Herman Benjamin Ferguson (December 31, 1920 - September 25, 2014)Official Obituary of Baba Herman B. Ferguson. Steven L Lyons Funeral Home. September 25, 2014. was an African-American educator and Black nationalist activist.
Ferguson was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Both of his parents were teachers. He earned a bachelor's degree from Wilberforce University and a master's from New York University.Farber, M.A. Brownsville Wants Death Plot Suspect As School Principal; Brownsville Picks Man for Principal. The New York Times. September 2, 1967. Beginning in 1949 he worked as a teacher and school administrator in New York City and Cleveland, Ohio.Firebrand or Educator?; Herman Benjamin Ferguson. The New York Times. February 28, 1968.
Ferguson was a founding member of Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity and witnessed his assassination in 1965.Herman Ferguson: 49 years ago at the Audubon Ballroom. New York Amsterdam News. February 20, 2014. He became a leader in the Revolutionary Action Movement.Conlon, Edward. The Undercover Lives of NYPD's Black Officers. Esquire. March 21, 2017. In March 1968, he was named minister of education in the newly formed "provisional government" of the Republic of New Afrika. In June of that year, he was convicted of conspiring to kill Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young, leaders of the NAACP and the Urban League, mainly on the strength of an NYPD informant's testimony.Ferguson and Harris Sentenced To 3 1/2 to 7 Years in Murder Plot. The New York Times. October 4, 1968.Gressin, Seena D. Fugitive black activist to return to U.S. UPI. April 4, 1989. Ferguson was convicted by an all-white jury. He jumped bail and fled to Guyana, where he lived for almost two decades, working for the Guyanese government.Blauner, Peter. "The Fugitive: Herman Ferguson Returns from the Sixties". New York. August 7, 1989. The US government didn't seek his extradition. In 1989 he returned to the US, seeking to clear his name. He served three years in prison.Carrillo, Karen Juanita. Exile is death: Herman Ferguson fled the U.S. in 1970 and lived in exile for 19 years. But he wanted to end his days active in the movements of his home.. Colorlines. September 22, 2005. After his release he helped found the Jericho Movement, an organization advocating for the release of American political prisoners.Pruden, Anne. Jericho Movement says: ‘Free all political prisoners!’ Workers World. October 15, 2008. Ferguson died in 2014.Arinde, Nayaba. Remembering Herman Ferguson. New York Amsterdam News. October 2, 2014.
Books Ferguson, Iyaluua, and Ferguson, Herman Benjamin. An Unlikely Warrior: Herman Ferguson, the Evolution of a Black Nationalist Revolutionary. United States, Ferguson-Swan Publications, 2011.
See also 1968 New York City teachers' strike
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