Prison Radio
Mumia Abu-Jamal

Cetewayo Goes Home.

A Pennsylvania prisoner, one of the nation’s longest held captives of a hole has finally left prison. After over 50 years in prison most of it in the hole. What began as an alleged escape attempt at the central Pennsylvania prison, Huntington In the early 1980s, led to transfers to maximum security prisons across the state and Cetewayo like a modern day Hannibal Lecter went not so much prison to prison as hole to hole in chains and shackles for decades. 

Named after a famed African warrior, Cetewayo became a quiet, legendary figure. A man who worked out every morning, ate little and complained less. Born Arthur Johnson, Cetewayo came to prison as a juvenile and at a time when the state was at war with what they called black militants.

From hole to hole, he would wake up generations of men before the crack of dawn when he would holler out of his cell door “Let’s get it brother” before launching into hundreds of pushups, thousands of jumping jacks, sprints, squats, twists for hours. Several years ago, a federal judge ordered him released from the hole and the work of the Abolitionist Law Center of Pittsburgh has since opened the door to his freedom.

Cetewayo is free.