revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

A dropout from the 5th grade, he was put into a home for mentally
retarded at the age of 13 . In prison on and off since
he was 16, he was finally incarcerated on a murder and robbery
charge in Jackson . There he organized a strike of black prisoners
against discrimination by forming a selected cadre . In
prison he read voraciously, learned to paint and after 17 years
was released through the intervention of a black probation
officer who recognized his genius .$
On
the West Coast, Ernie Allen held a news conference announcing
his refusal to participate in the U .S . Army because of its racist practices
.
SNCC began to undergo a policy change . Its staff decided to organize
an all-black party in Lowndes County, Alabama . When RAM leadership
received news of this, it decided to closely study these developments .
Various activists were called together in the
spring of 1965 in
Detroit, Michigan .
The meeting included James and Grace Boggs, Nahouse
Rodgers from Chicago, Julius Hobson from D .C ., Bill Strickland of the
Northern Student Movement, Don Freeman from Cleveland and Jesse Gray, a
harlem rent strike leader, and other activists from around the country .
The conference formed the Organization for Black Power (OB) .
The purpose
was to raise the position that the struggle was for Black Power and for
black state power and not just for black independent political power .
That if the black liberation movement was going to be
successful Black
people would have to think about seizing control, one way or another, over
the state and other forms of government . OBP was conceived as a coalition
of organizations that would organize black people to politically take over
large metropolitan areas in the 1970's . 9 The Organization for Black Power
8Grace and James Boggs, Detroit : Birth of a Nation , Pamphlet,
October, 1967, p . 7 .
9Max Stanford' FBI Cointel pro Document, Vo l . 1 , Washington, D .C ., FBI
Release under freedom of Information Act, 1978), p . 20 .