by Linn Washington 

Providence, RI – The decades-long efforts to erode U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal’s public credibility recently sustained a substantial setback at an unlikely location: an Ivy League university.

Brown University, the Ivy League institution located in Providence, Rhode Island, opened a unique exhibition on September 28, 2023, at its John Hay Library that features the life’s works of Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia-born journalist now serving a life-without-parole sentence.

Abu-Jamal Exhibition at John Hay Library. LBW Photo

Abu-Jamal spent over 40 years inside Pennsylvania prison cells due to his controversial 1982 conviction for fatally shooting a Philadelphia policeman.

From inside death row isolation cells, Abu-Jamal wrote over a half dozen books, penned thousands of perceptive commentaries, graduated college, obtained a master’s degree, gained a paralegal certificate, wrote poems, authored sheet music, created artworks, and learned three foreign languages.

Last year, Brown University’s John Hay Library obtained thousands of items Abu-Jamal had accumulated, mainly during 25+ years on Death Row, including legal documents, personal correspondences, visitor logs, artwork, and even a broken pair of glasses.

Of long-term importance, the Hay Library is digitizing items in its Abu-Jamal collection so scholars, students, and others can access the items.

Having these items in that Library’s permanent collection, plus making them readily available to the public through the World Wide Web, elevates the availability of information about the struggles for justice for Abu-Jamal, who is arguably the most recognized and respected inmate in the world.

“Having this Ivy League pedigree signals to the world to study [Abu-Jamal] not just as a ‘cop killer’ but as a human being,” Dr. Todd Steven Burroughs, a consultant on the Hay Library’s Abu-Jamal Exhibition, said.

Dr. Burroughs studied Abu-Jamal’s journalism, activism, and life for nearly thirty years, said, “If anyone doubts [Abu-Jamal] is not a world-historical figure, they need to come to see this Exhibition during the next year.”

That Abu-Jamal exhibition includes an unusual, imposing item that sits in the middle of one of the Exhibition’s rooms inside the Hay Library. 

That item is a full-sized replica of a death row prison cell, complete with a mounted bunk, a metal table, a chair, and the combined metal toilet-sink unit. The replica contains a window to enable looking inside the cell. (Prison cells do not have such windows.)

Replica of death row cell with window to peer inside. 

Abu-Jamal’s incarceration includes over 25 years living inside a 6×9-foot Death Row cell, under persistent threat of execution.

Court rulings that changed Abu-Jamal’s death sentence into life in prison without parole have consistently rejected conclusive evidence of his innocence. Those judicial rejections of factual evidence of innocence plus dismissal of violations of Abu-Jamal’s legal rights are key components driving many worldwide to deem him a political prisoner.

The volume of writings Abu-Jamal completed while on Death Row shows the strength of Abu-Jamal’s spirit and his power to create, Dr. Christopher West, Curator for the Black Diaspora at the John Hay Library, said during remarks at the formal opening of the Abu-Jamal exhibition. (Abu-Jamal’s creative output while on Death Row far exceeded the output of most non-incarcerated journalists during a comparable period.)

For Dr. West, American society must recognize the “inhumanity of putting thousands of people into” solitary confinement, where inmates spend 22 hours per day locked, isolated, in small cells for years. West referenced this penal practice as not the best way for “a society to operate.”

The exhibition’s opening– “Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Portrait of Mass Incarceration” – was part of a three-day symposium on mass incarceration at Brown. The Abu-Jamal collection is a focal point of a new archive at the John Hay Library containing papers of incarcerated persons.

Amanda Strauss, Director of the John Hay Library, stressed the importance of the new incarcerated persons archive during her remarks at the opening of the Abu-Jamal Exhibition.

“We have to tell the story of those who have been voiceless,” Strauss said.

Interestingly, Abu-Jamal earned the title ‘Voice of the Voiceless’ during his journalism work before incarceration due to his coverage of the poor and powerless, whose concerns were consistently excluded from most news media attention.

Brown University alum Dr. Johanna Fernandez, a history professor in NYC and a leading activist for Abu-Jamal’s release, donated the 97 boxes of Abu-Jamal items to Brown in 2022.

The night before the Exhibition’s formal opening, Fernandez participated in a panel discussion about Abu-Jamal and mass incarceration along with iconic activist/scholar Angela Davis and human rights/Abu-Jamal activist in France, Julia Wright, who appeared via Zoom from Paris. Wright’s father is the late, fabled African-American author Richard Wright.

Sophie Butcher, a senior at Brown from Australia who worked on the Hay Library’s Abu-Jamal project, described her experience as “living inside Mumia’s head.” Butcher said working on this project convinced her that Abu-Jamal is a “brilliant man.” Butcher said she was awed when she finally heard Abu-Jamal’s live voice for the first time when he phoned into that panel event with Fernandez and Davis.

Efforts to silence and otherwise suppress Abu-Jamal are constant elements of his decade’s decade-long incarceration.

During the late 1980s, an example of suppression was prison authorities’ denying Abu-Jamal access to a newspaper with socialist content. 

Authorities speciously claimed Abu-Jamal’s receipt of that newspaper presented a security risk for the entire prison despite Abu-Jamal being isolated in a death row cell with no access to any other inmates. At that time, inmates were approved to receive white-racist and pornographic publications. (Racism and rapes create security risks in prisons.)

In the mid-1990s, an effort to silence Abu-Jamal by attacking the publication of a book featuring his writings led to a gross violation of his legal rights. 

During that effort, initiated by Philadelphia’s anti-Abu-Jamal police union, PA prison authorities unlawfully opened Abu-Jamal’s mail with his lawyers.

Prison authorities sent those confidential legal strategy communications to the office of the then-Pa Governor. That Governor utilized those unlawfully obtained legal communications to issue an unlawful death warrant for 

Abu-Jamal helped sabotage his pivotal appeal hearing in August 1995. State and federal courts have blithely dismissed the governor’s disruptive and unlawful intervention.

In 2014, the P State Legislature passed a measure dubbed the “Silencing Act” initiated by conservatives specifically to suppress Abu-Jamal. A federal judge later voided that Act as unconstitutional.

Phillip “Rock” Lester, a panel participant during Brown’s mass incarceration symposium, said his first exposure to Abu-Jamal was when he was imprisoned. This former L.A. gang member, who now works on reentry and prison reform in L.A., said reading Abu-Jamal’s book on jailhouse lawyers while imprisoned was informative and inspirational.

“Mumia is a leader, an educator, and a transformative person who is being purposefully suppressed,” Lester said, terming the exhibition on Abu-Jamal “huge.”

The scores of persons who attended the Exhibition’s opening included Noelle Hanrahan, the founder of Prison Radio, who produced Abu-Jamal’s broadcast commentaries for decades.

Hanrahan at Abu-Jamal Exhibition opening. Hanrahan said that if the Exhibition inspires a better understanding of systemic racism and can accelerate commitments to work for Abu-Jamal’s freedom, “this will be worthwhile.”

Opening: Thursday, September 28, 2023 at 4:30 p.m.

Runs through July 2024

John Hay Library, 20 Prospect St., Providence, RI