Ossie Davis visits Mumia

Workers World, 27 May 1999

[On May 12, African American actor and activist Ossie Davis met with Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row at the Greene State Correctional Institute in Waynesburg, Pa. After the visit, Davis called for a new trial for the former Black Panther and released a statement. Excerpts follow.]

As we talked, I became conscious of those many things in our past as Black people that have been imposed upon us, but which we've overcome. Asking ourselves how was it, how did we overcome slavery, how did we overcome Jim Crow, how did we overcome lynching. Whatever that thing is that enabled us to face and overcome--Abu-Jamal is full of it. And I was happy to be associating with him. I feel that he is a struggler for justice. _

There was a young prisoner whom I got to know in the olden days whom I came to admire greatly as a man--his name is Malcolm X. It was only when I got to know Malcolm in person that I truly appreciated who he was. And so with Abu-Jamal, seeing him, looking in his eye, listening to him, checking for evidences. ... There was a nobleness about him that touched me.