Cincinnati Politics primer: What is the Black Fist?

The Black Fist's Kabaka Oba protests police outside the Seasongood Pavilion in Mount Adams in August 2003. (Photo by Brandi Stafford/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

(WARNING: This post contains strong language.)

If you've been to a Cincinnati City Council meeting, listened to talk radio, or stumbled across a Fountain Square rally in the last four years, you've no doubt heard of the Black Fist.

If you haven't, you're probably wondering how this small group of African-American activists managed to become a defining issue in Tuesday's mayoral debate in the West End.

David Pepper clearly came into the debate looking for an excuse to bring up the Black Fist, using a question about how he would work with Hamilton County Republicans to discuss Mark L. Mallory's acceptance of the group's endorsement. The Pepper campaign also distributed a statement during the debate calling the group "extremist" and "divisive," pointing to the following statements as evidence:

• The Black Fist participated in a December, 2002 Fountain Square protest of a menorah which included a sign reading, "Jews killed Jesus, had black slaves, stole our black identities." They also shouted chants of "Die Jews die."
  
  
• At a an April, 2002 demonstration at the police memorial, the Black Fist protested police brutality, the Catholic Church, and Pete Rose. Protesters called counter-demonstrators ''white devils,'' ''snow monkeys'' and ''faggots."
  
  
• A July, 2005 post on the Black Fist's blog accuses police of being aligned with the Ku Klux Klan in a conspiracy to kill African-Americans. "They love sucking the sweat of black people. That's why the Cincinnati police in Ohio love to rape little girls and put fear into black women!!!"

The Black Fist is led by Kabaka Oba, a 47-year-old Metro bus driver from the West End who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Hamilton County Commissioner in 2004. He calls himself a "general," and says the Black Fist is not an organization, but a "movement." The Black fist -- formerly known as the Black Special Forces -- is loosely associated with a number of other pro-boycott groups, such as Amanda Mayes' Coalition for a Just Cincinnati, Nate Livingston Jr.'s Unite Cincinnati PAC, and William Kirkland's African-American Cultural Commission.

Oba, who attended Tuesday night's debate, seemed not at all uncomfortable being thrust into the center of the mayoral campaign.

"What we like about Mark Mallory is that he is not afraid to talk to us about what our positions are," Oba said. "We can't find any middle ground with David Pepper, because he supports the police even when the police are wrong." He said Mallory doesn't agree with everything the Black Fist stands for, but that "consensus-building doesn't depend on total agreement."

Oba denied that the organization was anti-Semitic, saying that black people were the chosen people of God. "Pepper hates black people. He's anti-Semitic."

As for the 2002 protest of the Fountain Square menorah, Oba said it was an attempt to show that the federal court decision allowing the menorah also paved the way for the Ku Klux Klan to put a cross on the square. He said the chants were directed at Rabbi Sholom Kalmanson. "We showed him some anti-Semitic things so he could feel what we feel when we see the KKK cross," Oba said.

Lincoln Ware, the WDBZ talk show host who gave Oba an almost-daily forum for his views for four years before Oba was banned from the radio station last month, said the Black Fist was a small group unworthy of much debate in the mayoral campaign.

"I can't believe they're giving the Black Fist this much credit. There's like four people in the Black Fist, if that many," he said. "They don't have a whole lot of followers. They think they do. They're on the fringes."

UPDATE (Thursday, 10:09 p.m.): A previous version of this entry incorrectly listed Oba's address as Deer Park. He lives in the West End.