His alleged “crime”? Murdering a police officer. His actual "crime"? Exposing a COINTELPRO infiltrator in the Baltimore Black Panther chapter. But prison couldn't extinguish Eddie Conway's fire. Within weeks, his leadership grew among incarcerated Panthers. He earned four degrees, researching agent provocateurs in the BPP. But that isn’t all he did as a political prisoner.
In the 1980s, people incarcerated at Maryland State Penitentiary had extremely low literacy rates. The prison’s educational infrastructure was shoddy. With the help of local librarian Brenda Vogel and a grant, Conway helped turn the prison into a university with a real library system.
From Amiri Baraka to Askia Muhammad, Conway brought radical thinkers in his 50-week prison educational outreach program, called "To Say Their Own Word." They discussed capitalism, prison oppression, government surveillance, and more. Incarcerated people didn't just learn radical thought; they contributed to it.
It's decades beyond 1980, but today's waves of censorship, book bans, and attacks on Black education make efforts like Conway's even more critical. While new community programs will sprout, To Say Their Own Word is still a resource. Recorded on VHS and now digitized, it is a rich oral history.
Before he passed away as a free man in 2023, Conway offered words of encouragement: "Don't let the ideas and concepts of this program stagnate … You can teach each other. And everybody will learn."