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Audley Moore and Dara Abubakari: Mothers of Pan-Africanism [1]

['Tammy C. Barney', 'More Tammy C. Barney', 'Verite News']

Date: 2024-04-22  

A portrait of Audley Moore. Credit: Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Inspired by Marcus Garvey and his teachings, “Queen Mother” Audley Moore and “Mother” Dara Abubakari played important roles in Pan-Africanism. Abubakari focused on organizing and nation building, while Moore fought for reparations.

“Many activists from the 1960s and 1970s revere ‘Queen Mother’ Audley Moore and ‘Mother’ Dara Abubakari as consummate activists and mentors,” author and professor Ashley D. Farmer said during a 2016 interview. “These organizers often honored the two of them together as groundbreaking leaders in the radical black political struggle.”

A native of Plaquemines Parish, Abubakari was born in 1915 as Virginia Young. After graduating from McDonogh No. 35 High School, Abubakari married teacher James Collins Sr., became a registered nurse and had 10 children.

Born in New Iberia in 1898, Moore attended Catholic schools until her parents died. Left to care for two younger sisters as a teenager, Moore moved to New Orleans to work as a domestic and hairdresser. She later married Josiah Spraggs.

As activists, both women shaped Pan-Africanism for 70 years starting in the 1920s, according to Farmer. “Moore and Abubakari … often practiced a gender-conscious form of Pan-Africanism,” Farmer said, “or one in which they centered black women’s concerns and goals even if they didn’t always express this women-centered approach in noticeable ways.”

In 1962, they founded the Reparation Committee of Descendants of United States Slaves to educate the community about reparations. In the 1970s, Moore was president and Abubakari was vice president of the Republic of New Africa.

“I have done everything I could to promote the cause of African freedom,” Moore said in a 1987 interview, “and to keep alive the teaching of Garvey.”

Ten years later, Moore died at age 99 in Brooklyn, N.Y. Still living in New Orleans, Abubakari was 96 when she died in 2011.

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