Defining the Major Periods in African American History

09 Feb

February 9, 2012 | African American History, African American history, American History, Black History, Black History Month |  No Comments »

“We Must Learn and Know”

This is an excerpt from a forthcoming book entitled In All Our Glory: A Comprehensive Overview of African American History.

Central to grasping and appreciating the unfolding of the African American experience in America is knowing the chronology of the master periods which shaped the lives of both blacks and America. These periods witness the glorious ages in which Africans controlled their own destiny and contributed fundamentally to the development of Europe as well as the decline of Africa, resulting in the human trafficking of Africans and the underdevelopment of Africa.

Fundamentally there are xx periods which have defined and shaped the lives of African Americans. These master periods, listed below, have profoundly fashioned social landscape of America and underpinned its political economy.

Ancient Egypt: The Dawning of Human Civilization

The origin of African American History begins in ancient Egypt.  In ancient Egypt, an African civilization, we witness the dawning of human civilization with the development of the major human disciplines- religion, philosophy, science and technology, governance, agricultural development art and music, and writing- of human civilization.  The construction of the pyramids, the introduction of medicine, the study of the cosmos, the ethical teaching of right and wrong all occur over 2000 years before the common ear began, well before rise of Greek civilization.

The Emergence of African Empires

The Western Sudanic trading empires of Ghana (5th century), the Moors (8th century) Mali (13th and 14th century), and Songhai (15th and 16th century) illustrate the profound achievements of Africa- production of cooper and gold mines and long-distant trade routes. The camel caravans, which entered on either side of the Sahara desert or commonly known as ports, were called the “ships of the Sahara”. Walter Rodney asserts, “In practice trans-Saharan trade was as great an achievement as crossing an ocean.”

Another empire in the long pantheon of African civilizations was the Moorish empire which invaded and conquered Spain.  It is noteworthy that the Moors were in Europe as conquerors and served as a “civilizing force,” as opposed to being enslaved by the Europeans. The Moors had a tremendously positive impact on European cultural, socio-economic and political institutions. Under Moorish rule and conquest, the cities of the south, Toledo, Córdoba, and Seville, speedily became centers of the new culture and were famed for their universities and architectural treasures. In short, the Moors’s contributions to Western Europe and especially to Spain were almost incalculable—in art and architecture, medicine and science, and learning.

European Human Trafficking and African Enslavement in America

The 16thcentury begins the period of the human trafficking of Africans, a process called by historian Walter Rodney, kidnapping, violence, and terror. Rodney states: “When one tries to measure the effect of European slave trading on the African continent, it is essential to realize that one is measuring the effect of social violence rather than trade in any normal sense of the word.” The brutal and inhumane treatment of Africans continued through the infamous “Middle Passage” with: whips, shackles, neck rings, hot irons (to mark their captive in the most personal way) and thumbscrews and rape.

The study of African enslavement in America is the most potent and useful interpretive framework for understanding the historical as well as the current condition and predicament of African Americans. To be sure, there was fierce resistance to slavery by blacks: armed revolts, runaways and escapes (most notably the Underground Railroad), sabotage, organized protest, and of course, participation in the Civil War.

Nevertheless, slavery had a devastating impact on blacks, in particular the family formation and the roles of father and husband for black males. American slavery, which defined Africans as property, not persons made no allowance for their humanity and dignity.  What study of American slavery reveals is that the black male could not perform, legally or socially, the minimum roles of husband and father. Thus, cohabitation, rather than marriage, producing children out-of- wedlock became a permanent, but adverse feature of black life, all of which can traced back to enslavement.

The Civil War and Reconstruction Freedom Struggle

The Civil War the final phase to end African American enslavement.  African Americans, Benjamin Quarles states, were “both a symbol and a participant.” The War would eventual be seen as a “new birth of freedom” and blacks would play a decisive role in bringing the war to a close with the defeat of the South. And, after the war, blacks were active agents in charting the course of their lives. The period in American history known as Reconstruction was for blacks a time of reconstructing their lives, from slavery to freedom, from slave to citizen. Moreover, Reconstruction ushered in a social revolution of mammoth proportions, giving birth to America’s first interracial democratic experience, and as W.E.B. Bois observed Reconstruction was a period of promise and disappointment: “The [African American] went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” The Hayes-Tillman Compromise reversed the gains of Reconstruction and imposed Jim Crow laws, a racial caste system, reproducing  practices which dehumanized and subordinated blacks to whites and promoting white supremacy. The violence and brutality which grew out of the white supremacy system gave impetus and rise to the next master period-The Great Black Migration.

The Great Black Migration

One of the great untold stories of American history is the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Indeed, the mass migration of blacks to the North and West changed the cultural and social landscape of American cities. The cultural capital which blacks amassed in America’s cities fueled the first Black Awakening

The Black Awakening

Coinciding with the Great Black Migration 1920s, fifty years after the official end of African American enslavement, blacks in America began the  to come of age. This coming of age was expressed in the works of the Harlem Renaissance and the Marcus Garvey Movement. Black intellectuals and artist came together in the black capital of Black America, Harlem, to signal the emergence of a “New Negro”. The New Negro told the world of the new self-concept of the race, proclaiming that African Americans were a people deserving of respect, not a ward of society, not a creature to be helped, pitied or explained away. The New Negro could no longer be dismissed by contempt or terror. Instead, black people were insisting on their rights and would, as W.A. Domingo intimated-return violence blow by blow. This, to be sure, was the dawning of a people coming into being, jetting the docile and personality, the “minstrel man” who wore the mask which white people demanded.

The Second Black Awakening

The Second Black Awakening, 1956 through 1975, produced two of greatest social movements in the 20th century, Civil Rights and Black Power. The Civil Rights movement expanded citizenship for all Americans, employing multiple tactics to overcome and knock down the political and social apparatus of segregation in the South- legal challenges, boycotts, protest marches, sit-in demonstrations, freedom rides, and institutional building. The Civil Rights Movement served as a model subsequent social change movement in the United States and abroad. The Black Power movement touched every aspect of American culture, and, like the “New Negro” Movement of the 1920s, signaled cultural and political  transformation of African Americans. Black people- sharecroppers, unionists, welfare and tenants rights organizers, students, intellectuals, poets, musicians and singers and politicians-grounded in the ideology of Black Power, began to organize around controlling their own lives and institutions. Its unflinching call for the promotion of black history and black studies; its Pan African impulse; its far-reaching criticism of racism at home and imperialism abroad, expanded the dialogue and parameters of the black freedom struggle, and helped pave the way for a wave of black elected officials, black studies and numerous periodicals and businesses, and the African American holiday Kwanzaa.

The Age of Obama

The election of Barack Obama stands as a watershed event in African American and American history. Unquestionably, President Obama was the beneficiary 1960’s Civil Rights and Black Power movements which opened up the American society and the political system to people of color and women. The Age of Obama portends promise and possibility as well as confrontation and contrariness; Tea Party reactionaries and Wall Street Occupiers; obscene wealth and inequality and cascading poverty and a democratic impulse and anti-democratic push. To be sure, this will be a contested age and age which determines whether America has truly turned over a new leaf on race.

Ancient Egypt: The Dawning of Human Civilization

06 Feb

February 6, 2012 | African American History, African American history, American History, Anicnet Egypt |  No Comments »

The origin of African American History begins in ancient Egypt.  In ancient Egypt, an African civilization, we have the dawning of human civilization, and the development of the major human disciplines- religion, philosophy, science and technology, governance, agricultural development art and music, and writing.  It is well documented that human civilization originated in Kemet (Land of the blackface), the name which the ancient

Egyptians referred to their country. Five Thousand years ago these Africans study the universe and distilled from it a spirituality and ethos which placed a premium and priority on knowledge. Herein lies the key to their ethical and scientific production manifest in their religious concepts and practices, governance, engineering, and medicine.

That the ancient Egyptians were spiritual and religious people is evident by the richness of their scared literature. Their metaphysics lies at the heart or their religious thought. They were the first to give reflective attention to such fundamental matters as: being, God, the nature of the person, destiny, evil causality, and free will as recorded in their sacred text.

The reflective metaphysical impulse of the ancient Egyptians is manifested in their religious texts, Books of Rising Like RA (the ancient Egyptian deity).  Here in these books the religious language and practices of the ancient Egyptians provide a great deal of insight into their conception of reality. Humans, the Ancient Egyptian sacred text instructs, are endowed with the capacity for thought and action. The Creator says in the Book of Vindication, “I did not command them to do evil. It was in their hearts and minds which caused them to disobey that which I commanded.” Evil, therefore, is not a creation of God, which would be incompatible with the goodness of God. Hence, it was not God who created evil, but the will of humans. Moreover, here in the Book of Knowing the Creations, we find recorded for the first time the concept of human free will. That is to say, the ancient Egyptian sacred text asserted that failure to do right was a choice and the person must be held responsible and accountable for it was within his/her capacity (free will) to right.

Religion to be sure permeated every aspect of Egyptian society. The ancient Egyptians had a rich concept of morality, and ethical behavior and character.  Maat, which translates to Truth Justice and Righteousness, was the organizing principle for ancient Egyptian ethics and society. Henri Frankfort states Maat is a “divine order established at the time of creation and is manifest in nature as the normalcy of phenomena in society as justice and in an individual life as truth. In fact, the centrality of character, the essence of the “Good Person” was found in Maat. Maatian morality was concerned with right and wrong conduct and good and bad character.  Ancient Egyptian asserts, “The balancing of the land lies in Maat-truth, justice and righteousness.” For ordinary everyday people, but especially for leaders Maat is the Way. The Book of Ptah-Hotep exhorts, “if you are a leader and command many, strive for excellence in all you do so that no fault can be found in your character. For Maat- the way of Truth, Justice and Righteousness- is great; its value is lasting and it has remained unequalled and unchanged since the time of its Creator.

Finally, ancient Egyptian ethics teaches human are malleable and are responsible for the type of person they are and are becoming. I have grown strong as Thoth, wisdom exalted. “I have become as powerful as Atum-Ra as the Perfected.”

Ancient Egyptian Governance

The wonder of the Great Pyramids and the longevity of ancient Egyptian civilization can be attributed to their governance which was grounded in Maat. Most notably the Books of Path-Hotep and Kheti provide a treatise for moral governance. Path-Hotep instructs those who leaders to consider the voice and interest of everyone. Take as counsel, he writes, “with the ignorant as well as with the wise.

Ancient Egyptians also excelled in science. They evidenced knowledge and skills in engineering, mathematics and astronomy precision. Historian John J Jackson observed that the “English astronomer, Richard A Proctor, in his Problems of the Pyramids, presents convincing evidenced tending to show the that the Great Pyramids was used as an astronomical observatory. The Great Pyramids he goes on to say enabled the Ancient Egyptians to chart the annual course of the sun and the monthly path. With their knowledge of the geometric path of the planets they were able to accurately chart and determine celestial activity. In addition, their knowledge of science extended to the field of medicine. Their interest in medicine extended as far by as 6000 BCE. The noble Imhotep, the first recorded multi-genius, architect of the world’s earliest stone building, the step pyramid, was the first to practice medicine and designed, developed and practiced in humankind’s first hospital.

Hence the importance of ancient Egypt to Africa and African American History can not be overstated. Cheikh Anta Diop maintains that ancient Egypt is the major classical civilization for Africa because of its development of the major disciplines of human knowledge and level of achievement. Owing to this then, it was imperative that the falsification of ancient Egypt be corrected. Diop contends that the consequence of the negation of African history, namely ancient Egypt, results in Africans subordinating their history to Europe, making Africans debtors. Therefore, Diop argues,” understanding the role of ancient Egypt in human civilization and African history allows Africans everywhere to construct a body of modern human sciences, in order to renovate African culture.”

Therefore, given Diop’s contention, it is proper and fitting that we begin the celebration of African American History with origins of human and African history in ancient Egypt where we witness the dawning of human civilization.

Reference:

Asante, Molefi, The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices From Imhotep to Akhenaton

Diop, Cheikh Anta, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology

Jackson, John, Introduction to African Civilizations

Karenga, Maulana, Selections From The Husia: Scared Wisdom of Ancient Egypt

An Overview of African American History

05 Feb

February 5, 2012 | African American History, African American history, Black History Month |  No Comments »

The fantasy of an America free of blacks is at least as old as the dream of creating a truly democratic society. While we are aware that there is something inescapably tragic about the cost of achieving our democratic ideals, we keep such tragic awareness segregated to the rear of our minds. We allow it to come to the fore only during moments of greet national crisis.

Ralph Ellison

This is a passage from a forthcoming book, In All Our Glory: An Overview of African American History.

Ralph Ellison raised the provocative question, “What America would be like without blacks.” Ellison answered his own question, asserting, African Americans are an “American people who are geared to what is and who yet are driven by a sense of what it is possible for human life to be in this society. The nation could not survive being deprived of their presence because, by the irony implicit in the dynamics of American democracy, they symbolize both its most stringent testing and the possibility of its greatest human freedom.” Thus, Ellison affirms African Americans have played a crucial role in the unfolding of the American experience, and thus have earned a special place in the history of America.

While America has set aside and dedicated the month February to honoring the contributions of African Americans to the history of America and human civilization, the study of African Americans history of merits and extends a single month. Therefore, beginning in February with Black History Month, and extending throughout the rest of the year, we will post and highlight: 1) the  historical timeline delineating significant benchmarks which shaped the lives of blacks and America, (beginning with the dawning of human civilization in ancient Egypt and ending with the Age of Obama),

2) great African American thinkers, and scientist, 3) black creative production, 4) 10 books which shaped black life, 5) great debates, 6) significant events in African American history, 7)  creative production, and 8) African American women in history.

In short, we owe the celebration of Black History Month, and more importantly, the study of black history, to Dr. Carter G. Woodson.  Woodson chose the second week of February for Negro History Week because it marks the birthdays of two men who greatly influenced the black American population, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. In the 1970s, the celebration of African American history was expanded to include the entire month of February.

Celebrate African American History Month!


Newt Gingrich: The New George Wallace

21 Jan

January 21, 2012 | African American History, American History, Civil Rights |  No Comments »

History, and in particular Black History, is instructive for understanding the resurrection and rise of Newt Gingrich who has emerged as the new George Wallace. To stop desegregation by the enrollment of two black students, George Wallace stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.” As a staunch segregationist, he said to the nation:  “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Gingrich had his George Wallace moment in Monday’s South Carolina debate on Martin Luther King Day with his exchange with co-moderator Juan William.  Asked by debate co-moderator Williams whether he could understand why his comments that “black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps” and that “poor kids lack a strong work ethic” and perhaps should “work as janitors in their schools” were insulting to Americans — especially African-Americans — Gingrich dismissed the notion out of hand. Williams followed up by asking Gingrich to respond to emails that suggested Gingrich intended to “belittle the poor and racial minorities” with his words. “Well, first of all, Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history,” Gingrich responded, to more applause.

The following day a white woman praised Gingrich for putting Juan Williams in his “place-” Note in reference to blacks, in particular a black male, being put in “place” has racial history of while supremacy and violence and black subordination which Gingrich exploited. Gingrich thanked the woman without disapproving of her language,   reinforcing his bona fides as the reincarnation of George Wallace, and positioning himself as poster child and conduit for channeling white resentment against blacks and immigrants.

Gingrich was not just using code language, but rather reconstructing the historical memory of white supremacy. His campaign to be sure is to cultivate the worst impulses in whites, and to reconstruct an image and narrative of blacks as being lazy and worthless, deserving of their condition and contempt. Newt Gingrich for sure is having his 15 minutes of George Wallace fame.  George Santayana reminds us that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Honoring and Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

16 Jan

January 16, 2012 | African American History, African American Speeches, African American history, American History, Black History, Black Women in History, Civil Rights, King Day Celebration, Martin Luther King |  No Comments »

Martin Luther King’s I have A Dream Speech has been rightfully elevated to American scripture. The dream speech taps into our better selves and speaks to the possibilities of America achieving its founding aims of an inclusive political union: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

To be sure, the Dream Speech has become the organizing idea around the Martin Luther King (MLK) Day. Yet, King and his work were much broader and complex, reflecting a prophetic vision that call for America to repent for historical crimes against humanity, most notable African Americans. In one of his last sermons, King said to his audience: “Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policemen of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems I can hear God saying to America, ‘you are too arrogant. If you don’s change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power.’ This is the MLK which is an inconvenient hero and messenger. This is the King we should honor by continuing his legacy of speaking truth to power, even in inconvenient moments, and advancing his work of eliminating suffering, especially economic misery.

In honoring MLK,  let’s  revisit some of his writings and speeches, two of the most instructive:

Why We Can’t Wait
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why We Can’t Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign and features his response to his detractors in his memorable Letter from Birmingham Jail. In this letter he  captures in  poetic and insightful terms what it means to be an African American in the South: “…when your first name becomes “nigger”, your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and you are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Speech

Martin Luther King, Jr.

By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” This classic speech provides a radical critique of the American empire in relations to the Vietnam War which put him at odds with the American Power structure and the civil rights leadership.

In brief, let us honor and remember MLK by reading his works and being faithful to prophetic vision of a better America, though work and struggle, and fidelity to the truth of MLK as reflected by his works.

Martin Luther King’s Inconvenient Truth About America

15 Jan

January 15, 2012 | African American History, Black History, Martin Luther King |  No Comments »

THE life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. are central to any quest for a better world—in part because he so effectively illuminated, and helped people struggle against, the realities of racism, highlighting the link between issues of racial and economic justice.  His remarkable blending of Christian, democratic, and socialist perspectives informed his philosophical and social thought and practice. Today’s celebration of the birthday and legacy of Martin Luther King (MLK), takes place against the backdrop of obscene economic inequality,  gross injustice in America, and the madness of war.

King’s incredible intellectual and moral honesty posed a threat to America’s empire and now poses a challenge to the celebrants of his birthday and legacy. In celebrating King we would do well to revisit some of his critique of America. His condemnation of America was the prophetic tradition of black Christianity and in an attempt to help America face and overcome its cancerous disease of racism, materialism, and militarism

On the destructive role of the Vietnam War King observed: “Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.”

On violence: As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam?… They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.

On the madness of war: “If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?” And, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

On venture or financial capitalism: “The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.”

On wealth inequality: “The dispossessed of this nation — the poor, both white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.”

On wealth and poverty: “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: ‘This is not just.’

On American society: “We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Celebrating and Honoring Malcolm X

19 May

May 19, 2011 | African American History, African American Men, African American history, American History, Black History, Politics, Race |  No Comments »

Kwanzaa places a premium and priority on African American History. The Kwanzaa symbol ‘Mat” represents tradition and history. The Kwanzaa principle Self-determination instructs that African Americans study, know, and build upon their history and honor and celebrate their heroes and heroines. Thus, we honor and celebrate the 86th year birthday of Malcolm X.  Much of what Malcolm X said and practiced has been distorted and misrepresented. As such, we present Malcolm X in his own words using a question and answer format.

Please answer these charges that are often raised against you: That you are as racist as Hitler and the Klan

Malcolm X: No, we’re not racists at all. Our brotherhood is based on the fact that we are all black, brown, red, or yellow. We don’t call this racism, any more than you could refer to the European Common Market which consists of Europeans, which means that it consists of white-skin people—is not referred to as a racist coalition—it’s referred to as the European Common Market, an economic group—while our desire for unity among black, brown, red, and yellow is for brotherhood—has nothing to do with racism.

Please answer these charges that you are anti-Semitic.

Malcolm X: We’re anti-exploitation and in this country the Jews have been located in the so-called Negro community as merchants and businessmen for so long that they feel guilty when you mention that the exploiters of Negroes are Jews. This doesn’t mean that we are anti-Jews or anti-Semitic—we’re anti-exploitation.

Please answer these charges that you advocate mob violence.

Malcolm X: We have never been involved in any kind of violence whatsoever. We have never initiated any violence against anyone, but we do believe that when violence is practiced against us we should be able to defend ourselves. We don’t believe in turning the other cheek.

How religious is your new organization- the Muslim Mosque Inc.?

Malcolm X: The Muslim Mosque Inc. will have as its religious base the religion of Islam which will be designed to propagate the moral reformation necessary to up the level of the so-called Negro community by eliminating the vices and other evils that destroy the moral fiber of the community—this is the religious base. But the political philosophy of the Muslim Mosque will be black nationalism, the economic philosophy will be black nationalism, and the social philosophy will be black nationalism. And by political philosophy I mean we still believe in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s solution as complete separation.

Whom do you hope to draw from in organizing this political movement—what kind of people?

Malcolm X: All—we’re flexible—a variety. But our accent will be upon youth. We’ve already issued a call for the students in the colleges and universities across the country to launch their own independent studies of the race problem in the country and then bring their analyses and their suggestions for a new approach back to us so that we can devise an action program geared to their thinking. The accent is on youth because the youth have less at stake in this corrupt system and therefore can look at it more objectively, whereas the adults usually have a stake in this corrupt system and they lose their ability to look at it objectively because of their stake in it.

Do you expect to draw outside of black nationalist?

Malcolm X: All groups—Nationalist, Christians, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, anything. Everybody who is interested in solving the problem is given an invitation to become actively involved with either suggestions or ideas or something.

What kind of coalition do you plan to make? Can whites join the Muslim Mosque Inc.?

Malcolm X: Whites can’t join us. Everything that whites join that Negroes have they end up out-joining the Negroes. The whites control all Negro organizations that they can join—they end up in control of those organizations. If whites want to help us financially we will accept their financial help, but we will never let them join us.

Can there be any revolutionary change in America while the hostility between black and white working classes exists? Can Negroes do it alone?

Malcolm X: Yes. They’ll never do it with working-class whites. The history of America is that working-class whites have been just as much against not only working-class Negroes, but all Negroes, period, because all Negroes are working class within the caste system. The richest Negro is treated like a working-class Negro. There never has been any good relationship between the working-class Negro and the working-class whites. I just don’t go along with—there can be no worker solidarity until there’s first some black solidarity. There can be no white/black solidarity until there’s first some black solidarity. We have got to get our problems solved first and then if there’s anything left to work on the white man’s problems, good, but I think one of the mistakes Negroes make is this worker solidarity thing. There’s no such thing—it didn’t even work in Russia. Right now it was supposedly solved in Russia but as soon as they got their problems solved they fell out with China.

You often use the word revolution, is there a revolution underway in America now?

Malcolm X: There hasn’t been. Revolution is like a forest fire. It burns everything in its path. The people who are involved in a revolution don’t become a part of the system—they destroy the system, they change the system. The genuine word for a revolution is Umwälzung which means a complete overturning and a complete change and the Negro Revolution is no revolution because it condemns the system and then asks the system that it has condemned to accept them into their system. That’s not a revolution—a revolution changes the system, it destroys the system and replaces it with a better one. It’s like a forest fire like I said—it burns everything in its path and the only way to stop a forest fire from burning down your house is to ignite a fire that you control and use it against the fire that is burning out of control. What the white man in America has done, he realizes that there is a Black Revolution all over the world—a non-white revolution all over the world—and he sees it sweeping down upon America and in order to hold it back he ignited an artificial fire which he has named the Negro Revolt and he is using the Negro Revolt against the real Black Revolution that is going on all over this earth.

What is your program for achieving your goals of independence?

When the black man in this country awakens, becomes intellectually mature and able to think for himself, you will then see that the only way he will become independent and recognized as a human being on the basis of equality with all other human beings, he has to have what they have and he has to be doing for himself what others are doing for themselves so the first step is to awaken him to this and that is where the religion of Islam makes him morally more able to rise above the evils and the vices of an immoral society and the political, economic, and social philosophy of black nationalism instills within him the racial dignity and the incentive and the confidence that he needs to stand on his own feet and take a stand for himself.

What is the program for achieving your goals of separation?

Malcolm X: A better word to use than separation is independence. This word separation is misused. The 13 colonies separated from England but they called it the Declaration of Independence; they don’t call it the Declaration of Separation, They call it the Declaration of Independence. When you’re independent of someone you can separate from them. If you can’t separate from them it means you’re not independent of them.

The Freedom Riders: The Courage of the Greatest Youth Generation

07 May

May 7, 2011 | African American History, African American Literature, Black History, Civil Rights, Civil Rights, Race |  No Comments »

Fifty years ago, 14 black students from Tennessee State University were beaten and arrested during the Freedom Rides that helped integrate the South. For their courage, they were expelled from school, and informed of that decision by letter while still jailed in Mississippi.

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides, a more active and assertive phase of the American Civil Rights Movement. The Freedom Rides were bus trips designed to challenge segregation in areas of the deep South that were unwilling to accept a Supreme Court ruling that found the segregation of interstate travel facilities-such as bus station waiting areas, restrooms and restaurants- to be illegal.

The first Freedom Ride was a project of the Congress of Racial Equality, a national civil rights group. The riders — including current Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., then a student at Nashville’s American Baptist Theological Seminary — passed through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia without any major incidents. Their luck changed in Anniston, Ala., on May 14 — Mother’s Day. After a mob attacked the Greyhound bus, police escorted it to the city limits. Six miles southwest of Anniston, a protester threw a homemade bomb onto the bus, filling it with black smoke and flames and nearly killing the riders.

The Trailways riders were harassed by Ku Klux Klansmen as they rode from Atlanta to Alabama, and then viciously attacked after they got off the bus in Birmingham. The attacks grabbed the attention of a nation that hadn’t spent much time focusing on the Freedom Rides up to that point.

With this incident many thought the Freedom Ride “was over.” Or so almost everyone thought. But the Nashville students, led by Lewis and Diane Nash, decided the movement couldn’t end like that. They hustled to work out logistics for a ride from Nashville to Birmingham and on to Montgomery, Jackson and New Orleans.

When the riders tried to leave Birmingham for Montgomery, Greyhound canceled the ride. So the riders sat in the bus terminal for hours, surrounded by a restless crowd outside. When the bus finally arrived in Montgomery the next day, a mob teeming with violence attacked the Freedom Riders. Reporters and others who were present called the beating an afternoon of sheer terror.

Within six months, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued an order saying all interstate buses must post a certificate reading, “Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed or national origin.” Signs ordering African Americans to use separate facilities came down all through the South.

Commenting on the significance of the Freedom Riders, Tennessee State University president Melvin Johnson said, “The Freedom Riders serve to remind this generation of a time when people were willing to risk their reputations, their careers and their lives (for the greater good).” These courageous young women and men were a part of the Greatest Generation of Young People. The courage (under fire) of these young warriors, (Simba Wachanga, Young Lions) and their indomitable spirit emboldened the Civil Rights Movement to confront the system of segregation head-on, bring to a boil the naked injustice and terror which African America faced in their daily lives. African Americans and America are better off because of the young people who dared to challenge injustice.

The Relevance of Marcus Garvey’s Easter Sermon: The Resurrection of African Americans

24 Apr

April 24, 2011 | African American History, African American history, Black Culture, Black Religion, Religion |  No Comments »

The Lord is risen! A little over nineteen hundred years ago a man came to this world call JESUS. He was sent here for the propagation of a cause- that of saving fallen humanity. When He came the world refused to hear Him; the world rejected Him; the world persecuted Him; men crucified Him…He was buried. To-day He is risen… he in His resurrection triumphed over death and the grave…But what was done to Jesus in His lifetime is just what is done to all reformers and reform movements. He came to change the spiritual attitude of man toward his brother. That was regarded in His day as an irregularity, even as it is to-day. The one who attempts to bring about change in the order of human society becomes a dangerous imposter upon society, and to those whom control the system of the day.

-Marcus Garvey-1922

Marcus Garvey saw Easter as a transformative moment and event which offered spiritual and social lessons for African and in particular African Americans. Moreover, for Garvey Easter, the reenactment of the Resurrection was symbolic of the resurrection of black people, rising from their spiritually and socially decay and death. He saw the life of Jesus as instructive for blacks in addressing their condition as an oppressed people. “It has been an historic attitude of man,” Garvey said, “to keep his brother in slavery-in subjection for the purpose of exploitation. When Jesus came the privileged few were taking advantage of the unfortunate masses…the teaching of Jesus sought to equalize the spiritual and even the temporal rights of man.”

The Example Set by Christ

The active presence of Jesus in the world was an important lesson which Garvey wanted blacks everywhere to grasp and emulate. Garvey stated: The example set by our Lord and Master nineteen hundred years ago is but the example that every reformer must make up his mind to follow if we are indeed to serve those woo whom we minister.”

Garvey wants black Christians to use the instructive example of Jesus and the Resurrection to cast away the past, to rethink  their future, to advance a higher purpose and aim of life, and to give humanity a new model of how to live , love, and relate to each other as Christ had. Garvey raises up the Resurrection as a model a blueprint for collective renewal,  saying: As Christ triumph nearly two thousand years ago over death and the grave, as He was risen from the dead so do I hope that 400,000,000 Negroes of to-day will triumph over the slavishness of the past, intellectually, physically, morally, and even religiously; that on this anniversary of our risen Lord, we ourselves will be risen from the slumber of the ages; risen in thought to higher ideals, to a loftier purpose, to a truer conception of life.”

The Mission and Work Black Christians

If black Christians were to take serious the Resurrection and the life of Jesus, then Garvey argued that they must grasp the meaning of the Resurrection in this life and in these times. He says to the members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and blacks now: It is the hope of the Universal Negro Improvement Association that the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world will get to realize that we are about to live a new life-a risen life- a life of knowing ourselves. “

Thus, the reenactment resurrection of Jesus, Easter, is an act of self-renewal through new understanding of our potential and possibilities grounded in the example of the Resurrection Garvey crystallizes the significance and meaning of Easter for blacks breaking the mental and ideological chains of slavery and the past.

The major number of us for ages has failed to recognize in ourselves the absolute masters of our own destiny-the absolute directors and creators of our own fate. To-day as we think of our risen Lord may we not also think of the life He gave us- the life that made us His instruments, His children-The life that He gave us to make us possessors of the land that He himself crated through His Father? How many of us reach out to that higher life; that higher purpose; that creative world that says so you, you are a man, a sovereign, a lord- lord of the creation? On this beautiful spring day may we not realize that God made Nature for us; God has given it to us as our province and dominion? May we not realize that God has created no superior being to us in this world, but Himself? May we not know that we are the true lords and creators of our own fate and of our own physical destiny?

Therefore, on this Easter Sunday we would do well to reflect upon the meaning of this day as presented by Marcus Garvey. Garvey’s sermon challenges the compliancy which now has come to define and characterize Christianity today- the indifference by everyday Christians to suffering in the world. Again Garvey: “I trust that there will be a spiritual and material resurrection among Negroes everywhere; that you will lift yourselves from the doubts of the past; that you will lift yourself from the lethargy of the past; and strike out in this new life- in this resurrected life.”

Nia: Why African Americans Need a Black Agenda in the Age of Obama

17 Apr

April 17, 2011 | Uncategorized |  No Comments »

“To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our people in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.”
-5th Principle of Kwanzaa

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States brought hope and promise to African Americans. Notwithstanding his historical achievement of being the first black and person of color to hold the Office of President of the United States, Obama promised “Change We Can Believe In and his iconic image on the “Hope” poster made Americans, but in particular black Americans more hopeful that their lives would be better as a result of his presidency.

Hoping that Obama would be another Martin Luther King or more improbable, a messiah, African American leadership and indeed black people have deferred what should be a “Black Agenda” to the Obama and the Democratic Party agenda. Yet, it has become preeminently clear that the priorities and agenda of Obama and the Democratic Party reflect more of the interest and priorities of Wall Street and the imperial American empire (wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya) than race/class interest of blacks.

A Black Agenda is needed for three compelling reasons. First, the American Welfare State as we know it is diminishing. Since the New Deal, black leadership has dependent on the largess of the Democratic Party- initiators and defenders of Federal power and resources to address the condition of black people. This, as Harold Cruse points out in his instructive assessment of black politics in Plural but Equal, reinforces the fixed psychology of dependency on the federal government without an independent political strategy to achieve economic and social gains.

Secondly, American politics is about interest group politics, e., Jewish Lobby, Tea Party, “K Street” (republican lobby group) NOW, Labor, Finance, Oil, and Health. Without an agenda specific to the needs of African American class and racial interest, blacks will be unable to take advantage of Obama’s historic election, but they will be overcome and disadvantaged by the rightwing tilt of American political/economy.

Third, the data listed below graphically illustrates why a Black Agenda is needed.

Employment

1965 Employment rate for black and white males
- Blacks 82%
- Whites 80%

1984 Employment rate for black and white males
- Blacks 58%
- Whites 78%
*20% advantage for blacks turned into a 20% shortfall

2011 Employment rate for blacks and whites
- Black 15.5 %
- White 8.8%

2011 Black/White Youth Unemployment
-50% of black young people between 16-24 are unemployed
-20 percent white young people between 16-24 are unemployed

Education
Standardized Test Scores
-Average scores of black students is 75% below that of white students

4th Grade Reading (2009)
-Only 12% of African American males students performed at or above proficiency compared to 38% if white male students

High School Graduation Rates
-47% if blacks graduated from high school in 2008
*projected that 70% of black adults will not have the requisite educations for jobs in the future

School Dropouts
-2000 schools in USA produce 75% of black and brown dropouts (U.S  Department of Education)

Criminal Justice

-NAACP study (Misplaced Priorities) shows found a correlation between neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates and neighborhoods with the lowest performing schools( e.g., Houston Texas: 83% of the lowest performing high schools were located in neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates)
-Nearly 600,000 blacks in prisons (This number is almost the same number of blacks who were enslaved in American in 1790- MSNBC data)
-Blacks are 15% of the crack cocaine users but 85% are incarcerated for drug use (NAACP Study)
-Whites are 65% of the crack cocaine users but only 5% are incarcerated for drug use (NAACP Study)

Given the aforementioned data, which depicts the dire condition and circumstance of African Americans, it is imperative we they come together around the project of nation-building, the fifth principle of Kwanzaa, Nia. Such a movement at the local and national level, grounded in the second principle of Kwanzaa, Self-determination, can put a halt to the arrested development of black people and counter the rightward tilt of the country.

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