Jennifer Black holds a PhD in Comparative Studies from The Ohio State University where she taught for 12 years. Her research focuses on high-risk activism, state terror, criminal injustice, mass incarceration, and social movement theory. Black hails from a background in both academia and activism and has been collaborating on these two fronts with Abu-Jamal since 1993. She is based in State College, PA.

AN ANTI-PRISON READER

Edited by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black

ANNOTATED TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction Chapter 1: Oney Judge, Response to George and Martha Washington, Her Enslavers

Oney Judge’s successful self-emancipation and succinct response to her enslavers reflect a profound understanding of the importance of autonomy and self-determination in the fight for freedom.

Bio: Oney Judge was born into servitude in 1774 at George and Martha Washington’s plantation in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Her mother was an enslaved seamstress and her father was a white Englishman. Oney self-emancipated at age 22. In 1848, she died a free woman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Chapter 2: Nat Turner’s Confession

Nat Turner’s stark reflection outlines the circumstances and foundational inequities that inspired him to execute a massive insurrection against slavery.

Bio: Nat Turner lived and died in the state of Virginia from 1800 to 1831. Despite being enslaved, Turner learned how to read and write from the son of one of his masters. At 21 years old, Turner escaped slavery and remained at large for a month before voluntarily returning after receiving a religious sign. He spent the next 10 years planning the largest and bloodiest three-day slave revolt in United States history. He was apprehended and hanged for his role in the uprising.

Chapter 3: John Brown Letter

In his final letter to his family before his death, John Brown comforts his loved ones and remains steadfast in his view that the lengths he went to end slavery were justified.

Bio: John Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800 to an anti-slavery religious family. A conductor on the Underground Railroad, Brown founded the League of Gileadites, an organization that aided self-emancipated people on their path to Canada. In 1959, following an unsuccessful raid on Harpers Ferry in what is now West Virginia, Brown was caught, tried, and executed for inciting a slave insurrection and other crimes.

Chapter 4: Frederick Douglass, “The Run-Away Plot” from My Bondage and My Freedom

Frederick Douglass details the excruciating psychological torture of slavery, and the terrifying circumstances of being apprehended and imprisoned for trying to escape to freedom.

Bio: Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. When he was 20 years old, he successfully self-emancipated by obtaining false papers that allowed him to pose as a free Black sailor. He made his way to Philadelphia, where he was met by abolitionist friends who helped him reach New York. A towering figure in the abolitionist movement, Douglass was a brilliant orator, writer, thinker, organizer, and statesman. In 1895, he died in Washington, D.C.

Chapter 5: Crazy Horse Speech

While dying, Crazy Horse reflects that his only crime was being an Indian and living like one.

Bio: Crazy Horse was a legendary warrior and leader of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He fought against the US government’s attempts to displace and subjugate Native people and is best known for fighting in the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn. Crazy Horse was mortally wounded by bayonet when he allegedly resisted imprisonment at Camp Robinson. It is said that he never signed a treaty.

Chapter 6: Eugene Debs, “Prison Labor, Its Effect on Industry and Trade”

Eugene Debs analyzes why prison labor emboldens and supports prison profiteers while it impoverishes and weakens its workers.

Bio: Born in 1855, Debs began working at age 14, scrubbing paint and grease off railroad cars for 50 cents a day. Debs became a socialist after observing the two-party system’s ruthless support of industrial interests. Imprisoned twice for his political activities, his final campaign for presidency was conducted from a jail cell. Although no known recording of Debs’ voice exists, his oratory powers were said to be legendary. He died in 1926.

Chapter 7: Geronimo, “In Prison and on the Warpath” from Geronimo’s Story of His Life

Geronimo describes being displaced by the United States and the role of incarceration and confinement in the process of settler-colonialism.

Bio: Geronimo was estimated to be born in 1829 in present-day Arizona. A member of the Chiricahua Apache people, he gained esteem fighting against both Mexico and the United States. Known by his supporters as a warrior and medicine man, he was believed to have supernatural powers of healing, time manipulation, weather control, and prescience. Forcibly restricted to the San Carlos Reservation, Geronimo and his supporters escaped three separate times before they finally surrendered. He was the last Indian leader to formally surrender to the United States military and spent the final 23 years of his life as a prisoner of war. He died of pneumonia in 1909.

Chapter 8: Mother Jones, “Early Years,” “The Haymarket Tragedy,” and “In Rockefeller’s Prison,” from Autobiography of Mother Jones

Mother Jones’s narration of her life story highlights the circumstances that led to the rise of workers’ struggles in the United States and the roles of state terror and incarceration as methods of social control.

Bio: Known best as “Mother Jones,” Maåy Harris Jones was born in Ireland in 1837 and immigrated to Canada with her family to escape famine. A fiery orator and storyteller, she utilized dramatic speech and street theater to draw attention to the gap between obscene wealth and devastating poverty. Mother Jones was at one point considered the most dangerous woman in America. She died in 1930.

Chapter 9: Nicola Sacco Letter

Nicola Sacco’s final letter implores his teenage son to choose solidarity and love in the face of terror and viciousness.

Bio: Nicola Sacco emigrated to the United States from Italy when he was 17, where he became an active member of an anarchist group. In 1920, Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were charged with the murder of a paymaster and a guard during a robbery at a shoe factory. Their trial became an international cause célèbre, as many believed that there was no concrete evidence against them and that they were soley persecuted for their political beliefs. Despite widespread protests and appeals, they were convicted and sentenced to death in 1921.

Chapter 10: Angelo Herndon, “You Cannot Kill the Working Class”

Angelo Herndon uses his life story to illustrate how the legacy of slavery contributes to contemporary inequality, and calls upon workers to unite together against racism and capitalism.

Bio: Born in 1913 in Ohio, Angelo Herndon was a Black labor organizer, Communist Party member, and civil rights activist. As a 13-year-old laborer in a coal mine, his experience of poor working conditions influenced his decision to join the Young Communist League USA in 1930. In July 1932, he was arrested for organizing a march to Georgia’s state capitol to petition for unemployment insurance. His crime of “inciting an insurrection” was based on a rarely invoked 1861 Georgia state law intended to prevent slave revolts. Convicted and sentenced to 18 to 20 years in a chain gang, Herndon’s case highlights the racial and political tensions in the South, and the challenges to the rights of free speech. He died in 1997.

Chapter 11: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Letters

The human cost of political persecution is revealed in this set of personal letters sent between Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and their peers.

Bios: Ethel Greenglass was born in the state of New York in 1915. Julius Rosenberg was born three years later. Active members of the Communist Party, they married in 1939. Arrested in 1950, the couple was accused of turning over military secrets about the atomic bomb and nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union’s vice-consul. Despite an international campaign to free them, they were incarcerated for three years and then executed. The Rosenberg’s were the first American civilians to receive the death penalty for the crime of conspiracy to commit espionage.

Chapter 12: Malcolm X, “Saved” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X describes his extraordinary self-education in prison and reveals that the study of history transformed the course of his life.

Bio: Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. Following a jailhouse conversion to Islam, he was later referred to as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Malcom X was a remarkable orator and dedicated his life to studying history, organizing, preaching, and confronting white supremacy. At 39 years old, Malcolm X died from a hail of bullets in the Audubon Ballroom, in Washington Heights, New York. His work remains an inspiration to Black liberation movements around the world.

Chapter 13: George Jackson, Jail Letters, and excerpt from Blood in My Eye

George Jackson’s letters from jail demonstrate his personal view of his plight in the scope of historical circumstances, and outline the ways the anti-prison movement is connected to all movements for social justice.

Bio: George Jackson’s life began in Chicago in 1941 and ended in San Quentin Prison in 1971. One of five children, Jackson spent time in juvenile corrections for various charges. At the age of 18, Jackson was given an indeterminate “one year to life” sentence for stealing [...] from a gas station. Jackson was politicized by other prisoners and read voraciously, dedicating himself to revolutionary studies. In 1971, Jackson was shot and killed by prison guards who claimed he was trying to escape. His writings and life story have become foundational to the development of anti-prison theory.

Chapter 14: Angela Davis, 1971 Jail Letter and “Beneath the Mountain” Victory Speech...