Umar Johnson, Psy.D. also known as Ifatunde, is known for many reasons in contemporary circles. Some people know him as a prolific speaker, psychologist, philosopher and a man with a sense of humor who is against Black people participating in interracial relationships. Through it all, he’s asked his community to support his independent school, the Frederick Douglass Marcus Garvey Academy in Wilmington, Delaware.
“We are an embarrassment to the ancestors,” Johnson said at the Pure Life Fest in Atlanta on June 20. “We are a $2 trillion people. The richest group of Africans in the world, in terms of take-home pay and we do not educate our own children. That’s the solution: schools that we own and run. I want to see everybody at the Grand Opening of the Frederick Douglass Marcus Garvey Academy, as well.”
After the Pure Life Fest, Johnson exclusively gave rolling out an updated timetable on the progress of the school.
“The update with the school is the same,” Johnson said. “We’re near the finish. We’re just taking care of the last little things. Every time you think you’re done, something else comes up. So I’m done putting dates on it because every date I put on, it never comes to fruition.
“We’re just near the finish line. That’s all we would say, and hopefully, we cross it soon.”
Johnson continued to lay out what he wanted to see happen that would improve the quality of living for Black Americans.
“We’ve got to bring back Freedom School on the weekend,” he said. “We’ve got to bring back meaningful mentorship programs after school. We have to stop raising our boys and Black men to be athletes instead of intellectuals, leaders and scholars. There’s too much focus on the Black boy exploiting his physicality to the detriment of his intellectuality.
“We have to program our babies. The reason they’re running around Atlanta killing each other, robbing you, stealing and everything else is because we have nothing for them to do. Where are the Black community-owned and operated training programs? Job programs, socialization programs for our children? It’s not going to get better. Because problems that are unaddressed, especially mental ones don’t go away. They get bigger. The longer we take to reclaim our children, the harder it’s going to be to get them back.”
