Omali Yeshitela

Yeshitela served on St. Petersburg Mayor David Fischer's Challenge 2001 Steering Committee and on the St. Petersburg Housing Authority's Hope VI Advisory Committee, two projects dedicated to attracting jobs and investment to South St. Petersburg. He has also chaired the political action committee of the Coalition of African American Leadership, made up of a number of black churches and civil rights groups in the area, and served on the board of radio station WMNF community radio. Along with eight other candidates, Yeshitela made a run for mayorship in February 2001. Although he did not make it to the runoff, he won every African-American and mixed precinct but one in the entire city.

Omali Yeshitela has described The Burning Spear as a dual and contending power institution. Yeshitela explained this at the 1985 forum "Does the Media Tell the Truth?" held in Berkeley, California: "We don't consider ourselves alternative media. We consider ourselves a contending force." He later went on to explain, "[W]e see ourselves in fierce contention with the media." The cover of the December 1969 Burning Spear depicted the Snow Hill mural that Yeshitela tore down three years earlier.

Yeshitela is credited with popularizing the demand for reparations to African people in the U.S. and worldwide, having served as the People's Advocate at the First International Tribunal on Reparations to Black People in the U.S., held in Brooklyn, NY in 1982. He is the author of numerous books and pamphlets including Vanguard: Advanced Detachment of the African Revolution and An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African Revolution versus Parasitic Capitalism.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the APSP organized the first World Tribunal on Reparations to African People in the US on November 13 and 14, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York. The Tribunal found the United States guilty of stolen labor from African people. Unlike some understandings of reparations, the APSP and the World Tribunal did not stop its analysis at colonial enslavement but instead brought it to the contemporary time. The Tribunal quantified the debt owed to African people in the US was $4.1 trillion. This amount was laid out the book Stolen Black Labor: The Political Economy of Domestic Colonialism. The proceedings of the World Tribunal were published in the book Reparations Now!: Abbreviated report of the International Tribunal on Reparations for Black People in the US.

The APSP adopted its Constitution at its First Congress held in Oakland, California in 1981.

The Working Platform was revised and adopted, once again, at The First Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party held in Oakland, California in November 1981. The work that they immediately carried forward coming out of The First Congress included the reparations campaign. Omali Yeshitela writes that the goal of the African People’s Socialist Party was:

In his civic activism in his native St. Petersburg, Yeshitela has stressed his view that political and economic development will bring an end to the oppression of African communities throughout the world. He moved to Oakland, California in 1981, living and working there.

The Burning Spear gained broad circulation throughout the United States and globally. Bakari Olatunji, a longtime member of the APSP and an Oakland resident has noted that newspaper was even distributed by members of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, alongside their own newspaper. In the 1980s, Omali Yeshitela encountered a white British man in a black bookstore, standing in the middle of the floor, with The Burning Spear in hand, extolling the virtue of the newspaper as an honest purveyor of the truth. The newspaper also praises Russia and fully supports Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, calling it a defensive operation.

The Working Platform of the African People’s Socialist Party was adopted on September 23, 1979. Of the 14-Points in the platform, the APSP forwarded the demand for Reparations. For the APSP and the African Internationalists, reparations has been described as a revolutionary demand. The APSP position on reparations is encompassed in Point 11 of The Working Platform.

Yeshitela co-founded the African People's Socialist Party in May 1972 through the fusion of three Florida-based organizations: the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), based in St. Petersburg, Florida, led by Yeshitela, the Black Rights Fighters based in Ft. Myers, Florida, led by Lawrence Mann, and the Black Study Group based in Gainesville, Florida, led by Katura Carey. That same year, the APSP adopted JOMO's newspaper The Burning Spear – the longest-running Black Power newspaper in the U.S. – as its official publication.

In May 1972, after his release from prison, Yeshitela founded the African People's Socialist Party (APSP), a political party founded on an ideology combining black nationalism and socialism called "African internationalism." Yeshitela later set up an organization for white people to join in solidarity with the APSP's goals, the African People's Solidarity Committee.

JOMO represented a form of mass movement organizing that subsequent organizations within the Uhuru Movement embraced in the years to come. In 1968, JOMO founded The Burning Spear Newspaper, the oldest Black Power newspaper in continuous print. In 1969, JOMO formed the JOMO Blood Bank at St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.  The blood bank was created “because of the high price of blood and the vicious nature of America's capitalistic hospitals” with a pint of blood costing Africans as much as $45; which is around $300 2022.  On 1 January 1970, the blood bank released 14 pints of blood to two African women saving them $600 (about $4,000 today).

Yeshitela is the founder of The Burning Spear newspaper, the official journal of the African People's Socialist Party which has been in publication since 1968. Yeshitela is a writer and theoretician recognized for creating the revolutionary political theory known as "African Internationalism."

The Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO) was formed in St. Petersburg, Florida in May 1968. JOMO emerged in the wake of assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis Tennessee on April 4, 1968 and Little Bobby Hutton, the youngest member of the Black Panther Party, in Oakland, California on April 6, 1968. This was also the period of the St. Petersburg Sanitation Workers Strike. Omali Yeshitela created JOMO while he was incarcerated, serving time for the December 1966 mural incident. In Spanish, junta means council. As well, the letters were chosen because they spelled out the first name of Jomo Kenyatta. At that time, Kenyatta was thought to be responsible for the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, popularly known as the Mau Mau. Yeshitela notes: "Despite the erroneous understanding of who the neocolonialist Jomo Kenyatta was, Africa was clearly on my mind as central to our identity as a people and the starting point for understanding our situation in the U.S. and the world. The Swahili word for freedom, 'Uhuru,' introduced to the political lexicon of the world by the Mau Mau, became my lodestar."

The Burning Spear Newspaper is the oldest institution of the Uhuru Movement and predates the formation of the African People's Socialist Party. The Burning Spear was formed in December 1968, on the second anniversary of the city hall mural incident, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The original Burning Spear was an 8x11mimeographed 4-page newsletter. In December 1969, The Burning Spear became a typeset newspaper.

Yeshitela served as the first editor of the newspaper. The Burning Spear was first produced by the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), the organization that Yeshitela formed in 1968. The title of the newspaper reflects translation of the name JOMO. Jomo means "burning spear" in the Kikuyu language. As with the adoption of the slogan-demand “Uhuru,” title of the newspaper intended to connect the Uhuru Movement in the US to the Kenya Land and Freedom Army of Dedan Kimathi, commonly known as the Mau Mau.

Yeshitela joined SNCC in 1966. This was the same year that Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) was elected the chair of SNCC. Yeshitela notes that Carmichael had "captured the imagination of the world when he uttered the slogan/demand" Black Power. SNCC had also organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama.

In 1966, Omali Yeshitela organized the first membership-based SNCC chapter. SNCC had originally been operated as a staff-based volunteer organization. The membership-based structure gave the SNCC chapter in St. Petersburg, Florida, the same character as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, forming around the same time in Oakland, California.

SNCC St. Petersburg had organized a demonstration and press conference at St. Petersburg City Hall at noontime on December 29, 1966. The purpose of the demonstration was to utilize the issue of the mural “to galvanize public opinion to effect the changes” that SNCC had been pursuing. The degrading mural reflected the minstrel culture that was popular throughout American media during the height of Jim Crow. George Snow Hill’s “Picnicking at the Pass-a-Grille” was one of two images that had been displayed in St. Petersburg City Hall since 1945. “Picnicking at the Pass-a-Grille” depicted blackface musicians with exaggerated features and white paint around their mouths entertaining white beach goers. Its companion piece entitled “Fishing at the Pier” depicted white families with normal features enjoying a relaxing day of fishing. Bill DeYoung, a former correspondent with the St. Petersburg Times noted that these murals were suggested to represent “everyday life in St. Petersburg.” The black community had opposed the mural for two decades, since its installation. For the African community of St. Petersburg, “The mural bitterly represented the place that colonized black people were relegated to in this city, where African people were forced to function as oppressed servants to the white tourist industry and elderly white retirees.” As well, “The offensive mural represented a city where African people for decades were confined to housing in a small, two-mile square area of south St. Petersburg that was subjected to a curfew after 9 p.m. every night.”

Yeshitela and the SNCC activists did not intend on tearing down the mural. The mural incident was prompted by white reporters and cops laughing at an older African woman who spoke at the December 29, 1966 demonstration at St. Petersburg City Hall. The poor and elderly woman had joined the protest march when it passed her house. She spoke of the exploitative insurance that the African working class had to endure in St. Petersburg, Florida. Yeshitela writes that the elderly woman “spoke ‘broken English,’ used double negatives and split infinitives, and the media and police personnel found her funny, treating her like entertainment.” Yeshitela immediately marched into city hall and ripped down the 7 X 10 foot mural. The incident hit the news wire and was covered by a variety of media sources throughout the United States including Jet Magazine which covered the incident in a two page spread.

As a mass organization, the membership of JOMO was broad and its impact was wide. Many years later, Geronimo Pratt, for example, told Chairman Omali Yeshitela that he had been a member of JOMO in the late 1960s when he was stationed in Florida. In 1972, JOMO joined with two other Florida organizations, the Black Rights Fighters of Fort Myers and the Black Study Group of Gainesville, to create the African People’s Socialist Party.

Yeshitela stated early on that the mission of the APSP was to "complete the Black Revolution of the Sixties," describing a period of defeat resulting from the counterinsurgency war enacted by the U.S. government against the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Through FBI counterintelligence programs such as COINTELPRO, the U.S. government's counterinsurgency against the Black Revolution of the Sixties involved the assassinations of leaders such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Hutton, and Fred Hampton and the destruction of their organizations. Yeshitela was also arrested and jailed numerous times.

Yeshitela belongs to what historian Donna Murch calls "the Black Power Generation", black working class activists who came of age between the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till and the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X. Yeshitela is less than two months younger than Till and was 13 years old when the 14-year-old Till was lynched in Drew, Mississippi on August 28, 1955. Yeshitela has noted that the lynching of Till impacted his worldview, and the worldview of Black People in the United States.

In the late 1950s, the Modern Civil Rights Movement and African decolonization struggles were advancing. All sectors of black society discussed these topics. Yeshitela was a standout student at Gibbs High School. In 1959, during his senior year at Gibbs High School, a class discussion was held on "the advancement of African people." In this discussion, a teacher declared that black people would have to "prove" themselves to white people if they wanted to be free. That is when Yeshitela decided to leave school and join the United States Army.

Yeshitela participated in the Civil Rights Movement in his youth during the 1950s and 1960s as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC was an important organization. Formed in 1960, SNCC departed from the politics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). SNCC began in 1960. Since 1960, SNCC had committed itself to organizing amongst the grassroots in the South. SNCC had also begun to develop relationships internationally. SNCC organizers had met Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea and other African Independence leaders. SNCC had formed a close relationship with Malcolm X.

Omali Yeshitela (born Joseph Waller on October 9, 1941) is an African revolutionary, political leader, theoretician and author. He is the founder and chairman of the African People's Socialist Party, which leads the Uhuru Movement.

Omali Yeshitela was born Joseph Waller, Jr. in St. Petersburg, Florida on October 9, 1941. Yeshitela was raised in a community formerly known as the Gas Plant Area, an African community on the South Side of St. Petersburg, Florida. The Gas Plant Area no longer exists, as it was razed to create Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays. Yeshitela attended Jordan Elementary School, Sixteenth Street Junior High School, and Gibbs High School as a youth.