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A VOICE RAISED, A POWER EXPOSED
(Or, Why I've Decided To Write A Biography Of Mumia Abu-Jamal)
By Todd Steven Burroughs
(Author's Note: This column was written because of a request by Michael
Schiffmann, a German writer/activist who has written a forthcoming biography of
Mumia Abu-Jamal. He asked me to write an Op-Ed column for a white leftist
journal in Germany. The Op-Ed, Schiffmann said, should explain why I was
interested in writing about Mumia. I thought I'd share my answer with a larger
audience.)
It's not the symbol that attracts me so much to Mumia Abu-Jamal's life, but the reality.
The symbol -the romantic notion of the imprisoned Black radical activist, the "political prisoner"- easily smothers the man, obscuring the point.
Mumia as a modern-day Mandela? Nope, not to me. It's his work-the nature of it, the circumstances under which it's done, and its reaction-that's important to explore.
The first Mumia Abu-Jamal column I ever read was in a New York Black newspaper in 1994. The column caught my eye because it was a tribute to Joe Rainey, a Black radio broadcaster who was an important voice of Black Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s. Rainey had recently died. Mumia took the occasion to recall his brief time on Rainey's air as a teenage Black Panther Party member.
In my Black media studies, I had never heard of Rainey. And I didn't think I had ever heard of Mumia. (Years later, digging through piles of my junk -ah, I mean, my personal files- I would find a 1990 flyer discussing Mumia's case.) I had no idea this broadcaster and columnist was practicing print and broadcast journalism, by hand, from a Pennsylvania Death Row cell he has said is the size of a bathroom.
That changed as the year progressed. The Source, a national monthly periodical that calls itself "the magazine of hip-hop music, culture and politics," carried a feature on Mumia's case. I quoted the article in a column about him for a national Black newspaper wire service, and moved on.
But in 1995, the following year, Mumia was thrust into the international scene. Two events captured the media's attention in Europe and America. The book "Live From Death Row," his first, was published. His second first -a death sentence- quickly followed. Both deeds virtually started the "Free Mumia" movement and confirmed the course of my career.
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AS A YOUNG PERSON growing up in an urban area in the Northern part of the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, I consistently heard former "Black Power" supporters talk about the effect "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" had on their lives when it was first published in 1965.
I pretended to understand and relate.
During the years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush The First, many young Blacks unfortunately found current truths in Malcolm's long-uttered words. I was one of them. But although The Autobiography seemed to be about today, it was, in reality, more a defining part of yesterday. In my case, it was literally more high school book report topic than contemporary manifesto.
Then along came "Live From Death Row" and two tapes of Mumia's radio commentaries, all between the beginning of 1994 and the end of 1996.
The Prison Radio project, in cooperation with the Quixote Center, produced the tapes for possible broadcast on "All Things Considered," National Public Radio's afternoon newsmagazine program. (For the uninitiated, NPR, Mumia's former employer during his 1970s radio reporting days, is America's equivalent of the BBC.) At the last minute (after the network had already announced it!), NPR changed its mind. It refused to air the commentaries, saying that Mumia's case was too controversial to give him any forum. (For the record, Mumia never offered NPR a commentary about his case.) NPR vigorously denied it had caved to the national right-wing political firestorm that quickly flourished in the days between NPR's announcement and Mumia's aborted "All Things Considered" premiere.
But "Live From Death Row," published after the NPR controversy, was not negatively affected by the NPR debacle; it just received more publicity. The book came out for all to see and read.
I did.
I was affirmed, if not transformed. I began to understand what the "Black Power" Baby Boomers were talking about, a la The Autobiography.
I had found a book that, as a Black journalist in the mid-1990s, spoke directly to me-in content, in execution and in purpose.
Here was a talented Black journalist not practicing Black "objectivity"-defined, in my eyes, as the art of presenting (and negotiating) Black perspectives in ways that allow Black mainstream journalists to make rent and car payments. Here was someone who apparently did not worry about receiving acceptance from, and credibility with, America's powerful. Here was a Black writer who was clear, and not afraid to raise his voice in an undiluted way.
At the time, I was working on my third journalism degree-a Ph.D., with a research focus on Black journalism history. I had begun to accept that serious but pointed, angry Black advocacy print journalism would be found only in the microfilmed past. But with "Live From Death Row," I had finally found someone who used journalism in the way I thought oppressed people should. Today.
I gave away copies of the book. I read every Mumia column I could get my hands on. I played those first tapes over and over again.
I subconsciously (?) began to write like Mumia. A friend joked that I even began to try to sound like Mumia.
I began to keep a little file on this Death Row author. That file has now blossomed into a full file cabinet's worth of material.
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FAST FORWARD TO 2004. Four books, several book chapters, hundreds of columns, another (quickly halted) death sentence and about a half-dozen CDs later, Mumia is still writing. So am I.
I'm currently suffering through Draft One of my first book project: a critical, unauthorized biography of Mumia. Why?
Because his writing-his journalistic approach and philosophy-needs to be discussed and explained.
Because his generation's impact on Black American radio, from the 1970s until today, has only begun to be examined.
Because the very public attempts to silence him (in the home of the First Amendment, no less!) need to be documented.
And because all Leftists need to leave written, audiotaped or videotaped examples of their resistance-their dissent-to prove that it (and therefore, they) existed at all.
Mumia does a great job communicating his truths. He's done a much better job than I'll do telling his story. But more than 30 years after their deaths, biographies of Black Leftist martyrs George Jackson or Fred Hampton have yet to be written. I'll be damned if I don't at least try to produce a biography on Mumia.
I'm not on the frontlines trying to prove his innocence. Frankly, I still haven't decided if he is; his guilt, or lack thereof, is not my issue. He's a political prisoner of the First Amendment. That's all I need to know.
I see myself as a storyteller. His story needs to be told by those who care about (the tradition of) speaking truth to power. If nothing else, a close view of Mumia's life, his trial and his work show why it's necessary to raise our voices at all.
The reality of documenting America's current state-sanctioned and/or state-encouraged oppression, particularly the squashing of freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, is more important to me than any exercise in Leftist revolutionary symbolism. We have enough Che T-shirts, don't you think?
Copyright © 2004 by Todd Steven Burroughs
Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D. (tburroughs@jmail.umd.edu) is an independent researcher/writer based in Hyattsville, Md., USA. He is a primary author of Civil Rights Chronicle (Legacy), a history of the Civil Rights Movement, and a contributor to Putting The Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching (Teaching For Change/Poverty & Race Research Action Council), a K-12 teaching guide of the Civil Rights Movement.