Revolutionary Action Movement
Largely made up of formerly expelled students and veteran activists, Challenge was created to further political awareness, particularly in relation to the black community.
[9] At the request of Donald Freeman, who was enrolled at Case Western Reserve University at the time, Challenge read Harold Cruse's essay "Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American" and thereafter shifted its focus from educating their participants to creating a mass black working-class nationalist movement in the North.
[10][6] After this drastic change of agenda, Challenge soon evolved into the Reform Action Movement, as they believed use of the word revolutionary would stir fear in the university administration.
[6][11] Led by Freeman, Wanda Marshall, and Maxwell Stanford, RAM became a study/action group that hoped to turn the Civil Rights Movement into a worldwide black revolution.
[6][9][11] Max Stanford (now Muhammad Ahmad) was one of the founding members of RAM, and served as both its national chairman and Philadelphia head for much of the group's existence.
Through the lively discussions of revolutionary politics that thrived in the Boggs household, he developed a sharp critical consciousness and an impressive grasp of theory by adulthood.
[12][8] Don Freeman was black student at Case Western who originally organized Challenge at Central State and then went on to be one of the leaders of the Cleveland branch of RAM.
"[6][13] Though it initially started as a small student group at Central State College and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, RAM at its peak had chapters all over the nation.
[6][14] The decision to go underground was made by leadership after they judged that the ultra-right was preparing to crush the movement and that they could no longer be public without endangering noninvolved people and exposing them to violence.
The decade brought forth revolutions and mass uprisings in countries all over the world, and though the people were protesting in different regions, most of these movements sought to achieve a similar goal: the universal elimination of racism and capitalism.
In solidarity and fighting alongside anti-colonial struggles in China, Zanzibar, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Algeria, RAM activists saw themselves as playing a global role.
When Robert F. Williams, chairman of RAM, came back from his exile in China, he also emphasized that all young black revolutionaries must "...undergo personal and moral transformation.
[15][6] In mid-1965, before opposition to the Vietnam War gained momentum, RAM blazed an ideological trail, expressing solidarity with the Vietnamese National Liberation Front in their fight against imperialism.
At the same time RAM was explicitly anti-draft, arguing and organizing around the hypocrisy of drafting black Americans to fight in a war against, in their eyes, other people victimized by US imperialism.
[26] Throughout its existence, RAM supported mass action all over Philadelphia, canvassed to try to listen to community needs, and provided public services that they thought were lacking.
[26] In Cleveland, Ohio, RAM was governed by a secret committee named the "Soul Circle",[9] which was essentially a small selection of black men involved in the local community, as well as civil rights, and student groups.
Through this organization, RAM members held free public lectures and worked with other activists to improve the black community in Cleveland.
Mallory was a Black woman arrested for her relationship with Robert F. Williams, the future international chairman of RAM who, at the time, had fled to Cuba after being exiled from the United States.
[5][9][11] RAM's Northern California branch operated under the name the "Soul Students' Advisory Council" and started after then-member of the Afro-American Association and future-Black Panther, Ernie Allen, went on a trip to Cuba in 1964.
This confluence of events resulted in Allen establishing a branch of RAM in Oakland at Merritt College through the Soul Students' Advisory Council.
[5][10][6][21] The Soul Students' Advisory Council, in its interaction with RAM, exposed Seale and Newton to anti-imperialism, socialism, and revolutionary nationalism for the first time, which was critical in their political development.
[21] The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder ...
Many of its members went back to their communities or joined other civil rights groups to continue pushing their ideology of black internationalism and armed self-defense.
[5][6] On multiple occasions, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover condemned RAM, describing the organization as a "militant black nationalist hate group."
