The best thing coming out of Black Panther is the renewed calls for the release of jailed Black Panther members who’ve been incarcerated for decades. The FBI’s terrorism unit had labeled them “black identity extremists”, claiming that activists fighting police brutality posed a violent threat.
An incomplete list of Black Liberation political prisoners (Black Panthers and other groups) still inside:
Joe Joe Bowen, born 1946, in prison since 1971
Veronza Bowers, born 1946, in prison since 1973
Sundiata Acoli, born 1937, in prison since 1969
Chip Fitzgerald, born 1949, in prison since 1970, denied parole 17 times.
Fred Burton, born 1946, in prison since 1970
Mumia Abu-Jamal, born 1954, in prison since 1982
Ruchell Magee, born 1939, in prison since 1963,
Ronald Reed, born 1950, in prison since 1970,
Jamil Al-Amin, born 1943, in and out of prison from the 1970s to the 1990s on a series of suspicious charges, currently incarcerated
Rev. Joy Powell, born 1962, in prison since 2006, eligible for parole in 2045
Freddie Hilton, born 1953, in prison since 2002
Robert Hayes, born 1948, in prison since 1973
Russell Maroon Shoates, born 1943, in prison since 1972, held in solitary confinement for 22 years
