Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa (formerly known as "David L. Rice") was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1947.  Sometime during his second or third year of high school, he began to develop an interest in social and political issues, which led him to join both on- and off-campus groups that were attempting to challenge discrimination and segrega­tion based on color, poverty, etc.

After high school and the one year he spent in college, Mondo started focusing more on issues affecting his own community and also began to express himself seriously in writing, doing articles and columns in several community newsletters, "underground"/alternative newspapers, etc.  Sometime during this period, he discovered poetry as a means of expression.

By the time he joined the Omaha chapter of the Black Panthers in the spring of 1969, he had already been working with the chapter in  its breakfast-for-children program and other chapter activities in the community and was or had been part of a variety of other groups--such as Lake-Charles Community Action and other groups involved in community organizing for empowerment; Mothers for Adequate Welfare; which sought welfare and tenants' rights; Ad Hoc Education Planning Committee, which was concerned mainly with issues of racism in the Omaha public school system; and groups and organizations promoting political education, trying to bring an end to the U.S. government's war against the people of Vietnam, and otherwise trying to bring about significant change.

In the summer of 1970, Mondo (known at that time as "David Rice") was Deputy Minister of Information of the Omaha chapter of the Black Pan­ther Party's National Committees to Combat Fascism.  Ed Poindexter was the chapter's Deputy Chairman.  In August, an Omaha cop was killed by a suitcase bomb placed in a vacant house.  Within a couple of weeks, Mondo, Ed, and other chapter members and associates would be arres­ted.  Through a process of perjured testimony, use of Panther ideology and rhetoric to inflame a jury of 11 Europeans (Caucasians) and one person of African descent, falsified and manufactured physical "evi­dence," etc. Mondo and Ed were tried and convicted of the killing and sentenced to life imprisonment in April of 1971.  The youngster who testified that he placed the bomb and made the 911 call to lure police to the house pled guilty to "juvenile delinquency" shortly after Mondo and Ed's conviction and sentencing.

Within just a few years after entering the state pen, Mondo joined the Islamic community there, primarily for reasons associated with brotherhood.  He says that after maybe four years, he left Islam because, "it was too much like being a Christian all over again." Some time in ‘78 or ‘79, the Harambee Afrikan Cultural Organization was founded.  He joined it shortly after that and has been in positions of leadership of that organization since then.  He is also editor of the organization's newsletter.  Mondo has, over the years, been involved in theatre and writers' workshops, a prisoners' art guild, and has essentially continued being a part of a community, just as he was before his arrest, and just as he will do when he is rightfully returned to the African community outside of the joint.

For more information:  http://www.n2pp.infopp.info and http://www.mondo.info

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