On this day, 13 August 1973, five Black pro-independence activists were sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences in the US Virgin Islands. After the killing of eight US tourists on a Rockefeller-owned golf course, Fountain Valley, US colonial authorities rounded up dozens of Black people, and viciously tortured five of them to try to extract confessions. Although the jury was deadlocked following the trial, nine jurors testified that during deliberation they were threatened with FBI investigations on themselves and family members. The judge, formerly Rockefeller’s private attorney, and lawyer for the golf course, refused to declare a mistrial in order that the jurors could be compelled to deliver guilty verdicts. One of those convicted, Ishmael LaBeet (pictured), later hijacked a plane while being transferred to a different prison and flew it to Cuba where he was jailed for a period but released.
More info here: https://libcom.org/history/virgin-island-five-aka-fountain-valley-five https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2056909757827497/?type=3
“There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to talk of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk barefoot, so that others can travel in luxurious cars? Why should some live for thirty-five years, so that others can live for seventy years? Why should some be miserably poor, so that others can be hugely rich? I speak on behalf of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak on the behalf of the sick who have no medicine, of those whose rights to life and human dignity have been denied.”
Via Benjamin Ramos Rosado
