We Want Freedom by Abu-Jamal Mumia; Cleaver Kathleen;

Author:Abu-Jamal, Mumia; Cleaver, Kathleen; [Abu-Jamal, Mumia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Common Notions
Published: 2020-04-29T14:03:46+00:00

George Sams (a.k.a. “Madman”)

Imagine a case where a man instigates others to torture and kill. Where a man, under the illusion of rank, riles the blood of others to slay a brother with the deadly libel that the victim is a “low-down, dirty, rotten snitch.” Imagine that other young men, drunk on the opiate of revolutionary duty, carry out his will. Now imagine that it was later revealed that the man who issued the orders to kill was in fact the snitch. For young men and women in New Haven, Connecticut, they needn’t have imagined because that precise scenario became stark, raving reality. On an early spring morning in 1969, the New Haven dailies hit with explosive headlines blaring “8 Panthers Held in Murder Plot.”42

George Sams, claiming to represent the Central Committee and traveling from branch to branch, had appeared in New Haven and accused Alex Rackley, a young member of the New York branch of the Party, of being an informant. Under orders from Sams, Rackley was tortured and eventually taken into the woods outside of New Haven to be shot and killed. Once the story broke Sams vanished and FBI agents staged a series of raids across the nation—allegedly searching for Sams—hitting BPP offices in Washington, Denver, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Des Moines, Detroit, San Diego, and Chicago, demolishing office equipment, confiscating literature, swiping files and monies, and, of course, arresting scores of Black Panthers on false charges.

According to scholar and playwright Donald Freed, Sams’s mysterious appearances across the nation seemed to presage predawn raids by heavily armed city, state, and federal police forces. But for some strange reason, Freed notes, “Sams was never caught; he always managed to leave before the raids were made.” In Chicago, Sams reportedly “walked, armed, through the police and FBI lines.”43

Sams surfaced in Toronto before assuming his role as star witness for the prosecution in New Haven. During the first trial he admitted that he had instigated the beating and torture of Rackley and implicated Field Lt. Lonnie McLucas and Warren Kimbro for the actual murder. But Sams’s duty wasn’t done. His job was to help convict Bobby Seale, the Party’s Chairman, and Ericka Huggins, the New Haven chapter’s Deputy Chairman and the still-grieving widow of Jon Huggins, the Party’s Deputy Minister of Information in LA, and by so doing, attempt to deliver a death blow to the Party.

On the stand, however, Sams seemed, well, not just unconvincing, but strangely incoherent. Under examination by defense attorney Charles Garry, Sams seemed unduly confrontational and somewhat given to going off on tangents:

Q: How old are you, Sir?

A: What did you say, Mr. Garry? What did you say?

Q: May the question be read back?

A: … Today I became 25 years old.

Q: … Before May 19, 1969, weren’t you told by Mr. Seale that you are not to be around any of the Panther headquarters?

A: No, Sir.

Q: As a matter of fact, isn’t it a fact, Sir, that you always made sure that you were never around when Mr.

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