We will invite you to an orientation for the project on Zoom Sunday August 2nd at 1pm CT.
We look forward to working with you on this critical new black community-led institution that is bringing food, health, meaningful employment, uplifting African culture and economic self-determination to the Northside.
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!
The Reparations Investment Company (RIC), a new project of the Black Power Blueprint, is renovating some of the thousands of abandoned and deteriorating buildings that scar North St. Louis. Through renovation and reconstruction, RIC is creating affordable, quality housing that strengthens and stabilizes our community.
Proceeds from the sale of the RIC homes go directly to our community to fund programs of the Black Power Blueprint; the impact of each property renovation will be exponential.
RIC hires skilled Black and Indigenous contractors, creating employment and keeping money circulating within our community. We welcome the participation of volunteers of many skill levels and walks of life to contribute to this project.
APEDF President Ona Zené Yeshitela has called on the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, an organization of white people who work under the leadership of the Uhuru Movement, to build the Reparations Investment Company to voluntarily contribute to an infusion of resources into North St. Louis.
RIC is building a reparations-centered network of investors, donors, contractors, skilled laborers, and volunteers who contribute to sustainable, black community-driven real estate acquisition, renovation, and development that generates lasting social impact for the whole community.
Black Power Blueprint challenges the City’s long term plan to push our community out of our homes
Through decades of deliberate city government policies, St. Louis has let the once-thriving African community deteriorate as part of a plan to displace our people and gentrify the northside.
Nine months after the May 16th tornado, the City has refused to support thousands of Black homeowners in North St. Louis whose homes were damaged—while directing resources to white neighborhoods on the southside and downtown.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a massive 2,000‑acre U.S. military intelligence site less than 2 miles from the Uhuru House, is driving the gentrification of our community. The City is using the devastation from the May 16 tornado as an opportunity to take our property and push our community out.
Black Power Blueprint Programs are constructing a new world for our community today
APEDF President Ona launched the Black Power Blueprint to revitalize, beautify, and defend North St. Louis in the face of the City’s ongoing efforts to displace our community through gentrification.
For nearly a decade, the Black Power Blueprint has been transforming the northside, acquiring properties and developing them into beautiful and uplifting self-reliance programs, such as the Uhuru House, The One Africa! One Nation! Farmers Market, the Gary Brooks Black Power Community Garden, the Black Power Vanguards Community Basketball Court.
The BIG REVEAL is coming this Spring …
Black Power Blueprint is launching:
Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm, Uhuru Bakery & Cafe, Buy Black Power Store, African Independence Workforce Program and improvements to Black Power Vanguard Basketball Court .
Click for a video update:
The Black Power Blueprint is leading the Reparations Investment Company along with all the other growing Black Power Blueprint Programs to revitalize our community, transform our conditions and create the world we all want to live in.
Camille, who is now the N2U Volunteer Coordinator for RIC, says:
“I believe protesting and disagreeing with the system is important, but for me actions will speak louder than words ever will. The RIC allows me to work materially against colonial and oppressive systems and give power back to people from whom it was stolen.”
Eliedh Construction
We want to send our special thank you to Eliedh Construction! We have partnered with this growing family business for over 3 years. They are a fixture of the ever expanding Black Power Blueprint development process that is transforming every aspect of life in our community. We appreciate all your tremendous work and help to make housing available in our community once again!
Join Us for Upcoming Events & Programs!
JOB OPENINGS: Help Grow Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm!
Now hiring a Master Gardener and Assistant Gardener. To apply and for more information click here.
Every Sunday, 3-5pm CT Black Power Community Rally Talk about and take action on the most pressing issues for our people in the wake of the tornado and the City’s ongoing disdain and neglect of our people. We need housing, health, food, and economic self-reliance. Join us at the Uhuru House, 4101 W. Florissant Ave, St Louis, MO or watch and participate online on YouTube @TheBurningSpear.
Saturday 2/28/26, 4pm-6pm EST The Turn Up Meet + Greet with Black Power 96 Radio DJs, artists and volunteers. Black Power 96 Radio, 1245 18th Ave S, St Petersburg, FL . RSVP to attend in person or get a link. To join online, click HERE
Friday 4/17/26- Sunday 4/19/26 APSP International Plenary Conference 2026 This Time ‘Til it’s Won! Power in Our Own Hands! It’s not just Trump, it’s the whole damn system! Click HERE for more info
Black Power Blueprint purchased the first parcel of land at a sheriff’s sale in 2022 at 3901 W. Florissant, then acquired two adjacent lots—one along W. Florissant and one on Linton Avenue—combining all three into a single one-third-acre site. This land is now home to Shamba La Uhuru – Freedom Farm!
Custom Foodscapes created the design for the farm. Click the Map of Shamba la Uhuru to watch their video tour.
Before – click to view video
After.
DJM Environmental Solutions completed the lot grading and soil testing.
In early 2026, we will finish developing the site, plant it in the Spring and bring healthy food to North St. Louis, a longtime food desert. Taking back the POWER to end food apartheid in North St. Louis!
Shamba la Uhuru Freedom Farm will feature twenty-two 25-foot raised vegetable beds, a fruit orchard, berry patches, flowers, pollinator and herb gardens, Three Sisters and children’s gardens, free-range chickens, a large stage, a pavilion with picnic tables and native shade trees, a farm stand, and more.
We are transforming three abandoned properties into an urban farm and green space adjacent to the Black Power Vanguards Basketball Court, and near several other Black Power Blueprint programs revitalizing the devastated W. Florissant Corridor—bringing life back to a once-bustling Black community!
Shamba la Uhuru will beautify and transform our urban landscape, expand access to healthy food, and create a vibrant gathering place—uniting our community in the work of building power and self-determination.
Shamba la Uhuru is a community-driven program that will employ skilled farmers, train volunteers, and empower our neighbors to establish their own gardens.
Shamba La Uhuru will supply fresh vegetables and herbs to the Uhuru Bakery & Café, which is bringing delicious, healthy, homestyle food to the neighborhood and creating jobs for our community.
Another unique and beautiful feature of this farm is its cultivation and drying of sage and other traditional African plants and herbs. The celebration of African cultural life, the love we show our community, and the spirit of collective work for change are powerful gifts that Shamba la Uhuru will bring to this long-neglected neighborhood.
Shamba la Uhuru is an expansion of the Gary Brooks Community Garden, which has produced more than 1,000 pounds of organic vegetables and herbs annually and distributed them free of charge to the community for the past five years. With a much larger growing space and significantly higher yields, Shamba la Uhuru will greatly expand fresh food production for our community.
“Access to food is a human right. Access to fertile soil is a human right. African and other colonized people have the right to fight for healthy, nutritious foods. We want African self-determination and an end to food apartheid!”
–Ileana (left), with her husband Daniel – Black Power Blueprint newsletter staff writer
This article by USM leader and RIC Coordinator Jesse Nevel originally appeared in the Burning Spear Newspaper.
A bold, transformative initiative is emerging in North St. Louis. Known as the Reparations Investment Company (RIC), its goal is to create “renovation that contends with gentrification!” RIC is the latest expansion of the Black Power Blueprint, led by African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) Board President Ona Zené Yeshitela, to contribute towards building independent political and economic power in the hands of the African community.
Coordinated by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement as a concrete expression of material solidarity with African self-determination, the Reparations Investment Company is a joint program of the APEDF and Black Star Industries. RIC raises resources as reparations for Black community-led revitalization through property renovation and community ownership in North St. Louis.
The RIC is part of the African community’s work to build their own solutions, reclaim control of their property and neighborhoods, and revitalize the northside on their own terms.
RIC is organizing investors, including from the white community, to invest funds in the acquisition and renovation of properties to materially contribute towards the African community-driven revitalization.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela has said, to support RIC is to make “the greater investment” in a future where African people have self-government and power over their own resources, land, lives and destinies.
This is how we take a genuine stand to overturn the Delmar Divide, a symbol of the legacy of colonialism in this city that prioritized development and prosperity for the southside at the expense of the northside.
Through decades of deliberate colonial city government policies, including the notorious Team 4 plan of the 1970s, the city has intentionally let the once-thriving northside African community deteriorate as part of a plan to displace the neighborhoods and gentrify the northside.
This process has been underway for decades and reached new levels with the building of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a CIA spy agency constructed less than two miles from the Uhuru House.
The government is now exploiting the devastation caused by the May 16 tornado as an opportunity to accelerate this destructive plan at the expense of the African community.
This is why the Black Power Blueprint became necessary–taking the struggle beyond protest toward the capture of power. For nearly a decade, the Black Power Blueprint has been transforming the northside, acquiring properties and developing them into beautiful and uplifting self-reliance programs, such as the Uhuru House, Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm, One Africa One Nation Farmers Market, Community Basketball Court, and more.
RIC is the Black Power Blueprint’s response to the fact that North St. Louis has literally thousands of abandoned properties left to rot by the city. RIC is a campaign to bring those properties under the ownership of African people themselves so that they can be repaired into beautiful homes for sale and rental in the community.
This is solidarity with African people’s right to stay in their neighborhoods and bring power back to North St. Louis. This is revitalization through self-determination, as opposed to displacement and extraction.
The resources of the RIC will circulate within the northside and contribute towards African economic self-reliance. Rather than the city government or outside developers coming in and deciding what happens to the real estate on the northside, RIC means that the African community itself will decide.
The proceeds raised from the sale of properties will go back towards funding the economic development programs of the Black Power Blueprint. In other words, the impact of each property renovation will be exponential.
RIC is building a reparations-centered network of investors, donors, contractors, skilled laborers, and volunteers who contribute towards sustainable, black community-driven real estate acquisition, renovation, and development that generates lasting social impact for the whole community.
Since its launch, the Reparations Investment Company has acquired two properties—one on Harris Ave and another on Holly Ave—and is working fast to repair the roofs and begin construction and renovation on both homes.
We invite you to become an investor and take a concrete stand for reparations! We call on all contractors, real estate attorneys, painters, systems contractors, roofers and carpenters, handypersons, and volunteers to join this effort and contribute their skills and labor to this African community-led project!
We call on white people to join this momentous new development in the work to build white solidarity with African self-determination! This is reparations in action!
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela says, this is the “new world, under construction.”
Contact info@uhurusolidarity.org to become an investor and/or volunteer with RIC. Unity through Reparations! Uhuru!
The African People’s Education and Defense Fund is looking for experienced black community gardeners to work as a Master Gardener and Assistant Gardener in our new urban farm on West Florissant!
This is part of the Black Power Blueprint’s revitalization of the northside of St. Louis, expanding our community’s access to fresh foods and partnering with Uhuru Bakery & Cafe to bring fresh, wholesome foods to our community.
Join us as we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy along with all courageous African leaders who have fought for African community self-determination and self-reliance.
This dynamic program includes historic film clips, delicious treats by our own Uhuru Bakery & Cafe and an overview of the volunteer opportunities in our community that build power back in our own hands.
Featuring a keynote presentation by Chairman Omali Yeshitela, the living legacy and leader of the Black Power Movement.
After years of struggle, the Black Power Blueprint (BPB) is proud to share a new victory. That victory is the Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm, an urban farm rooted in our unwavering commitment to build a future in which Black people control our food, land, and economy.
What began with nine boxes of vegetables and three barrels of herbs in the Gary Brooks Black Power Community Garden has now developed into a one-third acre project in keeping with our larger, powerful goal: transforming North St. Louis.
This endeavor required leadership, strategic planning, and the collective work of hundreds of volunteers over the years.
At the core of it all is the determination and visionary leadership of African People´s Education & Defense Fund (APEDF) President Ona Zene Yeshitela and the fierce work of the BPB to liberate and revitalize three previously unused and neglected properties at 3901 and 3905 W. Florissant and 2189 Linton for our community’s collective use and growth.
Today that land is no longer abandoned. It is becoming a place of life, nourishment, and self-determination. That is the meaning of Shamba La Uhuru, the “farm of freedom.”
Shamba La Uhuru is the official expansion of the Gary Brooks Black Power Community Garden, marking a shift from small-scale gardening to full-scale agricultural production. Instead of a few boxes, we will have twenty-four rows of twenty-five-foot beds that will soon be home to fresh vegetables and herbs grown for the benefit of the community.
With our commitment to strengthening independent economic programs and ensuring that the food on our plates is grown by our own hands, one of the major goals of Shamba La Uhuru is to supply produce directly to our Uhuru Bakery & Cafe, located 2 blocks down the West Florissant Corridor. The farm will also cultivate several varieties of African herbs that will be cultivated, dried, and sold through the Cafe and a future Farm Stand, creating sustainable funding streams for the Black Power Blueprint.
The design of Shamba La Uhuru reflects both the depth and breadth of its partnerships. A team from Custom Foodscapes, whose previous work includes installing the rain garden and irrigation system at the original community garden, designed the farm’s layout. DJM Environmental Solutions prepared the land, which included removing old fencing, leveling the lots, and completing the soil testing that has now cleared the way for construction.
Together, these partners have helped create a space that will include a children’s learning garden, an area for workshops and community gatherings, a greenhouse, a produce stand, and a beautiful arbor entrance that will welcome visitors into a landscape overflowing with food and possibility.
Although much of the most difficult and technical work has already been completed, the next stage in our labor is defined by people power. Over the next several months, BPB will begin building a dedicated volunteer garden team. This will involve establishing timelines for installing fencing, water and electric lines, and storage containers, as well as preparing for the first major spring planting in 2026. BPB will also partner with community educators to schedule classes, workshops, and training materials that will deepen agricultural knowledge within our community.
Shamba La Uhuru Freedom Farm is more than a garden or a construction project. It is a declaration that Black people have the right to fresh, healthy food, the right to own and develop land, and the right to build an independent, self-sustaining economy. It is a space where children will learn, families will gather, volunteers will dig their hands into the soil, and a community will rise stronger, healthier, and more connected to the land that surrounds us.
The Black Power Blueprint extends an open invitation to stand with us and build this future together. Through the work of our volunteers, partners, and organizers, we are planting the seeds not only for vegetables and herbs, but for liberation itself. Shamba La Uhuru is a promise to our community and to our future, and together we will ensure that the harvest is one of empowerment, dignity, and lasting freedom.
