The architect of the Black Power Blueprint, Ona Zené Yeshitela is proud to announce the grand opening of Uhuru Bakery & Café, Saturday, August 15, 2026 at noon at 3719 W. Florissant Ave. in north St. Louis. This beautiful new institution of African economic power and self-determination brings to life another powerful victory of the Black Power Blueprint!
The Black Power Blueprint is a unique, all-encompassing array of programs that are transforming the conditions of the African community by bringing food, health, housing, dynamic African culture and economic self-reliance to a community the city of St. Louis deliberately defunded, bulldozed and “left to rot” for decades.
The opening of Uhuru Bakery & Cafe (UBC), led by African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) President Ona Zené Yeshitela, implements the Uhuru Movement’s three-pronged strategy to end food apartheid that has devastated the health and life expectancy of our black communities for decades. Along with the Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm at 3901 W. Florissant Ave., the One Africa! One Nation! Farmers Market, now a project of the African National Women’s Organization, the Uhuru Bakery & Cafe continues the transformation of the West Florissant corridor into what our community calls “the Uhuru District.”
These institutions bring food security, a new healthy environment, beautiful living African culture and economic self-determination to the African community. These dual power programs defy and contend with the city’s deliberate neglect and gentrification plan to push us out by withholding our own tax dollars and federal resources allocated for this area.
The city is using the catastrophic May 16, 2025 tornado as a push-out strategy, refusing to release funds for black homeowners to renovate their houses, resulting in thousands more African residents displaced from the northside. This is in addition to the 30,000 who have been forced out in the past decade. The city’s strategy is to sell our homes to developers in service of the National Geo-Spacial Intelligence Agency (NGA), aka the “Pentagon of the West.”
The Grand Opening celebration will feature speakers and soulful African culture including keynote presentations from African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela, President Ona Zené Yeshitela, poet Makeda Baraka and much more. The program will recognize and appreciate all the contractors, donors, pie buyers, neighbors and businesses who signed petitions and wrote letters in support of Uhuru Bakery and spoke out in public hearings in an outpouring of community support. This is YOUR institution and YOU fought for it and WE WON!
The Grand Opening will also feature a celebration of raising Marcus Garvey’s red, black and green flags at all the Black Power Blueprint institutions along West Florissant Avenue, as well as a history museum tent that shows what this once thriving community looked like decades ago when it was a renowned and flourishing black business and residential community.
The Grand Opening is on the weekend of the 139th birthday of Marcus Garvey. Garvey led the largest organization for African freedom and self-determination in history with over 11 million members and supporters worldwide in the early 1910s. This was a movement for African self-reliance, self-government and institution-building including factories, stores, a newspaper, recording studios, community meeting halls and even a steamship line.
Garvey initiated the red, black and green flag and worked for “Africa for Africans, those at home and those abroad.” The Uhuru Movement under the leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela carries on the legacy of Garvey in the 21st Century, calling on all Africans everywhere to build our own institutions, control our own economy and fight for the total liberation of African people!
We encourage YOU and everyone to come out to support the Uhuru Bakery & Cafe Grand Opening and be an active participant in the growth of this historic institution of African power and self-determination and the transformation of our community in our own hands!
Uhuru Bakery & Cafe
3719 W. Florissant Ave. • St Louis MO 63107
800-578-5157• uhurupies.org
Community meetings every Tuesday at 5:30pm
Volunteers are welcome • Now hiring
