By Chairman Omali Yeshitela

The Seventh Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party is occurring in St. Louis, Missouri from October 6-13, 2018 at a critical moment in history.

African people from throughout the world will convene in St. Louis, Missouri for the week-long seventh Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party starting on October 6th, 2018.

Editor's note: This piece was written by Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People's Socialist Party, commemorating one of Africa's fiercest fighters for independence, Patrice Lumumba, during our period of celebration of African Martyr's Day.

The African petty bourgeoisie, also had its own beneficial interest in trying to integrate into the social system.

The masses of African working people wanted to stop crackas from killing us, stop the brutality, stop the murder, stop the lynchings. We just wanted some kind of chance. We just wanted to know that we could have a child who might have a future.

There was no future! So all of them wanted change and wanted some kind of fundamental transformation 

Since our last Plenary in January 2016 the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) has been engaged in a blistering pace of struggle and development to carry out our responsibility to provide leadership to the African workers and nation during this extraordinary era of imperialist crisis.

This is our third Plenary since the December 2013 Sixth Congress of our Party. Like the two previous plenaries it will examine the state of our work to carry out the mandates and resolutions established by the Sixth Congress and prepare us for the Party’s Seventh Congress scheduled for Oakland, California in 2018.

This Political Report to our Plenary will also define our work and existence at this moment, when incredible upheaval is occurring within the imperialist centers, proving again that imperialist stability depends on parasitic colonial domination of the world.

The following is a transcribed speech which was made at the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement’s (InPDUM) Sunday Rally on July 7, 2016 by Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party, Omali Yeshitela.

InPDUM St. Petersburg is engaged in a fierce struggle with the State to control the replacement art of an anti-African mural which was torn down from the wall of St. Petersburg City Hall by the Chairman in 1966, fifty years ago.

Here, Chairman Omali takes us through the important historical context which is important in understanding why the mural struggle is critical.

This is part three in a series of four articles.

The issue of names and naming is really powerful.

It’s so deep and profound, more than what most of us ever think about. Most of us don’t think about our names, where we come from, what our names mean, anything like that, which in and of itself is a problem. But we never think about that.

Names are really important because names connect you to a past, to your history. Names are not just things floating out there in the world, but if you want to even look back and see where you came from and dig into your roots, the name is fundamental. It comes from someplace.

It was a nasty, dirty situation that happened. What you have to remember is that Africans were not wanting to leave Africa. Many Africans would literally jump off the ship or throw children off the ship rather than have the children going into slavery.  

And sometimes, when an African got sick on the ship, for fear that this African would make the others sick too, and therefore the persons who owned us would lose money, they would throw that African overboard. 

Schools of sharks literally learned to follow these ships across the Atlantic Ocean knowing that they were going to eat well from Africans who either jumped off or who got sick and died and then were thrown off by their captors. 

The Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations is an organization that was begun on September 12, 2009.

We were organized in Washington, D.C. and were compelled to come together for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the election of Barack Hussein Obama some eight months prior.

It concerned many of the founders of the coalition that many people around the world and inside this country would be confused by the fact that imperialism—U.S. imperialism—historically categorized by white nationalism, rape and plunder of the non-white people around the world, would now have a black face.