The organization experienced significant decline in the early 1970s primarily due to sustained government repression, including violent raids and mass arrests that imprisoned key leaders and disrupted operations. Efforts to build institutions involved land purchases, but the project encountered severe repression from federal and state authorities.
History
The idea of the RNA arose following the events of the 1967 Detroit riot.[4]:276 It was the first separate nation declared by African Americans in the United States.[4]:276
The vision for this country was first promulgated by the Malcolm X Society[5] on March 31, 1968, at a Black Government Conference held in Detroit, Michigan. The conference participants drafted a constitution and declaration of independence,[5] and they identified five Southern states Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina (with adjoining areas in East Texas and North Florida) as subjugated national territory.[1]
The Black Government Conference was convened by the Malcolm X Society and the Group on Advanced Leadership (GOAL), two influential Detroit-based black revolutionary organizations with broad followings. The attendees drafted a Declaration of Independence, a constitution, and the framework for a provisional government.[4]:276
This provisional government gave birth to the Republic of New Afrika.[4]:276Robert F. Williams, then living in exile in Cuba, was chosen as the first president of the provisional government; attorney Milton Henry (a student of Malcolm X's teachings) was named first vice president;[6] and Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, served as second vice president. Imari Obadele was its first Minister of Information.[4]:267 An RNA delegation traveled to China to meet Williams in June 1968.[4]:276 Williams accepted the position and proposed diplomatic initiatives for the RNA to undertake.[4]:276
The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) advocated/advocates a form of cooperative economics[7] through the building of New Communities—named after the Ujamaa concept promoted by Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.
It proposed and created militant self-defense through the building of local people's militias; a standing army to be called the Black Legion.
The organization was involved in numerous controversial issues. For example, it attempted to assist Oceanhill-Brownsville area in Brooklyn to secede from the United States during the 1968 conflict over control of public schools. 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. (It had announced that the capital of the Republic would be in Hinds County, Mississippi, located on a member's farm.) In the confrontations, law-enforcement officials were killed and injured. Organization members were prosecuted for the crimes. The members claimed they acted in self defense.[8]
The Republic of New Afrika's influence persisted through publications, such as Imari Obadele's War in America: The Malcom X Doctrine (1977) and Free the land! (1984), and Nkechi Taifa's Reparations Yes (1993). Key figures like Chokwe Lumumba, elected vice president in 1971, became a prominent attorney defending Republic of New Afrika members and later mayor of Jackson, Mississippi (2013-2014), where he advanced cooperative economics before his death. [9][10][11]
Notable members
Queen Mother Moore was a founding member. She helped found the group and helped out in the group as much as she could.[citation needed]
Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, was elected as second vice president of the first administration in 1968, working alongside Williams and Henry.[6]
Chokwe Lumumba, formerly Edwin Finley Taliaferro of Detroit, was elected as second vice president in 1971. He later became an attorney, working in Michigan and Mississippi in public defense. After settling in Jackson, Mississippi, he was elected to the city council there. He was elected as mayor in 2013, dying in office in February 2014 of natural causes.
Safiya Bukhari, former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member, founder of the Jericho Movement for U.S. Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, and co-founder of the Free Mumia Abdul-Jamal Coalition (NYC) was elected as vice-president.
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, Detroit: House of Songay, 1975.
Brother Imari [Obadele, Imari]. War In America: The Malcolm X Doctrine, Chicago: Ujamaa Distributors, 1977.
Kehinde, Muata. RNA President Imari Obadele is Free After Years of Illegal U.S. Imprisonment. In Burning Spear Louisville: African Peoples Socialist Party, 1980. pp.4–28
Obadele, Imari Abubakari. The Malcolm Generation & Other Stories, Philadelphia: House of Songhay, 1982.
Taifa, Nkechi; Lumumba, Chokwe (1993) [1983, 1987]. Reparations Yes (3rded.). Baton Rouge: House of Songhay.
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.
12Salvatore, N. A. (2005). Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Firing Line: The Republic of New Africa] William F. Buckley interviews Milton Henry, President of the Republic of New Afrika. 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 RealAudio.
Note: Forms of nationalism based primarily on ethnic groups are listed above. This does not imply that all nationalists with a given ethnicity subscribe to that form of ethnic nationalism.
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