Jamal Joseph

His parents, who never married, were both Afro-Cuban; his father, Alipio Zorilla, was a revolutionary comrade of Fidel Castro,[2] who later served as Cuba's ambassador to Tanzania and Zambia.

Joseph spent a year in prison pending the verdict before it was deemed he, as well as all other defendants, were ultimately not guilty.

[6][7] In 1973, Joseph, loyal to the New York faction led by Eldridge Cleaver, pleaded guilty to attempted manslaughter for his part in the 1971 murder of Samuel Napier, a Black Panther Party member who belonged to the California BPP faction loyal to Huey Newton.

[6][9][10][11] For this, Joseph served five and a half years in Leavenworth State Penitentiary in Kansas, where he earned two college degrees and wrote his first play.

[15] He is a full professor and former chair of Columbia University's Graduate Film Division and the artistic director of the New Heritage Theatre Group in Harlem.

He has been featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, BET's American Gangster and on Tupac Shakur's The Rose That Grew from Concrete Volumes 1 and 2.