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The Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
School of Graduate Studies and Research
Black Power Still Lives!: The Uhuru Movement
in Saint Petersburg, Florida (1972-2001)
By
Junius English
A Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies and Research in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Social Sciences
with a concentration in History
Summer Semester, 2006
The members of the Committee approve the thesis, entitled, Black Power Still Lives!:
The Uhuru Movement in Saint Petersburg, Florida (1972-2001), by Junius English
defended on August 2, 2006.
Titus Brown, Ph.D.
Professor Directing Thesis
David H. Ja n Ph. D.
Committee e er
Keth immonds, Ph. D.
Assistant Dean of College
of Arts and Sciences
Derek Williams, Ph. D.
Committee Member
Approved:
Departmt"of History and Political Science, David H. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D., Chair
bleg of Artsald Scienc Dr. Ralph Turner, Ph.D., Interim Dean
School of Graduate t dies and Research, Chanta Haywood, Ph.D., Dean
C-i
ii
Acknowledgements
First, I would like to thank the Great Being, for offering me the energy and
opportunity to engage in this challenging task. Secondly, I would like to thank the
profound professors of my department, especially Dr. Titus Brown for orchestrating this
project and working under stressful time constraints, Dr. David Jackson who had great
impact on my worldview and scope in regard to black history, and Dr. Canter Brown (no
longer with the department) for pointing me toward this uncovered topic and refining the
quality of my scholarship. Third, I would like to thank Omali Yeshitela, Chimurenga
Waller, Nyabinga Ezimbahwe and Penny Hess for enduring my consistent phone calls
and fulfilling my many requests for information on a subject as delicate and dear to their
heart as this one. Fourth, I would like to thank the staff at Florida A & M University's
Samuel Coleman Library, special thanks to the Inter-library loan office, Florida State
University's Strozier Library staff, and University of Florida's Institute of Black Culture.
Fifth, I would like to thank my family and friends for supporting me through all of my
shortcomings and offering your love throughout the completion of this process.
Abstract
African-American liberation movements, which have operated outside of the
conventional modes of civil rights activism, have often left unrecorded legacies.
Historically, the roles of these liberation movements in the fight for black rights have
been deemphasized and their contributions to the civil rights movement have largely gone
unmentioned. Not only is this true across the United States, it specifically holds true in
Florida. In Saint Petersburg, for example, the Uhuru movement has served as a catalyst
for serious social change, even though scholars virtually ignored its existence for almost
four decades. Omali Yeshitela, a self-proclaimed revolutionary, founded this movement
in 1972. Since its inception, the organization's goals and strategies have evolved in
successive stages. Today the Uhuru movement, also called the African People's Socialist
Party (APSP), advocates the creation of an international African state by way of a
working class revolution and the end of black oppression through combating European
colonialism and capitalism.
In an effort to argue the Uhuru movement's rightful place in history and to unveil
its captivating story, this work has recounted the organizations most significant activities
from its inception in 1972 to the present. In reconstructing the political history of the
APSP, this text has relied considerably on the firsthand accounts of Uhuru members and
their self-produced literature. In addition to the Uhuru's literature and perspective, the
Saint Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune have offered a wealth of information
regarding the organizations activities, specifically pertaining to recent Uhuru history.
Because the story of the APSP has for the most part been excluded from Florida's major
historical works and virtually omitted from Saint Petersburg's local histories, the aim of
this work is to demonstrate the crucial role they have played in local, state, and national
politics. The scope of this study is limited primarily to the historical activities of the
Uhuru movement, using the political life of Omali Yeshitela as a focal point.
Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru movement have significantly altered St.
Petersburg's political climate, providing a consistent political voice for working-class
blacks. The APSP's sustained political existence links the Black Power era with the
struggles of modern-day African-American politicians. Having had a profound impact on
St. Petersburg's political landscape, the APSP has also maintained a significant national
following. Omali Yeshitela has emerged as a distinctive political leader and theorist and
a prolific writer who has consistently expressed his political insights. Most famous for
his role in the mural case of 1966 and the Tyron Lewis case of 1996, Yeshitela has been
the feature of hundreds of newspaper articles, maintaining the political aptitude to remain
in the public eye. As a political strategist, Yeshitela has tried almost every method of
civil resistance to create change in America's social fabric.
Contents
SignaturePage .... .......... .... ...... .......... .. .. .... iii
Acknowledgements ..................................... iv
Abstract. .................. .................. .v
Contents. ................ .................. .............vii
Chapter
1. Introduction ..................................1
Aim and Scope of this Study
Historical and Histriographical Context
2. The Origins of the Uhuru!................................................... 12
The Childhood of Joe Waller
The Early History of the African People's Socialist Party
Early National Activities
3. Reviving the M ovement................ ....... .........................34
Uhuru philosophy and influences
Political Battles in Oakland
The Uhuru and Huey P. Newton
4. Power to the Populace................................................... 62
The Second series of National conferences
The Tyron Lewis Case and its political impacts
Yeshitela emerges as a community leader
5. The Challenge for Leadership......................................... 96
The Uhuru move to establish institutions
Yeshitela's bid for mayor
Police Chief Controversy
6. Conclusion ........................................................... ...129
7. Abbreviations Page............................... ......................39
8. Bibliography.............................................................140
Chapter 1: Introduction
African-American liberation movements, which have operated outside of the
conventional modes of civil rights activism, have left unrecorded legacies. Historically,
the roles of these liberation movements in the fight for black rights have been
deemphasized and their contributions to the civil rights movement largely, have gone
unmentioned. Not only is this true across the United States, it specifically holds true in
Florida. In Saint Petersburg, for example, the Uhuru movement has served as a catalyst
for serious social change, even though scholars virtually ignored its existence for almost
four decades. Omali Yeshitela, a self-proclaimed revolutionary, founded the movement
in 1972. Since its inception, the organization's goals and strategies have evolved in
successive stages. Today the Uhuru movement, also called the African People's Socialist
Party (APSP), advocates the creation of an international African state by way of a
working class revolution and the end of black oppression through combating European
colonialism and capitalism. As the organization evolved, the movement's members have
worked to strongly influence one of Florida's principal metropolitan areas while
broadcasting the movement's message of revolution on a far-broader scale. The simple
fact that exceptional organizations such as this one have remained obscured in history
and to Floridians illustrates why studies such as the present one remain a critical need.'
'The Uhuru movement's founder Omali Yeshitela, was born under the name Joe Waller.
Outside of the mural incident of 1966 and the Tyron Lewis case of 1996, the Uhuru
rarely appear in state and local histories. Neither of Florida's two current general
histories mentions the Uhuru movement. See Michael Gannon, The New History of
Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996) and Charlton W. Tebeau and
In an effort to argue the Uhuru movement's rightful place in history and to unveil
its captivating story, this work has recounted the organizations most significant activities
from its inception in 1972 to the present. To accomplish this, the initial chapter provides
an overview of the succeeding chapters contained in this manuscript. While much of the
Uhuru's self-produced literature is available, some works are no longer in print or exist as
archival material limited to the presence of a single library. Quality research has allowed
for the investigation of some of these texts, many quite obscure, while others lie beyond
the time constraints and monetary capacities of this work. Fortunately, many of the
Uhuru's older works are still in the organization's possession; nonetheless, at the time of
this essay, their earlier texts and newspapers were not available.
More importantly, the author has been unable to locate any scholars who have
written previous books or dissertations on this subject. This work will not attempt to
detail the number of members in the Uhuru organization because they have declared
those facts classified. Any information the author has obtained about the numerical value
of their membership stems from outside sources. The second chapter introduces the
historical account of the Uhuru epic, beginning with the childhood of its founder, Omali
Yeshitela. This chapter briefly examines his formative years and highlights the factors
that ultimately led to the movement's creation. Once the organization launched, it
William Marina, A History of Florida (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press,
1999). Similarly, see the local history written by Saint Petersburg's own current mayor:
Rick Baker, Mangroves to Major League: A Timeline of Saint Petersburg History (Saint
Petersburg: Southern Heritage Press, 2000).
functioned out of Saint Petersburg, Florida for its first six years, and then relocated to
Oakland, California.2
Chapter three encapsulates the Uhuru's experiences in Oakland and emphasizes
their political activity in the city. Serving as a platform for political maturation, Oakland
was where the organization encountered struggles that molded its ideology and prepared
its leadership for the challenges they soon encountered. By 1993, the Uhuru had left
Oakland to reconvene in Saint Petersburg, Florida, quickly becoming the premier black
revolutionary party in the state. Chapter four underscores the legendary Tyron Lewis
case of 1996. The Uhuru played a critical role in the highly publicized event, when a
white police officer killed a black motorist thereby initiating two outbreaks of civil
unrest. Some journalists and historians have called the case the greatest civil rights
disturbance in Saint Petersburg's history. Impressively, the Uhuru parlayed the
controversy into a prime spot in the city's mainstream politics. The fifth chapter
summarizes the activities and accomplishments of the APSP since their induction into
mainstream politics. Based on chapters two through five, chapter six will discuss the
implications of the research uncovered and the significance of the Uhuru movement as a
historical organization. It will conclude the argument for the Uhuru's historical position
and examine the project's strength as it relates to the original hypotheses.
2 Uhuru Chairman Omali Yeshitela only contributed these words when asked about their
size by the Saint Petersburg Times, "we are a small organization, we do not talk
numbers." Uhuru Historian Nyabinga Ezimbahwe, when asked about the fluctuation of
their membership over time, simply stated, "the numbers of our membership are
classified." He added only that the organization has recently obtained significant
international growth, specifically in West Africa.
In reconstructing the political history of the APSP, this text has relied
considerably on the firsthand accounts of Uhuru members and their self-produced
literature. Using primarily the publications of the Uhuru movement, their newspaper the
Burning Spear, and personal interviews with Uhuru members, the author has attempted to
paint an unbroken picture of the Uhuru phenomena. In addition to the Uhuru's literature
and perspective, the Saint Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune have offered a
wealth of information regarding the organization's activities, specifically pertaining to
recent Uhuru history.
Because the story of the APSP has for the most part been excluded from Florida's
major historical works and virtually omitted from Saint Petersburg's local histories, the
aim of this work is to demonstrate the crucial role they have played in local, state, and
national politics. This essay is exceedingly relevant considering the APSP's profound
impact on Saint Petersburg, Florida, and to a lesser degree in Oakland, California. Since
1987, the Saint Petersburg Times, the city's principal newspaper, has published over 800
articles pertaining to the Uhuru movement, which is sufficient proof of their obvious and
undeniable presence in local matters. However, with the exception of a single paragraph
describing a 1966 mural incident and another caption concerning the Tyron Lewis
incident, the Uhuru are strikingly absent from the histories of Saint Petersburg.3
The scope of this study is limited primarily to the historical activities of the Uhuru
movement, using the political life of Omali Yeshitela as a focal point. This work has
3 Technically, Joe Waller was still in SNCC so the mention of the mural incident does not
count as legitimately covering the Uhuru movement. NewsBank: America's newspapers,
"Saint Petersburg Times, a Search for: Uhuru" [document-online] available at
http://infoweb.newsbank.com.famuproxy.fcla.edu/iw-search/we/InfoWeb.
been tailored to provide a balanced perspective of the Uhuru phenomenon; however, this
task has proven exceptionally difficult. Newspapers and other media often report events
in ways significantly different from the Uhuru's own story. In order to rectify this
apparent contradiction, the author has presented both viewpoints as frequently as
possible.
Regardless of Omali Yeshitela and the APSP's distinct character and niche
within civil rights history, an understanding of their historical relevance and an
evaluation of their political perspective would not be possible without proper context.
This century old battle for social equality in America began shortly after slavery. Within
decades the appearance of notable race leaders, namely, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B.
DuBois, and Marcus Garvey furthered the cause for black political and economic power.
The early protests of the 1930s and 1940s and the social impacts of World War II
provided the platform for the riots that occurred during the civil rights era. The civil
rights movement, post-Rosa Parks, merely represented a more recognizable phase of
blacks' consistent attempts to evolve a healthy cultural and national identity within
American borders. A concise recount of the national civil rights organizations that
directly influenced the Uhuru, along with a brief summary of Saint Petersburg's civil
rights history, may enhance the reader's appreciation for the APSP.4
The context within which the Uhuru movement arose involved deep patterns of
racial prejudice and waves of racial violence. Unknown to many today, Florida stood
out, at least on a per capital basis, as the most lynch-prone state in the nation from the
4 Penny Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence (St. Petersburg: Burning Spear Uhuru
Publications, 2000), 166-226.
1880s to the 1930s. In the twentieth century, events such as the Ocoee Riot of 1920 and
the Rosewood Massacre of 1923, among others, highlighted the state's racist character.
In the 1930s, Saint Petersburg's African-American community existed under the
oppressive restrictions of Jim Crow. Seven years into the decade, Florida legislation
removed the state poll tax, opening the door for some black suffrage. In 1945, civil rights
leader Dr. Gilbert Leggett and several other black leaders effectively petitioned the
Circuit Court to repeal the white primary system that previously dominated Saint
Petersburg's political landscape. Common throughout the south, this system had existed
in Saint Petersburg since 1913. This major civil rights victory furthered black
participation in the local political arena, raising the percentage of black voters thirty
percent, one of the highest rates in the South.
African-Americans in Saint Petersburg had significant racial hostility to
overcome. In 1937, over 200 knights of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) marched through the
city's black neighborhoods, burning two, fifteen-foot crosses. The klansmen marched in
order to discourage African-American voter registration, specifically for a bill the KKK
supported, called the Civil Service Act. The Klan threatened to photograph and track,
"each Negro who votes," seeking to inspire terror in the minds of potential voters.
5 Michael Newton, The Invisible Empire: The Klu Klux Klan in Florida (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2001), 1-2; Raymond Arsenault, St. Petersburg and the
Florida Dream 1888-1950 (Norfolk, Virginia: The Donning Company, 1988), 305;
Maxine D. Jones and Kevin M. McCarthy, African Americans in Florida (Sarasota:
Pineapple Press, 1993), 81-82; Michael D'Orso, Like Judgment Day: The Ruin and
Redemption of a Town called Rosewood (New York: Boulevard Books, 1996); Saunders,
Bridging the Gap, 65.
Despite the Klan's efforts, forty percent of the city's blacks turned out to vote, helping to
repeal the bill.6
By October of 1939, blacks had a featured section in the Saint Petersburg Times,
called the "News of Negroes of Saint Petersburg and Pinellas County." The section
covered articles on black schools like Gibbs High School and Davis Elementary as well
as prominent social groups like Hotel Bellman's club. This small segment of the
newspaper only received distribution in the black areas of town. By 1948, the articles
had expanded to become a daily insert, but the success was short-lived. In 1967, the
paper discontinued its black section, but that same year the Weekly Challenger, an
African-American newspaper, began.7
As the 1940s unfolded, disparities amongst Saint Petersburg's white and black
communities became apparent. Blacks did not serve on Saint Petersburg's grand jury
until 1941. However, city officials introduced the discriminative "work or jail" edict in
1942, forcing black men to remain employed or suffer incarceration. Police brutality led
to black casualties in 1942 and 1944. In 1943, the City Planning Commission evaluated
the black community's development and concluded that its physical condition hindered
the overall progress of the city. In response, the city initiated the Jordon Park Public
Housing Project, which assisted the black community but could not compensate for the
predominately substandard housing available. With fifteen-thousand black residents,
Saint Petersburg could only lay claim to two black doctors and no black lawyers. Despite
6 Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 170-180; Newton, The Invisible Empire:The Klu
Klux Klan in Florida, 1-2.
7 Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 182.
these disappointing statistics, shortly after World War II Saint Petersburg began hiring
African-American police officers.8
A black high school, Gibbs, taught 781 children while having a structural
capacity for only 350 students, remaining perpetually overcrowded and underfunded.
Inadequate schools and housing were not the only problems facing the black community,
their recreational facilities and parks also lacked in quantity and quality. To assist in
community development, city planners requested an enormous amount of government
funding and private capital. While some blacks were undoubtedly grateful for the effort,
the political agendas that the white supremacists attached to the money never left their
minds. Out of this period, a small black middle-class emerged, but this did not
overshadow the pervasive lack of economic development blacks experienced.9
As the 1950s progressed, the civil rights struggle intensified. In 1954, Pinellas
County paid no heed to Brown vs. The Board of Education, instead constructing seven
schools for black students within eight years. It was not until mandatory busing in 1971
that the city achieved full integration. In 1958, Gibbs Junior College emerged as a
collegiate institution designated for blacks. The city had soon fallen victim to a
communist scare when several sit-ins were staged at restaurants throughout the South to
protest segregation. By 1960, concerns had grown stronger after thirty Gibbs Junior
College students held lunch counter demonstrations at two of the city's restaurants.
White establishments denied them food, even though no Florida statutes prohibited their
8 Arsenault, St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 307-313.
9 Ibid, 307-313; Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 202.
dining. Many believed the demonstrations to be orchestrated by communists, but local
black leaders denied these accusations, declaring the sit-ins "a purely local movement." 10
In 1967, nine years after the establishment of Gibbs Junior College, the school
merged with Saint Petersburg Junior College, an institution that became integrated just
six years earlier. Saint Petersburg's schools did not accept black students until 1962,
when they admitted a single seventh grader and two twelfth graders. Hostilities amongst
blacks and whites did not end there. Six black parents filed a lawsuit against Pinellas
County in 1963, alleging the continued practice of segregation. By the time the county
had prepared to overcome the challenge of integration, many white students had fled to
private schools. In between 1967 and 1972, the population of students at private schools
doubled, a trend that continued for at least a decade. By 1981, fourteen percent of the
school population attended private school. Pinellas County in 1971, became the first
county in Florida to desegregate schools, busing 11,000 students to facilitate the
process."
Beyond the city limits of Saint Petersburg, the civil rights struggle had long held
national attention. Intensifying in the 1950s and 60s, the civil rights movement
materialized into a force destined to alter American society. In the initial period of the
movement, blacks embraced the philosophy of nonviolence, but through trial and error,
many of its participants concluded that self-defense held a key place in the struggle. An
0o Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 200-228.
" Ibid., 255.
organization that played a central role in this tactical shift was the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC).'2
Beginning in fall of 1961, SNCC functioned as a southern collegiate-based black
youth organization committed to confronting the brunt of racial discrimination through
peaceful demonstrations. Labeled "the most serious social force in the nation," SNCC's
intense protests had such a powerful impact that the organization helped influence
lawmakers to create the Voting Rights Act of 1965. SNCC changed its methodology
when Stokely Carmichael became head of the organization the preceding year and began
to promote a new agenda of "Black Power." This ideological shift occurred within the
ranks of SNCC as well as other civil rights groups, like the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE), reflecting a change in the attitude of the greater black community. SNCC
focused less on peaceful demonstrations and voting drives and began to embrace a policy
of armed self-defense and black economic independence, ushering in a new era of civil
rights resistance. Following SNCC's example, numerous organizations surfaced
representing this inclination, most notably the Black Panthers.'3
In 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense in Oakland, California. The organization captured the imagination of black
America and soon became the epitome of black nationalism. Their militant approach to
politics embodied Malcolm X's mantra, "by any means necessary" and-their grassroots
12 Mary Hull, Struggle and Love: Milestones in Black American History 1972-1997,
(Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997), 19; Clayborne Carson, In Struggle:
SNCC and the Black awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press, 1981), 1-5.
3 Howard Zinn, SNCC the new Abolitionists (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 1-4, 274;
Albert P. Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando, Civil rights and the American Negro (New
York: Trident Press, 1986), 598-99.
approach galvanized black support on a national scale. The Black Panthers rejected the
civil resistance method of non-violence and sought to bring "power to the people" and
"Black Power" to African-Americans through a philosophy of self-defense. Within this
radical climate, a young man named Joe Waller, who had become a member of SNCC,
decided to take the path of Black Power.'4
The Uhuru movement arose out of the adverse conditions of the civil rights legacy
and the racism present in Saint Petersburg to become a political force that would
represent its black community for decades. Borrowing some ideology from the Black
Panthers, the Uhuru continued to modify and advance the paradigm of black
revolutionary thought in accordance with the changing times. They have gained
popularity and respect across the nation and particularly inside Saint Petersburg's black
community. At the same time, they have endured the scorn and criticism that
accompanies substantial political attention. Throughout the organization's history, Omali
Yeshitela and the Uhuru movement have attempted almost every method thinkable to
induce positive social change for blacks in America. Despite their undeniable presence in
Florida and particularly in Saint Petersburg, their story, like many other non-conventional
organizations, has gone untold.'5
14 Bobby Seale, Seize the time (New York: Random House, Black Classic Press: Reprint
edition 1968), 1-10; Benjamin Muse, The American Negro Revolution: From Non
violence to Black Power (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 1; Hess,
Overturning the Culture of Violence, 208-220; Robert Carr, Black Nationalism in the
New World: Reading the African American and West Indian Experience (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 2002), 186; San Francisco Chronicle, October 29, 1985.
15 Omali Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks (St. Petersburg: Burning Spear Uhuru
Publications, 2005), 69, 108, 240, 271.
Chapter 2: The Origins of The Uhuru!
Joe Waller (later known as Omali Yeshitela), who founded the APSP in 1972, has
since served as its most significant leader and spokesperson. A brief summary of the
childhood and teenage experiences that deeply impacted his early development will give
the reader a greater understanding of his character. A product of his environment,
Waller's childhood transpired while revolutions surfaced throughout the globe. As he
matured, Waller witnessed most African countries gain their independence.
Simultaneously, he experienced and became a victim of the overt racism so prevalent in
the American South. These circumstances greatly affected his worldview and his life's
mission.
The Uhuru movement coalesced within that hostile racial climate, beginning in
the mid-1960s. By then, the organization's founder, Waller, had experienced the bitter
taste of prejudice for most of his twenty-five years. Born October 9, 1941, in Saint
Petersburg, Florida, Joe matured hearing members of his family and other adults of his
community discussing problems of racial discrimination and police injustice. As he grew
older, he witnessed the same conditions with his own eyes. That he eventually became
determined to change these conditions can be credited in part to his grandmother Della
Thomas. She spent hours reading him Biblical stories that served as an early supplement
to Joe's education. She stressed the saga of Joseph, whose brother sold him into bondage
and who went on to become a great leader that rescued his people from disaster
(coincidentally, with a character bearing young Joe's first name). The story provided
Waller with his earliest inclination to become a civil rights leader and to dedicate his life
to the "rescue" of black people. Grandmother Thomas's teachings crafted young Joe's
early thoughts on private property as well. She would criticize his individualistic
economic dreams and encouraged the concept of community sharing. When Joe longed
for material objects such as automobiles or houses, his grandmother would respond:
"Wouldn't it be better for you to make those things happen for everybody?" In the
process, she planted ideas that would develop into civil rights activism and a philosophy
of socialist revolution.'
Not surprisingly, Joe Waller found himself clashing with local authorities early in
life. Joe and his friends believed themselves victims of racial profiling due to local police
officers harassing the group since they allegedly "looked like they could be criminals."
Officers once jailed Waller for walking home in the early morning from his job at the
Saint Petersburg Times. Because of these and other experiences, he first began to
contemplate how to change the world around him. He later would have more intense run-
ins with the local police for his civil resistance. Ironically, one of the methods that he
ultimately would follow involved turning the table on the police. He and his associates
followed them around to keep an eye out for race-based corruption.2
Finding few opportunities in the world immediately surrounding him in Saint
Petersburg, Joe opted to pursue freedom and new horizons by joining the army as a high
school senior, an experience that served only to heighten his concerns and to further his
' St. Petersburg Times, December 14, 1996, August 31, 1997; Omali Yeshitela, Social
Justice and Economic Development for the African Community: Why I Became a
Revolutionary (St. Petersburg: Burning Spear Uhuru Publications, 1997), 3.
2 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997; Personal interview, Nyabinga Ezimbahwe
(Uhuru historian) by the author October 15, 2005 (notes in collection of the author);
Yeshitela, Social Justice, 5.
impulse toward activism. Shipped out in December 1959, he received orders of
assignment in Germany. Despite its Nazi past, Joe found the country more free than his
oppressive hometown. Unfortunately, fellow United States soldiers imported their
American ideas of segregation and expressed anger towards African-American soldiers
who dared to enter German clubs because they considered them to be "for whites only."
Thus, at the same time, Joe experienced a German society, which lacked the constant
presence of overt racism while being reminded of the discrimination that he had faced
back in Florida.3
An understanding of imperialism gained during his European service influenced
Waller and the future direction of the Uhuru movement. He saw firsthand the operation
of French, British. United States, and Soviet forces during the height of the Cold War.
He became vividly aware of imperialism, a reality that never left his mind. Imperialism's
effect upon the world later played a significant role in the development of the
revolutionary-to-be's philosophy, particularly as he applied the lessons learned to the
situation of fellow blacks in America.4
Back in the United States, a series of events furthered Waller's movement toward
a revolutionary perspective. First, while stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia, Army
authorities attempted to dispatch him with others to Albany, Georgia, where hostile
whites were resisting the fight for black equality. Joe found himself stunned when he
discovered that the black troops in Albany had to execute their mission without
ammunition. Then, during the Cuban missile crisis of 1961, he endured racial
3 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997; Yeshitela, Social Justice, 15.
4 Yeshitela, Social Justice, 6.
discrimination when a white-owned restaurant in Palatka, Florida refused him service,
even though he was traveling as part of a military convoy. Nevertheless, the straw that
broke the camel's back occurred at Fort Benning, where whites accused him of trying to
touch the hand of a white woman who worked in the snack bar. Joe commented, "I
refused to drop the money in her hand to pay for services in a way that would allow her
to avoid touching my black skin." Disgusted, Waller decided to leave the army and
return to Saint Petersburg, convinced that blacks in America remained as second-class
citizens.5
Small wonder that Waller's revolutionary tendencies began to appear, a fact that
hastened his departure from the service. In 1962, with mounting tensions over civil rights
issues surfacing in the South, he informed President John F. Kennedy in a twelve-page
letter that he no longer would participate in an army that protected a system of
oppression. He then went on strike and began passing out literature and organizing
people to resist what he saw as the anti-black practices of the military. Before long, a
military psychiatrist apparently had ordered his honorable discharge, labeling him "a
Garveyite" [referring to race leader Marcus Garvey]. "I didn't even know what a
Garveyite was," Waller admitted, while insisting that he followed no ideology beyond
staunchly being himself.6
Thus in 1963 Waller returned to Saint Petersburg with an honorable discharge,
but disheartened and filled with rage. The army had provided an outlet for him to see
contrasts in different countries and to undergo unique experiences with racism. As a
5 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997.
6 Ibid., December 14, 1996; August 31, 1997.
result, he realized how deeply rooted American racism had become and he decided to do
something about it. That decision required him to take certain steps to lay a proper
foundation.7
First, following a period of several years spent back in Saint Petersburg as it
reeled from civil rights turmoil, Waller visited California before taking the important
initial step toward revolutionary action back in Florida. While in the Golden State, he
witnessed the explosive race riots that struck the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Many African -Americans professed that the event was a culmination of the routine
police brutality blacks experienced in the area. Beginning August 11, 1965, following an
altercation between a young black man and a police officer, the Watts riots have been
described as "the worst racial incident in the city's history." Approximately 5,000 people
assembled, firing at police, damaging stores and burning automobiles; the damage
amounted to forty million dollars. The event revealed a change in the black psyche.
Blacks no longer feared the white power structure, and in months, many of them began to
proclaim Black Power. Where most people found the turbulent event intimidating,
Waller became fascinated. "I had never seen anything like that in my life," he
acknowledged. "For just a brief moment, the African people had a real democratic
situation going there." He perceived that the rioters' unified efforts commanded power,
and this fact struck a deep chord within him. Waller thereupon concluded that black
people, despite their willingness to participate, did not get fair representation in the
political arena and that democracy should and could be demanded in the streets instead of
7 St. Petersburg Times, December 14, 1996; Rick Baker, Mangroves to Major League: A
Timeline of St. Petersburg History (St. Petersburg: Southern Heritage Press, 2000), 235.
being requested through the ballot box. Following his realization that democratic action
did not limit itself to the electoral process, he returned to Saint Petersburg.8
In a time and place known for activism, Waller found little difficulty in
associating himself directly with activist groups. Initially, he investigated joining the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but almost
immediately, he grew dissatisfied with what he considered a narrow perspective and mild
orientation toward civil resistance. Waller condemned the NAACP's pursuit of racial
equality, scoffing at its attempts to fight for integrated movie theaters. He felt that the
organization's requests for fair treatment essentially begged whites to change their
negative influence on the black community but never challenged the presence of the
influence itself or what he called the "the white power structure."9
In Waller's eyes, the NAACP's moderate approach paled in comparison to the
philosophy of the SNCC. In 1966, SNCC captured Waller's attention with its focus on
Black Power, challenging the conservative and liberal aspects of the white power
structure and the black organizations that supported the same agendas. Joe continued to
reject the passive solutions of the NAACP and similar groups because they promoted
integration as a solution to civil rights questions, while accepting whites as a primary part
of the black struggle, and advocated non-violence as the only approach to gain these
8 St. Petersburg Times, December 14, 1996; Ann K. Johnson, Urban Ghetto Riots, 1965-
86 (New York: Columbia University Press, East European Monographs, Boulder, 1996),
12-13.
9 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997.
rights. Joe viewed such integrationist and non-violent philosophies of earlier times as
weak and compromising.'1
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., known as an avid supporter of integration, began to
adopt "a modified form of Black Power." Toward the end of his political career, he
concluded that only a few whites actually wanted "authentic equality." Furthermore, he
declared, "the vast majority of white Americans are racists." Because of this conclusion,
he stated that the civil rights movement "must address itself to the restructuring of the
whole of American society." As that long-standing perspective of white supremacy now
encountered a new philosophy of Black Power, Joe began helping to organize a branch of
Saint Petersburg's SNCC, the first membership-based group of its kind in the city. Other
SNCC chapters existed but they primarily consisted of volunteers, while Waller's branch
reflected a structure similar to the Black Panther Party."
These experiences behind him, Waller prepared to draw the proverbial line in the
sand. He wrote a letter that requested the city to remove from City Hall a painting of big-
lipped black musicians playing banjos, eating watermelon, and entertaining white people
while they partied at Pass-a-Grille Beach. Waller felt the mural, which had been hanging
for nearly thirty years, represented black people "in a most despicable, derogatory
manner" and that it highlighted the subordinate position imposed on black people in the
10 African People's Socialist Party, "History of the African People's Socialist Party,"
[document-online] (Official website of the African People's Socialist Party 2005,
accessed August) available at http://apspuhuru.org/apsp/history; St. Petersburg Times,
August 31, 1997.
11 African People's Socialist Party, "History," 1-5; St. Petersburg Times, August 31,
1997; Eric C. Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang,
Noonday Press, 1970), 157-180.
old South. He hoped that the city would remove the painting willingly. This approach
represented Waller's initial method of resolution, before white city officials responded to
the issue in an insensitive manner. "I find nothing offensive in the portrayal of strolling
troubadours and picnickers at Pass-a-Grille Beach," Mayor Herman Goldner replied. He
went on to state: "I think you know that I, personally, am not a racist. I think ... that all
of our minority groups must mature to the point where self-consciousness is not a
motivating factor for complaints."2
The second response arrived from Chester K. Guth, chairman of the city's biracial
Community Relations Commission. That official insisted that the painting showed the
beaches "are open to our Negro citizens" and "pays tribute to the tremendous capacity
and talents of our Negro citizens." Waller attempted a last verbal appeal. "The fact that
our Saint Petersburg beaches are open to our Negro citizens must rank as the best kept
secret of modem times," he asserted. "For many years, we thought we were banished to
the south mole [now Demen's Landing]. Moreover, it may interest you to know that
racial unrest has existed in Saint Petersburg for many years."13
When words alone failed, Waller initiated action. On December 29, 1966 just
weeks after receiving these responses, Waller and fellow SNCC members marched to
City Hall. They marched in objection to a $50-million dollar federal grant allocated to
downtown beautification, which could have been used for the economic development of
black neighborhoods located only a few blocks away. After witnessing white reporters
and police make a mockery of an elderly black woman who spoke poor English, Joe
12 St. Petersburg Times, July 27, 1999, August 23, 1998.
'3 Ibid., July 27, 1999, August 23, 1998.
exploded emotionally, and the next few moments changed his life forever. He marched
up the steps of City Hall with four other members of SNCC. Without a word, he entered
the building and ripped the eight by twelve foot canvas off the wall. Waller walked out
with the artwork, unsure as to what he would do next, or where he would go.14
At that moment, Waller crossed an invisible threshold, and his character and
nature assumed a new form. He changed his name to Omali Yeshitela (Omali means
"son who returns" and Yeshitela derives from an Ethiopian word meaning "the shelter
for thousands and millions") in an effort to decolonize his persona and began
preparations to organize black people to fight against oppression. He would emerge as a
profound leader and one of Saint Petersburg's most significant citizens, dedicating his
life to the black revolutionary struggle.'5
Waller's first attempt to change the fabric of American society, its small scale
notwithstanding, carried significance. Though the act of tearing down the mural failed to
facilitate actual change in the lives of Saint Petersburg's citizens, it did become a famous
symbol and milestone of the civil rights struggle. It thrust the issues of institutionalized
racism and the legacy of Jim Crow into the forefront of Southern life and forced people to
finally come to grips with them. Within the black Saint Petersburg community, Waller
instantly became a hero. "I used to hear people on the street, when they felt they had
14 Yeshitela, Social Justice, 14; St. Petersburg Times, December 14, 1996, July 27, 1999.
15 St. Petersburg Times, December 14, 1996; Speech given by Omali Yeshitela, October
30 2005, at the Uhuru House, St. Petersburg, Florida (notes in collection of the author);
Wikipedia, 2005 ed.,"St. Petersburg, Florida." [Encyclopedia on-line] accessed
October, available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St. Petersburg. Florida.
been wronged in some way, say, I'm going to go tell Joe Waller. I'll get Joe Waller" his
brother reminisced, "and this reputation has stuck with him to this day."'6
In the white community, Waller's spirited statement of resistance had been
misconstrued and reduced to an $11,000 act of vandalism. Whites perceived Waller as a
"black militant leader" and a criminal. So, shortly after the event, Waller was officially
charged by the city's Circuit Court with destruction of city property and disturbing the
peace. Afterwards, Waller also faced conviction in state court on multiple charges,
including grand larceny. He found himself sentenced to five years in prison. In the
United States Supreme Court, the judge concluded, after another conviction, that the
similar charges in the two previous cases amounted to double jeopardy, violating the
United States Constitution. On July 11, 1973, Saint Petersburg's City Council declined
to support Waller's request for a pardon from Governor Reubin Askew. Three months
later, however, Circuit Court Judge David Seth Walker decided to release Waller with
time served. He had served two and a half years. The consequences of his actions
reached thirty-five years into the future, however. He lost his voting rights and would not
regain them until the year 2000 at the age of fifty-nine.'7
On April 4 1968, while Waller sat behind bars, an assassin killed Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. Dr. King's assassination sparked disturbances in over a hundred United
States cities. The civil rights legend had been gunned down on his motel room balcony
in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had planned to lead a protest in support of the city's
16 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997, January 13, 1988, October 11, 2000, February
13, 2000; Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 241-251.
17 St. Petersburg Times, July 18, 1998, February 13, 2000, December 14, 1996; Baker,
Mangroves to Major League, 241-251.
sanitation workers. His death increased racial tension to unknown levels. In the
meantime, the number of soldiers in Vietnam had reached an all-time high of 540,000.
Later that year, 250,000 anti-war protesters rallied in Washington D.C., the largest anti-
war protests in American history. In Saint Petersburg, a man named Joe Savage led
predominantly black sanitation workers on a strike. The city had declined to give the
workers a portion of the profit produced from its new collection system. The strike
backfired as the city fired 211 of 235 sanitation workers. The event drew the attention of
the NAACP and SNCC who organized both an economic boycott and a protest. In
response, thirty city leaders at the Saint Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce created
the "Community Alliance," an organization forged in order to foster better conditions in
the black community. They focused primarily on education, employment and housing.
Saint Petersburg had changed slightly while Waller served time in prison. By the time he
saw freedom, Saint Petersburg schools had become desegregated and C. Bette Wimbish
had become the first African-American to be elected to the City Council.'8
Prison molded Waller's character, philosophy, and direction. While incarcerated,
he created an organization called the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), composed
initially of inmates. After Waller attained freedom, JOMO expanded to include young
black workers. JOMO's orientation catered to politically conscious and militant black
youth, and while they represented a positive force in the black community, whites
considered them threatening troublemakers. Without question, JOMO stayed in the midst
18 Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 246-256; Janus Adams, Freedom Days: 365
Inspired Moments in Civil Rights History (New York, New York: John Wiley and Sons
Inc., 1998), 95; Michael Newton, The King Conspiracy (Los Angeles: Holloway House
Publishing Co., 1987), 49-65.
of controversy. In 1970, with Waller back on the scene, the organization frequented
Vietnam anti-war protests and appeared at school boycotts where social unrest
surrounded the issue of integration. Waller's organization also played a large role in the
116-day strike of 1968, the first major civil disorder that Saint Petersburg had
experienced. The activism again drew attention to the organizer. "I was in and out of jail
so often," he recalled, "that sometimes I had to read the newspaper to find out where I
was." 19
As it matured under Waller's leadership, JOMO pursued additional and diverse
methods of enhancing black social conditions. Members opened a restaurant and
encouraged entrepreneurship and support of black-owned businesses to improve the
economic status of the community. JOMO created after-school programs for children,
taught black pride, and undertook efforts to rid black neighborhoods of drugs. In 1969,
Joe launched The Burning Spear, a newspaper that informed people about social unrest
and Waller's ideologies. In 1970, when Pinellas County decided to desegregate its
schools, it forced the busing of 11,000 students. Waller, JOMO, and other black students
protested, threatening to boycott because the forced busing proved incredibly
inconvenient to black students, now made to travel great distances to attend school.20
As previously mentioned, the Black Panthers organized to prevent the brutal
violence inflicted by police on black people in Oakland, California. Such resistance
quickly became a rallying point in the black community generally and because of this,
19 Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 252, 255; St. Petersburg Times, December 14,
1996.
20 Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 255, St. Petersburg Times, March 11, 2000.
groups such as the Black Panthers and JOMO gained even more popularity. By 1972,
however, Waller had grown tired of JOMO's purely activist centered approach of protests
and demonstrations and sought a different venue for the creation of serious change.21
While rethinking the purposes for his actions, Yeshitela contemplated the
effectiveness of civil rights activism and passivism, rioting, and voting. Suddenly, in a
moment of revelation he understood prejudice to be insignificant. He identified the abuse
of power as the real culprit because power gave people the ability to oppress. Underlying
his previous efforts was a belief that he could dispel prejudice. After this revelation,
Yeshitela changed his orientation and ceased to be concerned with the elimination of
racism. He commenced to fight for the power necessary to prevent whites from
oppressing black people. This shift of focus from racism to the power of oppression
forced Yeshitela to view the world in a more materialist fashion, and he began to
contemplate the world's imbalanced distribution of resources. At this point, Yeshitela's
movement began to take a more philosophical and psychological approach."
As Yeshitela developed ideologically, the city of Saint Petersburg continued its
efforts toward integration and social equilibrium. In 1971, James Sanderlin, attorney for
the sanitation workers strike of 1968, became the first African-American elected county
judge. Sanderlin was not alone; Governor Reubin Askew appointed Joesph Woodrow
Hatchett, a black lawyer of Saint Petersburg, as a justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
21 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997; Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 255.
22 St. Petersburg Times, August 31, 1997.
In 1977. Corinne Freeman, running a campaign tough on crime and city spending,
became the city's first female mayor.'
While Yeshitela evaluated the source of black oppression, America's government
prepared to eliminate the threat of a black revolution. In fear of a black uprising, the U.S.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched COINTELPRO, a brutal attack on black
revolutionary movements and their supporters. By this time, SNCC had dissolved and
the BPP became the revolutionary vanguard. While the BPP enjoyed this rank, they also
suffered from espionage, being highly infiltrated with informants attacking the
organization from the inside. The FBI admittedly engaged in letter forging, wire-tapping
and telephone impersonations to disrupt the organization and planted at least sixty-four
informants in BPP chapters throughout the country. Not only does Yeshitela accuse the
government of murder, he asserts that they employed chemical warfare to end the black
revolutionary movement. "Counterinsurgency took the form of heroin, pumped into our
communities by the government. There was not a city that was too small or too rural- if
African people were there heroin was there."24
JOMO, with chapters in Florida and Kentucky, suffered from FBI attacks but
managed to survive the onslaught. The government's efforts eventually would dismantle
most of the black revolutionary organizations in the country. An unintended
consequence, though, soon appeared. In May of 1972, from the ashes of the-
23 Baker, Mangroves to Major League, 265-277.
24 African People's Socialist Party, "History," 4; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 45-6,
96; Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation (Chapel Hill and London: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 119; Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward
Albert, The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Westport, Connecticut
and London: Praeger, 1984), 26-7.
revolutionary movement, arose Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the APSP. The APSP,
initially very similar to JOMO, ultimately would evolve into a multi-layered international
organization.25
Yeshitela resonated with Kenya's freedom fighters, the Mau Mau, who fought the
colonial British in an intense struggle to gain independence. The fight for "Uhuru" in
Kenya ended in 1963, when Jomo Kenyatta became the country's first prime minister and
president. Yeshitela's JOMO named itself after Kenyatta under the incorrect assumption
that he was a Mau Mau leader. This mistake possibly stemmed from the press release
after "Operation Jock Scott," when the British declared a state of emergency in Kenya
and arrested Kenyatta, along with eighty-seven members of his organization, the Kenya
African Union (KAU). After the arrests, British officials announced that they had
arrested leaders of the Mau Mau. because they associated the two organizations with each
other. However, as Yeshitela would soon discover, Kenyatta did not belong to the Mau
Mau, and after his release from prison, he denounced their revolutionary activities for a
more moderate political approach to independence. Kenyatta soon became the new
nation's first president and the Mau Mau would go down in history as Kenyan cultural
heroes who shed blood for their countries freedom.26
The APSP emerged under the cry "Uhuru!" a Swahili word meaning freedom or
liberation. Black Africans had made this term popular in their resistance to British
25 African People's Socialist Party, "History," 4.
26 Atieno E.S. Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms,
Authority and Narration (Oxford and Nairobi: Ohio University Press, 2003), 9-20; F.D.
Cornfield, "The Origins and Growth of the Mau Mau," (Nairobi: Sessional Paper No. 5,
1960), 301-308.
colonial domination in Kenya. Over time, Waller's group turned the word into a slogan,
greeting, and all-encompassing name for their movement. The APSP, founded in Saint
Petersburg, inherited this legacy and named itself the Uhuru movement. The new
organization combined three preexisting groups: JOMO, the Black Rights fighters of Fort
Myers, Florida, and the Black Study Group of Gainesville, Florida. APSP's outlook
appeared identical to JOMO's but the organization's agendas differed slightly. Initially,
APSP had defined its primary goals as keeping alive the Black Power movement;
defending the victims of government counterinsurgency (COINTELPRO); and fostering
relations with Africa and Africans worldwide. This turned a local resistance group into
an organization with a global agenda. The Uhuru movement, consequently, created a
national organization and spread its philosophy to the masses of people. It did not
randomly pass out information to the public. Instead, its leaders created separate
organizations for each sector of the population it wanted to reach. This new tactic proved
successful in diversifying the focus of the organization from the limitations of Saint
Petersburg's politics.27
In its first political challenge, the APSP helped two black men escape death row,
rallying behind the fight over the unlawful imprisonment of Wilbur Lee and Freddie Pitts.
In 1963, Florida courts sentenced these two men to death with no evidence for allegedly
killing two white gas station attendants, and police officers had beat confessions out of
them. The men remained incarcerated until 1975 when Governor Reubin Askew
27 African People's Socialist Party, "History," 4.
pardoned them. Yeshitela and Uhuru had campaigned to secure their release. This
groundbreaking case thrust the APSP into national prominence.28
The APSP created its first subdivision just four years after its inception, a
procedure that provided a new element to the movement. The African People's
Solidarity Committee (APSC) appeared in 1976 as an organization designed to give white
people an opportunity to support the black struggle for social change. The APSC aimed
to rally revolutionary support and did not demand integration or acceptance. The APSC
did not represent a new concept, earlier organizations like The Friends of the Black
Panther Party in Oakland and the Friends of Fight in Rochester, New York, had surfaced
to become twin organizations for white participants. Radical whites would benefit by
gaining membership into a "blacks only" organization, while blacks would receive
monetary support and resources from white sources. In these "sister organizations"
whites remained subordinate to the black leadership of the organization and the two
functioned as separate yet interdependent groups.29
This political approach differed from those of other black revolutionary
organizations such as the Nation of Islam, which argued that blacks and whites should
remain separate and help their own communities. As the call for Black Power
blossomed, many groups developed that believed it inappropriate for their organizations
to be integrated. Ironically, before the creation of the Friends of the BPP, one of the
organizations leaders, Eldridge Cleaver, remained hostile towards white participation.
28 Miami Herald, June 18, 2005; April 4, 1993.
29 Personal interview, Penny Hess (president of the African People's Solidarity
Committee) by the author, October 17, 2005 (notes in the collection of the author); Rhoda
Goldstein Blumberg and Wendell James Roye, Interracial Bonds (Bayside, New York:
General Hall, Inc., 1979), 71-87.
When journalists asked what whites could do to help the revolution, Eldridge Cleaver
responded, "donate us machine guns," and help us "kill some white people."30
Yeshitela's organization, on the other hand, aimed to organize white support for
the APSP and to send recruits into the white community to seek more allies and to ask for
resources to support Uhuru. Penny Hess, the president of the APSC explained: "We are
doing this because it is a real way the white community can participate in economic
development for the African community." The APSC found that allowing whites to
donate and give collectibles, furniture, and buy Uhuru goods yielded success. "This is a
good way for people to show support from afar, for people who wouldn't necessarily
come to a forum at the Uhuru House," Hess added. Hess and the APSC committed to
these activities to distinguish individuals from the mass of white people who claim they
are not racist yet do nothing to counteract the hostile treatment of African-Americans.
Some critics have accused the Uhuru of being a black separatist movement; however, the
APSC seemingly proved otherwise. Yeshitela shed light on this point. "We're not
opposed to biracial alliances," he stated, "and there is nothing contradictory about us
accepting white support." Importantly, the Uhuru are not integrationists. They reject the
notion that black people's integrating within white society would solve black issues.31
30 Malcolm X, interviewed by Alex Haley, May 1963, [online document] accessed x
November 12, 2005, and available at: http://users.rcn.com/beecee.interport/playbov.htm;
Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power
in America (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994), 170;
Blumberg and Roye, Interracial Bonds, 71-87.
31 Malcolm X, interviewed by Alex Haley, [online document]; St. Petersburg Times, May
17, 2001, January 12, 2000, April 29, 1997; Penny Hess interview; Pearson, The Shadow
of the Panther, 170; Omali Yeshitela, Build and Consolidate the African People's
Socialist Party (Oakland: Marcus Garvey Club, 1986), 12. This work is available at the
Institute of Black Culture located at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Expanding their organization largely, ten years after the APSP launched, it held
its first Party Congress in Saint Petersburg, Florida. The Uhuru considered this national
congress meeting of all of its members its "most serious step towards building a
revolutionary capacity." The Party Congress was appointed the highest political body
within the movement, replacing the Central Committee, which had consisted of the
leaders of the organization. During the four-day event, members of the Uhuru renewed
their vows and refreshed themselves on the importance of their guidelines and ideologies.
They established strategies for refining their organization and improved their method of
introducing new members. For example, they discussed the importance of democratic
centralism, an orientation toward organizing each unit of the APSP so that efficacy can
be achieved. They borrowed this concept from the structural design of the BPP, who also
utilized and promoted democratic centralism. Each unit or chapter would have a single
quality leader, engendering more effective and consistent decision making. At the event,
Uhuru members constantly chanted the slogan, "from the people to the party; from the
party to the people," implying that their organization served and represented the greater
black population.32
A second slogan that arose out of the Congress was "Bread, Peace and Power."
The struggle for "Bread" represented the African-American struggle for economic
prosperity not only through jobs, but also through economic reparations, paid by the
United States government to reconcile centuries of racism. The term "Peace" had
32 Omali Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward! The Black Liberation Movement from 1978
to 1982 (Oakland: Burning Spear Publications, 1982), i-xi, 279-285. This work is
available at Mildred F. Sawyer University, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts.;
Philip S. Foner, The Black Panthers Speak (United States: Da Capo Press, 1970), xiv-
xviii; Omali Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor: The Political Economy of Domestic
Colonialism, (Oakland: Burning Spear Publications, 1983), 1-2.
multiple implications. It implied a ceasing of the American government's "War on
Crime" and construction of prison complexes, both activities they believed intentionally
attacked blacks. The Uhuru advocated arming the black masses with enough weaponry
to provide defense from any American onslaught, since they believed this was the only
certain way blacks could ensure peace. They set their goals to create a militia called the
"African People's Liberation Army" that could smooth the progress of and protect Black
Power.33
Following the congress, the APSP attempted to reconcile the disparity of material
wealth amongst blacks and whites nationwide. In November of 1982, the APSP held the
first World Reparations tribunal for "African People" in Brooklyn, New York, where
participants was concluded that America and "the system of imperialism" owed black
people payment for the historic suffering they had encountered. Reparations pertained to
compensation for the suffering blacks endured during the cataclysm of slavery, the era of
Jim Crow, the assassinations conducted by the COINTELPRO, institutionalized
discrimination, and the comparative subtleness of modern-day racism. The Uhuru
decided that the U.S. government owed African-Americans $4.1 trillion in damages for
the trauma incurred over the last four centuries. In order to better promote the cause of
reparations, the Uhuru created the African National Reparations Organization (ANRO),
which according to their leaders, helped spawn the modern-day reparations movement. A
multitude of groups showed up in support of the conference, including the Pan-Africanist
Congress of South Africa (Azainia), the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and the
Black Veterans for Social Justice. The Uhuru recalculated the $4.1 trillion figure, using
3 Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward!, i-xi, 279-285; Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 1.
the 1982 Consumer Price Index, converting older monetary values into the equivalent
values of the time. They criticized American economists who ignored slave labor as the
start up capital in the growth of capitalism and the resultant accumulation of unparalleled
wealth. Yeshitela declared that instead of acknowledging this obvious reality "bourgeois
economists" often attributed the ascension of capitalism to some form of "moral right,
personal genius, or racial superiority." The Uhuru maintained annual reparations
tribunals for eleven years following this initial meeting.34
Yeshitela insisted that reparations, if received, be rewarded directly to working-
class blacks, instead of allowing it to trickle down from the black middle-class. Since
working-class blacks constituted approximately ninety percent of the black population, a
segment that often received little genuine political representation, the Uhuru felt inclined
to defend their interests. The APSP's leader believed middle-class blacks were disloyal
to the race, often having ulterior monetary motives or becoming pawns of white liberals.
Some conservative blacks disagreed with the APSP's perspective on race and class,
stressing that the black "underclass" was a product of its own making. While the Uhuru
demanded that the American government pay its debts to American blacks, they
appropriately acknowledged that African people in Britain, France, Germany, and South
Africa also suffered similar fates. At the conference, the APSP also passed a resolution
34 According to the Burning Spear, reparations did not become a popular or realistic idea
until Reagan gave the Japanese reparations in 1986 for those placed in concentration
camps during World War II. Omali Yeshitela, The Road to Socialism is painted Black,
(Oakland: Burning Spear Publications, 1987), 39-54. This work is available at P.H.
Welshimer Memorial Library at Milligan College, Tennessee.; African People's Socialist
Party 4th Congress brochure, 19; Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 69-95; Yeshitela Omali
Yeshitela Speaks, 15; Philadelphia Daily News, December 8, 1986; Burning Spear (the
serial publication of the Uhuru movement), December 2001.
to build the African Socialist International (ASI), an "international African revolutionary
organization to unite Africans worldwide into a single organization that would defeat
colonialism and neo-colonialism, creating a liberated and united Africa under an all-
African Socialist government." This organization would stand for the Uhuru's ultimate
goal, an opportunity to unite blacks and other oppressed people worldwide to overthrow
the colonial powers. A slogan of the organization urged its members to, "build to win
independence, in our lifetime!"35
As the political scope of the APSP became increasingly national, they decided to
relocate to Oakland, California. In an effort to fill the vacuum of the once highly
influential BPP, they set out to revive the Black Power movement of the sixties. They
transferred the headquarters of the national office to Oakland, and began to challenge
Oakland's city officials to adjust to their political interests. While in Oakland, they
elucidated their ideology and fought key political battles. They also helped lay to rest the
legacy of a fallen panther.
35 Yeshitela, The Road to Socialism is Painted Black, 39-54; Myers, Civil Rights and
Race Relation in the post Reagan-Bush era, 231-3; African People's Socialist Party 4th
Congress brochure, 19; Omali Yeshitela, Build and Consolidate, 25; Resolution of the
African People's Socialist Party on The African Socialist International, (Oakland,
California, Adopted at the First Congress of the African People's Socialist Party,
September 1981).
Chapter 3: Reviving the Movement
"Why assume that free markets work? (a key element of capitalism) They
don't. The reality is that we live in a world today where over half the
people on earth live on less than two dollars per day, so where is the success
of free markets. It doesn't exist. Some say it exists because America is
wealthy and the greatest place on earth, but America is wealthy not because
of free markets but because it has the weapons and force to keep the rest of
the world suppressed so that it can take their resources.... the vast majority
of people's resources are being sucked up by imperial powers (U.S., Britain,
France). This is a "free" market that's not free at all....The theory of free
markets doesn't work for the majority of people on this earth.
-Omali Yeshitela'
Oakland, California once housed the legendary BPP a powerhouse amongst black
revolutionary groups that rose to political prominence only to be devastated by the
onslaught of the United States government. Oakland's police force became notorious for
its anti-black sentiment, so much so, that some officers described it as "the norm" in the
department. Consequently, the controversial Panthers had grown famous for their
revolutionary memorabilia: toting law books, tape recorders, cameras, and loaded guns.
The BPP's guns served as a signal to American society that the BPP would defend the
black community "by any means necessary." For the Panthers, carrying around armed
weapons legally persisted until the state of California passed the Mulford Bill, preventing
the open display of loaded firearms in public places. From 1967 to 1969, the Panthers
had repeatedly clashed with police, killing nine officers and wounding fifty-six; however,
Omali Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks (St. Petersburg: Burning Spear Uhuru
Publications, 2005), 362.
the police inflicted comparable damages on the BPP, killing ten Panthers and arresting
over 348.2
In 1970, a Lou Harris Poll reported that sixty-four percent of the black population
declared that the BPP gave them a sense of pride. This level of acceptance reflected the
popularity of the BPP at its peak; though their status as the revolutionary vanguard
proved short-lived. In future years, the BPP endured a sharp decline in their organization
and its effectiveness. United States Attorney General John Mitchell, who intended to
destroy the organization, announced that the BPP would be exterminated by the end of
1969. As a white backlash to the Watts, San Francisco, and Oakland riots and the black
militancy brewing amongst California's youth, the populace elected conservative
Republican Governor Ronald Reagan.3
Richard Nixon's administration swayed the public to believe that the invisible
hand of Soviet aggression had orchestrated the black nationalist struggle, thereby turning
America against poor blacks who fought for their human dignity. This numbed the
nation's conscience, making it permissible for the Black Power Movement to be treated
as an internal manifestation of the Cold War. Even in its absence, the BPP left a
passionate legacy for aspiring revolutionaries. Members of the Uhuru credited the BPP
2 Alan A. Altshuler, Community Control: The Black Demand for Participation in Large
American cities (New York and Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1970), 43;
Albert and Albert, The Sixties Papers, 24-7; Robert Scheer, Eldridge Cleaver. Post-
Prison Writings and Speeches (New York: Random House, 1968), xvi-xxviii.
3Omali Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor: The Political Economy of Domestic Colonialism
(Oakland: Burning Spear Publications, 1983), 2. This work is available at St. Johns
University, New York.; Altshuler, Community Control, 43; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela
Speaks, 45.
as the highest expression of revolutionary leadership. Omali Yeshitela, the Uhuru's
chairman, modeled a great deal of the APSP's internal structure after the BPP and
acknowledged the Panthers as the most prominent organization of the civil rights
movement that represented the black working-class. The Uhuru emerged and, after six
years, migrated to the hometown of the BPP. Moving to seemingly fertile ground,
Yeshitela chose to relocate to Oakland because of its notable support of the BPP in the
1960s. The Uhuru were also magnetized to change the desperate living conditions of
working-class blacks in the area.4
Before detailing the political activities of the APSP in Oakland, a summary of the
organization's primary influences and essential philosophy seems appropriate. Many of
their ideas materialized while stationed in Oakland. The theories that created the APSP's
paradigm simultaneously influenced their political tactics and agenda. Ideologically, the
Uhuru drew significantly from the works of Karl Marx and the ideas of Marcus Garvey.
Karl Marx, a German philosopher and economic theorist, is known historically as the
most prominent proponent of communism. Marx's The Communist Manifesto helped
4 Three of Yeshitela's works, This Time Till It's Won, Not One Step Backward! and The
Road to Socialism is Painted Black are all comprised primarily of excerpts from the
Burning Spear published during this period. Omali Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won,
(Oakland, California: Spear Graphics, 1988), 29; Omali Yeshitela, Not One Step
Backward! The Black Liberation Movement from 1978 to 1982 (Oakland: Burning Spear
Publications, 1982), i-xi, 86-88; African People's Socialist Party, "History of the African
People's Socialist Party," [document-online] (Official website of the African People's
Socialist Party 2005, accessed August) available at http://apspuhuru.org/apsp/history, 4;
Beth Bagwell, Oakland: The Story of a City (Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1982),
83-84; Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black
Power in America (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,
1994), 119, 206, 215.
inspire a multitude of future movements towards working-class revolution and
communist governments. In 1848, his book described the development of human society
from the perspective of class struggle. Marx opposed capitalism and predicted a
working-class revolution that would overthrow the existing governments, resulting in a
worldwide shift to communism. Marxist ideas emanated from the same spirit that
engendered the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.5
The history of the interaction between communists and African-Americans
reaches back to the aftermath of World War I. As early as 1919, U.S. intelligence
reported deep concerns about the spread of communist ideology to radical black
Americans, expressing fear of a unified internal and external opposition. African-
American intellectuals soon embraced the revolutionary zeal of communism
wholeheartedly; some of notable mention were: W.E.B. DuBois, Claude McKay, Paul
Robeson, and Langston Hughes. Claude McKay soon became the first politically minded
African-American to visit the Soviet Union. DuBois described Marxism as a "superior
framework" to analyze and understand the racial problem in America.6
Vladimir Lenin produced two articles in 1920: "The Theses on the National
Colonial Question" and "The Formerly Slave-Owning South" both in support of black
self-determination. Signifying its support of black nationalism, the Moscow-based party,
5 Kate A. Baldwin, Beyond The Color Line and The Iron Curtain: Reading Encounters
Between Black and Red, 1922-1963 (Durham and London: Duke University Press), 42.
6 Brenda Gayle Plummer, Window on Freedom, (Chapel Hill and London: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 48-49, 53; Baldwin, Beyond The Color Line
and The Iron Curtain, 42; Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., Seeing Red: federal campaigns
against Black militancy, 1919-1925 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 20.
Communist International, produced a shocking statement in 1928, declaring, "the
Communist International must prove to the Negro people that Negroes do not suffer
alone... and that the Negroes fight against imperialism is not the fight of one nation, but
of all the nations of the world." They pledged their assistance to African-Americans in
their struggle against segregation and second-class citizenship. Because of the
communists' stance, they were perceived as enemies to the Western powers and the
capitalist nations, while appearing to be a viable political option in the black community.
When the Communist Party of the United States of America began, it had almost
no black members. The Communist Party's anti-colonialist opinions allowed it to
support African-Americans, with dreams of national liberation. This support was short
lived. After six years, the Communist Party regarded blacks as members of a separate
struggle and denounced the NAACP as "class enemies." However, throughout the 1930s
and 1940s, the Communist Party consistently fought against racial discrimination and
aided in the creation of many black labor unions. By 1936, Stalin had outlawed racism.
On October 1, 1949, Mao Tse-tung declared China a communist nation, soon to ally itself
with Russia, further increasing Cold War anxiety. As the civil rights movement evolved,
the BPP became the first African-American group to publicly identify itself as
communist. Before the BPP, blacks only had access to communism through membership
in white communist organizations. The Uhuru gained inspiration from the philosophy of
dialectic materialism found in Marxist literature. The Uhuru, like Marx, strongly
7 Baldwin, Beyond The Color Line and The Iron Curtain, 42.
believed that history and its important events were shaped by the mobilized will of the
masses of people and not by special individuals.8
Marx's critical assessment of capitalism could be found throughout Uhuru
literature. The Uhuru firmly believed as Marx had stated in his general law of capitalist
accumulation:
In proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker
be his payment high or low, must grow worse-It makes an
accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to
the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole
is, therefore at the sometime accumulation of misery, the torment
of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation at
the opposite pole...
Not only did Yeshitela's ideology resonate with this concept, but it also embraced
Marx's essential law of profit. This law stated that as "the capitalist pays the worker only
enough to survive and bare children.....then profit is made off the commodities produced
by the labor-only after enough wealth is accumulated to give the capitalist control over
the power of production." The Uhuru believed that Africans had served as capitalism's
"start up capital" and were destined to be the revolutionary proletariat.'0
Uhuru philosophy had some sharp distinctions from Marxist doctrine. The Uhuru
described their perspective as Marxism, reevaluated from "the point of view of a slave."
They labeled African slaves as the "primitive accumulation" needed to launch capitalism.
They charged Marx with eurocentrism because he claimed to assess the development of
8 Charles M. Payne and Adam Green, Time Longer Than Rope (New York and London:
New York University Press, 2003), 373-375; Baker, Mangroves to Major League: A
Timeline of St. Petersburg History (St. Petersburg: Southern Heritage Press, 2000), 213.
9Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 2.
'1 Ibid., 2.
human society, but in fact, used the evolution of Western society as his fundamental
model. Therefore, Marx could describe capitalism as a progressive development when it
resulted in the dissolution of many of the world's, and especially Africa's, most
sophisticated societies. Yeshitela stated bluntly "he would not have been able to describe
capitalism that way if he were ruling, writing from Angola or as an enslaved African in
South Carolina." Africa never experienced Europe's period of feudalism, but it did
encounter the cruelty of chattel slavery, a circumstance with significant economic
differences and extraordinarily brutal conditions. African labor produced the major
staple crops of tobacco, sugar, and rice, bringing enormous wealth to colonialists.
"Without slavery you have no cotton, without cotton you have no modern industry."
According to Yeshitela, the African slave served as "ready-made capital" and an
"advanced means of production" transported from the African continent. Differing from
the industrial proletariat, slaves produced commodities but they did not constitute a
market for them. The Uhuru considered the true primitive capital of capitalism to stem
from the slave trade, slavery, and the theft of America from Natives. Yeshitela claimed
African labor to be the economic basis for all American social and cultural institutions."
Although communism proved highly influential to Yeshitela and his movement,
Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and its philosophy
of "Race First" became perhaps even more so. His "Race First ideology" and "Back to
Africa movement" captured the attention of the Uhuru and galvanized black people more
intensely than socialism. Garvey had organized the largest black organization in the
" Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 9-22; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 311-317.
history of the United States. By the 1920s, the UNIA had, "over 800 chapters, and forty
chapters, on four continents, totaling one million members." The UNIA proved more
practical to African-Americans than socialist organizations, largely due to the racism and
discrimination blacks often experienced within socialist groups, especially those located
in the South. The Uhuru, like the BPP before them, would eventually blend the concepts
of socialism and Garvey's "Race First theory" into a racially based liberation philosophy.
The Uhuru generally called African-Americans, "Africans", because they found it
illogical "for a human to get on a ship off the West coast of Africa [an African] and arrive
in North America as a Negro, or black American, or Afro-American."'2
While the general theme of black liberation permeated the Uhuru's early
literature, their ideas expanded to address various aspects of black life. The APSP boldly
demanded that the United States government adhere to the social changes they deemed
most important. The major concerns the Uhuru highlighted were black reparations,
freedom of all black prisoners, the end of black oppression, and worldwide African
liberation and sovereignty. Their Pan-African perspective stemmed from their desire to
have an international African nation. They labeled "Pan-Africanism" as the highest
expression of Black Power. One of the first notable African leaders to promote Pan-
12 Payne and Green, Time Longer Than Rope, 373-375; Charles I. Glicksberg, The Self in
Modem Literature, (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1963), 150-152; Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 24, 31; Tony Martin, Race First:
The Ideological and Organizational Struggles ofMarcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association, (Westport, Connecticut and London, England:
Greenwood Press, 1976), 42-50.
Africanism was Kwame Nkrumah, who paved the way for African liberation by leading
Ghana to its independence in 1957 and served as its first president in 1960.13
At the close of the seventies, the demographics of the United States went through
a metamorphosis. Within the last decade, the phenomenon of "white flight" left large
populations of blacks in the inner cities, usually relegated to impoverished areas. Black
communities suffered severely from poverty and crime. Statistics showed that black
children were four times as likely to be in poverty as whites; black teens were five times
as likely to be murdered and three times as likely to be unemployed. As poverty for the
general black population increased, paradoxically the black middle-class expanded.
Upper and middle-class blacks removed themselves from the inner cities and relocated to
suburban areas. A clear class schism had become apparent.14
As the Uhuru established their organization in California, they began to develop
and espouse their own unique philosophy and perspective on class, race, and power.
Yeshitela served as the organization's primary spokesperson and theorist, generating an
influence that had an immeasurable influence on the movement. After the Uhuru settled
into Oakland's predominately African-American area, they began to structure the
fundamental tenets of their philosophy. Upon entering the city, the APSP had acquired
little fame or prestige, yet they embarked on a journey to reawaken the Black Power
'3 South African apartheid, modern Arab enslavement, European economic domination,
etc. were all viewed as contrary to African liberation and sovereignty. Yeshitela, Not One
Step Backward!, i-xi, 15; Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 311-317; Ivan Van Sertima, Great
Black Leaders: Ancient and Modern (New Brunswick, N.J.: Journal of African
Civilizations, 1988), 21-22.
" Mary Hull, Struggle and Love: Milestones in Black American History 1972-1997,
(Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997), 57.
movement of the sixties. The mission involved organizing and mobilizing working-class
blacks in order to facilitate an end to what they called "a neo-colonialist peace."
Yeshitela sought to end the oppressive political climate that ensued after the Black
Panthers met defeat. '
The Uhuru vehemently opposed the views of Oakland's middle-class blacks who
stressed that "Oakland is the most integrated city in the United States." They reasoned
that these views were evidence of a political compromise and did not reflect the harsh
reality the greater black population endured. Quoting Malcolm X, the Uhuru argued, "the
masses suffer peacefully" without violent uproar. Only in cases involving drugs they
claimed, did violent reactions against the establishment typically arise. As mentioned
previously, the APSP stressed that following the collapse of the Black Power movement,
"the white ruling class" imposed a drug economy on Oakland's black communities.
According to Yeshitela, this drug economy became the main industry in black
neighborhoods nationwide, eradicating black families and greatly reducing their property
value.16
In September of 1979, some of the first documents produced by the Uhuru
surfaced. The Basic Line of the African People's Socialist Party and The Working
Platform of African People's Socialist Party described the movement's fundamental
15 Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward! i-xi; Bagwell, Oakland: The Story of a City, 251;
Chris Rhomberg, No There There (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2004), 183.
16 Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward!, i-xi; James Jennings, Race, Politics, and
Economic Development: Community Perspectives, (London and New York: Verso,
1992), 29.
goals and aspirations. These documents convincingly demonstrated that the Uhuru were
an African liberation movement inviting blacks, in America and elsewhere, to aid them in
the "defeat of imperialism and colonialism" through a socialist revolution. Their Basic
line warned: "The destruction of colonialism led by a conscious black revolutionary
socialist party will constitute the critical blow in the struggle for socialism within U.S.
borders." In addition to Marx, the Uhuru drew motivation from communist theorists like
Mao Tse-Tung and Vladimir Lenin. Although they embraced socialism, their idea of
revolution centered on race and history as strongly as it did class.7
Yeshitela, imbued with decades of civil rights struggle, now transmuted his
experiences and observations into a philosophy, one that he announced to the world. He
called it African Internationalism (and later Yeshitelism). His philosophy attacked the
basis of capitalism and global white supremacy. In it, he asserted, "capitalism is a
parasitic system born out of the genocide of the Native Americans, the oppression of
African people and other colonized people worldwide." Though capitalism seemed to
produce wealth, he argued that it "created a lifestyle of material comfort and used a cloak
of democracy to the benefit of white people." Unconcerned with personal prejudice
Yeshitela addressed the system and institutions that he felt reinforced racism. He
identified the unique history of African people and argued that they represented an
economic class not based solely on economic standings but on the concept of race.
"Anywhere you look in the world, blacks suffer from exploitation and whites are living
'7 Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward!, i-xi, 57-8; Yeshitela, The Road to Socialism is
Painted Black (Oakland, California: Burning Spear Publications, 1987), 107.
affluently," he declared. "Physical slavery created this parasitic relationship, and created
a global slave economy."'8
The Uhuru contended that blacks in America existed as a "colonial entity,"
meaning that African-Americans constituted an independent nation subjugated by the
United States government. Yeshitela attributed America's ability to impose racism on
blacks to the exploitative system of colonialism. He declared that outsiders controlled the
fate of the black community, resulting in a predicament of extensive oppression.
Yeshitela saw the civil rights movement as a response to this injustice and asserted that it
evolved into the philosophy of Black Power, a torch the Uhuru proudly carried. Black
Power as a construct rejected the philosophical and political assumptions of white
supremacy. Proponents of Black Power disagreed with the perspectives of more
conservative blacks, who believed that further integration into American culture would
help solve the race problem.19
In the profound work, The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto (1968), William
Tabb chose to explore the validity of Yeshitela's premise as it pertained to black
Americans. Before Yeshitela's assertions had materialized, Tabb concluded that the
black ghetto in America was an "internal colony of a dominant white society," with the
typical characteristics of an underdeveloped nation. Excluding distance, he argued that
the black ghetto had a virtually identical relationship to the United States as a third world
country has to its mother country. Yeshitela took it a step further. He used world
18 Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 21-25, 27-30; African People's Socialist Party,
"History," 7.
" Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, i-xi, 120-4.
economics as a metaphor. charging that "Europeans serve as a tapeworm to African
people, taking the nourishment for themselves and while Africans starve, they get more
and more 'healthy'." Yeshitela argued that ninety-seven percent of Africa's trade leaves
for Europe, the United States, or Japan, while only three percent of the resources
remained on the continent itself. This. he held, created the constant famine and lack of
economic development often portrayed in the media.20
On September 1, 1979, only months after they had solidified their philosophy,
APSP began the African National Prison Organization (ANPO), a subdivision designed
to spread its mission amongst blacks inside of penitentiaries. Over 100 people arrived in
California from sixteen states, twenty-five cities, and the District of Columbia, to
officially birth the organization. The Uhuru sought to connect with inmates by informing
prisoners of its ideology and political stance, in hopes of creating a greater support
system for their revolutionary cause. According to Yeshitela, the ANPO marked the first
attempt to assemble prisoners behind a national revolutionary cause since the Black
Power movement. The Uhuru believed that the United States should release all black
prisoners of war and political prisoners, to whatever "friendly country" would accept
them, as a tactic to cease the military bondage of the African-American community. 21
APSC's president Penny Hess had passionate remarks for America's prison
system. "Prisons are filled with young black men, [who are] victims of discriminatory
20 Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 21-25, 27-30; African People's Socialist Party,
"History," 7; Tabb, The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto, 21-24, Glicksberg, The
Self in Modem Literature, 153.
21 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 29; Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 58.
sentencing. While whites with the same charges are let off and given rehabilitative
treatment, I know because some of them are members of my own family." A white
American, Penny Hess described her disbelief when her relatives were repeatedly given
preferential treatment after being arrested. Hess associated this discrimination with the
history of American injustice "since there are over six million African people in the
prison system, it is fair to say that slavery is not over and that for black people capitalism
is a form of fascism, colonialism, or terrorism." Unfortunately, for Yeshitela and Uhuru
members internal and external organizational conflicts did not allow the organization to
accomplish its mission. The ANPO did not survive past 1980.22
By April 1980, the APSP had encountered its first major internal controversy.
Some members of the Uhuru movement, in conjunction with former party members,
attempted to overthrow the leadership and change the agenda of the APSP. The attempt
failed, but the detractors began an anti-Uhuru campaign and the betrayal frazzled several
party members causing them to leave the movement. The Uhuru's turmoil ultimately
resulted in the collapse of the ANPO. Consequently, the detractors took advantage of
structural weaknesses that the Uhuru had not corrected over time and the general
inexperience of the organization. The APSP acknowledged itself as a small organization
22 Penny Hess's quote regarding the number of inmates in prison is erroneously high.
According to the federal Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics' annual report,
last year they were 2,186,230 prisoners in 2005, an increase of 56, 428 from 2004.
Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward!, i-xi, 136-174; Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 58;
Personal interview, Penny Hess (president of the African People's Solidarity Committee)
by the author, October 17, 2005; Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Prison Statistics"
[document-online] (U.S. Department of Justice website, 2006, accessed August) available
from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm.
in terms of membership, but attributed its political potency to the quality of its theoretical
doctrines.23
Little more than a year later, Ronald Reagan became the nation's president,
promoting a conservative agenda diametrically opposed to Yeshitela's ideology. A
Republican, President Reagan began his economic campaign of "Reaganomics," intended
to lower taxes, increase military spending, and promote a smaller government. The
program's trickle down economics theory rewarded the entrepreneurial sector of
America, while the policy abandoned the support of welfare, affirmative action, and aid
to the poor. He promoted the idea of a "color-blind society" emphasizing that "anyone
could make money if they worked hard enough," implying that poor Americans and
African-Americans only had themselves to blame for their condition. Deeply engaged in
the Cold War, Reagan fervently rejected communism, labeling it a source of evil with no
redeeming values.24
Reagan later initiated the War on Drugs, a campaign introduced to fight against
substance abuse and the recent explosion of crack cocaine. The War on Drugs campaign
implemented stronger punishments for offenders and served to drastically, increase the
prison population. While the "rich man's drug," cocaine, was not pursued in courts with
23 Yeshitela, Stolen Black Labor, 49; Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther, 206-210, 278-
281.
24 Kuell Lejon, Reagan, Religion and Politics: The Revitalization of "a Nation under
God" (Sweden: Lund University Press, 1988), 123-131; Ollie A. Johnson and Karin L.
Stanford, Black Political Organizations in the Post Civil Rights Era (New Brunswick,
New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 181-2; Charles T. Banner-
Haley, The Fruits of Integration: Black Middle-Class Ideology and Culture (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 158-162.
the same vigor due to the upper-class status of its abusers, crack was highly punishable
and blacks suffered severely for possessing it. Courts made mandatory minimum
sentences four times higher than they previously were for similar abuses. The disparities
between whites and blacks grew tremendously, resulting in troubling statistics. At this
time, only one white person could be found imprisoned for every eight blacks. The
Uhuru's enthusiasm to fight for the rights of working-class blacks and the suffering
blacks experienced heightened under Ronald Reagan's leadership.25
As housing deficiencies in Oakland grew to chronic proportion, the Uhuru helped
the city's homeless population by creating a "Tent City," using a public park as an
opportunity to provide free food and shelter. In nearly two months, the Uhuru served
10,000 free meals and organized a park council that removed local drug dealers and
elected its own leaders. The Uhuru attributed Oakland's homeless population to the
system of capitalism and the cost of housing in the city. They charged "ruling class
whites" with hiding homelessness, rather than addressing the inherent factors of
capitalism that caused poverty. Specifically, Yeshitela identified how cities with rampant
homelessness removed abandoned houses from their real estate market in order to
maintain property values and the cost of housing. They insisted that this process opened
the door to gentrification.26
25 Reagan had already served as governor of California in the 1960's. Johnson and
Stanford, Black Political Organizations in the Post Civil Rights era, 181-2; San
Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 1985; Harry S. Ashmore, Civil Rights and Wrongs,
(New York: Random House, 1994), 324-326; Banner-Haley, The Fruits of Integration,
169-170.
26 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 30-39.
As the Uhuru endeavored to represent and assist the black working-class of
Oakland, they launched the "Measure O" campaign in November of 1984. Measure O
challenged some key tenets of capitalism, individual rights, and the ownership of
property. The Measure O initiative proposed several opportunities to help Oakland's
poor, including a diagram to divide Oakland into nine districts. Secondly, the measure
sought to establish a general rent ceiling (twenty-five percent of the average income) for
each district. Measure O also included commercial rent control for small businesses and
non-profit groups, and a plan to make vacant houses in the city available for the homeless
through eminent domain. The Uhuru accumulated over 25,000 votes in public support to
earn the Measure O initiative a slot on the November ballot. Local realtors, property
owners, and Oakland's African-American Mayor, Lionel Wilson, vehemently opposed
the initiative, in fear that it would cripple Oakland's real estate market. Local
businesspersons and politicians in opposition to the initiative labeled it "sheer insanity."
In efforts to crush the proposal, they sponsored a million dollar "No O" campaign and
eventually had the initiative defeated. Oakland's City Council voted against the rent-
control proposal four to one. This political battle revealed to the Uhuru that upper-class
whites and blacks worked together "to maintain capitalism."27
Nationally, black political participation began to increase in urban areas,
producing noticeable effects. Harold Washington had already become the first black
27 According to Uhuru member Sandy Thompson, the O in Measure "O" merely served
as means to identify the initiative, it was later reintroduced under the title, Measure "H".
San Jose Mercury News (CA), July 26, 1985; The San Francisco Chronicle, January 24,
May 26, June 4, 1986, November 11, 1987; African People's Socialist Party 4th Congress
brochure, 20; Yeshitela, The Road to Socialism is Painted Black, 115-25.
mayor of Chicago. While his election drew national attention, African-American Lionel
Wilson had reigned as Oakland's mayor since 1977. Before Wilson's bid for mayor, he
had a successful career in law, becoming Alameda County's first black judge. In
Oakland, shortly after the Measure O initiative met its defeat, the Uhuru decided to
formally influence the city's politics, organizing a boycott of Oakland's mayoral
elections. Before he became mayor, Wilson had loosely affiliated with the BPP, to such
an extent that the Panthers supported him in his election, where they registered thousands
of voters on his behalf. Apparently, Wilson's policies did not stay consistent with the
interests of the black working-class. The Uhuru only found it reasonable to vote for a
candidate that represented the masses of black people and their interests, qualities they
did not attribute to Wilson.28
In efforts to summarize working-class blacks' interests, the Uhuru designed the
People's Democratic Platform. The platform proposed that Oakland's politicians
consider restoring the rights of those who fell victim to the War on Drugs, hiring
Oakland's residents to serve as police, and allocating reparations to the black community.
The city had a habit of employing a disproportionate number of outsiders as officers; an
estimated eighty-five percent of the city's police resided outside of Oakland. The boycott
drastically affected the elections of 1984, producing the lowest voter turn out in the city's
28 Myers, Civil Rights and Race Relation in the post Reagan-Bush era, 231; Rod Bush,
The New Black Vote (San Francisco, California: Synthesis Publications, 1984), 55-57;
Rhomberg, No There There, 180-200; Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther, 247, 274.
history. While the APSP succeeded in discouraging black political participation, Wilson
triumphed at the polls, and continued to serve as mayor.29
By November, the Uhuru had devised a second attempt to affect Oakland's
political scene. They sought to eliminate homelessness in the city with the Community
Control of Housing Law by organizing Oakland into twelve different sectors, based on
income and nationality. Similar to Measure O, the Community Control of Housing Law
suggested that each sector should have a rent ceiling no higher than twenty-five percent
of the average income of the residents in each individual sector. In addition to the
lowering of rent prices, this proposal sought to elect a housing board for each potential
district. Ideally, those housing boards would limit homelessness by allowing people
without homes to take residence in abandoned buildings. The Community Control of
Housing Law won 17,000 signatures from petitions; nonetheless, it did not win approval.
Though the Uhuru lost their battle to eliminate Oakland's housing deficiency, they found
satisfaction in the failure. They believed their actions conveyed a crucial message to the
public concerning capitalist society. Even though they did not change the conditions of
homelessness, they highlighted that land ownership permitted the upper-class to
dominate, regardless of their level of morality. Considering that the APSP valued the
proliferation of their ideology as much as political victory, their campaign served as a
form of mass propaganda. Unfortunately, this year also marked the release of the
narcotic crack cocaine in Oakland, California, a cheaper version of cocaine that could be
29 Yeshitela, The Road to Socialism is Painted Black, 119-20; San Francisco Chronicle,
February 12, 1985, April 23, 1987; Bush, The New Black Vote, 55-57; Pearson, The
Shadow of the Panther, 247, 274.
smoked rather than inhaled. It quickly replaced cocaine as the city's most rewarding
drug to sell.30
Simultaneously, the APSP decided to provide medical assistance to Oakland's
impoverished black communities in an attempt to improve the local healthcare shortage.
They instituted the Bobby Hutton Freedom Mobile Health Clinic in memory of sixteen-
year-old Black Panther Bobby Hutton, who had been killed by Oakland police in 1968.
Afterwards he became a revolutionary martyr. Hutton had supervised the anti-poverty
program for the BPP before his death. With ingenuity, the Uhuru serviced the black
community, distributing medicine to the city's sick and poor blacks from a twenty-seven
foot recreational vehicle. Eventually, the city officials disapproved of the clinic, yet they
responded by providing health services in areas previously ignored. The Uhuru did not
endeavor to compete with the city's services, instead they focused on their capacity to
meet the needs of the black masses.31
As black political participation rose, the Uhuru focused primarily on Oakland's
political milieu, while Reverend Jesse Jackson cast his first bid for the presidency. In
1984, running under the ticket of the Democratic Party, Jackson acquired 300 delegates at
the Democratic National Convention. Many doubted Jackson's ability to succeed in the
controversial presidential race. He finished third in the Democratic primaries, garnering
3.5 million votes and winning five primaries. His platform appealed directly to those
30 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 40-44, 46-47; Altshuler, Community Control, 28-47.
3' The Uhuru were again following in the BPP's footsteps. In 1969, the BPP had created
the first Bobby Hutton Health Clinic in Kansas City, Missouri Yeshitela, This Time Till
It's Won, 43-47; Philip S. Foner, The Black Panthers Speak (United States: Da Capo
Press, 1970) xiv-xviii, 104.
normally locked out of American society, and he formed the Rainbow Coalition to
embody the various ethnicities and segments of society he sought to represent. Yeshitela
questioned Jackson's legitimacy as a representative of the black working-class. The
Uhuru opposed his alliance with the Democratic Party, and charged Jackson with
building the voting base for the Democrats, "the liberal sector of the white ruling class."
Jesse Jackson's allegiance forced the Uhuru to oppose rather than support him,
describing his campaign as a distraction from the real issues.32
As the eighties reached its midpoint, Oakland's political scene began to change
color. The city's mayor, director of economic development, owner of the daily
newspaper, and five of nine City Council members, were all African-American. "The
black urban regime" had succeeded in being elected to various offices but did not have
the same results across the board. Oakland's police department remained predominately
white. Oakland's black population consisted of forty-seven percent of the general
population, but only twenty-three percent of its police force. By this time, the city's drug
market had increased to such an extent that illegal drugs were openly sold on at least fifty
comers. The underworld that the BPP had initially tried to mitigate eventually emerged to
dominate Oakland's black community.33
In April of 1985, the Uhuru chose again to boycott the election for mayor under
the premise that no candidate represented the black masses or their platform. Disturbed
32 Hull, Struggle and Love, 10; Thomas H. Landess and Richard M. Quinn, Jesse Jackson
and the Politics of Race (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1985), 189-195; Lucius J.
Barker and Ronald W. Walters Jesse Jackson's 1984 Presidential Campaign (Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 3-5; Yeshitela, This Time Till It's
Won, 35-53.
33 Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther, 303; Rhomberg, No There There, 183-185.
by black politicians' apathy toward their outlook, the Uhuru decided to avoid the election
entirely. The Uhuru's platform centralized around increasing local political control as a
method to fight unemployment and decrease police brutality. They proposed that
Oakland's businesses hire more local residents to decrease unemployment, and suggested
that each community should have control of its police in order to combat brutality. The
agenda also supported the case for black reparations and the eradication of laws that
enabled the removal of citizen's rights based on the severe sentencing that accompanied
the War on Drugs. This election produced a more dismal turnout than the previous year;
only eighteen percent of the potential voting block visited the polls. Lionel Wilson, was
convincingly reelected for a third term, easily defeating top opponent and City Council
member, Wilson Riles. Some of Oakland's politicians accused the Uhuru of
contradictory behavior because they encouraged their supporters to vote for the
Community Control of Housing Law and discouraged their voting for mayor. The Uhuru
retorted that their tactics were based on their political strategy and that for their
opponents "the question [of voting] has nothing to do with issues," instead they
encouraged people to "just vote and validate the system even if you have nothing to gain
by voting." For the second time, the APSP had succeeded in preventing people from
going to the polls, but following the election, did not use this influence to their political
advantage. Their boycott strategy produced quantifiable results but did not change the
conditions of Oakland's black population.34
34 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 50-52; San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1985,
April 22, 1985, April 23, 1987, November 8, 1988; Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther,
303.
As the era of civil rights and Black Power became more distant, groups that once
thrived became more rare and estranged. America's efforts to eradicate the last vestiges
of the Black Power movement continued through the 1980s. For instance, in 1985, the
city of Philadelphia attacked and destroyed the MOVE organization, a back-to-nature
movement that shared many similarities with the Uhuru. On May 13, the police
attempted to evict members of MOVE from their row houses but were met with gunfire.
The police department of Philadelphia then dropped a bomb from a helicopter on the
houses, killing eleven of MOVE's black men, women, and children. After the bombing,
sixty-one houses were destroyed and 250 black people were left homeless, leaving the
surrounding communities in turmoil. MOVE members and masses of other people
believed the bombing to be racially motivated. Ramona Africa, one of the two MOVE
members that survived the bombing, asserted that, "had it been a predominately white
neighborhood, no bomb would ever have been dropped." At the time, Philadelphia's
African-American Mayor, Wilson Goode, stood at the forefront of the city's attack.
Apparently unrepentant about the results of the event, Goode later commented, "yes, I
gave the order and I'd do it again." Highly critical of Wilson Goode, the Uhuru's
historian labeled him a treacherous African neo-colonialist and charged him with being a
member of the "petty bourgeoisie," a class of functional traders aligned with the white
power structure rather than the black community. Eleven years later, in June of 1996, the
city of Philadelphia was found guilty of injustice in a civil trial.35
3 Hull, Struggle and Love, 92-93; Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 53-56; Hizkias
Assefa and Paul Wahrhaftig, Extremist Groups and Conflict Resolution: The MOVE
crisis in Philadelphia (New York and London: Praeger, 1988), 19-39; Nyabinga
The Uhuru perceived the MOVE confrontation to be extremely significant
because it revealed the weakness of the modern-day Black Power movement. In the
sixties, Black Power organizations influenced national politics on issues such as the draft
and the death penalty. The Black Power movement became so formidable that J. Edgar
Hoover, who then served as executive director of the FBI, described it as, "the greatest
internal threat to the security of the U.S. since the Civil War." Only twenty years later,
MOVE was openly bombed on U.S. soil without grave social repercussions. The Uhuru
felt that this event signified America's racial climate and represented a return to the
temperament that dominated the Jim Crow era. They again attributed a large part of this
political weakness to middle-class black leadership, which often aligned itself with
"white liberals," rather than the black masses.36
While MOVE felt the brunt of American injustice, the Uhuru continued to fight to
improve the lives of Oakland's black residents. In 1986, the APSP once again acquired
immense support to place the Community Control of Housing Law on the ballot. In this
election, they received significant opposition from local businesspersons and politicians.
Despite high-end political opposition, the Uhuru acquired 30,000 signatures in public
support, the highest number ever recorded for a ballot measure in the city's history. The
Uhuru charged the city government with intentionally deceiving the public by implying
that their initiative did not make it to the ballot. In response, they held a forty-eight hour
Ezimbahwe (Uhuru historian) interview with author, June 3, 2006; Yeshitela, Omali
Yeshitela Speaks, 102-103.
36 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 53-56; Hull, Struggle and Love, 92-93; Margot
Harry, "Attention, MOVE! This is America!" (Chicago, Illinois: Banner Press, 1987),
57-60; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 93.
vigil in front of the City Hall plaza until the initiative's place on the ballot was officially
announced. Allegedly, some of the petitions had gone uncounted and had been
rediscovered. Although the percentage of votes gained by the initiative was statistically
similar to the previous year, the campaign reached beyond poor black communities and
obtained support from a diverse population. The APSP endured another unsuccessful
campaign, ending their political blitz of Oakland's elections.37
After the series of consecutive political campaigns, a clear schism existed
between the local and national branches of the Uhuru movement. Many of Oakland's
local branch members felt the national organization burdened them with too much
responsibility. The phrase "(this is) too much work" became the chapter's most popular
slogan. To clarify the extent of the complaint, the local chapter likened the relationship
between them and the national party to the relationship between a slumlord and a tenant.
The issue was resolved by the political bureau of the Uhuru movement, which also
finalized the last push for the Community Control Housing Law.38
After two years of consecutive campaigning, the APSP turned its attention to a
racially charged event in Charlotte, North Carolina. In November of 1986, the Uhuru
visited Charlotte in support of the black community's opposition to a KKK march. In full
regalia, fifty-six KKK members marched through the city with the support of the Aryan
Brotherhood. The Aryan Brotherhood carried arms to protect the KKK from the 700
blacks that protested the march. Fourteen local police led the march, sixteen police cars
37 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 60-63; San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1986,
June 17, 2001.
38 Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, 60-63.
surrounded the KKK, and law enforcement' sharpshooters laid on rooftops. Police
attempted unsuccessfully to block the Uhuru's participation in the march. The Uhuru
complained that police brutalized blacks opposing the march, throwing them against
walls while conducting weapons searches. Despite the KKK's overwhelming police
protection, the Uhuru and the black community still managed to disrupt the march by
throwing bricks with the names of black heroes written on them. After the protest,
Yeshitela asserted, "party members were able to prevent the Charlotte cops from
arresting at least fifteen African youths and the people forced an end to the Klan march
after only five blocks." The Uhuru considered this countermarch a victory, utilizing
methods that contrasted drastically with the recommendations of local preachers, who
simply suggested that blacks ignore the KKK.39
Back in Oakland, on August 22, 1989, police found Huey P. Newton dead from
three shots to the head. Since 1970, Newton had admittedly been snorting cocaine and
had become addicted to crack. Prior to Newton's death, the Uhuru had reintroduced him
to political life. Huey spoke at the Uhuru house and gave several other speeches. In his
own words, he considered the Uhuru an equivalent to the BPP honoring their
continuation of the Black Power struggle. Newton bragged, "you may not have the Black
Panther Party but you have the Uhuru movement. You may not have the Black Panther
newspaper, but you have the Burning Spear."40
9 Local police did not participate in the march but instead attempted to provide protection
for the klansmen. Ibid, 60-67.
40 Personal interview, Nyabinga Ezimbahwe by the author June 3, 2006 (notes in the
collection of the author); Personal interview, Sandy Thompson (Member of the Uhuru
Many people showed their respect to the fallen Panther. Over 6,000 people
attended his wake and more than two-thousand attended his funeral at Allen Temple
Baptist church. As young men at Newtons' funeral began to wrestle with camera
operators, the Uhuru movement along with Newton's family, interceded providing
security. Fifty members of the Uhuru movement protected the hearse in berets, carrying
red, black, and green flags and Panther posters. During the funeral, the Uhuru raised a
huge banner that read, "Huey Lives." As his burial commenced, they compelled the
crowd to chant, "Long Live Huey P., African people must be free" and "Who killed
Huey, don't tell no lie, the government, the government, the FBI!"41
As Newton's death reached the media, negative press dominated his legacy.
Within four days headlines read, "From Prime Minister to Bum," describing Newton's
fall from the forefront of the revolutionary movement and the media's perception of his
life since. Bobby Seale, co-founder of the BPP, emerged after Newton's death, blaming
him for the organization's decline. While Seale criticized Newton, the Uhuru responded
with a campaign to counteract the profusion of negative media tarnishing his legacy.
Uhuru member Biko Lumumba led multiple demonstrations inspiring the black
community to uphold Newton's name. Biko Lumumba stated, "America does not want
black people to have heroes like Huey Newton...[they would] rather Bill Cosby and
Eddie Murphy." The Uhuru viewed Newton's name and life as a symbol of the black
movement for over twenty years) interview with the author, June 3, 2006; Pearson, The
Shadow of the Panther, 1-9.
" Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview; Sandy Thompson interview; Pearson, The Shadow of
the Panther, 323.
revolution and took criticism of his actions as a direct attack on the African revolutionary
process. The Uhuru sold shirts and banners with Newton's name on them featuring the
words, "Long Live the African Revolution." Two years later, the individual who shot
Newton was convicted of murder.42
On December 6, 1991, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into Yeshitela's Oakland
bedroom, where two of his children slept. The early morning attack burned the outside of
the bedroom but injured no one. It appeared the attackers also planned to destroy his van,
which he found drenched in gasoline. Oakland's Uhuru house announced that it had
received numerous threats from an anonymous caller, while Yeshitela remained aloof on
a tour. Members of the group believed that his political adversaries may have been
behind the attempt. This would not be the last time Yeshitela would risk death to fight in
the struggle for blacks' rights.43
The Uhuru defined and refined their organization while in Oakland, California.
Picking up where the BPP had reached its end, they kept alive the legacy of the Black
Power movement and survived the forces that crushed their contemporaries. Their
political blitz prepared them with the tenacity to embrace future social challenges. By
1996, the Uhuru played a crucial role in two racially based rebellions. Omali Yeshitela
utilized the events to catapult into mainstream politics.44
42 Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview; Sandy Thompson interview; Pearson, The Shadow of
the Panther, 323.
43 San Jose Mercury News (CA), December 6, 1991; Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview.
44 Banner-Haley, The Fruits of Integration, 158-162.
Chapter 4: Power to the Populace: The Uhuru in Saint Petersburg, Florida
Blacks represent America's conscience. It is the black American
who puts pressure upon the nation to live up to its ideals. It is
[they] who give tension to [the] struggle for justice and for the
elimination of these factors, social and psychological, which make
for slums and shaky suburban communities...Without the black
American, something irrepressibly helpful and creative would go
out of the American spirit, and the nation might well succumb to
the moral slobbism that has ever threatened its existence from
within. Ralph Ellison'
Between the APSP's political bouts in Oakland and their transfer to Saint
Petersburg, the APSP expanded its horizons, hosting multiple national events. When the
APSP resumed their second Party Congress in 1988, on their fifteenth anniversary, they
reflected on their recent business ventures and organizational additions. Spear Graphics
emerged as a typesetting and printing business, located in both the Oakland and Saint
Petersburg Uhuru houses. Spear Graphics had encountered considerable success and
acquired a reputation as a noteworthy small business in Oakland. The APSC's Oakland
branch headed the venture of Uhuru Foods, a business that distributed baked goods
throughout the Oakland Bay area. Shortly thereafter, the Party Congress and the APSP
opened the Uhuru bakery. The Burning Spear, the group's newspaper, had existed since
its inception and continued to evolve into a more complex publication with a greater
audience. Finally, the Uhuru aspired to launch Black Star vitamins, a business they
desired to develop into a national chain.2
'For Ralph Ellison excerpt, see Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The
Permanence of Racism, (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 157.
2 Omali Yeshitela, This Time Till It's Won, (Oakland: Spear Graphics, 1988), 69-71.
Though the Uhuru experienced various economic and political successes, the
Congress revealed some significant difficulties. On the national level, the Uhuru suffered
from organizational issues, leaving some of its major offices unfilled and an extra
workload on its functionaries. At the second Party Congress, this issue primarily
concerned the APSP. In addition to organization, the party stressed political education as
a tool to better facilitate organization and maintain the balance within the group's
structure. The Uhuru made pointed efforts to emphasize the relevance of an intimate
relationship with the black masses and converting them to the revolutionary platform.
The Congress praised the work of The Burning Spear and the APSP for spreading the
party's revolutionary message and the maintenance of its leadership. Finally, the
Congress introduced two emerging aspects of their movement: the African Socialist
International (ASI), an organization planned to unite black revolutionaries worldwide,
and the Women's Commission, a union designed to emphasize the role of women in the
struggle for revolution.3
At a conference in Chicago, Illinois, the APSP founded another branch
organization, the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (NPDUM). Yeshitela
created NPDUM to reawaken black political life inside America. Their goals, similar to
the APSP's, focused on defending black rights, fighting the use of drugs, ending unfair
imprisonment within the global black community, and stopping the America's
counterinsurgency inside of black communities worldwide. In 1991, the APSP created
NPDUM as a mass organization that welcomed membership from all races and focused
3 Ibid, 75-77.
on democratic rights, similar to groups that had emerged during the civil rights
movement. At the core of these goals, they placed the right to self-determination, which
NPDUM defined as the highest form of democracy. Democracy to this organization
relied on the ability or lack of ability for a people to determine the relationship between
them and their government. In this sense, they argued, blacks in the U.S. did not have a
democratic situation. After NPDUM's creation, the APSP merged the new organization
with the ANPO.4
For its first eight years, the leadership of NPDUM played a large role in its scope
as an organization. Appointed by the APSP, Akua Njeri served as NPDUM's first
president. She also served as a member of the BPP and was the mother of Fred Hampton,
Jr. During this time, the organization took a more national rather than international
approach, as Njeri fought for community improvement by boycotting schools, lobbying
for better public housing, and protesting police brutality in the areas of Philadelphia,
Oakland, and Saint Petersburg. Njeri served as president until 1999, when the APSP
appointed Dwight Chimurenga Waller (Joe Waller's younger brother) to serve the post.5
NPDUM endeavored to contest racism and police brutality, producing some
notable results. A good example of one of its accomplishments was the successful fight
4 Personal interview, president of the International People's Democratic Uhuru
Movement, Dwight Chimurenga Waller, by the author October 20, 2005; Personal
interview, president of the African People's Solidarity Committee, Penny Hess, by the
author October 17, 2005; Omali Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks (St. Petersburg:
Burning Spear Uhuru Publications, 2005), 50-51; National People's Democratic Uhuru
Movement, Party Constitution, 2000.
5 Burning Spear (the serial publication of the Uhuru movement) July-October 2001;
Dwight Chimurenga Waller interview, October 20, 2005.
to free the son of Fred Hampton and Akua Njeri, Fred Hampton Jr. Twenty-five-year-old
Fred Hampton died at the hands of the FBI while he slept in his bed with his pregnant
wife, Akua Njeri (then Debra Johnson). Before his death, Hampton had organized the
largest chapter of the BPP in the country, providing breakfast for school children and free
sickle-cell anemia testing for Chicago's black population. His son Alfred Hampton was
born a few weeks after his death and entered into the political world years later, through
the Uhuru movement. He would later grow up to become a political prisoner. Accused
falsely of bombing a Korean merchant store in response to the Rodney King verdict, the
court sentenced him to eighteen years in prison. According to the Uhuru, an all-white
jury tried him with no eyewitnesses or physical evidence. NPDUM rallied behind the
case. With his mother Akua Njeri testifying to his location on the day of the crime, they
secured Hampton a lawyer, and held demonstrations outside the courtroom to inspire a
fair trial. NPDUM fought for his freedom for eight years and on September 14, 2001,
young Fred Hampton regained his freedom. Upon attaining his freedom, Hampton Jr.
became the president and chair of his own organization, the Prisoners of Conscience
Committee (POCC). A few years after the creation of NPDUM, the Uhuru decided to
return their headquarters to Saint Petersburg. They had expanded their organization and
prepared to emerge as a major influence in the city.6
6 Burning Spear, July-October 2001; San Francisco Bay View, November 9, 2005; Omali
Yeshitela, Not One Step Backward! The Black Liberation Movement from 1978 to 1982
(Oakland, California: Burning Spear Publications, 1982), 279-285; Dwight Chimurenga
Waller interview, October 20, 2005.
On October 16, 1995, Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, called
upon the presence of one million black men to facilitate a massive demonstration at the
nation's capital. This impressive event called for black men to become more active and
unified in their communities, invest in black businesses, and build a black political
agenda through empowerment. This event served as the largest political demonstration in
America's history, shortly revitalizing the sprit of protest that arose in the sixties. Some
political analysts dispute the number of people who attended. Estimates ranged from
670,000 to 1.1 million. This event showed that blacks still had not achieved the goals
sought through the protests decades ago, and were still seeking a sense of nationhood and
community unity.7
Yeshitela, who attended the event, totally disapproved of Minister Farrakhan's
agenda for the march, calling it "reactionary and backwards for black people to go to
Washington D.C. to atone for our sins." He viewed the nation's capital as the crime
headquarters of the world. From his perspective, instead of African-Americans atoning
for their sins, they should have demanded "Clinton to come out with his hands up!"
While Minister Farrakhan had galvanized a plethora of black people to revisit the
traditions of protest established in the sixties, the next year Omali Yeshitela would be
involved in rebellions reminiscent of the riots of that same era.
7 Felton O. Best, Black Religious Leadership From the Slave Community to the Million
Man March: Flames of Fire (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), 243-
247; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 106-7.
8 Felton O. Best, Black Religious Leadership From the Slave Community to the Million
Man March: Flames of Fire (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1998), 243-
247; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 106-7; Omali Yeshitela, "Birthday speech at the
Uhuru House," Speech, Uhuru House, St. Petersburg, Florida, October 30, 2005.
As suggested, a key turning point in the history of the Uhuru movement occurred
in the latter part of 1996 when in Saint Petersburg police shot an eighteen-year-old black
man. With racial tensions at a boil, this event thrust the black community into a fury that
culminated into an outbreak of substantial violence. The controversy that sparked the
violence commenced on October 24, 1996, when two white police officers shot Tyron
Lewis at a routine traffic stop, just three blocks from Uhuru headquarters. Lewis refused
to roll down his window, step outside of his automobile, or turn himself over to the
police. Despite the fact that Lewis did not have a weapon and committed no crime, the
officer shot him through his windshield five times. The act enraged much of the black
community whose members viewed the shooting as unwarranted.9
Facts later surfaced to place Lewis's resistance in a new light, but this information
had not factored into the shooting. Specifically, police discovered that he had three
outstanding warrants, crack cocaine in his possession, and did not have a license. Still,
Officer James Knight insisted that he reacted to Lewis hitting him with his automobile,
an action he claimed had endangered his life by thrusting him on the hood of the car. The
officer's accusation did not jibe, however, with the recollections of witnesses. Out of
9 St. Petersburg Times, October 31, November 2, 3, 15, 1996; Tampa Tribune, November
15, 16, 24, 1996, November 4, 1997; Penny Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence
(St. Petersburg: Burning Spear Uhuru Publications, 2000), 450-468; Omali Yeshitela,
"The Dialectics of Black Revolution": The Struggle to Defeat the Counterinsurgency in
the U.S. (St. Petersburg: Burning Spear Uhuru Publications 1997), iii; African People's
Socialist Party 4th Congress brochure, 12 (copy in collection of the author); African
People's Socialist Party, "History of the African People's Socialist Party," [document-
online] (Official website of the African People's Socialist Party 2005, accessed August)
available at http://apspuhuru.org/apsp/history, 8-9; Newsday (Melville, NY), November
15, 1996.
thirty individuals interviewed, twenty-eight stated that they never saw a car hit the
officer. The black masses did not stand alone in their belief that the shootings were
unjustified. Soon-to-be Police Chief Goliath Davis affirmed the point: "Officers should
not be able to put themselves in front of or behind a moving vehicle and then claim to be
hit," he observed, "thereby giving them an excuse to execute civilians." Davis added,
"this was inappropriate and the officer should have been terminated." The events that
followed caused city officials to declare a state of emergency. Ultimately, the shooting
sparked the greatest civil disturbances in Saint Petersburg's history.10
Those disturbances ensued on October 25, 1996, when supporters of the Uhuru
movement and other enraged African-Americans took to the streets. Using bricks,
bottles, Molotov cocktails, guns and other weapons, these blacks, through what the Uhuru
called "organized rebellions," ejected the police from their neighborhood. The Uhuru
meanwhile organized black residents through community meetings, vigils, and
demonstrations. Later, angered blacks strategically wreaked havoc on the city, burning
white and foreign (Korean and Arab, for example) owned businesses and destroying
police substations. The Uhuru labeled the businesses targeted as "parasitic merchants"
inside the black community. After the tumult had subsided, city officials accused the
Uhuru of inciting the riot, a third-degree felony. The Uhuru leadership denied the
accusation although comments from Sobukwe Bambaata, the party's national director of
1o St. Petersburg Times, November 15, 1996; Tampa Tribune, November 15, 16, 24,
1996, November 4, 1997; Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence, 450-3; African
People's Socialist Party 4th Congress brochure, 12; Personal interview, St. Petersburg
Police Chief Goliath Davis by the author, February 24, 2006; African People's Socialist
Party, "History," 9-10; Washington Post, November'l6, 1996.
organization, made their denial appear contradictory. He stated during the mayhem, "We
have to push the pigs back across Central Avenue! They might be coming back in body
bags if we get our sh[i]t together!" Despite these inflammatory words, authorities found
it difficult to prove that the Uhuru incited the outbreak and, after investigation, they
determined that the Uhuru never directly threatened to commit or incite violence.I
To reach their conclusion, authorities had distinguished Uhuru commentary from
the type of verbal agitation that legally qualifies as language intentionally intended to
start a riot. On their part, members of Uhuru explained that they foresaw violence as a
community response and natural consequence to the shootings. Sobukwe Bambaata
clarified the point: "The Uhuru movement, we told you that this was gonna happen," he
began, "but you didn't want to listen." Bambaata continued, "we said that if you don't
stop what you're doing, then this city's gonna go up in flames." Nyabinga Ezimbahwe,
the Uhuru historian, personally assured the author, "we never told nobody to bum shit."
Far from inciting a riot, the Uhuru portrayed their role in the event as strategists,
"summing up the contradictions" and political motivations behind the event. The Uhuru,
in fact, charged the police as the culprit, stressing that their negative relationship with the
black community and disregard for the life of Tyron Lewis had incited the riots.
Chimurenga Waller, an Uhuru leader, remarked, "the so-called riots were the people's
response to their people not being treated as citizens." "[This] is an expression of self-
defense after being violated as a people." The department's record certainly appeared
" St. Petersburg Times, November 15, 20, 1996, August 10, 1998; Tampa Tribune,
November 15, 16, 24, 1996, November 4, 1997; Yeshitela, Dialectics of Black
Revolution., iii; African People's Socialist Party, "History," 4; Miami Herald, November
15, 1996; Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer, November 15, 1996.
less than perfect. In 1995 alone, the organization received 283 allegations of police
misconduct. It also had a history of shooting young black men.12
Uhuru leaders opted to utilize their own judicial hearing to make their point. On
November 1, the organization and many members of the black community held a
"tribunal," or a mock trial. The proceedings found the two officers guilty of murder.
Participants thereupon "sentenced" the men to the state electric chair. When the
controversial results reached the public, many perceived the news as a threat. Yeshitela
urged caution. "Those were not threats of a street execution," he noted, "we don't have
an electric chair." Uhuru, nonetheless, endured a wealth of criticism in the media, and
the misunderstanding served to heighten hostility between its members and city
officials.'3
The community soon faced renewed challenge. On November 13, weeks after the
initial explosion, the grand jury cleared Officer Knight of any crime in the Tyron Lewis
case. The Saint Petersburg Times asserted that the Uhuru threatened to respond with
violence if the trial did not result in conviction. The combination of the previous riot, the
statements about an electric chair execution, and the new potential threat made police
exceedingly nervous. In fear of another violent outbreak, Police Chief Darrel Stephens
ordered the strategic arrest of key members of the Uhuru movement. The plan backfired,
12 St. Petersburg Times, November 15, 20, 1996; African People's Socialist Party,
"History," 9-10; Memorandum from St. Petersburg Police Department, Statistical
Analysis 1995-2005, March 2006; Dwight Chimurenga Waller interview, April 14, 2006;
Personal Interview, Uhuru historian, Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, by the author June
3, 2006.
'3 St. Petersburg Times, November 15, 20 1996; Hess, Overturning the Culture of
Violence, 458; Tampa Tribune, November 16, 17, 1996.
causing yet another rebellion. The police department intended to prevent the Uhuru from
inspiring another night of unrest, but the arrests occurred at the Uhuru headquarters, an
event police stated that they did not anticipate. In any event, officers arrested three
Uhuru members on minor charges in full view of seething protesters, and only hours
later, the police returned, undoubtedly upsetting Uhuru members.14
Events soon spun out of control. Women, children, church leaders, civic leaders,
and Uhuru members had gathered to discuss recent events at the Uhuru house. When the
police returned, they demanded the building's evacuation. Afterwards, officers were
pelted from the headquarters and fired upon, as one account detailed. Police officers
subsequently attempted to raid the building, with officers later asserting that Uhuru
advocates had prepared for violence that night. Intelligence reports, they insisted,
divulged that the Uhuru had stockpiled six tons of bottles and rocks as potential
weaponry. Whatever the case, before the Uhuru members could depart, the police
unleashed an assault, with 300 heavily armed troops from local, county, and state
organizations swarming the house. Inside, over one-hundred civilians found themselves
trapped in the building and tear-gassed so thoroughly that the assault depleted the city's
police armory. Tear gas was shot into the trees above the house and sparked a fire, a
maneuver that Yeshitela claimed constituted an attempt to "kill the Uhuru Leadership."
14 Tampa Tribune, November 17, 1996; St. Petersburg Times, November 14, 21,
1996; Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence, 454-58; Philadelphia Inquirer,
November 15, 1996; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA), November 15, 1996; Lexington (KY),
Herald-Leader, November 15, 1996; Stuart News, November 15, 1996.
A videotape of the event revealed an officer pepper spraying Yeshitela without
provocation. Some individuals escaped, while police detained others.'5
Outraged, the black community decided to fight for the detained members of the
Uhuru movement. While members of Uhuru were stuck inside of their headquarters, the
townspeople used rocks, bottles and automatic weapons to engage the police's militarized
armed forces. Once the violence began, it quickly spiraled out of control. "Before it was
over, an officer on the street and a Pinellas County sheriffs deputy in a helicopter were
shot, a tavern patron was shot and a motorist's jaw was broken when an object came
through his window," The Saint Petersburg Times related. "There were thirty-three
confirmed fires, most or all set by Molotov cocktails." Police Chief Stephens
commented on the local police department's lack of preparedness, while acknowledging
that under normal circumstances police came prepared for potential violence. He
admitted that nonetheless, "in our training, we never contemplated the level of gunfire we
had (Wednesday night)." Police claimed to have found at least fifty rounds of gunfire at
one intersection alone. 16
15 Tampa Tribune, November 15, 17, 1996; Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 69-89; St.
Petersburg Times, November 14, 1996; Omali Yeshitela, Social Justice and Economic
Development for the African Community: Why I Became a Revolutionary (St. Petersburg:
Burning Spear Uhuru Publications, 1997), iv-v; African People's Socialist Party,
"History," 9-10; Miami Herald, November 17, 1996; Buffalo (N.Y.) News, November 15,
1996; Austin (TX) American-Statesman, November 15, 1996.
16 Tampa Tribune, November 15, 16, 17, 1996; St. Petersburg Times, November 20, 21,
1996, November 10, 2000; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks,79; African People's
Socialist Party, "History," 9-10; Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence, 460-1;
Burning Spear, August 2000-January 2001.
Yeshitela offered his own perspective. "They were going to get rid of us by a
military attack," he observed, "and when they attacked they got their asses kicked right
there in the street." Night's end saw ten people arrested, five buildings burned, and for
the second time the police pushed out of the black community. With these events, Uhuru
members had made genuine attempts to establish themselves as community leaders.
Combined, the two riots produced an estimated $5 million in property damage and caused
seventy-four reported fires, while leaving over one dozen injured and twenty arrested.
Four years later, the Uhuru and thirty-nine other people injured in the teargassing of the
Uhuru house, filed a class action lawsuit. Yeshitela called the police actions an attack on
blacks' rights to assemble and the suit sought compensation for physical and
psychological damages. Rioting as an act of civil resistance has received criticism
because it has traditionally decreased the likelihood of future economic investment in the
area. However, in this instance the riots produced some unusual consequences.7
Despite some criticism from local authorities, concrete results flowed from the
crisis. The tumultuous events brought the black community of Saint Petersburg together
as never before, and, directly following the disturbances, residents created an executive
organization known as the African-American Leadership Coalition (AALC). This group
17 A semblance of community unity in the AALC, the city's first black police chief,
federal and city economic investments and Yeshitela's pardon and bid for mayor all
stemmed from the disturbances. Tampa Tribune, November 15, 16, 17, 1996; St.
Petersburg Times, November 20, 21, 1996, November 10, 2000 ; Yeshitela, Omali
Yeshitela Speaks,79; Yeshitela, Social Justice, iv-v; African People's Socialist Party,
"History," 9-10; Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence, 460-1; Contra Costa (CA)
Times, November 15, 1996; Philadelphia Inquirer, November 15, 1996; African People's
Socialist Party 4th Congress brochure, 10; Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3, 2006;
Burning Spear, August 2000-January 2001.
combined various aspects of the black community including local ministers, the SCLC,
the NAACP, the Uhuru members, local politicians, and businesspersons. They joined to
serve as a council to make decisions to better the black community. Uhuru members
declared themselves community leaders, boasting, "we are the political leadership of the
African community." City officials found themselves compelled to hear the AALC's
voice. Comprised of sectors of the black community that usually remained segmented,
the AALC intended to represent the black population of Saint Petersburg, which at that
time, comprised twenty percent of the city's 250,000 citizens. "We found common
ground around the need [for police] to essentially stop the killing of young black males,"
local SCLC President Sevell C. Brown, III, explained. Regardless of pressures from city
officials aimed at influencing members of the organization to disassociate themselves
from the Uhuru, the group produced a statement about the Tyron Lewis case. It
demanded "the prosecution of the killer cops" and "reparations for the family of Tyron
Lewis," as well as a "hands off the Uhuru movement policy."18
On its part, the coalition intended to secure jobs and monetary assistance from the
federal government to help rebuild the black community and to coerce city officials into
sharing power with black leaders. The coalition also publicly addressed its exclusion
from Mayor David Fischer's plan to form a community action committee, a group
designed to improve the city's poor areas. Rosa Hemingway, a member of the AALC,
commented on that situation: "We don't need someone to plan for us," she declared.
8 Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence, 460; Washington Post, November 16, 1996;
St. Petersburg Times, November 28, 1996; Tampa Tribune, November 15, 1996; Houston
Chronicle, November 15, 1996.
"We need someone to come in here and plan with us." Soon, Mayor Fischer acquiesced
and invited the group to committee meetings. Fischer tempered his action, however, by
insisting that he did not want the Uhuru to control the coalition because its philosophy
"doesn't mesh" with economic development.19
Just as it appeared that Yeshitela had solidified his role as a new political leader, a
schism developed within the AALC. Only weeks later, in the midst of developing a
blueprint for the black community's revitalization, the coalition encountered internal
conflicts with Yeshitela playing a primary role. The Reverend Sevell Brown of the
SCLC and the chairman of the coalition, had a rift with Yeshitela and his supporter, the
Reverend Manuel Sykes. Brown voiced complaints regarding how the group should be
run, respect for members within the coalition, and the group's democratic process.
Yeshitela and Brown maintained differing views on the concept of democracy and its
application. According to the Uhuru historian, the SCLC did not represent a significant
segment of the black community because their organization was not active at the time.
Regardless of the political dissension within the AALC, Yeshitela maintained his
membership within the group while Reverend Sevell Brown's affiliation ended. 20
19 Tampa Tribune, November 23, 1996; St. Petersburg Times, November 21, 23, 1996;
Newsday, November 17, 1996.
20 St. Petersburg Times, January 20, 29, 30, 1997, June 14, 1998; Tampa Tribune,
November 24, 25, 1996, February 5, 1997; Goliath Davis interview, February 24, 2006;
Memorandum from St. Petersburg Police Department, Statistical analysis 1995-2005,
March 2006; Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3, 2006; Rick Baker, Mangroves to
Major League: A Timeline of St. Petersburg History (St. Petersburg: Southern Heritage
Press, 2000), 308.
As the AALC attempted to unify the black community, a representative of the
United States government helped change the city's perspective of the Uhuru movement.
On November 23, the African-American Leadership Coalition and Uhuru leaders met
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) head Henry Cisneros. A
member of President Bill Clinton's cabinet and the leader of a federal task force,
Cisneros had arrived in Saint Petersburg to assess the city's recent civil disturbances.
Yeshitela and fifty other members of the AALC expressed to him concerns over
employment, police brutality, and public respect for blacks. The potential destruction of
the Jordan Park housing complex, the largest and oldest housing project in the city,
received additional consideration. Pleased that his efforts placed the issues of poor and
oppressed African-Americans in the political spotlight, Yeshitela found renewed
confidence in the sessions. Cisnero's reports to city officials satisfied the leader as well.
"Before constructive change occurs," he told the city's leaders, "civic leaders first must
build a bridge to those who feel disenfranchised on the city's Southside." Statistically,
Saint Petersburg's 1990 census revealed great disparity between the poverty levels of
blacks and whites. Over twenty-nine percent of blacks lived below the poverty level,
while a mere six percent of whites suffered the same fate. Cisnero went so far as to say
that Saint Petersburg's situation appeared to him, "the most racist in the country" and
suggested that the city must seek input from non-mainstream black groups. Cisneros
specifically mentioned that local officials should listen to the "thoughtful" Yeshitela.21
21 St. Petersburg Times, November 23, 1996; Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence,
472-7; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 81; 1990 Census of population and housing,
Population and housing characteristics for census tracts and block numbering areas.
Tampa- St. Petersburg- Clearwater, FL MSA.
Shortly after Cisneros's comments reached the public, Yeshitela accepted an
invitation to join the fifty-member special task force created to facilitate federal relief
efforts. He would serve alongside other black leaders, Chamber of Commerce members,
and representatives from the mayor's administration. The task force eventually dispersed
$20 million in federal aid to assist the black community. After that, the black community
honored Yeshitela for his decades of commitment in the fight against injustice and his
dedication to working-class blacks. Yeshitela informed residents that now his plans for
the black community consisted of community-directed development that included low-
interest loans, increased black business ownership, and the creation of African cultural
attractions.22
Saint Petersburg's police department moved to ease racial tensions in a different
way. In a startling change, the police department replaced white Police Chief Darryl
Stephens with African-American Goliath Davis. This change resulted directly from the
riots. Many blacks understandably had believed that the Stephens administration had
added strain to the already tense relationship between the police and their community.
Early in his tenure as Chief, Davis demonstrated that he would not hesitate to fire white
officers who abused privileges by treating black males inappropriately. Boldly, Davis
went so far as to declare the Uhuru house an embassy, ordering his officers not to arrest
anyone on the property. Initially, Yeshitela appeared highly skeptical that Davis would
help, charging the city with being "obsessed with providing a police solution," and
22 Tampa Tribune, November 23-27, 1996, January 9, 1997; St. Petersburg Times,
November 23, 24, 26, December 20, 1996; Hess, Overturning the Culture of Violence,
475.
saying, "having a black police chief will not improve inner-city life unless the policies
Davis has to work with are changed."23
Perhaps as a test, the Uhuru leader and the AALC soon thrust the issue of Weed
and Seed on Davis's plate. This two-fold federal program intended to remove the
unsavory element of a given community by increasing the area's police presence and the
community's penalties for crime. This segment they labeled the "weed" aspect of the
program. Simultaneously the "seed" aspect of the program offered funds to the city for
economic development of the area. Following the riots, the city had declared areas of the
Southside as Weed and Seed sites, and the federal government had planned to contribute
$325,000 to assist with both programs. This figure pleased neither Chief Davis nor
coalition leaders. The AALC responded that this funding was too miniscule to improve
an entire neighborhood. "I had a seven million dollar police budget already," Davis
recalled. "I felt they should transfer that money allocated to increased police presence,
and dedicate it all to economic development." He explained that he disliked the program
because it treated the "law-abiding and the criminal in the same light." As assistant
Chief, Davis had attended several meetings about the Weed and Seed program; the
meetings had stirred his concerns, particularly when a speaker declared that the increased
police presence should be like an "occupying army."24
23 St. Petersburg Times, January 20, 29, 30, 1997, June 14, 1998; Tampa Tribune,
November 24, 25, 1996, February 5, 1997; Goliath Davis interview, February 24, 2006;
Memorandum from St. Petersburg Police Department, Statistical analysis 1995-2005,
March 2006; Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3, 2006; Baker, Mangroves to Major
League, 308.
24 Tampa Tribune, May 14, June 12, October 24, December 23, 1997; St. Petersburg
On the issue of Weed and Seed, Chief Davis and Yeshitela agreed. The Uhuru
leader charged that the program is "an insidious attack on the black community" and
declared, "it leads to an increased police presence and federal involvement."
Consequently, they asserted, "it leaves residents open to wire-tapping and other
surveillance techniques not found in white neighborhoods." Nyabinga Ezimbahwe,
Uhuru historian, called the program illogical, mocking the idea by stating, "it's like
saying we must get rid of the niggas to save the niggas."25
On August 23, the Uhuru-AALC conglomerate passed out pamphlets that
informed the community about the issue. Uhuru argued that "police containment" did not
help the black community, but instead it demonstrated city officials' unwillingness to
address the source of crime, the problem of economic development. Yeshitela supported
his views with statistics. "The unemployment rates there [in the black area] are twice the
average for the city, and the average annual income is about $12,000." He added that
one-third of the black community lived below the poverty level. Lastly, Yeshitela
criticized the $325,000 offered for economic development. He found this amount of
money comical. In disgust he replied: "they talk about a total amount of money that is
less than salaries of the mayor, his chief administrator and chief of staff."26
Times, July 27, October 19, 1997, June 14, 1998; Goliath Davis interview, February 24,
2006, Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 84.
25 Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 86-87; Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3,
2006; Penny Hess interview, October 17, 2005.
26 Tampa Tribune, May 14, 30, June 12, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, July 27, December
20, 1997; Goliath Davis interview, February 24, 2006; The Dallas Morning News,
October 26, 1997; Boston Globe, July 7, 1997; Penny Hess interview, October 17, 2005.
Mayor Fischer soon made groundbreaking efforts to contribute to the critical
problems facing the black community. Fischer proposed Challenge 2001, a five-year
plan, "to create 2,500 new jobs, help 425 families buy their first homes, raise housing
values by twenty-five percent, lower school dropout rates and help make sure children are
reading by the third grade." The plan aimed to rectify the economic disparities of Saint
Petersburg, where the unemployment rate equaled twice the national average. Mayor
Fischer declared an end to an era of divisiveness and separation, and requested the
assistance of everyone seriously concerned with helping the city.27
These declarations did not convince Yeshitela, who replied, "while jobs are
critical, the programs can't be tied to police intervention -- which is included in the
federal initiative known as Weed and Seed that the mayor's plan is following," and he
concluded that, "the city is treating this economic situation like a police problem." In
light of the economic situation, Yeshitela tried desperately to persuade the taskforce to
allocate the funding in a manner that may benefit the majority of African-Americans.
Sevell Brown, Yeshitela's political adversary in the split of the AALC, countered
Yeshitela's perspective, asserting that Weed and Seed represented just a minor portion of
the total federal assistance, which included programs for job training, childcare services,
education, and the development of leadership skills. However, Marvin Davies, a city
commissioner, complained about the task force's monetary distribution, stating, "at least
half of the money already awarded is going to programs that don't benefit poor African-
27 Tampa Tribune, May 30, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, June 9, 1997.
Americans." Davies continued his critique, charging that the federal funding "is still not
community-based or community-driven, and that's my problem with it."28
In October of 1997, months after Yeshitela rejected Mayor Fischer's Challenge
2001 program the mayor suddenly changed his tune. With increasing pressure from the
Uhuru movement and national attention on the racial dynamics of the city, Mayor Fischer
reconsidered his stance. Yeshitela had convinced Mayor Fischer to reject the Weed and
Seed program, an unprecedented decision that satisfied the veteran activist. When
Southside's Jordan Park housing project became the promised target of $27 million
dollars, Yeshitela experienced another success. Vice President Al Gore visited the city to
announce the grant named "Hope 6." In a rare moment, Yeshitela commented positively
on the potential capital planned to enter Saint Petersburg's black community. "The city
appears to be moving in a way that shows a lot of possibilities, greater than I have seen in
my lifetime," he asserted. Yeshitela gladly acknowledged that the plan showed
"promise" and boasted that the city's business sector "realized inner-city black residents
can contribute to the money pool."29
Though satisfied with the federal assistance proposal, Yeshitela remained aware
that finances had not yet reached the public. In anticipation of its arrival, he insisted that
local banks have enough faith to invest in the black community. Yeshitela declared the
money a form of social justice and prophetically asserted that if things continued in this
28 Tampa Tribune, May 30, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, June 9, 1997; Hess,
Overturning the Culture of Violence, 266, 476; Miami Herald, May 31, 1997
29 Tampa Tribune, October 3, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, October 3, 12, 1997; Baker,
Mangroves to Major League, 308; Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3, 2006.
direction, he "doesn't envision a repeat of last year's violence." With the black
community united under the AALC after the civil disturbances and Yeshitela influencing
public policy, this period marked his entrance into mainstream politics.30
Whatever the mayor's opinion of Weed and Seed, Police Chief Goliath Davis
would make an authoritative decision. Goliath Davis became the first Police Chief in
Weed and Seed's six-year history to reject the program. He offered a straightforward
explanation. "You can't expect economic investment to occur if others view the black
community as pathological and dysfunctional." In addition, "accepting this Weed and
Seed program assumes the worst of the entire black community, thereby leaving no room
[reason] for investment." He contended, like Yeshitela, that the presence of the program
would deter investors from viewing the area as lucrative and that increased police
presence would not eradicate the criminal element as effectively as serious economic
development and genuine treatment for offenders. Davis took into account that last years
rioters would also be affected by the program, (that paid police officers overtime to make
more arrests) openly admitting, "I don't want to set those people off again." The police
chief also felt uneasy about the program's sectional approach to fighting crime stating
that "my law enforcement program has always been city wide and that's how I want to
keep it." Davis expressed why he viewed economic development as important when he
30 Tampa Tribune, October 3, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, October 3, 12, 1997.
remarked: "Why would people burn down their own community? ----- What
community? [Those] people don't own anything down there."31
As Davis stood in opposition to Weed and Seed, he received ample criticism.
Many felt the chief's policy seemed insensitive to the problems the city experienced with
its criminal sector. City Council member Connie Kone expressed her perception of
Davis's decision. "It comes across as tolerating drugs, [the] citizens want to be assured
that we're going to continue to aggressively pursue drug dealers," she noted. While
Davis rejected the "weed" part of the program, that dedicated $100,000 to increased
police presence in selected neighborhoods, he accepted the $225,000 dedicated to
economic development. In efforts to compromise, he even requested a transferal of the
"weed" money over to the "seed" part of the program. He told critics "we won't relax our
enforcement of drugs .... we will continue to do that. However, as a police chief, all I
am saying is we need to think differently about the way we do business." The rejection
of Weed and Seed evidenced a new height in the political influence of Omali Yeshitela
and the Uhuru movement, its biggest opponent.32
In the end, the city still endorsed the program. Pinellas County Sheriff Everett
Rice strongly supported the program and made efforts to implement it in spite of
opposing political opinions. After a great deal of debate and some compromise, the
police chief agreed to approve the program, only under the condition that the program
31 Tampa Tribune, December 9, 13, 20, 1997; Goliath Davis interview, February 24,
2006.
32 St. Petersburg Times, December 10, 14, 16, 1997.
coverage became citywide. Ultimately, the city expanded the "weed" part of the program
to cover the entire city of Saint Petersburg.33
After the Weed and Seed issue ended, Yeshitela reflected on his transition from
political outcast to an accepted community leader with exceptional composure. "I'm not
doing anything different than I did before except sitting down with these guys. It's been
they all along who did not want to sit down," Yeshitela explained. He revealed that he
never intended to be on the outside of mainstream politics, but instead he planned to
ensure that working-class blacks had representation on the inside of it. Consequently,
other politicians often dismissed Yeshitela's perspective as radical and labeled the Uhuru
a "fringe group." Yeshitela rejected the idea that he had become mainstream, since his
political orientation remained unchanged. Yeshitela explained, "I have not gone
mainstream, it is they who have gone Uhuru!" His idea of economic development as the
key method for fighting poverty found acceptance with Jack Soule, the head of the police
union. Although Soule had disagreed with Yeshitela in the past, he "agreed with
Yeshitela that economic development was the best strategy for reducing crime and
violence in urban areas, and that the city's bureaucracy could be streamlined to help."34
With Yeshitela's new notoriety came the inevitable suspicions about whether he
had betrayed his original audiences and allegiance. His decisions to work with white
business bankers and leaders seemed to contradict his philosophy of black independence.
Not surprised at the accusations, Yeshitela retorted that the comments come "from
33 Ibid., January 16, 1998.
34 St. Petersburg Times, October 3, 12, 1997; Tampa Tribune, October 25, 1997;
Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 88-9.
quarters that have never supported us....Those are the same people who, in the past, have
said we're too strident, or too black, or too prone to violence, or too something. Now that
it doesn't appear to be the case, we're (accused of being) sell-outs. So it's a no-win
situation." Yeshitela defined being a sell-out as someone who relies more on the
relationship with people like the mayor and the head of the police union, than with the
masses of black people. Since blacks were in no position to cause revolution, Yeshitela
opted for the next viable option, political power inside the city of Saint Petersburg.
Because of the Uhuru's new elevated political status, working class blacks received
greater attention in the local media and their interests reemerged as relevant to politicians
when they considered economic development. 35
With Yeshitela receiving positive press, he put pressures on the city to deliver its
monetary promises. The Uhuru staged a march on City Hall to protest the discrepancy
between the money allegedly awarded to help the black community and the money
received. They proposed that the community development block grant money "went to
build the Hilton, Tropicana Field parking lot, etc." In the process of building Tropicana
Field, the city tore down the gas plant, destroying many black businesses and the
neighborhood where Yeshitela had grown up. Lou Brown, a realtor representing AALC,
remarked, "we're not going to be pushed off to the side with jobs selling peanuts. We
want real jobs." As a member of the federal task force, Yeshitela opposed the entire
process of the city's distribution of money almost every step of the way. He supported
self-determination in the black codnmunity, and specifically desired the power to create
3 St. Petersburg Times, October 12, 1997; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 87.
jobs and determine the allotment of federal funding. Although Mayor Fischer's monetary
plan had not satisfied the black community, the mayor admitted, "Saint Petersburg
probably would have gotten some of the money despite last fall's disturbances," but, "it
probably would have been considerably less."36
As money finally arrived in the black community, Yeshitela's prominence
increased. Business owners, government officials, and community activists attended a
meeting at the over-packed Enoch Davis Center to announce the arrival of new economic
support for the inner city. Yeshitela spoke, thanking the black community for its support
and his speech received passionate applause. Mayor Fischer and Paul W. Bailey, a South
Trust bank executive, also received applause; Fischer for his efforts at inner-city
development and Bailey for his commitment to lend more money to African-American
entrepreneurs. Less than two weeks later, WHJoint Venture LLC, a Maryland-based
corporation, proposed a $16 million plan to create a mail-order pharmaceutical company
that would bring over 800 jobs to Saint Petersburg. The company's president, Charles
Washington, assured the public that he was, "committed to hiring local low and
moderate-income residents."37
Federal support did not last forever. By late February of 1998, Andrew Cuomo,
the U.S. Housing Secretary, decided that the Federal Interagency Task Force, which
Omali Yeshitela participated in, had completed its mission. In its fourteen months of
existence, the task force facilitated the distribution of over $45 million dollars in aid,
36 Tampa Tribune, August 13, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, June 9, August 24, 1997;
Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3, 2006.
37 St. Petersburg Times, November 5, 1997; Tampa Tribune, November 14, 1997.
intended to inspire economic development in the black community. As a composite
entity, it consisted of various people from divergent sectors of society and its mission
forced the group to appeal to both grass roots and political motivations. However,
Yeshitela afterward confessed that the task force did not produce any tangible results that
could change the conditions of the black inner city. He argued that the democratically
based federal task force evacuated because Saint Petersburg's grass-roots activists would
not tolerate its inclination to produce positive political reports without any substance.3
While the federal task force planned to disband, public advisory commissioner
Marvin Davies challenged Mayor Fischer's similar Challenge 2001 plan alleging that,
"there's no money attached to it. It's an illusion for hope. There's nothing there." As
federal support exited the city, many black leaders expected Saint Petersburg to return to
business as usual. Yeshitela returned to his disbelief in Challenge 2001's promises and
transitioned his focus from the federal task force to the locally based Citizens Advisory
Commission. He admitted, "I believed a year ago we had an opportunity to truly move
into the future with a win-win process --- But I do not see that now."39
As Yeshitela coped with the tumult of economic development, he did not forget
about the life of Tyron Lewis. Already displeased with the city's economic development,
Yeshitela became disgusted with the city's relaxed approach to punishing the officers
involved in the killing. On the anniversary of Lewis's death, the Uhuru held a
candlelight vigil in his honor and memory. The Uhuru requested that members of the
38 St. Petersburg Times, February 26, 1998; Tampa Tribune, February 27, 1998.
39 St. Petersburg Times, February 26, 1998; Tampa Tribune, February 27, 1998.
crowd "remain disciplined" in order to prevent a repeat of the previous year's violence.
Police Chief Goliath Davis met briefly with Yeshitela on his tour through the black
community to monitor the sentiment of the public.40
Days after the vigil, courts dealt a serious blow to the relationship between the
black community and the police department. A Pinellas grand jury concluded that
Officer Knight had not violated the civil rights of Tyron Lewis in the shooting. The
Justice Department investigated only whether the officer, "actually knew he was using
excessive force at the time of the shooting," and did not assess recklessness or
negligence. This announcement ended the possibility of criminal punishment against the
officer. Knight shared his perspective on the event, stating that he believed his actions to
be morally correct, but admitted, "I regretted then and continue to regret that such
extreme action was necessary to protect my life." Lewis's family then pursued a civil
suit in the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court for the cause of a wrongful death and the
violation of civil rights. They did not seek a specified amount of damages. Both
Yeshitela and Lewis's family expressed a desire to see the officers imprisoned. Yeshitela
vowed to have both officers fired and wanted the city to pay reparations to Lewis's
family. He collected petitions to support his cause. The Uhuru declared the court's
verdict a part of the continued, "cover-up" of Lewis's murder.41
40 Ibid., October 25, 1997.
41 Tampa Tribune, November 4, 1997; St. Petersburg Times, November 4, 1997;
Nyabinga Ezimbahwe interview, June 3, 2006.
Seven years earlier the Uhuru had succeeded in freeing Fred Hampton Jr. but the
results of Lewis's trial did not produce results as flattering. In March of 1998, the courts
released a new decision in the Tryon Lewis litigation, concluding that Officer Knight did
not violate any of the police department's rules. Due to this ruling, the court demanded
that Knight be paid compensation for the sixty-day suspension he received in response to
the killing. Ironically, Knight had already received enough in public donations to cover
the money he had lost during his suspension. Former Police Chief Darryl Stephens and
Chief Goliath Davis both disagreed with the court, explaining that the officers acted
against department policy. Officer Knight admitted to watching a video on handling car
situations that warned officers, "don't place yourself in the path of the vehicle," but
explained that he viewed the video as funny rather than instructive. The court's arbitrator
ruled that the video did not address the real situation the officer encountered. Quite
plausibly, Yeshitela felt offended and protested that the police officers had permission to
penalize black people with death for not stepping out of a vehicle, while, "Officer Knight
cannot even get a slap of the wrist. The message is that it is all right to kill Africans in
this fashion." This event, Yeshitela argued, proved that the system did not value black
life. At a civil trial in 2004, James Knight allegedly admitted to murdering Lewis,
stating, "I intended to kill him." Though the statement seemed incriminating, it served to
assist Knight in winning his case because the charges were based on negligence.42
Still aiming to secure economic development in the black community, the Uhuru
sought alternative methods of negotiation. As the mayor and 45,000 of Saint
42 St. Petersburg Times, March 24, 1998; Tampa Tribune, March 24, 1998.
Petersburg's citizens prepared for the opening of its new baseball stadium housing the
Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Uhuru prepared to protest. Yeshitela and AALC felt blacks
had been excluded from the park's economic opportunities. The Uhuru protested in
support of Campbell Park Neighborhood Association president Janice Teemer, who
advocated that the blacks that lived in the neighborhood near Tropicana Field should be
able to charge visitors for parking. Yeshitela had had enough of the city's policy of
leaving blacks out of baseball revenue, and he "vowed to disrupt traffic approaching
Tropicana Field," admitting, "we intend to rain on this ballgame."43
The Uhuru intended to remind city officials that they built Tropicana Stadium
over a black neighborhood. Protesters believed their community deserved a small share
of the benefit from the stadium since they had already made a significant sacrifice.
During the opening game, the APSP protested on the exit ramp of highway Interstate 75
at Fifth Avenue South in order to block traffic to the game. Police arrested six members
of the Uhuru merely thirty seconds after the protest began. At the following game, police
arrested four more members who protested at a second demonstration. This second
demonstration showed the Uhuru movement's commitment to risk themselves as political
activists for the black community.44
Frustrated with the results of the protest, Yeshitela moved to explain his
perspective to upscale local executives. He spoke at the Suncoast Tiger Bay Yacht Club,
43 Tampa Tribune, March 31, April 5, 1998; St. Petersburg Times, March 31, April 1,
1998.
44 Tampa Tribune, March 31, April 5, 1998; St. Petersburg Times, March 31, April 1,
1998.
a prestigious private white institution where the city's top investors frequented. As a
representative of poor blacks, Yeshitela used this opportunity to give a history lesson to
the city's ruling class. He delivered a speech to 190 listeners on economic development
in the black community. He explained:
Blacks were "brought" to Saint Petersburg to serve mainly
as a cheap source of labor for the tourism industry. At the
same time, the presence of so many frustrated Black folks
threatened the peaceful stability of that industry. So city
power-brokers long ago adopted a policy of "police
containment" to keep them in line.
Yeshitela argued that this hostile environment had persisted until the present day,
and served as a catalyst for the Tyron Lewis event. He argued that true economic
development, meaning major black businesses and franchises, not minimum wage jobs,
welfare, nor a few corporate positions, would be the only solution to the black
community's problems. Yeshitela finished by stating that increasing the police presence
in a community will always lead to conflict and confrontation, but community commerce
would lead to social justice. He also accused the city of trying to develop an "African-
free, sanitized zone" around the Tropicana Field. Yeshitela had finally gotten the
opportunity to express his views to the city's top businesspersons of the city without
igniting some sort of serious civil disturbance.46
Now that Yeshitela held a place in the political mainstream, city officials began to
rethink his 1966 mural case. In the latter part of 1998, to show some sensitivity to race
relations, Saint Petersburg City Council considered giving Yeshitela a plaque as a form of
45 St. Petersburg Times, July 10, 1998; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 108-115.
46 St. Petersburg Times, July 10, 1998; Yeshitela, Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 108-115.
an apology for the damages he incurred because of his 1966 act of ripping down a racist
mural. For years, a blank wall remained where the mural once hung, but once the idea of
a formal apology and a plaque surfaced, this issue quickly turned into an intense debate.
Half of the council members openly supported an apology for the "incorrect caricature of
African-Americans" and labeled Yeshitela "a hero whose act should be remembered."
These same council members advocated that Yeshitela's voting rights be restored. Some
local residents wanted a picture of Omali Yeshitela to replace the blank space. In 1996,
local artist Derek Washington received $7,500 from the Saint Petersburg Public Arts
Commission to create a mural painting of Yeshitela. After the Tyron Lewis case, the city
discarded the mural. In 1998, Washington sought to install the painting in City Hall but
abandoned his mission midway. Unfortunately, he concluded that city officials "don't
think any differently than they thought thirty years ago."47
The debate over Yeshitela's plaque continued. More than a year after the
controversy began, no conclusion had been reached. Everyone on the council agreed that
George Snow Hill's mural represented racism and that Yeshitela's actions symbolized
justice, but half of them still had issues with an apology. In September of 1998, the
council had requested the mayor to issue a public apology, but it produced no results.
The council itself could not agree to apologize half a year later. Council Chairwoman
Bea Griswold, for example, did not want to "immortalize a man" who promoted the
overthrow of the government. Griswold said Yeshitela's actions since the mural incident
have violated the constitution, an institution she felt obligated to uphold. She
47 St. Petersburg Times, September 11, November 11, 1998; Tampa Tribune
September 11, 1998.
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