Prison Radio
Mumia Abu-Jamal

This is Mumia Abu-Jamal with an excerpt from the new book known as Murder Incorporated Book One.

From chapter one. “With God On Our Side.”

There was no doubt that religious fervor combined with a moral imperative to civilize a new continent infested with savages was a major force behind the European modus operandi responsible for the occupation, settlement, and subsequent genocidal maelstrom unleashed in the titular new world.

But one doesn’t need to dig too deep to find the profit motive rumbling, like rolling thunder, just below the surface. In fact, in all things geopolitical, it’s like what deep throat tells Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men: follow the money. The same pretext and justification used to exterminate the indigenous population was also used to validate and defend the enslavement of Africans in the young and growing nation, a nation founded in genocide and built by slavery. (Complete discussion in chapter five.)

Many tend to dismiss the horrors and murderous brutality of American slavery as an isolated antebellum Southern thing or a misguided tributary of American history. But as Dr. James Horton of George Washington University sums up, America’s economic growth, which at the time was the envy of the world, “slavery was not a sideshow. It was the main event.”

These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.