Morehouse Police Beat Up Civil Rights Leader!

Willie Mukasa Ricks: Originator of the Black Power slogan was recently assaulted by the Morehouse College Police

For More Information Just Click on the Following URL: http://www.assatashakur.org/1205.htm

Plan of Action: Contact Morehouse College and Morehouse Police Department and demand that an act of police brutality perpetrated against civil rights icon Mukasa Dada (Willie Ricks) be corrected and that he be compensated for his injuries. Purpose of Action: Rectify an act of politice brutality against Mukasa Dada, formerly named Willie Ricks, creator of the term "Black Power" and pioneering civil rights activist.

Morehouse police beat up Civil Rights Leader and Elder, Mukasa Dada former known as Willie Ricks of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), on Thursday, November 10, 2005 at Morehouse College. As a Field Secretary for SNCC and overall freedom fighter for Black people in general, we feel this attack by Morehouse Police is dishonorable, appallingly contradictory, and a slap in the face to all Black Leadership past, present, and future. Mukasa Dada’s history in the civil rights movement, Black power movement, and all Black progressive movements is impeccable.

Not only did Mukasa Dada popularized the chant of “Black Power” but he is highly spoken of by other civil rights leaders.

Who Is Mukasa Dada?
Civil Rights Leader, Elder, Father, Organizer, Orator Field Secretary of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
“The fiery orator of SNCC” -
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here
“Willie Ricks must rank as one of those unknown heroes who captured the mood of history.
In calling for Black Power, he caught the essence of the spirit, moving Black people in the United States and around the world who were poor, Black, and without power”
- James Forman of SNCC
Popularized of the chant, “Black Power” For more information about Mukasa Dada: http://assatashakur.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3867

Participate
What You Should Do Now:
1. Call Morehouse Police: 1-404-215-2666 Call Morehouse President, Dr. Massey: 1-404-215-2645 Call Morehouse Public Relations: 1-404-614-3788
2. Fax Letters to Morehouse College #1: 1-404-659-6536 Fax Letters to Morehouse College #2: 1-404-215-272
3. Write Dr. Walter E. Massey Morehouse College 830 Westview Drive, S.W. Atlanta, GA 30314 Tell Dr. Massey that he should guarantee the safety of people that frequent Morehouse and that he should honor the contributions of Mukasa Dada (Willie Ricks) to the Civil Rights Movement, by investigating the allegations of police brutality on Morehouse's campus.

Discuss Current Action

Goals & Outcomes
Goals:
Fire involved officers (officer C. Cox and others)
Public written apology
All charges dropped
Restitution for Mukasa Dada and his family for medical services and humiliation

Outcomes
Police Department notified that acts of brutality must be punished.
Public awareness of police brutality will be heightened.
Public will know that police often use false arrest to hide their own criminal intent.
Mukasa Dada will receive financial restitution.

Mukasa Ricks is one of the greatest of all activists produced by the turbulent 1960s in the Southern portion of the United States.

His activities have carried him all over this country and throughout the African World in an effort to eliminate the misery and suffering that peoples of African descent have been subjected to ever since the slave trade depopulated Africa of million of its sons and daughters. As the Field Secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Ricks organized countless sit- ins, marches, demonstrations, and boycotts—all of which ere instrumental in destroying the overt forms of Jim Crow and racial oppression that were so prevalent in the United States less than thirty years ago.

Mukasa Ricks was introduced to the Civil Rights Movement in 1960 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the age of 17. For two years he was active in Chattanooga while working with the local NAACP chapter in the sit-in movement. Quickly he became a hero in the African American community and as a result, persons in the white community made attempts on his life and the lives of his family members. Cars were burned in their yard and their neighbors were harassed.

In 1961, Ricks was contacted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to help voter registration in Chattanooga. Speaking the language of the rural African American community, he became one of the South’s most powerful organizer’s. Ricks continued organizing in Chattanooga until he was asked to come to Georgia by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1962. As a result he became a part of SNCC’s first Direct Action Program in Albany, Georgia where he first began to build a long-term working relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr. Ricks continued organizing for SNCC in Georgia, and then in Alabama, Mississippi and throughout the South. While organizing in Mississippi in 1964, he helped to build the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) along with Fannie Lou Hamer and others.

Subsequently, Ricks returned to Alabama and helped to organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. This organization became known as the Black Panther Party and was the first group inside the movement to defend themselves with guns. By this time, Ricks, who was speaking on the same platforms with Dr. King and other important figures, had become one of the leading organizers and speakers for SNCC in particular and the movement in general.

Having participated in hundreds of sit-ins, stand-ins, demonstrations, pickets and marches, Ricks paid the price by being jailed, beaten, bitten by dogs and shot. While organizing once in Americus, Georgia, he was shot at by the police which resulted in him being gazed and left with a scare he still has today. In January of 1966, Mukasa was a key organizer in Tuskegee, Alabama where Sammy Young Jr. was shot in the head with a shotgun for using a “White Only” toilet.

During this same year, SNCC put Ricks in charge of organizing students under what was called Campus Traveler’s Program. Ricks also traveled extensively with Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and spoke in the same platforms with him wherever he spoke. In fact, when Ture stepped down as the Chairman of SNCC, Ricks was the leading candidate to replace him but chose to work more quietly in the background. Consequently, when H. Rap Brown was selected as the Chairman of SNCC, Ricks was appointed to travel with Brown in order to show him the ropes. In February of 1968, when over sixty-nine students were shot in the Orangeburg massacre at South Carolina State College, Ricks was one of the key organizers.

Rick’s organizing activities were so effective that the state of Georgia declared him to be one of the ten most dangerous persons in the state in 1973. As a result the police were requested not to approach his house by themselves but, instead, to signal “39” which meant “Police in Stress, Need Help.” It has been documented that they were given orders to shoot to kill! Ricks has remained active ever since he first stated out in Chattanooga in 1960. He is one of the most committed activists and charismatic speakers around. The experiences he shares and the message he gives is powerful and needs to be heard by all.

Suggested Lecture Topics ·From Civil Rights, To Black Power, To Pan- Africanism
·Pan-Africanism ·Organizing For Black Power and Pan-Aricanism
·The Revolutionary Potential of Students
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"How dare they call us terrorists when we were being terrorized? Terror was a constant part of my life....We lived under police terror." "I realized that I was connected to Africa."
-Sister Queen Assata Shakur Forward Ever, Backwards Never!