“Emperor” of Black-Nationalist “Washitaw Nation” Claims Individual Sovereignty in New Jersey Gun Case

(from The Trentonian)

A man claiming to be the newly crowned emperor of a Black-nationalist group called the Washitaw Nation argued before a judge in Trenton, New Jersey, on September 9th that a defendant in a gun-possession case was immune from prosecution because he was a “sovereign citizen.”

An example of a “Washitaw Nation” yard sign, for sale at Café Press

The “emperor,” known as El Bey, presents himself as monarch of what is also known by its longer name, the Official Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah.  [See the bottom of this page for an article comment from El Bey himself, clarifying, “I never proclaimed to be the Emperor of the Washitaw Nation or Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah.  Visit www.empirewashitaw.org to see my actual position within the Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah and Washitaw Nation.”]  The group draws inspiration from the Islamic- and Masonic-tinged “Moorish Temple” strain of Black-nationalist activism which dates to northern urban African-American communities in the 1910s and ’20s and from the purported ancestry of its founder, Verdiacee Hampton-Goston, with Louisiana’s Ouachita Indian tribe.  “Empress” Hampton-Goston, who died earlier this year (as reported at the time in this blog), subscribed to the “Paleo-Negroid” hypothesis, which holds, against all evidence, that the Americas were peopled by ancient Africans who are responsible for the monumental architecture of the Midwestern mound-building cultures and others.  She claimed to be Empress of the entire territory of the Louisiana Purchase, though she really only governed a few scraps of land in Oklahoma.  Actual Ouachitas, who are mostly enrolled with the Caddo Nation, do not seem to want much to do with the Moorish “Washitaws.”  (See that original article on this blog for a full discussion of the Washitaw movement.  [See also comments by El Bey at the bottom of this article.])

The late empress, Verdiacee Hampton-Goston

El Bey, a 42-year-old who appeared in court in full Plains Indian regalia, including a headdress, is, according to the Trentonian newspaper, “best known in Trenton for once asserting his status as a so-called ‘sovereign’ nation allowed to keep a horse in the back yard of his row house in the Wilbur section” (two horses, actually, named Princess and Pop, and it was actually only half of a duplex.)  And El Bey told the paper that “he and allies will ride their horses through Trenton next week to make a political point.  He said he has legal papers exempting him from U.S. and local law.”  At other times, El Bey has claimed to be prince of the Abannaki Aboriginal Nation, named for an unrelated tribal group in New England but in this case another incarnation of a Moorish Science style fringe group (as identified by the Alabama-based hate-group-monitoring organization the Southern Poverty Law Center).

“Emperor” El Bey of the “Washitaw Nation.”
(Contents of peace pipe unknown, but one wonders.)

(Wikimedia Commons photo.)

The first Moorish Science Temple was founded in New Jersey in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali, who mixed Islam, Masonry, ancient Egyptian traditions, and crackpot anthropology to assert that, because the real Indians were “paleo-Negroids” from Africa, the descendants of African-American slaves were somehow the true owners of the North American continent.

A map of the ancient world from a Moorish Science Temple of America website not
affiliated with the Washitaw Nation.
(Trenton, New Jersey, not shown.)

El Bey is a well-known eccentric in Trenton.  Also known as Crown Prince Emperor El Bey Bigbay Bagby, but apparently born as William McRae, he tried in February to assert authority over a defunct Powhatan Renape Nation reservation in southern New Jersey, earning him from the Philadelphia Inquirer the nickname “Prince Alarming.”  (An actual Powhatan leader, Obie Batchelor, has said of El Bey, “We don’t know where he came from.  We don’t know anything about him.  He just popped up out of the woodwork.  You can’t just pop up and claim yourself chief.”)  McRae has also tried to convince the singer Kanye West to join his tribe, and in 2009 he expressed his crush on the lovely young director of the Trenton Free Public Library by arriving at her workplace on horseback to beseech her to gallop away with him and become his bride.  The library director, Kimberly Matthews, called the police instead.

Kimberly Matthews, the librarian who could have been an empress.
Ah, the road not taken.

(from The Trentonian)

What is not clear is whether the followers of the original, late “empress” acknowledge El Bey—or anyone—as her successor, or what role the defendant in the Trenton gun case, one Abdul Aziz, plays in the organization.  But El Bey’s invocation of the “sovereign citizen” movement shows affinities with Empress Verdiacee’s Oklahoma branch of the movement, which used that libertarian concept as a crude legal tool—betraying more ideological affinities with radical right-wing anarchists, Tea Party activists, and all-white militias than with the more collectivist, community-based strains of mainstream Black Islam and Black Nationalism.

Emperor El Bey, with Princess and Pop.  If nothing else, they are on his side.

(from The Trentonian)

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  (That is shorter than the previous working title.)  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), will be on shelves and available on Amazon on March 1, 2015.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Empress of Moorish “Washitaw Nation” Dies in California, Age 87

A Louisiana woman who founded a Native American–inspired “empire” with elements of both 1960s-style Black nationalism and the modern “sovereign citizens” movement died on April 26th at her home in California at the age of 87.

Flag of the Washitaw Nation

Verdiacee Hampton-Goston, as she was legally known, was an African-American from Louisiana who also claimed ancestry in the local Ouachita tribal group and preferred to be known as Verdiacee Washington-Turner Goston El-Bey, Empress of the Washitaw Nation—though the federally recognized Caddo Nation of Louisiana and Oklahoma, which represents most Ouachitas, had no formal connection with her.

“Moorish Science” religions date to the 1920s.

The Washitaw Nation (in full, it is called the Official Empire Washitaw de Dugdahmoundyah) is in many ways an offshoot of the “Moorish Science” movement, a precursor to modern Black nationalism which emerged in the ferment of religious and political ideas in 1920s and ’30s Detroit, Michigan, where Islam, Freemasonry, offbeat anthropological theorizing, and an infatuation with all things Egyptian and occultic gave rise to Marcus Garvey and the Nation of Islam’s founder, Elijah Muhammad, among others.  Hampton-Goston believed that her Washitaw ancestors were actually African-featured “Israelites” (this is known as the “Paleo-Negroid” hypothesis) and that she was their rightful empress and thus sovereign of traditional territories that she felt were illegitimately transferred from Napoleon Bonaparte to Thomas Jefferson in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase.  She spent most of her imperial career living in Oklahoma and was even for a while mayor of Richwood, Oklahoma.

The Empress’s territorial claims were not particularly modest,
but she didn’t press them.

Hampton-Goston claimed to be rightful empress of the entire territory of the Louisiana Purchase, which includes four U.S. states, parts of nine others, and even a decent slice of Canada.  She claimed this right through “matriarchal descent.”  (Most of the indigenous nations in the Louisiana Purchase territory have always, unlike the Ouachita and Caddo, practiced patrilineal, not matrilineal, descent, but, listen, this was hardly the most serious vulnerability in her arguments.)

Looks official—but don’t try using it as I.D.

The number of those who counted themselves Hampton-Goston’s imperial subjects is unknown, but they certainly included a large extended family.  In later years, the Washitaws adopted legal strategies that borrowed heavily from the “sovereign citizens” movement, a vaguely anarcho-libertarian tax-protest phenomenon which otherwise mainly attracts disaffected conservative rural whites.  But—unlike a more high-profile Moorish Science splinter group, the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, which was shut down by authorities in Georgia in 2005—Hampton-Goston stayed clear of troubles with the authorities.  She was once investigated for tax evasion, but the charges were dropped.  (She claimed identity theft caused the misunderstanding.)  She was also once arrested for shooting two pigs in Monroe, Oklahoma.  But charges were brought instead against the animals’ owner, for keeping them within city limits.

How to get pulled over in rural Oklahoma

The Empress was also the author of a book called Return of the Ancient Ones, which encapsulated many of her ideas.

The idea of “indigenous” “Black Israelites” appeals to many politically disaffected
African-Americans in places like Atlanta.

A long-time friend, Vicki Williams, said of Hampton-Goston, “She had her strong beliefs that everybody was supposed to be treated equal no matter what their color, what their race was or what they believed in or what kind of valuable they had.”  Another friend, Umar Bey, of Los Angeles, was quoted as saying, “She was a very spiritual woman.  She had a direct connection to God.  She could think about something and go to sleep and wake up with the information she needed.”  Hampton-Goston niece, Zelia Logan-Smith, age 66, said her aunt’s ashes would be returned to Monroe and scattered in a private ceremony.  Logan-Smith added, “She was one step from a genius.  She would say, ‘When you walk through the jungle, you have to be as harmless as a dove, but as wise as a serpent.’”

[You can read more about the Washitaw Nation, the Nuwaubians, and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

Her anthropological theories were a tad wonky,
but the woman knew how to accessorize.

5 of 11 Counties Vote to Secede: Whither "New Colorado" Now?

On November 5th, Colorado went to the polls.  Among other issues at stake there—all of which featured the dynamic of rural Tea Party pushback against an urbanizing, increasingly Democratic-dominated state—11 counties in the northeast and north were asked whether they wanted to secede to form a new, and solidly Republican, State of North Colorado.

Orange counties voted yes to secession; blue ones voted no.

Of the 11, five contiguous counties said yes, while the other six voted to stay in Colorado.

The five splittist counties are Cheyenne (where 62.2% voted yes), Kit Carson (54.2%), Phillips (62.2%), Washington (58.1%), and Yuma (59.6%).  They form a contiguous territory snug against the Kansas border but do not reach into the far northeastern corner of the state, where Sedgwick County voted by 57% to stay under Denver’s thumb.  Weld County, where the rebellion began earlier this year—home to the region’s largest city, Greeley, the presumed future capital—rejected secession by a margin of 56.3% to 43.6%.  The other counties that elected to stay are Elbert, Lincoln, Logan, and—the outlier, in the state’s northwest corner—Moffat County.

From this summer, this news graphic showed green states planning to vote on secession
and blue states expressing interest.

But does this mean that silkscreeners are now poised to churn out 51-star flags?  Not at all.  Any new admission to the Union must be approved by both houses of Congress.  The last state to secede from another was West Virginia, in 1863, and it was really seceding from the Confederacy back into the United States.  And the last time new stars were added, in 1959, Hawaii and Alaska were admitted more or less in tandem, so as to preserve the balance of power between the two national political parties.  A new state, after all, means two new senators, and the redrawing of congressional districts as well.  This two-at-a-time pattern is an old tradition, dating back to events such as the Missouri Compromise (Maine and Missouri, in 1820), and even to the simultaneous admission of Kentucky and Vermont in 1791—in those days the idea being to preserve the balance between slave and free states.  A new Democratic state would need to be added to balance a North Colorado in today’s divided, fiercely partisan political climate.  And no one in Congress seems remotely interested.

A proposed flag (not proposed by proponents, it need hardly be added)

The North Colorado movement began in early summer of this year (as reported at the time in this blog), with initially eight counties—Kit Carson, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, and Yuma—though, by early July, Cheyenne and Lincoln had joined as well, soon followed by Elbert County.  The whole phenomenon has been a response to this politically mixed state—famous for category-defying maverick politicians like Governor Richard “Dickie” Lamm and Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell—turning “blue” in recent years, led by the growth of the capital, Denver, and to a lesser extent the counterculture mecca Boulder.  Barack Obama was the first Democratic presidential candidate to draw a majority of Colorado voters since 1964.  It was a swing state for several election cycles, until Obama won it handily in 2008, and it is now considered a blue state.  New legislation decriminalizing marijuana and restricting gun rights and animal cruelty further incensed socially conservative voters in the rural plains east and northeast of Denver, a region sometimes known as the Northern Front Range.  This week’s election also featured a heated recall campaign growing out of resistance to gun control and other issues.  The growing Hispanicization of Colorado has also been a factor, and the North Colorado rebellion, like the broader Tea Party movement of which it is a part, can reasonably be seen as connected to demographic shifts that promise to make white Americans become this century a racial minority, in a country with no racial majority at all.  North Colorado would be by far the whitest state in the Union.  There aren’t even that many American Indians there.

These two fellers represent the demographics of the North Colorado secession movement.

But interest came too from more than a dozen other Colorado counties, covering more than half the state’s land area, and even a couple counties in neighboring Kansas to the east and Nebraska to the northeast.  Interest was expressed in southeastern Wyoming as well (all reported at the time in this blog).  In fact, the North Colorado movement is only the most serious of numerous suggestions made over the years to create some kind of new state in the eastern Colorado area where the state meets up with rural parts of Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.  West Kansas, Kansorado, Kansahoma, and even CoKaNe (i.e., parts of Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska)—yes, pronounced like cocaine—are all names that have been tossed around.

A more seriously proposed North Colorado flag

The name New Colorado has also been proposed for this year’s 51-state movement, and perhaps that name is destined to replace North Colorado, since the configuration of secessionist-voting counties now appears less northeasterly oriented and more easterly oriented than originally conceived.  Nor is the movement likely to go away.  Despite the six counties that voted no, those defeats were surprisingly narrow, and this has definitely been the most well-organized and high-profile state secession movement since 1975, when Michigan’s legislature came one vote shy of approving a proposal to hive off the state’s rural, conservative Upper Peninsula as the State of Superior (or Superiorland, or Ontonagan) (which some want to include northern Wisconsin as well).  North Colorado separatism inspired conservative regions in blue or blue-trending states like California and Oregon (the State of Jefferson), Maryland (Western Maryland), and New York (West New York) to contemplate secession too.  And Tuesday’s electoral showing is likely to get heartlanders thinking harder about partition in places where it has already been suggested in the past, such as “South California,” Florida, Virginia, Illinois, Washington, Nevada, and elsewhere.

As a movement, it is not going away.  In Colorado, rural conservative forces had already, even before this week’s vote, been thinking of other ways to increase their political participation, such as turning the Colorado legislature’s upper chamber into one where counties had equal representation irrespective of population.  This would in effect make Colorado into a federation of counties—something that to my knowledge has never been implemented at the state level, where upper and lower chambers differ in their structure mainly in the size of representative districts (but if any readers know of other historical examples of such proposals I would be grateful).

Birthplace of the North Colorado rebellion

And last month in northern California, where the decades-old but suddenly jump-started State of Jefferson movement has been re-energized (as reported on regularly in this blog), there is a new proposal to sidestep the requirement for federal congressional approval of new states by creating a sort of Jefferson “autonomous region” free of state laws and taxes and with its own courts, police, and social services (or, rather, lack of social services, since that seems to be what Jeffersonians prefer).  You know, that sounds like nothing so much as an Indian reservation.  Maybe, in the increasingly brown United States, white people’s reservations are the future.  North Colorado, be careful what you wish for.

Would North Colorado be better off as an autonomous Caucasian Reservation?

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Hispanics and African-Americans “Remember the Alamo” Differently—at Least Some of Them Do

The Texas Nationalist Movement (T.N.M.), an organization which would like the United States’ second-largest state to secede, held its first annual Texas Independence Conference in the former Republic of Texas capital of Washington-on-the-Brazos over the November 3-4 weekend, just before the national (i.e., United States) election.  Recently, I reported in this blog that the T.N.M. was prepared to send out vigilantes to interfere with monitoring of Texas polling places by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (O.S.C.E.).  At this first conclave, however, things were more introspective.  Attendees heard, among other messages, that Texan separatists need to start appealing to non-whites.

An image from the T.N.M. website

Apostle Claver Kamau-Imani, a prominent African-American conservative from Houston, told the assembled that right-wing groups such as the T.N.M. need to start recruiting voters of color, explaining, “You wonder why the socialists keep pouring millions and millions of dollars into Texas even though they don’t win a lot of elections?  That’s because the demographics are changing.  Eventually they are going to turn Texas blue.  We’re going to have to recognize that we have ourselves a demographic crisis.  Here’s the good news: voters of color share our values.  ...  When it comes to taxation, border security, protecting the lives of the unborn, they agree with us on all those points” (they? us? Kamau-Imani’s pronouns are tipping his hand a bit here).  “They have nothing in common,” he went on, “with a liberal, a socialist, a communist, a fascist.”

Apostle Claver Kamau-Imani addresses Texas separatists

What Kamau-Imani fails to note is that there are some “values” that Americans of color tend not to share with his nearly all-white audience, such as the nostalgia for slavery and segregation that created and continues to energize Southern and Texan secessionism—and the thinly-veiled racism that drives right-wing extremists like the T.N.M. to brand Barack Obama, absurdly, a “communist” and a “fascist.”

Kamau-Imani, an evangelical Christian and founder of the political action committee (PAC) RagingElephants.org, gained notoriety last year when, at a campaign rally for the dim-witted pizza mogul Herman Cain, he called the Democratic Party the party of the Ku Klux Klan.

Meanwhile, after Obama’s reelection on November 6th, the T.N.M.’s president, Daniel Miller, announced on his website, “This presidential election serves as a clear signal from the rest of the Union to Texas—we do not care for your right of local self-government and we do not share your values.”  The organization—based in Nederland, in southeastern Texas, between Port Arthur and Beaumont, and boasting a support base of a quarter-million (surely exaggerated)—continues to petition Texas’s legislature to consider secession. There is also a movement online to draft the action-film star Chuck Norris to be Texas’s first president (he was born in Oklahoma, but never mind).

After Sonny Bono and Arnold Schwarzenegger, nothing seems ridiculous anymore.

He has every right to argue and struggle for the America that he wants, but Kamau-Imani should not be surprised if Texas’s Latinos and African-Americans remember the Alamo a little differently from the intolerant, gun-happy vigilantes that make up the Texas Nationalist Movement.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  (That is shorter than the previous working title.)  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Okies Call Cops on Indians with “Tomahawks”—or Sacred Eagle Staff as It Turns Out

Wild-west fantasies die hard among the ignorant.

Residents of Kay County, Oklahoma, called police September 5th in alarm over Native Americans “running down the road with weapons and tomahawks.”  Police arrived, drew firearms, and handcuffed a citizen of the Mohawk Nation who was running with a sacred eagle staff as part of a Peace and Dignity Journey marathon run, held for Native and non-Native participants alike.

Apparently residents had phoned police because they were concerned about a recent rash of break-ins—because of course we all know that whenever American Indians decide to break into a house and steal things, they first run through the center of town in a large group, in full ceremonial regalia, carrying sacred eagle staffs.  A local Indian newspaper called the incident “typical of the type of ‘law enforcement’ our indigenous citizens endure in Oklahoma.”

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]