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Abstract
The Congress of African People (CAP) in the 1970s expanded the scope of Black cultural nationalism. However, though CAP was founded as a cultural nationalist party, the organization ultimately discarded this ideology for Maoist theory and practice. This work situates 1974 as a decisive year in CAP's ideological transition. CAP's transformation displays the ideological heterogeneity of Black nationalist politics and provides a multifaceted illustration of the changing dynamics of Black radicalism.
Notes
1. The author thanks the following people who have either generously reviewed this article or provided advice and assistance in regard to this study of Black Maoism: Robert Allen, Charles Henry, Ula Taylor, Gerald Horne, Ramon Grosfoguel, Waldo Martin, Ernie Allen, Patricia A. Patton, Manning Marable, Komozi Woodard, and Robin D.G. Kelley.
2. Peniel E. Joseph. “Black Power Revisited: A Review of Komozi Woodard's A Nation Within A Nation; Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics,” The Gaither. Houston, April 30 1999 Reporter, 4(4), 3.
3. One could also include Egypt, but during this period Egypt aligned itself with the Arab states. For more information look to G. H. Jansen's Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 23.
4. Mao's two stage revolutionary process asserted that it was not vital in a communist revolution to have a stage of bourgeoisie capitalism prior to the emergence of socialism. Instead, a nationalist patriotic united front could defeat imperialism spurring a national democratic revolution that would ultimately develop into a socialist revolution.
5. Renmin Ribao. “Chairman Mao's Theory on the Differentiation of the Three Worlds Is a Major Contribution to Marxism-Leninism.” Peking Review, no. 45 (November 4, 1977), 24.
6. Robin D. G. Kelley & Betsy Esch. “Black Like Mao.” Souls, 1(4) (Fall 1999), 8.
7. Mohamed A. El-Khawas. “China's Changing Policies in Africa.” Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 3(1) (Spring 1973), 26–27.
8. Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within A Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 203.
9. At CAP's first convention were a wealth of Black political figures from a diversity of Black political backgrounds and organizations such as: Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, Betty Shabazz, Owusu Sadaukai of Malcolm X Liberation University, Imari Obadele of the Republic of New Africa, former SNCC worker and freedom fighter, Julian Bond of the Georgia legislature, Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, Mayor Kenneth Gibson from Newark, NJ, Rev. Ralph Abernathy of SCLC, Whitney Young, Jr. of the National Urban League, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson of People United for Self Help.
10. Bill Mullen. Afro-Orientalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 95.
11. Woodard, 60.
12. Ibid., 111.
13. In The Black Power Movement: Part 1, Amiri Baraka from Black Arts to Black Radicalism, a CFUN file document found on Reel 2, fiche 580, states, “Local movement of CFUN and evolving national CAP ideology diverges (as practice) at some points. But cadre development of CFUN, we feel would be good model for cadre development of CAP.”
14. Ibid., 168.
15. Look to Robin Kelley and Betsy Esch's “Black Like Mao,” 6–41, and Forward: Journal of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought 3 (January 1980), 29–38.
16. John Bracey, Jr. “Marxism and Black Nationalism in the 1960's: The Origins of Revolutionary Black Nationalism.” (Presented at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, New Orleans, Louisianan 1968), 21.
17. Scot Brown. Fighting For US (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 89.
18. Clayborne Carson's Foreword in Brown's Fighting For US, vii.
19. For more info on the Black Panther–U.S. conflict, look to Scot Brown's Fighting for US.
20. Manning Marable. Race, Reform & Rebellion (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 134.
21. Amiri Baraka. “Congress of African People Political Liberation Organizing Manual: Ideological Statement of the Congress of African People.” First Annual Meeting of the Congress of African People, September 6, 1970, 3.
22. Kawaida means tradition and reason in Swahili.
23. The seven principles of Nguzu Saba are black unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility cooperative economics, the purpose of nation building, creativity, and faith. They also represent the seven days and principles of Kwanzaa, the weeklong holiday and celebration also established by Ron Maulana Karenga.
24. Amiri Baraka, “The Pan-Afrikan Party and the Black Nation,” 6.
25. Ibid., 8.
26. Ibid., 9.
27. Ibid., 9.
28. Baraka in “Black Nationalism: 1972 (Address by Chairman of Congress of African People)” asks: “Why should our models for Ujamaa be put forward by Europeans? Why does the term science have to connote Marx and Lenin? How scientific is it, if it yet does not exist, aside from in radical pamphlets and the fantasies of Afro-Americans.”
29. Baraka, “The Pan-Afrikan Party and the Black Nation,” 9.
30. Woodard, 111.
31. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a Detroit-based coalition of Black workers who came from the Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM) and the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), was established in 1968. The organization worked “to transcend the Marxist/nationalist, the race/class dichotomy that would plague the succeeding radical organizations in the seventies,” (Herb Boyd. “Radicalism and Resistance: The Evolution of Black Radical Thought.” The Black Scholar, 28[1] [Spring 1998], 43) and focused primarily on worker's rights by taking an anti-management and anti-union position. The Republic of New Africa (RNA), a Black separatist organization whose agenda was both nationalist and Marxist, called for reparations from the federal government in the form of land aqcuisition. This territory—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—they asserted would serve as the land for a separate Black nation with the RNA as its government in exile.
32. Woodard, 171.
33. Ibid., 254.
34. Ibid., 175.
35. Phil Hutchings. “Report on the ALSC National Conference.” The Black Scholar, (July–August 1974), 48.
36. Hutchings, 48.
37. Ibid., 49.
38. Baraka, “ALSC Conference Speech, May 24, 1974.” 30 (Reel 2, Fiche 843).
39. Marable, 135; Abd-al Hakimu Ibn Alkalimat (Gerald McWhorter), a professor at Fisk University, was one of the founders of the Institute of the Black World who before the 1970s followed a strict black nationalist line. Yet by the early 1970s, Alkalimat switched to Leninism and established a Marxist institute, the People's College, in Nashville, TN.
40. Kalamu Ya Salaam. “African Liberation Day: An Assessment—Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories.” Black World (October 1974), 18–34.
41. Baraka, “Comments of Chairman on Resignations of Haki Madhubuti and Jitu Weusi (IPE & The East)” (Reel 2, Fiche 789).
42. Baraka, “Comments of Chairman on Resignations of Haki Madhubuti and Jitu Weusi (IPE & The East)” (Reel 2 Fiche 799).
43. Madhubuti. “Enemy: From the White Left, White Right and In Between.” Black World (October 1974), 38.
44. Ibid., 38.
45. Ibid., 43.
46. Nagueyalti Warren. “Pan-African Cultural Movements: From Baraka to Karenga.” Journal of Negro History 75(1/2) (Winter–Spring 1990), 24.
47. Edith Austin states: “The Black Americans brought at least ten ideologies with them from the states ranging from socialism, communism, separatism, class vs. color struggles, Garveyism, and you-name-it-ism, but no single position representing a united front on the part of the delegation” (Sun Reporter, August 3, 1974).
48. Baraka. “Chairman Report, Central Council Meeting—July 8, 1974,” 2.
49. Vijay Prashad. Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 143.
50. George T. Yu. “Sino-African Relations: A Survey.” Asian Survey 5(7) (July 1965), 321–332.
51. Mohamed A. El-Khawas. “China's Changing Policies in Africa,” 27.
52. George T. Yu. “China's Role in Africa.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 432, Africa in Transition (July 1977), 108.
53. Yu. “China's Role in Africa,” 101.
54. Ibid., 101.
55. Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. “The Rational Choice.” Address delivered at Sudanese Socialist Union Headquarters, Khartoum, January 2, 1973.
56. Baraka. “Chairman's Report: Central Council Meeting—July 8, 1974.” (Reel 2, Fiche 702–704).
57. Ibid.
58. Warren, 18.
59. Ibid., 19.
60. Peniel, 3.
61. Robert Allen in his work, Black Awakening in Capitalist America, explains of the tendencies found in Black nationalism: “To understand outbursts of nationalism fully, it is necessary to delve into the social fabric of Afro-American life. The foregoing historical sketch strongly suggests that nationalism is an ever present but usually latent tendency, particularly among blacks who find themselves on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. The members of this class traditionally exhibit a sense of group solidarity because of the open hostility of the surrounding white society” (115).
62. Baraka, “The Position of the Afrikan People: December, 1974.” 8; Baraka, “CAP: Going Through Changes,” Found in The Black Power Movement: Part 1, Amiri Baraka from Black Arts to Black Radicalism (microform) (Editorial advisor Komozi Woodard, project coordinator Randolph H. Boehm, Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 2000).
63. Baraka, “Newark, NJ, a Classic Neocolonial Creation,” Monthly Review 25(8) (January 1975), 23.
64. Sullivan, “Baraka Drops Racism, Shifts to Marx.” The New York Times, December 27, 1974, 35.
65. Prashad, 136.
66. Steven Jackson. “China's Third World Foreign Policy: The Case of Angola and Mozambique, 1961–93,” The China Quarterly, No. 142 (June 1995), 393.
67. Kelley & Esch. “Black Like Mao,” 35.
68. Kalamu Ya Salaam. “Djali Dialogue with Amiri Baraka.” The Black Collegian, available at http//www.black-black.ukcollegian.com/african/baraka-a1299.shtml, February 17, 1998.