Imari Obadele

Imari Obadele was born Richard Bullock Henry in Philadelphia. With his brother Milton (Gaidi Obadele) co-founded the Republic of New Afrika in Detroit in 1968 and became its first elected president of the Provisional Government. Murder charges from the 1971 Jackson raid were dropped (he was not at the scene). In 1973 federal court convicted him of conspiracy to assault a federal officer; sentenced to 12 years, served ~5-7. Paroled 1980. Earned PhD in political science from Temple University 1985; taught at Prairie View A&M and other HBCUs. Filed 1977 FOIA suit that exposed FBI COINTELPRO targeting of RNA. Founded N'COBRA (1987). Died 2010 of stroke in Atlanta, age 79. Imari Obadele was a co-founder of the Malcolm X Society, an advocate for reparations, and the president of Republic of New Afrika (RNA), a Black separatist group advocating for the liberation of Black people in America. In 1971, police and FBI agents raided an RNA house in Jackson, MS, with warrants to arrest four men. One policeman was killed and an FBI agent was wounded in an ensuing shoot-out. Obadele was not in the house but police arrested him nearby and charged him with murder. After seventeen months in prison, he was released, and the charge was dropped. However, federal authorities unfairly targeted Obadele and arrested him again, charging him with conspiracy to assault a Federal officer. Witnesses at the trial testified that they heard Obadele, on an earlier occasion, tell the policeman who was slain in the shoot-out that he would "be ready" for the police if they came to the RNA house. Obadele was convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison, ultimately serving five. He filed a civil suit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

which resulted in the release of government documents confirming that the RNA had been targeted for subversion by the covert and often illegal Counter Intelligence Program of the FBI. After prison, Obadele went on to earn a PhD in political science from Temple University. He became a professor at Prairie View A&M University. Later, in 1987, Obadele and Chokwe Lumumba formed the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA), an organization dedicated to seeking financial compensation for the descendants of former slaves in the United States.

In his June 1974 first-person account, Obadele describes arrest at the RNA office on August 18, 1971, his April 1973 bail release after nearly twenty months, a twelve-year federal sentence and subsequent freedom on appeal bond. These are separate custody and liberty phases. His account says state charges could still be tried at that point; it does not establish a later final disposition or continuous1971–1980 imprisonment. The narrative is a participant’s account of the RNA-11 prosecutions, and its political assessments are attributed to its author. Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41065737#page=2