Philadelphia Apartment Building Claimed as Sovereign “Moorish” Territory on 30th Anniversary of MOVE Bombing

A new Black nationalist micronation in Philadelphia?

The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has never healed from the horrific events of May 1985, when police helicopters bombed an urban compound rented by the radical Black nationalist organization MOVE and the mayor ordered firefighters to stand aside while 65 homes burned to the ground, after a siege followed police attempts to evict the group.  MOVE, a (heavily armed) communitarian, back-to-nature movement, had been branded a terrorist organization linked to the killing of a police officer seven years earlier, though in the 1985 eviction case had done little more than torment neighbors with political diatribes delivered through bullhorns.  Last month, media and activists revisited the MOVE siege on its thirtieth anniversary, which came amid a new civil-rights movement across the United States focusing on police brutality against African-Americans.

How Philadelphia police handled an eviction complaint in 1985.

It was in this climate that four African-American activists facing eviction from another Philadelphia apartment building invoked Black nationalism last week and tried to turn a minor court hearing into an international incident.  They say the entire building is a sovereign territory, not part of the United States.

A tenant in the latest dispute being arrested last month

At the June 2nd hearing addressing defiance of an eviction order by the landlord, Francine Beyer, the four tenants of the apartment at 13th and Hamilton identified themselves as “Aboriginal Indigenous Moorish Americans,” refusing to recognize the court’s right to call them or its authority over the building, which they regard as “theirs by birthright,” according to the Philadelphia Daily News, and not subject to U.S., state, or municipal law.

Location of the apartment building on 13th and Hamilton in Philadelphia being claimed as a separate nation.

“Are you aware that the people who you have falsely called defendants,” one defendant, Nanye Amil El (a.k.a. 45-year-old Dante Morris), wearing a maroon fez cap, asked Judge David C. Shuter, “are actually heirs to this land?”  Another defendant, 65-year-old Delilah Passe, waved what the press described as a Moorish flag but was asked to put it away lest it be used as a weapon.  (If a reader can tell me which flag was used, I would be grateful.)

This (in center) may or may not be an example of the type of Moorish flag
displayed by defendants in court last week in Philadelphia.

At this point, students of the history of Black nationalism and readers of this blog will recognize the names and terminology of the tenants as indications that they are part of the Moorish Science Temple movement.  This precursor to modern Black nationalism 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 as well as the Nation of Islam’s founder, Elijah Muhammad, among others.  Many Moorish activists claim that African-Americans are actually African-featured “Israelites.”  This is known as 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.

Historic photo of Moorish Science Temple of America members

Other offshoots of the group that have been reported on in this blog include the Washitaw Nation in Oklahoma and elsewhere (see an article from this blog) (whose crown is currently claimed by a Trenton, New Jersey, eccentric calling himself “Crown Prince Emperor El Bey Bigbay Bagby-Badger” (see article), the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors (whose 500-acre compound Tama-Re, in Georgia, was demolished by authorities in 2005), and a new splinter group called the United Nuwaupian Nation (see article). Yet another group, the Moorish Divine and National Movement of the World, includes among its followers Pilar Sanders, the estranged wife of the retired football star Deion Sanders, who in court last month tried to void a prenuptial agreement which would cost her millions by saying that she now calls herself Pilar Biggers Sanders Love El-Dey and answers only to the laws of the “Moroccan Empire.”

Moorish Science follower Pilar Sanders as depicted in a graphic by the celebrity gossip website TMZ

One reporter contacted Brother A. Kinard-Bey, of the largest and oldest Moorish group, the Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc., in Washington, D.C., who called the four Philadelphia tenants “impostors” and said his group is the only real Moorish Temple in the U.S.  He added, “We’re seeing a number of people claiming to be of our temple who want to know how to naturalize or how to gain to their sovereignty.  Those are not lessons that the Moorish Science Temple of America teaches.”

Noble Drew Ali, founder of the Moorish Science Temple movement

Indeed, while Moorish Science traditionally is communal and leftish in its orientation, new offshoots like the Washitaw Nation are borrowing concepts and legal strategies from the “individual sovereignty” movement more popular among alienated right-wing white American males.  One of the tenant activists in Philadelphia this month, 38-year-old Rebecca Lyn Harmon, who asked to be referred to as R. Lynn Hatshepsut Ma’atKare El, is also an attorney (under yet a third name, Rhashea Lynn Harmon), who has talked of running for mayor of Philadelphia on the Republican Party ticket.

R. Lynn Hatshepsut Ma’atKare El (a.k.a. Rebecca Harmon),
a defendant in the current eviction case

A formal arraignment will be held for the four tenants on June 23rd.

American and Moroccan flags on display at a charity event hosted by a separate Moorish group in Philadelphia recently.  Note the 48-star flag.

[You can read more about many of these and 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 special announcement for more information on the book.]

Who Murdered Chokwe Lumumba? Farrakhan, Others See Foul Play in Death of ’60s New Afrika Radical Turned Mississippi Mayor

The specter of assassination has been raised in the death on February 25th of Chokwe Lumumba, the 1960s-era Black separatist militant who became mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, in the last year of his life.  (See the report on his death from this blog.)

On March 2nd it was reported that the supervisor of Hinds County, Mississippi, Kenny Stokes, says he believes Lumumba was murdered and wants an autopsy performed.  (Jackson is the seat of Hinds County as well as the state capital.)  At a local event, Stokes stated publicly, “We gonna ask a question: who killed the mayor?  We’d feel a lot better if there was an autopsy.  First they say it’s not a heart attack and not a stroke, then what was it?  You don’t just die like that and you’re healthy.”  Afterward, he told a reporter, “So many of us feel, throughout the city of Jackson, that the mayor was murdered.  I’m not going to sugar coat it.”  (Watch a video of Stokes’s statements here.)

Sharon Grisham-Stewart, the Hinds County coroner, had declared Lumumba’s death to be from natural causes, though would not elaborate for reasons of privacy.  Previously, the mayor, who was 66 when he died, had battled cancer, but Stokes emphasizes what he calls conflicting statements from authorities and the fact that Lumumba was feeling fine shortly before his death.

Jackson police say they have seen no cause to investigate any possible foul play.  But Stokes’s suspicions are echoed by Louis Farrakhan, leader and “prophet” of the Nation of Islam (N.O.I.), who said he would pay for an autopsy.  Farrakhan stated during his annual Savior’s Day address, “Chokwe, I’ve known him for nearly 40 years.  ...  And he died under circumstances that we don’t know what it was.  He became the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.  And any of you who know Mississippi and know Jackson—a Black man being mayor and trying to do right by all the people is not a mayor that those people want.  He was in the hospital.  He was on the phone doing mayoral business.  He was laughing.  He was in good spirits and within a few hours, he was dead.  ... Medical examiners—we can’t trust them when our babies are dead and they make it seem as if it were under ‘natural circumstances.’  They lie to protect the government.  We have to have our own independent pathologists and whatnot to look after us, so I understand they’re trying to raise the money.  I told them don’t even waste time, call me.  I will give you whatever it takes to get our own forensic specialist to go in and make sure that our brother died under the right circumstances.”

Louis Farrakhan

The Nation of Islam is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.) as a hate group.  Farrakhan, who believes that he has been contacted by extraterrestrials and that whites and Jews were created in a breeding experiment by a Black mad scientist in ancient Greece, has in the past praised Adolf Hitler at length, called Judaism a “gutter religion,” and asserted that crack cocaine was invented by the federal government and introduced into the ghettoes in the 1980s as a direct response to his own popularity.  He also believes in an active secret plot to recruit a Muslim to assassinate President Barack Obama.

The five states of the proposed Republic of New Afrika

Lumumba, who was born Edwin Finley Talafierro in Detroit, Michigan, served as minister of justice in the provisional government of the Republic of New Afrika (R.N.A.), a radical Black nationalist group which aimed to create a separate nation-state for African-Americans out of five states in the Deep South.  The group (which did not share N.O.I.’s anti-Semitism or other extreme views) was targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), but Lumumba was absent from the heavily-armed R.N.A. “government” headquarters in Jackson when they were raided by the authorities in 1971 and so escaped prosecution, unlike his comrades.  Later, he became a prominent civil-rights attorney, whose clients included the rapper Tupac Shakur.

Flag of the Republic of New Afrika

Lumumba’s son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, and daughter, Rukia Lumumba, seemed to leave open the possibility of murder in their own statement released to the press on March 3rd, but he was careful not to echo Stokes’s air of certainty.  “We know that our father was loved and appreciated by many and a number of people both in Jackson and around the world have inquired into the manner of his death,” the younger Lumumba said.  “At this time, there has been no information provided to the family other than that provided at the time of his death by the doctors.  The family will explore all possible causes of his death.”

Lumumba with his son Chokwe Antar and daughter Rukia when he was elected mayor last year

[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.]

El Salvador Grants Recognition to Kosovo as Haiti Cuts Ties with Sahrawi Republic

It’s been a week of one step forward and one step back for partially recognized states in the Old World trying to solidify diplomatic support in the Americas.  The Republic of El Salvador became the 105th sovereign state to recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo, but the Republic of Haiti surprised observers by revoking its diplomatic recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) (a.k.a. Western Sahara), the former Spanish Sahara mostly occupied by Morocco.

The October 4th announcement on Kosovo came via the Twitter feed of Enver Hoxhaj, the country’s foreign minister, who learned of El Salvador’s decision through the Kosovar embassy in New York.  Kosovo had most recently received recognition from Libya, Grenada, and Thailand.  The former Serbian province, still claimed by the Republic of Serbia, has been steadily gaining diplomatic partners following the signal moment in December 2012 when the Commonwealth of Dominica, a former British colony in the Caribbean, became the 97th United Nations member-state to grant recognition, which pushed Kosovo over the 50% mark (as reported at the time in this blog).

Countries that recognize Kosovo are shown in green.

But Kosovo’s membership in the U.N. General Assembly is still blocked by two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, both for reasons of paranoia about their own internal fissions and Russia for the added reason of an emotional pan-Slavic, and thus pro-Serbian, ideological allegiance.  Currently, Western allies of Kosovo are attempting at least to convince some of the holdouts among Kosovo’s immediate neighbors, in particular Romania and Greece.

In the case of Greece, Kosovo’s secession still brings up ugly memories of the predominantly-Slavic Republic of Macedonia’s emergence from the wreckage of Yugoslavia in 1993.  Athens still points out that Macedonia is historically a culturally-Greek region lying mostly within Greece (Alexander the Great was Macedonian, for example).  Greeks also seem unable to shake memories of the Second World War, following which a new Macedonia within Yugoslavia—with the current republic’s borders—was founded by partisans of a fascist insurgent army which had connived in Nazi-allied Bulgaria’s invasion of Greece and had tried to seat an Aromanian nationalist as voivode (prince) of an independent Slavic state in the Macedonia region that would be a refuge for Greece’s Aromanian minority as well.  (Aromanians speak a language related to Romanian.)  Romania itself, a staunch European Union and NATO member, will probably come around.  (See more detail on Kosovo’s status in my blog article from last year on the subject.)

The dotted line shows the approximate extent of the traditional Greek region of Macedonia.

Other European holdouts include Spain, which has its own internal Basque and Catalan separatist movements, and Slovakia.

Countries that recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic are in green.  Dark grey are those, including Haiti, that have withdrawn recognition over the years.  The S.A.D.R. itself is in red.

A bit less understandable than Kosovo’s successes and setbacks is the recent move by Haiti, announced this week, to withdraw its 2006 recognition of the Sahrawi republic.  The S.A.D.R. claims all of Western Sahara but the “black,” sub-Saharan Sahrawi people are at the mercy of the brutal repression of (Arab) Moroccan occupation forces.  The S.A.D.R., which administers only a sliver of land behind a series of sand berms erected by Morocco, is recognized by 49 countries, only just over a quarter of U.N. member states, including most of Africa and a considerable number of Latin American countries as well—also by the African Union (A.U.).  Haiti follows a few other Caribbean nations in withdrawing membership—mostly as a result of buckling to diplomatic pressure from Morocco, which is something of a diplomatic pariah nation within Africa but which for countries farther afield is a more promising economic partner.

In red is the territory controlled by the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

But in Haiti’s case it is disappointing because of the country’s symbolic role for African anti-colonialists.  In 1804, after a successful slave revolt, Haiti became, in terms of the modern system of nation-states, the second independent modern state in the Americas (after the United States) and the first Black republic anywhere.  In the late 1960s, Haiti was also the only non-African state among the five that recognized the Republic of Biafra before that nation was crushed by a brutal siege by Nigeria.

Haiti symbolizes freedom from colonialism for many sub-Saharan Africans—
but this week not so much.

Pan-African unity is supposed to be a big deal for Haiti.  Perhaps it will before long come to its senses and put ideals before economics and convenience.

[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.]