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Mumia (then Wesley Cook) began his career in journalism st the age of fifteen
as minister of information for the Philadelphia branch of The Black Panther Party. Mumia was
well known for his activities with The Panthers, and by the age of sixteen the FBI had a thick file
on him. In 1970 Mumia left the Panthers, disgusted with the fighting within the organization. In
1973 Mumia got his start in broadcast journalism on the Temple radio station. After graduating
from Temple Mumia became a widely acclaimed broadcast journalist. He won several local
journalism awards, served as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, and
was one of Philadelphia Magazine’s “81 people to watch in 1981” because he brought “a special
dimension to radio reporting.”
Mumia often have run ins with his superiors, and throughout the seventies moved from
station to station. But these conflicts stemmed from Mumia’s refusal to follow order’s, and his
unpopular political views. No one doubted his talent. As fellow journalist Joe Davidson put it, “I
considered him to be the best broadcast journalist in the city. His voice was just made for radio.
He was a fine writer.” Philadelphia Inquirer writer Tom Ferrick Jr. recalls hearing Mumia give a
report on racial tensions in Kensington:
I was making dinner at the time, half-listening to the radio, when Mumia
came on with his report. Within a minute, I was frozen in my tracks,
mesmerized as he summoned forth not just the people and the facts, but
the essence of that neighborhood.
It is significant that the neighborhood in the story was Kensignton, the poorest in
Philadelphia. Throughout his career, beginning in his Black Panther days, Mumia spoke for the
voiceless. He compassionately told the stories of those not in power. The one criticism of
Mumia’s reporting was that he was not always objective. One coworker said, “He wasn’t being
fair, being balanced.” If by this the coworker meant that he was siding with the oppressed, than
he/she was right. Even today, from prison, Mumia continues to speak against the injustice’s in
our society. He rarely ever writes about himself, but he does use his insider’s view to write about
the injustices of the prison system and police brutality. However, he doesn’t just write about
those in his demographics (black/ death row). Like Huey P. Newton, who he idolized as a
teenager, Mumia recognizes that the struggle of all oppressed peoples is the same. For this
reason Mumia writes about issues as diverse as gay rights and the bombing of Iraq.
Other reporters were shocked when Mumia showed up to cover the trial of MOVE
members sporting dreadlocks like those worn by MOVE, and began selling MOVE newspapers.
But one is reminded of George Orwell, one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Orwell
traveled to Spain to cover the civil war. But he was so moved by the fight against the fascists that
he joined POUM, a Trotskyite militia, and began to fight in the very war he was covering. Mumia
and Orwell are two of the rare journalists who have fully lived up to the newspaper man’s maxim
of “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.”
