Safiya Bukhari, born Bernice Jones in 1950 in the Bronx, began her life in a devout Christian, middle-class household. Like many young African women, she initially pursued the “respectable” path set before her by studying pre-med and pledging a sorority. But history had another role for her.
A single encounter with a Black Panther newspaper seller shook her worldview and drew her into the Party’s Free Breakfast for Children program.
In serving hungry African children, she experienced a political awakening, coming to the realization that liberation was not found in individual success but in the collective struggle of our people.
Building power in the Black Panther Party
By 1969, Safiya Bukhari was a full member of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party. She rose quickly, leading the East Coast Information and Communications office, sharpening the Party’s political outreach. But Bukhari was not satisfied with just carrying out assignments.
She challenged sexism within the Party, insisting that African women’s leadership was not optional but essential to victory.
At a time when too many accepted silence, she forced the Party to reckon with its contradictions, showing that our liberation cannot be built on the backs of silenced African women.
on political imprisonment, the Black Panther Party and African
people’s resistance. PHOTO: THE WAR BEFORE BY SAFIYA BUKHARI
Arrest, incarceration, and liberation beyond prison walls
By the early 1970s, the U.S. government had unleashed COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) against the Black Panther Party and its successors like the Black Liberation Army (BLA).
The FBI and police used surveillance, assassinations, frame-ups, and mass incarcerations to destroy African liberation organizations. Safiya Bukhari was directly targeted because she refused to testify against comrades when subpoenaed in 1974.
Instead of betraying the movement, she chose to go underground with the BLA. An act that marked her as a prime enemy of the colonial State.
On January 25, 1975, she was captured in Norfolk, Virginia, after a shootout. The state charged her with felony murder, attempted robbery, and illegal possession of a firearm. Her trial was a sham: it lasted just one day, she was barred from entering her own courtroom, and her conviction rested not on hard evidence but on her political affiliation and commitment to liberation.
Sentenced to 40 years, Bukhari endured brutal conditions at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women, where officials labeled her the “most dangerous inmate.” She faced medical neglect so severe it endangered her life, pushing her to attempt an escape on New Year’s Eve 1976.
Even in chains, she fought back. She filed a $1.45 million lawsuit in 1979 that exposed the prison’s forced sterilization, denial of medical care, and sexual violence against African women.
In 1983, after eight years of consistent pressure from Bukhari and movement allies, she walked free and she wasted no time returning to the frontlines. She co-founded the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition and the Jericho Movement for U.S. political prisoners, and served as vice president of the Republic of New Afrika.
Her organizing tied the plight of imprisoned revolutionaries in the U.S. to anti-colonial struggles across the globe, reminding us that solidarity was not charity, but strategy.
Safiya’s legacy
Safiya Bukhari passed away on August 24, 2003, at just 53 years old. Yet her legacy thunders on. As Mumia Abu-Jamal honored her, she was a “Lioness for Liberation.”
She and other political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Albert Nuh Washington, and George Jackson showed me what unwavering commitment to the struggle looks like. Even through years of unjust imprisonment, they never surrendered their principles.
Their example gave me the mental and spiritual blueprint I needed when I faced my own brief stint as a political prisoner in 2007, under state repression against the Riders Liberation Party.
Reading how Safiya transformed her incarceration into a platform for organizing and defending others reminded me that our struggle is part of a much longer continuum. We carry a historical obligation to those who came before us, to those who will come after us, and to our people fighting right now, to continue the battle for African liberation.
Her life is a directive to us: African women cannot wait for liberation to be handed down, we must take it. We must demand the release of our political prisoners, expose the colonial violence of prisons, and continue the work of acquiring African freedom.
Safiya Bukhari’s footsteps leave us no room for passivity. They challenge us to live with the same clarity, discipline and fire that she embodied.
The war before: Voice of an unyielding spirit
Safiya Bukhari knew that revolutions don’t just live in the streets; they live in memory, in lessons, and in the written word. Throughout her years of struggle, she wrote speeches, essays, and letters that dissected the meaning of political imprisonment, the internal contradictions of the movement and the unbroken will of African people to be free.
These writings were later collected and published in 2010 as “The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, and Fighting for Those Left Behind,” edited by her comrade Laura Whitehorn.
She wrote because she understood that the state not only cages bodies but also tries to erase the stories of resistance. “The War Before” preserves her testimony: exposing prisons as instruments of colonial warfare, critiquing the limitations of the Panther era, and offering guidance to new generations of organizers.
She reminds us that our duty is not only to survive colonialism but to defeat it, once and for all.
