On Thursday, April 10, 2025 the University of Florida (UFDC) George A. Smathers Libraries hosted the event “Recordings of Burning Spear Media: 30 Years of Voices from the Uhuru Movement.” This event debuted the newly curated digital collection of Uhuru Movement audio and visual recordings.
UFDC has digitized over 500 visual and audio recordings. The oldest dated material is from May 1971. The most recent is from November 1999.
Almost four years in the making, the recent digitization project joins the 2019 publication of The Burning Spear newspaper digital collection. There are currently 369 copies of The Spear included in the UFDC archive. The oldest copy is from the first serial edition of The Spear in December 1969. The most recent is from January 2024. The digital collection of The Spear is a living archive that is routinely updated with new print editions.
As with The Spear archive, the documents in this recordings archive predate the May 25, 1972, formation of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP). They offer a history of the Uhuru Movement and the global struggle for African Liberation. As we celebrate the 53rd anniversary of the APSP this month and African Liberation Day, we should uphold the release of these archives as victories for the masses.
More than 4,000 hours of recordings
The collection contains the 1971 recordings from the movement to Free Connie Tucker, 1973 African Liberation Day, the 1976 formation of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the Free Dessie Woods Campaign, the formation of the African National Prison Organization (ANPO) and Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s “Tactics and Strategies” presentation delivered at the Black Organizers Conference at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in April 1977.
There are recordings from APSP’s First Congress in 1981, the 1984 Measure O Community Control of Housing Campaign, the 1985 formation of the People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, African National Reparations Organization (ANRO) proceedings and so much more.
In total there are more than 4,000 hours of recordings. Importantly, these recordings are also accompanied by printed transcripts.
Nearly 60 years of African revolutionary history reflected in The Spear
The APSP was formed on African Liberation Day May 25, 1972 with the expressed goal of reviving and completing the Black Revolution of the 1960s (commonly known as the Black Power Movement). However, the Uhuru Movement is six years older than the APSP.
The Uhuru Movement’s origins are with the formation of the St. Petersburg, Florida branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1966 by Chairman Omali who was then known as Joe Waller. In 1968, Waller organized the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO) as well as its newspaper The Burning Spear. In Kikuyu, Jomo means “burning spear.”
The Spear is the oldest African Revolutionary journal in continuous print around the world. Almost 60 years of the struggle for African liberation are in the pages of The Spear as well as the history of the APSP. With the digital archives, that history has been given back to the people.
Burning Spear Media archives are one of a kind
In her presentation at the April 10 unveiling of the recordings archive, April Hines, University Librarian of Journalism and Mass Communications at UF, noted the uniqueness of the archival collection.
Hines said, “It is not common to have such an extensive collection of original source audiovisual content. Archival recorded content is generally postproduction. To have the recorded material in combination with print media enriches the collection.”
Dr. Rachel Grant, Assistant Professor of Journalism at UF, used the Party’s archives to point out the role of African women in the Black Liberation Struggle.
“The Spear does not only report facts but importantly applied theory and analysis,” Grant noted.
These digital archives provide evidence of the creation and advancement of African Internationalism, the dialectical materialist theory and practice crafted and advanced by Chairman Omali Yeshitela.
The Spear places African Internationalism into the hands of the masses
Chairman Omali has noted the importance of maintaining a journal for a revolutionary organization. It gives the people the ability to hold the Party accountable to their beliefs. The Spear allowed the ability to put the ideas of African Internationalism in the world, to test their correctness. It reunited the dispersed African Nation.
The Spear was a recruiting tool that let the science of African Internationalism reach far and wide. Evidence of this was when Chairman Omali walked into a British bookstore in the 1980s and encountered someone holding a copy of The Spear and extolling praises to its writings.
As an Africana Studies professor and Uhuru Movement organizer, I was influenced directly by Burning Spear Publications. I read the African Studies scholar Rod Bush who cited Chairman Omali and African Internationalism in his writings. As an undergraduate and graduate student, I purchased The Spear from local organizers.
As a doctoral researcher, I found copies of Burning Spear Publications inside various archives. I encountered videos of speeches and conferences online and audio recordings on older websites.
I wrote a dissertation that was informed by African Internationalism, but these recent archives make me envious of future researchers. In recent years, scholars have written on important Uhuru Movement campaigns.
Consider Emily Thuma’s important 2019 book “All Our Trials.” In her book, Thuma published the most detailed account of the Dessie Woods Campaign. With access to these archives, Thuma’s telling would have been even more deeply informed by an African Internationalist context.
Respond to the attacks on education by building dual and contending power
In July 2022, Black Studies came under attack in Florida. This coincided with federal and local government attacks against the Uhuru Movement and Burning Spear Media. In this context, librarians and scholars at UF reiterated their commitment to Burning Spear Media.
Recently, I helped organize a series of public forums and presentations entitled “We Can Educate Ourselves! Responding to Trump’s Attacks on DEI–Build Black Community Control of Education!” throughout Southern California.
The consensus in these forums was to respond to the attacks on education by building dual and contending power, turning African students and educators into African Working Class intellectuals and arming the masses with African Internationalism.
The publication of these archives and the unity of librarians and professors represents a victory in the anti-colonial free speech counteroffensive.
Visit The Spear’s archives at TheBurningSpear.com/archives
