Learning From the History of Black Activism in

Greensboro, NC
Missing Pages of the Civil Rights Movement and
Phases of Soci-political, Economic and Cultural Change

Claude Barnes, Ph.D.

Research Associate,
Beloved Community Center
June 30, 2016

One serious shortcoming of the literature on the Civil Rights and Black
Nationalist era is the absence of a comprehensive analysis of the role of the Black
Nationalist organizations that come out of the Greensboro-Durham Axis or what I
term the North Carolina Nationalists (N.C.N.). When we examine the literature on
the Contemporary Black Nationalist Movement we find a wealth of material on such
organizations and personalities as: Malcolm X and his Organization of Afro-American
Unity (OAAU); Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam; Huey P. Newton, Bobby
Seal, Eldridge Cleaver, et. al. and the Black Panther Party; Ron Karenga and the U.S.
organization; Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) the Black Arts Movement and later the
Committee for a Unified Newark (CFUN), and the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE); the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM); James Foreman and the
Black Workers Congress (BWC). The literature on these and other personalities and
organizations is quite extensive and useful but the paucity of literature on the role
of Black Activism originating from Greensboro, North Carolina is a serious problem.
At one point in the Black Nationalist Movement, Greensboro and Durham
were considered to be the center of the Black Power Movement in the South.
Several important nationalist organizations were created and received direction
from the area including: The Student Organization for Black Unity or later the Youth
Organization for Black Unity (SOBU/YOBU) and its newspaper The African World,
The Foundation for Community Development , Malcolm X Liberation University
(MXLU), the North Carolina Black Assembly, The African Liberation Support
Committee (ASLC), the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL), and the Greensboro
Association of Poor People (GAPP).
The North Carolina Nationalists (NCN) include such personalities as Howard
Fuller (Later as Owusu Sadaukai), Nelson Johnson, Mark Smith and Lewis Brandon.
Howard Fuller was one of the prime movers behind the establishment of Malcolm X
Liberation University (MXLU) and African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC).
Nelson Johnson and Mark Smith were active in the creation of the Student
Organization for Black Unity (SOBU) and later the Revolutionary Workers League
(RWL). Lewis Brandon has been one of the most active people in the Black
Movement in Greensboro and in North Carolina for almost fifty six years and played
a key role in Sit-In Movement that lead to the desegregation of the city of
Greensboro. He was also active in the creation of the Foundation for Community
Development (FCD) and more importantly the Greensboro Association of Poor
People (GAPP).
Some of the lesser known personalities in the collective leadership of the NCN
include Joyce Johnson, who was an active behind the scenes leader in SOBU, GAPP,
RWL, and later the Communist Workers Party (CWP). Milton Coleman, the first
editor of the African World Newspaper, played a key role in SOBU during its PanAfrican phase. Jim Lee was Director of Operations at MXLU and played a leading
role with F.C.D. and the North Carolina Black Assembly. We might also mention
Sandra Neely (later Sandra Smith) who was active in SOBU, RWL, and Communist
2

Workers Party. Barbara Kamara served as one of the first chairpersons of GAPP and
was active in the N.C.B.A. Finally, we should point out the crucial roles of Frank
Williams, one-time Director of Field Operations for SOBU, Chuck Hopkins and Bertie
Howard who helped establish MXLU. While this is not meant to be an exhaustive
listing of the main personalities and organizations in the NCN, we can begin to get
some idea of the structure and function of this grouping within the radical section of
the Black Nationalist Movement. I wish to emphasize here that unless more
comprehensive data are generated on the role of the North Carolina Nationalists our
analysis of the trajectory of the Contemporary Civil Rights and Black Nationalist
Movement will suffer from superficial and inconclusive treatment. More ominously,
if do not recover the lessons from the struggles waged by this important sector of
what some prefer to call the Black Liberation Movement we will fail to obtain
valuable guidance for future social justice movements and be doomed to repeat
the mistakes of the past.
Part One: A Curriculum of Study With Links to Resources
I.

What Period Are We In Now?

Grace Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the
Twenty First Century, (Berkley, CA: University of California Berkley Press,
2012)
Gar Alperovitz, America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our
Liberty and Democracy,(Boston, MA: Democracy Collaborative Press, 2011)
Gar Alperovitz, The Next American Revolution
http://www.garalperovitz.com/nextamericanrevolution/index.php

II.
The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement and the Fight Against Jim Crow
Segregation
A.

Slavery in the Making of America

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/

B.

Jim Crow Segregation and Racial Oppression After Slavery

PBS Special on Jim Crow Segregation
http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/black_power.html

C.

Martin Luther King: From Montgomery to Memphis

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/25/exclusive_rarely_seen_film_ki
ng_a

D.

The Sit-in Movement and the Destruction of Jim Crow Segregation

(1960 -1964)
February 1, 1960, the Desegregation of Woolworths and the Four
Freshmen of North
3

Carolina A&T :International Civil Rights Museum

http://sitinmovement.org/history/greensboro-chronology.asp
Greensboro News and Record
http://www.sitins.com/
E.

Bill Thompson, Jessie Jackson, Lewis Brandon and the Struggle to

desegregate downtown Greensboro, Stores, Hotels, Cafeterias and
Movie Theaters
Lewis Brandon, III The Greensboro Movement: 1960-1963, Power
Point Presentation

F.

Ella Baker and the Creation of the Student Non-violent Coordination

Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University April 1960
http://zinnedproject.org/materials/baker-ella/

G.

Robert Williams and the Deacons for Defense: Negros with Guns During
the CRM
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5193906
http://www.jou.ufl.edu/documentary/negroeswithguns/about.asp
http://www.africanaonline.com/orga_deacons_for_defense.htm

III.
Black Power, Black Nationalism and Community Control Movement (19641973)
A.

How do you build broad and successful grassroots coalitions to

challenge the Status Quo in the realm ideas, culture, politics,
economics and social structure?

B.

What were the major organizations and personalities associated with

this movement? GAPP in 1968, SOBU/YOBU in 1969, MXLU in 1970,
ALSC in 1972 and RWL.
See the following, William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights:
Greensboro, North Carolina and the Black Struggle for Freedom ( New
York: Oxford, 1980); Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A
Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2006); and Jalani Favors, North Carolina A&T Black Power
Activists and the Student Organization for Black Unity, found in Robert
Cohen and David J. Synder, eds., n , (Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins
University Press, 2013).

C.

What impact did the North Carolina Nationalist and the organizations
associated with them have on the black liberation movement and
politics in the South and Nation?
4

See, Claude W. Barnes, A Consideration of the Relationship Between

Ideology and Activism in the Black Nationalist Movement: A Case Study
of the Greensboro Association of Poor People, MA Thesis, Atlanta
University, Atlanta, GA, 1981,
https://www.scribd.com/doc/315911252/Ideology-and-Activism
Steven E. B. Lechner, Gate City Rising: Continuity and Change within
Greensboros Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s, MA Thesis,
University of North Carolina Greensboro, 2015
D.

Black Activism, Urban Rebellion and the Struggle for Black SelfDetermination: What factors caused the urban rebellions of the late
1960s and early 1970s? What role did he Student Organization for
Black Unity, GAPP play in the and the Dudley/ A&T Revolt of May 1969?
See Wickham and Zuberi, Justice: Kerner Plus 40 Report: An
Assessment of the Nations Response to the Report of the National
Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder, (Washington, DC: Accura
Foundation, 2008),
http://www.ifajs.org/events/spring08/Kerner40/Report.pdf
See SeKou M. Franklin, Chapter 3, From Civil Rights to AntiAprathied,After the Rebellion: Black Youth, Social Movement Activism,
and the Post-Civil Rights Generation, (New York: New York University
Press, 2014);
Claude Barnes, Chapter 15 Bullet Holes in Wall: Reflections on the
Dudley/ A&T Student Revolt of May 1969 found in, Barnes, Moseley
and Steele, eds, American National and State
Government( Dubuque,Iowa: Kendall Hunt, 1997)
https://www.scribd.com/doc/265782394/Bullet-Holes-in-the-Wall-TheDudley-A-T-Student-Revolt-of-May-1969-8-21-14

E.

The Cafeteria Workers Strike March 1969: Building a Community and

Student Coaliton

F.

Sanitation Workers Strike (Summer 1970)

G.

The AAA Rent Strike May 1970-April 1971 (?)

H.

The Blind Workers Strike October, 1970-December 1970

The Day the Blind Workers Went on Strike, Greensboro News and
Record, June 16, 2001
http://www.greensboro.com/the-day-the-blind-workers-went-onstrike/article_d3014bb2-a6ce-5569-ae6e-d59378027d69.html

I.

1972 Campaign Against Police Brutality and the Creation of Black

Citizens Concerned with Police Brutality (BCCPB)

J.

IV.

Free Ben Chavis and the Wilmington Ten Campaign and the Campaign
to Pardon the Wilmington 10
Kenneth Robert Janken, The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and
the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s, (Chapel-Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 2016)
https://aerbook.com/books/The_Wilmington_Ten-13493.html?
store_id=137&product_id=2182852&product_id=2182852

Pan-Africanism, Marxism the Labor and Anti War Movements (1973-1979)

A.

SOBU, Malcolm X Liberation University and MXLU and Pan-Africanism

See Richard D. Benson, Fighting for Our Place in the Sun: Malcolm X
and the Radicalization of the Black Student Movement: 1960-73, (New
York: Peter Lang: 2015); Brent H. Belvin, Malcolm X Liberation
University: An Experiment in Independent Black Education, MA Thesis,
North Carolina State University, 2004 , Marxist Internet Archive,
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1a/experiment.pdf
See also, Media and Movement: Journalism, Civil Rights, and Black
Power in the American South,
http://mediaandthemovement.unc.edu/ .

B.

The Evolution of the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) and

African Liberation Day (ALD) May 1972
See SOBU News Service, 55,000 Demonstrate Support: ALD
International Success, African World, June 10, 1972

C.

Which Road for Black People? Historic ALSC Conference at Howard

University July 1974
See SOBU News Service, Historic ALSC Conference Discussed Which
Road for Black People? SOBU News Service, African World, July 1974

D.

The Creation of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL).

See Ron Washington, The Rise and Fall of the Revolutionary Workers
League Marxist Internet Archive, August 4, 2009,
https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1a/experiment.pdf

E.

The Greensboro Massacre of November 3, 1979

Greensboro Closer to the Truth, A Film by Adam Zucker
Closer to the Truth Discussion Guide
http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/closer.pdf

V.
Reassessment, and Building Multi-racial and Progressive Leadership (1980
-1999)
A.
B.
Education
C.

The Beloved Community Center Created in 1991

Black and Brown Movement, Immigration, Peace Walks Reform in Public
April 1992-July 1996 Struggle of the K-Mart Workers at the K-Mart
Distribution Center
See , Prayer and Protest: Bringing a Community Vision of Justice to a
Labor Dispute found in Penda Hair, Louder Than Words: Lawyers,
Communities and the Struggle for Justice, (New York: Rockefeller
Foundation, 2010).
http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/hair.pdf

D. Struggle to Free Kwame Cannon 1986-1999

VI.

VII.

The Beloved Community Center, Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project

and Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2000- 2006)
A.

Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report

http://www.greensborotrc.org/

B.

Signe Waller, Love and Revolution, A Political Memoir: Peoples History

of the Greensboro Massacre, Its Setting and Aftermath, (New York:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002).

C.

Lisa Magarrell and Joya Wesley, Learning from Greensboro: Truth and
Reconciliation in the United States, (Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania, 2008)

Racism and Police Accountability

A.

Documenting Racism and Police Abuse of Power

See Johnson, Barnes and Rosenblith, Our Democratic Mission:
Transitioning the Greensboro Police Department from Double
Standards and Corruption to Accountability and Professionalism
(Greensboro, NC: Beloved Community Center, 2013)
https://www.scribd.com/doc/255672648/Our-Democratic-Mission ;
Sharon LaFraniere and Andrew W. Lehren, The Disproportionate Risks
of Driving While Black: An Examination of Traffic Stops and Arrests in
Greensboro, NC, Uncovered Wide Racial Differences in Measure After
Measure, New York Times, October 24, 2015,
7

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traffic-stopsdriving-black.html?_r=0 ; and
Barnes, Racial Disparity and Police Accountability: New York Times
Article Exposes Long Standing Problem In Greensboro, the State of
North Carolina and the Nation, Beloved Community Center,
November 16, 2015,
http://en.calameo.com/read/004618746954c107bb0e3