A Tribute to Mamadou Lumumba in Oakland

Original members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California on November 6, 1966. Pictures includes Huey P. Newton, Big Man Howard, the Forte brothers, Bobby Seale and Bobby Hutton.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

The Spirit of Lumumba

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

The Spirit of Lumumba was alive in Oakland tonight at the celebration of revolutionary Pan Africanist Mamadou Lumumba. Bay Area radicals gathered at the Afrikan Children's Learning Center on San Pablo Street in Oakland. A few of the those in attendance included Baba Lumumba (brother of Mamadou), Bobby Seale, Oba T'Shaka, Mama Makenya, Isaac Moore, Phil Huchings, Vincent and Ann Lynch, Sister Shukuru, Margo Dashiel, Jim Lacey, Abdul Sabry, Aubrey Labrie, Norman Brown, Sadaat Ahmed, Tarika Lewis, Leo Cherry, Vulindela Wobogo, Marvin X, Judge Henry Ramsey.

The celebration morphed into a discussion of Bay Area liberation
history. There were extended testimonies from the history of Bay Area
radicalism, especially about the Black Panther Party of Northern
California and the Black Panther Party of Self Defense. Bobby Seale
was diplomatic in recounting his relationship with Mamadou Lumumba who organized the first Black Panther Party in the Bay under the the Revolutionary Action Movement or RAM, headed by Robert F. Williams and Max Stanford (Muhammad Ahmed). A message from Muhammad Ahmed was read.

There was also a message from Eusi Kwayana of Guyana, where Mamadou had spent time while the Burnham regime was in power. Burnham turned out to be a CIA negro who was favored by the US imperialists who could tolerate a black power government but not a Cuban style Marxist regime under the opposition party of Cheddi Jagen, although Jagen eventually won power.

Marvin X said the last time he saw Mamadou was in Guyana, 1970, when he interviewed Prime Minister Burnham for Muhammad Speaks and the Black Scholar magazine. Mamadou approved the questions he presented to the PM.