UPAMA
Ujima* Pan African Media Archives (UPAMA) is an organization of New York-based activists and historians seeking to preserve decades of Black history recorded in the late 20th century by the Sound Gatherers.
Ever attend a John Henrik Clarke presentation? Did you see one on YouTube? What about Dr. Ben? We’re talking about historian Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan. Dr. Clarke’s and Dr. Ben’s forums have been attended and viewed by people all over the country, and we’ve all benefited from their scholarship. Have you ever been inspired by Regent Adelaide Sanford or heard Marta Vega, the founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center, speak? The Sound Gatherers recorded most of this material and so much more.
The Sound Gatherers have dedicated themselves to preserving the history of African people using audio and video production. They have accumulated political recordings documenting decades of civil rights and Black liberation movements. Their work has and continues to be featured on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) and Pacifica Radio Station WBAI.
Our Mission
UPAMA’s mission is to organize, digitize, and preserve the vast trove of audio and visual materials recorded by grassroots documentarians that capture the Pan-African struggle for freedom, justice, and equality.
Transforming the media archive into an empowering community resource that is accessible to youth, engaged educators, researchers, and the community-at-large.
OUR BOARD
Baruti N. Bediako has over thirty years of extensive tax, accounting, and auditing experience with not-for-profit organizations. He is a tax partner at Watson Rice LLP, where he is principally responsible for the preparation of federal and state information returns for the firm’s not-for-profit clients; his clients include the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and Affiliates, the Harlem Commonwealth Council, Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement, and several 1199 entities. Baruti is a registered Certified Public Accountant in New York and currently a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the National Association of Black Accountants. In addition to being part of UPAMA, he serves as treasurer for the Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy and Citizens Against Recidivism.
Cinque Brath is President of the Board of the Elombe Brath Foundation, as well as one of its co-founders. He is certified in nonprofit program management and holds a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina A&T State University and a master’s from the University of Central Missouri. He works as an independent project manager, keeping assignments on task and on time. Cinque is the fourth of Elombe Brath’s seven children. He has been a guest speaker at many of his father’s heralded forums, held in Harlem by the Patrice Lumumba Coalition. He has also traveled abroad both on behalf of and with his father to monitor election fairness in Zimbabwe. Cinque is a former writer for Afronet, the first African American sociopolitical digital magazine on the Internet. For nearly a decade he was a cohost of The Communicators on WHCR-FM, covering a vast array of personalities, issues, and events.
Janice K. Bryant was a copy editor at Essence magazine for fourteen years and coordinated its national Take Back the Music Campaign. Since leaving Essence, she has worked as a freelance copy editor for numerous publications including, Reader’s Digest, Penguin Books, and Vanity Fair. She was also Line Producer/Production Assistant at radio station, WBAI in New York City for the program, Wake Up Call for many years. Among her other activities, she volunteered as a court appointed Special Advocate for the City of New York. Janice has a B.A. degree in English Education from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and M.A. in Journalism from Northern Illinois University.
Ellen Gary was Chair of the Library Department, Malcolm X College, City Colleges of Chicago, prior to her retirement. She had previously been a reference librarian at Richard J. Daley College, the Chicago Urban League, and the Chicago Public Library. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. In addition to her many professional memberships, she has served as a board member of the Black United Fund of Illinois, the W.E.B. Du Bois Foundation, and the African American Studies Program, Chicago, as well as a volunteer in South Africa with the World Library Partnership.
Akinlabi E.A. Mackall is a longtime community empowerment worker, planner, and organizer. He is a co-founder and the director of operations of the Pan-African nonprofit S.E.E.D.S., Inc.(www.seedswork.org). He is also a co-founder of several education activist groups, including the Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública (CPE/CEP)(www.forpubliced.blogspot.com, in which he has been active for a dozen years)and the NYC Coalition to Finally End Mayoral Control 2022 (www.nycmayoralcontrolnot.org). Akinlabi is a proponent of critical theory and intergenerational participatory action research (iPAR) as means for understanding and helping to liberate oppressed communities—and the world. Not surprisingly, his motto is “Community is both local and global.”
Basir Mchawi has been actively engaged in the African Liberation struggle for over fifty years. As an educator, he has been a teacher, professor, headmaster, principal, and central office administrator, while also serving as an advocate for the establishment of independent Black schools. As a member of Brooklyn’s EAST organization, he was a founder of what was then called the African Street Carnival, which began as a block party to raise funds for Uhuru Sasa, New York’s largest independent Black school, and evolved into a world-class event now known as the International African Arts Festival (IAAF); Basir served as the chair of the IAAF for over a decade. From the mid to late 1970s, Basir was the editor of Black News, a contributor to numerous publications, and producer and host of A View from the EAST on WLIB-AM. He currently produces and hosts the award-winning Education at the Crossroads on WBAI-FM. Basir has traveled in Africa, Asia, and North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean. He serves as a board co-chair of the Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center, giving back to the North Bronx community in which he resides.
Bok-keem B. I. Nyerere grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, and came to the movement as an activist who developed into an organizer. His activist history begins in 1969, as a member of the National Black Theater under the leadership of Barbara Ann Teer. This was followed by memberships in the Black United Front (NBUF), the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP),and the Black Radical Congress (BRC). At Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM in New York City, he worked as an outreach coordinator. Bok-Keem has been a member of the National Association of Kawaida Organizations (NAKO) since its founding in 1988.
Melvin Simmons started out with the Sound Gatherers with a simple tape recorder and a desire to give a voice to misrepresented and underrepresented cultures in New York City. As technology evolved, so did the mission and scope of the Sound Gatherers, and Melvin moved from capturing pure audio to capturing video as well—and from there to creating programming for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) and Pacifica’s WBAI-FM in New York City.
Bernard White earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queens College in Urban Studies /Administration. He has been an active radio journalist since 1978, and has won numerous local and national awards for journalism and artistic excellence. Bernard worked at listener-sponsored WBAI-FM in New York City, from I980 to 2008 as a news reporter, audio engineer, sound editor, talk-show host, co-host of Wakeup Call, and program director. From 1978 to 1980, Bernard hosted a talk show on WWRL-AM, in New York City for the National Black Human Rights Coalition. The program focused on exposing both domestic and international human-rights abuses. Since 1991, Bernard has been the host of Radio Vision, a public-access cable show designed to illuminate connections between local, national, and international issues, at Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN). He can currently be heard on radiojustice.org, where he is the host of Emanations, and on tunein.com/radio/Heat-FM-s206074/, where he is the host of Hear & Now, presenting an eclectic mix of music from around the African diaspora. He was co-chair of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists.
