Let Them Get Their Voices Out: The Death Row 10, Radical Abolitionists, and the Anti–Death Penalty Movement in Illinois (1996–2011)

I n late 1990s Illinois, a group of African American prisoners calling themselves the Death Row 10 (DR10) forged a partnership with radical anti– death penalty activists in Chicago to help win their release and reinvigorate a movement to abolish capital punishment. Led by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP), a multiracial yet largely white middle-class offshoot of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), this movement represented the latest in a long tradition of cooperation between radical activists and black prisoners extending back to the 1930s and earlier. Throughout the twentieth century, leftist organizations, including militant black nationalist groups, consistently joined prisoners’ friends and families as the most stalwart allies of the convicted—particularly those living on death row—who otherwise struggled to elicit sympathy and support on the outside. That an alliance of men convicted of murder and radical leftists could forge a multiracial coalition—a modern-day Popular Front—and help win several victories between 1996 and 2011 reveals a vital history of resistance and accomplishment among two of the most marginalized groups in the United States. ANDREW S. BAER