In doing some research recently, I re-read the April-May 1971 issue of the Black Scholar which was focused on the theme of the “Black Prisoner.” I can’t think of a current publication that might devote an entire issue to the topic. It would be important to have at least a few “mainstream: publications that regularly focus on the plight and privilege the voices of prisoners.

Anyway, in the 1971 Black Scholar issue, Fleeta Drumgo (one of the Soledad Brothers, pens a letter that I wanted to reprint here. It provides a window into the times and offers some critiques that are still relevant today.

Dear Brothers and Sisters

The Department of Corrections doesn’t exist! All institutions under such titles are barbaric, oppressive, racist and murderous institutions. This system of government is designed to oppress, exploit and intimidate, all that are not classified as white Anglo-Saxon bourgeois ruling clique. The hatred, violence and destruction imbedded in the system is the same fascist repression that is destroying the people in general, black people in particular. In realizing this it is difficult to understand that America is prison. As Brother Huey P. Newton stated, the only difference is one is maximum and the other one minimum security.

It seems at times that the oppression and violence inflicted upon us here in the maximum security is more intense than that inflicted upon us in the minimum security, but really it’s utterly impossible for me or any of us here to distinguish the oppression and violence we are all victimized by. I am constantly thinking about unemployment, under-employment, poverty and malnutrition that are the basic facts of our existence; it’s this which sends persons to these concentration camps; it’s this which causes so-called crime in general.

I like to express that there’s a growing awareness behind the walls; we’re seeing through the madness of capitalism, class interest, surplus value and imperialism, which this gestapo system perpetuates. It’s this which we have to look at and understand in order to recognize the inhumanity inflicted upon the masses of people here in Amerika and abroad. As brother Malcolm X once said, “We as people, as human beings have the basic human right to eliminate the conditions that have and are continuously destroying us.”

The decadence and corruption in the present day society and in these concentration camps much be dealt with by the people, and the only way we can deal with it us uniting, becoming as one! Because people who are oppressed, exploited and deprived are one. What I am trying to relay is the fact we are all prisoners, and under the yoke of fascist enslavement. Anyone who can deny this fact isn’t really concerned about liberation; he considers himself free and that attitude relates directly to the petty-bourgeois class of society.

In conclusion let me say on behalf of all of us in the maximum, please don’t reject or forget us, because this allows the monster to brutalize, murder and treat us inhumanly. We are of you, we love you and struggle with you.

Power to the people — Liberation in our time!

Fleeta Drumgo