Russell Bingham
Born in Elizabeth, NJ in 1898, Russell Bingham was perhaps the most seasoned political actor in Newark’s struggles for Civil Rights and Black Power. In his time and travels, Bingham had been a contemporary of iconic figures in struggles for Black liberation across generations, including Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, and Malcolm X. Bingham had met all three of these leaders, and it was actually a meeting with Paul Robeson in Montclair that had influenced him to enlist in the Army in World War I.
According to Komozi Woodard, “the white racism he encountered in the war laid the early basis for his black political consciousness.” While serving in World War I, Bingham told Woodard, “We had more problems in France with the crackers than we had with Germans, actually… some of them, like the Alabama group and the Fifth Marines, they were more enemies to us than the Germans were.” After these marines fired into Bingham’s barracks one night, his infantry organized to return fire the following night to chase the marines out of the camp.
After returning home from the war, Bingham worked with the NAACP to desegregate movie theaters in Newark and his hometown of Elizabeth in the 1920s. During FDR’s campaigns in the 1930s, Bingham supported the platform of the New Deal and canvassed in Elizabeth to encourage Black voters to switch to the Democratic Party. In the 1950s, Bingham became acquainted with Eulis “Honey” Ward, and worked together with Clarence “Larry” Coggins and other Black political operatives to elect Irvine Turner as the city’s first Black city councilman in 1954. Ward, Bingham, and Turner represented a generation of political leaders in Newark that were not afraid to play hard ball with the bosses of ethnic political machines or their interests in the underworld. “Russell was everything that a lot of black guys wanted to be,” “Honey” Ward later said. “He was dap, articulate, knew how to make money, had a lot of guts.”
In 1966, Bingham broke with Newark’s Democratic Party over the party’s support of plans to build the NJ College of Medicine and Dentistry in the Central Ward. Bingham’s break with the Democratic Party started a shift in his political involvement. At the National Conference on Black Power, held in Newark just days after the 1967 rebellion, Bingham met Ron Karenga, the cultural nationalist leader of US Organization in California and advisor to Amiri Baraka. After the conference, at 69 years of age, Bingham became Baraka’s senior political advisor and a founder of the United Brothers and Committee For Unified Newark (CFUN). “Signifying the change in his values and his identity,” Woodard explained, “Russell Bingham pledged himself to live by Karenga’s seven principles and was reborn Baba Mshauri, literally the ‘elder counselor.”
As a member of the United Brothers and CFUN, Baba Mshauri built on his years of political experience and played an active role in establishing a Black united front to gain Black political power in the 1970 elections for mayor and city council. As Baraka’s political advisor, he helped to organize the 1969 Black and Puerto Rican Convention, which nominated and organized to elect Newark’s first Black mayor, Ken Gibson.
“In his eulogy at Baba’s funeral,” Woodard wrote, “Baraka would refer to him affectionately as his consigliere, his most trusted advisor, and a second father who counseled him about controlling his unmanageable rage against racism and forced him to think strategically and politically.”
References:
Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within a Nation
Komozi Woodard Interview with Eulis “Honey” Ward, February 7, 1986.
Article from June 13, 1968 covering the United Brothers political convention to nominate candidates for City Council. Bingham is pictured at right with Ken Gibson. — Credit: The Star-Ledger
Transcript of oral history interview of Russell Bingham, conducted by Komozi Woodard on November 27, 1984. — Credit: Komozi Woodard
Transcript of oral history interview of Russell Bingham, conducted by Komozi Woodard on December 4, 1984. — Credit: Komozi Woodard
