Biography
Alfred “Al” Featherston was a leader of Miami’s Black Afro Militant Movement (BAMM). A federal jury convicted him of teaching the use or making of explosives or incendiary devices; the Fifth Circuit affirmed the conviction in 1972. In a letter published by The Black Panther in February 1978, he said he had spent five and a half years in federal and Florida state prisons, followed by nearly eight months on parole. He alleged that FBI agents and an informant had engineered his prosecution. His account distinguished the completion of his combined sentences on December 11, 1977 from his earlier physical release on parole. The individual prison-entry and discharge dates and the division of his actual custody between the federal and state cases remain unresolved.
Alfred “Al” Featherston was a leader of Miami’s Black Afro Militant Movement (BAMM). A federal jury convicted him of teaching the use or making of explosives or incendiary devices; the Fifth Circuit affirmed the conviction in 1972. In a letter published by The Black Panther in February 1978, he said he had spent five and a half years in federal and Florida state prisons, followed by nearly eight months on parole. He alleged that FBI agents and an informant had engineered his prosecution. His account distinguished the completion of his combined sentences on December 11, 1977 from his earlier physical release on parole. The individual prison-entry and discharge dates and the division of his actual custody between the federal and state cases remain unresolved.
The Black Panther, February 4, 1978, vol.18 no.3, PDF page 25; www.themilitant.com, PDF page 26; law.justia.com.
A January 31, 1982 Miami Herald report reprinted in a Senate hearing identifies Michael Von Zamft as Featherston’s attorney in a later Miami assault case and reports his January 7 arrest and confinement in Cameron County Jail, Brownsville, Texas.
