Chokwe Lumumba
Former Ward 2 Councilman and Chokwe Lumumba, 65, is the new mayor of Jackson, Miss., winning the general election with 87 percent of the vote, reports Fight Back! News.
As previously reported by NewsOne, Lumumba served four years on the Jackson City Council before running for mayor. He spent part of the ’70s and ’80s as vice-president of the Republic of New Afrika, an organization which advocated for “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States and reparations for slavery.
“The provisional government of Republic of New Afrika was always a group that believed in human rights for human beings,” Lumumba told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “I think it has been miscast in many ways. It has never been any kind of racist group or ‘hate white’ group in any way…. It was a group which was fighting for human rights for black people in this country and at the same time supporting the human rights around the globe.”
As an attorney, Lumumba has represented legendary activist, poet, actor and Hip-Hop artist Tupac Shakur in several cases, and his godmother, Assata Shakur, whom Lumumba calls a “Black Panther heroine.”
Assata, formerly Joanne Chesimard, was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army.
h/t John P
I live in a Jackson suburb….we anticipate real estate values in the northern and eastern suburbs to rise over the short term, uncertain about long term future. This man is an older less polished clone of Obama.
Jackson is my hometown -- and it gives me great shame to see what they have done to this once beautiful southern city…it will surely be the Detroit of the south within months
tmedlin, I thought Birmingham, AL already had the title Detroit of the South!
On topic, 87% ? Is that right?
well, I think it’s a Mercedes plant in Alabama -- closer to Tuscaloosa than Birmingham…Nissan is in the Jackson area. Jackson is pretty much gone -- shootings nightly, just pathetic…I only drive thru (around) Birmingham to get to Jackson. I would say that it’s most likely that both places have experience white flight to the suburbs.