Black/New Afrikan Liberation

Veronza Bowers

Personal Background

Veronza Bowers Jr. is a former Black Panther Party member framed for the murder of a U.S. Park Ranger. He is being unjustly and arguably illegally held past his 30-year mandatory release date of April 7, 2004, making him one of the longest-held political prisoners in U.S. history.

Legal Case

Veronza was convicted in the murder of a U.S. Park Ranger on the word of two government informants, both of whom received reduced sentences for other crimes by the Federal prosecutor’s office.

Herman Bell

 

Personal Background

Herman Bell was born in Mississippi and moved to Brooklyn, New York as a boy. He was a talented High School football player and won a football scholarship to the University of California in Oakland. While in Oakland, Herman joined the Black Panther Party and became active around human rights issues in the Black community.

Zolo Azania

Personal Background

Zolo Azania is a former Black Panther convicted of a 1981 bank robbery that left a Gary, Indiana cop dead. He was arrested miles away from the incident as he was walking, unarmed, down the street.  After a trial plagued with injustices, Zolo was given the death penalty.  After years of campaigning and several orders to stop his execution, the death penalty sentence was finally dropped. Zolo still adamantly maintains innocence.

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Imam

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown, is a Black liberation leader who became known serving as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and late the Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party.

Early Life

Imam Jamil was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the late 1960s, he was known as H. Rap Brown. After Islam, he adopted the name Jamil Al-Amin.

Sundiata Acoli

Sundiata is a tireless worker for Black liberation, and once a prominent member of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party. After targeting by the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO operation, Sundiata continued the struggle underground. In 1973 he and two friends were stopped by New Jersey state troopers. One of his friends and one state trooper was killed during the incident. In a politically charged and biased trial, Sundiata was sentenced to life plus 30 years.

Personal Background

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia is an award-winning journalist and was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party chapter in Philadelphia, PA. He was a vocal supporter of the MOVE organization and has struggled for justice and human rights for people of color since he was at least 14 years old- the age when he joined the Party. He left the party to become a radio journalist where he made waves defending the rights of black and brown people. In 1981, he was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists Philadelphia Chapter.

Arrest

Angola 3

Forty-three years ago, deep in rural Louisiana, three young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation called Angola. Peaceful, non-violent protest in the form of hunger and work strikes organized by inmates caught the attention of Louisiana’s elected leaders and local media in the early 1970s.

Abdul Majid

In 1968, Abdul Majid joined the Black Panther Party, having been previously active with the Grass Roots Advisory Council. Abdul was involved in many of the community-based projects of the BPP including the free health clinic and free breakfast for children program.

Queens 2

As a direct result of their BPP membership and progressive political views, Bashir Hameed and Abdul Majid were hunted, captured, framed and convicted of the 1981 murder and attempted murder of two police officers in St. Albans, Queens.

On the night of April 1981, two NYPD officers were fired on by two suspects during a traffic stop. Police claim that the stop in connection with several burglaries, while they also claim the van was pulled over because of its connection to the liberation of Assata Shakur from a New Jersey prison.

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