04-02 - Banbose Shango

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Banbose Shango, born in Kingston Jamaica, is a product of the civil rights, black power and Pan-African movements of the twenty-century. Moving to Chicago from Jamaica at age 16, in the midst of the civil-rights struggles of 1964, within two years he was engrossed in the then civil-rights, black power/black students movement of 1966. He worked with CORE, Friends of SNCC (Chicago), RAM, UNIA, Organization of Young West Indians and ACT. He helped to organize the large Chicago city wide Black High School student movement of 1967.   Working with the Afro-American Student Association, he joined SOBU/YOBU and was one of the organizers who prematurely announced the formation of the A-APRP one year early in Chicago in 1971.

Banbose has worked with the A-APRP in various capacities since its official formation in 1972 until his resignation in November of 2001. He left Chicago and moved to North Carolina in 1972 and helped organize the first work-study circle there in 1973. He became the first Southern Regional Coordinator and helped open up North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida. In 1976 he helped to mobilize the south for the first A-APRP organized African Liberation Day. All the time working in his capacity as an A-APRP organizer with various other African and progressive organizations.

In 1980 the A-APRP’s Central Administration Committee asked Banbose to move to DC to coordinate the Party Communication Center which he did until its closure in 1986. As coordinator he oversaw the overall day-to-day management and operations of PCC, including helping to coordinated a nation-wide and international network of members, volunteers, chapters and BSO.  He helped organized and attended the Peoples Gathering in Tripoli, Libya in 1987 and is co-editor of Pan-African Roots, newspaper. He later worked in 1988 with the National Committee in Support of Grand Jury Resistors, which struggled for the freedom of the A-APRP and AIM prisoners of conscience, Bob Brown and Vernon Bellecourt.

He traveled to Libya in 1987 and to the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Senegal in 1993, and attended the Party Congress of the Democratic Party of Guinea.  He has also traveled to the Virgin Islands (US), Jamaica, Cuba, El Salvador, Morocco, Venezuela and Brazil. 

In 1995, Banbose was elected to the expanded Central Committee of the A-APRP, repreenting the Maryland Chapter. He worked as the international Outreach Coordinator for the first Million Man March. He along with Mawina Kouyate and others, as a representative from the A-APRP help to organize the Million Youth March in NYC in 1998. In 1999 he traveled to Cuba with the African Awareness Association and returned several time with other Party members and with the US-Cuba Sister City Association. In 2001, he represented the A-APRP at the First International Encounter on Plan Colombia, held in San Salvador, El Salvador.Banbose resigned from the A-APRP in protest in 2001.

In 2006 he rejoined the A-APRP-GC, and traveled to Guinea for six months. He lived in Conakry and Dalaba and traveled throughout central Guinea. He has participated in the 5th ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Our America’s) conference held in Venezuela and took a Venezuela Solidarity Network delegation to Venezuela in July 2007.

Banbose has spoken for and represented the A-APRP on numerous campuses, conferences, delegations, seminars, community meetings and at internationally manifestations. He was one of the Freedom Riders on the AAA ‘04’ Travel Challenge to Cuba.  Banbose is currently the Eastern Regional Coordinator of the Venezuelan Solidarity Network, (VSN) and an at-large co-chair of the National Network on Cuba.  

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