Events
Connie Tucker Legacy Foundation to Host Virtual Celebration and Commemoration from The Gambia to Around the World
Connie Tucker Legacy Foundation To Host Virtual Celebration and Commemoration from The Gambia to Around the World
Connie Tucker Legacy Foundation To Host Virtual Celebration and Commemoration from The Gambia to Around the World. On what would be her 70th birthday, a three day host of discussions and tributes in collaboration with the New Freedom Project, the Auburn Avenue African American Research Library, National Council of Arts and Culture, Sizzla Youth Foundation and MO2 on October 14th, 15th, and 18th.
On October 14th from 6-10pm GMT the event will celebrate the birthday of Connie Tucker by focusing on The Black Power and PanAfricanist Movements From Then Until Now. On October 15th from 6-10pm GMT we will honor the life work of my mother by focusing on Voting Rights, Environmental Justice, Youth Activism in the 21st Century. Finally on October 18th 6pm-9pm we will celebrate Olimatta Taal’s birthday as the finale and Global World Party featuring live performances, poetry, art, and music. All events will be virtual and available on all social media platforms.
A number of distinguished invited international guest will be participating including the son of Marcus Garvey, Dr. Julius Garvey. One of the original members of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee and our mother’s great friend and comrade Mukasa Ricks aka Willie Ricks. Congresswoman Able Mable, Former State Senator Hank Sanders, Angela Brown, Sizzla Kalonji, Faya Rose Toure, Dead Prez, Cali P, and a plethora of dynamic speakers, leaders, and supporters of CT, she was affectionately called.
Given the fierce urgency of justice still today, her legacy of activism is a timely example for civic duty and social justice. It is in her memory that we launch this effort. Our goal is to raise funds in order to ship her collection of archives to The Gambia where it will join her in rest for the establishment of the Connie Tucker Legacy Center in the Gambia. This C.T.L.C. will house a Pan African Museum, Library and Skills Center focusing on film, graphic designs, adult literacy, sewing, music production, performing arts, youth leadership development and agriculture. For more information www.connietuckerlegacy.org or connietuckerlegacyfoundation@gmail.com,
Connie Tucker Bio
Connie Tucker (October 14, 1950 – September 26, 2015) was born in Seale, Alabama to parents Otis Spencer Jr. and Bernice Nall Tucker. Although a native of Alabama, she grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama and Sarasota, Florida. Connie attended Booker High School (Sarasota); the University of South Florida (Tampa). She became an activist for social justice in the late 1960s and 1970s as one of the young leaders of the Black Liberation Movement. She co-founded Black Youth For Peace and Power in Sarasota which spiraled into other forms of activism with other groups.
She was also co-founder of the The Burning Spear Newspaper and served as Chair of the African People’s Socialist Party also referred to as The Uhuru Movement. During that time, she became one of the iconic and first modern day political prisoners at the tender age of twenty and was released through a national Free Connie Tucker Campaign. Her legal case was supported and financed by Ann Braden (SCEJ). Through the Uhuru Movement platform to Free Connie, other’s joined including SCLC, SNCC, and AAPRP organizing to free her as well. James Orange organized a march from one side of Florida to the next.
After her freedom, she married Saihou Taal, a Gambian student and activist at Tuskegee University who was introduced to her by Willie Ricks aka Bro. Mukasa Dada of SNCC. They lived in Honolulu, Hawaii for three years. In the 1980s, Connie lived and worked for the United States Agency for International Development and the University of Wisconsin in The Gambia, West Africa. Returning to the USA in the late 1980s, she became Project Coordinator for the 21st Century Youth Leadership Training Project in Selma, Alabama and played a major role in the Selma Movement Against Racial Tracking to end miseducation and tracking in the schools. In 1992, she worked as coordinator of the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice organizing its South-wide Environmental Justice Project.
Connie was key to this historic regional conference in New Orleans, the largest diverse environmental justice conference to date. In May 1993, she became the Executive Director for SOC and grew its Environmental Justice (EJ) network to one of the largest grassroots efforts in the United States, which worked across eight states in the U.S. EPA’s region IV. From this work the National Environmental Justice Council (NEJAC) and the Clinton Environmental Justice Executive Order were established. Connie co-founded the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute and the Bridge Crossing Jubilee (which commemorates Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery March).
She has written many articles and books on the Civil Rights Movement as well as the Environmental Justice Movement. Connie’s last works before she died includes the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery March and exposing white supremacy supporters of Nathan B. Forrest and asking for the removal of racist statues in Selma. A panAfricanist at heart, Connie Tucker is buried in the village of Juffureh in The Gambia, West Africa. Juffureh is the home of Kunta Kinteh, where he was stolen and taken on slave ships to America, thus told to us in the story Roots written by Alex Haley. Connie dearly loved her daughters Olimatta Taal and Maiyai Taal Hocheimy. She cherished young people including her grandbabies, many nieces, nephews and children of the community, which she treated as her own. We will miss her strength, love, activism, and courage.
