Safiya Bukhari's The War Before

Intro to The War Before

by Laura Whitehorn
 

In the following excerpt from The War Before, coming soon from the Feminist Press, former Weather Underground member Laura Whitehorn introduces Safiya Bukhari, who became a member of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. A longtime political prisoner, then prison activist, Bukhari died in 2003. The War Before is a collection of Bukhari’s writings.

"For many, the iconic image of the 1960s is not a picture of hippies with daisy-wreathed hair dancing in the rain during the days of peace, love, and music at Woodstock. It is a photograph splashed across the front pages of Chicago newspapers in December 1969. Four grinning Chicago police officers—all of them white—carry a trophy: The bullet-ridden body of a young Black man.

Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was 21 years old when the cops murdered him. Other photos show his body lying face down on the floor of the apartment where he and fellow Panther member Mark Clark had been shot to death in their sleep. Still another depicts Fred’s blood-soaked mattress... (read the rest at the Brooklyn Mail).