Roy Innis
Encyclopedia
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
civil rights activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
. He has been National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...
(also known as CORE) since his election to the position in 1968.
One of his sons, Niger Innis
Niger Innis
Niger Innis is the National Spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality , MSNBC commentator, and political consultant. He was born in Harlem, New York, and currently lives in Westchester, New York...
, serves as National Spokesman of the Congress of Racial Equality.
Early life
In 1946 Innis moved with his mother from the U.S. Virgin Islands to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School
Stuyvesant High School , commonly referred to as Stuy , is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. The school opened in 1904 on Manhattan's East Side and moved to a new building in Battery Park City in 1992. Stuyvesant is noted for its strong academic...
in 1952. At age 16, Innis joined the U.S. Army, and at age 18 he received an honorable discharge. He entered a four-year program in chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
at the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
. He subsequently held positions as a research chemist at Vick Chemical Company and Montefiore Hospital.
Early civil rights years
Innis joined CORE’s Harlem chapter in 1963. In 1964 he was elected Chairman of the chapter’s education committee and advocated community-controlled education and black empowerment. In 1965, he was elected Chairman of Harlem CORE, after which he campaigned for the establishment of an independent Board of EducationBoard of education
A board of education or a school board or school committee is the title of the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or higher administrative level....
for Harlem.
In the spring of 1967, Innis was appointed the first resident fellow at the Metropolitan Applied Research Center (MARC), headed by Dr. Kenneth Clark
Kenneth and Mamie Clark
Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark were African-American psychologists who as a married team conducted important research among children and were active in the Civil Rights Movement...
. In the summer of 1967, he was elected Second National Vice-Chairman of CORE.
CORE
Innis was elected National Chairman of CORE in 1968, and has held the position ever since. Initially Innis, headed the organization in a strong campaign of Black Nationalism. White CORE activists, according to James PeckJames Peck
James Peck may refer to:*James H. Peck , American judge in Missouri impeached for abuse of power*Sir James Peck , British civil servant and local government officer...
, were removed from CORE in 1965, as part of a purge of whites from the movement then under the control of Innis. He subsequently became prominent as a conservative activist. CORE supported the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
in 1968 and 1972. Since taking over CORE, the organization's politics have moved sharply to the right. Mother Jones
Mother Jones (magazine)
Mother Jones is an American independent news organization, featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. Mother Jones has been nominated for 23 National Magazine Awards and has won six times, including for General Excellence in 2001,...
magazine said of the modern organization that it "is better known among real civil rights groups for renting out its historic name to any corporation in need of a black front person. The group has taken money from the payday-lending
Payday loan
A payday loan is a small, short-term loan that is intended to cover a borrower's expenses until his or her next payday. The loans are also sometimes referred to as cash advances, though that term can also refer to cash provided against a prearranged line of credit such as a credit card...
industry, chemical giant (and original DDT
DDT
DDT is one of the most well-known synthetic insecticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....
manufacturer) Monsanto
Monsanto
The Monsanto Company is a US-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed in the "Roundup" brand of herbicides, and in other brands...
, and ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas...
." CORE's original leader James L. Farmer, Jr.
James L. Farmer, Jr.
James Leonard Farmer, Jr. was a civil rights activist and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride, which eventually led to the desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States.In 1942, Farmer co-founded the Committee...
said in 1993 that CORE "has no functioning chapters; it holds no conventions, no elections, no meetings, sets no policies, has no social programs and does no fund-raising. In my opinion, CORE is fraudulent."
Black nationalism
Innis drafted the Community Self-Determination Act of 1968 and garnered bipartisan sponsorship of this bill by one-third of the U.S. Senate and over 50 congressmen. This was the first time in U.S. history that a bill drafted by a black organization was introduced into the United States CongressUnited States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
.
In the debate over school integration, Innis offered an alternative plan consisting of community control of educational institutions. As part of this effort, in October 1970, CORE filed an amicus curiae
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in connection with Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 was an important United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools...
.
Innis and a CORE delegation toured seven African countries in 1971. He met with several heads of state, including Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
’s Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyatta
Jomo Kenyattapron.] served as the first Prime Minister and President of Kenya. He is considered the founding father of the Kenyan nation....
, Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
’s Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
, Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
’s William Tolbert and Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
's Idi Amin
Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...
, who was awarded a life membership of CORE. In 1973 he became the first American to attend the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in an official capacity.
In 1973 Innis participated in a televised debate with Nobel
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winning physicist William Shockley
William Shockley
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Along with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented the transistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s...
on the topic of black intelligence.
Criminal justice and the National Rifle Association
Innis has long been active in criminal justice matters, including the debate over gun controlGun control
Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...
and the Second Amendment
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court issued two Second...
. After losing two sons to criminals with guns, he became an advocate for the rights of law-abiding citizens to self-defense. An NRA
National Rifle Association
The National Rifle Association of America is an American non-profit 501 civil rights organization which advocates for the protection of the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and the promotion of firearm ownership rights as well as marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection...
Life Member, he also serves on its governing board. Innis also chairs the NRA's Urban Affairs Committee and is a member of the NRA Ethics Committee, and continues to speak publicly in the US and around the world in favor of individual civilian ownership of firearms, gun issues, and individual rights
A supporter of victims' rights
Victims' Rights
-History:Victim movements in the U.S. grew in the 1970s. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Victims of Crime released its Final Report. The report drew attention to the re-victimization of crime victims within the criminal justice system...
, he has been involved in cases such as: the "subway gunman," Bernhard Goetz
Bernhard Goetz
Bernhard Goetz is an American man best known for shooting four young African American men who tried to mug him on a New York City Subway train, resulting in his conviction for illegal possession of a firearm. He came to symbolize New Yorkers’ frustrations with the high crime rates of the early...
; "subway token booth clerk", James Grimes; the "candyman good Samaritan", Andy Fredericks; the "black Bernie Goetz", Austin Weeks; and the accused "remember me subway shooter" Clemente Jackson. Some of his activities include: investigating the Tawana Brawley
Tawana Brawley
Tawana Brawley is an African-American woman from Wappinger, New York. In 1987, at the age of 15, she received national media attention in the United States for accusing six white men, some of whom were police officers, of having raped her...
case, defending the infamous Howard Beach boys who were later sentenced to jail for their 1986 racially-motivated attack; overseeing and participating in a citizen’s anti-drug campaign, "One Street At A Time".
Innis has lost two of his sons to criminal gun violence. His first son, Roy Innis, Jr., at the age of 13 in 1968. His next oldest son Alexander, 26, was shot and slain in 1982.
Controversy
He's noted for starting two on-air fights in the middle of TV talk shows in 1988. The first in the midst of an argument about the Tawana BrawleyTawana Brawley
Tawana Brawley is an African-American woman from Wappinger, New York. In 1987, at the age of 15, she received national media attention in the United States for accusing six white men, some of whom were police officers, of having raped her...
case during a taping of the The Morton Downey Jr. Show, Innis shoved the Reverend Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election...
to the floor. Also that year, Innis was in a scuffle on Geraldo
Geraldo (TV series)
Geraldo is an American daytime television talk show hosted by Geraldo Rivera that aired in syndication from September 7, 1987, to June 12, 1998. On the last two seasons, it was known as The Geraldo Rivera Show. Both titles were produced by Investigative News Group in association with Tribune...
with white supremacist John Metzger. The skirmish started after Metzger, son of White Aryan Resistance
White Aryan Resistance
White Aryan Resistance is a neo-Nazi white separatist organization founded and led by former Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger. Part of the American far right, it is based in Warsaw, Indiana and is incorporated as a business....
founder Tom Metzger
Tom Metzger
Thomas Metzger is an American white nationalist who founded White Aryan Resistance . His far-right activist groups, including WAR, have been monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an American organization that tracks hate groups...
, called Innis an "Uncle Tom."
Political campaigns
In 1986 Innis challenged incumbent Major OwensMajor Owens
Major Robert Odell Owens is a New York politician and a prominent member of the Democratic Party. He is also a former Congressman, having represented the state's 11th Congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He retired at the end of his term in January 2007 and was...
in the Democratic primary for the 12th Congressional District, representing Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. He was defeated by a three-to-one margin.
In the 1993 New York City Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
mayoral primary, Innis challenged incumbent David Dinkins
David Dinkins
David Norman Dinkins is a former politician from New York City. He was the Mayor of New York City from 1990 through 1993; he was the first and is, to date, the only African American to hold that office.-Early life:...
, the first African-American to hold the office. Given his conservative positions on the issues, he explained that "the Democratic Party is the only game in town. It's unfortunate that we have a corrupt one-party, one ideology system in New York City, and I'd like to change that. But being a Democrat doesn't mean you have to be a fool." During his own campaign, Innis also appeared at fundraising events for the Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani. Innis received 25% of the vote in the four-way race with a majority of his votes coming from multi-ethic areas and while he failed in less culturally diverse Assembly districts. Innes lost to Dinkins who lost to Giuliani in the general election.
In February 1994, his son Niger, who ran his primary campaign, suggested that Innis would also challenge incumbent governor Mario Cuomo
Mario Cuomo
Mario Matthew Cuomo served as the 52nd Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994, and is the father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.-Early life:...
in the Democratic primary.
In 1998, Innis joined the Libertarian Party
Libertarian Party (United States)
The Libertarian Party is the third largest and fastest growing political party in the United States. The political platform of the Libertarian Party reflects its brand of libertarianism, favoring minimally regulated, laissez-faire markets, strong civil liberties, minimally regulated migration...
and gave serious consideration to running for Governor of New York
Governor of New York
The Governor of the State of New York is the chief executive of the State of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military and naval forces. The officeholder is afforded the courtesy title of His/Her...
as the party's candidate that year. He ultimately decided against running, citing time restrictions related to his duties with CORE .
Innis served as New York State Chair in Alan Keyes
Alan Keyes
Alan Lee Keyes is an American conservative political activist, author, former diplomat, and perennial candidate for public office. A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, Keyes began his diplomatic career in the U.S...
's 2000 presidential campaign.