Charlotte Hill O’Neal is known by several names.
In Northern Tanzania, where she has lived for decades, she is known as “Mama C” because her name is hard for locals to pronounce. She is also called “Mama Africa” for her Afrocentric appearance — including Maasai cheek scarification and a labret nose piercing — and for inspiring local youth to be proud of their cultures.
Her Orisha spiritual name, Osotunde Fasuyi, was given to her during her initiation as a priestess in the Orisha tradition of the Yoruba faith — one of the world’s oldest living religious traditions.
She is also a former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), which was founded exactly fifty-nine years ago today.
Charlotte, seventy-four, and her husband Pete O’Neal, eighty-five — the former head of the Kansas City chapter — fled the United States more than five decades ago after Pete was targeted by authorities. They have made their home in Tanzania since 1972.
Though she speaks Swahili, the official language of Tanzania, Charlotte’s lingering Midwest drawl remains a reminder of her former life in Kansas City. Her skin is decorated with tattoos of a black panther on her left shoulder and Sankofa, an Akan symbol for gaining wisdom from the past. A nyatiti, a stringed instrument traditionally played by the Luo people of Kenya, has now replaced the gun she once carried during her time in the party.
The couple now runs the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC) in Imbaseni village outside the city of Arusha. The center’s walls are splashed with murals of black power and civil rights icons like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Their decades-long story intertwines with the revolutionary spirit of thousands of young African Americans who attempted to stand against injustice but who were instead met with prison, assassinations, and government repression.