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Honoring the Legacy & Building for a Self-Determining Future!
Organized by
Cooperation Jackson
https://www.cooperationjackson.org
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
https://www.mxgm.org
All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party (GC
https://www.a-aprp-gc.org
Logistics:
Thursday, June 16, 2016 to Sunday, June 19, 2016
Chokwe Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy and Development
939 W. Capitol Street
Jackson, MS 39203
Registration & Onsite Meals to be announced!
Transportation and Housing to be announced!
Program to be announced!
Program will be broadcast online!
Educational materials will be uploaded soon!
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See also:
Announcement: Countering the Confederate "Spring": The Assault on Black Political Power in Jackson, MS
http:///www.cooperationjackson.org/announcementsblog/
African Liberation Day 2016
May 21, 2016, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm in Washington, DC
https://www.a-aprp-gc.org
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/user/manageevent/2524864
Report on Our Trailer: Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) Dances in the Fire!
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Call to Conference
50 years ago, a slogan, idea and movement was resurrected and reincarnated in Mississippi that would forever change the political landscape in the United States and the African World. On June 16, 1966 in Greenwood, Mississippi, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chair, Kwame Ture (then known as Stokely Carmichael), addressed a crowd of youthful demonstrators and the media covering the militant March Against Fear, and forcefully re-echoed our millennial and generational demand for Black Power.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Kwame Ture and Willie Mukassa Ricks were not the first ones to use the phrase Black Power. The call was carefully planned, not spontaneous or in reaction to Kwame's arrest before the rally, as history is falsely written. SNCC had used similar words in its position papers and internal documents since at least 1964; and several of its key cadre in Washington, DC, Mississippi and Alabama had been moving towards black nationalism since 1962, through their contact with Malcolm X.
SNCC had planned a Black Belt Summer Project in 1965 to build independent freedom organizations (nascent political parties) in 650 counties in the South, from Virginia to Texas, and support bases in the North. Unfortunately, this plan was tabled. It is out of this Project that the Freedom Organizations in Dallas, Greene and Lowndes County, Alabama were born on May 3, 1966; the first wave or litter of Black Panther Parties (October 10, 1964 to November 8, 1966).
SNCC helped, thanks, no thanks to the media, to popularize the Black Power slogan, introduce it to a new generation of youth, and spread it to every corner of the United States, the African Diaspora, Africa, and the World.
The phrase has a long, unacknowledged history in the Pan-African movement. Classical African Civilizations were the first recorded black power in the world. Ethiopia, Liberia and Haiti were independent and acknowledged as black power.
Frederick Douglas delivered a speech titled The Doom of Black Power in 1855, albeit he saw black as negative and was talking about the power of slavery and King Cotton. The Honorable Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association fought for a Black Government and Black President, Black Army and Black Generals in Africa in the 1920s.
The African Blood Brotherhood and other leftist forces struggled to build an independent nation in the U.S. Black Belt South in the late 1920s and 1930s. Similar efforts were undertaken at the same time in South Africa.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam continued this effort, and struggled for black economic power from the 1930s until today. Paul Robeson spoke about the Power of Negro Action in the 1940s.
Richard Wright, a native of Mississippi, used the Black Power phrase in 1954 as the title of his book about the Gold Coast (Ghanaian) Revolution under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. A later edition included Wrights book titled The color curtain: A report on the Bandung (Afro-Asian) Conference, which was published in 1956.
Adam Clayton Powell, the legendary Congressman from Harlem, used the phrase on several occasions in his speeches in the 50s and 60s. Malcolm X struggled to build black nationalism, which is black power, through the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964 and 1965.
The Organization for Black Power was formed on May 1, 1965, with former and then current members of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and SNCC among its members. Activists in RAM utilized the phrase Black Power in internal and external publications like SOULBOOK.
Kwame Nkrumah wrote a pamphlet called The Spectre of Black Power in 1968. These aren't the only examples of its usage by different forces, in different languages and countries over millenniums and generations.
1966 changed everything. On May 3, 1966, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee helped midwife the Dallas County, Greene County, and Lowndes County Freedom Organizations, the first wave or litter of Black Panther Parties was born,(October 10, 1964 to November 8, 1966).
On May 24, 1966, SNCC and Kwame announced a nationwide tour captioned The Black Panther is Coming! It built political support and raised monies to finance the November 8, 1966 elections. SNCC recruited poll watchers and armed guards from the youth gangs in the north. Out of this effort, the second wave or litter of Black Panther Parties was born, (May 24, 1966 to November 8, 1966).
On July 11, 1966, the Black Panther Party of New York was founded at the Slave Theater by Queen Mother Moore and Muhammad Ahmed of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). On August 28, 1966 Kwame Ture of SNCC, Muhammad Ahmed of RAM and the Bill Epton of the Progressive Labor Party publicly announced the Black Panther Party of New York. By November, SNCC and RAM were organizing Black Panther Parties in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and other cities. This is the third wave or litter of Black Panther Parties (July 11, 1966 to May 3, 1967).
On October 15, 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California. Kwame Ture was appointed Honorary Field Marshall on July 29, 1967, when the BPP SD had less than 15 members in one chapter. Kwame was the keynote speaker at the Free Huey Rally in Oakland, CA on February 17, 1968, and in Los Angeles on February 18, 1968. By September 1968, thanks to Kwame's and SNCC's help, chapters had been founded in more than 20 cities. Kwame resigned from the BPP SD on July 4, 1969. This is the fourth wave or litter of Black Panther Parties (July 29, 1967 to July 4, 1969).
On October 29, 1966, Kwame Ture spoke to 10,000 students during the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Conference on Black Power at the University of California at Berkeley. He announced that he would run for president of the United States in 1968, in order to build the Black Panther Party nationwide.
In June 1967, Kwame, representing SNCC and the BPP SD, began a six-month world tour to England, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Guinea, Tanzania, Scandinavia, France and other countries. He was the first Panther to travel internationally, and he organized the first "Free Huey" demonstration outside the United States, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He helped midwife the first Black Panther Party in England, and helped lay the seeds for other international chapters and allies.
Upon his return to the United States in December 1967, Kwame announced that he would boycott the 1968 elections. Eldridge Cleave ran for president on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.
The Black Power slogan fostered the birth and development of numerous political organizations in the United States like the African Peoples Socialist Party, the African Peoples Party, the Congress of African People, the National Black Political Assembly and the US organization; numerous Black Power Conferences; alliances like the African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee and the African Liberation Support Committee, a government in exile, the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika. The Congressional Black Caucus, Trans-Africa, Black Caucuses in professional, cultural, religious, labor, student, and other organizations were also founded.
The energy produced by the Black Power explosion was not confined to the United States. It spread to the Caribbean (Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, Guyana and the Bahamas to name a few), Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the Motherland in places like Azania (South Africa) where it helped reinvigorate the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania and inspire the birth of the Black Consciousness Movement; and introduced a generation of African youth to the liberation movements in north, east, couth, central and west Africa.
Kwame Nkrumah founded the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party in Guinea in 1967, with the objective of Pan-African unity and liberation as the highest political expression of the Black Power. Kwame Ture recruited cadre and built chapters of the A-APRP in several countries around the world. The Black Power slogan strengthened the Pan-African Revolution and forever changed its social and political consciousness, ambitions and objectives.
African people throughout the world were on the move, and the Black Power slogan spread like wildfire, reverberating to every corner of Mississippi, the United States, the African Diaspora, Africa, and the World. It articulated a radical shift in the movement, re-galvanized the political consciousness of the masses, sharpened our demands, and immediately redefined and refocused the values and objectives of the Black/African Liberation Movement towards human rights, self-determination, national liberation, national unification, Pan-Africanism, scientific socialism, and a genuine and lasting peace.
Kwame coined the phrase "Hell No, We Won't Go!" This slogan became the anthem of the anti-draft movement, and spread worldwide. Youth continue to use the phrase today, without knowing its origins. Like Black Power however, it was more than a slogan. Its objective was to smash the draft. This objective was achieved by the early 1970s.
Black Power was more than a slogan; it was and is a program and a goal. The quest for genuine Black Power and revolutionary Pan-Africanism remains unfulfilled, worldwide. African people throughout the world still remain subject to capitalism, European imperialism and various forms of white supremacy and domination, and the plague of neo-colonialism, mis-leadership and imperial accomplices.
The struggle for Black /African Liberation is long, protracted and costly, in terms of sweat, tears and blood. The current upsurge in the Black/African Liberation Movement in Africa and the African Diaspora, popularly referred to in the United States as the Movement for Black Lives, powerfully demonstrates that revolutionary ideas and demands emanating from Peoples movements don't die and cannot be defeated.
This Black Power, Black Lives and Pan-Africanism Conference seeks to examine the historic origins and development of the struggle for Black Power and the Black Power slogan emanating from it, and critically analyze the contributions of the individuals, organizations and entities that dedicated themselves to its pursuit (past and present). It will also examine how the current generation and Black Lives Movement is seeking to attain Black Power and Pan-Africanism; and what must be done ideologically, politically and programmatically to build and seize them.
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See also:
Announcement: Countering the Confederate "Spring": The Assault on Black Political Power in Jackson, MS
http:///www.cooperationjackson.org/announcementsblog/
Report on Our Trailer: Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) Dances in the Fire!
Event: May 21, 2016
African Liberation Day & Palestine (Nakbar)Day 2016
https://www.a-aprp-gc.org
https://www.facebook.com/events/192150397822634/
Events: June 16, 2016
SNCC Legacy Project: Black Power 50th
https://sncclegacyproject.org/projects/black-power-50th
https://www.facebook.com/SNCCLegacyProject
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For more information, contact:
Cooperation Jackson
https://www.cooperationjackson.org
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
https://mxgm.org/
All African Peoples Revolutionary Party (GC)
https://www.a-aprp-gc.org
info@a-aprp-gc.org
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LocationChokwe Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy and Development (View)
939 W. Capitol Street
Jackson, MS 39203
United States
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| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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