Organization of Afro-American Unity

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On June 28, 1964, six weeks after Malcolm X's return to New York from Africa, he announced the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). “It was formed in my living room,” remembers John Henrik Clarke. “I was the one who got the constitution from the Organization of African Unity in order to model our constitution after it. Malcolm’s joy was that we could match up [our constitution with the African one]; we could find parallels between the African situation and the African American situation – that plus a whole lot of other things we agreed with that had nothing to do with religion, because we agreed with the basic struggle. We agreed on self-reliance, about what people would have to do, and that an ethnic community was really a small nation and that you need everything within that community that goes into a small nation, including a person who would take care of the labor, the defense, employment, morality, spirituality . . . . “ [1].

Thus, Malcolm X, along with John Henrik Clarke, wrote the following into the Organization of Afro- American Unity (OAAU) Basic Unity Program

1. Restoration:“In order to release ourselves from the oppression of our enslavers then, it is absolutely necessary for the Afro-American to restore communication with Africa . . .

2. Reorientation: “ . . . We can learn much about Africa by reading informative books . . . “

3. Education: “ . . . The Organization of Afro-American Unity will devise original educational methods and procedures which will liberate the minds of our children . . . We will . . . encourage qualified Afro-Americans to write and publish the textbooks needed to liberate our minds . . . . educating them [our children] at home.”

4. Economic Security: “ . . . After the Emancipation Proclamation . . . it was realized that the Afro-American constituted the largest homogeneous ethnic group with a common origin and common group experience in the United States and, if allowed to exercise economic or political freedom, would in a short period of time own this country. WE MUST ESTABLISH A TECHNICIAN BANK. WE MUST DO THIS SO THAT THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT NATIONS OF AFRICA CAN TURN TO US WHO ARE THEIR BROTHERS FOR THE TECHNICIANS THEY WILL NEED NOW AND IN THE FUTURE.

Following article is from Columbia University's Malcolm X Project "On June 28, 1964, Malcolm X called a press conference at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem to announce his new project which he had been helped to set up by Elijah Muhammad's two sons, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Modelled after the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the all-African federation, the OAAU was an international secular political organization promoting the interests of black people and working to fight white oppression, Discussions with the exiled author Julian Mayfield, one of Malcolm X's hosts during his 1964 trip to Africa, convinced Malcolm X of the need for a social, political and economic organization that would link Blacks in the U.S., the Caribbean and the Americas with Africa.

The OAAU pushed for Black control of every aspect of the Black community. At the founding rally, Malcolm X stated that the organization's principal concern was the human rights of Blacks, but that it would also focus on voter registration, school boycotts, rent strikes, housing rehabilitation, and social programs for addicts, unwed mothers, and troubled children. Malcolm X saw the OAAU as a way of "un-brainwashing" Black people, ridding them of the lies they had been told about themselves and their culture. Malcolm X was determined not to let the OAAU come under white influence, and he insisted that no donations from whites be accepted and that whites not be allowed to join the organization. Small initiation fees and weekly dies were collected in order to keep the OAAU from resorting to accepting charity from whites. Malcolm X did not have sufficient time to invest in the OAAU to help it flourish. After his death, Malcolm X's half sister, Ella Collins, took over the leadership of the OAAU, but dwindling membership and Malcolm X's absence eventually led to the collapse of the organization."

[edit] References

  1. ^ David Gallen, As They Knew Him, p.79-80

[edit] External links