Shirley Qahhar

Shirley Qahhar, a long-time community activist, passed away on June 9 in Cleveland.

Bert Jennings of the Carl Stokes Brigade, a militant Cleveland group, told Workers World, “Shirley was an ardent opponent of the mistreatment of poor people, dedicated to working for solutions in the communities. She will be sorely missed.”

Shirley Jean Smith was raised in St. Louis where she was propelled into activism when police shot and killed an 80-year-old woman whom they were in the process of evicting. She became a leader in the St. Louis chapter of the National Organization for Women and a member of the Socialist Workers Party.

The activist moved to Louisville, Ky., where she represented the SWP and Louisville NOW in the Anti-Klan Coalition, which was being formed by Abdul Qahhar, then a leader of the Black Panther Party. The coalition included the Communist Party, the Reparations Party, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP and other local organizations.

Brother Qahhar told this writer: “The Anti-Klan Coalition held the biggest rally Louisville had seen to that point [with] 500-600 people. The white supremacists were preparing for war. The rally was held in the Labor Temple, a union hall, and racist white workers were outside picketing the building. A comment had been made about insufficient government funds. Shirley got up and said the funds were not insufficient for the war abroad. The Louisville paper quoted her. She was always at the forefront, always leading.”

After Shirley and Abdul Qahhar got married in a Muslim ceremony in September 1976, she returned to her job at a DuPont factory. She was the only woman and sole African-American worker in a chemical loading-and-unloading department where she faced relentless harassment.

Upon returning to work, she found that her name was written as “Shirley Khomeini.” When she asked her union’s Human Rights Committee for support, she was told, “We can’t believe you waited this long.” The Anti-Klan Coalition showed solidarity with the Qahhars by protesting this racist, anti-Muslim attack.

Shirley Qahhar also launched the Black Market Bookstore in Louisville. Its slogan was “Read — it ain’t illegal yet.”

In 1987 the Qahhars moved to Cleveland where Shirley wrote articles for the East Side News, a progressive newspaper. One important article was her interview with Susan Robeson, granddaughter of Paul Robeson.

The activist won the Journalist of the Year award in 1990 for her article on Arnold Feckner, a drug dealer whom the police were paying to supply the Morris Black housing project with cocaine. Her exposé blew the case wide open and led to widespread protests. Feckner was convicted, but a pro-police judge acquitted the cops.

On June 18 Shirley Qahhar’s funeral (janazah) harmoniously brought together people from many perspectives, who offered prayers, poetry, songs, stories and loving wishes. Abdul Qahhar’s son, Ibrahim, who led the service, commented that “even in her death, she was organizing.”

Khalid Samad of Peace in the Hood, a youth-oriented community group, told of Shirley Qahhar’s tireless organizing for a conference on the African Holocaust held in Cleveland 20 years ago. Although the conference focused on the question of “Who are we?,” Samad said that she refocused the discussion by asking, “What are we going to do?”

Art McKoy, founder of Black on Black Crime Inc., a Cleveland activist organization, said that he gave Shirley Qahhar the nickname “the bodyguard,” as she was known for her perception and quick thinking.

Her spouse and comrade Abdul Qahhar said that, although he is officially the chairperson of the Cleveland chapter of the New Black Panther Party, Shirley was the real chairperson, in that she would let him know if his statements were on the mark or not.

After the funeral, he told this writer that, “The service expressed all that she was — her communalism, socialism, communism, Black Nationalism, Islam and pro-humanity.” Moreover, he said, “When you live as a revolutionary, you die a revolutionary.”