Jamal Joseph (formerly Eddie Joseph; [1] 1953) is an American writer, director, producer, poet, activist, and educator. Joseph was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was prosecuted as one of the Panther 21. [1] He spent six years incarcerated at Leavenworth Penitentiary. [2]
Jamal Joseph was born Edward L. Joseph in New York City. His parents, who never married, were both Afro-Cuban; his father, Alipio Zorilla, was a revolutionary comrade of Fidel Castro, [2] who later served as Cuba's ambassador to Tanzania and Zambia. [3] His mother placed him in foster care when he was 17 days old, and he was raised in Harlem by the housekeeper of his foster family and her husband. [2] He joined the ranks of the Black Panther Party in September 1968 at the age of 15. The Assassination of Martin Luther King had occurred that same year, leaving Joseph feeling outraged. He sought out the Panthers believing them to be the most militant Black group around. However, when he asked his local branch to arm him, instead of receiving a gun as he expected, the local chapter gave him a stack of books by African-American authors instead. He was informed that is how he would be "armed". [4]
In 1969, Joseph was one of the defendants in the Panther 21 trial, which accused the Panthers of planning a series of deadly attacks across New York City. Joseph spent a year in prison pending the verdict before it was deemed he, as well as all other defendants, were ultimately not guilty. [5] During Joseph's time in the Black Panther Party, he befriended Afeni Shakur, who was later one of his fellow defendants in the Panther 21 trial, and would act as Godfather to her son Tupac Shakur. [6] [7]
In 1973, Joseph, loyal to the New York faction led by Eldridge Cleaver, pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter for his part in the 1971 murder of Samuel Napier, a Black Panther Party member who belonged to the California BPP faction loyal to Huey Newton. [8]
In 1981, he was convicted for harboring a fugitive, Mutulu Shakur (Afeni's husband), who had taken part in the robbery of a Brink’s armored car in Rockland County, New York as part of an operation by members of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. [6] [9] [10] [11] For this, Joseph served five and a half years in Leavenworth State Penitentiary in Kansas, where he earned two college degrees and wrote his first play. [12]
Upon his release from prison, he became a poet, an author, a playwright and director. [13] He earned his BA summa cum laude from the University of Kansas while at Leavenworth. [14] His first position after incarceration was at Touro College, in East Harlem. While there, he was instrumental in arranging historic graduation ceremonies at the Apollo Theatre, with a graduation address by Ossie Davis, preceded by a spectacular Graduation Procession down the middle of 125th Street. [15] He is a full professor and former chair of Columbia University's Graduate Film Division and the artistic director of the New Heritage Theatre Group in Harlem. He has been featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam , BET's American Gangster and on Tupac Shakur's The Rose That Grew from Concrete Volumes 1 and 2.[ citation needed ] He is the author of the interactive biography on Tupac Shakur, Tupac Shakur Legacy . [16]
Joseph was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award in the Best Song category for his contributions to the song "Raise It Up", performed by IMPACT Repertory Theatre and Jamia Nash in the 2007 film August Rush . [17] [18]
His memoir Panther Baby was published in February 2012 by Algonquin Books. [1] A television series based on the book is in development at Starz, to be directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. [19]
Joseph is a co-founder of the Harlem Film Company with producer Cheryl Hill, which released the 2016 feature Chapter & Verse, which Joseph co-wrote and directed. [20] The film was a New York Times Critics’ Pick. [21]
In 2023, Joseph was interviewed in the FX television documentary series Dear Mama .
Tupac Amaru Shakur, also known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper and songwriter. Considered one of the most influential and successful rappers of all time, Shakur is among the best-selling music artists, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. His lyrical content has been noted for addressing social injustice, violence, and the marginalization of African-Americans.
Assata Olugbala Shakur, also known as Joanne Chesimard, is an American political activist and convicted murderer who was a member of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1977, she was convicted in the first-degree murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and is currently wanted by the FBI, with a $1 million FBI reward for information leading to her capture, and an additional $1 million reward offered by the Attorney General of New Jersey.
Afeni Shakur Davis was an American political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. Shakur was the mother of rapper Tupac Shakur and the executor of his estate. She founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and also served as the CEO of Amaru Entertainment, Inc., a record and film production company she founded.
The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground Marxist-Leninist, black-nationalist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981. Composed of former Black Panthers (BPP) and Republic of New Afrika (RNA) members who served above ground before going underground, the organization's program was one of war against the United States government, and its stated goal was to "take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States." The BLA carried out a series of bombings, killings of police officers and drug dealers, robberies, and prison breaks.
David Gilbert is an American radical leftist who participated in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored vehicle. Gilbert was a founder of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became a member of the Weather Underground. Gilbert, who served as the getaway driver in the robbery, was convicted under New York's felony murder law in the killing by co-defendants of two Nyack, New York police officers and a Brink's security guard.
Mutulu Shakur was a convicted murderer, New African activist, and a member of the Black Liberation Army who was sentenced to sixty years in prison for his involvement in a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck in which a guard and two police officers were murdered.
Sundiata Acoli is an American political activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1974 for murdering a New Jersey state trooper. Acoli was granted parole in 2022 at the age of 85.
Marilyn Jean Buck was an American Marxist and feminist poet who was imprisoned for her participation in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur, the 1981 Brink's robbery and the 1983 U.S. Senate bombing. Buck received an 80-year sentence, which she served in federal prison, from where she published numerous articles and other texts. She was released on July 15, 2010, less than a month before her death at age 62 from cancer.
"Dear Mama" is a song by American rapper 2Pac from his third studio album, Me Against the World (1995). It was released on February 21, 1995, as the lead single from the album. The song is a tribute to his mother, Afeni Shakur. In the song, Shakur details his childhood poverty and his mother's addiction to crack cocaine, but argues that his love and deep respect for his mother supersede bad memories. The song became his first top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number nine. It also topped the Hot Rap Singles chart for five weeks. As of March 2021, the song is certified 3× Platinum by the RIAA.
Kuwasi Balagoon, born Donald Weems, was an American political activist, anarchist and member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. Radicalised by race riots in his home state of Maryland growing up, as well as by his experiences while serving in the US Army, Weems became the black nationalist known as Kuwasi Balagoon in New York City in the late 1960s. First becoming involved in local Afrocentric organisations in Harlem, Balagoon would move on to become involved in the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party, which quickly saw him charged and arrested for criminal behaviour. Balagoon was initially part of the Panther 21 case, in which 21 panthers were accused of planning to bomb several locations in New York City, but although the Panther 21 were later acquitted, Balagoon's case was separated off and he was convicted of a New Jersey bank robbery.
Silvia Baraldini is an Italian political activist. From the age of 12, she lived in the United States and became a student radical. She joined the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee and the May 19th Communist Organization, groups which aimed to support Black Power and Puerto Rican independence movements. In 1977, Baraldini acted as spokesperson for the protestors outside the court during the trial of Assata Shakur and two years later, she helped to break Shakur out of jail, driving a getaway car. In 1982, she was arrested and imprisoned on a 43 year sentence under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for conspiring to commit armed robberies. Baraldini was held in a purpose-built High Security Unit (HSU) in the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky which also housed two other women, Susan Rosenberg and Alejandrina Torres. Conditions in the unit were criticized by Amnesty International and it was closed by judicial order.
The Panther 21 is a group of twenty-one Black Panther members who were arrested and accused of planned coordinated bombing and long-range rifle attacks on two police stations and an education office in New York City in 1969, who were all acquitted by a jury in May 1971, after revelations during the trial that police infiltrators played key organizing roles.
Tupac Shakur Legacy is an official interactive biography of Tupac Shakur released on August 16, 2006. The author of the book is Jamal Joseph, a friend of the Shakur family, Shakur's godfather, and a former Black Panther Party member, now a professor of film at Columbia University. The book is published by Atria Books a division of Simon & Schuster. It features unseen family photographs, intimate stories, and over 20 removable reproductions of his handwritten song lyrics, contracts, scripts, poetry, and other personal papers.
The 1981 Brink's robbery was an armed robbery and three related murders committed on October 20, 1981, by several Black Liberation Army members and four former members of the Weather Underground, who were at the time associated with the May 19th Communist Organization. The plan called for the BLA members – including Kuwasi Balagoon, Sekou Odinga, Mtayari Sundiata, Samuel Brown and Mutulu Shakur – to carry out the robbery, with the M19CO members – David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck – to serve as getaway drivers in switchcars.
Nehanda Isoke Abiodun was an African American hip hop activist, black revolutionary, and fugitive who was living in Cuba. Abiodun was wanted by the FBI in connection of the 1981 robbery of a Brink's truck that resulted in the killing of a Brink's guard and two New York police officers. The United States federal government also charged Abiodun in connection with Assata Shakur's escape from prison, along with Susan Rosenberg.
Sekou Odinga was an American New Afrikan activist who was imprisoned for actions with the Black Liberation Army in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Rose That Grew from Concrete (1999) is a collection of poetry written between 1989 and 1991 by Tupac Shakur, published by Pocket Books through its MTV Books imprint. A preface was written by Shakur's mother Afeni Shakur, a foreword by Nikki Giovanni and an introduction by his manager, Leila Steinberg.
All Eyez on Me is a 2017 American biographical drama film directed by Benny Boom. Titled after the 1996 studio album, as well as the song of the same name, it is based on the life and death of the titular American rapper Tupac Shakur. The film stars Demetrius Shipp Jr. as Tupac, with Kat Graham, Lauren Cohan, Hill Harper, and Danai Gurira. Jamal Woolard reprises his role as Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace / The Notorious B.I.G. from Notorious (2009).
Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur is an American television documentary miniseries directed by Allen Hughes, about Tupac Shakur and his mother Afeni Shakur. It premiered on FX on April 21, 2023. It received critical acclaim.
In April 1969, Joseph was arrested as one of the "Panther 21" on charges of conspiracy and spent a year in jail. Later, he was charged with harbouring fugitives and spent six years in prison at Leavenworth, Kan.
In 1981, he was arrested for robbing an armored truck and spent five and a half years in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas
In 1981 he was convicted for harboring a fugitive, someone who had taken part in the robbery of a Brink's armored car in Rockland County. Sentenced to 12 years in prison, he served 5½ years
Joseph spent several years behind bars himself after being convicted of a variety of crimes including the sheltering of members of the Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground involved in the infamous Brinks robbery and murders in 1981.
In the Federal trial of the Brink's case in 1983, Mr. Joseph was acquitted of participating in the armored-car robbery in which a guard and two police officers were killed. But he was convicted of being an accessory after the fact because he helped hide an associate, Mutulu Shakur, accused of carrying out the robbery.
Along the way, he became a poet, a playwright and director, and now he's the author of "Panther Baby: A Life of Rebellion and Reinvention."
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