Freeing the People, Freeing the Land

The currents of modern American intellectual history have, in recent years, expanded to include a wide range of voices once ignored by the field. As more voices are being excavated by historians, we would do well to think about what those voices are trying to tell us today. Such is the case with the subjects of Edward Onaci’s book, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. The quest for land and justice by the members of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) organization forms the heart of Edward Onaci’s monograph. Their journey intersects with elements of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter movements in ways that should make us think deeper about the intellectual, cultural, and social contours of the longer Black Freedom movement.

Onaci’s argument is forceful in pushing for the need to study the RNA and other radical Black organizations during and after the Black Power Movement’s heyday. For him, what made the RNA unique was that “a dialectical and reciprocal relationship bound New Afrikan activists, their movement and its concomitant ideas, and the impact of their revolutionary work” (5). That the RNA began in the late 1960s is important to Onaci’s story, but he carries the framework of their goal of a Black nation-state within the United States—made up of the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—up to the present day. This is a unique framework, and allows Onaci to consider the RNA’s interaction with not just civil rights and Black Power groups, but organizations such as the Nation of Islam and the activists of the 1980s and 1990s who lived in the shadow of the better-remembered movements.

The methodology and structure of Free the Land are among the standout elements of Onaci’s book. He uses the concept of “lifestyle politics,” one championed by political scientist W. Lance Bennett, to investigate how the personal was political for so many members of the RNA. Ideas such as changing one’s name to a more African or Arabic one—to get closer to one’s ancestral roots—were not simply the function of a harmless cultural politics. Instead, they were part and parcel of the methods used by members of the RNA to rebuild their own identities, and in the process, forge a new destiny for themselves and other peoples of African (or in their spelling, Afrikan) descent.

For the members of the RNA, the pursuit of a new nation was paramount. But the way to get there often included self-reflection and work with other organizations. Again, this influences the structure of the book; as Onaci points out, “Their childhood and early adult experiences guided their decisions to become involved with social movement activism” (8). Thus, the book is filled with fascinating biographical sketches of members of the RNA whose activism took them across the United States and in alliances—and debates—with other radical organizations such as the Black Panther Party.

The RNA’s critique of “paper-citizenship” is an important lesson that Onaci describes in Chapter 2. It is worth elaborating on here, because it crystallizes their ideology and, at the same time, should force everyone to consider the current stakes of the Black Lives Matter movement. The idea of “paper-citizens” is linked back to the United States Constitution: the establishment of the Fourteenth Amendment was not a boon for Black Americans, and instead showed that they were a “people who were deprived of the chance to decide where to place their political consent” (44). New Afrikans saw themselves as people seeking a country; they had no need for what they saw as the false trappings of American citizenship.

Free the Land extends this alienation from American society throughout the book. The various chapters deal with the ways in which New Afrikans struggled to create for themselves a new society within the United States, always keeping their eyes on the goal of a separate nation-state within North America. Changing names, changing ideas of citizenship, even debating what religious beliefs were best suited for New Afrikans—these attempts to craft new identities and new ideologies bear additional scrutiny by historians. Free the Land, above all, offers a fresh and unique model for thinking about intellectual histories of organizations and groups that aren’t quite as well known as their larger counterparts. As we grapple with the explosion in books about Black Nationalism and Black Power, Free the Land offers a way to think about how those ideas have been re-crafted and argued since 1970.