Ernest William Chambers (1937- )

January 19, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Tekla Ali Johnson

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Ernest Chambers

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Ernest William Chambers, Africana intellectual, has lived in the semi-segregated community of North Omaha, Nebraska for his entire life. A community activist in the 1960s, Chambers rode into office in the Nebraska State Legislature on the crest of new-black electoral power in 1970. As a state senator, Chambers made a profound impact upon international, national, and local politics, focusing his political savvy and skillful debate on revealing abuses of citizens of color by police and the courts.  Much of the Senator’s time has been devoted to promoting human rights legislation.  For over thirty years Chambers has written bills to stop police homicides of African people, demanded internal investigations by police departments, and insisted on an end to racial profiling and excessive use of force by officers.  He also argued for the hiring of African American professors in the state’s university system and co-authored an early resolution for divestiture of Nebraska from apartheid South Africa’s monetary system.

Senator Chambers had made his first anti-apartheid speech on the floor of the state legislature by 1979.  With the passage of Chambers’ divestment resolution in 1980, Nebraska became the first state in the nation to begin withdrawing their financial investments from apartheid South Africa.  Nebraska’s Divestment Resolution changed history as other states quickly followed, and the United States’ withdrawal of support sped the demise of South Africa’s white minority government. A community man, Chambers has spent his life fighting, locally and globally, for laws and policies which reflect the interests of his Africana constituency.

About the Author

Author Profile

Tekla Ali Johnson earned a Ph.D. in history with an emphasis in African American Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. At UNL she studied World System Theory with Andre Gunder Frank and, Africology and Kawaida Methodology at the Black Studies Department at UNO, with Dr. James Conyers. As a former traveling spouse, Ali Johnson taught Africana Studies on a number of campuses including: North Carolina A & T State University, Johnson C. Smith University and Salem College in North Carolina, Harris Stowe State and Clarkson University. She has served as Coordinator of the African & African American Studies Minor, Coordinator of the History Program, and co-founder of an emerging Concentration in Public History. From 2010-2014 She taught Africana Studies, Public History, and Women’s History at a women’s college. After a residency at the James Weldon Johnson African American Interdisciplinary Institute at Emory University, and an encounter there with the archives and person of Alice Walker, Ali Johnson acquired a degree in library science with an emphasis on Archives. Her first book ‘Free Radical’: Ernest Chambers, Black Power, and the Politics of Race (Texas Tech University Press, 2012) earned a national book award from the National Council of Black Studies, 2013, and a State Book award from Nebraska. Dr. Ali Johnson is a member of the faculty at the University of South Carolina where she teaches African American and Africana Studies. Her research focus is social justice. Ali Johnson is the Acting Secretary of the national Black Power Archives Collective. Her Current research includes a study of the mid-west chapter of the Black Panther Party, and forced relocation of African Americans through urban renewal. She is co-writing a manuscript entitled Forgotten Comrades.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Johnson, T. (2007, January 19). Ernest William Chambers (1937- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/chambers-ernest-william-1937/

Source of the Author's Information:

Tekla Ali Johnson, “The Impact of the South African Liberation Struggle on Pan-African Praxis in the United States: A Pedagogical Study.” SERSAS Online Papers. Spring 2004. http://www.ecu.edu/african/sersas/Papers/JohnsonTeklaAliSpring2004.htm> (19 April 2004).

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