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ix Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the example and influence of my ancestors and elders. My family oral tradition and other information I obtained informed me of my roots in West, West-Central, and East Africa. My ancestors survived the Middle Passage and were captives in Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana. My Mississippi connection comes from the Delta, where my grandparents, Oscar Eugene Lewis and Carrie Freeman, were sharecroppers, and which was the birthplace of my father. I salute my parents, Vanderbilt (“Van”) and Dimple Theola (Watts) Lewis. My father worked as a sharecropper from his childhood until he was thirty years old, when he finally had the opportunity to go to high school. He completed high school at the age of thirty-four, and completed an associate ’s degree at Southwestern Christian College in Texas. He went on to achieve a bachelor of arts degree and enter graduate school at Pepperdine College in Los Angeles. My mother was the valedictorian at Frederick Douglass High School in Wewoka, Oklahoma, and moved to Los Angeles, where she was a clerical worker and civil servant for the federal government . My parents emphasized education and literacy for my siblings and me. Books were always a part of our household. I also had the influence of my Uncle Joe Carter and older cousin, Ronald Boone. They always encouraged me to read books like James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time1 and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.2 Much of my introduction to the Black Power Movement comes from my older sister, Angela Lewis. “Angie,” three years my senior, was a student at the University of California at Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She shared with me her African American history texts (including literature from Professor Angela Davis’s class), turned me on to the music of Pharoah Sanders, and encouraged me to wear an “Afro.” Growing up in Compton, California, during the late 1960s and being influenced by the consciousness and culture of my community were powerful forces in shaping me and this project. x Acknowledgments I became active at the tail end of the Black Power Movement in the early 1970s. The Movement served as a New African university for me. My guides in the Movement are too numerous to mention here, as there are many individuals who influenced my development or played a role that contributed to this project. The relationships I developed in the Movement were critical in giving me access to much of the information in this book. I particularly want to acknowledge two of my political education instructors in the Movement, Mamadou Lumumba-Umoja and Adewole Umoja, for emphasizing the importance of the insurgent activism in the southern Black Freedom Struggle and urging me to pay attention to the resistance of laborers and farmers. I was given the assignment of accompanying Queen Mother Audley Moore to speaking engagements in Southern California when I was eighteen years old. Queen Mother Moore often told the story of how she and other Louisiana members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association came to New Orleans to force the police and local officials to allow Marcus Garvey to speak to their assembly in the 1920s. Conversations with and feedback from my Mississippi-born comrades, Watani Tyehimba and Makungu Akinyela, also helped to shape this work. My traveling to Mississippi with Ahmed Obafemi also helped provide background for this work. Tamu and Hekima Kanyama provided valuable first-hand accounts of their ordeal in Mississippi, as well as editorial support. Friends in Mississippi, particularly in Jackson, provided shelter, food, and companionship that sustained my research trips there. Chokwe Lumumba , his late wife, Nubia, and their children provided a “home away from home” for me in Jackson. Demetri Marshall and his family openly welcomed me in Claiborne County and treated me as a brother. My comrades Akil and Gwen Bakari, Hondo Lumumba, Mikea Kambui, Halima Olufemi, Safiya Omari, and the rest of my Jackson, Mississippi, family always cared for me. Several people led me to folks to support my work, but I particularly want to recognize Charles Tisdale, Howard Gunn, Hollis Watkins, Willie Owens, Herman Leach, James Miller, Ser Sesh Boxley, Moriba Lumumba, and Tyrone “Fat Daddy” Davis for their assistance and contribution to this book. One person who helped put me on the right track was Ken Lawrence, who did preliminary work on this project and knew as well as worked with many of the subjects of this text...

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