Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia AbuJamal
Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia AbuJamal
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Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?

Author: Mumia Abu-Jamal

Narrator: JD Jackson

Unabridged: 4 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/29/2020


Synopsis

In December 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot and beaten into unconsciousness by Philadelphia police. He awoke to find himself shackled to a hospital bed, accused of killing a cop. He was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has denounced as failing to meet the minimum standards of judicial fairness.

In Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia gives voice to the many people of color who have fallen to police bullets or racist abuse, and offers the post-Ferguson generation advice on how to address police abuse in the United States. This collection of his radio commentaries on the topic features an in-depth essay written especially for this book to examine the history of policing in America, with its origins in the white slave patrols of the antebellum South and an explicit mission to terrorize the country's black population. Applying a personal, historical, and political lens, Mumia provides a righteously angry and calmly principled radical black perspective on how racist violence is tearing our country apart and what must be done to turn things around.

About Mumia Abu-Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist and author of two best-selling books, Live From Death Row and Death Blossoms, which address prison life from a critical and spiritual perspective. In 1981 he was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists (Philadelphia chapter). That same year he was arrested for allegedly killing a white police officer in Philadelphia. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982, in a process that has been described as an epic miscarriage of justice. In 2011, after spending more than 28 years on death row, his death sentence was vacated when the Supreme Court allowed to stand the decisions of four federal judges who had earlier declared his death sentence unconstitutional. He is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. In spite of his three-decade-long imprisonment, most of which was spent in solitary confinement on Death Row, Abu-Jamal has relentlessly fought for his freedom and for his profession. From prison he has written seven books and thousands of radio commentaries. He holds a BA from Goddard College and an MA from California State University, Dominguez Hills. His books have sold more than 100,000 copies and have been translated into seven languages.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kris (My Novelesque Life) on June 15, 2019

RATING: 4 STARS 2017; City Lights Publishers/Consortium Book Sales & Distribution (Review Not on Blog) While racism has always existed, the 2016 election of Trump has definitely put more of a spotlight on the issue. I live in British Columbia, and the effects of the US are felt here, and we also have o......more

Goodreads review by Logan on September 09, 2017

To say this is a review is a bit of a half-truth. I am reviewing this book, but I also want to take the time to express my own thoughts on injustices in America. I’m speaking on these issues as a white person and I want to amplify the voices and opinions of black people, not speak over them. If ther......more

Goodreads review by Andre on July 23, 2017

Well the title of the book is the question that is being presented to readers and after reading through this collection of short essays, ruminations and meditations all dealing with the results of police brutality or state-sanctioned racist acts, the answer is indisputable, a capital NO. Mumia is cl......more

Goodreads review by Bek on August 31, 2021

Mumia Abu-Jamal pointedly weaves together the past with what is his present in this this is a compellation of essays from 1998 to 2017 on police brutality. There is so much important insight throughout many of these. More than that, there is so much. He recalls so many names -- and this isn't close......more

Goodreads review by Eric on January 27, 2018

A damning portrayal of police brutality in America over the last half century. Every once in awhile something hits me over the head and I wonder why I never made that connection before, and in the final chapter of this book Abu-Jamal makes the connection between the earliest slave control "militias......more