Biography
Sekou Kambui was a Civil Rights activist with the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When Sekou was 19 years old, he became affiliated with the Black Panther Party and Republic of New Afrika. In the 1970s, Sekou spent most of his time community organizing in Birmingham, Alabama with the Alabama Black Liberation Front, the Inmates for Action, and the Afro-Amerikan People’s Party. Because of his activism in the Civil Rights movement, he was watched closely by the FBI’s counterintelligence program entitled COINTELPRO, and was subsequently profiled and pulled over on January 2, 1975 for allegedly running a yield sign and/or speeding. During the traffic stop the officer found a pistol in Sekou’s vehicle, and after strong suspicion by the officer that it was the weapon listed as stolen during a Tuscaloosa, Alabama murder, Sekou was taken into custody and charged for the murders of the two white men; a KKK official and a billionaire oilman. During his trial defense witnesses provided alibi testimony for Kambui during the time of the murder leading to a hung jury only for those witnesses to later flee the state after being threatened by Birmingham Police. Leaving Kambui with no defense during his second trial. Throughout both trials, major witnesses admitted that they had been coerced into testifying falsely against Sekou and were repeatedly visited by certain members of the Tuscaloosa County and Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and were deliberately coached on what to say during their testimonies. Sekou was never placed at or near the crime scene, the real murder weapon was never found, nor was there ever any direct evidence to connect him to the murders.
