Alabama Black Liberation Front
The Alabama Black Liberation Front (ABLF) was a black radical group affiliated with the Black Panthers movement. It was founded in May 1970 by Wayland Bryant and Michael Reese as an outgrowth of the Georgia Black Liberation Front, based in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood. Reese told the Southern Patriot that they organized in response to, "a rash of police killings of black people in Birmingham."
The group worked through Perry Carlisle's black nationalist shop on 4th Avenue North and kept offices in Roosevelt City and Newmongo.
On September 15, 1970 Bryant and four other members of the organization plotted to ambush Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputies when they served an eviction notice to Beatrice Turner at her house on Jefferson Avenue in Tarrant City. He and Ronald Williams did not respond to knocks, and were holding guns when Major David Orange kicked in a door. All five occupants were arrested, and Bryant and Williams were convicted of felony assault and sentenced to five years in prison. Their imprisonment effectively ended the ABLF's activities.
Nevertheless, a "well-placed" source informed an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that members of ABLF were planning to assemble outside the Parliament House where President Nixon was speaking on May 25, 1971, to "scream at the president."
Another organization, the Concerned Citizens for Justice, helped raise funds for bail and legal fees for their unsuccessful appeals.
References
- Suitts, Steve (March 22, 1971) "Birmingham police stage 'shoot-in' against Alabama Black Liberation Front" Great Speckled Bird (Atlanta, Georgia)
- FBI teletype (May 25, 1971) - via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections
- William, Yohuru & Jama Lazerow (2008) Liberated Territory: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party. Duke University Press. ISBN 0822389428
- Huntley, Horace and John W. McKerley, eds. (2009) Foot Soldiers for Democracy: The Men, Women, and Children of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press ISBN 9780252076688
- Widell, Robert W. Jr (2013) Birmingham and the Long Black Freedom Struggle. Palgrave McMillan. ISBN 1137340959