Chokwe Lumumba Sr. (/ˈʃoʊ.kweɪ.lʌˈmuːm.bɑː/; August 2, 1947 – February 25, 2014) was an American attorney, activist, and politician, who was affiliated with the black separatist organization Republic of New Afrika and served as its second vice president.
Lumumba stated at the 2011 Netroots Nation Annual Conference that his great-grandmother was a Cherokee woman and his great-grandfather was a Black American man who descended from enslaved Nigerians.
His mother would stand with her children on corners collecting money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and she her determination gave him a foundation for organizing.
[7] He majored in political science and graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1969, where he formed the Black United Front to advocate for African-American studies in Midwestern higher educational institutions.
[8] As second vice president, he accompanied other members when the capital of the provisional government was moved to Hinds County, Mississippi, and dedicated at a farm there on March 28, 1971.
He was in the lead car with Alajo Abegbalola which was halted by the Bolton police on that day when the "Land Celebration" was set to take place, marking the establishment of the capital of the Republic of New Afrika.
[13] He was initially barred from representing Cynthia Boston, known as Fulani Sunni Ali, a member of a revolutionary group charged in a Brink's robbery case; she was jailed on $500,000 bond.
Many national legal groups protested the barring of Lumumba from representing the prisoner and the characterization of him as a terrorist due to his membership in the Republic of New Afrika.
[15] He worked on the Geronimo Pratt case and encouraged black youth to eschew gang activities and participate in global actions such as protesting apartheid in South Africa.
During the 1980s, there was a marked increase in the number of imprisoned African Americans in the United States, due in part to mandatory sentencing guidelines.
[16] Lumumba became interested in organizing to demand reparations for the damage done to the generations of African-American slaves, which he believed had contributed to contemporary problems of blacks in the United States.
By the evening of May 7, 2013, it was announced that Lumumba had forced Jonathan Lee into a runoff election and that the incumbent, Harvey Johnson Jr., had been soundly defeated in each municipal ward.
[21] Prior to the primary election on May 7 Lumumba had raised only $69,000, one-fifth of Jonathan Lee's campaign chest, but projected that the challenger's grassroots work would be more decisive in the upcoming runoff.
[22] On May 15, attorney Regina Quinn, the fourth-place Democratic primary finisher, endorsed Lumumba for his stance on infrastructure development as an economic stimulus for local Jackson businesses and his insistence that the city pay women equally with men in like positions.