Eddie Conway: Political Prisoner

The Spirit of the Black Panther Party still lives in a land where the forces of reaction tried to exterminate it with violence and illegal prosecutions and imprisonment. Black Panthers lie in hallowed and early graves or live heroic lives in the hellish tombs of America’s shameful prison systems. Others remain in the community working for justice in ways less frenetic and dangerous than the halcyon days when Panthers spread across the nation and challenged an oppressive system not from the belly of the beast, but from its bloody jaws. 

The Panthers live on, not in imitators but in the monumental sacrifice and legacy. They live on wherever Panthers refuse to accommodate an oppressive system that today ravages inner city neighborhoods in ways hardly imagined when the Panthers were founded in 1966. The spirit cannot be broken and it cannot be written out of history. 

I lived through the era of the Panthers glory days and though I did not join as a teenager, I thoroughly identified with them. I shared their belief that radical solutions were needed for the problems of society. One of the Panthers who has haunted my life is Marshall “Eddie” Conway. 

I must say at the risk of appearing maudlin that Eddie has taught me more about spirituality and grace than all my Sunday School lessons, more than all the religion professors and seminarians I sat in class with in college. He has taught me more about faith than all the imams, reverends, and spiritual gurus I have met and regarded with skepticism and hustler radar. 

Eddie Conway has been unjustly imprisoned for 36 years because he was and continues to be a liberation soldier. He has been in the worst penal institutions of Maryland, the ancient tomb on Forrest Street that was built when Thomas Jefferson was president, and the sinkhole of violence and despair called the Maryland House of Corrections aka Jessup Cut. They have imprisoned Eddie Conway, but his humanity is diamond hard and undimmed by the acts of callous and ultimately doomed agents of oppression. 

Eddie was a Vietnam era veteran who was stationed in Europe. When he was discharged he returned to Baltimore determined to help liberate his people. The prevailing winds of the time were for change. The civil rights movement, anti-war movements and the black power movements were pushing for change and Eddie made the fateful decision that Paul Robeson did decades before. He said the choice was between fighting for freedom and accepting oppression. Eddie made the clear choice when he joined the Panther Party. They were not the only liberation movement, but they were at the top of the massacre list of the FBI and other counterfeit law enforcement agencies. 

In 1970, three blocks from where I lived, two policemen were shot on Myrtle Ave in West Baltimore. One died and one survived. Then as today, the Baltimore City Police had a contentious relationship with the black community. Shortly before this incident the community was able to end canine patrols through protests. 

A patrol dog had mauled a woman sitting on her steps and the hated procedure, which was also used by the Belgians in the Congo and the apartheid government of South Africa, was changed. 

Two suspects were caught hiding near the scene of the shooting. Police claimed that a third got away after shooting at a policeman responding to the initial shooting incident. The police officer claimed to have seen the man from a hundred feet or more at night in an alley. While Conway was working his job at the post office he was arrested and charged with the murder of one police officer and the wounding of a second. There was no evidence linking Conway to the crime. His picture was selected from a photo array where both sets of photos contained his picture, a clearly illegal and unprofessional act. 

While Conway was awaiting trial a known informant was placed in a cell with him despite his vehement objections. Conway knew the tricks of law enforcement because he was head of security of the Baltimore branch and had exposed an NSA agent who helped found the chapter. 

The informant placed in his cell later testified at his trial claiming that Conway confessed. At the trial Conway was denied the attorney of his choice and was saddled with a court appointed defender with little interest in the case and a drinking problem. 

Conway was the victim of the COINTELPRO conspiracy by the FBI which was created to infiltrate and destroy social change movements such as the Panthers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and SCLC, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Students for a Democratic Society and other old left and new left groups. He was found guilty and sentenced to life plus thirty years. The system imprisoned him but it could not break him. 

The same man who helped found free breakfast programs and a free health clinic on Greenmount Avenue that survives today as a non-profit health organization, continued his organizing in the hellholes of the correctional system. Conway worked with writing groups, Vietnam veterans’ organization, study groups, computer literacy classes, and conflict mediation programs. He is associated with the American Friends Service Committee of Baltimore. He has not lost his thirst for liberation and justice, despite the worst that the enemies of freedom have done to him. 

That Eddie Conway is still languishing in prison is an indictment of the injustice of the American judicial system, but more personally it is an indictment of my generation and following ones that have not insisted on justice for all the victims of COINTELPRO. Eddie Conway is the embodiment of the heroism and determination of the Black Panther Party. Anyone wishing to write to Eddie can send correspondence to: 

Marshall E. Conway #116469 

PO Box 534 

Jessup, MD 20794