Black August is a time of study, reflection, solidarity with ongoing liberation movements throughout the Black African diaspora, and of recommitment to the freedom of all Black political prisoners worldwide. The month of August is rich with histories of Black resistance, and we invite you to spend time with some of the resources and reflections the Center for Constitutional Rights has shared in years past.
This year, we want to highlight advocacy in support of the multi-decade movement to free incarcerated Black activist, journalist, and intellectual Mumia Abu-Jamal, and invite you to a screening of Sambizanga (1972) that we are co-hosting with the Highlander Center in Durham, North Carolina.
Free Mumia Now: Petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Mumia Abu-Jamal, a 72-year-old activist, award-winning broadcast journalist, and prolific author, has been unjustly incarcerated for more than 44 years, since December 1981. On July 28, together with the Abolitionist Law Center and a national coalition of other human rights organizations—American Civil Liberties Union, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and Release Aging People in Prison Campaign—we submitted a petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention seeking a determination that Mumia’s continued imprisonment amounts to arbitrary detention. The submission provides evidence of the state of Pennsylvania violating international standards by consistently denying Mumia a fair trial, applying torturous conditions of confinement, and condemning him to a death-by-incarceration sentence that prevents him from ever leaving prison alive.
Honoring African Political Cinema: Sambizanga Screening with the Highlander Center
On Friday, August 21, join the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Highlander Center at 7:00 p.m. ET for a screening at the Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, North Carolina, of the landmark 1972 film Sambizanga, followed by a group discussion moderated by cultural organizer Marcella Zigbuo Camara of Second Daughter Cinema.
SAMBIZANGA (Sarah Maldoror, 1972, Angola, 102 min)
Sarah Maldoror, the first woman to make a feature film in Africa, chronicles an anti-colonialist struggle via the story of a woman’s relentless search for her resistance leader husband after he’s arrested and brutally imprisoned by Portuguese authorities in Luanda. An explicitly political film, Sambizanga draws from historical events to create a tapestry of characters who, through their actions, set the stage and provide us with a prologue for the long-fought and hard-won Angolan War of Independence.
As we continue our annual commemoration of Black August, we hope you engage with the offerings above, both learn and unlearn, and move onward with dedication to advancing struggles for Black Liberation globally.
maya finoh is the Political Education and Research Manager for the Center for Constitutional Rights.
