Black August’s Forgotten Black Heroines

Every year when Black August rolls around, the stories we pull from the archive tend to center on Black men’s experience while the distinct warfare waged against Black women political prisoners gets reduced to a quiet whisper, if mentioned at all. 

I learned to tune my ears to those whispers early on in my academic career. My education in Black political activism began on the streets of North and West Philadelphia, not far from my university’s lecture halls. 

It was nearly impossible to remain oblivious to Black political struggle while living in Philadelphia, a city mired in a brutal history of police terror aimed narrowly at the Black community. Under the reign of former Philadelphia police commissioner Frank Rizzo, Black neighborhoods were targeted and regularly brutalized by his police force.

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The first Black political prisoner in Philly I learned about was Mumia Abu-Jamal, the incarcerated journalist convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer whose dispatches from the bowels of Pennsylvania’s carceral system exposed the state’s incessant war against Black liberation in general and Black prisoners in particular. His name was written into the very fabric of the city, with “Free Mumia” posters lining storefront walls and plastered on trees. 

At the same time, I was introduced to lesser-known Black women political prisoners through Ramona Africa’s activism. Africa was a member of the MOVE family, a radical, back-to-nature group that lived communally and fiercely resisted technology and state intervention. Africa was a regular fixture on campus, organizing and protesting to bring recognition to her comrades who had been locked away since the August 1978…