When she heard Omali Yeshitela speak in 1976, it changed the course of her life, says Penny Hess.
BY SAMANTHA OUIMETTE
NNB Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – For Penny Hess, being a bystander to history was never an option.
Although she was raised in conservative-leaning southern Indiana, Hess drifted increasingly leftward as a teenager and young woman. Then in 1976, she heard a speech by a fiery black activist from St. Petersburg named Omali Yeshitela.
Black people cannot obtain justice without a separate economic and social order, he declared, and white people should show solidarity with his African People’s Socialist Party.
Captivated, Hess signed on. And ever since then she has been a key lieutenant to Yeshitela in speeches and picket lines in St. Petersburg, Oakland, Calif., and countries around the world.
As chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, Hess is charged with bringing awareness of black people’s struggles to those who are not directly involved with them.
“There are a lot of white people who are trying to hang onto a past that is just not there anymore,” said Hess, 69. “But I think there is a real, genuine sector of the white community that wants answers, too, and that wants to have a principled relationship with the African community.
“They don’t want to be seen as the oppressor nation,” she said. “They want to change that relationship.”
Hess has followed Yeshitela since 1976, spending more than 20 years in Oakland, Calif., before moving to St. Petersburg.
Hess, a slender, bespectacled woman, was the oldest of four children in a New Albany, Ind., household that she said focused more on art than politics. But growing up during the civil rights era and coming of age during the Vietnam War had an impact.
“Before I was in high school, my family took a vacation to Mississippi, which was a state that was heavily engulfed in the civil rights movement,” she said. “I learned some things about it, and I certainly agreed with what was going on. It didn’t really hit home with me until Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (in 1968), but those previous experiences fueled my desire to get involved.”
King’s assassination came while Hess was attending Indiana University, where she earned a degree in comparative literature. Although his murder played a role in shaping Hess’ perception of how African-Americans are treated in the United States, she said, it wasn’t until she left the country that her world view dramatically changed.
After graduating from college, Hess moved to Paris for two years of study. It was there when she began to see the United States from the perspective of others, she said, and quickly realized that the country was not as admired as she thought.
While she was in Paris, she got an introduction to what she calls a revolutionary movement. The so-called Paris Peace Accords between the North Vietnamese government and the United States were signed there in January 1973 after five years of negotiations.
Hess said she watched as the negotiations went on, witnessing thousands of people demonstrating in support of what she calls the “Vietnamese revolutionary movement.”
In 1976, she returned to her hometown with a new perspective. Not long after, Yeshitela – then known as Joseph Waller – came to nearby Louisville, Ky., to speak at a YWCA.
“We’re talking about making a revolution, not a war,” Omali Yeshitela once wrote. “A war is a contest between two armies. A revolution is a contest between two social systems.”
Yeshitela had grown up in St. Petersburg and become a prominent activist in the 1960s, ripping down a mural at City Hall that many black people found offensive, protesting with the city’s black garbage workers when they went on a prolonged strike, and demonstrating against the closing of an all-black junior college. He ultimately spent two years in prison for the mural incident.
As the civil rights movement wound down, Yeshitela refused to move toward the mainstream with other activists. Instead, he formed the Africa People’s Socialist Party in 1973 as he called for a separate economic and social order for black people everywhere. Some years later, he formed the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement. “We’re talking about making a revolution, not a war,” he once wrote. “A war is a contest between two armies. A revolution is a contest between two social systems.”
That was the message that Hess heard in Louisville – a message that she said changed her life.
“Yeshitela was speaking to the African community, but he also mentioned during that presentation that there was a way for white people to stand in solidarity with African people,” she said. “He said that he was going to form a solidarity committee of white people within the Uhuru movement, and I went to a meeting for that and have been involved ever since.”
Hess, who was divorced at 22 and never remarried, has followed Yeshitela throughout her career, spending over 20 years in Oakland before moving to St. Petersburg. She lives in the predominantly white, middle-class Magnolia Heights neighborhood 30 blocks north of downtown.
Hess said her family was wary of her career choice at first. But over the years they have come to better understand her involvement in the movement, she said. They see how the world has progressed while minorities still struggle.
Garnering support from the white community has been one of the biggest challenges the Uhuru movement and the African People’s Solidarity Committee have faced.
Hess’ work involves extensive travel, with the goal of spreading awareness throughout the Western Hemisphere. Members of her solidarity committee recently went to Sierra Leone, where, Hess said, they saw the poverty that has stricken Africa due to “imperial colonialism.”
That firsthand exposure has helped the Uhuru movement grow in places like Sweden and Poland that would seem unlikely, she said. This kind of growth leads toward the committee’s goal, which is recognizing the need for “white reparations for African people,” she said.
Hess defines that liberation as African people living under their own rule and receiving reparations for slavery. Liberation achieved through violent means is a product of America’s violent society, she said, and that it is simply a response to issues such as police brutality. She said that people outside the African community are seeing that response and joining the movement.
“I just see this movement exploding,” she said. “It’s really getting bigger and bigger, and I think we’re seeing all the different sectors of this movement growing by leaps and bounds. That gives more consciousness to white people and helps towards our goal of making them see that Africans deserve liberation.”