The Republic of New Afrika was founded in March 1968 at the Black Government Conference in Detroit, convened by the brothers Milton and Richard Henry — who took the names Gaidi and Imari Obadele — along with some 500 Black nationalists. Drawing on the legacy of Malcolm X, the conference proclaimed the creation of an independent Black nation and adopted a founding document, the New Afrikan Declaration of Independence.
The RNA demanded three things: an independent Black-majority nation carved from the five Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina; billions of dollars in reparations for slavery; and a plebiscite allowing Black Americans to choose their citizenship. It framed Black Americans as a colonized, captive nation entitled to self-determination under international law.