Planting the seeds of peace: House of Umoja celebrates 40 years of service to the African-American community

PHILADELPHIA'S pioneering African-American organization House of Umoja celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend with the Collard Greens Cultural Festival on the West Philly block where it has planted seeds of change for four decades.

The group this year started what it calls a Peace Garden, a neat plot of vegetables growing at the end the 1400 block of N. Frazier Street above Master. And some of the collard greens used in the festival will come from that garden.

But the festival also will be a tribute to the perseverance of a family that has been identified with the city's African-American struggle since the 1960s.

The House of Umoja has been at the forefront of the local civil-rights movement since 1968, becoming a force during the urban gang wars of the late 1960s and early '70s.

"We're . . . using the youths as seeds," said founder Queen Mother Falaka Fattah, who has helmed House of Umoja alongside her husband, David Fattah. U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah is their son.

"We're . . . planting seeds in the peace garden. It's a perfect way to celebrate 40 years of service."

The three-day celebration will include panel discussions, music, cook-offs and other events.

"We are going to be celebrating ourselves, our food and culture," Fattah said. "The funds raised will go towards our long-term project."

Part of that project is the long-standing effort to renovate the House of Umoja's "Boys Town" section, a row of Moorish-style, two-story houses bordering the block of Frazier Street and surrounding the group's headquarters at 56th and Master streets.

The House of Umoja (it means unity in Swahili) spent $911,989 in the fiscal year that ended in June 2007 - more than half of that for salaries and consultant fees. In that fiscal year, $681,466 of its money came from government grants and contracts.

A response to gang warfare

Born Frankie Brown, Queen Mother Falaka Fattah - the name means "a new day revealed" in Arabic - founded the House of Umoja in 1968.

It began as the communications wing of the third Black Power Conference, held in North Philly. Inspired by that effort, and profoundly affected by the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Fattah set up a home, without funding, for wayward African-American youth.

"In terms of philosophy, I've always wanted to do something to help black people," she had said at the time.

That help was sorely needed, especially in the light of rampaging gang warfare that erupted throughout black neighborhoods. In 1973, a total of 43 homicides in the city were connected to warring gangs, and in 1974 another 33 youths were killed. In all, more than 300 homicides between 1964 and 1974 were identified as gang-related.

It wasn't until 1972 when the House of Umoja received its first grant from the state's welfare department, enabling it to house and rehabilitate 15 court-appointed youths.

That grant, for $126,000, helped Fattah move closer to her goal of building a replication of the ancient African city Djenne.

"It will now become the first urban 'Boys Town,' " Fattah said decades ago. "It is a dream I have had for many years."

Fattah modeled the House of Umoja's "Boys Town" section after similar camps for wayward youths that were starting to appear throughout the country.

The moorish motif is "not only a symbol to the youth of their proud heritage, but to bring a new awareness of that heritage to the community," Fattah said in 1979.

The House of Umoja also partnered with the old Philadelphia Youth Development Center in 1973 to train the youths; that contract was for $630,000, or about $8,500 per student.

"That's not a lot of money," William F. Johnson, then-executive director of the state Department of Welfare, said in 1973. "But we have been spending money on programs that weren't working. We had to try something new."

That state grant allowed House of Umoja to house 15 juvenile offenders, under the guidance of the Youth Development Center.

Other grants soon followed, including one for $244,620 in 1978. That 18-month grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration was to go toward a neighborhood anti-crime program. At the time, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan, said that "the only way to stop crime is to involve the people who are affected."

In 1979, the House of Umoja netted its biggest grant to that point - $400,000 - from the U.S. Economic Development Administration to expand operations.

But the House of Umoja's gang-mediation work took precedence over rebuilding the House of Umoja's implementation of its Boys Town.

"We delayed dealing with it because of our gang work," Fattah said in 1974. "Now, we feel an urgency to get started."

Gaining political clout

The House of Umoja began to flex its political might when it took on then-Mayor Frank Rizzo's bid for a charter change that would allow him to run for a third successive term, and supported the MOVE cult during its confrontations with police in the mid-'70s.

In 1970, the House of Umoja joined other grassroots groups to create an electable slate of black candidates.

Four years later, David Fattah ran unsuccessfully to replace Hardy Williams as a state representative from the city's 191st Legislative District. In 1979, he tried to oust then-City Council President George X. Schwartz, but Common Pleas Judge Stanley Greenberg said Fattah didn't have enough valid signatures.

After Rizzo's charter-change defeat in 1978, Fattah and state Rep. David P. Richardson formed the Black United Front to promote African-American causes. Fattah said then that "the black community held the keys to the success" of the charter-change defeat. "The black community was being used [by Rizzo forces] as a whipping boy. It was a cause to us."

It was a time when police brutality often was directed against the city's black residents.

The black wards had overwhelmingly voted "no" to the charter change, with more than 96 percent of the voters in those wards turning down the measure. At the time, lawyer Charles Bowser said that "Rizzo brought us together, but I think that the important thing about the black vote is that it . . . was a denunciation of polarization.

"Black voters are not controlled voters."

House of Umoja's most controversial tactic was its early support of MOVE, including staging a rally outside MOVE's Powelton Village headquarters in 1977. A year earlier, Falaka Fattah had urged police, MOVE members and the community to cool the tension. She urged the city to drop all pre-confrontation warrants as a peace offering. In 1978, the police barricaded MOVE's headquarters, leading to confrontations.

"They are for disorderly conduct, not appearing in court," Fattah said then. "Certainly not the kinds of things that should be on the top of the FBI's wanted list."

A changing emphasis

Adapting to a changing Philadelphia and the varying needs of its youth, the House of Umoja is slowly moving from its anti-gang roots to an emphasis on green peace - using neighborhood gardens as a base for peacefully settling conflicts - neighborhoods and intergroup harmony.

These days, only a handful of youth live in Boys Town, which had been home to more than 3,000 youths during the last 40 years. The place has had new paint jobs and rebuilt facades, but Fattah points to the peace garden as the most tangible sign of regrowth.

"We are going to use this garden to feed people," Fattah said, noting that the garden was once a trash-strewn eyesore. "The garden shows people what they can do, and it gets people excited. We wanted young people to see the value of growing, and as a people, it's a way to connect generations."