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RBG TRIBUTE TO

DR. IMARI ABUBARKI

OBADELE, Co-Founder of the RNA and Father of the Reparations

Movement Compiled and designed RBG Street Scholar

(Marc Imhotep Cray,M.D.)

Imari Obadele:

The Father of the Modern Reparations Movement By Robert C. Smith Africana.com,1 June 2000

The issue of reparations has received increased attention in the last several months. Local and state legislative bodies have taken up the issue; articles have appeared in leading newspapers and magazines; it has been a topic of lively debate on the Internet and local and national television and radio programs; and Randall Robinson's TransAfrica conducted a nationally televised symposium on the subject. Also, The Boston Globe reports that Harvard's much publicized "dream team" of African American intellectuals is considering legal and legislative actions to secure reparations. In virtually all of this discussion, hardly any mention has been made of Imari Obadele, the individual who probably should be described as the father of the modern reparations movement. That Obadele's work has been ignored is not surprising, given how the mainstream media, black and white, covers African American politics. This coverage is frequently uninformed and almost always biased and myopic, focusing mainly on the familiar disputes between black liberals and conservatives and black Democrats and Republicans, while ignoring - relegating to the fringes - the powerful tradition of nationalism in the black community's politics. Bishop Henry M. Turner was the first African American leader to call for reparations. He did so near the end of the Reconstruction era. The Nation of Islam has, since its inception, called for reparations, and the Republic of New Africa (RNA), organized by Obadele and his Malcolm X Society associates in 1968, demanded payment of $400 billion in "slavery damages." However, the modern movement for reparations did not take organizational form until 1988, when Obadele and his associates formed the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA). NCOBRA initiates litigation, publishes a newsletter and sponsors national and regional conferences. Professor Obadele gave the closing argument in a mock trial at Bethune-Cookman College in 1998, where a bi-racial jury voted to award reparations. At its tenth annual convention held in St. Louis in June 1999, NCOBRA adopted the "Six Down-Payment Demands on the U.S. Government," which demanded that a billion dollars each be given to ten black colleges, that a

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billion dollars be placed in a black economic development fund, that $20,000 be awarded to each black family, that a billion dollars be given to black farmers, and that all "political prisoners" be released. For more information, visit the NCOBRA website. Imari Obadele is currently a professor of political science at Prairie View A & M University, where he has been on the faculty since 1990. A leading scholar of nationalism, Obadele served for twenty years as Provisional President of RNA and is currently a member of the group's national legislative council. The principal aim of the RNA since its formation has been the organization of a plebiscite among African Americans in order to determine whether they would wish to form an independent nation-state within the current boundaries of the United States. Professor Obadele has written extensively on the right of blacks under prevailing standards of international law to have been accorded after the Civil War the opportunity to choose independent nation-state status rather than forcible incorporation into the United States. In August of 1971, as part of its COINTELPRO program to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" black nationalist and other radical organizations, the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid on the Jackson, Mississippi headquarters of the RNA. In the ensuing gun battle, a Jackson police officer was killed and an FBI agent and another policeman were wounded. Obadele and several other RNA officials were sentenced to long prison terms. He spent nearly five years behind bars, but as a result of national grassroots mobilization and a legal campaign, he was eventually freed. He immediately resumed his leadership work in the RNA. But he also decided to combine his life of activism with scholarship, enrolling at Temple University where he earned a BA in 1981, a Master's in 1982 and a Ph.D in 1985. His areas of specialization include American government, constitutional law, international relations and African American politics. Before joining the faculty at Prairie View, Obadele taught at William Paterson College and the College of Wooster. A prolific scholar, Professor Obadele has written three textbooks, co-edited two volumes (including The Forty Acres Documents, an important reference source on reparations) and in 1984 authored Free The Land, an autobiographical account of his work in the RNA during the 1970s.

I recently spoke to Imari Obadele. Q: When did you first become active in the black freedom struggle? A: I grew up in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania, and managed to join the Boy Scouts at 11, in 1941. My brother Milton, a Lincoln University student, had joined the 99th Pursuit Squadron to begin training as a radio operator. He was commissioned by the Signal Corps as a second lieutenant and then went on to become a fighter pilot. Milton was one of the leading black officers who fought against the discriminatory impositions suffered by black officers, including the inability to be admitted to officers' clubs on various bases, the frequent refusals of white enlisted men to salute black officers. He took his complaints to Air Force Headquarters at Mitchell Field, New York, and was ultimately court-martialed and given an "other than honorable" discharge. He completed work at Lincoln University without the GI Bill, was then refused admission at Temple University Law School, but was admitted to Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1947 and subsequently passed the Michigan bar. As teenagers, myself and my neighborhood buddies, as Explorer Scouts, avidly followed Milton's struggle as it was reported in the Pittsburgh Courier and other Afro-American national newspapers. His dauntless struggle -- particularly as he continued his fight against racism when he returned home -- inspired all of us, including myself, to make a commitment to ending our

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people's oppression and injustice. In Philadelphia in those early years Milton and I were instrumental in forming a Civil Rights group, which brought W.E.B. Du Bois to town, and which also led to an effort to create a boycott against the segregation in the U.S. military. This case -- with Devreaux Tomlinson of Philadelphia as main plaintiff -- never went to trial, but we believe that Truman's order to integrate the army in terms of units (not within units), as the Korean War began in the summer of 1950, was a response to this campaign. Q: What led you to conclude that an independent state is the optimum outcome of the black freedom struggle in the United States? A: My brothers Milton Henry and Lawrence Henry (a freelance news reporter and photographer) met with Malcolm X and shortly before King's "March on Washington" introduced me to the brother. The Detroit organization which we had formed, a civil and economic rights group called "The Group on Advanced Leadership" (GOAL), invited Malcolm X and others involved in the rights movement to speak for us in Detroit. Here he made his formidable "Message To The Grassroots" speech. This was a turning point in my political life. I was married with four children and employed at the U.S. Tank-Automotive Command as a technical writer, and attending classes at Wayne State University when I could. GOAL was peopled by many persons, some of whom have become educators and political luminaries in Detroit. Malcolm's speech was early November 1963. Kennedy was killed two weeks later, and Elijah Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam, suspended Malcolm for having commented that "the chickens have come home to roost." Milton and myself and others in Detroit, and armed brothers in Brooklyn and the Los Angeles area, who were followers of Malcolm but not members of the Nation of Islam, became Malcolm's support, though we failed to stop his 1965 assassination. Within three years our Malcolm X Society had called a "Black Government Conference" in Detroit and established a Provisional Government, named the unfree nation as the Republic of New Africa, and charged the Provisional Government with leading the struggle for independence of the Republic. The Declaration of Independence was signed 31 March 1968, the same Sunday that Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election as President of the United States. Robert Williams, in exile in China, was named our first President. Milton was named First Vice President and Betty Shabazz was named second Vice President. I was named Minister of Information. Q: How do you respond to critics who say the idea of an independent black nation-state is a fantasy -- completely unrealistic -- because it is not desired by most blacks, and not achievable even if desired? A: Our effort is to recruit those who do believe that creating a state as independent as Canada is possible and will work to achieve it. People have a right to believe it is a fantasy. But what's new? The United States and its institutions have worked to make all of our people believe that because of the Fourteenth Amendment we have been "made" into U.S. citizens. Even many Black professors refuse to write in their books or teach their classes that New African people -- persons born in the United States and descended from Africans once held in slavery -- had and have after the Thirteenth Amendment the right to political self-determination. We should have been asked -- as a group and individually -- what we wanted to choose as our political future. Instead, the United States, which theretofore had refused the application of the Rule of Jus Soli [an ancient legal standard that tied citizenship to place of birth] to Africans born in America, assumed that they could deny us the right to self-determination when they passed the Thirteenth Amendment and, then, passing the Fourteenth Amendment two-and-a-half years later, could impose the Rule of Jus Soli upon us. The most modest count indicates that over

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nine percent of our 40 million population desire independence today, despite the years of U.S. brainwashing. Time and events will bring the reality to the rest of us. The key is information and choice. Q: Given your long-time involvement in the reparations struggle, what do you think of the recently highly publicized efforts of Randall Robinson and others? A: Mr. Robinson's book [The Debt: What America Owes Blacks] has helped to make reparations a household word, coming after ten years of struggle by NCOBRA. Those who are joining the fight will emphasize, we trust, the importance of the 27-odd chapters across the country continuing their consultations with Black organizations everywhere to decide the forms of reparations and establish elected local organs to deal with the collective aspects of the payment, economic development, education, and release of people from jail based on reviews by elected community parole boards. Q: What's your thinking on the Africa-based initiatives led by the OAU and Ali Mazrui? Are there connections, coordination between the African American and African initiatives? If not, should there be? A: We in America and our people throughout the diaspora must work together. NCOBRA is involved in this work. Q: Also, to what extent is there communications or coordination between NCOBRA, Robinson and other activists who have recently embraced the cause? A: NCOBRA is a mass-based organization, which includes members like Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, the National Conference of Black Lawyers. The NAACP has passed a resolution asking chapters to work with NCOBRA. Q: Some blacks say that while reparations are owed it is not likely that the debt will be paid, and that a highly visible national debate on the issue will be racially divisive (a 1997 poll found that while 65% of blacks supported reparations, it was opposed by 88% of whites) and in the long run harmful to blacks. What's your judgment? A: Many New African people, unfortunately, must have our souls repaired and appreciate our history. We have always achieved things that were supposed to be impossible. The United States will do what all countries do: They pay when they MUST, when paying is the best alternative to what else they face. What is this about racial divisiveness? We are supposed to allow a nation of thieves, the whites, to remain comfortable with the wealth and rectitude stolen from us?

Robert C. Smith is a professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. He has written extensively on African American politics and has published numerous books, including Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (SUNY, 1995), We Have No Leaders (SUNY, 1996), and African American Leadership (SUNY, 1999). Copyright (c) 2000 Africana.com, Inc.

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Milton Henry, right, in 1969, as vice president of the Republic of New Africa, with Mabel Williams, center, wife of the R.N.A.’s president in exile, Robert Williams.

Milton Henry, (brother of Imari Obadele) in 1968

LINK TO FIRING LINE TELEVISION PROGRAM COLLECTION FOR VIDEO

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View VideoWindows Media

The Republic of New Afrika flag is that first used by Marcus Garvey.

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Q: What is the Republic of New Afrika (RNA)?

A: In the late 1960s, at the height of the Black Power Movement, two acquaintances of Malcolm X, Gaidi Obadele and Imari Abubakari Obadele assembled a group of 500 militant black nationalists in Detroit, Michigan, to discuss the creation of a black nation within the United States. On March 31, 1968, 100 conference members

signed a Declaration of Independence outlining the official doctrine of the new black nation, elected a provisional government, and named the nation the ―Republic of New Africa‖ (RNA).

The RNA believes that as a nation, black people are entitled to the full rights of a nation, including land and self-determination. Furthermore, Amerikkka as the land upon which Black People (New Afrikans) have lived, toiled and made rich as slaves is theirs; it is land that Blacks must gain control of because, as Malcolm X said, land is the basis of independence, freedom, justice and equality. The RNA even identified the five states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as Black People's land. According to the RNA, gaining control of our land is the fundamental struggle facing Black People; without land, Black Power, rights and freedom have no substance.

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Republic of New Africa

By Nicholas D. Kimble

(Tougaloo '04 )

Many of the activists who worked in the Freedom Movement in Mississippi became founders and participants in the Black Power movement, with Stockley Carmichael (of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) giving the new movement its name during the Meredith Mississippi Freedom March in the summer of 1966. At the pinnacle of the Black Power Movement in the late 1960s, brothers Milton and Richard Henry, (acquaintances of Malcolm X who renamed themselves Gaidi Obadele and Imari Abubakari Obadele, respectively) assembled a group of 500 militant black

nationalists in Detroit, Michigan to discuss the creation of a black nation within the United States. On March 31, 1968, 100 conference members signed a Declaration of Independence outlining the official doctrine of the new black nation, elected a provisional government, and named the nation the Republic of New Africa (RNA). The Declaration of Independence asserted the RNA's aims: to free black people in the United States from oppression; to promote the personal dignity and integrity of the individual and to protect his natural rights; and to support co-operative economics and community self-sufficiency.

The Republic of New Africa identified the Southern states - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina - as subjugated land. According to the RNA, the Southern states were the traditional homeland where Africans had been oppressed three hundred years in slavery and where Africans were due land as part of a reparations settlement. In addition to reparations in land, The Republic of New Africa sought reparations payments of ten thousands dollars for every black person based on Reconstruction's promise to freed slaves of "fifty dollars, forty acres, and a mule." The Republic of New Africa based its political, economical, and cultural activities on Ujamaa, a system taken from concepts of family supposedly present in traditional African societies. The People's Center Council, chaired by the President of the Nation, governed legislative and judicial power and supervised industries and land. The Republic of New Africa provided its citizens with six essentials for human life: food, housing, clothing, education, medical treatment, and defense. These calls for economic independence and African American control can be seen as reactions to both the gains and losses of the early Freedom Movement. To read more about the RNA history and beliefs, see various pamphlets and flyers from the Tougaloo College archives.

The RNA gained popularity in Mississippi, and on the Tougaloo campus as evidenced by the collection of their papers in the Tougaloo College Archives and articles in campus newspapers about the group. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) immediately targeted the RNA and they began raiding RNA meetings. In August 1971, the FBI and the Jackson Police Department, without warning, attacked the RNA government residence with arms, tear gas, and a tank. One Jackson police officer, William Skinner, was killed, one patrolmen and an FBI

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agent were wounded but there were no RNA casualties. Eleven Republic of New Africa government officials, including President Imari Obadele and three women, were arrested and tried for murder. Of the RNA 11, eight were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment based on the weak and conflicting testimony of witnesses. The RNA protested the arrests and verdicts, pointing out that the RNA 11 part of a "long pattern" of violence and injustice against Blacks in Mississippi.

Following his 1980 release from prisoner, RNA President Imari Obadele earned a Ph.D. in political science from Temple University and published articles and books upholding RNA's principles of reparations, acquisition of land, and the establishment of an independent, self-sufficient black nation. With a membership of 10,000 in Washington, D.C., the Republic of New Africa continues to promote awareness of racial injustice and inequality in American society.

Source: Brown University Tougaloo College

Q: Where can I find out more about the RNA?

A: Resources use to compile this asset included...

Republic of New Afrika - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRIKA/asetbooks

Republic of New Afrika - Social Justice Wiki

Brown University Tougaloo Project

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Modified from Wikipedia:

The Republic of New Afrika (RNA), was a social movement organization that proposed three objectives. First, the creation of an independent Black-majority country situated in the southeastern region of the United States. The vision for this country was first promulgated on March 31, 1968, at a Black Government Conference held in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Proponents of this vision lay claim to five Southern states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina) and the Black-majority counties adjacent to this area in Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida. A similar claim is made for all the Black-majority counties and cities throughout the United States. Second, they demanded several billion dollars in reparations from the US government for the damages inflicted on Black people by chattel enslavement, Jim Crow segregation, and persistent modern-day forms of racism. Third, they demanded a referendum of all African Americans in order to decide what should be done with their citizenry. Regarding the latter, it was claimed that Black people were not given the choice to decide in regard to what they wanted to do after emancipation.

The Black Government Conference was convened by the Malcolm X Society and the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL), two influential Detroit-based organizations with broad followings. This weekend meeting produced a Declaration of Independence (signed by 100 conferees out of approximately 500), a constitution, and the framework for a provisional government. Robert F. Williams, a controversial human rights advocate then living in exile in China, was chosen as the first President of the provisional government; attorney Milton Henry was named First Vice President (a student of Malcolm X's teachings); and Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, served as Second Vice President.

The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) advocated/advocates a form of cooperative economics through the building of New Communities—named after the Ujamaa concept promoted by Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere; militant self-defense through the building of local People's Militias and an aboveground standing army called the Black Legion; and respect for international law through the building of organizations that champion the right of self-determination for people of African descent.

During its existence, the organization was involved in numerous controversial issues. For example, it attempted to assist Oceanhill-Brownsville in seceding from the United States during the conflict that took place there. Additionally, it was involved with shootouts at New Bethel Baptist Church in 1969 (during the one-year anniversary of the founding) and another in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1971 (where it had begun to start its occupation of the South on a single farm). Within both events, law-enforcement officials were killed as well as injured and harsh legal action was imposed against organizational members.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believed the Republic of New Afrika to be a seditious group and conducted raids on its meetings, which led to violent confrontations, and the arrest and repeated imprisonment of RNA leaders noted above. The group was a target of the COINTELPRO operation by the federal authorities but was also subject to diverse Red Squad activities of Michigan State Police and Detroit Police Department—among other cities.

Publications

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The Article Three Brief. 1973. (New Afrikans fought U.S. Marshals in an effort to retain control of the independent New Afrikan communities shortly after the U.S. Civil War.)

Obadele, Imari Abubakari. Foundations of the Black Nation. 154p. Detroit. House of Songay, 1975.

Brother Imari [Obadele, Imari]. War In America: The Malcolm X Doctrine. 45p. Chicago. Ujamaa Distributors, 1977.

Kehinde, Muata. RNA President Imari Obadele is Free After Years of Illegal U.S. Imprisonment. In Burning Spear February 1980. Louisville. African Peoples Socialist Party. 4 p to 28 p.

Obadele, Imari Abubakari. The Malcolm Generation & Other Stories. 56p. Philiadelphia. House of Songhay, 1982.

Taifa, Nkechi, and Lumumba, Chokwe. Reparations Yes! 3rd ed. Baton Rouge. House of Songhay, 1983, 1987, 1993.

Obadele, Imari Abubakari. Free The Land!: The True Story of the Trials of the RNA-11 Washington, D.C. House of Songhay, 1984.

New Afrikan State-Building in North America. Ann Arbor. Univ. of Michigan Microfilm, 1985, pp. 345–357.

"The First New Afrikan States". In The Black Collegian, Jan./Feb. 1986. A Beginner's Outline of the History of Afrikan People, 1st ed. Washington, D.C. House of

Songhay, Commission for Positive Education, 1987. America The Nation-State. Washington, D.C. and Baton Rouge. House of Songhay,

Commission for Positive Education, 1989, 1988. Walker, Kwaku, and Walker, Abena. Black Genius. Baton Rouge. House of Songhay,

Commission for Positive Education, 1991. Afoh, Kwame, Lumumba, Chokwe, and Obafemi, Ahmed. A Brief History of the Black

Struggle in America, With Obadele's Macro-Level Theory of Human Organization. Baton Rouge. House of Songhay, Commission for Positive Education, 1991.

RNA. A People's Struggle. RNA, Box 90604, Washington, D.C. 20090-0604. The Republic of New Africa New Afrikan Ujamaa: The Economics of the Republic of

New Africa. 21p. San Francisco. 1970. Obadele, Imari Abubakari. The Struggle for Independence and Reparations from the

United States 142p. Baton Rouge. House of Songhay, 2004. Obadele, Imari A., editor De-Colonization U.S.A.: The Independence Struggle of the

Black Nation in the United States Centering on the 1996 United Nations Petition 228p. Baton Rouge. The Malcolm Generation, 1997.

See also

Malcolm X Robert F. Williams Harry Haywood Black Power Black Belt (U.S. region), social and demographic crescent of southern counties that

contain higher than average percentages of African American residents Queen Mother Moore Maoism Sanyika Shakur Jehoshaphat Kilimanjaro

External links

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RNA links

People's District Council of Los Angeles The Republic of New Afrika New Afrika (Online Blog) Black Law--Code of Umoja The New Afrikan Creed The New Afrikan Declaration of Independence The Black Patriots Party for Emancipation

Archives

RNA documents in the Freedom Now! archival project at Brown University - Tougaloo College archives.

The Republic of New Africa vs. the United States, 1967-1974 documents on police surveillance and repression of the RNA as well as protest by the organization at the The Radical Information Project.

Articles and reports

Firing Line: The Republic of New Africa William F. Buckley interviews Milton Henry. President of the Republic of New Africa. Program number 126. Taped on Nov 18, 1968 (New York City, NY). 50 minutes. Available from the Hoover Institution. The first 5 minutes are accessible in streaming Real Audio.

Understanding Covert Repressive Action: The Case of the US Government Against the Republic of New Africa by Christian Davenport, Professor of Peace Studies and Political Science at the Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame.

The Real Republic of New Africa By Dennis Smith, News Director. February 3, 2005. Accessed April 1, 2005