Akinyele Umoja
Professor Africana Studies- Education
December 1996: Ph.D. Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia Supervising professor: Robin D.G. Kelley, Dissertation topic: “Eye for an Eye: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.”
August 1990: Masters of Arts, Institute of Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
June 1986: Bachelor of Arts, Afro-American Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California.
- Specializations
19th and 20th century African American History
African-American and African Diaspora Social Movements
Black Radical Tradition
African-American Political Thought
African and African derived religions
Research Interests
Civil Rights Movement
Black Power Movement
Black Radical Tradition
Black Nationalism
- Biography
Akinyele Umoja is a Professor of African-American Studies. Umoja is the author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance and the Mississippi Freedom Movement, named the 2014 Anna Julia Cooper/ C.L.R. James Award for the best book in Africana Studies by the National Council of Black Studies. We Will Shoot Back also earned the 2014 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature. He is also co-editor of Greenwood Press Black Power Encyclopedia (2018), which was named on the Reference and User Services Association’s (a division of the American Library Association) 2019 List of Outstanding References for Adults. Umoja also the editor of a special issue of The Black Scholar (2018) on the legacy of his comrade; revolutionary activist, attorney, and late Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, the Honorable Chokwe Lumumba. Umoja’s research has also been featured in several other journals and anthologies.
Professor Umoja is also very engaged in social justice advocacy. Along with his wife Aminata and other comrades, Umoja organized Atlanta’s Malcolm X Festival in 1989, which is now attended by thousands annually. Umoja received acknowledgement from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (1998) and the National Council of Black Studies (2008) for his activism. Due to his civic engagement and scholar-activism, he was inducted into Selma, Alabama’s Hall of Resistance in the Enslavement and Civil War Museum during the annual Bridge Crossing and Jubilee Celebration. Other inductees into the Hall of Resistance include author Sonia Sanchez, and scholar-activists Asa Hilliard, Maulana Karenga, and legendary Hip Hop artist Tupac Shakur.
- Publications
To see all my publications, please visit my Google Scholar page.
Lectures and Seminars
Left of Black with Akinyele Umoja
Faculty Spotlight: with Akinyele Umoja
Akinyele Umoja discusses why he wrote WE WILL SHOOT BACK
Civil Rights History: A Workshop DiscussionPublications
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Settler-Colonialism and New Afrikan Liberation,” in Ness I., Cope Z. (eds), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Basingstroke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-91206-6_78-1
Charles E. Jones & Akinyele O. Umoja, “#BlackLivesMatter: The Black Power Movement through a Hip Hop Pedagogical Lens,” in Stanford and Jones Eds. Higher Learning: Hip Hop in the Ivory Tower. (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 2019), pp. 215-263.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Maroon: Kuwasi Balagoon and the evolution of revolutionary New Afrikan anarchism,” in Kuwasi Balagoon, Karl Kersplebedeb (editor), and Mike Meyer (editor), A Soldier’s Story: Revolutionary Writings by a New Afrikan Anarchist. Third Edition: (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019), 13-45. (reprint)
Akinyele O. Umoja, Karin Stanford, Jasmin Young (editors), Black Power Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2018.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Opening the Way”: Review of Ashley Farmer’s Remaking of Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era, in Journal of Civil and Human Rights, 4, 2 (Fall/ Winter 2018), 90-94.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Matriarch of the Captive African Nation: Reflections of Queen Mother Moore,” Palimpsest, 7, 2. 2018, 177-180.
Akinyele O. Umoja, Special Issue on Chokwe Lumumba, (editor) The Black Scholar, (August 2018)
Akinyele O. Umoja, “‘The People Will Decide’: Chokwe Lumumba, Participatory Democracy and 21st Century Black Power.” The Black Scholar (August 2018)
Akinyele O. Umoja, excerpts from We Will Shoot Back in Chad Williams, Kidada Williams, and Keisha Blain, Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence. (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 2016), 262-268.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Legacy of the Black Panther Party,” in Michael Ferschke, Black Panther. (Hamburg, Germany: Laika Verlag, 2016) (reprint German translation)
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Maroon: Kuwasi Balagoon and the evolution of revolutionary New Afrikan anarchism” Science and Society, 79, 2, (April 2015), 196-220.
Akinyele K. Umoja, “Black Power: The Struggle Continues,” Passing it On: Moving Stories from Activists, 1960-2000. Bloomington, IN: Archway, 2015.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “From One Generation to the Next: Armed Self defense, Revolutionary Nationalism, and the southern Black freedom struggle,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society. 15, 3-4, Fall 2013, 218-240.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “‘Time for Black Men….’: The Deacons for Defense and the Mississippi Movement.” In Ted Ownby (editor), The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. (Oxford, MS: University of Mississippi, 2013), 204-229.
Akinyele O. Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. (New York: New York University, 2013)
Akinyele O. Umoja, “From Malcolm X to Omowale Malik Shabazz: The Transformation and Its Impact on the Black Liberation Struggle” in James Conyers and Andrew Smallwood, Malcolm X: Historical Reader, (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2008).
Akinyele Umoja, in Dan Moore and Michelle Mitchell (ed), “Foreword,” Black Codes in Georgia. (Atlanta, GA: APEX Museum, 2006), vii-viii.
Akinyele Umoja, “Aid to Children of Imprisoned Mothers: An Ethnographic Study,” Leadership for a Changing World, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York, University, (April 2007). http://wagner.nyu.edu/leadership/reports/files/Aid_to_Children.pdf.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “From Dahomey to Haiti: The Vodun Paradigm and Pan-Africanism,” in James Conyers, Reevaluating the Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey: Escapist Fantasy or Relevant Reality. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2006), 257-72.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Legacy of the Black Panther Party,” in Lance J. Jeffries, Black Power in the Belly of the Beast. (University of Illinois, 2006). (reprint)
Charles E. Jones, Patricia Dixon, Akinyele O. Umoja, “Return to the Source: The Role of Service-Learning in Recapturing the Empowerment Mission of African-American Studies,” The Black Scholar, 35, 2 (Summer 2005), 25-36 (reprint)
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Searching for Place: Nationalism, Separatism, and Pan-Africanism,” in Alton Hornsby (editor), Blackwell Companion to African-American History. (2005)
Charles E. Jones, Patricia Dixon, Akinyele O. Umoja, “Return to the Source: The Role of Service-Learning in Recapturing the Empowerment Mission of African-American Studies,”
The Western Journal of Black Studies, 27, 2003.Akinyele O. Umoja, “1964: the Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” Radical History Review, (January 2003).
Akinyele O. Umoja, “From Dahomey to Haiti: The Vodun Paradigm and Pan-Africanism,” International Journal of Africana Studies, 7, 1, (Fall 2002).
Akinyele O. Umoja, “‘We Will Shoot Back’: The Natchez Model and Para-Military Organization in the Mississippi Freedom Movement,” Journal of Black Studies, 32, 3, (January 2002), 267-290.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party,” in Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficus, Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party. (New York: Routledge, 2001), 3-19. (reprint).
Akinyele O. Umoja, review of Enemies of the State by Marilyn Buck, David Gilbert, and Laura Whitehorn in Socialism and Democracy (2000).
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Ballots and Bullets: A Comparative Analysis of Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Black Studies, 29, 4, (March 1999), 558-578.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Legacy of the Black Panther Party,” New Political Science, 21, 2, (June 1999), 131-155.
Akinyele O. Umoja, “Set Our Warriors Free: The Legacy of Political Prisoners and the Black Panther Party,” in Charles E. Jones (editor), The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 417-442.