Ed Pilkington, The Black Panthers still in prison After 46 years, will they ever be set free?

The Guardian’s series Black Power Behind Bars began in 2013, when our U.S. chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, reported on the Angola Three. These were former Black Panthers who were then America’s longest-serving solitary confinement prisoners, held in isolation cells in Louisiana for more than 40 years. Pilkington began identifying those black radicals still behind bars, working with academics, criminal justice groups and prisoner support campaigns to come up with a list of 19 people. Through prison emails, letters and inmate visits, Pilkington built up an intimate portrait of the 19 that was both rooted in history and highly newsworthy, in that all of them are subject to bitterly contested parole proceedings today. This piece powerfully demonstrates how the history of the black liberation struggle lives on today in the form of enduringly complex and profoundly divisive dilemmas of crime and punishment. Days before we published, a 20th former Black Panther was paroled after 45 years in prison – a news story that we exclusively broke. Shortly after we published, two more of the 19 were paroled – again as reported exclusively by the Guardian. Yet Jalil Muntaqim / Anthony Bottom, our prime subject, was rejected by a parole board in December. The Guardian’s reporting has both added on public knowledge and also added understanding and balance to how these events are covered. The piece pulled in over 320,000 page views.