Reparations: Today's Ourstories

[Baba Ahmed]

Peace and Power readers!

This will be a long post, offerring a partial overview of our continuing battles for Reparations.(***) Its excerpted from Raymond A. Winbush, Ph.D's book: SHOULD AMERICA PAY?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on REPARATIONS, published 2003 and presented there in Conrad W. Worrill's article, The National Black United Front and the Reparations Movement pp.203-205. It begins with,

"If you beat a donkey every day, one day it will kick you ---Jamaican Proverb"


Queen Mother Audley Moore championed reparations for over sixty years. She is considered the High Priestess of the Reparations Movement and formed the Reparations Committee of Descendants of United States Slaves, Inc., along with Dara Abubakari. In 1962, they delivered a petition to the United Nations demanding the United States be made to pay reparations.

Contributions to the reparations movement resurfaced through the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X in the 1960s, making the demand for reparations through Muhammad Speaks, the print voice of the Nation of Islam. The Republic of New Africa made a reparations demand in 1968, demanding payment of $400 billion in damages for slavery.1

The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) was organized in 1988 following in the tradition of Callie House. Since 1988, N'COBRA has developed a number of strategies designed to gain reparations for African people in America and to help advance international efforts to win reparations. Beginning in 1989, Congressman John Conyers introduced legislation in each Congress calling for the U.S. government to study the impact of slavery on Africans in America and the United States. This legislation is currently receiving wide support, primarily due to the work of N'COBRA.

Since the late 1980s,several organizations, including the December 12th Movement, the Uhuru Movement, the Lost and Found Nation of Islam, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), and the National Black United Front (NBUF), continue to organize around the demand for reparations. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, under the leadership of Representative Donn Ross, has generated more interest in the movement. Since the late 1990s, attorney Deadria Farmer-Paellmann's research on the insurance companies that held policies on enslaved blacks in the 1850s has added to the reparations sponsored by Alderman Dorothy Tillman in Chicago's city council received wide publicity and also generated a great deal of interest among black people in the United States regarding the demand for reparations. This visibility was further assisted by the publication of The Debt by Randall Robinson.

The reparations movement has moved from the realm of ideas pushed by a handful of intellectuals and activists to the masses of black people. This is an indication that African people have not lost memory of the historical atrocities inflicted upon them and that they will never forget or dismiss the continuation of this mistreatment by this country.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF NBUF

NBUF was founded in 1980. It grew out of the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s when African people in this country were aggressively organizing around numerous issues. The activism of the Civil Rights movement and its challenges against de jure and de facto segregation was a spark that set off the mass movement of African people in America. The organization and mobilization of the Civil Rights movement provided the springboard for the emergence of the Black Power phase of our movement in the late 1960s and the renewed call for Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

Through the disruptive tactics of the U.S.government via its counterintelligence programs, also known as COINTELPRO, the African Liberation Movement in America suffered serious setbacks. Many leading activists and organizers were arrested and convicted on false charges, some of whom remain locked up today as political prisoners. Others such as Malcolm X, Dr.King, Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark were assassinated or otherwise silenced with many people convinced that the U.S. government was complicit in their deaths.

By the late 1970s, the African Liberation Movement was in serious disarray. This stimulated numerous leading black activists, organizers, and leaders to convene a series of meetings. Two organizational meetings were held in Brooklyn in 1976 and 1977. The purpose was to address the ideological disunity among the various forces in the Black Movement and to formulate a united front. Many members of NBUF remember the all-day meetings held on the east Coast as an attempt toward national unity; however, the discrete commitments, points of view, and organizational interests were intransigent and in some cases unresolvable. The mistrust and apprehensions of the past years fueled by COINTELPRO scheming and various ideological rivalries lingered in the memories of most participants. However, a core group of participants in these meetings from around the country agreed that it was urgent that a call be made to convene the founding convention of the National Black United Front.

The meeting was held in Brooklyn, New York, at the Old Armory in June 1980. More than one thousand activists from thirty-four states and five foreign countries participated in this four-day convention. Rev. Herbert Daughtry was elected the interim national chairman, and we approved a draft of the constitution and bylaws. I succeeded Rev. Daughtry as chairman in 1985 and since then have continued to serve as national chairman.

At the second national convention in July of 1981, which was also held in Brooklyn, NBUF ratified a permanent contitution, bylaws, and leadership structure. NBUF chapters emerged across the country in

• Philadelphia

• Atlanta

• Raleigh

• Greensboro

• Mississippi

• Houston

• Dallas

• Kansas City

• St. Louis

• Portland

• Seattle

• the Bay Area

• Muskegon

• Lansing, Detroit, New York, New Jersey, Milwaukee, Memphis, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, most of these are still active.
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***SHOULD AMERICA PAY?
1. Lisa N. Nealy and Pfizer Shellow. "Our Land is a'comin and Our Mule is on de Way." Research paper submitted to the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, Washington, D.C., 2002.
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Baba note: clearly there are many not mentioned here; surely we can agree that always there are unsung sheroes/heros; unknown ones and unnamed ones. Yet the work continues and our major goals have not been achieved. Thanks for your interest and attention.

ALUTA CONTINUA!!!

[Baba Ahmed]

Greetings Afrikans!
Below is an email rec'd yesterday from Dr. Mustafa Ansari, Chief Justice of the Indigenous* African American Reparations Tribunal. Read it carefully. If u agree with what it addresses, solid; if u don't please we don't have time for lengthy debates. Just keep do n what u do best. And I hope success for u. We're in motion. Thanks.
__________________________________________________ ____________

Greetings, Peace and Power,

I have just returned from Ghana with a delegation of African Americans who received a 1/4th acre of land in our model 4 square mile ocean township. We will be returning in July and all diasporan slave descendants who are interested in obtaining a parcel of African land can apply for a (Free) 1/4th acre parcel and obtain a project overview by e-mailing me for land tour instructions. As we can only accommodate 50 people for the July trip, please take this into consideration.

We will be returning to Ghana for a 10 day stay to distribute additional land parcels, and to attend the Panafest activities, and otherwise party and tour the life of Ghana. At the Panafest we will take a symbolic boat excursion on the Gulf of Guinea and return back through the "Door of No Return" at the Cape Coast Slave dungeon, where we will be received by dignitaries and pageantry. There will be additional musical concerts, dance and other activities.

In addition, I would like to turn your attention to part 1 of our dual indigenous strategy [ land in America and land in Africa] that has crystallized while in Ghana where I was received by the Paramount Chiefs and the Ghanaian Minister Obetsebe Lamptey of the "Joseph Project", and the director of the Panafest, who is using his office to not only gather all of the Chiefs and Elders in Ghana but the Chiefs and Elders from Senegal to Angola by 2007 so I in my capacity as the Chief Justice of the Indigenous African American Reparations Tribunal we have agreed to collaborate and cooperate with his offices in this effort.

However, as we have not perfected a 'land status Plebiscite', I do not have the authority to receive the additional land for 40 million African people in the Americas and the Africans in the Caribbean and Europe so the Indigenous African American Reparations Tribunal [www.aareparations.com] is structuring a broad based "Land Resettlement Commission" to receive this land in behalf of the Diaspora.

The land commission will be made up of 50 Nationally and Internationally known or otherwise prominent Muslim, Christians, Hebrew Israelites, women, diaporan Business, legal, political and land developmental persons who have at least 10 hours a month to meet by teleconference and can afford the time to conference at a designated sight and to travel at least once a year to Ghana and the other countries to aid us in the developmental process, International trade and public and political relations.

I remain open for nominations, and applications

Very truly yours,


Dr. Mustafa Ansari
Chief Justice
Indigenous African American Reparations Tribunal
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*Baba note: This, indigenous, deals with legal status. We've - aareparations - chosen this name. But our people will have to decide its final name... via voting; a vote that does not include white people, nor the gov't. Its our choice: to b or not to be AFRIKANS.

[RecoveringAA]

Greetings Baba,

you know who i am...so i won't repeat...



Anywho....I received my packet last year. Is now buried somewhere in the house. I don't have the money, right now, to complete application and go FORWARD ~ HOME TO A~FREE~KA.....
HOWEVER,....i have my packet, i have my determined SPIRIT and i have the WILL TO DO

Thanks for sharing and allowing me to share