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Live from Death Row Paperback – June 1, 1996
| John Edgar Wideman (Introduction) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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"A rare and courageous voice speaking from a place we fear to know: Mumia Abu-Jamal must be heard." —Alice Walker
"Resonates with the moral force of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail." –Boston Globe
After twenty years on death row, Mumia Abu-Jamal was released from his death sentence . . . but not the conviction. This once prominent radio reporter was convicted for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1982, after a trial many have criticized as profoundly biased. Live from Death Row is a collection of his prison writings—an impassioned yet unflinching account of the brutalities and humiliations of prison life, and a scathing indictment of racism and political bias in the American judicial system.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateJune 1, 1996
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100380727668
- ISBN-13978-0380727667
- Lexile measure1290L
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A tough, true, timely book. You cannot read it and remain unmoved." -- E.L. Doctorow
"An important book [that] takes us into the bowels of hell...Abu-Jamal offers expert and well-reasoned commentary on the justice system...His writings are dangerous." -- Village Voice
"Brilliant in its specificity and imperative, Mumia Abu-Jamal's work is about why multitudes of people don't overcome. It rings so true because he has not overcome." -- LA Weekly
"Resonates with the moral force of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail." -- Boston Globe
"We aren't supposed to feel connected with people 'inside'—least of all those on Death Row. Mumia Abu-Jamal's eloquent, scholarly, urgent dispatches teach us that we ignore those connections at our own peril." -- Adrienne Rich
"Abu-Jamal is an articulate voice at the far side of this country's great racial divide. . . . In this decade when building prisons and increasing the use of the death penalty have become popular responses to crime, Abu-Jamal's perspective is worth reading." -- Philadelphia Inquirer
"A scathing indictment of this country's justice system from a man about to receive it's ultimate punishment. . . . He has become one of America's most controversial and eloquent death row prisoners." -- New York Daily News
"Presents a bracing challenge to complacent views about crime, race, and incarceration." -- Publishers Weekly
"Documents the maddening psychological and physical torment of a life awaiting execution inside Huntingdon County Prison. . . . His words shock in a raw, disturbing style." -- Boston Globe
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Before his conviction, Mumia Abu-Jamal covered community development and culture as a radio reporter in Philadelphia and was president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Once a Black Panther, his writings have been published in The Nation and The Yale Law Review. He is the author of the books All Things Considered, Death Blossoms, and Faith of Our Fathers. In August 1995 he was granted a stay of execution, and his appeal for a new trial is currently pending.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Teetering on the brink between life and death
For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
--ALBERT CAMUS
"Yard in!"
The last yard of the day is finally called. "Capitals! Fourth, fifth, and sixth tier--YARD UP!" the corpulent correctional officer bellows, his rural accent alien to the urban ear.
One by one, cells are unlocked for the daily trek from cell to cage. Each man is pat-searched by guards armed with batons and then scanned by a metal detector.
Once the inmates are encaged, the midsummer sky rumbles, its dark clouds swell, pregnant with power and water. A bespectacled white-shirt turns his pale face skyward, examining nature's quickening portent. The rumbles grow louder as drops of rain sail earthward, splattering steel, brick, and human.
"Yard in!" the white-shirt yells, sparking murmurs of resentment among the men.
"Yard in?! Shit, man, we just got out here!"
The guards adopt a cajoling, rather than threatening, attitude. "C'mon, fellas--yard in, yard in. Ya know we can't leave y'uns out here when it gits to thunderin' an' lightnin'."
"Oh, why not? Y'all 'fraid we gonna get our-self electrocuted?" a prisoner asks.
"Ain't that a bitch?" another adds. "They must be afraid that if we do get electrocuted by lightnin', they won't have no jobs and won't get paid!"
A few guffaws, and the trail from cage to cell thickens.
Although usually two hours long, today's yard barely lasts ten minutes, for fear that those condemned to death by the state may perish, instead, by fate.
For approximately twenty-four hundred people locked in state and federal prisons, life is unlike that in any other institution. These are America's condemned, who bear a stigma far worse than "prisoner." These are America's death row residents: men and women who walk the razor's edge between halflife and certain death in thirty-four states or under the jurisdiction of the United States. The largest death row stands in Texas (324 people: 120 African-Americans, 144 whites, 52 Hispanics, 4 Native Americans, and 4 Asian-Americans); the smallest are in Connecticut (2 whites), New Mexico (1 Native American, 1 white), and Wyoming (2 whites).
You will find a blacker world on death row than anywhere else. African-Americans, a mere 11 percent of the national population, compose about 40 percent of the death row population. There, too, you will find this writer.
Control
It is from Pennsylvania's largest death row at the State Correctional Institute at Huntingdon, in rural south-central Pennsylvania, that I write. In the Commonwealth I am but one of 123 persons who await death. I have lived in this barren domain of death since the summer of 1983. For several years now I have been assigned DC (disciplinary custody) status for daring to abide by my faith, the teachings of John Africa, and, in particular, for refusing to cut my hair.* For this I have been denied family phone calls, and on occasion I have been shackled for refusing to violate my beliefs.
Life here oscillates between the banal and the bizarre.
Unlike other prisoners, death row inmates are not "doing time." Freedom does not shine at the end of the tunnel. Rather, the end of the tunnel brings extinction. Thus, for many here, there is no hope.
As in any massive, quasi-military organization, reality on the row is regimented by rule and regulation. As against any regime imposed on human personality, there is resistance, but far less than one might expect. For the most part, death row prisoners are the best behaved and least disruptive of all inmates. It also is true, however, that we have little opportunity to be otherwise, given that many death units operate on the " 22 + 2" system: 22 hours locked in cell, followed by 2 hours of recreation out of cell. Outdoor recreation takes place in a cage, ringed with double-edged razor wire-the "dog pen."
All death rows share a central goal: "human storage" in an "austere world in which condemned prisoners are treated as bodies kept alive to be killed."
Pennsylvania's death row regime is among America's most restrictive, rivaling the infamous San Quentin death unit for the intensity and duration of restriction. A few states allow four, six, or even eight hours out of cell, prison employment, or even access to educational programs. Not so in the Keystone State.
Here one has little or no psychological life. Here many escape death's omnipresent specter only by way of common diversions-television, radio, or sports. TVs are allowed, but not typewriters: one's energies may be expended freely on entertainment, but a tool essential for one's liberation through judicial process is deemed a security risk.
One inmate, more interested in his life than his entertainment, argued forcefully with prison administrators for permission to buy a nonimpact, nonmetallic, battery-operated typewriter. Predictably, permission was denied for security reasons. "Well, what do y'all consider a thirteen-inch piece of glass?" the prisoner asked. "Ain't that a security risk?"
"Where do you think you'll get that from?" the prison official demanded.
"From my TV!"
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Perennial (June 1, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0380727668
- ISBN-13 : 978-0380727667
- Lexile measure : 1290L
- Item Weight : 6.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.5 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #28,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Security How-to & Home Improvement
- #7 in Forensic Science Law
- #11 in Disaster Relief (Books)
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My fortune was to hear about this brother's plight surrounding wrongful internment. As my reading is full, I purchase in support and to surround my library with sources, in my belief or hope, that will best progress my understanding, from first person narratives.
If a companion is possible, considering I have only read a few news posts surrounding Mumia Abu-Jamal's life struggle, I suggest MalcomX, Black Like Me, There is a River by Vincent Harding, Major General Smedley Darling Butler....
Paper waste? I think not!
Donald T. Coughlin
By barbara hyde on July 23, 2015






