Akinyele Umoja

Akinyele Umoja (born 1954) is an American educator and author who specializes in African-American studies. As an activist, he is a founding member of the New Afrikan People's Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. In April 2013, New York University Press published Umoja's book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Currently, he is a Professor and Department Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU).

Early life and education Akinyele Omowale Umoja was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1954, and spent much of his childhood in Compton, California. He graduated from high school in 1972. After beginning to attend UCLA in 1972, as a freshman, he began to write for the student newspaper NOMMO and also joined the Muhammad Ahmad (Max Stanford) Defense Committee (MADC). Umoja has since represented both organizations nationally and in international forums in the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. A review in The Clarion-Ledger in 2015 described the book as following "confrontations in communities across the state through the end of the 1970s, demonstrating how black Mississippians were ultimately able to overcome intimidation by mainstream society, defeat legal segregation, and claim a measure of political control of their state." He was honored for the book in 2014 in Oakland.

Umoja has been a contributor to commercial and popular documentaries on black history. Umoja was a featured commentator on the American Gangster episode "Dr. Mutulu Shakur", which aired on November 8, 2008. He appeared in Bastards of the Party (2006) and Freedom Archives’ Cointelpro 101 (2010).

In recent years, he supported movements in Guyana and Haiti, and, in August 2010, he led a Black August delegation of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement to Haiti to investigate conditions after a recent earthquake. In 2014, he offered tribute to his late friend, Chokwe Lumumba, at the mayor's funeral in Jackson, Mississippi.

Awards and recognition He earned the Patricia Harris Fellowship from 1990 until 1993, and, in 1994, he was named in Who’s Who in America’s Teachers. In 1995, he was an honorary member of the National Golden Key Honor Society.

Publications We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

Film appearances 2008: American Gangster episode "Dr. Mutulu Shakur" — featured commentator 2006: Bastards of the Party, directed by Cle "Bone" Sloan 2010: Cointelpro 101 by Freedom Archives