A longtime black nationalist organizer and attorney, Lumumba had been described as “America’s most revolutionary mayor.” Working with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Lumumba advocated for participatory democracy and the creation of new worker-run cooperatives in Jackson. Over the past four decades, Lumumba was deeply involved in numerous political and legal campaigns. As an attorney, his clients have included former Black Panther Assata Shakur, as well as her godson, the late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. As a political organizer, Lumumba served for years as vice president of the Republic of New Afrika, an organization which advocated for “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States and reparations for slavery. He also helped found the National Black Human Rights Coalition and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
Jackson, Mississippi, as a center of racism and racial oppression over the—really, over centuries. The very name of the city—the city was named after Andrew Jackson by the white settlers when Jackson in 1820 was able, as Indian commissioner, to basically pressure the Choctaw Indians to give up 13 million acres of land and move to Oklahoma in the Treaty of Doak’s Stand. And that’s why the white settlers named the city after Jackson, because of his success at ethnic cleansing. And then, of course, its history throughout the—through slavery and Jim Crow. How did this change occur? How were you able to put this together, this coalition to be elected, given your history as a radical and an activist in the black liberation struggle.
Akinyele Umoja talking:
Chokwe Lumumba was born 1948 in Detroit, Michigan. He grew up in a working-class family. He was the second-oldest child in that family. His mother, when he was a child, involved him in civil rights activity. Interestingly enough, they were raising money to go to Mississippi to support the movement, the Student of Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other groups in Mississippi. He became a student athlete. Chokwe was a very gifted athlete, went to Kalamazoo College, and there he became a student activist also.
He was attracted to the Black Power movement, particularly after the assassination of Martin Luther King. You know, like, a tremendous event occurred after the assassination of King. Many young black people joined the Black Power movement. And Chokwe was attracted to a group in Detroit that was based in Detroit, the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, that demanded five states in the South, that also talked about creating a new society for black people, a society where there would be diversity, a society that would have cooperative economic and socialistic principles.
And those are things that Chokwe carried with him to his last days. He believed in black self-determination. He believed that black people should form—and black people and other folks, because Chokwe was definitely an internationalist also—believed that there should be a new economic system that was more humanistic than the system we live in today. In 1984, Chokwe helped found the New Afrikan Peoples Organization, which would be more activist than the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, and then, a companion with that, in 1990 formed the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
Chokwe was actually drafted to run for mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Many people—he had been there, moved to Jackson in the late ’80s. And he had been engaged as an attorney, being an advocate for people, for workers’ rights, being an advocate for victims of police brutality. He had challenged activity of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations in Mississippi. And because of his consistency of work in the state, many people said he should run for mayor. And the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement agreed with that, encouraged Chokwe to run, and—but decided to organize a different type of black politics there. We felt the traditional black politics weren’t really working for us at this time.
So, in Chokwe’s ward, first, before he ran for mayor, in his ward, when he ran for city councilman in 2009, a People’s Assembly was organized. And so, when you heard the clip of him saying the people will decide, that slogan was put into practice by organizing an assembly that would develop his platform. So his platform actually came from the community and not out of his head or not out of our organization. Chokwe—they formed form this People’s Assembly that helped him get elected, formed his platform, but also stayed organized while he was serving the City Council to provide him with direction on how he should proceed on policy.
So it was a different form of politics that was being pursued, as you mentioned earlier, encouraging participatory democracy, encouraging people to get active and also to become politically educated. The hope was—and the hope is still—after his election for mayor, that we would organize a People’s Assembly. In fact, this May, May 2nd through 4th, in Jackson, Mississippi, there also will be the New Economies Conference, Jackson Rising conference, that will look at new economies, cooperative economic development, things of that nature. In the legacy of Chokwe Lumumba, we have to continue these initiatives, even though his—even though his untimely death. He died of a sudden heart attack. And our prayers go out to his family.
He told the Jackson Free Press why he chose his name. He said, “I picked the name Chokwe because in my African history class I learned that the Chokwe tribe, which is a tribe that still exists, was one of the last tribes to resist the slave trade successfully in northeast Angola. The name literally means ‘hunter.’ The second name, Lumumba, was the name of a great African leader who began to lead Africa to decolonize, to independence. He was from the Congo. Lumumba means ‘gifted.’ So literally, it means ‘gifted hunter.'”
He was inspired by Malcolm X, and Malcolm X talked to us about the legacy of the names that we were born with in this country, of having a legacy that was connected to slavery. And so, Chokwe very much embraced the necessity of black people having a culture that was liberating. And in that context—and many people who were a part of the New Afrikan movement with Chokwe, began to change their—like myself, changed our names to African names to try to embrace that heritage, but not only looking back, but also looking forward to try to develop new societies and new communities and to be able to give our children a legacy that’s connected to a liberation movement as opposed to a legacy that was connected to slavery. And so, he very much believed that—for instance, one of the major issues, as we talked about Jackson, he felt that the curriculum needed to be changed in the schools to be able to give our children more knowledge of their history and heritage. He thought that was connected to a low academic achievement in Mississippi, which you know generally rates in one of the lowest-achieving school systems in the country. And so, he believed in that.
I also want to point out that Chokwe was an internationalist. One of the last times we spent extensive time together, we were in Haiti. I know, Amy, you’ve covered the fight for democracy in Haiti.
And we went there in 2010 to examine what was going on after the earthquake. And we found at that time—and Chokwe and I both held a press conference in Port-au-Prince, looking at that many of the funds that had been collected for people who were abused in—who were victims of the earthquake hadn’t been distributed to them. We also called for the return of President Aristide. So, Chokwe—and this is just one example of the campaigns around the world or issues around the world that Chokwe began to speak about and speak on, as well as his support for human rights for people who had immigrated to Jackson and other parts of the United States from other countries and the rights that they had. He was very much opposed to the legislation that was occurring in Arizona and in the state I live in, in Georgia, that racially profile immigrants. So, he was a champion. I mentioned he was a black nationalist. He was also an internationalist who campaigned for the human rights for all people.
Akinyele Umoja, associate professor and chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University. He is a founding member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the New Afrikan Peoples Organization. He is also the author of the book, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.