The African People's Socialist Party (APSP) is a

pan-Africanist Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all Indigenous and diaspora peoples of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement exte ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

and organization working towards reparations for slavery in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, identifying ideologically with

African internationalism Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all Indigenous and diaspora peoples of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement ext ...

and

African socialism African socialism or Afrosocialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a traditional African way, as distinct from classical socialism. Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support for African socialism, althou ...

.Klehr, Harvey, ''Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today'',

Transaction Publishers Transaction Publishers was a New Jersey-based publishing house that specialized in social science books and journals. It was located on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University. Transaction was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged with ...

(1988), p. 118-119,

(Retrieved 19 April 2019) The party was formed in May 1972 by the merger of three black power organizations based in

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

and

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

. Omali Yeshitela, one of the original co-founders, leads the APSP as of 2019.Shujaa, Mwalimu J.; Shujaa, Kenya J.; ''The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America'',

SAGE Publications SAGE Publishing, formerly SAGE Publications, is an American independent publishing company founded in 1965 in New York by Sara Miller McCune and now based in Newbury Park, California. It publishes more than 1,000 journals, more than 800 books ...

(2015), p. 316

(Retrieved 19 April 2019)The Weekly Challenger, ''The Burning Spear celebrates 50 years'', December 20, 201

(Retrieved 19 April 2019) The APSP's stated goals are "to keep the Black Power Movement alive, defend the countless Africans locked up by the U.S. law enforcement, counterinsurgency, and develop relationships with Africa and Africans worldwide".

History

The APSP was founded in 1972 — emerging from three earlier Black organizations in Florida, namely: the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), the Black Rights Fighters, and the Black Study Group. JOMO, the most influential of the three organizations then led by Yeshitela, was a Black organization protesting against

racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin.Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain g ...

, and racist

police brutality Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...

and abuses against people of African descent in Florida, United States. Omali Yeshitela, who was then the chairman of JOMO also founded APSP in 1972 and became its chairman. According to Klehr, the APSP styles its members as "true, genuine communists." That same year (1972), the APSP adopted the oldest Black Power newspaper in the U.S. — The Burning Spear Newspaper as its official publication. The APSP established the African People's Solidarity Committee (APSC) in 1976. The APSC is a Euro-American/European people organization "that works in solidarity with the struggle for African liberation and the unification of Africa and African people worldwide." The role of the APSC is to raise funds through donor campaigns and economic development campaigns operated by the APSP. In September 1979, the party founded the African National Prison Organization (ANPO) following a 4 September 1977 meeting in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

. Several nationalist organizations attended that meeting where the importance of, and the need for developing greater unity between pro-independence forces were established. It was decided that the ANPO "would be the gateway to building a national liberation front. Additionally, the participants at the meeting established five principles as the basis for forming the ANPO, which were self-determination, political independence,

anti-imperialism Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...

, anticolonialism, and

self-defense Self-defense (self-defence primarily in Commonwealth English) is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in ...

."Umoja, Akinyele; Stanford, Karin L.; Young, Jasmin A.; ''Black Power Encyclopedia: From "Black is Beautiful" to Urban Uprisings,'' ABC-CLIO (2018), p. 811,

(Retrieved 19 April 2019) In 1981, the party moved its national office to Oakland, California, Oakland,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, and opened the Uhuru house. The first party congress was held in Oakland in 1982. At that congress, the party passed a resolution to create the

African Socialist International The African Socialist International (ASI) in the United States, is an organization set up by the African People's Socialist Party at that party's first congress, in 1981. The resolution for the organization's creation called for all African sociali ...

(ASI) organization. The ASI sought to be the "international party of the African working class", and has held conferences in various countries outside the United States. The APSP also founded the African National Reparations Organization in 1982, and the First World Tribunal on Reparations for African People was held in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

.Araujo, Ana Lucia, ''Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History'',

Bloomsbury Publishing Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a U ...

(2017), p. 159,

(Retrieved 19 April 2019) On its official website, the APSP claims that "through this work, the African People's Socialist Party gave birth to the modern Reparations Movement." Martin and Yaquinto however posits that, in the National Black Political Convention, National Black Political Assembly's (NBPA) ''Black Agenda'' report published in 1974, the NBPA "endorsed the concept of African American reparations." Citing Hakim (Hakim, I. T., ''Reparations, the Cure for America's Race Problem.'' Hampton. Va.; U.B. and U.S. Communication System, 1994), the authors however went on to write that: "The African National Reparations Organization linked to the African People's Socialist Party has conducted yearly tribunals on U.S. racism since 1982 and demanded $4.1 trillion in reparations for stolen labor."Martin, Michael T.; and Yaquinto, Marilyn; (contributors: Lyons, David; and Brown, Michael K.), ''Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies'',

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 Du ...

(2007), p. 362

(Retrieved 19 April 2019) That financial reparation was initially demanded at the First World Tribunal on Reparations for African People's 1982 meeting, which concluded that, "the United States owned $4.1 trillion for the crime of Maafa, genocide against African Americans and the unpaid labor provided by them and their descendants during the period of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

." The stated objective of the movement is to obtain compensation for the injustices of slavery, as well as

segregation Segregation may refer to: Separation of people * Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space * School segregation * Housing segregation * Racial segregation, separation of humans ...

and

neocolonialism Neocolonialism is the continuation or reimposition of imperialist rule by a state (usually, a former colonial power) over another nominally independent state (usually, a former colony). Neocolonialism takes the form of economic imperialism, ...

since then. In the mid-1990s, the party's national office moved back to St. Petersburg, Florida. The APSP and its sister organization the

Uhuru Movement The Uhuru Movement (Pronounced is the Swahili word for "freedom") is an American-based socialist and African internationalist movement founded in 1972 and led by the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), whose chairman is Omali Yeshitela. I ...

were investigated by state prosecutors for allegedly collaborating with alleged

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

foreign agent A foreign agent is any person or entity actively carrying out the interests of a foreign country while located in another host country, generally outside the protections offered to those working in their official capacity for a diplomatic missio ...

Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov to sow social divisions in the United States. Members of the APSP and Uhuru Movement have traveled to

St. Petersburg, Russia Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

to attend an anti-globalization conference hosted in Russia. The organization supports Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The Colorado Times Recorder indicated that the African People's Socialist Party is linked to another group under investigation for ties to Russia, the Black Hammer Party, by way of Gazi Kodzo (referred to by the publication as "August Romaine Jr.") who had previously been a key member in both organizations.

References

External links

*The Bridge, ''A Day of Reparations Stops in Portland'' by Rory Elliott, November 21, 201

(Retrieved 19 April 2019) {{Authority control 1972 establishments in Florida African Americans' rights organizations African socialist political parties African-American socialism Black political parties in the United States Communist parties in the United States Black separatism Pan-Africanism in the United States Pan-Africanist political parties Political parties established in 1972 Socialist parties in the United States Political parties in Florida State and local socialist parties in the United States Organizations based in St. Petersburg, Florida Russia–United States relations