Walter Fauntroy

Template:TOCnestleft Walter Fauntroy

Founding Members CBC

The following were founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus:

• Shirley Chisholm
• William Lacy Clay, Sr.
• George W. Collins
• John Conyers
• Ron Dellums
• Charles Diggs
• Augustus Hawkins
• Ralph Metcalfe
• Parren Mitchell
• Robert Nix
• Charles B. Rangel
• Louis Stokes
• Walter Fauntroy, Washington D.C. delegate

Nicaragua conference

The Communist Party USA controlled U.S. Peace Council organized a National Conference on Nicaragua in 1979, along with several other radical groups, to discuss a strategy to ensure that the Sandinistas took control.

Three Congressmen and two Senators lent support to this Conference: Ron Dellums, Tom Harkin, and Walter Fauntroy in the House and Mark Hatfield and Edward Kennedy in the Senate.

Free South Africa Movement

What was called the Free South Africa Movement began on Thanksgiving Day 1984, when then-U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry, TransAfrica Forum executive director Randall Robinson, then-D.C. Congressman Walter Fauntroy and current-D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (then a law professor at Georgetown University), were granted a meeting at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The group called for an end to apartheid and the release of all political prisoners in South Africa. When their demands were ignored, the activists staged a sit-in at the South African embassy located on Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.

All but Norton were arrested for trespassing and their actions made national, then international news.

“There were already protests before, but no one got any momentum,” Berry recalls. “We wanted to get arrested. And we tried to get people lined up to get arrested the next day.”

They were arrested the next day, the day after that and the following day. In fact, every day for a year, the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM) held demonstrations at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

1987 Rainbow conference/Board

At the 1987 National Rainbow convention in Raleigh North Carolina, a new board was elected, which included Rep. Walter Fauntroy.

National Dialogue on the Sudan

In Memory of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)

A National Dialogue on the Sudan

Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, BLDG. 46 - MAIN AUDITORIUM

Among the Invited Speakers

• Sheikh Muhammad Nur Abdullah, Islamic Society of North America
• US Representative Elijah Cummings, Congressional Black Caucus
• Ambassador Khidir H. Ahmed, Embassy of the Republic of Sudan
• Imam Khalid Fattah Griggs, Journalist and Community Activist
• Akbar Muhammad, International Representative of the Nation Of Islam
• Rev. Walter Fauntroy [or] Joe Madison, Sudan Campaign
• Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Muslim Alliance of North America
• Rev. Graylan Hagler, Plymouth Congregational Church
• Dr. Mustafa Osman Isma’il, Sudanese Foreign Minister
• John Garang, Vice President of the Republic of Sudan *
• Dora Muhammad, Editor The Final Call Newspaper
• Sheikh Muhammad Shareef, The Sankore Institute
• Rev. Willie Wilson, Union Temple Baptist Church
• Bill Reed, The Coalition To Give Peace A Chance
• Omar Ismail, Darfur Peace And Development
• Imam Zaid Shakir, The Zaytuna Institute
• US Representative Donald Payne, (D-NJ)
• Damu Smith, Black Voices For Peace
• Bill Fletcher, TransAfrica Forum

The National Conference/Dialogue on the Sudan will take place (Feb 27th), culminating a week long observance for an Afro-American Muslim leader who was (and still is) most deserving.

We expect to be joined by a host of local grass-roots community leaders and activists (and possibly a few from outside the Washington area) for the press conference. Our hope is that we will also be joined by leaders from some of our “major Muslim organizations” (i.e., CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MPAC, etc), as this will be an opportunity for us to make a unified statement of concern and support for the Sudan and its people – particularly in light of the crisis in Darfur.

The objective will be threefold: (a) enlightened dialogue on the crisis in Sudan; (b) education for the community; (c) and a far more constructive engagement of African Americans on this issue than what we’ve seen thus far.

This conference is being sponsored by The Committee for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in the Sudan (a project of The Peace And Justice Foundation).

Ride to Revive Section 5

A group of sixty community activists from Alabama went to Washington, D. C. in six vans from Sunday to Tuesday (June 24-27, 2017) to support the Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA), HR 2948, introduced last week by Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell.

The bill was introduced on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Shelby vs, Holder decision, which gutted Sections 4 and 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The bill also carefully defines what constitutes a voting rights violation and which election changes must be submitted for pre-clearance. Congresswoman Terri Sewell said, “The VRAA is an advancement bill, it advances voting rights throughout the country. Under this bill, all eleven states that were part of the Confederacy, including Alabama, as well as other political subdivisions around the nation and on tribal lands would be covered and subject to the pre-clearance provisions.”

The VRAA would classify voting changes such as strict voter photo identification requirements, and voter registration requirements to be reviewed and possibly overturned if they were deemed to be more stringent than the requirements in Section 303b of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.The VRAA, HR 2948, has 182 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. They are all Democrats. And the companion legislation S.1490 in the Senate has 46 co-sponsors, also all Democrats, so far.

On Tuesday morning, the Alabama group joined by other activists in Washington from the Rural Coalition, Food and Water Watch, National Family Farm Coalition and other groups had a rally and press conference on the Capitol grounds facing the Cannon House Office Building on Independence Avenue and First Street NE.

The rally had many chants supporting the revival of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act along with civil rights freedom songs. Several Congresspersons, including Terri Sewell, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, Marc Veasey of Dallas, Texas and Katherine Clark of Massachusetts addressed the rally. Congressman John Lewis drove by the rally on Independence Avenue and saluted the crowd. On Monday night, the group had a meeting at Howard University Law School, which was addressed by several civil rights veterans, including former D. C. Congressman Walter Fauntroy, Viola Bradford, who wrote for the Southern Courier newspaper in Montgomery, Antonio Harrison, a former Alabama State Senator, who lives and works in D. C. Professor Ardua of the Law School spoke on the need for reparations to address the continuing impact of slavery on Black people.

The Ride to Revive Section 5 was sponsored by the SOS Coalition for Justice and Democracy, Alabama New South Coalition and other local groups in Alabama.

References

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