Tufara Waller Muhammad is among the most consequential thought leaders and activists in contemporary social and economic justice. Despite influencing strategic leaders in social movements across the United States and Africa, her relative obscurity finds its roots in a syncretic ethos born of her Islamic faith and her familial heritage in African American Christian servant leadership traditions; as well as her belief that the organizer’s work is best evidenced when they are not in the foreground of the movement.   

A political strategist and cultural organizer, Tufara used her role as the Cultural Programs Director at Highlander Research & Education Center to train artists and community organizers fostering intentional learning exchanges and collaborations from the US South to the Global South. Strategically impacting individual, corporate and philanthropic efforts by infusing the need to fund indigenous grass-roots causes, her efforts, always done behind the scenes and in coalition. This strategy has directly built capacity among those working on various issue-based campaigns including voting rights across multiple Southern states; labor rights among poor and working-class people across race, gender, ethnicity, and faith tradition; environmental justice from Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta; and human rights among undocumented workers, refugees, and asylum seekers. Her work is intergenerational, intercultural, and inter-movement focused.

Tufara has been instrumental in shifting the discourse about the strategic use of art and culture to shift policies and practices towards justice and equity, healing, and transformation having trained hundreds of Southern activists, organizers, and everyday people. Tufara has quietly helped to lay the groundwork of mass-mobilization across identities and geographies, including the Movement for Black Lives and the Southern Peoples Movement Assembly to name a few.

A renaissance woman, she has performed with Grammy® Nominated founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon; nationally known blues artist, Essie Neal; renowned folk musicians Guy and Candie Carawan; The Fruit of Labor Singing Ensemble;  and many others. 

Waller Muhammed was the only US citizen who helped to strategize and organize the United African Caravan from Cape Town to Kenya which provided a mechanism for African organizers, direct-service providers, and artists to join together to collaborate as a part of the international human rights movements. She helped to organize the first US Social Forum in Atlanta, GA where she also served on the ground as a part of the implementation team. Tufara was the only American to perform on the Africa Stage at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya Africa, and with theater companies including the Otto René Castillo Award-winning Carpetbag Theatre. She presented and performed “Rhythm, Resistance and the Fight for Social Justice in the US” at the Venezuela International Book Fair in Caracas on the invitation of the government of the Republic of Venezuela as the Director of Cultural Programs, Highlander Research and Education Center, TN.

Growing up in Little Rock, AR she was first politicized by the gang wars involving friends, and the pandemic of AIDS/HIV which was impacting the community. Having taken a trip to land near Little Rock that was once owned by the family, but now was being used as a work-farm penitentiary fueled her hunger to work on intersections which are now called the school to prison pipeline and the prison industrial complex. These intersections were also the impetus for her local organizing work related to HIV/AID interventions, family economics, and poverty elimination.  

Tufara draws on six generations of her multiracial familial lineage of civically-engaged artists, organizers, and spiritual leaders animated by faith and a commitment to justice, healing, and transformation of systems and structures within communities, institutions, and governmental entities. Continuing this legacy, she quietly advances the next generation of rural and southern organizers by bringing forth lessons from among her elders, peers, and countless cultural organizers and strategists across the globe. Her work infuses relevant 21st century technologies, ancient Griot story practices, and love for people to conquer issues both internal and external to persons’ critical life needs.  Tufara says, “We are all human and divine; all at the same time. I come from grits and gravy and not being lazy! The only thing that I declare being an expert in is making bean pies. The rest of my stuff is based on trial and error, and lessons learned from other folks.”