Laura Whitehorn spent 14 years in federal prison for helping to plot a 1983 bomb attack on the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The bomb was designed to protest the liberation of Grenada. These days Ms. Whitehorn finds herself in more congenial surroundings. She will be speaking at Duke University on March 3rd. Well, rehabilitation is always possible, and Whitehorn will be there to talk about the spread of sexually-transmitted disease among prison inmates, a topic she studied extensively during her own incarceration, and one that’s worthy of discussion.
However, belief in her rehabilitation would be rather easier to sustain without the brief biography she sent to Duke’s African and African-American Studies department, her hosts on the 3rd. According to the department’s website, she began by describing herself as a “revolutionary anti-imperialist who spent over 14 years in federal prison as a political prisoner…”