Biography
Michael Aloysius “Cetewayo” Tabor was a Harlem organizer, writer and member of the Black Panther Party’s New York leadership. Arrested in the April 2, 1969 Panther 21 raids, he spent about twenty-two months in pretrial custody. While free on bail during trial, Tabor fled to Algiers in February 1971 amid the Panther split and threats to his life. A jury acquitted all defendants, including Tabor in absentia, on May 13, 1971. He worked with the party’s International Section in Algeria, moved to Zambia with Connie Matthews in 1972 and never returned to the United States. He became a writer and radio broadcaster in Lusaka and died there on October 17, 2010.
The Black Panther reported that Michael Tabor was arrested in court at 1:57 p.m. on December 29, 1970 after an absence he attributed to asthma. His Panther 21 bail was revoked, and the report describes continued detention into January. This was a return after bail, not the original 1969 Panther 21 arrest. The Black Panther, January 9, 1971, original PDF page 7. Source: https://washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1971-01-09-black-panther-vol-4-no-28.pdf#page=7
The Militant dated Michael Cetewayo Tabor’s and Richard Dharuba Moore’s failure to appear at the Panther 21 trial while on bail to February 8, 1971. It reported that Connie Matthews Tabor went with them to Algiers and that a video of Cetewayo and Connie Tabor there was released by the New York Panthers on March 11. This concerns their flight and exile during the existing prosecution, not a new arrest. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1971/v35n12-apr-02-1971-mil.pdf#page=14
