adailyriot:

If one were to examine, closely, the hegemonic discourses of black American history, one would be surprised to find a long history of militant armed struggle. Slave rebellions, urban “guerilla” insurgencies, rural defense leagues, are all part of a tapestry of black militant rebellion to subjugation. The most recent icon of black armed struggle, the Black Panther Party, is a linchpin in understanding the development of this phenomenon in the late 1960s, which saw its high point in the 1970s. But it was not the only organization that used or opening advocated the use of force against the state. Others did exist. They did not exist in the public or “aboveground” as the Panthers did between the years of 1966 and 1974. Other factions of the organization existed outside the public eye—clandestinely. Not coincidently, this history exists clandestinely. Clandestine is also a fitting way to describe some of the writers of this history. It is fitting because they, like the histories of armed struggle in U.S., don’t exist in the open, but they exist nonetheless.

Many of those who (clandestinely) trace the historical trajectories of armed struggle are (or were) prisoners of the state. Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Kuwasi Balagoon, and Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt, all participated in armed struggle. Branded by the state as criminals, underground black radicals, as well as white underground radicals were part of a network of militant “paramilitary” insurgencies. By several accounts this movement lasted from the late 1960’s until the beginning of the 1980’s. Today, imprisoned underground activists continue to write of this subjugated history from the cells that hold them.