Former SNCC leader speaks on revolution

Detroit held its 8th Annual MLK Day Rally & March, which began at Central United Methodist Church on Jan. 17 under the theme of renewing the fight for “Jobs, Peace and Justice.” The keynote speaker was Willie “Mukasa” Ricks, a former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Ricks was a civil rights worker in Alabama and Tennessee during the 1960s.

Willie Mukasa Ricks

Ricks raised the slogan “Black Power” in Mississippi in June 1966.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described Ricks as the fieriest orator in SNCC. Ricks played a significant role in the Selma to Montgomery march in March 1965, when he organized students at Alabama State to defy the state troopers who were under the command of then Gov. George Wallace.

Later Ricks would be one of the early members of the Black Panther Party in Alabama in 1965-66, which influenced Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to form the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, Calif.

Ricks was also a founding member and leader of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party along with Kwame Ture.

At the Jan. 17 rally, Mukasa said that he did not want to be viewed as a revolutionary from the 1960s but “someone who is still committed to revolution today.” After a rousing speech to a standing-room-only crowd inside the church, where Dr. King delivered annual sermons for 10 consecutive years, Muskasa led the march through downtown, passing the Detroit Auto Show at Cobo Conference Center, and through the city’s financial district.

The march in Detroit was initiated by the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice in 2004 in order to reclaim the anti-war and social justice legacy of Dr. King. MECAWI immediately expanded participation in the event by establishing the Detroit MLK Committee, which plans the event every year. Co-sponsors and endorsers of the rally and march included the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and Mosaic Design Group, the Justice for Cuba Coalition, the Palestine Office, among others.

Two Detroit MLK Spirit of Detroit awards were given to Warriors on Wheels, the people-living-with-disabilities rights organization, and the Detroit Local Organizing Committee for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit.

A special tribute to the late Rev. Dr. Lucius Walker, the founder of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations, featured City Council member JoAnn Watson and Ellen Bernstein, Acting Co-Director of IFCO and Pastors for Peace.

Both women also spoke Jan. 18 at the University of Michigan about the program established by IFCO, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Cuban government that provides scholarships to students from oppressed communities interested in studying medicine at the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba. Ricks also spoke about his son, who is a student there.

— Report & photo by Abayomi Azikiwe