Photo Courtesy of Diario Libre
On Friday, May 7, the northeast corner of West 166th Street and Broadway, New York City, was co-named Carlos Cooks Way in honor of the legacy of Black Nationalist Carlos Cooks, according to Black Star News.
The outlet reported, “Cooks was introduced to Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalist fraternal organizations, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League, by his uncle and father, who were among the many St. Martiners who were Garvey followers, at age 19, Cooks was officially recognized by Garvey and became a vital member of the movement.”
Cooks coined the phrase “Buy Black” years before others popularized it, and he initiated the concept of natural hair as an issue of racial pride through ANPM’s Miss Natural Standard of Beauty Contest.
The revolutionary also launched the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement (ANPM) in 1941, intending to make it “an educational, inspirational, instructive, constructive and expansive society… composed of people desirous of bringing about a progressive, dignified, cultural, fraternal and racial confraternity among the African peoples of the world.”
The Dominican-born activist’s organization played a key factor in the history of Black American Nationalism between Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, whom he influenced.
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Cooks founded the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement based on three focus points:
The first was to combine material resources of the Black race worldwide to help secure the welfare and well-being of Black people.
Secondly, he urged the activation of African-Community Leagues in places where people of the African ethnic group were the majority.
And finally, Cooks wanted to unite the various nationalist and pan-African organizations with the goal of freedom for Africa and the benefit of the African people of the world.
The revolutionary died in New York at age 53 in May 1966.
Cooks believed that Black Nationalism is the only way to secure a free future for Black people.