Reverend Annie Chambers, a revolutionary, a civil rights leader, and a tireless advocate for Baltimore’s poor, homeless, and working class families, passed away on July 2, 2026, at the age of 84. She exemplified what it means to be a revolutionary. Her life and commitment touched the hearts and lives of countless people and her list of achievements and contributions stretches long.
Growing up the nineteenth of twenty-two siblings, she often heard tales from her brother, James X, a comrade of Malcolm X. From him she learned that there were people actually fighting back against the racist oppression in this country. These stories lit a feeling of fire in her chest, an anger at the system that we’re all familiar with. She decided to join the movement when she was just 14 years old, begging her father to let her attend her first protest. She went on to join the March on Washington in 1963, pregnant and at term. After giving birth to her child on the side of the road, she continued onward with the march and took her place directly at the front. Her brother, trying to keep her safe, would order his comrades to pull her back from the front. She fought them to take her place right at the front of the protest. She would continue assuming her place on the front lines for the rest of her life.
These choices set her on a path, one that she continually chose over and over, one that has propelled her to a place in the pantheon of revolutionaries. She was a Black Panther, and in the 1970s she organized the Baltimore Welfare Rights Association. she was at the core of building the Poor People’s Campaign, building it up among her connections at Tent City where she, herself, was residing. She spoke of being approached by Dr. King, how it was his first time seeing people living in such dire conditions, and how she set to work with the people around her to build the Poor People’s Campaign.
Reverend Chambers found a home in Baltimore, spending over 60 years of her life here. Her fights for the people of this city have shaped the lives of thousands of Baltimoreans, and left an indelible mark on the organizing landscape here. She was at the heart, and often the head, of countless actions – from taking over houses the city was renovating for homeless families, to sit-ins at a welfare office until the office sent the checks they’d been withholding. She’s dealt with the Housing Authority of Baltimore (HABC) meddling in and trying to shut down her food distribution work, through the organization We Stand Up For All, at Douglass Homes. She could have stopped and let them win, but instead set up right outside of HABC, carrying on food distribution outside of their purview. The fight for Douglass Homes continues in her wake, with the struggle against acquisition by Johns Hopkins still ongoing.
She worked inside myriad organizations as an exemplary comrade, whether locally in Struggle La Lucha, Ujima People’s Progress Party, New Harvest Ministries, or People’s Power Assembly, or nationally with the Poor People’s Campaign, National Welfare Rights Organization, the All People’s Congress, and speaking at ANSWER events. She showed us the necessity and power in working together and allowing our differences to exist while still sharing in the same work, the tireless march to a better world for the poor.
She intimately understood the need for on-the-ground work. Consistently engaging with the homeless population, speaking everywhere from outside prisons to the United Nations on behalf of the global and international struggle for women. Every day was an opportunity for her to intervene in the status quo and she seized that opportunity daily. She was also no stranger to retaliation – she experience frequent harassment from the Baltimore Police Department for her work talking with young people in prison. On at least one occasion, they even threatened to evict her from her public housing.
Through all of this, she set herself to the task of education – and not just the constant education of being hands on and in the struggle. She went on to attain her master’s degree. Acquiring a master’s is a high achievement in and of itself, and still through it all, her political work did not diminish.
The people of Baltimore, and the greater struggle for justice, suffered a profound loss with the passing of Reverend Annie Chambers. Reverend Chambers has been a staple of the struggle for a better world for her entire life. Her continual discipline, the most difficult of revolutionary characteristics to maintain, is something every revolutionary should aspire to. There is a saying, that Revolutionaries are guided by great feelings of love – and the immense work that the Reverend poured into our movements, the continual dedication to the cause, demonstrates the tremendous love that she had for the People.
The Party For Socialism and Liberation salutes the good Reverend and will carry her flame into the future.
Featured photo: Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner
