Baton Rouge is the capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it had a population of 227,470 as of 2020; it is the seat of Louisiana's most populous parish (county-equivalent), East Baton Rouge Parish, and the center of Louisiana's second-largest metropolitan area and city, Greater Baton Rouge.
Southern University and A&M College is a public historically black land-grant university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. It is the largest historically black college or university (HBCU) in Louisiana, a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and the flagship institution of the Southern University System. Its campus encompasses 512 acres, with an agricultural experimental station on an additional 372-acre site, five miles north of the main campus on Scott's Bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in the northern section of Baton Rouge.
Robert Franklin Williams was an American civil rights leader and author best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and into 1961. He succeeded in integrating the local public library and swimming pool in Monroe. At a time of high racial tension and official abuses, Williams promoted armed Black self-defense in the United States. In addition, he helped gain support for gubernatorial pardons in 1959 for two young African-American boys who had received lengthy reformatory sentences in what was known as the Kissing Case of 1958.
The black power movement or black liberation movement emerged in mid-1960s from the civil rights movement in the United States, reacting against its moderate, mainstream, and incremental tendencies and representing the demand for more immediate action to counter American white supremacy. Many of its ideas were influenced by Malcolm X's criticism of Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful protest methods. The 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, coupled with the urban riots of 1964 and 1965, ignited the movement. While thinkers such as Robert F. Williams and Malcolm X influenced the early movement, the Black Panther Party's views are widely seen as the cornerstone. They were influenced by philosophies such as pan-Africanism, black nationalism, and socialism, as well as contemporary events including the Cuban Revolution and the decolonization of Africa.
Theodore Judson Jemison, better known as T. J. Jemison, was the president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. from 1982 to 1994. It is the largest African-American religious organization. He oversaw the construction of the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee, the headquarters of his convention.
McKinley Senior High School, located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States on 800 E. McKinley St., is home to the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board's first gifted and talented high school programs. The school mascot is a Panther and the school colors are royal blue and white.
Melvin Lee "Kip" Holden, is an American politician who served from 2005 to 2016 as the Democratic Mayor-President of Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. The parish includes the state capital of Baton Rouge and smaller suburban cities such as Baker, Central City, and Zachary.
The Chokwe people, known by many other names, are a Bantu ethnic group of Central and Southern Africa. They are found primarily in Angola, southwestern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and northwestern parts of Zambia.
Ujamaa was a socialist ideology that formed the basis of Julius Nyerere's social and economic development policies in Tanzania after it gained independence from Britain in 1961.
Akinyele Umoja is an American educator and author who specializes in African-American studies. As an activist, he is a founding member of the New Afrikan People's Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. In April 2013, New York University Press published Umoja's book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Currently, he is a Professor and Department Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU).
The foundation of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dates to 1721, at the site of a bâton rouge or "red stick" Muscogee boundary marker. It became the state capital of Louisiana in 1849.
Imari Obadele was a Black nationalist, advocate for reparations, and president of the Republic of New Afrika.
Chokwe Lumumba was an American attorney, activist, and politician, who was affiliated with the black separatist organization Republic of New Afrika and served as its second vice president. He served as a human rights lawyer in Michigan and Mississippi. In 2013, after serving on the City Council, he was elected as Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.
African-American self-determination refers to efforts to secure self-determination for African-Americans and related peoples in North America. It often intersects with the historic Back-to-Africa movement and general Black separatism, but also manifests in present and historic demands for self-determination on North American soil, ranging from autonomy to independence. The freedom to make whatever choices as a free American, and willfulness to do for self are often a key demand for advocates of African-American self-determination.
Joseph Samuel Clark was an academic administrator who spent most of his career in Louisiana. He was the head of Baton Rouge College and president of Southern University and A&M College, both historically black colleges, where he served in total from 1901 to 1938. During the years from 1914 to 1938 he led the development of Southern, designated as a land grant college in 1890 and moved to the Baton Rouge area in 1914.
Ivory Achebe Toldson is an American academic and author. He is a professor of Counseling Psychology at Howard University, national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education, and executive editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Research, published by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. He is formally the president of Quality Education for Minorities. He served as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (WHIHBCUs) under President Barack Obama.
The Louisiana Library Association (LLA) is a professional organization for Louisiana's librarians and library workers. It is headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The LLA publishes The LLA Bulletin (est. 1937) and Louisiana Libraries magazine.
The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA) is an organization that advocates for financial compensation for the descendants of former slaves in the United States.
Dara Abubakari was an activist and advocate for Pan-African organizing and black nation-building. She was an important member of a number of organizations, including the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Communist Party, and the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women. In later decades, she emerged as a key leader in groups such as the Republic of New Africa and the Revolutionary Action Movement. Through her guidance, these organizations helped inspire and influence the next generation of activists with their Pan-African political vision and dedication to activism.
