From Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row
John Black presente!
Published May 7, 2006 6:30 PM
From an April 9 audio
commentary.
With the passing of John Black of State
College, Pa., passes more then a remarkable man. It is the passing of an era.
Black was a anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-Nazi, anti-death penalty,
anti-ignorance activist and worked for the working class since his youth in
Germany.
During the rise of the Nazis, Black, as a teenager, worked with
young anti-fascists and communists in Berlin to oppose the { emerging-WW}
dictator. He posted anti-Nazi slogans at a time when it could have earned him a
death sentence. He passed secret communications against the Nazis among
anti-fascists throughout the region. When he came to the U.S., he worked
tirelessly to help build Local 1199, the progressive hospital workers union and
got tossed into jail frequently for defending the rights of workers.
He
was a member of Workers World Party and contributed to the Workers World
newspaper, especially when it came to historical research and to revolutions and
popular struggles.
He was fascinated with the life of people like
François-Noël Babeuf, the French revolutionary who helped form the
“Conspiracy of Equals” which opposed the authoritarian nature of the
five-man Directory in the later stages of the revolution. John, despite failing
health, continued his reading and research into revolutionary figures and
struggles from France, from Indonesia and beyond.
He drew immense
inspiration from his brilliant wife, the scholar Dr. Bernice Black and their
children. On our visits whenever he mentioned her, I never failed to see a
twinkle in his eye, of love and pride.
From his earliest days to his last
ones, he was a revolutionary who never forgot, as the theme of his radio show
use to go, which side he was on. John’s weekly talk show on Penn
State’s WPSU was one of the first places to air my pieces from death row.
When university big-wigs demanded that he stop airing them, he refused and his
show was canceled.
John Black never forgot which side he was on. He was on
the workers side, he was on the oppressed side, he was on the revolutionary
side, he was on the peoples’ side.
John Black presénte. From
death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal.
Go to prisonradio.org to hear
Mumia’s audio commentaries.
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