not based on traditional Christian theology and church structures, but as a means of struggle against white oppression. He discusses two strategies that Blacks used to deal with the contradiction of its adoption of "white" Christianity: embracing it ("historical consistency") and rejecting it ("spiritual purism"). The former includes the African Orthodox Church, which was founded by Marcus Garvey as part of his Universal Negro Improvement Association. The latter includes Rastafarianism and the Moorish Science Temple. Abu-Jamal sees the Nation of Islam as the spiritual child of the UNIA church and the Moorish Science Temple.
Abu-Jamal revisits all of the common themes of an African-American cultural history book, such as the double meaning of Negro spirituals and other "coded" messages within Black music, and the relation between the sacred and the secular in the Black music tradition and the politics surrounding such production.
The book is not flawless. There are too many block quotes (a typical element of the work of beginning scholars, including this reviewer), and an inappropriate footnote on the number of members of the Nation of Islam-a Malcolm X quote about how those who know don't say, and vice-versa. These style deviations will not add to the book's credibility within the academy.
Such concerns will probably not bother Abu-Jamal, whose credibility as an activist/writer has not come traditionally from centers of power. In this small but concentrated book, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who will turn 50 next April, does here what he does in his columns and broadcast commentaries: he charts, explains, and cheers on the resistance of the oppressed against oppression. Faith Of Our Fathers is a fine first attempt of the latest stage of Abu-Jamal's own transformations from teenage Black Panther Party propagandist to "twentysomething" radio newscaster to death row columnist to author, and now, scholar. All the while, Abu-Jamal continues to believe in liberation-for himself, for all other African people, and for the oppressed everywhere.
Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D., is a freelance researcher and writer based in Hyattsville, Md. He is writing a journalistic biography of Abu-Jamal. He can be reached by emailing tburroughs@jmail.umd.edu.