ATLANTA—Services for Comrade Connie Tucker (10/14/50 – 9/26/15) were held on Friday, October 2, 2015 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Connie Tucker was a founding member of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) in 1972 and worked for social justice for the remainder of her life.
Omali Yeshitela, Chairman and founder of the APSP officiated the funeral services and longtime Black Liberation Movement activists Willie Mukassa Ricks and Linda Leaks (also a founding member of the APSP) along with Rose Sanders, Olimatta Taal (Connie’s daughter) and others who played an important role in our movement also spoke at the services appreciating the life of Comrade Connie Tucker.
Comrade Connie had come into the African Liberation Movement as a teenager and joined the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO) in the late 1960s. She made the transition over to the African People’s Socialist Party in 1972.
A tried and fierce worker, Connie became one of the first female political prisoners of the era, a victim of what has now been revealed as the COINTELPRO counterinsurgency program devised by the FBI to destroy the Black Revolution of the Sixties.
Connie had been kept under consistent surveillance by the Tampa Criminal Intelligence Division and the FBI since the 1967 Tampa rebellions.
Police were later to obtain a fraudulent search warrant, raid her apartment, claim they found a dubie in the house and charged her with felony possession of narcotics.
The first trial ended in a hung jury, but the second trial found her guilty and railroaded her with a five year sentence on a misdeameanor case that they fabricated.
JOMO built a national “Free Connie Tucker” campaign that would win her release. Connie by then was the Florida State Chairwoman of JOMO.
We give to Connie a deserving salute from the African People’s Socialist Party: Uhuru!!! Long Live Connie Tucker!
