Civil rights & activism / Law / Politics
Chokwe Lumumba
1947–2014 · human rights lawyer, Black nationalist activist, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi
Detroit-born lawyer and Republic of New Afrika leader who practiced civil rights law in Detroit before moving to Mississippi, where he became mayor of Jackson.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Jackson, Mississippi
aged 66- Birth name
- Edwin Finley Taliaferro
- Detroit years
- 1947–1988
- Field
- Civil rights & activism, Law, Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Edwin Finley Taliaferro was born in Detroit in 1947, the second of eight children of parents who had come north in the Great Migration from Kansas and Alabama. At Kalamazoo College he organized a Black United Front for African American studies, and in 1969 he took the name Chokwe Lumumba, after a Central African people who resisted slavery and the assassinated Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. He joined the Republic of New Afrika, a Black separatist movement founded in Detroit in 1968, and in 1971 was elected its second vice president. Back home he graduated first in his class from Wayne State University Law School in 1975, founded the Malcolm X Center, worked as a staff attorney in the Detroit Public Defenders Office and in 1978 opened his own law firm. In 1988 he moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where he was elected to the city council and in 2013 as mayor. He died in office in 2014. Part of Warren Avenue at Wayne State is named Chokwe Lumumba Avenue.
Highlights
- Born in Detroit in 1947; took the name Chokwe Lumumba in 1969
- Second vice president of the Republic of New Afrika (1971)
- Graduated first in his class from Wayne State Law School in 1975
- Elected mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, in 2013
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Memorial
Chokwe Lumumba Avenue (Warren Avenue)
Stretch of Warren Avenue on the Wayne State University campus, where he studied law, honorarily named Chokwe Lumumba Ave.