In addition to his leadership role in VVAW, Hussin was a board member of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services and supported the Republic of New Africa. Lifelong Community Activist Dies at 55. He was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 28, 1949. He joined the merchant marines at age eighteen, and at nineteen he enlisted in the United States Army. He served a tour of duty in Vietnam and ultimately earned an honorable discharge.
Especially noteworthy was his national leadership role with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and his two terms of formal service and leadership as a Board member of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. His activism didn't stop there. Hussin was also very proud of his working relationship with the Chicano Development Center, The Republic of New Africa, and the anti-war Quakers in San Francisco. Despite his growing debilitating medical conditions, Mr. Hussin followed his love for people and the environment. He worked at the ACCESS, donating his time to fixing plumbing, electrical and carpentry problems that would arise from time to time. He was most proud of his successful completion and certification of a Horticulture program which allowed him to establish a children's learning garden at ACCESS. He taught children how to garden and grow plants and, most importantly, they learned an appreciation for the Earth. Hussin devoted his life to community activism on the most fundamental basis, on the ground and personal! Hussin is survived by his wife Tamara; daughters Georgia and Tiffany; his four grandchildren; five brothers and sister. A memorial service for Mr. Hussin will be held at. The Republic of New Africa (RNA) is a black nationalist organization that was created in 1969 on the premise that an independent black republic should be created out of the southern United States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which were considered subjugated lands. It also argued that African-Americans should be allowed to vote on self-determination, as that opportunity was not provided at the end of slavery when the 14th Amendment to the U.Constitution incorporated African-Americans into the United States. The economy of the RNA was to be organized based on ujamaa, Tanzania's model of cooperative economics and community self-sufficiency. Citizens of the proposed RNA would have limited political rights, unions would be discouraged, freedom of the press would be curtailed, men would be forced to serve in the military, and polygamy would be allowed.
Two brothers, Milton and Richard Henry, who were associates of Malcolm X, formed an organization called the Malcolm X Society, which was devoted to the creation of an independent black nation within the United States. Milton and Richard subsequently changed their names to Gaidi Obadele and Imari Abubakari Obadele, respectively. The brothers organized a meeting of 500 black nationalists in Detroit, Michigan in 1968.
Exiled former North Carolina NAACP leader Robert Williams was chosen as the first President of the Republic of New Africa. The group wrote a declaration of independence and established the Republic of New Africa. The group anticipated that the U.Would reject their demands and made plans for armed resistance and a prolonged guerrilla war. Both federal and local governments reacted to the RNA with suspicion, and had violent conflicts with the RNA. The RNA was a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) COINTELPRO, its anti-radical program of surveillance, disruption, and subversion. Detroit police raided the RNA's first anniversary conference in 1969 and one police officer was killed during the raid.
Three RNA members were acquitted of any crimes in this incident. Police in Jackson, Mississippi raided RNA headquarters, and another police officer was killed. Eleven RNA members, including founder Imari Obadele were arrested and convicted for assault, murder, and sedition.
Three other members, while driving to RNA headquarters, killed a police officer in New Mexico who had pulled their car over. They subsequently hijacked a plane and escaped to Cuba. Soon after Imari Obadele was released from prison he and six others were convicted on federal conspiracy charges. He was released in 1980 and went on to earn a Ph. From Temple University in political science and has taught at several colleges and written numerous books and articles on black separatism, which he still advocates. The RNA's popularity and influence diminished with most of its leaders in prison, but it still claims a membership of 5,000 to 10,000.Its headquarters have been moved to Washington, D. The Republic of New Afrika (RNA), founded in 1968 as the Republic of New Africa (RNA), is a black nationalist organization and black separatist movement in the United States popularized by black freedom fighter groups.
The larger New Afrika movement in particular has three goals. Creation of an independent black-majority country situated in the Southeastern United States, in the heart of an area of black-majority population. A referendum of all African Americans to determine their desires for citizenship; movement leaders say their ancestors were not offered a choice in this matter after emancipation in 1865 following the American Civil War. The vision for this country was first promulgated by the Malcolm X Society[2] on March 31, 1968, at a Black Government Conference held in Detroit, Michigan.The conference participants drafted a constitution and declaration of independence, [2] and they identified five Southern states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina) as subjugated national territory. The Black Government Conference was convened by the Malcolm X Society and the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL), two influential Detroit-based black organizations with broad followings. The attendees produced a Declaration of Independence (signed by 100 conferees out of approximately 500), a constitution, and the framework for a provisional government. Williams, a controversial human rights advocate then living in exile in China, was chosen as the first president of the provisional government; attorney Milton Henry (a student of Malcolm X's teachings) was named first vice president; and Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, served as second vice president. The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) advocated/advocates a form of cooperative economics through the building of New Communities-named after the Ujamaa concept promoted by Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.
It proposed militant self-defense through the building of local people's militias and a standing army to be called the Black Legion; and the building of racially based organizations to champion the right of self-determination for people of black African descent. The organization was involved in numerous controversial issues. For example, it attempted to assist Oceanhill-Brownsville area in Brooklyn to secede from the United States during the 1968 conflict over control of public schools. Additionally, it was involved with shootouts at New Bethel Baptist Church in 1969 (during the one-year anniversary of the founding) and another in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1971. It had announced that the capital of the Republic would be in Hinds County, Mississippi, located on a member's farm. In the confrontations, law-enforcement officials were killed and injured. Organization members were prosecuted for the crimes. Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, was elected as second vice president of the first administration in 1968, working alongside Williams and Henry. Chokwe Lumumba, formerly Edwin Finley Taliaferro of Detroit, was elected as second vice president in 1971. He later became an attorney, working in Michigan and Mississippi in public defense. After settling in Jackson, Mississippi, he was elected to the city council there. He was elected as mayor in 2013, dying in office in February 2014 of natural causes. Queen Mother Moore was a founding member of the Republic of New Afrika. She helped found the group and helped out in the group as much as she could. Milton Henry, also known as "Brother Gaidi Obadele, " was one of the primary founders of the Republic of New Afrika.He was elected as the first vice president of the founding administration in 1968. Williams was a black nationalist elected as the first president of the Republic of New Afrika. Sanyika Shakur, former Eight Tray Crips gang leader, currently incarcerated at Centinela State Prison.
For thousands of years, Black People in Africa had enjoyed Freedom, Independence, Self-Government and Self-Determination. When Black People came to the Americas as adventurers and explorers and established settlements here, they maintained their love for freedom, independence, self-government and self-determination. And, when Black People were brought to this land as slaves, Our most powerful motive was to regain Our freedom, independence, self-government and self-determination. From day one, Black People rebelled and sought a way-of-life that was more rewarding and beneficial to Us.
We did so in 1526 by rebelling against the Spaniards in South Carolina and running to the Indians, who helped Us drive the Spanish away and experience the self-governing process again. Thus began Our quest to establish a Black nation, a REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRIKA, in North America. To the Black People who were forced to come to this land, Black Nationalism was a top priority. Self-government was what Blacks wanted more than anything else.Between 1850 and 1860, Blacks became more daring in their determination to rule themselves. For 250 years they had expressed their nationalistic desires by rebelling against whites, terrorizing whites and establishing camps that were governed by Black People.
Throughout the Civil War Black People demonstrated a preference for self-government by taking every opportunity available to govern themselves. Black People flocked in large numbers to areas where northern armies had won battles, and confronted the military officers with situations that could only be controlled if immediate governments were established.
Black People would have to to run those governments, and had a right to. In 1864, Special Field Order #15 set aside for Black People a stretch of land from Charleston, S.
To the country bordering the St. John's River in Florida. In this area, the official order read, no white person whatsoever, unless military officers and soldiers detained for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs [of government] will be left to the free people [Black People] themselves. Similar centers were established in Mississippi, where more than 70,000 Blacks established governments where all property was under Black government and control, and where all Black residents had the inalienable right to liberty.
With such settlements as these, on land from South Carolina to Florida and Mississippi that had been declared Ours, We, Black People, settled down to manage Our affairs [and did a good job]. We wanted to continue managing Our affairs, too.
For this reason We resisted efforts made later on by the federal government to take away Our land and oftentimes only gave it up after We had been defeated in battle by army troops. In the late 1960s, a convention of Black delegates met in Detroit, Michigan and proclaimed that Black People in the United States were in fact a Nation of People separate from the American people.
This convention of delegates, including Imari Obadele (who was later elected president of the Black Nation) gave that Nation of People a name, the Republic of New Afrika. The Republic of New Afrika took the concept of Black Nationalism to its ultimate stage when, in 1968, it declared Black People to be free and independent of the United States government. The Republic of New Afrika declared Black People's independence because it believes that Black People in Amerikkka make up a nation of people, a people separate and apart from the Amerikkkan people. The RNA also believes that as a nation of people, We are entitled to all of the rights of a nation, including the right to land and self-determination.The RNA further believes that all the land in Amerikkka, upon which Black People have lived for a long time, worked and made rich as slaves, and fought to survive on is land that belongs to Us as a People, and it is land We must gain control of because, as Malcolm X said, land is the basis of independence, freedom, justice and equality. We cannot talk about self-determination without discussing it within the context of land. Therefore, the RNA [identified the five states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as Black People's land and] believes that gaining control of Our land is the fundamental struggle facing Black People.
Without land, Black Power, rights and freedom have no substance. The Republic of New Afrika believes that Black People in Amerikkka make up a nation of people, a people separate and apart from the Amerikkkan people.
The RNA further believes that all the land in Amerikkka, upon which Black People have lived for a long time, worked and made rich as slaves, and fought to survive on is land that belongs to Us as a People. We must gain control of that land because land is the basis of independence, freedom, justice and equality.
We cannot talk about self-determination without talking about land. Therefore, the RNA identified the five states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as Black People's land. Gaining control of that land is the fundamental struggle facing Black People who presently live in the United States of America. The RNA asserts that Black People in Amerikkka are not legally U. History is quite clear on this point.
In 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U. Constitution recognized the freedom of the New Afrikan (Black People) and left Us as an unattached political entity rightfully settled on land that was claimed by the U. Along with freedom, according to international law, came four choices as to what Our political destiny would be.
Number one, if We wanted to, We could seek admission to citizenship in the Amerikkkan community. Number two, if We so desired and if We could afford to, We could return home to Afrika. Number three, if We so desired, We could emigrate to (re-locate in) another country where We preferred to live if that country did not object. And, number four, if We so desired, We could and had a right to set up an independent state [Nation] of Our own, and could legally do so on land claimed by the United States.
We had the right to do so because We had lived here long enough, worked here long enough and fought here long enough to satisfy the requirements laid out by international law. Additionally, establishing an independent nation where We were was Our most logical choice because (1) We had experienced self-government in this land before, (2) We could not trust Our welfare and government to the people who had enslaved Us and dreadfully exploited Us, and (3) most New Afrikans [Black People] were unwilling and/or unable as a practical matter to emigrate to another land or return to Afrika. Land in this country where the ex-slave had already contributed his labor and blood, all as a result of wrongful kidnapping, wrongful transport and wrongful exploitation was the only logical and practical option left. The RNA teaches that the passage of the 14th Amendment was, in fact, a declaration of war by whites and their government against Black People and the governments We had established during the Civil War.White military expeditions against and invasions of all the Black governments were begun, meetings and conventions of New Afrikans [Black People] were attacked and banned, and widespread white violence against Black People was approved and supported by white governments. In spite of this, Black People continued to seek self-government and land because they preferred government by Blacks rather than government by whites. Thus, independent land for Black People is one of three cornerstones of the Republic of New Afrika.
The other two are (1) We, Black People, must internationalize Our struggle, and (2) We must defend Ourselves. He Black/New Afrikan Creed [Audio Version]. I believe in the spirituality, humanity and genius of Black People, and in Our new pursuit of these values. I believe in the family and the community, and in the community as a family, and i will work to make this concept live.
I believe in the community as more important than the individual. I believe in constant struggle for freedom, to end oppression and build a better world. I believe in collective struggle: in fashioning victory in concert with my Brothers and Sisters. I believe that the fundamental reason Our oppression continues is that We, as people, lack the power to control Our lives. I believe that the fundamental way to gain that power, and end oppression, is to build a sovereign Black nation.
I believe that all the land in America, upon which We have lived for a long time, which We have worked and build upon, and which We have fought to stay on, is land that belongs to Us as a people. I believe in the Malcolm X Doctrine: that We must organize upon this land, and hold a plebiscite, to tell the world by a vote that We are free and Our land independent, and that, after the vote, We must stand ready to defend Ourselves, establishing the nation beyond contradiction. [BlackGovernment101][BuyBooks][TheBlackEye][Top][Home]. Therefore, i pledge to struggle without cease, until We have won sovereignty. I pledge to struggle without fail until We have built a better condition than man has yet known.
I will give my life, if that is necessary. I will give my time, my mind, my strength and my wealth because this IS necessary. I will follow my chosen leaders and help them. I will love my Brothers and Sisters as myself. I will steal nothing from a Brother or Sister, cheat no Brother or Sister, misuse no Brother or Sister, inform on no Brother or Sister and spread no gossip. I will be patient and uplifting with the deaf, dumb and blind, and i will seek by word and deed to heal the Black family, to bring into the Movement and into the Community mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters left by the wayside. Now, freely and of my own will, i pledge this creed, for the sake of freedom for my people and a better world, on pain of disgrace and banishment if i prove false. The Black Declaration of Independence [Audio Version]. We, the Black People in America, in consequence of arriving at a knowledge of Ourselves as a people with dignity, long deprived of that knowledge; as a consequence of revolting with every decimal of Our collective and individual beings against the oppression that for 300 years has destroyed and broken and warped the bodies and minds and spirits of Our people in America, in consequence of Our raging desire to be free of this oppression, to destroy this oppression wherever it assaults mankind in the world, and in consequence of Our indistinguishable determination to go a different way, to build a new and better world, do hereby declare Ourselves forever free and independent of the jurisdiction of the United States of America and the obligations which that country's unilateral decision to make Our ancestors and Ourselves paper-citizens placed on Us. We claim no rights from the United States of America other than those rights belonging to human beings anywhere in the world, and these include the right to damages, reparations due Us for the grievous injuries sustained by Our ancestors and Ourselves by reason of United States lawlessness.Ours is a revolution against - Our oppression and that of all people in the world. And it is a revolution for a better life, a better station for mankind, a surer harmony with the forces of life in the universe. We therefore, see these as the aims of Our revolution.
To free Black People in America from oppression. To support and wage the world revolution until all people everywhere are so free.To build a new Society that is better than what we now know and as perfect as man can make it. To assure all people in the New Society maximum opportunity and equal access to that maximum. To promote industriousness, responsibility, scholarship and service. To create conditions in which freedom of religion abounds and man's pursuit of god and/or the destiny, place and purpose of man in the Universe will be without hindrance. To build a Black independent nation where no sect or religious creed subverts or impedes the building of the New Society, the New State Government, or the achievement of the Aims of the Revolution as set forth in this Declaration.
To end exploitation of man by man or his environment. To assure equality of rights for the sexes.
To end color and class discrimination, while not abolishing salubrious diversity, and to promote self-respect and mutual respect among all people in the Society. To protect and promote the personal dignity and integrity of the individual, and his natural rights.To assure justice for all. To place the major means of production and trade in the trust of the state to assure the benefits of this earth and man's genius and labor to society and all its members; and. To encourage and reward the individual for hard work and initiative and insight and devotion to the Revolution. In mutual trust and great expectation, We the undersigned, for ourselves and for those who look to us but who are unable personally to fix their signatures hereto, do join in this solemn Declaration of Independence, and to support this Declaration and to assure the success of Our Revolution, We pledge, without reservation, ourselves, our talents, and all our worldly goods. N impressive assortment of Black radicals gathered to sign the Declaration of Independence.
It was not Philadelphia 1776, of course, but Detroit in 1968, a city still smoldering from its 1967 Rebellion, one of the most significant urban rebellions the country has ever known. The colonial authority from which Black radicals sought independence was none other than the United States.
And like the British, the United States would not relinquish its colonial authority. Thus began the rise of the Republic of New Africa (RNA) (the group later changed the spelling of "Africa" to "Afrika, " in keeping with Swahili phonetic traditions).
From the beginning the RNA embodied both a concept and an organization. Never a large organization, RNA members and the idea of New Afrika have shaped a myriad of foundational campaigns for reparations and the freedom of US political prisoners over the last half-century. In each of its campaigns, the New Afrikan framework has insisted on the centrality of land and power to any idea of Black politics.
New Afrikan political thought synthesized long-prevalent strands of Black nationalism: cultural pride, anti-imperialism, spirituality, self-defense, self-governance, land ownership, and economic uplift. As both an individual right and a collective future, self-determination has been the guiding proviso. As an organization the RNA joined the Black arts cultural renaissance with the militancy of the Black Panther Party and a spiritual cosmology redolent of the Nation of Islam. Like the Nation of Islam, the RNA's "New Afrikan creed" maintained the "genius of black people, " regulated personal behavior such as dress and hygiene, and upheld the heteronormative family as the natural unit of political community.The evolution of New Afrikan politics has shed some of these conservative gender politics, while still synthesizing a blend of Black radical influences. Inspired by Garveyism and Rastafarianism, New Afrikans capitalize "We" and use lowercase i. " Like other Black nationalists, New Afrikans often change their names to reconnect to their African ancestry and reject the "slave names they had received at birth.
New Afrikans described the US as "Babylon, " characterizing Black liberation as a biblical struggle. As an organization the RNA built on the legacies of Garveyism and heterodox Black radicalism. The 1968 Black Government Conference that founded the RNA brought together a wide array of Black radicals-including Betty Shabazz, Queen Mother Moore, Muhammad Ahmad and Herman Ferguson of the Revolutionary Action Movement, Ron Karenga of the US Organization, Amiri Baraka, H.
The first president of the provisional government was Robert F. Williams, the NAACP organizer whose advocacy of armed self-defense against racism ran him out the country. A figurehead more than a founder, Williams resigned his presidency after returning to the US in 1969. Central to its cosmology, the RNA advocated the creation of a separate nation for Black people-New Afrika-by carving territory from the five Black Belt states of the Deep South: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina where slavery was once most strongly concentrated.
This position revived one held by the Communist Party in the 1930s and echoed by many of the small communist parties emerging in the 1970s, which held that the history of racial slavery and its afterlives had created a colonized people in the cotton belt South. However New Afrikans argued that across the country Black people were colonized.
Even though decades of migration north and west had decreased the Black population in the cotton belt South, many Black folks still lived in the region. New Afrikans upheld the South as a more strategically defensible and historically authentic location of Black politics than the northern and western cities. Although RNA started in Detroit, it moved to Mississippi in 1970-around the time that African Americans began returning South in large numbers.The RNA's move South was not without conflict, however. Longtime Detroit organizers Gaidi and Imari Obadele (née Milton and Richard Henry) founded the RNA to continue the ideology of Malcolm X, as well as what the pair had learned from figures such as Reverend Albert Cleage, Kwame Nkrumah (a college classmate of Milton Henry), and Grace Lee Boggs. The brothers had a falling out about the strategic direction of the group, however, and Imari led a small group of partisans in moving to Jackson in 1970 to set up a provisional government. The more significant conflict came from the government. RNA members gathered in March 1969 at Detroit's New Bethel Baptist Church, pastored by the Reverend C.
Franklin-a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) member and the father of soul singer Aretha Franklin-to celebrate the church's one-year anniversary. When a shooting occurred outside the church, police surrounded the building and opened fire. The case immediately became embroiled in Detroit's high-pressure environment, where divisions between the police and Black activists remained sharp.
George Crockett, a judge who had previously represented the United Auto Workers and defended activists who were being persecuted as Communists, set up an impromptu court in the police station to hear the charges against arrested Black activists. Working through the night, Judge Crockett freed many of the activists. Police continued to hound the RNA in Mississippi.In August 1971 the group faced a dramatic raid on two of its houses by local and state police, as well as the FBI. In early morning raids, police surrounded the RNA's headquarters in Jackson.
One police officer died, and two were wounded. This raid resulted in the arrest of eleven RNA members, of which eight-including Imari Obadele-were convicted and spent much of the 1970s as political prisoners.
Audley Queen Mother Moore (Photo: Judith Sedwick, Black Women Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Flickr). RNA members continued to organize while incarcerated. They used the strict conditions of their confinement as further proof of their political arguments.
Obadele participated in the formation of a multiracial coalition of radical prisoners at the federal prison in Marion, Illinois and wrote for Black Pride, a Black-nationalist-prisoner magazine based there. With its leaders incarcerated, in 1972 the RNA released a legislative Anti-Depression Program.The title was similar to the manifesto of demands issued during the previous year's rebellion at Attica. Both writings demanded legislative changes while upholding self-reliance as a necessary practice on the way toward self-determination.
New Afrikan politics also grew because its cosmology resonated with Black people who were disproportionately represented in American prisons. The notion of New Afrika as a nation formed by slavery echoed what Malcolm X had said about America itself being a prison. New Afrikans claimed that prisoners were on the front lines within the prison that held all Black people. Staking their authority "by the grace of Malcolm, " New Afrikans extended his message that the Black condition was one of perpetual imprisonment.
They spoke of the US as imprisoning the New Afrikan nation, urged adherents to support prisoners' struggles, and promoted prisoners as strategists for the developing Black revolution. The prison system was the most explicit expression of the colonial relationship between the US government and the Black diaspora, here and abroad. Led by the prolific-imprisoned intellectual James Yaki Sayles, New Afrikan prisoners studied the afterlives of slavery evident in everything from the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which outlawed slavery except as a punishment for a crime, to gentrification.New Afrikans identified prison and slavery as foundational elements of the United States-problems only reparations and self-determination could address. Providing a robust worldview for the anti-Blackness that yokes chattel slavery to mass incarceration, New Afrikan politics continue to animate contemporary Black prison organizing.
After fifty years New Afrika remains a North Star in the imagination of Black freedom. The provisional government of the Republic of New Afrika still exists, hosting annual New Afrikan Nation Day celebrations to honor the history of the Black freedom struggle. Yet the most salient influence is likely to be found in the elastic, transformative concept of New Afrika itself.
A neologism coined to name a diasporic Black identity formed through slavery and its afterlives, "New Afrika" can be found wherever people struggle for reparations, self-determination, the freedom of political prisoners, the eradication of police and vigilante violence, and-as seen today in Jackson, Mississippi-economic democracy and eco-socialism. In short, it can be found where Black people govern themselves. The Republic of New Afrika (RNA) is a Black nationist movement that was founded in 1968 as the Republic of New Africa (RNA). Self-described as a Black separatist organization, it was known for its Black freedom fighters groups in the U. The movement is still viable today. Here are 10 things you should know about the Republic of New Afrika. The Republic of New Afrika has three main goals. The first is the creation of an independent Black-majority country situated in the Southeastern region, in the heart of an area of Black-majority population. The group also wants the federal government to pay reparations of several billion dollars to African-American descendants of slaves. The first goal is a referendum of all African Americans to determine their desires for citizenship; movement leaders say they were not offered a choice in this matter after emancipation in 1865 following the American Civil War.The organization strives for independence for Blacks as a separate nation. The vision for this country was first promulgated by the Malcolm X Society on March 31, 1968, at a Black Government Conference held in Detroit, Michigan. The conference participants drafted a constitution and declaration of independence.
Its proponents lay claim to five Southern states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina; and to the Black-majority counties adjacent to this area in Arkansas, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida, Wikipedia reported. The attendees produced a Declaration of Independence.
The organization drew some prominent Black Americans to the conference, including human rights advocate Robert F. Williams, then living in exile in China, who was chosen as the first president of the provisional government; attorney Milton Henry (a student of Malcolm X's teachings) was selected as first vice president; and Malcolm X's widow Betty Shabazz served as second vice president. The group was very involved in various communities and outspoken about racist incidents in the U.
Organization members were prosecuted for the crimes, Wikipedia reported. Because of its movement and the attention the organization was gaining, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) listed the Republic of New Afrika as a seditious group due to its advocacy of secession. The FBI even raided several of the group's meetings and repeatedly arrested and prosecuted certain RNA leaders noted above. The group was a target of the FBI's controversial COINTELPRO operation.
The group has always attracted a wide range of Blacks, from convicted felons to renowned professors, among them: Monster Kody, Eight Tray Crips gang Leader (currently incarcerated at Centinela State Prison); Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X; Chokwe Lumumba, formerly Edwin Finley Taliaferro of Detroit, who later became an attorney was elected to the Jackson City, Mississippi, city council there. Lumumba elected as mayor in 2013, dying in office in February 2014 of natural causes. Jamarlin Martin catches up with Tayo Oviosu at SXSW 2018. Oviosu is the Founder and CEO of Paga, the leading mobile payments company in Nigeria. As both an individual right and a collective future, self-determination has been the guiding proviso, Black Perspectives reported.
The New African Movement was inspired by Garveyism and Rastafarianism and like other Black nationalists, New Afrikans often change their names to reconnect to their African ancestry and reject the slave names. The group was very involved with other Black organizations and this alerted various government agencies as they feared RNA would create a united front with other Black organizations. The government continued its efforts to dismantle the growing organization, especially in Mississippi. This raid resulted in the arrest of eleven RNA members, of which eight-including Imari Obadele-were convicted and spent much of the 1970s as political prisoners, Black Perspectives reported. One of the goals of the group is for Black to be economically independent.Citizens of the proposed RNA would have limited political rights, unions would be discouraged, freedom of the press would be curtailed, men would be forced to serve in the military, and polygamy would be allowed, Black Past reported. In 1967 Milton Henry, an African-American attorney and former acquaintance of Malcolm X, and his brother, Richard Henry, founded the Malcolm X Society, an organization based in Detroit whose purpose was to encourage the establishment of an autonomous black nation within the United States.
By 1968 the brothers had adopted new names-Milton became Brother Gaidi Obadele and Richard renamed himself Imari Abubakari Obadele-and issued a call to black nationalists for the creation of an independent black republic in the Deep South. In March 1968 the Obadeles, along with black militant activist Robert F. Williams, convened several hundred nationalists in Detroit, where a declaration of independence was adopted and the Republic of New Africa (RNA) was established.
The delegates called for the creation of an independent, communitarian black nation stretching across "the subjugated territory" of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The republic's economy would be organized according to the guidelines of ujamaa, the Tanzanian model of cooperative economics and community self-sufficiency, but political rights and freedom of the press would be limited, unions discouraged, military service made compulsory, and men allowed multiple wives. Soon several "consulates" were established across the country, officials were chosen, and members declared their allegiance to the provisional government. In its manifestos, largely written by Imari Obadele, the RNA called on the U.
In anticipation of the government's rejection of the proposal, the RNA's leaders developed a contingency plan of armed resistance in the South and guerrilla sabotage in the North. Detroit police conducted a violent raid on the RNA's one-year anniversary conference, held in 1969 at the New Bethel Baptist Church.
One police officer was killed and four RNA members were wounded after hundreds of rounds of ammunition were fired into the church. Three RNA members were tried and acquitted of murder charges.
One of the accused, Chaka Fuller, was stabbed to death several months later by an undiscovered assailant. Soon thereafter local police conducted a raid on the RNA headquarters in Jackson, Mississippi, during which a white police officer was killed.
Eleven RNA members, including Imari Obadele, president of the provisional government, were arrested and convicted on charges of murder, assault, and sedition. Ten of the "RNA-11" served sentences ranging from two to ten years.Hekima Ana was convicted of firing the shot that killed the officer and was sentenced to life in prison. In 1971 five RNA members were accused of robbing a bank in Manhattan. Three of the five were caught at the scene, and a fourth was killed. The fifth, a twenty-four-year-old schoolteacher, Patrick Critton, who was the lookout, escaped. He later hijacked a plane to Havana.
In 2004 a police detective in Canada investigating the old case found Critton in Mount Vernon, New York. Critton was arrested and convicted. Three RNA members who were driving through New Mexico on route to Mississippi to assist the besieged headquarters murdered a police officer when he stopped their car.
The three, Michael Finney, Charles Hill, and Ralph Goodwin, then hijacked a commercial airplane and ordered it flown to Cuba. Finney and Hill continue to live in Cuba (Goodwin died there in 1973). Imari Obadele was released from prison in 1973, but shortly thereafter he and six others were convicted on federal conspiracy charges and incarcerated in a federal prison in Illinois. While serving his seven-year sentence, Obadele filed a civil suit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1977, which resulted in the release of government documents confirming that the RNA had been targeted for subversion by COINTELPRO, the FBI's antiradical program. Formed at the height of the Black Power movement, the RNA attracted a significant number of sympathizers in both radical and liberal political circles. Communist Party leader Angela Davis organized support campaigns for the group, and prominent Democratic politicians such as Julian Bond, John Conyers, and George Crockett provided legal assistance on various occasions. At the grass-roots level, the diffusion of RNA offices in cities throughout the United States attested to the group's position as one of the most popular and influential black nationalist organizations. Imari Obadele was released from prison in 1980 and went on to pursue an academic career.In political science from Temple University in 1985 and through the late 1980s taught at several colleges, including Beaver College in Pennsylvania and the College of Wooster in Ohio. Obadele has also published numerous books and articles on the RNA and black separatism in which he continues to advocate reparations, the acquisition of land, and the establishment of an independent, socialist republic where a distinctive and autonomous black culture could flourish. His works include War in America: The Malcolm X Doctrine (1968), Revolution and Nation-Building: Strategy for Building the Black Nation in America (1970), and America the Nation-State: The Politics of the United States from a State-Building Perspective (1988). After the imprisonment of most of its leaders the RNA declined in prominence but remained committed to its original principles. In the mid-1980s the group moved its headquarters from Detroit to Washington, D.
And claimed a membership of between five thousand and ten thousand. The RNA, which considers all African Americans to be citizens of the Republic, periodically holds elections on street corners in black neighborhoods to elect officials for the provisional government. Black nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. [1] Black nationalist activism revolves around social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people, especially to resist assimilation into white culture (through integration or otherwise) and maintain a distinct black identity.
Black nationalism arose within the African American community in the United States. In the early 20th century, the Garveyism promoted by the U.
Based Marcus Garvey furthered black nationalist ideas. Black nationalist ideas also proved an influence on the Black Islam movement, particularly groups like the Nation of Islam founded by Elijah Muhammad. During the 1960s, Black nationalism influenced the Black Panther Party and the broader Black Power movement.African Episcopal Church of St. This article or section contains close paraphrasing of one or more non-free copyrighted sources.
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Inspired by the success of the Haitian Revolution, the origins of black and indigenous African nationalism in political thought lie in the 19th and early 20th centuries with people such as Marcus Garvey, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, Henry McNeal Turner, Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Paul Cuffe, and others. The repatriation of African-American slaves to Liberia or Sierra Leone was a common black nationalist theme in the 19th century. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1910s and 1920s was the most powerful black nationalist movement to date, claiming millions of members. Garvey's movement was opposed by mainline black leaders, and crushed by government action.
However, its many alumni remembered its inspiring rhetoric. According to Wilson Jeremiah Moses, black nationalism as a philosophy can be examined from three different periods, giving rise to various ideological perspectives for what we can today consider black nationalism. The first period of pre-classical black nationalism began when the first Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves through the American Revolutionary period. The second period of black nationalism began after the Revolutionary War.This period refers to the time when a sizeable number of educated Africans within the colonies (specifically within New England and Pennsylvania) had become disgusted with the social conditions that arose out of the Enlightenment's ideas. [clarification needed] From this way of thinking came the rise of individuals within the black community who sought to create organizations that would unite black people. The intention of these organizations was to group black people together so they could voice their concerns, and help their own community advance itself.
This form of thinking can be found in historical personalities such as; Prince Hall, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, James Forten, Cyrus Bustill, William Gray through their need to become founders of certain organizations such as African Masonic lodges, the Free African Society, and Church Institutions such as the African Episcopal Church of St. These institutions served as early foundations to developing independent and separate organizations for their own people.The goal was to create groups to include those who so many times had been excluded from exclusively white communities and government-funded organizations. The third period of black nationalism arose during the post-Reconstruction era, particularly among various African-American clergy circles.
Separated circles were already established and accepted because African-Americans had long endured the oppression of slavery and Jim Crowism in the United States since its inception. The clerical phenomenon led to the birth of a modern form of black nationalism that stressed the need to separate blacks from non-blacks and build separate communities that would promote racial pride and collectivize resources. The new ideology became the philosophy of groups like the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam.By 1930, Wallace Fard Muhammad had founded the Nation of Islam. His method to spread information about the Nation of Islam used unconventional tactics to recruit individuals in Detroit, Michigan. Later on, Elijah Muhammad would lead the Nation of Islam and become a mentor to people like Malcolm X. [6] Although the 1960s brought a period of heightened religious, cultural and political nationalism, it was black nationalism that would lead the promotion of Afrocentrism.
Prince Hall was an important social leader of Boston following the Revolutionary War. He is well known for his contribution as the founder of Black Freemasonry.
His life and past are unclear, but he is believed to have been a former slave freed after twenty one years of slavehood. In 1775 fifteen other black men along with Hall joined a freemason lodge of British soldiers, after the departure of the soldiers they created their own lodge African Lodge #1 and were granted full stature in 1784. Despite their stature other white freemason lodges in America did not treat them equal and so Hall began to help other black Masonic lodges across the country to help their own cause - to progress as a community together despite any difficulties brought to them by racists. Hall was best recognized for his contribution to the black community along with his petitions (many denied) in the name of black nationalism.
In 1787 he unsuccessfully petitioned to the Massachusetts legislature to send blacks back to Africa (to obtain "complete" freedom from white supremacy). In 1788, Hall was a well known contributor to the passing of the legislation of the outlawing of the slave-trade and those involved.Hall continued his efforts to help his community, and in 1796 his petition for Boston to approve funding for black schools. Despite the city's inability to provide a building, Hall lent his building for the school to run from.
Until his death in 1807, Hall continued to work for black rights in issues of abolition, civil rights and the advancement of the community overall. Main article: Free African Society.In 1787 Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, black ministers of Pennsylvania, formed the Free African Society of Pennsylvania. The goal of this organization was to create a church that was free of restrictions of only one form of religion, and to pave the way for the creation of a house of worship exclusive to their community. They were successful in doing this when they created the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in 1793.
The community included many members who were notably abolitionist men and former slaves. Allen, following his own beliefs that worship should be out loud and outspoken, left the organization two years later. With the re an opportunity to become the pastor to the church but rejected the offer leaving it to Jones. The society itself was a memorable charitable organization that allowed its members to socialize and network with other business partners, in attempt to better their community. Its activity and open doors served as a motivational growth for the city as many other black mutual aid societies in the city began to pop up.
Additionally the society is well known for their aid during the yellow fever epidemic in 1793 known to have taken the life of many of the city. Main article: African Episcopal Church of St. The African Church or the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was founded in 1792 for those of African descent, as a foster church for the community with the goal to be interdenominational.
In the beginning of the church's establishment its masses were held in homes and local schools. One of the founders of the Free African Society was also the first Episcopal priest of African American descent, Absalom Jones. The original church house was constructed at 5th and Adelphi Streets in Philadelphia, now St. James Place, and it was dedicated on July 17, 1794; other locations of the church included: 12th Street near Walnut, 57th and Pearl Streets, 52nd and Parrish Streets, and the current location, Overbrook and Lancaster Avenue in Philadelphia's historic Overbrook Farms neighborhood. The church is mostly African-American. The church and its members have played a key role in the abolition/anti-slavery and equal rights movement of the 1800s. Thomas has been involved in the local and national civil rights movement through its work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Union of Black Episcopalians, the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC), Philadelphia Interfaith Action, and The Episcopal Church Women. Most importantly, it has been in the forefront of the movement to uphold the knowledge and value of the black presence in the Episcopal Church.Today, that tradition continues with a still-growing membership through a host of ministries such as Christian Formation, the Chancel Choir, Gospel Choir, Jazz Ensemble, Men's Fellowship, Young Adult and Youth Ministries, a Church School, Health Ministry, Caring Ministry, and a Shepherding Program. Main article: Nation of Islam. Fard founded the Nation of Islam in the 1930s.
Fard took as his student Elijah (Poole) Muhammad, who later became the leader of the organization. The basis of the group was the belief that Christianity was exclusively a White man's religion, while Islam was the way for black folk; Christianity was a religion that, like slavery itself, was forced upon the people who suffered at the hands of the whites during their enslavement. The beliefs of the members of the Nation of Islam are similar to others who follow the Quran and worship Allah under the religion of Islam. Founded on resentment of the way Whites historically treated people of color, the Nation of Islam embraces the ideas of black nationalism.
The group itself has, since the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, recruited thousands of followers from all segments of society: from prisons, as well as from black pride and black nationalist movements. Members of the Nation of Islam preached that the goal was not to integrate into White American culture, but rather to create their own cultural footprint and their own separate community in order to obliterate oppression. Their aim was to have their own schools and churches and to support each other without any reliance on other racial groups. The members of the Nation of Islam are known as Black Muslims.
As the group became more and more prominent with public figures such as Malcolm X as its orators, it received increasing attention from outsiders. In 1959 the group was the subject of a documentary named The Hate that Hate Produced. The documentary cast the organization in a negative light, depicting it as a black supremacy group.
Even with such depictions, the group did not lose support from its people. When Elijah Muhammad died, his son took on the role as the leader of the Nation of Islam, converting the organization into a more orthodox iteration of Islam and abandoning beliefs that tended toward violence. This conversion prompted others to abandon the group, dissatisfied with the change in ideology. They created a "New" Nation of Islam in order to restore the aims of the original organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Nation of Islam as a hate group, stating: Its theology of innate black superiority over whites and the deeply racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBT rhetoric of its leaders have earned the NOI a prominent position in the ranks of organized hate.
[11] Louis Farrakhan currently leads the group. Elijah Muhammad was famously known as the successor of Wallace Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam. He was born in Georgia on October 7, 1897. He led the group from 1934 to 1975, being very well recognized as one of the mentors to other famous leaders such as Malcolm X. He lived until February 25, 1975, in Chicago, and the leadership of the organization passed to his son.Marcus Garvey encouraged African people around the world to be proud of their race and see beauty in their own kind. This form of black nationalism later became known as Garveyism. A central idea to Garveyism was that African people in every part of the world were one people and they would never advance if they did not put aside their cultural and ethnic differences and unite under their own shared history.
He was heavily influenced by the earlier works of Booker T. Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry McNeal Turner. [13] Garvey used his own personal magnetism and the understanding of black psychology and the psychology of confrontation to create a movement that challenged bourgeois blacks for the minds and souls of African Americans. Marcus Garvey's return to America had to do with his desire to meet with the man who inspired him most, Booker T.
Washington, however Garvey did not return in time to meet Washington. Despite this, Garvey moved forward with his efforts and two years later, a year after Washington's death, Garvey established a similar organization in America known as the United Negro Improvement Association otherwise known as the UNIA. [14] Garvey's beliefs are articulated in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey as well as Message To The People: The Course of African Philosophy. Between 1953 and 1964, while most African leaders worked in the civil rights movement to integrate African-American people into mainstream American life, Malcolm X was an avid advocate of black independence and the reclaiming of black pride and masculinity.[15] He maintained that there was hypocrisy in the purported values of Western culture - from its Judeo-Christian religious traditions to American political and economic institutions - and its inherently racist actions. He maintained that separatism and control of politics, and economics within its own community would serve blacks better than the tactics of civil rights leader Rev. And mainstream civil rights groups such as the SCLC, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE. Malcolm X declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool, "[This quote needs a citation] and that to achieve anything, African Americans would have to reclaim their national identity, embrace the rights covered by the Second Amendment, and defend themselves from white hegemony and extrajudicial violence. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, Malcolm X quipped, While King was having a dream, the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare.
Prior to his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X believed that African Americans must develop their own society and ethical values, including the self-help, community-based enterprises, that the black Muslims supported. He also thought that African Americans should reject integration or cooperation with whites until they could achieve internal cooperation and unity. He prophetically believed that there "would be bloodshed" if the racism problem in America remained ignored, and he renounced "compromise" with whites.
In April 1964, Malcolm X participated in a Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca); Malcolm found himself restructuring his views and recanted several extremist opinions during his shift to mainstream Islam. However, he still supported black nationalism and advocated that African Americans in the United States act proactively in their campaign for equal human rights, instead of relying on Caucasian citizens to change the laws that govern society. The tenets of Malcolm X's new philosophy are articulated in the charter of his Organization of Afro-American Unity (a secular Pan-Africanist group patterned after the Organization of African Unity), and he inspired some aspects of the future Black Panther movement. In the 1967 Black Power, Stokely Carmichael introduces black nationalism. He illustrates the prosperity of the black race in the United States as being dependent on the implementation of black sovereignty. Under his theory, black nationalism in the United States would allow blacks to socially, economically and politically be empowered in a manner that has never been plausible in America history. A black nation would work to reverse the exploitation of the black race in America, as blacks would intrinsically work to benefit their own state of affairs. African Americans would function in an environment of running their own businesses, banks, government, media and so on and so forth. Black nationalism is the opposite of integration, and Carmichael contended integration is harmful to the black population. As blacks integrate to white communities they are perpetuating a system in which blacks are inferior to whites. Blacks would continue to function in an environment of being second class citizens, he believes, never reaching equity to white citizens. Stokley Carmichael uses the concept of black nationalism to promote an equality that would begin to dismantle institutional racism. While in France, Frantz Fanon wrote his first book, Black Skin, White Masks, an analysis of the impact of colonial subjugation on the African psyche.This book was a very personal account of Fanon's experience being black: as a man, an intellectual, and a party to a French education. Although Fanon wrote the book while still in France, most of his other work was written while in North Africa (in particular Algeria).
It was during this time that he produced The Wretched of the Earth where Fanon analyzes the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for decolonization. In this work, Fanon expounded his views on the liberating role of violence for the colonized, as well as the general necessity of violence in the anti-colonial struggle. Both books established Fanon in the eyes of much of the Third World as one of the leading anti-colonial thinkers of the 20th century. In 1959 he compiled his essays on Algeria in a book called L'An Cinq: De la Révolution Algérienne.
Revolutionary Black nationalism is an ideology that combines cultural nationalism with scientific socialism in order to achieve Black self-determination. Proponents of the ideology argue that revolutionary Black nationalism is a movement that rejects all forms of oppression, including class based exploitation under capitalism. [19] Revolutionary Black nationalist organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary Action Movement also adopted a set of anti-colonialist politics inspired by the writings of notable revolutionary theorists including Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong and Kwame Nkrumah. [20] In the words of Ahmad Muhammad (formerly known as Max Stanford) the national field chairman of the Revolutionary Action Movement.We are revolutionary black nationalist[s], not based on ideas of national superiority, but striving for justice and liberation of all the oppressed peoples of the world. There can be no liberty as long as black people are oppressed and the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America are oppressed by Yankee imperialism and neo-colonialism.
After four hundred years of oppression, we realize that slavery, racism and imperialism are all interrelated and that liberty and justice for all cannot exist peacefully with imperialism. Professor and author Harold Cruse saw revolutionary Black nationalism as a necessary and logical progression from other leftist ideologies, as he believed that non-Black leftists could not properly assess the particular material conditions of the Black community and other colonized people. "Revolutionary nationalism has not waited for Western Marxian thought to catch up with the realities of the "underdeveloped world...
The liberation of the colonies before the socialist revolution in the West is not orthodox Marxism (although it might be called Maoism or Castroism). As long as American Marxists cannot deal with the implications of revolutionary nationalism, both abroad and at home, they will continue to play the role of revolutionaries by proxy. Former director of African Americans for Humanism, calls black nationalism a "strange mixture of profound thought and patent nonsense". On the one hand, Reactionary Black Nationalists (RBNs) advocate self-love, self-respect, self-acceptance, self-help, pride, unity, and so forth - much like the right-wingers who promote traditional family values. But - also like the holier-than-thou right-wingers - RBNs promote bigotry, intolerance, hatred, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, pseudo-science, irrationality, dogmatic historical revisionism, violence, and so forth. Allen further criticizes black nationalists' strong "attraction for hardened prisoners and ex-cons", their encouragement of violence when other African-American individuals or groups are branded as "Toms, " traitors, or "sellouts", the blatantly sexist stance and the similarities to white supremacist ideologies. Many RBNs routinely preach hate. Just as white supremacists have referred to African Americans as "devils, " so have many RBNs referred to whites. White supremacists have verbally attacked gays, as have RBNs. White supremacists embrace paranoid conspiracy theories, as do their African counterparts.Many white supremacists and RBNs consistently deny that they are preaching hate, and blame the mainstream media for misrepresenting them. I pray that God will kill my enemy and take him off the face of the planet.
" Rather, they claim they are teaching "truth and advocating the love of their own people, as though love of self and hatred of others are mutually exclusive positions. On the contrary, RBNs preach love of self and hatred of their enemies. Indeed, it often seems that these groups are motivated more by hatred of their enemies than love of their people. Tunde Adeleke, Nigerian-born professor of History and Director of the African American Studies program at the University of Montana, argues in his book UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission that 19th-century African-American nationalism embodied the racist and paternalistic values of Euro-American culture and that black nationalist plans were not designed for the immediate benefit of Africans but to enhance their own fortunes. Black feminists in the U.Such as Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, and Frances Beal, have also lodged sustained criticism of certain strands of black nationalism, particularly the political programs advocated by cultural nationalists. Black cultural nationalists envisioned black women only in the traditional heteronormative role of the idealized wife-mother figure. Patricia Hill Collins criticizes the limited imagining of black women in cultural nationalist projects, writing that black women assumed a particular place in Black cultural nationalist efforts to reconstruct authentic Black culture, reconstitute Black identity, foster racial solidarity, and institute an ethic of service to the Black community. [25] A major example of black women as only the heterosexual wife and mother can be found in the philosophy and practice called Kawaida exercised by the Us Organization. Maulana Karenga established the political philosophy of Kawaida in 1965.
Its doctrine prescribed distinct roles between black men and women. Specifically, the role of the black woman as "African Woman" was to inspire her man, educate her children, and participate in social development. [26] Historian of black women's history and radical politics, Ashley Farmer, records a more comprehensive history of black women's resistance to sexism and patriarchy within black nationalist organizations, leading many Black Power era associations to support gender equality.