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About me:
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My name is Russell 'Maroon' Shoats and I am a New Afrikan Political Prisoner
of War, who at this moment is serving a prison sentence at the Waynesburg,
Pennsylvania, state institution. I was originally locked up in January of
1972, and have since spent over 25 years in 15 different state, county, and
federal prisons, jails and a maximum security prison/mental institution. Over
20 of these years were spent in the "holes" of these various
facilities locked down for 23 or more hours daily. RUSSELL MAROON SHOATS New
Afrikan Prisoner of War I was born in Philadelphia, PA, in August of 1943, one
of 12 children in the household of Gladys and Russell Shoats. I attended
school there until the age of 15, after which I was in and out of reforms
schools and youth institutions until the age of eighteen , mainly due to
gang-related activities. These gang activities, though not drug-related as
the bulk of similar actitites are today, still had the same root causes: a
lack of comprehensive youth-oriented programs in the schools and
neighborhoolds, coupled with high unemployment and police repression in the
New African communities. I married twice and became the father of 7 children
between the years of 1964 and 1970. During the early to middle 1960's, I
became increasingly politically aware and active in the New Afrikan
liberation movement. I was a founding member of the Black Unity Council, a
Philadelphia Grouping that eventually merged with the Philadelphia chapter of
the Black Panther Party in 1969. In August of 1970, at the height of the
nationwide repression of the New Afrikan liberation movement, I became a
fugitive after a Philadelphia policeman was killed and another was wounded in
a retaliatory attack on a Philadelphia police station. In response to the
heightened repression of the New Afrikan liberation movement in general, and
the unjustified killing of a New Afrikan youth by the repressive poloice in
the local community, from August 1970 until January 1972, the date of my
capture and arrest; I was active on the armed front of the New Afrikan
Liberation Army. All of my actions and activities during this period were in
direct response to, and in direct support of the movement's activities. I was
tried and convicted for the attack on the police station and sentenced to
life-plus imprisonment. In September 1977, myself and three other New African
Political Prisoners of War liberated ourselves from state prison at
Huntington, PA. Two of these brothers were recaptured and a third was killed
during the escape. However, I remained at large for a month, in the teeth of
a massive "slave-style" hunt by local, state, and federal forces,
who had also recruited large numbers of the local rural while populace to
help in their search. From my capture in October 1977, until November 1989, I
was kept in various "holes" in numerous state, county, and federal
prisions, and maximum-security prison/mental institutions. During this period
I was locked down daily at the Pennsylvania state prisons at Huntingdon,
Pittsburgh, Camp Hill, Dallas, Rockview, and Grateford, as well as the
Allegheny, Wayne, Washington, Lackawanna, Montgomery, and Philadelphia county
prisons and the U.S. penitentiaries at N. Lewisburgh, PA and Leavenworth,
Kansas. In 1979, I was forcibly transferred to the maximum security-security
prison/mental institution at Waymart, Pennsylvania, known as "Fairview."
During my over one-year stay at this facility I was forcibly drugged, and on
one occasion was hospitalized from a hospital-induced overdose of these
drugs. In March 1980, myself and another New Afrikan Political Prisoner of
War were able to liberate ourselves from this institution after a New Afrikan
activist smuggled a revolver and a sub-machine gun into the institution for
our use. Three days later all three of us were captured after a gun battle
with local, state, and county police and FBI agents. In the wake of the
historic Camp Hill rebellion, during October 1989, at the Pennsylvania state
prison at Camp Hill, I was transferred from the state in- prison at Dallas,
to the U.S. Penitentiary at Lewisburg, and then to the U.S. Penitentiary at
Leavenworth, Although I had no part in this rebellion (having been at Dallas
at the time,) I was nevertheless singled out by the prison administration to
be transferred over 1,000 miles from family, supporters, and friends with a
view towards ultimately having me confined at the notorious federal prioson
at Marion, Illinois. While being kept on 23-hours a day lockdown at
Leavenworth, during November 1989, my relatives and supporters mounted a
campaign to reveal the lies and falsified records the Pennsylvania prison administration
had used to implicate me in the Camp Hill rebellion, which was used as a
basis for my transfer to Leavenworth and there to be evaluated for placement
at Marion, Illinois. These efforts were successful and I was finally released
to the general prison population in December 1989 until June 1991, I'm now
being held on 23-hour lockdown at Dallas and Waynesburg state institution,
where I remain a committed New Afrikan freedom fighter who will not rest
until the New Afrikan peoples are free from oppression, an a free and
self-governing nation. Russell Maroon Shoatz was a dedicated community
activist and founding member of the Philadelphia based Black Unity Counsel,
which merged with the Black Panther Party in 1969. In 1970, Maroon, along
with five comrades, was accused of an attack on a Philadelphia police station
which resulted in the death of a cop. This attack was carried out in response
to the war being waged against the Black Community. For eighteen months
Maroon was active underground as a soldier in the Black Liberation Army until
his arrest in 1972. This freedom fighter escaped from prison twice, and in
1977 he remained at large for twenty-seven days before being re-captured. On
March 2, 1980 he liberated himself once more, but was captured three days
later. Maroon has been in prison, serving multiple life sentences, since that
time. Currently he is locked down twenty-three hours a day under conditions
of sensory deprivation at the control unit in SCI-Greene in Pennsylvania,
with no prospect of release.
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Jalil
Abdul Muntaqim/Anthony Bottom & Russell "Maroon" Shoats 
Ed Poindexter:
11/1/44 & Larry Hoover:
11/30/50 
POLITICAL PRISONER/POW BIO'S
FOR JALIL & MAROON
Russell "Maroon" Shoats