Cecil Elombe Brath (September 30, 1936 – May 19, 2014)[1] was a Pan-African activist, born in New York City of Barbadian heritage, who is best known for founding the Patrice Lumumba Coalition.
He was an influential activist, recognized by Stokely Carmichael as the "Dean of Harlem Nationalists"[2] and by Dudley Thompson, an "Icon of the Pan-African Movement".
[1] Brath fought to eliminate the usage of the term "negro" and, in 1961, launched a "Black is Beautiful" campaign with a series of Afrocentric fashion shows featuring African-American women who were known as the Grandassa Models[5] and sported large afros.
[7] They garnered attention for a 1977 boycott of Ipi Tombi, a Broadway musical that purportedly misrepresented life under apartheid.
[9] The great thinkers whom Brath counted as influences — Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Carlos A. Cooks, and his cousin Clennell Wickham — waged a political battle on behalf of working-class blacks in colonial Barbados.