Black History Month [Archive]

Communist

2nd February 2010, 06:03

Patton was, in my and many's estimation, the greatest of all the early Delta bluesmen. Here's a brief bio, a classic recording and the only known photo of Patton.

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CHARLEY PATTON (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/charley_patton.htm)
Born in April 1891, between Edwards and Bolton in southern Mississippi, Charley Patton (actually spelled Charlie) was the scrawny child of sharecropper parents. In 1900, his family moved 100 miles north to the Delta (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/delta_sites.htm) and the Will Dockery Plantation (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/delta_sites.htm#dockery). There Patton fell under the spell of guitarist Henry Sloan and would follow him to gigs. By 1910, he had become proficient as a performer and songwriter, having already composed "Down The Dirt Road Blues," a slow drag called "Banty Rooster Blues," and his theme song "Pony Blues."

After the turn of the decade Patton began playing with Willie Brown, a guitarist who would later become a regular on his recordings. Patton's music began to exert considerable influence; guitarist Tommy Johnson (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/tommy_johnson.htm) had moved to the Dockery vicinity circa 1913 and was soon playing Delta blues including Patton's "Pony Blues." Around 1914, Patton began playing his guitar with members of the Chatmon family, working picnics and frolics. Bo, Sam, and Lonnie Chatmon and guitarist Walter Vinson later would gain fame as the Mississippi Sheiks. Bo Chatmon also recorded many titles as soloist Bo Carter. Patton continued playing and rambling around the Delta, going north to Memphis (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/memphis_sites.htm) and as far west as Arkansas and Louisiana (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/la_sites.htm). By 1926, a young Robert Johnson (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/robert_johnson.htm) had begun following Patton and Brown to gigs trying to learn from the veteran guitarists.

Patton made his first recording in June 1929, cutting fourteen songs for the Paramount label, all issued on 78s. Such was the success of his initial session that he was invited four months later to Paramount's new studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, where he recorded twenty-eight additional tunes. Patton's polyrhythmic picking, accompanied by tapping the body of the guitar, created an intricate dance melody that its author could play for thirty minutes or more. Son House (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/son_house.htm), who recorded in a 1930 session that also featured Patton and Brown, recalled that Charley "clowned" for an audience by playing the guitar behind his back or between his knees.

Patton included regional landmarks in his tunes - places that a local record-buying audience would be familiar with, including a Moorehead, Mississippi railroad crossing, "Where The Southern Crosses The Dog (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/delta_sites.htm#southern)," in "Green River Blues" and Parchman Farm (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/delta_sites.htm#parchman) in "A Spoonful Blues."

Howlin' Wolf (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/howlin_wolf.htm), who moved to Dockery in 1926, recalled seeing Patton on the town square in Drew (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/delta_sites.htm#drew), not far from Dockery Plantation. Patton's hypnotic three-note songs also deeply influenced Clarksdale's John Lee Hooker (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/johnlee_hooker.htm), who recorded his own version of Patton's "Pea Vine Blues." Bukka White (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/people/bukka_white.htm) also cited a desire "to come to be a famous man, like Charley Patton," and demonstrated a similar knack for playing dance songs for extended periods. Patton's last recording session was in New York City in February 1934, two months before his death.

Charley Patton died April 28, 1934, at 350 Heathman Street in Indianola, Mississippi. Patton's grave (http://www.nps.gov/history/delta/blues/sites/delta_sites.htm#cp_grave) is located in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, and the tombstone acknowledges his pivotal role in the development of the Delta Blues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGK7fFLvnak

http://www.delta-blues.org/images/Charley_Patton.jpg (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charley+patton&search_type=)

Joe_Germinal

2nd February 2010, 06:09

Paul Robeson (1898-1976): activist, artist, athlete, intellectual. From the Marxist internet archive:

The extraordinarily multitalented Robeson was the first world-famous singer and actor to become a political activist during his peak performing years. Robeson’s father, a runaway slave who became a minister in Princeton, New Jersey, exerted a strong influence on the young Robeson, instilling in him a quiet dignity, a love for African-American culture, and an all-embracing humanism.

An outstanding scholar-athlete at Rutgers University in 1915-19, Robeson went on to become one of the world’s leading concert singers, stage actors, and film stars in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. During the period 1927-39, when he was based in London, his artistic growth led him to study world cultures and to support social and political movements. He sang concerts to benefit trade unions, especially the Welsh coal-miners’ union, and he came to see the connection between the struggles of the British working class and those of the oppressed colonial peoples. Robeson was introduced to socialist ideas through his friendship with George Bernard Shaw and his acquaintanceship with several leaders of the British Labour Party. As a result, Robeson studied the classic Marxist writings and became attracted to the basic premises of communism.

In the early 1930s Robeson met many African students in London and developed a deep appreciation of the close links between the African and African-American cultures, learning several African languages. He also met Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru of India, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Prompted by the desire to extend his artistic range, Robeson studied many other languages and cultures throughout the 1930s and 1940s, mastering Russian, Chinese, Hebrew, and most European languages. This focus on the centrality of culture went hand-in-hand with Robeson’s increasing radicalism – a duality that continued for the remainder of his career.

Robeson responded to the rise of German fascism by becoming one of the world’s leading antifascists. Invited to the Soviet Union in 1934 by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, Robeson was almost assaulted by Nazi storm troopers in Berlin as he changed trains on his way to Moscow. In the USSR he was deeply impressed by the lack of racial prejudice and by flourishing diverse cultures in the Soviet republics. These experiences and the communist leadership of the worldwide antifascist and anticolonialist struggles were the basis of his unwavering support for the Soviet people in their attempts to build socialism. The fact that Robeson viewed the Soviet Union and the world communist movement as reliable allies of the colonial liberation movements led him to form a close alliance with Communists despite his private misgivings about the Stalinist purges of 1936-38 and his disagreement with the Communist Left’s exaggerated emphasis on class priorities over “nationalist” priorities in the Third World.

In 1938 Robeson demonstrated his commitment to the fight against fascism by going to Spain to sing and speak in support of the Spanish Republic in its civil war against General Francisco Franco’s fascist rebellion. The profound effect this experience had on Robeson’s radicalization was reflected in his dramatic statement at that lime: “The artist must elect to fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice; I had no alternative.” By 1939, Robeson was a key figure symbolizing on a world scale the unity of the antifascist and anticolonial struggles.

In the fall of 1939 Robeson returned from England to the United States, where he continued his highly successful concert and theater career while simultaneously becoming a leader of the civil rights movement and a spokesman for left-wing causes. He was the first major performing artist to refuse to perform for segregated audiences and to lead voter registration campaigns in the Deep South. Robeson also played an important role in support of the union-organizing drive of the CIO in the early 1940s, and in bringing black workers into the unions.

In 1946 Robeson challenged President Harry S Truman’s refusal to sponsor legislation against lynching by telling him that in the absence of federal protection blacks would exercise their right of armed self-defense. An opponent of the Cold War from its inception, Robeson attended a world peace conference in Paris in 1949 and expressed the view that black Americans should not fight an aggressive war against the Soviet Union on behalf of their own oppressors. In the wake of those remarks, the U.S. government and the media launched an attack of unprecedented ferocity against Robeson that lasted for nine years.

Robeson’s passport was revoked in 1950 and was not restored until 1958. Inquiries under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State, and numerous other U.S. government agencies compiled tens of thousands of documents on Robeson and illegally harassed him over a period of more than twenty years. Robeson was also blacklisted in the entertainment industry and prevented from appearing in professional engagements until 1957. Despite this persecution, Robeson continued to sing and speak in black churches and in the halls of the few surviving left-wing trade unions. He also wrote a book titled Here I Stand in collaboration with the black writer and journalist Lloyd I. Brown in which he outlined the program and strategy subsequently adopted by the civil rights movement and foretold the advent of the movement for economic justice.

During the anticommunist witch-hunts of the late 1940s and the 1950s, Robeson defended the rights of Communists and defied congressional committees when they compelled him to testify before them. Although he was not a member of the Communist Party, he refused on constitutional grounds to answer any questions concerning Party membership or affiliation.

Robeson remained publicly neutral concerning the USSR-China rift that began in the late 1950s, maintaining his cordial relations with both countries, and expressed no opinion about Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” in 1956 denouncing Stalin’s crimes However, Robeson’s political attitude on these issues was conveyed indirectly by his personal friendship with Khrushchev and his enthusiastic support of Khrushchev’s domestic and foreign-policy reforms.

In 1958 Robeson’s passport was restored on the basis of a Supreme Court decision, and he traveled abroad for five years to reestablish his artistic career. After a successful comeback, Robeson became ill with circulatory disease, and in 1963 he returned to the United States to retire. Contrary to the claims of the media, Robeson was not disillusioned or embittered. As he put it in 1973, three years before his death from a stroke: “Though ill health has compelled my retirement, you can be sure that in my heart I go on singing.” Drawing upon lyrics he had made world famous, he continued, “I must keep laughing instead of crying, I must keep fighting until I’m dying, and Ol’ Man River, he just keeps rolling along.”

Some Paul Robeson videos for BHM.

Robeson at the peace arch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdGvoOVaPbk&feature=related

Singing the Soviet Anthem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT2qnM3s0Cc

Singing Joe Hill:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Kxq9uFDes

Interviewed on Pacifica Radio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8vL0Vx34x8

Mumia's Tribute to Paul Robeson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqKNvZD1mxc

Three short pieces he wrote are at the Marxist internet archive: http://www.marxists.org/archive/robeson/index.htm

RED DAVE

2nd February 2010, 12:54

To Joe_Germinal:

Joe, thanx for your post about Paul Robeson. Although this isn't intended to be a discussion thread, do you have any information on his silence during the 1960s? I remember being very puzzled about it as Robeson was one of my early heroes. Although I know he was ill, and at one point he was in Poland for treatment of his illness, it has always given me pause to think.

RED DAVE

Joe_Germinal

3rd February 2010, 00:47

Joe, thank for your post about Paul Robeson. Although this isn't intended to be a discussion thread, do you have any information on his silence during the 1960s? I remember being very puzzled about it as Robeson was one of my early heroes. Although I know he was ill, and at one point he was in Poland for treatment of his illness, it has always given me pause to think.

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, Robeson's biographers have tended to blame his silence on his illness and leave it at that. There is a small conspiracy literature about his illness, suggesting among other things that it was brought on by an acid trip (part of MKUltra) and exacerbated by electro-shock therapy carried out by doctors in London who, it is claimed, were on the CIA payroll. Not totally an impossible story; however, I think far too much energy is spent on these conspiracy theories which detracts from any kind of social, political, or economic analysis of the last 15 years of Robeson's life.

According to Martin Doberman's biography, after the electro-shock, Robeson got talk therapy in East Germany, then spent most of his life chronically ill in New York and Philadelphia. Unfortunately, more than this, I don't know.

RED DAVE

3rd February 2010, 21:36

C.L.R. James

James’s distinctive contribution to the understanding of civilization emerged from a world filled with war, division, fear, suppression and unprecedented brutality. He himself had never underestimated the depth of the crisis which faced modern humanity. In James’s view, it was fundamental. It was part and parcel of the process of civilization itself, as the need for the free and full development of the human personality within new, expanded conceptions of social life came up against enhanced powers of rule from above, embodied in centralized, bureaucratic structures which confined and fragmented human capacity at every level. This theme, what James later called the struggle between socialism and barbarism, was the foundation of his life’s work. In the early Caribbean phase, it was implicit in his depiction of character and society through fiction and cricket writing; later it became politically focused in his active engagement with the tradition of revolutionary Marxism; until eventually, as a result of his experience of the New World, it became the expansive and unifying theme by which James approached the complexity of the modern world.http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/biograph.htm

RED DAVE

Communist

4th February 2010, 18:55

=

Carter G. Woodson & African-American History Month (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/african-american_history_month_0211/)

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire (http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/)

Published Feb 3, 2010 5:25 PM

February 2010 represents the 84th anniversary of the founding of Negro History Week, now known as African-American History Month. This month of commemoration was initiated by historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who worked tirelessly for many years to popularize the dissemination and study of the history of African people in the United States and throughout the world.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/woodson_0211.jpg
Carter G. Woodson

Woodson originally came from New Canton, Virginia, where he was born on Dec. 19, 1875. Born into a poor Southern family and having to work in the coal mines of Kentucky, he was unable to enroll in high school until he was 20 years old.

He later attended the University of Chicago and Harvard University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1912, the second African American to receive this degree after W.E.B. DuBois in 1896.

W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson and other African-American historians took on the challenge of refuting the racist propaganda disguised as history, which sought to provide the ideological justification for the mass enslavement of African people and the continuation of Jim Crow laws and racist terror.

Before DuBois and Woodson

One of the major contributions of historians such as DuBois and Woodson is that they scientifically challenged and debunked the myths of the “Southern slave-owning aristocracy” and “Black docility.” These views could no longer stand up to the research presented in the narratives the African-American historians developed.

What is often deemphasized in the historical remembrance of African slavery in U.S. society is the high level of resistance by the captives to the plantations owners, overseers and the legal codes that reinforced this system of exploitation. Notions and theories of African slave resistance were largely absent from the scholarly treatment of this long episode in the history of North America until relatively recent times. One of the early 20th-century historians, Ulrich B. Phillips, did much to advance the racist views of Southern former-slave-owning families and their communities.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/dubois_0211.jpg
W.E.B. DuBois

In Phillips’ book entitled “American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime,” published originally in 1918, he contends that the overwhelming tendency among Southern slave holders was a liberalized form of administrative control, which resembles a patriarchal or paternalistic model of slave management.

As a result of the biased views held by Phillips and other white historians, their flawed emphasis and interpretation of data lead the reader to no particular insights or conclusions related to the African slave as a conscious human being within the production process taking place within Southern society as a whole.

All of the viewpoints presented by observers of the slave system in Phillips’ work reinforce the idea of the inferiority of African peoples and the supposed moral fortitude of the Southern slave owners. These views of the slave-master relationship contend that is is the natural order of things between Africans and Europeans.

The birth of African-American Studies

However, new schools of thought arose during the early 20th century to counteract the apologists for the antebellum slave system and the rebel confederacy during the Civil War. DuBois declared in 1909 that the cultural presence of the ancestral origins of the slaves played a significant role in shaping the character of American life: “The mystic spell of Africa is and ever was over all America. It has guided her hardest work, inspired her finest literature, and sung her sweetest songs. Her greatest destiny — unsensed and despised though it be — is to give back to the first of continents the gifts which Africa of old gave to America’s fathers’ fathers.”

According to Jacqueline Goggin in her political biography, “Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History”: “In 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to encourage scholars to engage in the intensive study of the past as it related to Africans and their descendants through the world. Prior to this work, the field had been largely neglected or distorted in the hands of historians who accepted the traditionally biased picture of Blacks in American and world affairs.”

In 1916 Woodson founded the “Journal of Negro History,” which remained an important scholarly publication under his direction for more than 30 years. His academic work led him to Howard University and West Virginia State College as a professor and administrator.

Over the years he authored numerous important books, including “The Negro in Our History” (1922), “The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861” (1915) and “A Century of Negro Migration” (1918). In 1933, during the Great Depression, he published his best known work, “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” where he attacked the white capitalist influence over schooling designed for African Americans during the early 20th century.

In this book there is a chapter entitled “Political Education Neglected,” where Woodson writes: “Even the few Negroes who are elected to office are often similarly uninformed and show a lack of vision. They have given little attention to the weighty problems of the nation; and in the legislative bodies to which they are elected, they restrict themselves as a rule to matters of special concern to the Negroes themselves, such as lynching, segregation and disenfranchisement, which they have well learned by experience.”

Woodson then goes on to point out that the contributions of African-American elected officials during Reconstruction were broader: “This indicates a step backwards, for the Negroes who sat in Congress and in the State Legislatures during the Reconstruction worked for the enactment of measures of concern to all elements of the population regardless of color. Historians have not yet forgotten what those Negroes statesmen did in advocating public education, internal improvements, labor arbitration, the tariff, and the merchant marine.”

Woodson’s legacy and the African-American struggle

Woodson died in 1950 at the age of 75. He did not live to see the emergence of the mass civil rights and Black power struggles starting in the mid-1950s and extending through the early 1970s. He was unable to witness the emergence of a militant student movement in 1960 that led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the later Black Panther Party.

It was during these times that the movement demanding the implementation of African-American Studies programs in K-12 education and in institutions of higher learning emerged. Tremendous protests were carried out at numerous schools, colleges and universities that won concessions introducing course work that recognized the contributions and essential role of African Americans in U.S. and world affairs.

The work of Woodson, DuBois and other African-American scholars provided the intellectual basis for the advancement of ethnic and multicultural studies. Every major school district and institution of higher learning has seen intense debate and struggle over the character of the academic curriculum and the admission and status of African Americans and other oppressed people of color in the United States.

Despite these gains of the adoption of African-American and multicultural studies programs and curriculums, as well as admission of people of color to historically white institutions, the current economic crisis has witnessed the wholesale attack on such gains made during the civil rights and Black power era. Today school districts and colleges are cutting back and laying off educational workers who gained their positions as a result of the mass movements over the last five decades.

These attacks on higher education and their disproportionate impact on African Americans and other oppressed people must be taken up in the current student movement against the major downsizing taking place in all areas of education in the U.S. With the upcoming March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education, students and educational workers must demand the continuation, restoration and full funding of all academic programs that serve the oppressed and exploited groups who have traditionally been excluded from positions of power and influence in the country.

These major cutbacks in education funding must be rejected, and students and workers should demand that money be taken away from the banks and the Pentagon and given to the people to ensure quality education for all. The interests of youth and workers must supersede those of the corporations and the military.

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Hampton

5th February 2010, 03:24

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/tomasutpen/Album2/Album%203/7a3d08fc.jpg

In 1961 Carmichael became a member of the Freedom Riders (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfreedomR.htm). After training in non-violent techniques, black and white volunteers sat next to each other as they travelled through the Deep South. Local police were unwilling to protect these passengers and in several places they were beaten up by white mobs. In Jackson, Mississippi, Carmichael was arrested and jailed for 49 days in Parchman Penitentiary. Carmichael also worked on the Freedom Summer (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfreedomS.htm) project and in 1966 became chairman of SNCC (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsncc.htm).

On 5th June, 1966, James Meredith (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmeredith.htm) started a solitary March Against Fear (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmeredithM.htm) from Memphis to Jackson, to protest against racism. Soon after starting his march he was shot by sniper. When they heard the news, other civil rights campaigners, including Carmichael, Martin Luther King (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkingML.htm) and Floyd McKissick (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmckissick.htm), decided to continue the march in Meredith's name.

When the marchers got to Greenwood, Mississippi, Carmichael and some of the other marchers were arrested by the police. It was the 27th time that Carmichael had been arrested and on his release on 16th June, he made his famous Black Power (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAblackpower.htm) speech. Carmichael called for "black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, and to build a sense of community". He also advocated that African Americans should form and lead their own organizations and urged a complete rejection of the values of American society.

The following year Carmichael joined with Charles Hamilton to write the book, Black Power (1967). Some leaders of civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAnaacp.htm) (NAACP) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsclc.htm) (SCLC), rejected Carmichael's ideas and accused him of black racism.

Carmichael also adopted the slogan of "Black is Beautiful" and advocated a mood of black pride and a rejection of white values of style and appearance. This included adopting Afro hairstyles and African forms of dress. Carmichael began to criticize Martin Luther King (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkingML.htm) and his ideology of nonviolence. He eventually joined the Black Panther Party (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApantherB.htm) where he became "honorary prime minister".

When Carmichael denounced United States involvement in the Vietnam War (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/vietnam.html), his passport was confiscated and held for ten months. When his passport was returned, he moved with his wife, Miriam Makeba, to Guinea, West Africa, where he wrote the book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism (1971).

Carmichael, who adopted the name, Kwame Ture, also helped to establish the All-African People's Revolutionary Party and worked as an aide to Guinea's prime minister, Sekou Toure. After the death of Toure in 1984 Carmichael was arrested by the new military regime and charged with trying to overthrow the government. However, he only spent three days in prison before being released. Stokely Carmichael died on cancer on 15th November, 1998.

the last donut of the night

5th February 2010, 03:53

Communist

5th February 2010, 04:02

.
Do we still need to celebrate Black History Month? (http://www.blackcommentator.com/)

by the Reverend Irene Monroe

The Black Commentator - Issue 361 - Feb. 4, 2010

February 1 began Black History Month, a national annual
observance since 1926, honoring and celebrating the
achievements of African-Americans.

This February 1 the International Civil Rights Center and
Museum (ICRCM) opened in Greensboro, North Carolina,
honoring the courageous action of four African- American
students. Their actions led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
which mandated desegregation of all public accommodations.

Fifty years ago on February 1, 1960 the now ICRCM was a
Woolworth's store and the site of the original sit-in where
Ezell A. Blair Jr. (also known as Jibreel Khazan), David
Leinhail Richmond, Joseph Alfred McNeil, and Franklin Eugene
McCain from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
College (NC A&T), a historically black college, sat at its
lunch counter as a form of non-violent direct action
protesting the store's segregated seating policy. And as a
result of their civil disobedience, sit-ins sprung up not
only in Greensboro but throughout the South, challenging
other forms of this nation's segregated public
accommodations, including bathrooms, water fountains, parks,
theaters, and swimming pools, to name a few.

If Dr. Carter Woodson, the Father of Black History, were
alive today, he would be proud that the ICRCM opened this
month.

However, for a younger generation of African- Americans as
well as whites, whose ballots help elect this country's
first African-American president, celebrating Black History
Month seems outdated.

"Obama is post-racial. And Black History Month is old
school," Josh Dawson (26) of New Hampshire tells me.

For many whites as well as people of color of Dawson's
generation, Obama race was a "non-issue." And Obama's
election encapsulated for them both the physical and
symbolic representation of Martin Luther Kings' vision
uttered in his historic "I Have a Dream" during the 1963
March on Washington.

"King said don't judge by the color of our skin, but instead
the content of our character," Dawson continues.

In proving how "post-racial" Obama was as a presidential
candidate, Michael Crowley of "The New Republic" wrote in
his article "Post-racial" that it wasn't only liberals who
had no problem with Obama's race but conservatives had no
problem too, even the infamous ex-Klansman David Duke.

"Even white Supremacists don't hate Obama," Crowley writes
about Duke. "[Duke] seems almost nonchalant about Obama,
don't see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary
Clinton--or, for that matter, John McCain."

For years, the celebration of Black History Month has always
brought up the ire around "identity politics" and "special
rights."

'If we're gonna' have Black History Month, why not White
History Month? Italian History Month? Chinese History
Month?," Dawson questions.

During the first decade of the 21st century we saw the
waning interest in "identity politics," creating both political
and systematic disempowerment of marginalized groups, like
people of color, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and queer (LGBTQ) people. We also saw the gradual
dismantling of affirmative action policies, like in 2003
when the Supreme Court split the difference on affirmative
action, allowing the Bakke case on reverse discrimination
to stand.

In celebrating Black History Month this year in what is now
perceived by some to be one year in the "post-racial" era
since Obama took office, I worry how we as a nation will
honestly talk about race.

For example, During Black History Month in 2009 Holder
received scathing criticism for his speech on race. His
critics said the tone and tenor of the speech was
confrontational and accusatory.

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an
ethnic melting pot," Holder said, "in things racial we have
always been and continue to be, in too many ways,
essentially a nation of cowards."

Within the African- American LGBTQ community, Black History
Month has always come under criticism. And rightly so! The
absence of LGBTQ people of African descent in the month-long
celebration is evidence of how race, gender and sexual
politics of the dominant culture are reinscribed in black
culture as well. It leads you to believe that the only
shakers and movers in the history of people of African
descent in the U.S. were and still are heterosexuals. And
because of this heterosexist bias, the sheroes and heroes of
LGBTQ people of African decent -- like Pat Parker, Audre
Lorde, Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and Bayard Rustin -- are
mostly known and lauded within a subculture of black life.

However, the argument that celebrating Black History Month
in 2010 is no more than a celebration of a relic tethered to
an old defunct paradigm of the civil rights era and is a
hindrance to black people moving forward is bogus.

In order to move forward you must look back.

And in so doing, were it not for the successful sit-ins,
marches, and boycotts of the 1960's, could we have this
conversation in 2010?

-----------------
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------

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene
Monroe, is a religion columnist, theologian, and public
speaker. She is the Coordinator of the African American
Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in
Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific School of
Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate
from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at
Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-
American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for
her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to
MSNBC's list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend
Monroe is the author of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow
Always: Meditations on Bible Prayers for Not-So-Everyday
Moments. As an African American feminist theologian, she
speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible.
Her website is irenemonroe.com]

__________________________________________________ _
_____________________________________________
__________________________________

Jimmie Higgins

5th February 2010, 05:08

Well, obvious, but since not one mentioned either the greatest athlete of the 20th century or the most famous revolutionary of the post-war US.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0m9i2ACgZw&feature=related

Ballot or the Bullet: a required listening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRNciryImqg

dar8888

5th February 2010, 07:23

Clearly, we do. When it is no longer necessary to ask the question, we'll know that we no longer need to celebrate Black History Month.

RED DAVE

5th February 2010, 14:41

If you don't know Coltrane, you don't know music.

John William "Trane" Coltrane (September 23, 1926*– July 17, 1967[1]) was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz. He was prolific, making about fifty recordings as a leader during his recording career, and appeared as a sideman on many other albums, notably with trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk.

As his career progressed, Coltrane's music took on an increasingly spiritual dimension. His second wife was pianist Alice Coltrane, and their son Ravi Coltrane is also a saxophonist.

He influenced innumerable musicians, and remains one of the most significant tenor saxophonists in jazz history. He received many awards, among them a posthumous Special Citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2007 for his "masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coltrane

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

5th February 2010, 22:37

There's no such thing as too much Miles!

Miles Davis is more than a jazz musician: he is a cultural icon, known even to people who can't tell bebop from fusion. That may seem strange considering that Davis made a career of defying the expectations of critics and audience alike, but it is just one more paradox associated with this mercurial artist.

Miles was born in Alton, Illinois on May 26, 1926. He grew up in East St. Louis in a middle class family, playing in his high school band as well as with several local R&B groups. He quickly became enamored of jazz, particularly the new sounds being created by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Davis' father sent him to Juliard to study music, but Miles didn't spend much time there, dropping out to play with Parker's quintet from 1946 to 1948. That proved to be a humbling experience at first, since Miles didn't yethave the chops to keep up with Parker's breakneck tempos and chord substitutions. He learned quickly, though, and grew immensely as a musician during his tenure with Bird.

Next, Miles hooked up with a group of musicians who were doing something completely different. This group included J.J. Johnson, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, and Max Roach. While all were excellent bop players, they were developing a style that was less volatile and more relaxed, which suited Davis' temperement. The arrangements crafted by Lewis, Mulligan, John Carisi, and Gil Evans added more uniqueness to the nine-piece group's sound. Davis became the group's ad-hoc leader, and the classic Birth of the Cool was the result.

The early 50s were an erratic time for Davis, mostly due to his heroin addiction, and he was a disappointing performer during this time. By the middle of the decade, however, he had cleaned up and formed his first quintet, comprised of Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. This group became very popular and recorded several essential albums for the Prestige label: Cookin', Steamin', Workin', and Relaxin'. When the quintet broke up, Davis spent time collaborating again with arranger Gil Evans, resulting in great albums like Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain. He finished the decade out by recording one of the best known jazz albums of all time, Kind of Blue, with a sextet that included Coltrane, Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones.

In the 1960s Davis put together a second quintet, this time utilizing Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Ron Carter. The music of this group was more complex, moving through post-bop modal experimentation and eventually into some of the group improvisation and open forms of free jazz. Some of Davis' fans were mystified by the group's music, but it was uniformly applauded by critics, other musicians, and avid music fans eager for new sounds. The group's output has recently been collected in the 6-disc set The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, 1965-'68.

As the 1970s beckoned, Miles realized that rock had replaced jazz as the music of choice for the younger generation. In order not to get left behind, he began to perform with an electronic band: electric guitar, electric bass, banks of electronic keyboards, and even an amplified trumpet. The sound was bubbling, dark, and dense, and it further alienated some jazz fans and many critics as well. There was no denying the power of the music Davis was producing, however: upon its release in 1970, *****es Brew sold 400,000 copies, making it the best-selling jazz album of all time. The group included Chick Corea, Hancock, John McLaughlin, and others who went on to become mainstays of the jazz fusion movement.

Davis continued to perform and record throughout the 1970s and 1980s, continuing to perform with primarily electronic groups, often playing organ instead of his trumpet, and playing with his back to the audience. Some of the minimalist experiements he performed at the close of the 70s foreshadowed the ambient and electronic music that would become common in the 80s and 90s. Miles died on September 28, 1991, but his music, style, and collaborators all continue to influence not only jazz music, but popular culture as well.http://www.jazzitude.com/milesbio.htm

RED DAVE

Communist

5th February 2010, 23:25

Miles. :thumbup1: Another short bio here (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:0ifuxqt5ldke%7ET1).

I'll tell you, I may be pretty lonely in this, but "On The Corner" gets me going every time. He nearly invented fusion with "*****es Brew" and then he reinvented fusion with "On The Corner (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gifuxqtgldhe)".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps0ka1tY5yg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POcsWz4GwUA

Communist

6th February 2010, 01:56

.
Celebrating 100 Years of Black Cinema (http://www.theroot.com/views/celebrating-100-years-black-cinema-0)

From the earliest days of film, black pioneers have
imagined a better world for African Americans-a
world that was often far ahead of reality.

By Nsenga Burton
February 3, 2010

As we all know, February marks Black History Month. But
this year, February also marks something else: The 100th
anniversary of the birth of black cinema. Black cinema
was making black history before Carter G. Woodson
founded Negro History Week in 1926. And this week, black
cinema is making history once again with the nomination
of Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire for
Best Picture. It's the first time in the history of the
Academy Awards that a film directed by a black director
is nominated for the top award. Director Lee Daniels is
following in the footsteps of those who came before him-
namely, William D. Foster and Oscar Micheaux.

Oscar Micheaux is often lauded as the father of black
filmmakers. But William D. Foster began producing films
nearly a decade earlier than Micheaux's first effort. In
1910, Foster, a sports writer for the Chicago Defender,
formed the Foster Photoplay Company, the first
independent African-American film company. (Foster
wasn't a complete stranger to show business; he had also
worked as a press agent for vaudeville stars Bert
Williams and George Walker.) In 1912, Foster, produced
and directed The Railroad Porter. The film paid homage
to the Keystone comic chases, while attempting to
address the pervasive derogatory stereotypes of blacks
in film.

This was three years before D.W. Griffith's The Birth of
a Nation (1915), a plantation fantasy credited with
establishing negative stereotypes of blacks in film that
still exists today. Consider the Reconstruction scene,
where barefoot black legislators eat fried chicken,
swill whiskey, lust after white women and pass a law
that all legislators must wear shoes. Insert a
cantankerous mammy, tragic mulatto, murderous buck,
black rapists and a lynching, and you've got what is
shamefully considered to be one of the greatest films of
all time.

In response to The Birth of a Nation, brothers George
Perry Johnson and Noble Johnson (a Universal Pictures
contract actor), founded the Lincoln Motion Picture
Company in 1916, producing middle-class melodramas like
The Realization of a Negro's Ambition (1916) and the
Trooper of Troop K (1917) and their most well-known
film, The Birth of a Race (1918). The Johnson brothers'
movies featured black soldiers, black families and black
heroes, concepts foreign to most mainstream films at
that time.

Oscar Micheaux soon followed suit with The Homesteader
(1919), becoming one of the most prolific filmmakers of
his time. He directed over 40 films, most notably Within
Our Gates (1920) and Body and Soul (1925), which
featured film star Paul Robeson, and God's Step Children
(1938). Micheaux's films explored the issues of the day:
passing, lynching, religion and criminal behavior. They
were independently produced until he filed bankruptcy in
1928, reorganizing with white investors as the Micheaux
Film Company. Some argue that this changed the tone and
direction of his films.

Micheaux's films attracted controversy: Some black film
critics criticized his work for its portrayal of blacks,
which sometimes perpetuated the same stereotypes found
in mainstream films. You didn't find these stereotypes
with the work of Eloise Gist, a black woman filmmaker,
who with her husband, James, made religious films.
Eloise Gist, a D.C. native, drove around with a camera,
shooting footage that used "real" people as actors. Her
morality films, Hellbound Train and Verdict: Not Guilty,
were released in 1930 and were strongly endorsed by the
NAACP.

Early black filmmakers aimed to show the full humanity
of African Americans with story lines and themes that
countered prevailing ideologies about blackness. Many of
the films are hard to find and have "poor" production
values because they were literally making something out
of nothing.

Early black cinema is an important part of American
culture because it visually brought our stories to life.
Without the black independent film movement, there would
be very few black films today. Where would the black
film canon be without the Los Angeles School of Black
Filmmakers of the 1970s? Haile Gerima, Charles Burnett,
Larry Clark, Pamela Jones, Jamaa Fanaka, Julie Dash,
Billy Woodberry, Alile Sharon Larkin all came out of
UCLA. Their films tied black stories to black political
struggles with an intellectual and cultural core.

Some say Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's
Baadasssss Song (1971) was revolutionary; others found
it to be pornographic Van Peebles made this cult classic
for $500,000; it grossed $10 million. Without Sweet
Sweetback, there would have been no space for Gordon
Parks Jr., Ossie Davis and others to direct films during
the blaxploitation era. Although controversial, the
blaxploitation era gave black actors, filmmakers and
musicians an opportunity to make movies-at least in the
beginning. During that era, one of the most profound
independent films of all time emerged-Ivan Dixon and Sam
Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973), which
gave voice and visuals to the black power ideology that
was evolving at that time. It was an unapologetic look
at rebellion and literally using the masters' tools to
dismantle the masters' house.

It wasn't so long ago that so many people of all races
didn't believe that they would see an African-American
president in their lifetime. But what some couldn't
imagine in reality, black filmmakers created in fantasy,
reimagining an America where a black man could be
president. In The Man (1972), James Earl Jones stars as
Douglass Dilman, a black man who becomes president of
the United States after the untimely deaths of the
president and speaker of the House. (The vice president
was too sick to take over.) Jones brilliantly conveys
the struggle over power and identity in this cult
classic that shows the complexity of race and class in
the Oval Office.

Historically, black cinema has been inextricably linked
to social issues in our community. The controversy over
Tyler Perry's and Daniels' films has a lot to do with
class issues, something that Oscar Micheaux also
experienced. While black filmmakers have broken many
barriers, there is still much work to be done. For
example, Cheryl Boone Isaacs is currently the only
African American among the 43 governors of Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While African-American
film directors like Antoine Fuqua and F. Gary Gray are
directing films that encompass many different genres
including action and suspense, black female directors
like Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou) and Euzhan Palcy (A Dry
White Season) have not fared as well.

Black cinema has always imagined what we could never
dream of in reality. Now that reality is catching up
with black film, it will be fascinating to see where it
goes, particularly on the independent front. Let's think
about how the concept of black cinema is being redefined
when a film like Avatar features Zoe Saldana, Laz Alonso
and CCH Pounder in starring roles.

Black cinema is evolving and will continue to evolve. It
did not start with Tyler Perry, nor will it end with
him. There would be no Denzel Washington without Sidney
Poitier and no Sidney Poitier without Paul Robeson.
There would be no Halle Berry without Dorothy Dandridge,
no Dorothy Dandridge without Lena Horne and Lena Horne
without Fredi Washington. There would be no Hughes
Brothers without the Johnson Brothers, no Lee Daniels
without Spike Lee, no Gina Prince-Bythewood without
Darnell Martin. There would be no Tyler Perry Company
without New Millenium Studios, no New Millenium Studios
without Third World Cinema.

As in many other industries, African Americans have made
their mark in film narratively, stylistically,
historically, thematically, economically and
aesthetically. What some call poor production values,
particularly as it relates to early black films, I call
a survival aesthetic-doing the best that we can with
what we have. Now that we have 100 years under our
belts, we will do better. No matter how much black film
changes, the ways in which we interrogate society
through our films will not.

As we embark on a new decade in American society where
many believe race will become less of an issue, we often
forget how long black film has been around and how it
has given voice-and image-to our issues.

Black cinema is black history - and our future.

--------------

Nsenga K. Burton Ph.D. serves as cultural critic for
Creative Loafing. An assistant professor at Goucher
College in Baltimore, she is a media scholar and
filmmaker who recently finished Four Acts, a documentary
on the 2007 public servants strike in South Africa.
Follow her on Twitter.

===========

RED DAVE

6th February 2010, 14:05

I got this from Kayser Soso. It's an online mini graphic novel of Paul Robeson in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Absolutely fantastic.

http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/document-library/volunteer-june-2009/?searchterm=robeson%20volunteer%202009

RED DAVE

AmericanRed

6th February 2010, 15:48

I'll tell you, I may be pretty lonely in this, but "On The Corner" gets me going every time.

Not lonely at all. I love On The Corner. ("Black Satin" in particular.) I love pretty much everything Miles did between 1955 and 1975. He's probably my favorite 20th century musician.

Pirate Utopian

6th February 2010, 16:55

My favorite Miles Davis album is Get Up With It.
On The Corner is also fantastic ofcourse.

scarletghoul

6th February 2010, 17:26

Oh god black history is like, half of all interesting western history.Theres way too many awesome people and things to mention ..

I'll just post one of my favourite poems from one of the all time great blackamerikan poets, Amiri Baraka. great to listen to as well as to read :

http://amiribaraka.com/Somebody.mp3

SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA (All thinking people
oppose terrorism
both domestic
& international…
But one should not
be used
To cover the other)
They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
the gonorrhea in costume
the white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say? Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane

Who/ Who / Who/
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker

Who/ Who/ Who/
Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war
Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air
Who own the water
Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth
Who live in the biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime
Who killed the most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos
Who/Who/Who
Who own the ocean
Who own the airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio
Who own what ain't even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain't the real owners
Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
WHO/ WHO/ WHOWHO/
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner
Who/Who/Who ^^^
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who/ Who/ ???
Who fount Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere
Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane , Betty Shabazz, Princess Margaret, Ralph Featherstone, Little Bobby
Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia,Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,
MedgarEvers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed
Who put a price on Lenin's head
Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars
WHO/WHO/ ^^

Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured , assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"
Who blew up the Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek who WHO W H O/
Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal, The New
Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs, Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys, The Hollywood Ten

Who set the Reichstag Fire
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away ?
/
Who,Who, Who/
explosion of Owl the newspaper say
the devil face cd be seen Who WHO Who WHO
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national oppression and terror
violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful

Who you know ever
Seen God?
But everybody seen
The Devil

Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO (+) who who ^
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!

AMIRI B 10/01

Nwoye

6th February 2010, 20:35

I really wanted to share this so I guess I'll post it here. In 2003 Nigerian author and prominent public figure Chinua Achebe attended a meeting of the OECD. While there international bankers and economists discussed the status of African economies, insisting that if they just further liberalized their markets things would be alright. They shrugged off evidence to the contrary, arguing that these countries just needed more time getting use to the radical "structural adjustments". Achebe replied with this:

"I am beginning to understand why I am here. I have been wondering what a fiction writer is doing among world bankers and economists. But now I realise that what you are doing here is fiction! You talk about "structural adjustment", as if Africa was some kind of laboratory! Some intellectual abstraction! You prepare your medicine, you mix this into that; if it doesn't work, you try out another concoction. But Africa is people, you know? In the last two years, we have seen the minimum wage in Nigeria fall from the equivalent of 15 [pounds sterling] a month to 5 [pounds sterling] a month! That's not an abstraction: somebody is earning that money and he has wife and children, you see? ... You are punishing these countries because they are in debt but America is the biggest debtor of all; and nobody is asking America to adopt politics that would bankrupt their citizens. But Africa--the Third World--they are places where you can try out things. Africans are not really people ... they are expendable"

owned.

Jimmie Higgins

7th February 2010, 00:32

Wanted Man

7th February 2010, 13:13

Please contribute poems, biographies, art work, etc.

I've Known Rivers

by Langston Hughes

RED DAVE

Awesome. In Literature class, we had to study some of these poems, and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to learn about them. At some point, I was sitting on a long train trip, studying for my exam, looking over all the poetry that I had to read, and I came back to his works, and I read them thoroughly, while thinking deeply about what they meant, about the context. For some reason, they really resonated at that point.

Another one by Hughes that I had to study, from 1932:

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

RED DAVE

7th February 2010, 13:28

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)
by Nikki Giovanni

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman

I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me

For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on

My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

I mean...I...can fly
like a bird in the sky... RED DAVE

ChrisK

7th February 2010, 22:34

Here's Ossie Davis's eulogie for Malcolm X.

Here—at this final hour, in this quiet place—Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes—extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought—his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are—and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again—in Harlem—to share these last moments with him.
For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who have loved her, have fought for her and have defended her honor even to the death. It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us—unconquered still.
I say the word again, as he would want me to: Afro-American—Afro-American Malcolm, who was a master, was most meticulous in his use of words. Nobody knew better than he the power words have over minds of men.
Malcolm had stopped being a Negro years ago. It had become too small, too puny, too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American, and he wanted—so desperately—that we, that all his people, would become Afro-Americans, too.
There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times.
Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain—and we will smile. Many will say turn away—away from this man; for he is not a man but a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the black man—and we will smile. They will say that he is of hate—a fanatic, a racist—who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them:
Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did, you would know him. And if you knew him, you would know why we must honor him: Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood!
This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves. Last year, from Africa, he wrote these words to a friend: My journey, he says, is almost ended, and I have a much broader scope than when I started out, which I believe will add new life and dimension to our struggle for freedom and honor and dignity in the States.
I am writing these things so that you will know for a fact the tremendous sympathy and support we have among the African States for our human rights struggle. The main thing is that we keep a united front wherein our most valuable time and energy will not be wasted fighting each other.
However we may have differed with him—or with each other about him and his value as a man—let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now.
Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man—but a seed—which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us.
And we will know him then for what he was and is—a prince—our own black shining prince!—who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.

I'd also just like to recommend Black Liberation and Socialism by Ahmed Shawki. Its an excellent book on black history.

RED DAVE

8th February 2010, 04:16

Jim Crow and Popular Culture

Ronald L. F. Davis, Ph. D.

The onset of Jim Crow laws and customs rested upon the racist characterization of black people as culturally, personally, and biologically inferior. This image functioned as the racial bedrock of American popular culture after 1900, especially manifested in minstrel shows, the vaudeville theatre, songs and music, film and radio, and commercial advertising. So pervasive was the racial demeaning of black people, and so accepted was it by white Americans throughout the nation, that blackness became synonymous with silliness, deprivation, and ignorance. Most white Americans believed that all Africans and their descendants were racially inferior to whites, and that their common inferiority tied them together wherever they might live in the modern world.

In America, black people were portrayed as inferior almost from the time of their enslavement in the colonies in the 1620s. This racial characterization enabled white masters to justify slavery as something positive. Using racial stereotypes to justify the enslavement of blacks was especially pronounced after 1830 as white Southerners defended slavery against attacks by northern abolitionists.

This historic view of blacks became deeply embedded in American popular culture with the emergence of the minstrel show in the 1840s. By 1900, the image of silly and exaggerated black men and women in comic routines was the mainstay of musical acts, songs, and skits that dominated the theatrical scene in America well into the twentieth century. (For further discussion of the relationship of Jim Crow and minstrel shows, see Creating Jim Crow, In-Depth Essay.

The image of black people in the white mind focused on outrageous depictions of individual blacks and their assumed cultural practices. Countless representations of impoverished blacks with ink-black skin, large thick red lips, and bulging eyeballs appeared almost everywhere in the public arena. Dozens of graphic artists and illustrators prospered as racial commercial artists by drawing such images to sell products and to illustrate show bills and magazines. Most prominent was Edward W. Kemble, whose racist illustrations were notorious in America and Europe, including his 1896 "classic," Kemble's Coons.

Perhaps, the most popular of all the Jim Crow industries by 1900 was the sheet music field, which made the derogatory word "coon" a part of everyday language. The black American Vaudeville performer and composer, Ernest Hogan, did more than anyone else, ironically, to popularize the so-called "coon" craze and racist characterization of blacks. His wildly popular 1896 song, "All Coons Look Alike to Me," appeared, usually illustrated with the images of ridiculously dressed black men and women, on billboards and sheet music all over the nation.

At the same time, as Jim Crow music, dance, theatre, and illustrations distorted the image of black Americans, a wave of racially driven commercial advertising flooded the landscape. Most popular were the racist trading or advertisement cards that used the outrageous images of black people to sell everything from yeast to furniture, pillows, fertilizers, hardware, cigars, breakfast food, and tobacco. Of these cards, racist advertisements that depicted a Mammy-like black woman (Aunt Jemima) selling pancakes were, perhaps, most popular. The silly "Gold Dust Twins," who performed as half-dressed, house-cleaning pickaninnies dispensing commercial washing powder, were also especially popular. Everywhere one turned were brightly colored and skillfully drawn images of big-eyed and thick-lipped blacks eating corn, sporting fanciful attire and riding a wild pig or some other farm animal, aping white elites to comic effect, trying to ice skate, clumsily walking along a high fashion boulevard, haplessly trying to ride horses in the manner of an English gentleman, and strutting proudly in exaggerated dress at parties and "darkey" balls.

And soon, the images became products themselves--racist dolls and Mammy-style metal banks flooded the consumer market as children's toys. By 1900, so accepted was the popular concept of black inferiority that racist brand names, such as "Niggerhead," began to appear--usually selling some aspect of blackness, such as ink or dye.

This outpouring of images, performances, and music was supported by a largely racist or else highly romanticized literary tradition. The novels and writings of Joel Chandler Harris, especially his Uncle Remus tales, written from 1888 through 1906, looked back at the days of plantation slavery as a time of racial harmony in which happy and simple-minded blacks lived with respect and dignity as slaves.

Thomas Nelson Page, whose early novels and short stories, usually narrated by elderly freedmen, portrayed, like Harris, a tranquil life in slavery where faithful blacks adored their masters and were cared for with affection and tenderness. By 1898, Page had turned bitter, however, and began depicting blacks as sinister characters that could not be trusted in freedom. No author was more racist or more popular than Thomas Dixon, whose novel, The Clansman, published in 1905, blamed all of the South's woes on the inferior blacks who roamed the land unchecked following their emancipation.
When film and radio burst onto the American scene in the new century, the racial stereotypes were easily adapted and strengthened in these revolutionary forms of popular culture. Radio captured the imaginations of millions of passive listeners who tuned in for broadcasts of the Amos and Andy shows--the most popular radio show in America in the 1930s. Rooted in the old minstrel shows and blackfaced vaudeville acts, the program portrayed two southern black men who had moved to Chicago. Its characters of the Kingfish, a dishonest and lazy confidence man who massacred the English language by mispronouncing words, and Sapphire, his loud, abrasive, bossy, and emasculating wife, became permanent fixtures in the minds of white Americans. The program dominated radio in the 1930s and 1940s, and played as a popular television show in the 1950s.

Like radio, Hollywood films also presented blacks within the context of images from the minstrel shows and vaudeville. Usually, blacks were presented as faithful and often wise or hapless servants, resolute and devoted Mammy-type characters, and often stupid and silly chicken-stealing blacks. Many of the classic film landmarks of American culture featured such stereotypical portrayals of African Americans. These films included such classics as Birth of a Nation (1915), The Jazz Singer (1927), which was the first sound film, Gone with the Wind (1939), the most popular film of all time, and the sentimental Song of the South (1946), an animated film produced by Walt Disney and based upon the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris.

Birth of a Nation was truly a product of its times when it hit the nation's movie houses in 1915. It fused the two most basic racial themes of the Jim Crow South, demonstrating the close link between the two: the minstrel show and lynching. And, in the latter case, it greatly strengthened the racist image of black men as beasts who lusted after innocent white women and girls. The film, which was the blockbuster of its day, raking in over $200 million dollars from its debut in 1915 to the mid 1920s, launched a wave of "Negrophobia," which is the fear of and/or contempt for black people and their culture. After viewing this film, many white males honestly worried about leaving their wives and children at home alone out of fear that black beasts lurked in the shadows all around. In some communities, after seeing the film, the whites randomly attacked and beat any blacks they found on the streets. The movie helped revive the long dead Ku Klux Klan and inspired a new wave of white supremacy in the 1920s.

Most "Southern Films," although far less viciously anti-black than Birth of a Nation, played, nevertheless, to the white supremacy convictions of most Americans. Continuously voted the most popular film of all times whenever surveys are made, the epic Gone With the Wind, based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, presented a range of black characters who exemplified various aspects of the accepted racial stereotypes. Although the black actresses Mattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen brilliantly played the Mammy character and the witless house servant, both women were barred from the week's events surrounding the Atlanta premier of the film in 1939. McDaniel, who went on to be the first African American to win an Oscar for her performance as the strong and resolute Mammy, was viewed by white audiences as a loyal and faithful servant--which was an acceptable black image.

And McQueen, who had starred in dozens of black theatrical performances during the Harlem Renaissance, displayed a genuine comic talent in ways that sadly supported the racist views of blacks as incompetent people. Her performance, along with those of the popular black actors Stepin Fetchet, who portrayed a lazy, whining, clown-like character in numerous films in the 1930s and 1940s, and Billy "Bo Jangles" Robinson, the tap dancing house servant in several Shirley Temple films in the 1930s, continued the long line of racial characterizations stretching from the minstrel shows through vaudeville and radio.

At the same time that black stereotypes and racist characterizations dominated the popular culture of white supremacy, significant contrasts did exist and provided refuge for black Americans. The Harlem and Chicago Renaissance movements in literature and the arts of the 1920s presented richly creative and genuine black achievements in contrast to the popular images of white supremacy.

In film, for example, over 200 "race movies" were produced between 1915 and 1945. Most of these films countered the stereotypical images of blacks, presenting them instead as doctors, lawyers, soldiers, cowboys, gangsters, and men and women of character. Most importantly, they featured all-black casts. Three Oscar Micheaux films were among the best of these: Within Our Gates (1920), which presents the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta; The Brute (1920), which is the story of a black man standing up to a lynch mob; and Birthright (1939), which tells of a black Ivy League man who returns to the South after college. In the white mainstream, moreover, the popular musical, Show Boat, featuring the great black actor and singer, Paul Robeson, was one of the first films to show black people as strong and complex men and women victimized by racism in America.

Still, images of blacks as lazy, thieving, conniving people; hapless or faithfully devoted servants; or dangerously sex-crazed beasts dominated the media during the Jim Crow era. The accepted racial stereotypes supported a racist America in which lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, disfranchisement, and segregation ruled the land. At a sold out charity benefit during the premier of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta in 1939, local promoters recruited blacks to sing in a "slave choir" on the steps of a white-columned plantation mansion built for the event. Among the local African Americans in the choir was a young black man dressed as a slave who made his first appearance that evening in the national spotlight. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr.

Selected Secondary Sources:

Bernardi, Daniel. ed. The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of the U. S. Cinema. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York, New York: Continuum, 1989.
Cripps, Thomas. Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

______. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914. 1971. Reprint, Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, 1987

Hale, Grace Elizabeth. Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940. New York, New York: Pantheon, 1998.

Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York, New York. Oxford University Press, 1977.

Litwack, Leon F. Troubled In Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

O'Connor, John E. and Jackson, Martin A. eds. American History/American Film: Interpreting the Hollywood Image. New York, New York: Continuum, 1988.

Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. White on Black: Images of African and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1991.

Powell, Richard J. Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century. New York, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Toll, Robert C. Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century America. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/hs_es_popular_culture.htm

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

11th February 2010, 05:33

Woodbey was so thoroughly forgotten, that when I was in the Civil Rights Movement and a member of the Socialist Party in the US, I never heard mention of him.

George Washington Woodbey

George Washington Woodbey (October 5, 1854 - 1920s?) was an influential African-American minister, author and Socialist. He wrote several influential papers about Socialism and African Americans, ministered in churches in the Midwestern United States and California, and served as the sole Black delegate to the Socialist Party of America conventions in 1904 and 1908.[1]

Biography

Woodbey was born into slavery in Johnson County, Tennessee, to Charles and Rachel Woodbey. Little is known about his childhood, though it is reported that he learned to read at a young age. Following the conclusion of the Civil War, Woodbey made his way to Emporia, Kansas and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1874. He ministered in churches in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.[2] [3]

Woodbey became active in the Republican Party and by the 1880s became interested in social reform. In Omaha he joined the Prohibition Party and ran on their ticket for Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska in 1890. He was Nebraska’s Prohibition Party’s candidate for Congress in 1894.[4]

In the 1900 Presidential campaigns, Woodbey supported the Democratic and Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. During this period Woodbey became familiar with the ideas of Eugene Debs, a labor organizer and five-time Socialist candidate for President. The Democratic Party invited Woodbey to deliver speeches, but then cut him off because he was too strongly Socialist.

Woodbey became a member of the Socialist Party. He never took the Socialist Party to task on the question of race, even after his own nomination for Vice Presidential candidate was met with only one vote. Woodbey believed the Socialist Party could help solve racial problems in the United States because of its emphasis on economic changes to the system. He promoted the causes of socialism across California and was recognized as one of the great socialist orators of the time. His ability to bring his message to the common man made him a reputation on the streets. On one occasion, Woodbey was denied access to a restaurant due to his race. He turned the situation around by putting together a successful boycott of the restaurant and hotel with the help of socialist comrades.[5]

In 1902 Woodbey moved to San Diego, where he was pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. He served on the executive board of the Socialist Party of California, and traveled around the state in his work. He believed that the socialist message of helping the poor was consistent with his Christian beliefs.[6]

Because of the inflammatory nature of his message, Woodbey was in and out of jail for several years. In 1905, after one particular incident, the police hospitalized the orator. He organized a protest and went to the county jail to lodge a formal complaint. His complaint was met by being physically thrown from the building. Woodbey would then press charges of assault and battery on the officer. The case was taken to court and a jury found the defendant not guilty. The verdict was not what Woodbey was looking for, but it gave him an unexpected boost with the community. The event also allowed him to demonize the police as shills for the capitalist machine.[7]

According to one biographer, there is no record of Woodbey or his activities after 1915;[8] however, an article by Woodbey was printed in a Chicago publication in 1909. He was said to have been active in California as late as 1923.[9]

Legacy

No one tried to estimate how many people Woodbey brought to the Socialist movement, but party organizers agreed that he did more for the cause in the beginning of the 20th century than any other leader. Reverend George W. Slater, Jr. credited Woodbey for his conversion and understanding of Socialism. Slater took the mantel of Socialism from Woodbey and continued to teach and preach his message as a disciple of the Socialist movement.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Woodbey

RED DAVE

Reuben

11th February 2010, 21:54

Excellent choice for a thread I have stickied it.

Reuben

Communist

11th February 2010, 22:24

The Watts Prophets (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:0ifexqqhld0e%7ET1)
bio from this website (http://www.dlartists.com/wp/company.html)
Prior to 1965, few white Americans outside of Los Angeles were aware of the community of Watts - an enclave of working class African-Americans just south of the skyscrapers of downtown. Forty square blocks of shops, churches, parks and families with a unique cultural and economic base were slowly deteriorating under the outside pressures of “urban renewal”, “progress,” and the overall population growth of the greater Los Angeles area.

In the 1950’s, Watts supported an astonishing array of creative endeavors. Seminal artists like Ornette Coleman, Charlie Mingus, and Don Cherry gave birth to much of their artistic legacy in the small clubs and theatres along Central Avenue in the community of Watts.

The anonymity of Watts in the 1950’s and early 60’s was lost forever after the explosive confrontation between the community and a Los Angeles police force in 1965. Walter Cronkite and a vast America called it the Watts Riots. For the community it was more a rebellion - the inevitable confrontation with what they experienced as an occupying army. However one sees it now, the event brought the community of Watts to the consciousness of all America and sustains it there now - more than thirty years later.

Out of the smoke and ashes, the process of rebuilding included the efforts of Budd Schulberg, (Academy Award-wining screenwriter for On the Waterfront) to create in his Watts Writer’s Workshop, an opportunity for local citizens to express themselves and their culture by encouraging art and literacy. It was the Watts Writer’s Workshop that bore the Watts Prophet was born.

The Watts Prophets are Richard Dedeux, Amde Hamilton and Otis O’Solomon who live, work and create in Watts, California, something they have done for more than thirty years. In 1967, these three, the best of the students in the prestigious Watts Writers Workshop, won their first amateur talent contest as a nameless group. But then, after they recited/chanted/ spoke/sung/witnessed their unique jazz-accompanied topical poem, an audience member - dazzled by their performance - shouted, “They must be the Watts Prophets!”

The earliest work by the twenty-something aged poets (as documented in their earliest recordings) was an expression of their rage against powerlessness. Racism, poverty, and violence were their everyday reality and provided the thematic foundation for what become a very unique style - what many today acknowledge as the roots of rap.

The Prophets

Amde Anthony Hamilton
Upon joining the Watts Writer’s Worshop under Budd Schulberg (What Makes Sammy Run, Oscar for On The Waterfront), Mr. Hamilton entered into a new phase in his life and emerged as one of The Watts Prophets. Success was fleeting and http://www.dlartists.com/images/ad_amde.jpgmore emotionally satisfying than financially remunerative. After the first flush, Mr. Hamilton spent a year teaching poetry at San Francisco State, but quickly came back to his roots in Watts doing social work with the Brotherhood Crusade, then in various capacities in numerous programs - e.g., Coodinator of special programs at Drew Postgraduate Medical School, Associate Director of Black Commission on Alcoholism, then as president of Classic Cut (contractors) and as a youth counselor. During all this time, Mr. Hamilton kept his art alive and when a new generation of African-American poetics began to emerge attention was once again focussed on the Watts Prophets. London Records came round with a contract and tours were arranged. But the Prophets had grown and now seek to bring their special art to an audience which needs and deserves their experience and their wisdom.

Otis O’Solomon
Mr. O’Solomon, too, became one of The Watts Prophets after the Watts Writer’s Worshop. Once the initial success had passed Mr. O’Solomon embarked on a career in the arts, editing and designing a book of original poetry from The Watts http://www.dlartists.com/images/ad_otis.jpgProphets work and other poets, writing for the Los Angeles TImes, producing poetry exhibitions and contests under the banner of his company, Artistic Heart; and presenting programs on Black History for Xerox, TRW, Rockwell, and Hughes Aircraft. He wrote the commentary material for song books on Quincy Jones, Marvin Hamlisch, Cannonball Adderly, and worked in television, film and the music world. During all this time, Mr. O’Solomon was honing his special art and when a new generation of African-American poetics began to emerge attention was once again focussed on the Watts Prophets. London Records came round with a contract and tours were arranged. But the Prophets had grown and now seek to bring their special art to an audience which needs and deserves their experience and their wisdom.

Richard Anthony Dedeaux
After first few years as one of The Watts Prophets, Mr. Dedeaux started working as a free lance producer for KCET, KNBC and other stations. He had a stint as a Creative Writing Instructor for the Los Angeles City Schools, the Mafundi http://www.dlartists.com/images/ad_richard.jpgInstitute in Watts, and at the Pasadena Community Center. He has acted with the Irish Repertoire Theater and other organizations and toured the country reading poetry, and appearing opposite Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, Stevie Wonder. During all this time, Mr. O’Solomon was honing his special art and when a new generation of African-American poetics began to emerge attention was once again focussed on the Watts Prophets. London Records came round with a contract and tours were arranged. But the Prophets had grown and now seek to bring their special art to an audience which needs and deserves their experience and their wisdom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4hAZtU8_aM

Pirate Utopian

11th February 2010, 22:48

I love the Watts Prophets, they are a must hear for any fan of The Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron.

Communist

11th February 2010, 22:51

Absolutely. They have some very interesting material.

Communist

12th February 2010, 06:19

__________________

Youth played pivotal role in civil rights, Black Power movements (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/youth_pivotal_0218/)

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Published Feb 11, 2010

It was on Feb. 1, 1960, some five decades ago, that the student movement was initiated when four youths were arrested for demanding service at a segregated whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/March_on_Washington_1963.jpg (http://www.blackpast.org)
March on Washington, 1963.

When the Southwide Student Leadership Conference on Nonviolent Resistance to Segregation was held in April of that same year, at least 56 colleges in the region had participants linked to the so-called “sit-in movement.” These activists were spread out over 12 states and had links with students from 19 northern colleges and universities.

The gathering was sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and executive director Ella Baker. The over 300 students who were delegates and observers to the conference witnessed the formation of a continuing Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which would constitute itself later as a more structured organization with a headquarters as well as field workers.

With the intensification of the campaigns to abolish legalized segregation and to win universal suffrage for African Americans in many areas of the southern United States, SNCC began to play a critical role in the civil rights movement. In 1961, the “Freedom Rides” were launched by the Congress on Racial Equality, resulting in the bombing of an integrated busload of freedom riders in Anniston, Ala., and severe beatings by white racists in a Greyhound bus depot in Birmingham.

As a result of these actions carried out against the freedom riders, CORE called off the campaign aimed at outlawing segregated interstate transportation facilities in the South. However, it was the student activists from SNCC based in the Nashville area who pledged to continue the freedom rides until the segregation laws governing interstate transportation in the South were overturned.

The SNCC activists in the area worked with the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference under the influence of Rev. James Lawson, who taught seminars on nonviolent protest methods.

Student activist Lucretia Collins summed up the sentiments within SNCC when she stated: “In Nashville, we had been informed that CORE was going to have Freedom Rides that could carry people all over the South and their purpose was to test the facilities at the bus stations in the major cities.
“Later we heard that the bus of the Freedom Riders had been burned on Mother’s Day in Anniston, Alabama, and that another bus had been attacked by people in Birmingham.
“CORE was discontinuing the Freedom Rides, people said. We felt that it had to continue even if we had to do it ourselves. We knew we were subject to being killed. This did not matter to us.
“There was so much at stake, we could not allow segregationists to stop us. We had to continue that Freedom Ride even if we were killed in the process.” (“The Making of Black Revolutionaries,” by James Forman, 1972)

After the continuation of the Freedom Rides by SNCC, the government was forced to intervene and repeal the segregation laws that regulated interstate public transportation. This was only done after numerous activists were beaten, tortured and imprisoned on false charges in Parchman Correctional Facility in Mississippi.

Fighting for political power

SNCC, however, was not content to merely abolish the segregation laws. It recognized that political power being denied to African Americans in the South would continue to perpetuate the system of oppression and inequality. Consequently, the organization took a great interest in developments in Fayette County, Tenn., where the African-American community had suffered severe reprisals for their efforts aimed at voter registration.

By 1963, the slogan “one man, one vote” became the cornerstone of SNCC’s organizational program. This slogan, demanding the establishment of universal suffrage in the U.S., paralleled the efforts taking place within the anti-colonial struggle in Africa.

When Oginga Odinga, the Home Affairs minister of the newly independent government in Kenya, visited the U.S. in late 1963, Atlanta was the last stop on his itinerary. Several representatives of SNCC, which was headquartered in Atlanta, visited Odinga at his hotel, where they presented him with gifts and exchanged solidarity greetings.

After the meeting with Odinga, SNCC members held a sit-in at a segregated restaurant in the city, resulting in the arrests of 17 of their members. This event prompted other protest activities against segregation in the city, where several hundred people participated and were arrested.

James Forman, the executive secretary of SNCC, stated some years later: “All these activities, beginning with our visit to Oginga Odinga, must have made some people on a higher level squirm too. Here was a high-ranking foreign dignitary, on an official visit, commenting that the racial situation in the United States was ‘very pitiful’ and that the United States ‘practices segregation — which is what we are fighting in Africa.’
“The racist image of this country that SNCC’s work projected was in sharp conflict with the picture of democracy at work painted by the bureaucratic beavers in Washington, D.C.” (Forman, “The Making of Black Revolutionaries”)

During 1964, SNCC embarked upon its most challenging effort with the Mississippi Summer Project, which was launched in coalition with other civil rights organizations operating in the state. Under the direction of this alliance, known as the Council of Federated Organizations, nearly 1,000 volunteers were mobilized from northern universities and communities to travel to Mississippi that summer to organize an independent Freedom Democratic Party and to register thousands of African Americans to vote.

The state’s racists responded with the murder of several civil rights workers and the jailing and beating of scores of others. By the conclusion of the summer, the MFDP activists had attempted to unseat the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party delegation to the national convention in Atlantic City.

Although the MFDP was never seated at the National Democratic Convention in 1964 and the federal legislation on universal suffrage would not be passed until after the Selma campaign of early 1965, the efforts of the MFDP and its SNCC supporters were successful in bringing broader segments of the community into the struggle for political empowerment and national recognition.

SNCC & the global anti-colonial struggle

As a result of the pioneering work of SNCC, it was invited to send a delegation to tour several independent nations in Africa during the fall of 1964. The group spent two weeks in the Republic of Guinea at the special invitation of President Ahmed Sekou Toure. After this, John Lewis and Donald Harris continued the sojourn in Kenya and Zambia as well as other countries, while the other members of SNCC returned to the U.S.

Forman, who was a leading member of the SNCC delegation to Africa, said in 1972: “[T]he trip for me was a culmination of my life in several ways. Africa as a black continent, as our homeland, had always been on my mind.” The SNCC executive secretary went on to say, “I had also dreamed for years of helping to build an organization to achieve popular power in the United States and then to relate it with one or more African countries for common revolutionary purposes.”

After 1966, SNCC would create an International Affairs section under Forman’s direction. Forman represented the organization at an international conference on settler colonialism in southern Africa that was held in Zambia in 1967. He also spoke before the United Nations Fourth Committee on Decolonization later that same year.

The role of SNCC during this period illustrated the interconnectedness of the African-American struggle and developments on the continent of Africa. This intersection of the history of Africans in various parts of the world would continue throughout the remaining years of the 20th century.

SNCC, urban rebellions & the workers’ movement

What distinguished SNCC from other civil rights organizations was its work within the cities, small towns and rural areas of the South where the development of local leadership was a key aspect of its political program. In 1965-66 in Lowndes County, Ala., SNCC’s work with farmers and youth led to the formation of the original Black Panther Party.

Not only did the Black Panthers in Alabama push for the right to vote and the development of an organization that was independent of the racist-controlled state Democratic Party, it also advocated and practiced self-defense for activists and the community as a whole. These efforts spread throughout the country and created the conditions for the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, Calif., in October 1966.

Between 1964 and 1968 hundreds of urban rebellions erupted throughout the U.S. Chapters of the Black Panther Party grew rapidly all over the country from 1967 to 1969. The FBI and local law-enforcement agencies responded to the upsurge in revolutionary activity by directly and indirectly killing Malcolm X in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. Hundreds of members of SNCC and the Black Panther Party and other revolutionaries were harassed, imprisoned and driven into exile.

In 1968, African-American workers in Detroit began to engage in wildcat strikes demanding an end to racism and superexploitation in the automotive industry. These struggles were soon linked to the efforts of community organizers and students who were waging battles around education issues, housing and police brutality.

The National Black Economic Development Conference was held in Detroit in April 1969, where the demand for reparations was put forward when Forman issued the Black Manifesto, calling for massive compensation for centuries of slavery and national oppression. Forman would soon join the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which grew out of the African-American independent labor struggles of the period in Detroit and around the country.

The students at Wayne State University in Detroit took control of the campus newspaper and turned it into the official publication of the LRBW. The daily newspapers published on campus were distributed at plant gates and within the African-American community.

These developments illustrated clearly the necessity for the student movement to merge with the broader movement of workers against capitalism and national oppression.

The student activists of the present period must learn from the struggles of the 1960s. By linking the cutbacks in education to the overall economic crisis of capitalism, students and youth can become an important force in the burgeoning movement against the most aggressive attacks against the working class since the Great Depression.

______________________________________________

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/).
Verbatim copying and distribution of entire
article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Communist

12th February 2010, 20:03

.
A tribute to the Black Panther Party

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/Bpp_logo.PNG (http://www.workers.org/2007/us/panthers-0208/index.html)
By Larry Hales
Feb 1, 2007

Oakland is one of the poorest cities in California as well as the entire country. It holds the dubious distinction of having been dubbed the second most violent city in California after Compton, near Los Angeles. Both cities are predominately communities of color, primarily Black and [email protected] people.

Oakland has a poverty rate of over 18 percent; 27.9 percent of its youth under 18 live below the poverty line. In Compton the poverty rate is much higher. The per capita yearly income in 2000 was $10,389, with 28 percent of the population living below the poverty line; 35.6 percent of youth under 18 live below the poverty line.

Crime heavily affects both cities. Both areas are impoverished and the residents of color suffer from police repression, occupation and brutality.

The “answer” given to the conditions from which despair arises is not different from what is happening in inner city areas across the country, where the poor and people of color have lived since “white flight” began over 30 years ago.

That “answer” is to build luxury homes and condos, retail shops and other amenities that tailor to middle-and upper-middle class whites who want to move back into the city centers. Poor people and people of color are pushed to the fringes of metropolitan areas in a “liberal” form of ethnic cleansing.

Oakland, of course, has a rich history of struggle. It conjures up in the minds of most Black people an era of great militancy and revolution—when the realities of ghetto life, of the Vietnam War’s toll on the whole country and the national liberation and revolutionary movements around the world contributed to the rising fervor in the U.S.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in 1966 in Oakland, was a group so dangerous to the U.S. ruling class that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover labeled it “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”

The BPP was a vanguard organization fighting for self-determination for the Black nation in the U.S., but evolved over its short existence to adopt a thoroughgoing anti-imperialism, as a way for humanity to free itself from the cycles of war and oppression.

The founding document of the BPP was the Ten Point Platform and Program, which stated as the first desire and goal:

• We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. And,
• We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

The Ten Point Platform and Program also called for “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace” and wanted exemption of Black people from military service that used Black people to “fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America.”

Rebellions and survival programs

The BPP was founded by the great revolutionary leaders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale and was initially established to expose and fight against police brutality in Oakland.

By 1967 there had been over 100 rebellions in cities across the U.S. Many took place in some of the poorest, most oppressed and repressed cities.

The rebellions were an outgrowth of the social conditions and the many contradictions rooted in capitalist society. The antagonisms that exist between the rulers and the workers and nationally oppressed were being displayed.

The BPP was partly molded after the Deacons for Defense and the armed self-determination struggle opened up by the great revolutionary Robert F. Williams, in that it asserted the right of the oppressed to defend themselves with arms against the oppressor.

Huey P. Newton would call attention to the fact that the Vietnamese people and the Black masses were fighting the same oppressor and that the struggles of the two were linked.

Many organizations that mirrored the sentiment of the BPP began to develop from other oppressed nationalities, like the [email protected] Young Lords. Support groups of the BPP were formed by white revolutionaries and other Panther allies.

The groups that mirrored the Panthers were not simply attracted to the militancy of the Panthers. They took inspiration from the many programs established by the BPP to look after the health and well-being of Black communities, such as the free breakfast program.

There were 35 such initiatives and they came to be known as survival programs. They were not attempts to reform the system, but examples of what is possible for humanity. They were humane programs and necessary alternatives to the system, as the government of the capitalist rulers did not provide these services.

The programs were of great pride in the communities in which they flourished and were provided for under the slogan “survival pending revolution.” Some would denigrate the Panthers for organizing these programs, not understanding that the immediate needs of the people had to be met while fighting for revolutionary change.

The Free Breakfast for Children Program fed thousands. The federal government eventually co-opted the idea, while attacking the Black Panther Party’s program as being a communist agenda. While capitalist propaganda made communism out to be the great evil, imperialist aggression, an objective outgrowth of capitalism, inflamed the whole world and rained down bombs, death and destruction from Oakland to Southeast Asia.

Eventually, the brutal assault of the federal government broke the back of the BPP. Members were hunted down, framed up and imprisoned, and systematically assassinated.

The FBI created Cointelpro, an insidious program contrived to destroy national liberation and civil rights movements in the U.S., socialist and communist parties and anti-war groups. One of its main targets was the Black Panther Party.

Cointelpro was used to infiltrate the Panthers, pit members against one another, bribe, cajole, plant evidence and use every mechanism under the sun to keep the U.S. rulers’ tenuous stranglehold on workers and the oppressed from being cast off.

It is believed by many that the FBI also introduced heroin into Black communities, not far-fetched considering the toll the drug took on oppressed communities.

Though the original BPP no longer exists, its history provides lessons and examples for today’s struggle. The U.S. capitalist rulers have become more militarily adventuristic abroad and conditions of life are becoming more intolerable for the masses at home.

What will give the movements of the workers and the oppressed a boost of energy and deepen the people’s understanding of the intransigent antagonism of a common enemy? It is the theory of what is possible when the workers seize real power, based on the theories of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin along with other great socialist revolutionaries and national liberation fighters.

And, for the oppressed Black nation, a shining example was the heroic Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

___________

For a detailed analysis of the BPP go here (http://www.blackpanther.org/legacynew.htm).

______________

Articles © 1995-2010 Workers (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background) World (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/).
Verbatim copying and distribution of
this entire article is permitted in any
medium without royalty provided this
notice is preserved.

Communist

14th February 2010, 17:58

ROBERT F. WILLIAMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Williams) 1925-1996
http://api.ning.com/files/N2faP-aD8pudqkseDgxegrRKEvVs6yspVB8keJ7f7aWwbuUforkEni3e KSRsmqOlKtw-DSL3KoNcc3f6eWsQBPFlsPLqTAKL/355459865.jpeg (http://afrocubaweb.com/rwill.htm)

Robert F. Williams died October 15th, 1996.

His funeral was attended by Rosa Parks, among others. He was among the most important and influential figures in the tradition of African American armed self defense. An ex-Marine and leader of the NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, he was expelled by the NAACP for his views in 1959. He led a fight by African Americans in the late 50s and early 60s to defend themselves, with guns when necessary, from Ku Klux Klan violence.

He wrote a book about these experiences, Negroes with Guns (http://books.google.com/books?id=i4YiA0jWz4EC&dq=robert+williams+negroes+with+guns&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=njh4S8CiHMOUtgeQhpXLCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false).
The work, which has been reprinted by Wayne State University Press, was originally published in 1962 by Marzani & Munsell of New York.

Robert Williams also championed the Cuban Revolution. He saved lives in a 1959 race riot and took on the defense of two youths (aged 7 and 9) accused of "assaulting and molesting a white female." Williams was then falsely accused of kidnapping charges and fled into exile in Cuba and China from 1961 to 1969.

In Cuba, he ran Radio Free Dixie (now the title of a fine book covering this period), which broadcast across the Southern US until he experienced some difficulties with the Soviets in Cuba as well as the American Communist Party. However, he had good ties with Che Guevara and some of the Cuban revolutionaries and even explained to a very interested Che the machinations of the American CP and how they tended to marginalize the African American community. He elected to leave for China. In China, he was at the seat of power, at Mao's side during many historic events.

In 1969 he returned to the U.S. and has remained active in the Peoples Association for Human Rights and in New Afrika while writing his autobiography. He was the first president of the Republic of New Afrika. His perspective was unique, framed by his extensive experiences abroad.

Williams was framed by the US intelligence services through an article in the New York Times which sought to portray him as being against the Cuban Revolution. To this day a segment of the ever paranoid Cuban government (Well, who can blame them!) looks upon him with suspicion but they should know that to his death he wanted to return to Cuba and visit his old comrades, of this we have personal knowledge. ****

______________________________

Robert Williams 1925-1996 (http://www.workers.org/ww/williams.html)

"A couple of years ahead of his time"-Malcolm X

by Stephen Millies

"In thirty minutes you'll be hanging in the courthouse square." So spoke A. A. Mauney, the Monroe, N.C., police chief, to Robert F. Williams on Aug. 27, 1961.

Williams-the president of the local NAACP chapter-wasn't lynched that day. He was hounded into exile by the FBI.

Robert F. Williams died Oct. 15 in Grand Rapids, Mich., at age 71. His story is a remarkable chapter in the history of Black liberation.

Monroe, N.C.-Williams' birthplace-was in 1925 like hundreds of other Southern communities. Black people lived under lynch law. "Whites Only" signs littered the town, including its library and swimming pool.

The local white aristocracy-including the Helms family- ran the town. Old Man Helms was sheriff of Union County, whose seat is Monroe. His son Jesse became the Ku Klux Klan senator from North Carolina.

Helms and the other local racist ruling families kept Monroe "safe" for Duke Power and the tobacco companies that really ran North Carolina. And for the Southern Railroad- now the Norfolk Southern-controlled by the J.P. Morgan banking house in New York.

Keeping Monroe "safe" meant keeping Black people down and keeping unions out. North Carolina still ranks lowest among the states in the percentage of unionized workers.

Armed self-defense

In 1955 the NAACP chapter in Monroe had dwindled down to six members. Williams, who had worked as a machinist in New Jersey and did a hitch in the Marines, took over its leadership. He started a membership drive among workers and the unemployed.

On too many Saturday nights, KKKers would drive through the Black community, shooting it up. Many of these Klansmen came from South Carolina, whose border was only 14 miles away.

When North Carolina Gov. Luther Hodges did nothing to stop the attacks, Williams and the local NAACP chapter formed a National Rifle Association chapter and trained its members in using firearms.

In the summer of 1957 a Klan motorcade attacked the home of NAACP member Dr. Albert E. Perry. An armed defense squad drove them off. Klan night riding came to a sudden stop in Monroe.

This famous incident-which electrified so many Black people-was completely suppressed in the big-business media. Only Black publications such as Jet Magazine, the Afro-American and the Norfolk Journal and Guide reported the event.

In October 1958, two Black boys aged 7 and 9 were arrested for rape in Monroe after a 7-year-old white girl kissed one of them on the cheek. These two children-who could have been given the death penalty-were sentenced to 14 years in the reformatory.

Only after Williams fought on and protests occurred throughout Europe did the state release the two.

'The Crusader'

The national NAACP suspended Williams for six months, but the Monroe NAACP chapter became famous for its militancy and for advocating self-defense against racist attacks. To spread his views, Williams started a newspaper called the Crusader.

North Carolina authorities were determined to get rid of Williams. They offered him bribes. When that didn't work, they tried to kill him.
On June 23, 1961, Bynum Griffin, the owner of a local car dealership, tried to run Williams off the road.

On Aug. 27, 1961, a full-scale assault was launched upon Monroe's Black community. The racists assaulted and jailed "Freedom Riders"-demonstrators who had come from the North to overturn segregation.

During this assault the Stegalls, a white couple known for their Klan sympathies, drove through the Black community. Only Williams' personal intervention prevented any violence against them. Yet this action then became the basis of a phony kidnapping charge that was used to hound Williams out of the country.

This charge was also used to jail one of Williams' closest supporters, Mae Mallory.

Williams escaped the FBI dragnet and went to Cuba, where with the assistance of the Cuban revolutionary government he started the anti-racist "Radio Free Dixie." Later, Williams would live in China, where he urged Mao Zedong to issue his famous message of support to African Americans.

WWP printed and distributed Williams' "Listen Brother (http://www.archive.org/details/ListenBrother)", an impassioned appeal to Black GI's not to shoot their Vietnamese brothers and sisters.

Huey P. Newton-the founder of the Black Panther Party - wrote how Williams' book "Negroes With Guns" influenced him.

Malcolm X had this to say: "Robert Williams was just a couple of years ahead of his time."

__________________________

Articles © 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Verbatim copying and distribution of
this entire article is permitted in any
medium without royalty provided this
notice is preserved.

RED DAVE

15th February 2010, 12:43

Moms Mabley was bad!

http://www.vinylrevinyl.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/moms-mabley.jpg

Early Years

Mabley was born Loretta Mary Aiken into a large family of twelve children in Brevard, North Carolina in 1894. Her father, James P. Aiken, owned and operated several businesses while her mother, Mary, kept home and took in boarders. Her father died a sudden accidental death when she was eleven.[1] By the age of fifteen Mabley had reportedly been raped twice and had two children that were given up for adoption.[citation needed] After being pressured by her stepfather to marry a much older man[citation needed] and encouraged by her grandmother to strike out on her own, she ran away to Cleveland, Ohio with a traveling minstrel show where she began singing and entertaining.[2]

Career

She took her stage name, Jackie Mabley, from an early boyfriend, commenting to Ebony magazine in a 1970s interview that he'd taken so much from her, it was the least she could do to take his name. Later she became known as "Moms" because she was indeed "Mom" to many other comedians on the circuit in the 1950s and 60s. She was one of the top women doing stand-up in her heyday, and recorded more than 20 albums of comedy routines. She appeared in movies, on television, and in clubs.

Mabley was one of the most successful entertainers of the black vaudeville Chitlin' circuit, earning US$10,000 a week at Harlem's Apollo Theater at the height of her career. She made her New York City debut at Connie's Inn in Harlem.[3] In the 1960s, she become known to a wider white audience, playing Carnegie Hall in 1962, and making a number of mainstream TV appearances.

Mabley was billed as "The Funniest Woman in the World", and she tackled topics too edgy for many other comics of the time, including racism, one of her regular themes was her romantic interest in handsome young men rather than old "washed-up geezers", and regularly got away with it courtesy of her on stage persona where she appeared as a toothless, bedraggled woman in a house dress and floppy hat.[4][5] She added the occasional satirical song to her jokes; her version of "Abraham, Martin and John" hit #35 on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1969. At 75 years of age, Moms Mabley became the oldest person ever to have a US Top 40 hit.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moms_Mabley

RED DAVE

The Vegan Marxist

15th February 2010, 16:55

Would it be inappropriate to represent John Brown through black history month, given that John Brown was not black, despite the fact that he was a revolutionary folk hero to the black slaves?

RED DAVE

15th February 2010, 22:30

Who Killed Black Radio News?

In 1973, 21 reporters from three Black-oriented radio stations provided African Americans in Washington, DC a daily diet of news - hard, factual information vital to the material and political fortunes of the local community. The three stations - WOL-AM, WOOK-AM and WHUR-FM - their news staffs as fiercely competitive as their disc jockeys, vied for domination of the Black Washington market. Community activists and institutions demanded, expected, and received intense and sustained coverage of the fullest range of their activities.

On the streets and at press conferences, Black radio journalists jostled with white and African American reporters from "general market" radio stations, to form a local press corps that competed for the Black public's attention and respect. Movements sprouted, thrived - or self-destructed - in a marketplace of contentious community and media voices. Black radio news had been called forth by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the previous decade. The news staffs at WOL (five reporters), WOOK (four-person news staff) and WHUR (12 reporters and producers) were local radio's answer to Black people's demands.

In scores of large, medium and even small cities across the nation, the early to mid-Seventies saw a flowering of Black radio news, a response to the voices of an awakened people. Black ownership had relatively little to do with the phenomenon. According to the National Association of Black-owned Broadcasters (NABOB), there were only 30 African-American owned broadcast facilities in the United States in 1976. Today, NABOB boasts 220 member stations - and local Black radio news is near extinction.http://www.blackcommentator.com/44/44_cover.html

RED DAVE

The Vegan Marxist

16th February 2010, 00:27

:star:John Brown:star:

1800 - 1859

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/07/John_brown_abo.jpg/506px-John_brown_abo.jpg (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/07/John_brown_abo.jpg)

John Brown was a man of action -- a man who would not be deterred from his mission of abolishing slavery. On October 16, 1859, he led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured.

John Brown was born into a deeply religious family in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. Led by a father who was vehemently opposed to slavery, the family moved to northern Ohio when John was five, to a district that would become known for its antislavery views.

During his first fifty years, Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, and taking along his ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he never was finacially successful -- he even filed for bankruptcy when in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example and to act as a "kind father to them."

Despite his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his sons to the Kansas territory. There, he became the leader of antislavery guerillas and fought a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence. The following year, in retribution for another attack, Brown went to a proslavery town and brutally killed five of its settlers. Brown and his sons would continue to fight in the territory and in Missouri for the rest of the year.

Brown returned to the east and began to think more seriously about his plan for a war in Virginia against slavery. He sought money to fund an "army" he would lead. On October 16, 1859, he set his plan to action when he and 21 other men -- 5 blacks and 16 whites -- raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Brown was wounded and quickly captured, and moved to Charlestown, Virginia, where he was tried and convicted of treason, Before hearing his sentence, Brown was allowed make an address to the court.

. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done."

Although initially shocked by Brown's exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. "He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.

Although it is apparent that he is not black, I believe that John Brown is one of the most important historical figure that one should remember during Black History month. So let it be known that, to this day, we all have a little of the revolutionary John Brown inside of us.

R.I.P.

Communist

16th February 2010, 00:28

___________________________

HUBERT HARRISON (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Harrison) 1883-1927

http://harlemtenantscouncil.org/Hubert_Henry_Harrison.jpg (http://www.marcusgarvey.com/wmview.php?ArtID=511)

Early African-American writer, atheist, intellectual and socialist.

Extensive bio, excerpt of which appears below. Click on title for full story.

Hubert Harrison (1883-1927): Race Consciousness and the Struggle for Socialism (http://www.sdonline.org/34/jeffrey_perry.htm)

By Jeffrey B. Perry

The historian Joel A. Rogers, in World's Great Men of Color, describes the brilliant writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist Hubert Harrison (1883-1927) as "the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time" and "one of America's greatest minds." Rogers adds (amid chapters on Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey), "No one worked more seriously and indefatigably to enlighten his fellow-men" and "none of the Afro-American leaders of his time had a saner and more effective program."

Variants of Rogers' lavish praise were offered by other contemporaries.

William Pickens, field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a former college dean, and an oratory prize winner at Yale, described Harrison as "a plain black man who can speak more easily, effectively, and interestingly on a greater variety of subjects than any other man I have ever met in the great universities."

Pickens added that it made "no difference" whether he spoke about "Alice in Wonderland or the most extensive work of H.G. Wells; about the lightest shadows of Edgar Allen Poe or the heaviest depths of Kant; about music, or art, or science, or political history." The novelist Henry Miller, a socialist in his youth, remembered Harrison on a soapbox as his "quondam idol" and as an unrivaled, electrifying speaker.

Eugene O'Neill, America's leading playwright and a future Nobel Prize winner for literature, lauded Harrison's ability as a critic and considered his review of the ground-breaking play The Emperor Jones to be "one of the very few intelligent criticisms of the piece that have come to my notice."

W. A. Domingo, one of the early Black socialists and the first editor of Marcus Garvey's Negro World, emphasized the fact that Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, Cyril Briggs, Grace Campbell, Richard B. Moore and the other leading Black activists of their generation, "all followed Hubert Harrison." Hodge Kirnon, a freethinker and one of those activists in Harlem, praised the fact that Harrison "lived with and amongst his people," "taught the masses," and was "the first Negro whose radicalism was comprehensive enough to include racialism, politics, theological criticism, sociology and education in a thorough-going and scientific manner."

Despite such high praise from his contemporaries and despite being rated "one of the 20th century's major thinkers" by the double Pulitzer Prize winning Du Bois biographer David Levering Lewis, Harrison is, as Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes, "a major but neglected figure in our history." While his name has an "almost mythical character" to activists such as Black Radical Congress co-chair Bill Fletcher, he is largely a "forgotten" and "un- known" radical. Historian Gerald C. Horne considers him "a scandalously ignored thinker and activist." Columbia University's Winston James, placing this neglect in perspective, observes: "Seldom has a person been so influential, esteemed, even revered in one period of history" and within a matter of years become "so thoroughly unremembered."

The effects of this historical neglect were again brought home at the 2003 Socialist Scholars Conference, where discussions with participants made clear that many progressive activists and intellectuals remain unaware of Harrison's life and work. There is great loss in this since his life was one of remarkable contributions; since he exerted major influence on a generation of early 20th-century activists and "common people"; since many of his views, as historian James points out, became "the stock-in-trade of the black left" in the 20th century; and since his writings and speeches offer profound insights on the struggle against white supremacy, on socialism and democracy in America, and on a wide range of other subjects.

Harrison's class and race conscious political message merits special attention. More than any other political leader of his era he combined class consciousness and (anti-white supremacist) race consciousness in a coherent political radicalism. He opposed white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism; challenged the idea that racism was innate; developed a socio-historical as opposed to a religious or biological understanding of race; maintained that white supremacy was central to capitalist rule in the United States; argued that racism and racist practices were not in workers' class interests; and urged "Negroes" not to wait on white Americans while struggling to shape their future.

This message was combined with a consistent internationalism, a scientific approach to social problems, and an impressive grasp of history, science, politics, religion, freethought, literature, and the arts. His militant, mass-based approach broke from the patron-based leadership of Booker T. Washington and the "Talented Tenth"-based leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois and profoundly influenced a generation of activists that included Randolph and Garvey. Harrison was more race conscious than Randolph and more class conscious than Garvey; he is the key ideological link in the two great trends of 20th-century African American struggle-the labor and civil rights trend associated with Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race and nationalist trend associated with Garvey and Malcolm X.

Harrison's political message, repeatedly delivered to the masses, enabled him to uniquely play signal roles in the development of what were, up to that time, the largest class-radical movement (socialism) and the largest race-radical movement (the "New Negro"/Garvey movement) in U.S. history.

Harrison served as the foremost Black organizer, agitator, and theoretician in the Socialist Party (SP) of New York during its 1912 heyday; as the founder and leading figure of the militant World War I-era "New Negro" movement; and as the editor of the Negro World and principal radical influence on the Garvey movement during its radical high point in 1920.

He also worked with the Industrial Workers of the World, the Communist Party, the Farmer Labor Party, the American Negro Labor Congress and a number of other radical and progressive organizations. Such efforts, during the period when Harlem became the "international Negro Mecca" and "the center of radical Black thought," led Randolph and others to revere him as "The Father of Harlem Radicalism."

Communist

16th February 2010, 02:33

__________________________________

On Air With Black America (http://www.inthesetimes.org/article/5443/on_air_with_black_america)
Chicago's only black-owned talk radio station gives voice to a complex people still struggling to be heard.

By Salim Muwakkil
In These Times
February 10, 2010

Callers' mistrust of white America is deep; some of it
can be attributed to many listeners' familial links to
the South and its tradition of overt and and brutal
racism.

Good evening, you're talking to Salim Muwakkil on 1690
WVON. What's on your mind?" I ask.

"The election of Barack Obama is the worst thing to ever
happen to black people in America," the caller snarls.
"He's a perfect Trojan Horse for American imperialism
and corporate control. What do you think?"

That kind of question is typical fare on The Salim
Muwakkil Show, broadcast every Saturday night by
Chicago's only black-owned radio station. These days,
one year after the nation's first black president took
office, callers make it clear that African-Americans are
divided sharply on Obama's performance.

Most are reluctant to criticize a man who inherited
massive economic and military morasses from his
predecessor-and who is, like them, both black and from
Chicago. But others, like the caller quoted above, blame
Obama for offering cover to the U.S. war machine. This
critical perspective was asserted by a group called the
"Black is Back Coalition (http://blackisbackcoalition.org/)," which organized a November
rally and march in Washington, D.C., to protest the
foreign and domestic direction of the Obama
administration.

Many callers reflect black Americans' general unease
with military adventures and their wariness of
escalating hostilities in Afghanistan. But few are
willing to join groups like the Black is Back Coalition -
yet.

As a writer concerned with the state of black America,
my experience as a WVON-AM talk show host provides me
with an organic link to the black community and its most
urgent concerns.

In recent months, the topic of youth violence has
monopolized discussion on my show. This furor was
sparked by the September 28 videotaped fatal beating of
16-year-old student Derrion Albert (http://www.workers.org/2009/us/derrion_albert_1022/).

"It's the parents' fault; plain and simple, end of
story," one caller says succinctly. Many others agree,
blaming the offenders' parents, particularly absent
fathers, for failing to provide necessary guidance.

Others call in to defend their heroes.

"Hello, this is Alice. What I want to say is, I can't
understand why so many black men hate Oprah. It is
ridiculous."

"I understand what you're saying," I reply. "She's so
successful. She's an easy target. But then, she focuses
a lot of her criticism on black men in ways some men
think aren't useful to them. I don't particularly agree
with that critique, but that is what people say about
her."

These days, when the most successful radio hosts are
usually insulting and abrasive, it's the rare show that
attempts to respect callers. I try to build an audience
by challenging people's views without dismissing or
belittling their arguments.

Some media theorists say I have it all wrong, that
right-wing radio attracts a large audience because it
eschews nuance and context. They may be right. But I
think the future of our nation depends on them being
wrong.

Across the spectrum-and beyond

Chicago's WVON is one of the few stations in Chicago
featuring a steady diet of progressive fare, though it
does attempt to provide ideological balance by
broadcasting conservative commentator Charles Butler's
evening show every weeknight.

Though many callers express views that could easily be
called conservative, most are progressive, at least
nominally. Many strongly support single-payer
healthcare, and strengthening the social safety net in
general.

I have regular callers who are convinced that white
America has black genocide on its agenda. Their mistrust
is deep; some of it can be attributed to familial links
to the South and its tradition of overt and brutal
racism. Even a black president can't dislodge that kind
of generational mistrust.

Anti-immigration sentiments are common; "they're being
imported to take our jobs," is a typical complaint. My
arguments to the contrary have changed some minds, but
others stubbornly hold their position. I keep trying.

The traditional right-left political spectrum doesn't
quite apply here. I've spoken to a left-leaning black
nationalist who supports a healthcare "public option,"
but opposes abortion as ardently as any right-to-lifer.
I've debated dedicated union members who agree with
white Minutemen that undocumented workers should be
summarily deported. I have a regular caller who grew up
in an orphanage but now runs an inner-city boxing club
that mentors and counsels youth. He is a Mormon.

Yes, the station's target audience is a bit older than
the youthful demographic coveted by commercial music
stations, but WVON does attract some young listeners.
One of my regular callers is Rhymefest, the 32-year-old
Chicago rapper who co-wrote Kanye West's popular 2004
song "Jesus Walks."

The black metropolis

Context is crucial to understanding this politically
complex community of listeners and callers.

Chicago is home to the largest black nationalist groups
in the nation, including Louis Farrakhan's Nation of
Islam (http://www.noi.org/) and the National Black United Front (http://www.nbufront.org/). The city is
also a center of progressive activism; the Black Radical
Congress (http://www.blackradicalcongress.org/), a near-defunct grouping of progressive black
activists, academics and journalists, was born here.
Additionally, the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH
Coalition (http://www.rainbowpush.org/PHP/results.php) (formerly Operation PUSH) is Chicago-based and
still fighting the good fight as an advocate for the
poor and a clearinghouse for much needed social
services.

And the city is home to a number of large black churches
and an influential corps of clergymen, including two who
gained national exposure during Obama's presidential
campaign. The infamous Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity
United Church of Christ married and ministered the Obama
family. Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church, a
fiery Catholic priest and social activist who happens to
be white, gained some media attention for his mocking
portrayal of candidate Hillary Clinton.

This rich ideological landscape accounts for a dizzying
array of ideas and emotions in the black community, a
discourse that finds expression on WVON.

The station has a well-earned reputation for organizing
grievances and bringing energy to political movements;
it was the 2002 winner of the coveted Studs Terkel Award
from Chicago's Community Media Workshop-the only media
outlet ever to win the award.

Originally a music station owned by Phil and Leonard
Chess (of the legendary Chess Records), legendary
Chicago journalist Wesley South* converted WVON into an
all-talk format in 1986, in the midst of the re-election
campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black
mayor. The station played a major role in Washington's
two trailblazing elections and has been an influential
voice in black Chicago politics ever since.

Today, three years after WVON upgraded its signal
strength and began broadcasting 24-7, Chicago's black
political elite and the city's most mobilized black
voters are regular listeners. Illinois politicians from
both parties avidly seek interviews with the station's
drive-time hosts.

In a media environment cluttered with right-wing rants
and polarizing pundits-or mainstream outlets that mostly
ignore black America altogether-WVON offers a bracing,
complex alternative. Instead of false ideological
symmetry, you get a complex reflection of a people still
struggling with a legacy of exclusion, but looking
toward an empowered future. You get a radio station with
enormous potential.

The Salim Muwakkil Show can be web-streamed live at
www.WVON.com (http://www.wvon.com/), on Saturdays from 7 to 10 p.m.

*Editor's note: On Jan. 9, 2010, Wesley South, the 95-
year-old chairman emeritus of WVON's parent company and
a pioneer of black talk radio, died in Chicago. The
radio station's obituary is available here (http://www.wvon.com/events/wesley-south.html).

Communist

16th February 2010, 22:53

_____________________________

The origins of Black History Month
(http://www.workers.org/2009/us/black_history_month_0219/index.html)
By Dolores Cox
Feb 16, (http://www.workers.org/) 2009

February is designated as Black History Month in the U.S. It is also celebrated in many other countries in the African Diaspora. Black History Month was initiated in 1926 by Carter G. Woodson as “Negro History Week.”

In 1976, the 200th anniversary of the U.S., the week was extended to one month, allowing for more inclusion of activities and programs.

http://www.workers.org/2009/world/BHM2009200.jpg (http://search.workersworld.net/local-cgi/search.cgi?q=african+american++history+month&cmd=Search)

Woodson chose the second week in February because both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were born in February. Woodson saw them as two men who had significantly influenced the lives and social conditions of African Americans.

Lincoln was the U.S. president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, leading to the abolition of slavery. Douglass was born in 1817 in Maryland, the son of an enslaved woman and her white master. He was taken from his mother when he was an infant. When he was in his early 20s, he escaped from slavery.

Douglass was self-educated and became a fierce abolitionist. He was a newspaper editor and lecturer, known for his great oratory skills. He was an activist for women’s rights and an advisor to President Lincoln. He and Lincoln frequently debated the issue of slavery. Douglass is known for one of his phrases, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Carter G. Woodson was a Ph.D. scholar from Harvard University whose parents were formerly enslaved. In 1916 he established the Journal of Negro History on Black people in U.S. history. He also established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later, “Negro” was changed to “African American”).

Woodson initiated “Negro History Week” in order to bring attention to the significant contributions to U.S. society that Black people had made and to show that their history was an integral part of U.S. history. He noted that there was no respectable mention of Black people in history books; that they were either ignored or mainly represented as slaves, slave descendents or referenced by their designated inferior social positions.

The initial contribution of Blacks in the U.S. was, of course, the 246 years of enslaved African labor which greatly contributed to the U.S. becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world.

The election of President Barack Obama represents the latest chapter of African-American achievements.

However, for a brief period of time (1867-1877) when the emancipation of Blacks during the Reconstruction Era guaranteed ex-slaves citizenship status and the right to vote, Black men became politically active, holding 16 seats in Congress and 600 seats in state legislatures. A violent, racist white backlash ended this progressive era. One hundred years of “Jim Crow” laws, legalizing discrimination and segregation, including terror against Blacks, followed.

Black History Month celebrates the accomplishments and contributions of Black people in the U.S. in the fields of medicine, law, science and history as well as Black inventors and explorers. It also celebrates Black culture in the areas of art, dance, literature and music.

The role of Black labor along with political movements, such as Pan-Africanism, Black Power, Garveyism, the right to self-defense and Black Nationalism, are honored.

Black History Month also commemorates Black economic and civic organizations, such as the NAACP (formerly the Niagara Movement), which was co-founded by W.E.B. DuBois in 1909. DuBois, born of ex-slaves, was a political activist, writer and historian, well known for “The Souls of Black Folks,” published 1903.

Additionally, the month celebrates religious institutions, as well as Blacks in sports. Recognition is also given to the fact that Blacks have fought in every major U.S. war, including the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

Black history also includes several civil rights movements from the years 1896 through 1968. Following the initial involuntary mass migration out of Africa, there were several large voluntary migrations of Black people out of the South from 1896 to the end of the 1960s.

Black History Month provides an important opportunity to shed an even brighter spotlight on the legacy of oppression and injustices in the form of political, economic and social inequalities that Black people still face today and to push forward with the struggles to win full equality.

Black people are a global people. Their history started in Africa, where the civilization of humankind began, with science, math, religion and the written word. Unfortunately, though, U.S. public school systems and institutions of higher learning are still resisting the full inclusion of Black history in the curriculum of world history, not just for one month but all year round.

__________________

Articles © 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Verbatim copying and distribution
of this entire article is permitted in
any medium without royalty provided
this notice is preserved.

Communist

19th February 2010, 06:09

______________
Mae Mallory 1929-2007
unforgettable freedom fighter promoted self-defense

By Jeanette Merrill and Rosemary Neidenberg

http://www.workers.org/2009/us/Mae-Mallory_0221.jpg (http://www.workers.org/2009/us/mae_mallory_0305/)

Mae Mallory was a leading figure in the movement for Black liberation in the 1960s, and especially known as a proponent of the right of Black people to armed self-defense.

Once recalling conditions at her children’s school in Harlem, Mallory wrote: “I represented the Parents Association in Albany and spoke about the miserable condition of P.S. 10. They were not prepared for this angry Black woman. Brand new toilets were put in immediately.
“We needed a new school. Getting that school gave me so much confidence that you can fight City Hall and win. ... We finally boiled down to nine that stuck all the way. We were known as the Harlem Nine.” (“Letters from Prison,” by Mae Mallory. Monroe Defense Committee, circa 1962).

Students researching her life and her contributions still ask to go through Workers World’s archives to learn the true history of this heroic Black woman warrior.

Of all her life’s battles, before her death in 2007, the hardest one established Mallory’s political role. It began with her support and fundraising for Rob Williams, a leading advocate of armed self-defense for Black people in the fight against violent racism.

From Monroe, N.C., in 1961, came Williams’ decisive call to Mallory in New York: “Mabel and I need you down here.”

Rob Williams had come home to Klan-infested Monroe from the U.S. Marines. He recruited Black WW II veterans into a working-class chapter of the NAACP. They fought to desegregate the local swimming pool.

Some in the civil rights movement at that time advocated nonviolent civil disobedience. Williams, however, organized armed pickets, who withdrew only when the city closed the pool. Faced with increasing threats and deadly violence, Williams and his self-defense guards protected the resisting Black community. In the newsletter named “The Crusader,” which Williams printed on a mimeograph machine, Williams called on all Black communities to do the same.

In one confrontation, racists forced Williams’ car off the road. One held a gun to his head. One of Williams’ young supporters jammed his gun against the skull of the would-be killer. His bold action saved Williams’s life.

When 17 Freedom Riders came to Monroe to support Williams, a dramatic debate developed between the ideologies of passive resistance—which the Freedom Riders supported—and Williams’ armed self-defense. Williams warned the brave young idealists that racists would confront passive resisters with violence.

In “Negroes with Guns,” a pamphlet published originally by Workers World, Williams described brutal beatings and shooting attacks on the Freedom Riders. At the peak of the battle between Black people and the racists in Monroe there were thousands of armed people menacing each other.

When the tension was greatest, in August 1961, an elderly white couple, the Steagalls, drove into the neighborhood. To protect them from the possible wrath of the community, Williams offered shelter in his home where he, Mabel Williams and Mae Mallory were preparing food for the Freedom Riders. The Steagalls gratefully accepted his offer.

After two hours the neighborhood was less tense and the Steagalls left. Later this same couple testified that they had been held against their will. The state brought indictments of kidnapping against Mallory and Williams and charges of complicity against three others.

Facing what they knew would be an unfair, racist trial if not a lynching, Rob Williams and Mabel Williams escaped to young socialist Cuba. Mae Mallory went to Cleveland and found “justice” Northern style.

Cleveland chronology

1961—Oct. 12: Arrested by FBI agents and imprisoned in Cuyahoga County Jail. Oct. 18: Released on $7,500 bail. Workers World Party members Frances Dostal and Ted Dostal used their house as collateral for the bail.

1962—March 11: Bail revoked. Oct. 4: Ohio State Supreme Court refuses attorney Walter Haffner’s plea to stop extradition.

1963—Dec. 2: U.S. Supreme Court turns down appeal by attorneys Len Holt and Walter Haffner to stop extradition.

1964—January: Extradited to North Carolina.

The Monroe Defense Committee

Mallory’s 1961 call from jail to Workers World Party resulted in the establishment of a Monroe Defense Committee office in Harlem and one in Cleveland, where rotating teams of Workers World Party members maintained an office/apartment. Young Audrey Proctor Seniors worked in a coffee shop patronized by MDC members and enthusiastically agreed to receive mail, shielding it from the FBI. She took telephone messages to bypass the office tap.

MDC Chairperson Clarence Seniors, Vera Spruill, Ruth Stone, Frances Dostal and others kept the office open. They organized demonstration after demonstration, large and small, always loud, always imaginative. Aided by the New York MDC, they raised the money needed to maintain the offices, for legal expenses and bail, and succeeded in building national and worldwide interest.

Among the MDC supporters were Bertrand Russell, James Baldwin, Cleveland CORE, James Foreman, Julian Mayfield, the National Lawyers Guild, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Humanist Association, Dick Gregory, the Ghana Evening News, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

Mae Mallory’s prison writings bristle with rebellion and condemnations of the racist system and the top-of-the-heap racists. Caged though she was for most of the Cleveland years, her unquenchable spirit and voice were huge assets to the campaign for her own freedom and that of the other defendants.

A Monroe Defense Committee undated leaflet commented on the hard-fought campaign to keep Mallory out of Monroe, where her life would unquestionably have been in danger: “On many occasions she was offered all kinds of deals if she would renounce her militant approach and disassociate herself from Rob Williams. ... She and the other collaborators with Williams refused. ... It was Mrs. Mallory’s passionate advocacy of these ideas in her writings, letters and speeches over two-and-a-half years which made [the extradition] inevitable.”

On trial in Monroe; chronology

1964—January: Extradited from Ohio. Sheriff drives Mallory to Monroe. MDC sets up in Monroe. Jan. 18: Len Holt posts $10,000 bail releasing Mallory from Union County jail. Feb. 27: After deliberating 32 minutes, a white jury finds Mae Mallory, Richard Crowder and Harold Reape guilty, sentencing Mallory to 16-20 years. Crowder and Reape, who had been present at the Steagall incident, were given lesser sentences. Back to Union County jail.
March 16: MDC raises Mae’s $10,000 cash bail and smaller amounts for other defendants. April 30: At Columbia University, New York City, Mallory supports the tactic of stalling the ways to protest racism at the World’s Fair. Soon after, she attends a meeting of U.S. activists addressed by Che Guevara, who was representing Cuba at the United Nations.

1965—Jan. 29: Because the jury list for the trial was segregated, the Supreme Court of North Carolina throws out the Monroe court’s verdict. Mallory is free.

After this victory, Mallory addressed thousands of people in many cities and at many colleges, always advocating for armed defense as practiced by Rob Williams and the Louisiana-based Deacons for Defense.

On Feb. 21, 1965, Mallory witnessed the assassination of Malcolm X from a front row in the Audubon Ballroom. Later, speaking in Buffalo, N.Y., she said, “A Black hand pulled the trigger, but it had a white CIA brain behind it.”

Her view extended well beyond the U.S. In April 1965, she played a key role in a protest in Times Square in New York of the U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic. On Aug. 8, 1966, speaking before tens of thousands at an anti-Vietnam War rally, Mallory said, “We are inspired by and salute the great People’s Republic of China.”

Mallory always had a great love for and interest in Africa. When she told a comrade that she was going to Tanzania—where she remained for five years—she said, “I’m going home.”

_________

Articles 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/AboutThisSite).
Verbatim copying and distribution
of this entire article is permitted in
any medium without royalty provided
this notice is preserved.

LOLseph Stalin

19th February 2010, 07:56

Interesting enough I'm writing an essay on the Black power movement which of course fits in quite nicely with the whole black history month thing. :lol:

Belisarius

19th February 2010, 10:18

does anyone know where i can find texts by Malcolm X on anticapitalism on the internet. i know he turned to socialism in 1965, but i can't find any texts about that.

Pirate Utopian

19th February 2010, 13:25

does anyone know where i can find texts by Malcolm X on anticapitalism on the internet. i know he turned to socialism in 1965, but i can't find any texts about that.
http://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/

Try the ones labeled (after true islam) this is after he left the NOI.

onlineidiot94

19th February 2010, 15:31

I think white people should have a history month too.

Pirate Utopian

19th February 2010, 15:59

I think white people should have a history month too.
I think you're probably some racist scumfront troll.

Communist

19th February 2010, 16:21

IDA COX 1896-1967

http://www.findagrave.com/photos/2005/55/7129165_110939999749.jpg (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jifrxqt5ldke%7ET1)

One of the finest classic blues singers of the 1920s, Ida Cox was singing in theaters by the time she was 14. She recorded regularly during 1923-1929 (her "Wild Woman Don't Have the Blues" and "Death Letter Blues" are her best-known songs). Although she was off-record during much of the 1930s, Cox was able to continue working and in 1939 she sang at Cafe Society, appeared at John Hammond (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:difoxqu5ldse)'s Spirituals to Swing concert, and made some new records. Cox toured with shows until a 1944 stroke pushed her into retirement; she came back for an impressive final recording in 1961.

Cox left her hometown of Toccoa, GA, as a teenager, traveling the south in vaudeville and tent shows, performing both as a singer and a comedienne. In the early '20s, she performed with Jelly Roll Morton (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:difixqy5ldhe), but she had severed her ties with the pianist by the time she signed her first record contract with Paramount in 1923. Cox stayed with Paramount for six years and recorded 78 songs, which usually featured accompaniment by Lovie Austin (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jcfrxqw5ld6e) and trumpeter Tommy Ladnier (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:3zfrxq85ldte). During that time, she also cut tracks for a variety of labels, including Silvertone, using several different pseudonyms, including Velma Bradley (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:VELMA%7CBRADLEY), Kate Lewis (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jpfqxqe5ldae), and Julia Powers (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:JULIA%7CPOWERS).

During the '30s, Cox didn't record often, but she continued to perform frequently, highlighted by an appearance at John Hammond (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:difoxqu5ldse)'s 1939 Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert increased her visibility, particularly in jazz circles. Following the concert, she recorded with a number of jazz artists, including Charlie Christian (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:kifuxqt5ldje), Lionel Hampton (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:hiftxqt5ldse), Fletcher Henderson (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wbfwxqt5ldae), and Hot Lips Page (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:h9fexqlgldte). She toured with a number of different shows in the early '40s until she suffered a stroke in 1944. Cox was retired for most of the '50s, but she was coaxed out of retirement in 1961 to record a final session with Coleman Hawkins (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wpfixqr5ld0e). In 1967, Ida Cox died of cancer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf_BOovHeJo

RED DAVE

21st February 2010, 15:45

SMOKEY!!!!!

William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is one of the primary figures associated with Motown Records, second only to the company's founder, Berry Gordy. Robinson's consistent commercial success and creative contributions to the label have earned him the title "King of Motown."

As an original member of Motown Records' first vocal group The Miracles and as a solo artist, Robinson delivered thirty-seven Top 40 hits for Motown between 1960 and 1987. He also served as the company's vice president from 1961 to 1988.

Robinson was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan's North End neighborhood.
According to Entertainment Weekly, "when he was 6 or 7, his Uncle Claude christened him Smokey Joe, which the young William, a Western-movie enthusiast, at first assumed to be his cowboy name for me. Some time later, he learned the deeper significance of his nickname: It derived from smokey, a pejorative term for dark-skinned blacks. I'm doing this, his uncle told the light-skinned boy, so you won't ever forget that you're black."[1]

In his teens, "Smokey Joe" was shortened to "Smokey." In an interview, Robinson claims he has been friends with Diana Ross since she was eleven years old. [2] Around this time Robinson began listening to Nolan Strong & The Diablos, a Fortune Records recording artist. Strong's high tenor voice would be a primary influence on Robinson. In a 2008 interview with Goldmine, Robinson said: "There was a guy who lived in Detroit and had a group called The Diablos. His name was Nolan Strong. They were my favorite vocalists at that time." [1]

In 1955, Robinson co-founded a vocal group called The Five Chimes with his best friend Ronald White, and Northern High School classmates Pete Moore, Clarence Dawson, and James Grice. By 1957, the group was renamed the Matadors and included cousins Emerson and Bobby Rogers in place of Dawson and Grice. Emerson was replaced by his sister Claudette Rogers, who later married Robinson. Guitarist Marv Tarplin joined the group in 1958.

With Robinson as lead singer, the Matadors began touring Detroit venues. After finishing high school Robinsion made plans to attend college, with his studies to begin in January of 1959.[3] However, in August of 1958, Robinson met songwriter Berry Gordy and, as he awaited his enrollment in school, Robinson pursued his musical career with Gordy, who co-wrote for the Miracles the single "Got a Job," an answer song to the Silhouettes' hit single "Get a Job." The group renamed itself the Miracles, and began recording with Gordy on the End Records label in November of 1958.

Robinson has said that he did, in fact, enroll in college and began classes that January, studying electrical engineering. However, The Miracles' first record was released a few weeks later and Robinson left school shortly thereafter, his college career having lasted approximately two months.[3]

The Miracles would go on to issued singles on both End Records and Chess Records, and Robinson suggested to Gordy that he start a label of his own.

In 1959, Gordy founded Tamla Records, which he soon reincorporated as Motown. The Miracles were among the label's first signees. Gordy and Robinson had a synergistic relationship, with Robinson providing a foundation for Motown's hit-making success and Gordy acting as a mentor for the budding singer and songwriter. By 1961, Gordy had appointed Robinson vice-president of Motown Records, a title Robinson held for as long as Gordy remained with the company.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Robinson

RED DAVE

Communist

22nd February 2010, 20:37

.
Grandmaster Flash 1958 -

http://iknowtheledge.com/images/2009/01/grandmasterflash.jpg (http://www.grandmasterflash.com/)

bio found here (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fbftxqt5ld0e%7ET1)
____________

J Grandmaster Flash and his group the Furious Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte) were hip-hop's greatest innovators, transcending the genre's party-music origins to explore the full scope of its lyrical and sonic horizons. Flash was born Joseph Saddler (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:kjfrxqlgldte) in Barbados on January 1, 1958; he began spinning records as teen growing up in the Bronx, performing live at area dances and block parties. By age 19, while attending technical school courses in electronics during the day, he was also spinning on the local disco circuit; over time, he developed a series of groundbreaking techniques including "cutting" (moving between tracks exactly on the beat), "back-spinning" (manually turning records to repeat brief snippets of sound), and "phasing" (manipulating turntable speeds) -- in short, creating the basic vocabulary which DJs continue to follow even today.

Flash did not begin collaborating with rappers until around 1977, first teaming with the legendary Kurtis Blow (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fifqxq95ld6e). He then began working with the Furious Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte) -- rappers Melle Mel (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:dpfqxqekld0e) (Melvin Glover), Cowboy (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jzfqxqtkldke) (Keith Wiggins), Kid Creole (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:kzfqxqtkldke) (Nathaniel Glover), Mr. Ness (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fpfixqr0ldse) aka Scorpio (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:SCORPIO) (Eddie Morris), and Rahiem (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:w9fexqtgldse) (Guy Williams); the group quickly became legendary throughout New York City, attracting notice not only for Flash's unrivalled skills as a DJ but also for the Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte)'s masterful rapping, most notable for their signature trading and blending of lyrics. Despite their local popularity, they did not record until after the Sugarhill Gang (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fifpxq95ldhe)'s smash "Rapper's Delight" proved the existence of a market for hip-hop releases; after releasing "We Rap More Mellow" as the Younger Generation (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:THE%7CYOUNGER%7CGENERATIO), Flash and the Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte) recorded "Superappin'" for the Enjoy label owned by R&B legend Bobby Robinson (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:BOBBY%7CROBINSON). They then switched to Sugar Hill, owned by Sylvia Robinson (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:SYLVIA%7CROBINSON) (no relation), after she promised them an opportunity to rap over a current DJ favorite, "Get Up and Dance" by Freedom (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:FREEDOM) (the idea had probably been originally conceived by Crash Crew (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=1:CRASH%7CCREW) for their single "High Powered Rap").

That record, 1980's "Freedom," the group's Sugar Hill debut, reached the Top 20 on national R&B charts on its way to selling over 50,000 copies; its follow-up, "Birthday Party," was also a hit. 1981's "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel" was the group's first truly landmark recording, introducing Flash's "cutting" techniques to create a stunning sound collage from snippets of songs by Chic (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:hifixqw5ldfe), Blondie (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:gifpxqw5ldde), and Queen (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:jifpxqr5ldje). Flash and the Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte)'s next effort, 1982's "The Message," was even more revelatory -- for the first time, hip-hop became a vehicle not merely for bragging and boasting but for trenchant social commentary, with Melle Mel (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:dpfqxqekld0e) delivering a blistering rap detailing the grim realities of life in the ghetto. The record was a major critical hit, and it was an enormous step in solidifying rap as an important and enduring form of musical expression.

Following 1983's anti-cocaine polemic "White Lines," relations between Flash and Melle Mel (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:dpfqxqekld0e) turned ugly, and the rapper soon left the group, forming a new unit also dubbed the Furious Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte). After a series of Grandmaster Flash solo albums including 1985's They Said It Couldn't Be Done (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:dcfqxqw5ldke), 1986's The Source (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:fcfqxqw5ldke), and 1987's Da Bop Boom Bang (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gcfqxqw5ldke), he reformed the original Furious Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte) lineup for a charity concert at Madison Square Garden; soon after, the reconstituted group recorded a new LP, 1988's On the Strength (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:hcfqxqw5ldke). Another reunion followed in 1994, when Flash and the Five (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:wjfwxqtgldte) joined a rap package tour also including Kurtis Blow (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:fifqxq95ld6e) and Run-D.M.C. (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:gpfpxqlgld6e) A year later, Flash and Melle Mel (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:dpfqxqekld0e) also appeared on Duran Duran (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:hifrxqe5ldhe)'s cover of "White Lines." Except for a few compilations during the late '90s, Flash was relatively quiet until 2002, when a pair of mix albums appeared: The Official Adventures of Grandmaster Flash (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:jvfuxqy0ld6e) on Strut and Essential Mix: Classic Edition (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3nfrxqy0ldfe) on ffrr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4o8TeqKhgY

Communist

23rd February 2010, 02:57

.
COMMEMORATE BLACK HISTORY
Malcolm X’s legacy lives on 45 years after his assassination (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/malcolm_x_0225/)

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire (http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/)
Feb 22, 2010

Forty-five years ago on Feb. 21, Malcolm X — El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz — had begun his address to a mass meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity in New York City at the Audubon Ballroom when several men opened fire on him with shotguns and pistols, killing him.

At the time the corporate media framed the threats, attacks and assassination of Malcolm X as a feud between the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad and former members of the organization who were led by Malcolm X. Yet it has been well documented that the membership of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X were all under FBI and local police surveillance.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/malcolm_x_1_0225.jpg

The FBI wanted to cause a rift between Malcolm X and the members of Elijah Muhammad’s family in order to weaken the impact of these organizations on developments within the broader African-American struggle.

Malcolm X’s assassination came at a critical point during the African-American political movement of the 1960s. The Nation of Islam’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, had done a superb job in covering developments within the civil rights movement from 1961 to 1963, but had remained largely aloof from the direct action efforts of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and other organizations.

The program of the NOI called for the creation of a separate state for African Americans in the United States or in Africa. The organization felt that based on the legacy of racism and national oppression it would be impossible for Blacks and white people to be integrated into the same society on an equal basis.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/malcolm_x_2_0225.jpg

After the April 1962 police attack on the NOI mosque in Los Angeles that resulted in the killing of NOI member Ronald Stokes and the wounding of several others, Malcolm X wanted to engage in broader political efforts to seek justice in the case. City authorities found the killing justifiable.

Differences between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad over the character of the NOI’s response to the killing of Stokes, coupled with the burgeoning mass movement for civil rights, increased tensions inside the organization.

When the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in September 1963, killing four African-American girls, Malcolm X’s statements became even more militant in response to this act of racist terrorism and the failure of the John F. Kennedy administration to take effective action in support of civil rights.

Consequently, when Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, and Malcolm later made comments at the Manhattan Center on Dec. 1 that Kennedy’s death was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost,” he was silenced by Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm would eventually leave the organization by March 1964.

Following his departure from the NOI, Malcolm formed two other organizations, the Muslim Mosque Inc., a Sunni Islamic organization, and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a pan-Africanist group patterned on the Organization of African Unity, in an effort to build a united front in the U.S. in solidarity with the struggle for independence and unity on the continent of Africa.

Malcolm X: A transformative figure in African-American history

Building on the legacy of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X emerged during the 1950s as a leader within the Nation of Islam and a militant spokesperson for urbanized African Americans in the U.S. Born to Garveyite activist parents Earl Little and Louise Little in 1925, Malcolm’s exposure to nationalist and pan-Africanist thought began at a very early age.

Malcolm was one of seven children in the Little family. His father Earl, a Baptist minister, often carried him to the mass meetings he attended during the depression years of the 1930s. His father was originally from Georgia and his mother Louise had been born in the Caribbean nation of Grenada. (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)

Malcolm’s parents had originally met at a Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League conference, the organization founded by Marcus Garvey, in 1919 in Montreal. They were leading members of the UNIA-ACL. Louise Little’s articles were often published in the Garveyite newspaper, The Negro World.

Despite the economic crisis facing the U.S. at the time, Malcolm’s family, a close unit, remained self-reliant. The nationalist mood and self-pride exhibited by this family caused tremendous hostility among racist whites in Nebraska, where Malcolm was born. Malcolm and other family members believed that Earl Little was murdered by white racists in 1931 in Mason, Mich., near the state capital of Lansing.

The social pressure from the white power structure in the area around Lansing, Mich., and economic isolation precipitated a nervous breakdown for Louise Little. Her eventual commitment to a state mental hospital and the breakup of the family by the welfare department had a tremendous impact on the Little children.

During his primary school years Malcolm exhibited intellectual capabilities and talents. He dreamed of being a lawyer but was discouraged by a racist teacher who told him that he had to be realistic because he was Black. By 1941, Malcolm had relocated in Boston to stay with his older sister, Ella Collins, the daughter of Earl Little from a previous marriage.

Malcolm worked in menial jobs in pool halls and on transport trains during World War II. He eventually drifted into criminality and drug abuse that resulted in his arrest and sentencing to prison for burglary in 1946.

While in prison he was influenced by an older inmate to read and develop his mind. He then set out to learn as much as possible and to participate in the prison debating teams.

Malcolm soon accepted the teachings of the Nation of Islam at the urging of his brothers, who had entered the organization prior to him. When he was paroled in 1952, he immediately began to work as an NOI organizer under Elijah Muhammad’s leadership.

He rose swiftly through NOI ranks to become the Boston and later New York minister during the mid-to-late 1950s. After he gained national exposure through public speaking and media coverage, the press once again set out to discredit another fearless spokesperson for the African-American masses.

Malcolm X created a newspaper for the Muslim organization, Muhammad Speaks, which as with the Garvey movement proved to be a powerful vehicle for the transmission of the NOI’s ideas to the general public. In addition, Malcolm’s radio and television interviews and debates drew national attention from both the African-American masses and from U.S. political police agencies like the FBI.

By 1963, Malcolm X’s speeches had become more decisively political and secular. He began to de-emphasize certain aspects of Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslim theology. His remarks at a mass rally held during a grassroots organizers’ conference in Detroit in November 1963 reflected his developing world outlook.

In this address, which was recorded and issued under the title, “Message to the Grassroots,” Malcolm X said, “The same man that was colonizing our people in Kenya was colonizing our people in Congo. The same one in the Congo was colonizing our people in South Africa, and in Southern Rhodesia, and in Burma and in India, and in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan. They realized all over the world where the dark man was being oppressed, he was being oppressed by the white man; where the dark man was being exploited, he was being exploited by the white man.” (Malcolm X Speaks, 1965)

In March 1964 Malcolm announced the formation of an orthodox Muslim Mosque that would rival the NOI and arranged to make hajj in April to Saudi Arabia in order to authenticate himself as a Sunni Islamic believer. When he returned to the U.S. in May 1964, he then established a political group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, whose objectives were decisively revolutionary nationalist and pan-Africanist in orientation.

In July 1964, Malcolm departed again for Africa and the Middle East to engage in further study, analysis and research and to establish deeper contacts between the OAAU and other revolutionary movements in the so-called Third World. Although many writers have placed emphasis on his conversion to Sunni Islam, Malcolm never lessened his commitment to the revolutionary transformation of the U.S. and the world.

Malcolm spent the bulk of his time between July and November of 1964 in various revolutionary and progressive states in Africa, including Egypt, Ghana, Algeria, Tanzania and Guinea. He developed close political relations with Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Ahmed Sekou Touré of Guinea, Gamal Abdel Nassar of Egypt and Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu, a leading government official and Marxist theoretician from Tanzania.

It was Malcolm’s connections with Babu that resulted in Malcolm’s meeting with the Cuban revolution leader, Che Guevara, during Guevara’s visit to the United Nations in late 1964. Malcolm took a keen interest in Cuba and Che’s role in Cuba’s pending aid to Congo’s revolution during 1965.

Malcolm had been one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. foreign policy towards Congo during 1964, when the Johnson administration had intervened to halt the advances of the revolutionary forces. These revolutionaries were fighting against the Western-backed forces that had overthrown and assassinated Patrice Lumumba in 1960-61.

Malcolm’s public statements became more anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist in character and many believed that had he lived longer, Malcolm would have advanced socialism as a political objective.

Malcolm X also visited England and France during late 1964 and early 1965. In England he made alliances with organizations within the Black and Islamic communities. In France, he embarked upon efforts to form alliances with expatriate Africans and Caribbean nationals residing in Paris. Just before his assassination, the French government prevented his making another visit, apparently in response to U.S. State Department pressure.

During this period Malcolm began to emphasize the central role of women in the national liberation process. In an interview in Paris he told the public, “One thing I became aware of in my traveling recently through Africa and the Middle East, in every country you go to, usually the degree of progress can never be separated from the woman. If you’re in a country that’s progressive, the woman is progressive. If you’re in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it’s because the woman is aware of the importance of education.”

Malcolm continued, “But in every backward country you’ll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed, it’s because the women don’t have education. So one of the things I became thoroughly convinced of in my recent travels is the importance of giving freedom to the woman, giving her education, and giving her the incentive to get out there and put that same spirit and understanding in her children.

And I frankly am proud of the contributions that our women have made in the struggle for freedom, and I’m one person who’s for giving them all the leeway possible because they’ve made a greater contribution than many of us men.” (By Any Means Necessary, p. 179, 1970)

Malcolm X’s secure position in African-American history

Despite the efforts of the corporate media to distort his legacy and international image since his assassination, Malcolm X has been immortalized by many writers and commentators on African-American affairs. According to journalist M.S. Handler, “No man in our time aroused fear and hatred in the white man as did Malcolm, because in him the white man sensed an implacable foe who could not be had for any price — a man unreservedly committed to the cause of liberating the Black man in American society, rather than integrating the Black man into that society.” (El Hajj Malik Shabazz, documentary film)

During the later years since his martyrdom Malcolm has gained a secure position within the collective consciousness of Africans, oppressed peoples and workers worldwide. His image proliferates in the urban areas of America and his name and spirit are often evoked in relation to the uncompromising character of the African-American struggle for total liberation from national oppression and economic exploitation.

Consequently, the efforts of the mass media, U.S. intelligence services and the capitalist class in general have failed to obscure or co-opt his message due to the efforts of the political heirs of Malcolm X, who have continued to maintain the integrity and principled character of his legacy.

_____________________

© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Verbatim copying and distribution
of entire article is permitted in any
medium without royalty provided
this notice is preserved.

Communist

25th February 2010, 21:14

SPIKE LEE 1957 -

http://www.tvfunspot.com/forums/images/articles/kf/14.jpg (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000490/)

full bio here (http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/lee_s.htm)

Shelton Jackson Lee was born March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, to William "Bill" Lee, a jazz composer and bassist, and Jacqueline Shelton Lee, an art teacher. His mother, who died in 1977 of cancer, nicknamed him "Spike" as a toddler, evidently alluding to his toughness. Spike grew up the oldest three brothers, David, Cinque, and Chris, and one sister, Joie. The family moved from Atlanta shortly after Lee's birth and lived briefly in Chicago. In 1959 they moved to Brooklyn's predominantly black Fort Greene section. Jacqueline Lee provided a rich cultural upbringing that included plays, galleries, museums, movies. Bill Lee saw that the family experienced music, occasionally taking them to his performances at the Blue Note and to other Manhattan jazz clubs.

After graduating from John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, Lee majored in mass communications at his father's and grandfather's alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta. At Morehouse Lee took an interest in filmmaking, and upon graduation in 1979, was awarded a summer internship with Columbia Pictures in Burbank, California. In the fall, he returned to New York to attend New York University's Institute of Film and Television, Tisch School of the Arts. One of the few blacks in the school, Lee's first year at NYU was not without controversy. An assistantship in his second year provided full tuition in exchange for working in the school's equipment room.

Lee earned his master's in filmmaking from NYU in 1982, and as his final film project, he wrote, produced and directed Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. His father composed the original jazz score, the first of several he created for his son's films. The film was set at a barbershop in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that serves as a front for a numbers running operation. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lee the 1983 Student Academy Award for best director. The Lincoln Center's New Directors and New Films series selected the film as its first student production.

Upon graduation two major talent agencies signed Lee, but when nothing materialized, he was not surprised. In an interview in The New York Times, Lee said that it "cemented in my mind what I always thought all along: that I would have to go out and do it alone, not rely on anyone else." Even though the honors enhanced his credibility, they did not pay the bills. In order to survive, Lee worked at a movie distribution house cleaning and shipping film.

At the same time, he tried to raise funds to finance a film entitled Messenger, a drama about a young New York City bicycle messenger. However, in the summer of 1984, a dispute between Lee and the Screen Actors Guild forced a halt in the production of his first film. The Guild felt the film was too commercial to qualify for the waiver granted to low-budget independent films that permitted the use of nonunion actors. Lee felt that the refusal to grant him the waiver was a definite case of racism. Unable to recast the film with union actors, he terminated the project for lack of funds. Lee told Vanity Fair that he had learned his lesson: "I saw I made the classic mistakes of a young filmmaker, to be overly ambitious, do something beyond my means and capabilities. Going through the fire just made me more hungry, more determined that I couldn't fail again."

Film Career Launched

With the disappointment of Messenger behind him, Lee needed a film with commercial appeal that could be filmed on a small budget. His script for She's Gotta Have It (1986) seemed to fill the bill. The $175,000 film was shot in 12 days at one location and edited in Lee's apartment. The plot follows an attractive black Brooklyn woman, Nola Darling, and her romantic encounters with three men. Lee played one of the three suitors, Mars Blackmon. In the comedy Lee poked fun at the double standard faced by a woman is who involved with several men. After the film's successful opening at the San Francisco Film Festival, Island Pictures agreed to distribute She's Gotta Have It, beating out several other film companies. At the Cannes Film Festival it won the Prix de Jeuness for the best new film by a newcomer. A success in the United States, it eventually grossed over $7 million.

Lee based his next film, School Daze (1988), on his four years at Morehouse College. Set on a college campus during homecoming weekend, it explores the conflict between light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks. Those with light skin have money, expensive cars, and "good hair." The ones with darker skin are "less cool" and had "bad hair." Lee aimed to expose what he saw as a caste system existing within the black community. Lee began filming at Morehouse, but after three weeks the administration asked him to leave citing his negative portrayal of black colleges. Lee finished filming at Atlanta University. School Daze opened to mixed reviews but was a box office success, ultimately grossing $15 million. However, Lee's efforts to explore a complex social problem offended some, while others applauded.

Do the Right Thing (1989) opened with even more controversy. It portrays simmering racial tensions between Italians and African Americans in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section that erupt when a white police officer kills a black man. Some critics said Lee was endorsing violence and would hold him partly responsible if audiences rioted upon seeing the film.

Lee stated that he did not advocate violence, but intended to provoke discussion. The Cannes International Film Festival included a screening of the film and the Los Angeles Film Critics gave it an award for best picture. Do the Right Thing received Golden Globe nominations for best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best supporting actor but failed to win in any category. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay and for best supporting actor. It lacked a nomination for best picture despite its high acclaim. According to Lee, in Jet magazine, "the oversight reflects the discomfort of the motion picture industry with explosive think pieces." It cost $6.5 million to produce and grossed $28 million.

Lee's father inspired the main character and wrote the score for Mo' Better Blues (1990). A jazz trumpeter — who might be based on Lee's father, Bill Lee — tries to balance his love of music with his love of two women. However, Lee said the film was about relationships in general and not just the relationship between a man and a woman. He wanted to portray black musicians that were not dependent on drugs or alcohol.

Lee directed a film on the life of Malcolm X. He knew from the start that it would be controversial. Warner Brothers originally chose Norman Jewison to direct the film. When Lee announced publicly that he had a problem with a white man directing the film, Jewison agreed to step down. Lee problems began early on with a group called the United Front to Preserve the Memory of Malcolm X and the Cultural Revolution. Their objections were based on their analysis of Lee's "exploitative" films. Others doubted that Lee would present a true picture of Malcolm X (http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/malcolmx.htm). After reworking the script, Lee battled with Warner Brothers over the budget. He requested $40 million to produce a film of epic proportions. Warner offered only $20 million. By selling the foreign rights for $8.5 million and kicking in part of his $3 million salary, Lee made up the difference by getting backing from black celebrities such as Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and Michael Jordan, much to Warner's embarrassment. Under Lee's direction, Malcolm X was released in 1992, grossing $48 million. It played a major role in elevating the black leader to mythic status, portraying him as a symbol for the extremes of black rage as well as for racial reconciliation.

Films Stir Controversy

Lee's earlier films courted controversy that helped maximize profits, but critics have said that since Malcolm X Lee has been less discerning, and his films have not done as well at the box office. However, his willingness to tackle sensitive issues of relevance to the black community has made his films profitable, awakening the industry to an untapped market. In 1997 Lee released 4 Little Girls, about a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls. He then moved into what Maclean's Brian D. Johnson called "nervy satire" with a 2000 release, called Bamboozled. In that film, Lee delves into the delicate emotions associated with blackface minstrel shows as entertainment. In 2001 Lee released a television miniseries about the controversial Black Panthers cofounder, Huey P. Newton. Lee seems to be misquoted often and finds it a nuisance to explain things he did not say. He would rather be out of the papers than see false claims. He told American Film, "All I want to do is tell a story. When writing a script I'm not saying, 'Uh-Oh,' I'd better leave that out because I might get into trouble. I don't operate like that." His goal is to prove that an all-black film directed by a black person can be of universal appeal.

In keeping with his interest in encouraging others who want to enter filmmaking, Lee established a minority scholarship at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1989, and he also supports the College Fund/UNCF.

Lee is about five feet six inches tall and has a mustache and small beard. He wears glasses. Lee is a dedicated New York Knicks fan and has been known to plan film projects around the Knicks' basketball schedule.

Associates describe him as possessing a fierce determination and unshakable self-confidence. Philip Dusenberry of New York advertising agency BBDO said of Lee in Business Week, "You get the impression that Spike is a devil-may-care kind of guy, but he's also a shrewd self-promoter." Other long-time associates told Ebony that Lee "is an obsessive workaholic who seems intent on cramming a lifetime of work into a few short years." Lee is unusual in the filmmaking business in that he not only writes, directs, and produces, but also acts in all his films — although most of his roles are marginal. He does not consider himself an actor but feels it creates box office appeal.

Lee makes no apology for his success and defends himself against charges of commercialism. His motivation for business investments comes from Malcolm X's philosophy that blacks need to build their own economic base. Lee was recognized as a marketing phenomenon and multimedia star only four years after his surprise hit, She's Gotta Have It. His first enterprise, Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks, moved from his apartment to a remodeled Brooklyn firehouse in 1987. With tongue in cheek, Lee says the name reflects the arduous struggle he went through to make She's Gotta Have It.

In addition to his films, he has written several books that recount his experiences as a director. He has also produced music videos for Anita Baker, Miles Davis, Michael Jackson, and Branford Marsalis, among others. In 1988 he produced and directed a television commercial for Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign.

Lee married attorney Tonya Linette Lewis, in October of 1993. They met in September of 1992 during the Congressional Black Caucus weekend in Washington D.C. Their daughter, Satchel Lewis Lee, was born in December of 1994. She was named after legendary black baseball star Satchel Paige. In May of 1997 their son, Jackson Lee, was born.

Known as one of the most original and innovative filmmakers in the world, Lee presents the different facets of black culture. He is quick to admit, however, that there are those in the black community among his detractors. Lee says that he is neither a spokesman for 35 million African Americans nor tries to present himself that way. He will probably continue to court controversy, but with his savvy and salesmanship skills, Spike Lee will remain a significant influence in the entertainment world.

___________

Communist

26th February 2010, 18:57

.
Vanessa Fluker
Foreclosure fighter honored
Feb 25, 2010

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/fluker_0304.jpg (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/foreclosure_fighter_0304/)
Attorney (http://pview.findlaw.com/view/3419274_1) Vanessa Fluker

Attorney Vanessa Fluker (http://search.workersworld.net/local-cgi/search.cgi?m=all&s=D&q=vanessa+fluker), a leader of the Moratorium NOW! (http://www.moratorium-mi.org/) Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs, was honored at a brunch held Feb. 20 at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (http://www.maah-detroit.org/) in Detroit.

The Black Women Lawyers Association of Michigan presented Fluker with its prestigious Harriet Tubman Award for her legal services on behalf of children victimized by lead poisoning as well as her work representing homeowners fighting foreclosures and predatory lending. Coalition members and several of Fluker’s clients were among the hundreds who attended the BWLAM program.

“For every home we are able to save there are a thousand families who are put out on the street. If you think this doesn’t affect you, think again. Have your home appraised and see what it’s worth,” said Fluker. “The federal government is paying the banks to toss people out of their homes. Everyone must take up the fight for justice against the banks and lenders who continue to get billions in our tax dollars.”

Judge Deborah Thomas (http://www.myspace.com/356812307) received the Torch Bearer of Justice Award for her civil rights advocacy and leadership in demanding representative juries in Detroit, a majority African-American city. Fluker and Thomas were also presented with citations from several dignitaries, including U.S. Rep. (http://conyers.house.gov/) John Conyers Jr (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Conyers).

— Report and photo by Kris Hamel

_____________________

© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Verbatim copying and distribution of
this entire article is permitted in any
medium without royalty provided this
notice is preserved.

RED DAVE

27th February 2010, 14:01

Rustin was a great and strong black man who, in the end, just couldn't sustain his militancy alone.

Bayard Rustin (March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier, and the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[1] He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. He became an advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career; however, his homosexuality was the basis for attacks from government officials and agencies as well as from interest groups.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

27th February 2010, 23:01

Tracy Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American rapper and actor. He was born in Newark, New Jersey and moved to Los Angeles, California. After graduating from high school he served in the United States Army for four years. He began his career as a rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays. The next year, he founded record label Rhyme Syndicate and released another album, Power. He became the lead vocalist in rap metal band Body Count, which he introduced in his 1991 album O.G.: Original Gangster. Body Count released its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", which was perceived to glamorize killing police officers. Because of this, he left Warner Bros. Records in 1993 and released his album Home Invasion through Priority Records instead. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s.

As an actor, Ice-T began starring in minor roles in two films during the mid-1980s. In 1991, Ice-T formally began his acting career as an actor in the film New Jack City. Ice-T also starred in films such as Who's the Man? (1993), CB4 (1993), Tank Girl (1995), and Johnny Mnemonic (1995). He has played Detective Odafin "Fin" Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit since 1999. In 2006, Ice-T released his first album in seven years, Gangsta Rap.(emph. added)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-T

RED DAVE

Communist

27th February 2010, 23:08

.
COURAGEOUS ROLE OF BLACK WOMEN

The 1933 Funsten Nut Strike (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/funsten_nut_strike_0304/)

By Martha Grevatt
Published Feb 26, 2010

In 1933 St. Louis, Mo., was the gateway to the segregated South. Here was the last train stop before passengers were reassigned to cars marked “colored” and “white.” While the city did not have apartheid codes on the books, St. Louis itself was in every other way a Jim Crow town.

Yet there, in the worst year yet of a depression that had gone on for four years, African-American women who shelled pecans all day led a victorious strike.

Because pecans grew naturally along the Mississippi River, they were shipped by boat to St. Louis, making the city a center for the nut shelling industry.

In her book, “The Funsten Nut Strike,” Myrna Fichtenbaum describes the situation of the workers: “Seated at a table, after obtaining a 25 pound bag of nuts, the women separated the meat from the shells with a knife. Halves were placed in one pile, broken pieces in another. The shells were also kept, so that upon completion all of it could be weighed once more, making sure that it all added up to the original 25 pounds.”

Workers were paid by the pound. Black women got two cents for pieces and three or four cents for halves. White women, most of them Polish, received two cents more per pound. The workplaces were dusty and unsanitary, but better jobs were not available to women of color. Black women comprised about 85 percent to 90 percent of the work force in the pecan shops.

Starvation pay — an average of $1.80 per week for Black women and $2.75 for white women — meant that the owners of the Funsten Nut Company could earn a quarter of a million dollars in annual profit even during the Depression.

Overall unemployment and underemployment in St. Louis’ Black community stood at a staggering 75 percent — a hard economic environment in which to launch a strike, to say the least. By 1933, however, Black workers had acquired several years of class struggle experience specifically through the communist-led Unemployed Councils. It was a recent Black recruit to the Communist Party who first began talking strike with two members of his family who worked at Funsten. The Food Workers Industrial Union, affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League, began holding organizing meetings at the CP headquarters.

It was the women in the shops who developed the strike demands: equal pay for all, union recognition, and pay rates of 10 cents per pound for pecan halves and four cents for pieces. “We demand 10 and four” became the strike slogan. It was coined by Carrie Smith, a middle-aged Black woman described as “the heart and soul of the strike.”

On April 24, 1933, a committee of 12 walked into the office at Funsten’s west end plant — one of four in St. Louis. All but seven workers stopped working and waited outside the office for a report. A company executive told the committee he would get back to them at a later date.

Three weeks went by with no answer from management. On May 13 Carrie Smith addressed a mass meeting. “Girls, we can’t lose,” she implored, holding a brick in one hand and a Bible in the other. The meeting voted to strike. The next day the committee went back to the company office. Their demands were rejected. The walkout began at the west end plant, after which workers gave the signal to walk out at the main plant. A day later two more Funsten plants plus the Liberty Nut Company and the Central Pecan Company were strikebound. Altogether 1,400 workers hit the picket lines. While Black women led the strike, most of the white women joined in.

Picket duty began promptly at 5 a.m. Each plant had a shop committee that met every morning. Nightly strike meetings were held at the CP headquarters. A negotiating committee was established, as was a relief committee, which fed about 1,200 strikers three meals a day. Often the women battled scabs with bricks and bats. About 100 were arrested.

Several days into the strike a committee went into the city hall to demand the mayor intervene. On May 23 the central strike committee met — at the CP headquarters, no less — with Funsten management, their attorney, and a committee set up by the mayor. The agreement reached in this all-day session was eight cents for halves and the four cents for pieces that the women had demanded. All workers were to be paid equally!

This would have been a remarkable achievement under favorable strike conditions. Yet it took place in the first half of 1933. The National Recovery Act, with a Section 7(a) that on paper gave workers the right to organize, had not even been passed!

These heroic workers inspired others. Ralph Shaw, leader of the city’s CP branch, recalled, “This initial example by the most oppressed nut workers had a tremendous effect in St. Louis in bringing forward the clothing workers and ladies’ garment workers after the NRA was passed. Some of our people from the Food Union spoke and were greeted at some of their strike meetings. There was a tremendous feeling of solidarity.”

The main source for this article, including quotes, is from the book “The Funsten Nut Strike” by Myrna Fichtenbaum.

___________________________

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/).
Verbatim copying and distribution of entire
article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

RED DAVE

28th February 2010, 15:23

If you've never heard it: the greatest speech by an American in the 20th Century:

YouTube- Martin Luther King "I have a dream" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk)

RED DAVE

Frank Zapatista

28th February 2010, 20:43

Ok. Not to be a prick, but could we celebrate black people's history every month? As a high-schooler, I know that Black History Month is basically a liberal strategy to keep people fooled.

"Here ya go, 28 days to study 500, still on-going, years of oppression"
Why cant we mix in black history with the rest of our history? Seperating it into its own category seems pointless to me. Their history is just as important and relevent as our own. Can't Martin Luther King be tought as a regular part of the curriculum? He didnt just fight for black rights he fought for RACIAL EQUALITY.

Communist

28th February 2010, 22:26

Angela Davis 1944 -

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/illumina%20Folder/davisa_a.jpg (http://www.jayepurplewolf.com/PASSION/ANGELADAVIS/index.html)

detailed bio found here (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdavisAN.htm)

Angela Davis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis) (b. January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American socialist, political activist and retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Consciousness_Departmen t&action=edit&redlink=1) at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

She was the director of the university's Feminist Studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_Studies) department. Davis was a vibrant activist during the Civil Rights Movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Movement) and was associated with the Black Panthers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party).

Her research interests are in feminism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism), African American studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_studies), critical theory, Marxism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism), popular music and social consciousness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_consciousness), and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons.

In the 1970s, she was a target of COINTELPRO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO), tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA (http://cpusanationalboard.blogspot.com/2009/02/communist-party-usa-supports-barack.html) ticket during the 1980's.

Since moving in the early 1990s from party communism to other forms of political commitment, she has identified herself as a democratic socialist. Davis is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex.

Pirate Utopian

1st March 2010, 00:04

Considered The Beatles of hip-hop, they are one of the most important musicians of modern music and hip-hop in particular...

Run-DMC (sometimes written Run D.M.C., Run–DMC, or Run DMC) was a hip hop (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Hip_hop_culture) group from Hollis (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Hollis,_Queens), in the Queens (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Queens) borough of New York City (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/New_York_City). Founded by Joseph "Run" Simmons (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Joseph_Simmons), Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Darryl_McDaniels), and Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Jason_Mizell), the group is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential acts in the history of hip hop. They were the biggest act in hip-hop throughout the 1980s and are credited with breaking hip hop into mainstream music.[1] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-0)[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-stone-1) In 2004, Rolling Stone (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Rolling_Stone) ranked them number 48 in their list of the greatest musical artists of all time.[2] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-stone-1) In 2007, the trio was named Greatest Hip Hop Group of All Time by MTV.com [3] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-mtv.com-2) They were also named Greatest Hip Hop Artist of All Time by VH1.[4] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/#cite_note-3) They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_Hall_of_Fame) on April 4, 2009, the second hip-hop group to be inducted, after Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Grandmaster_Flash_and_The_Furious_Five).

OBrW4QflQAI

_wMFOL_sAPk

Communist

4th March 2010, 04:31

.
Theodore Lamont Cross 1924-2010

abridged from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
http://www.jbhe.com/crossobit.html

Theodore Cross, the founder and editor of The Journal
of Blacks in Higher Education, died in Florida on
Sunday. He was 86 years old.

A native of Wellesley, Massachusetts, Ted Cross was a
graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School.

After a long and successful career in professional
publishing, Cross devoted the last two decades of his
life to increasing the opportunities of African
Americans in higher education. In 1993 the first issue
of the quarterly, The Journal of Blacks in Higher
Education was published. To the time of his death,
Cross maintained an active role in writing and editing
the journal. In 2003 he began an online weekly edition
of JBHE.

A veteran of the 1960s civil rights marches and
protests, Cross' efforts on behalf of African- American
higher education were not restricted to publishing. He
was an active member of the board of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund. Also, in 1981 Cross
established an endowed professorship in the sciences at
Amherst College with the stipulation that the chair's
first occupant be an African American.

Cross was the author of The Black Power Imperative.
He also published two critically acclaimed books of his bird
photography, the latest being Waterbirds, which
was published in 2009.

He will be deeply missed.

http://blog.locustfork.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/waterbirds.jpg (http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=12248)

Communist

19th April 2010, 07:41

.
SNCC at 50 (http://www.theroot.com/views/sncc-50)

Remembering a student movement
that changed America forever.

By Charlie Cobb Jr.
The Root
April 15, 2010

In July 1962, I went with two students from Jackson,
Mississippi's sit-in movement to a little town in
Sunflower County called Ruleville. We'd only been in
town for a couple of days when, while walking down a
dirt road, a car stopped in front of us. A white man
holding a pistol ordered us into the car. He was the
mayor. He was also a justice of the peace; he owned the
town's hardware store and headed the local White
Citizens' Council.

Pistol in hand, he brought us to the hardware store,
where he ranted about New York Communists and told us to
get out of town. The leader of our little threesome,
Charles "Mac" McLaurin, responded, saying we were in
Sunflower County to encourage and help people register
to vote. The U.S. Constitution gives us the right to do
this, Mac told him. The mayor's unforgettable response:
"That law ain't got here yet."

This story begins two years earlier. On Feb. 1, 1960,
four students attending North Carolina A&T, a
historically black college in Greensboro, N.C.,
purchased school supplies at Woolworth's department
store, then sat down at the store's lunch counter for
coffee and doughnuts. "Negroes get food at the other
end," the waitress told them, pointing to the far end of
the counter where there were no seats and blacks were
expected to carry their orders outside. The four stayed
seated until the store closed.

By the end of March, the sit-ins had spread from
Greensboro to 80 other Southern cities. Two and a half
months after Greensboro, on the weekend of April 15-17--
Easter weekend that year--about 150 student activists
gathered at Shaw College (now Shaw University) in
Raleigh, N.C., where they gave birth to the Student Non-
violent Coordinating Committee (usually pronounced
"Snick").

For me, the sit-ins were a wake-up call, and I became
deeply involved with movement, first as a student
protester and, before long, as a field secretary for
SNCC in Mississippi from 1962 to 1967.

The deeper meanings of the sit-ins, like much of the
Southern freedom movement of the 1960s, are not very
well understood. There are black people today in places
that black people once could not occupy. Back in the
day, we could hardly imagine a black person in the White
House or even reading the news on television.

But African Americans are not in these positions today
because a sudden change of heart occurred in this
nation. There was pressure: a significant amount came
from young people on the campuses of historically black
colleges and universities. In fact, the student eruption
triggered by the Feb. 1 sit-ins may have been the only
time when HBCUs, as a collective body, have had national
political impact. And young black people who came off
these campuses to organize kept the pressure on for
years, primarily through SNCC.

On April 15, I will be joining SNCC veterans at a
conference and reunion on Shaw University's campus. The
discussion will begin with some of the important lessons
contained in the sit-ins. It would be a mistake to
reduce the sit-ins to a simple demand by black students
for a hamburger or Coke where only white people were
allowed to eat. The sit-ins were important because the
students were challenging themselves, making their way
in a fashion that would become very significant to the
larger freedom movement. Before the sit-ins, civil
rights seemed like something grown-ups did. Now, as
SNCC's legendary Bob Moses once put it, remarking on his
reaction in Harlem to the sit-in students in the South:
"They looked like I felt."

The bonds we formed in the student protests 50 years ago
were strong despite the diversity of political opinion
and economic class among SNCC members. Listen to another
legendary SNCC leader, Charles Sherrod, the first of us
to leave school and commit to working full-time as a
SNCC field secretary: "You get ideas in jail. You talk
with other young people you have never seen. Right away
we recognize each other: People like yourself, getting
out of the past. We're up all night, sharing creativity,
planning action. You learn the truth in prison; you
learn wholeness. You find the difference between being
dead and alive."

For all of the youthful energy and commitment to
challenge and change that erupted in 1960, the reason
for SNCC's existence comes down to one person--a
then-57-year-old woman--Ella Baker, one of the great
figures of 20th-century struggle. In a deep political
sense, we are her children and our 50th anniversary
conference is dedicated to her.

In the 1940s, Baker was the NAACP's director of southern
branches, organizing and assisting local chapters across
the South. In 1957, she was instrumental in the
establishment of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), becoming its
first executive secretary (actually "temporary"
executive secretary because she was a woman in an
organization of male preachers). She immediately
recognized the significance of the sit-in movement and
got $800 from King to bring together the student
activists to her alma mater, Shaw College, to create
SNCC while fending off efforts by SCLC to make us a
student arm of that organization.

What she stressed, and what came to define SNCC, was the
idea of organizing from the bottom up. "Strong people"
she would say, "don't need strong leaders." She
encouraged us to think that our work was community
organizing.

In 1961, other sit-in students left their campuses to
work full-time for SNCC as "field secretaries." Again,
we saw challenge in this as much as political
commitment. Traveling by bus to Houston in the summer of
1962, I got off in Jackson, Miss.,to introduce myself to
the students who were sitting in there. Why? Because
Mississippi was identified in my mind--as it was in the
minds of many young black men of my generation--with the
murder of Emmett Till. I wondered what kind of black
people were these Mississippi students who dared
confront one of the most brutal and violent regimes in
the United States. When I explained that I was just
passing through on the way to a civil rights workshop in
Texas, Lawrence Guyot,, who would later head the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), looked at
me with total disdain, "Texas? For a civil rights
workshop? What's the point of that when you're standing
right here in Mississippi?" I got the message, felt the
challenge, and stayed.

SNCC's mission was to organize in the toughest areas of
the Black Belt South. Older veterans of struggle, mainly
local NAACP leaders, guided us in organizing efforts for
voter registration. They felt that if the potential
political power reflected in the number of black people
were harnessed through registration, change could come
through the exercise of that power.

We dug in. Truthfully, until passage of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, we never got huge numbers of people to even
try to register to vote. There was too much violence,
too much economic reprisal, too much intimidation, all
ignored by the federal government and supported by the
local so-called forces of law and order. In Mississippi,
when Byron De La Beckwith was found not guilty of the
murder of NAACP leader Medgar Evers, the state's major
newspaper had a front-page photograph of De La Beckwith
shaking hands with a smiling Gov. Ross Barnett.

Not being run out of Mississippi was a victory in
itself. We made our way to strong people who were
willing to expose themselves to reprisal in order to
fight for change. And our work had greater impact than
we realized at first. In 1964, the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party, which we helped organize, decided to
challenge the legitimacy and seating of Mississippi's
officially recognized Democratic Party at the National
Democratic Convention that year. President Lyndon B.
Johnson and other national party decision-makers
exercised what can only be called raw white power and
denied seating to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party. This was because of the clout wielded by southern
white Democrats--power they owed to their exclusion of
blacks from the political process.

We were bitter about it because we thought we had
failed. But the party promised changes that would expand
the participation of women and minorities. In 1972,
these changes were formalized into what are now called
the McGovern Rules, outlawing explicitly racist local
party affiliates and increasing the number of women and
minorities in party leadership roles.

The candidacy of Barack Obama--and Hillary Clinton, for
that matter--would not have been possible without the
1964 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenge that
generated the pressure for these new rules. President
Obama owes a great debt to this Mississippi challenge of
1964 as well as to the black people in Mississippi and
across the South whose blood still soaks the soil.
Civil rights victories--the 1964 Public Accommodations
Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act--were a dilemma for
us in SNCC. In five years, we learned that the problems
of black life in America were greater and deeper than
these two pieces of legislation could remedy. "Where do
we go from here?" we asked ourselves, and we never
really found an answer.

Differences of political opinion that had been
relatively unimportant in the heat of struggle loomed
larger now. Was willingness to face terror enough to
qualify for membership? How strong should central
authority be? Is nonviolence still relevant? What about
self-defense? How do whites fit in? The MFDP's challenge
of the status quo and its refusal to kowtow to liberal
Democratic Party pressures, our stance against the war
in Vietnam, our support for a Palestinian state, and our
use of the slogan "black power" brought the wrath of
former allies down on our heads. I think our stances
were all legitimate, but they cost us politically.

Complicating all this was the simple fact that we were
tired. We stopped organizing, in a sense, losing the
best in ourselves. As Bob Moses put it, SNCC was like a
boat in the water that had to be repaired to stay
afloat, but had to stay afloat in order to be repaired.

Our disintegration will also come up during our
gathering in Raleigh, and there are undoubtedly lessons
in it for today. Some of us will not have seen each
other for years. Still, I think that while "repair" has
gone on for decades, most of us are still afloat. And
there are lessons in that, too.

Charles Cobb Jr. is senior analyst for All Africa. His
latest book is On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of
the Civil Rights Trail

_____________________________________________

Communist

20th April 2010, 04:47

.
I was speaking with a comrade about this story earlier this evening. She was around the SNCC in the mid '60's. The story really made her nostalgic and also a bit sad. Those were some pretty heady days.
,

RED DAVE

22nd April 2010, 00:56

Heady days indeed. I remember Bob Moses and Chuck McDew coming to speak to NYU CORE and telling us assorted horror stories.

We also participated in a little-known series of "freedom rides," in which we went down to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and went in integrated teams to try to get served in segregated restaurants.

I ended up as a member of Downtown CORE, in New York, and we provided support for SNCC in the form of money and clothes for some of the direly impoverished people SNCC was working with in Mississippi and Alabama. We also carried out rent strikes and other community actions. Mickey Schwerner was a member of our chapter until he went South to participate in the Freedom Summer.

Those were the days, my friend.
We thought they'd never end.

RED DAVE

hobo8675309

13th November 2010, 23:11

Lobotomy

18th January 2011, 09:36

Why is there a black history month, but not a white [...] history month?

There is. It's called January, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December.

A Revolutionary Tool

19th January 2011, 06:08

I'm really surprised nobody has even mentioned Franz Fanon yet. According to the Encyclopedia of Marxism:

Fanon, Franz (1925-1961)
West Indian psychoanalyst and social philosopher, known for his theory that some neuroses are socially generated and for his writings on behalf of the national liberation of colonial peoples.
After attending schools in Martinique and France, Fanon served in the French army during World War II and afterward completed his studies in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Lyon. In 1953-56 he served as head of the psychiatry department of Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria, which was then part of France. He joined the Algerian liberation movement in 1954 and in 1956 became an editor of its newspaper, El Moudjahid, published in Tunis. In 1960 he was appointed ambassador to Ghana by the rebel Provisional Government.
Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952) reflected his personal frustrations with racism. The publication shortly before his death of his book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) established Fanon as a prophetic figure, the author of a social gospel that urged colonised peoples to purge themselves of their degradation in a "collective catharsis" to be achieved by violence against their European oppressors. This book traced the stages of development of culture and social development as a new nation emerges from the domination of colonialism and he warned of the dangers of a nation achieving national liberation before achieving maturity in the development of its own culture, pointing to the United States as an example.
The national liberation struggle which Fanon spoke for and Fanon's writings themselves served as a source of intellectual inspiration for the US Black Civil Rights movement and subsequently the women's liberation movement.

If I can get my hands on a copy of "The Wretched of the Earth" do you guys think it would be worth the money? Heard it is REALLY good.

RED DAVE

3rd February 2011, 00:52

It being Black History Month again:

Booker T. and W.E.B.

"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"It shows a mighty lot of cheek
To study chemistry and Greek
When Mister Charlie needs a hand
To hoe the cotton on his land,
And when Miss Ann looks for a cook,
Why stick your nose inside a book?"
"I don't agree," said W.E.B.,
"If I should have the drive to seek
Knowledge of chemistry or Greek,
I'll do it. Charles and Miss can look
Another place for hand or cook.
Some men rejoice in skill of hand,
And some in cultivating land,
But there are others who maintain
The right to cultivate the brain."
"It seems to me," said Booker T.,
"That all you folks have missed the
boat
Who shout about the right to vote,
And spend vain days and sleepless
nights
In uproar over civil rights.
Just keep your mouths shut, do not
grouse,
But work, and save, and buy a house."
"I don't agree," said W.E.B.,
"For what can property avail
If dignity and justice fail.
Unless you help to make the laws,
They'll steal your house with
trumped-up clause.
A rope's as tight, a fire as hot,
No matter how much cash you've got.
Speak soft, and try your little plan,
But as for me, I'll be a man."
"It seems to me," said Booker T. --
"I don't agree,"
Said W.E.B.Dudley Randall (1914-2000)

RED DAVE

brigadista

3rd February 2011, 00:57

The Wretched of the Earth is a GREAT book..get it:):)

RED DAVE

3rd February 2011, 12:17

The Wretched of the Earth is a GREAT book..get it:):)Wretched of the Earth on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wretched_of_the_Earth)

On Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_36?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=wretched+of+the+earth+by+franz+fanon&sprefix=wretched+of+the+earth+by+franz+fanon)

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

3rd February 2011, 12:30

h4ZyuULy9zs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs)

Strange Fruit

by Lewis(Allan (Abel Meeropol)

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Here's the great story behind this song. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Fruit)

RED DAVE

brigadista

3rd February 2011, 13:43

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/01/31/2011-01-31_nyc_hip_hop_pioneer_dj_kool_herc_very_sick_has_ no_health_insurance_cant_afford_s.html

pioneering hip hop DJ sad

brigadista

3rd February 2011, 13:54

from the carribbean
CLR James marxist and writer of the Black Jacobins an essential book about the Haitian slave revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._R._James

http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/index.htm

“this independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights ... [and] is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, that it has got a great contribution to make to the development of the proletariat in the United States, and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism.”

also

Marcus Garvey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey

and

Juan Almeida Bosque hero of the Cuban revolution and friend to Che Guevara

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Almeida_Bosque

to those complaining about black history month and asking why there is no white history month - its white history months 11 months of the year...

RED DAVE

4th February 2011, 00:29

Steve Harvey said that if it weren't for Ron Isley and the Isley Brothers, most of the young people alive today would never have been born.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdbQTXc8Kb8&feature=fvst

RED DAVE

Lobotomy

4th February 2011, 07:22

tyZv444n6bg

RED DAVE

4th February 2011, 15:58

If you don't know pee-funk, then you don't know funk! :D

l1Y7rEiJ9kE

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

5th February 2011, 13:58

One of the greatest of all videos: Mary J. Blige, "No More Drama" (ignore the commericial at the beginning)

em328ua_Lo8

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

5th February 2011, 14:05

n8Kxq9uFDes

What more need be said?

RED DAVE

brigadista

5th February 2011, 14:59

noone posted one of the originators of modern music...

f5Hbh_-IRs8

and the REAL king of R and R..

cK6MElklfvM

brigadista

5th February 2011, 18:12

Assata Shakur Black Panther and in exile in Cuba

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assata_Shakur

bell hooks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks

Emory Douglas minister of culture for the Black Panther Party [ and artist of my avatar]

some fantastic art that still hits home all these years later - Emory is still painting and resisting

see some of his still seriously fresh work here

http://www.moca.org/emorydouglas/

Great grandfathers of rap and hip hop
the Last Poets [ currently touring with the Roots] quite a few vid on youtube this is one of my personal favorites..

XY1gtyzxAGw

Fela Kuti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fela_Kuti

lots of youtube vids on a search on his name its worth it

brigadista

5th February 2011, 18:29

Damn did we forget....
LKJ

after Brixton...."an we form up we posse an we mek we raid.."

hpypYcMe16I

more recently

pY0hdmDn_cI

brigadista

5th February 2011, 18:46

Gil Heron and his son

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/dec/19/gil-heron-obituary

Gil Scott Heron a lone voice during the reagan years and former last poet

BS3QOtbW4m0

Lobotomy

6th February 2011, 04:44

0kJkhEcQ44k

brigadista

6th February 2011, 14:48

Why is there a black history month, but not a white or asian history month? Or better yet, why not an American Indan history month? They get a bad wrap for being kicked off their land by whitey and being forced into a desert with a welfare system poorer than afghanistan's.

I think they should be included but i also think that a lot of the information on here should also be in the general lists otherwise we will have the "black history month" ghetto thread...

x359594

6th February 2011, 15:38

My friend Will Alexander is a poet whom critics have not been able to categorize easily. An African-American child of the post-World War II baby boom who grew up in south central Los Angeles, he also does not fit any clichéd image of that generation's avant-garde poets. The son of a World War II veteran, Alexander was influenced by the revolutionary struggles of the Third World that first inspired his father during a military tour of the Caribbean. The elder Alexander found there was a sharp contrast in how black Americans lived in the United States as compared to other Third World countries, according to Harryette Mullen (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=82488), writing in Callalloo. "There, the elder Alexander was impressed to see black people in positions of power, and his story of that experience left a distinct impression on his son, who counts among his culture heroes Césaire of Martinique and Wifredo Lam of Cuba," Mullen noted.

Born in Los Angeles, Alexander has remained a lifetime resident of the city. Although he received a B.A. degree in English and creative writing, he has followed his own direction in his writing and painting. According to Clayton Eshleman (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2069), writing in American Poet, Alexander was probably first published in 1981 in the small press literary journal Sulfur. Until the mid-1990s, he made his living in an assortment of low-paying jobs. He has since given readings of his work and held artist-in-residence posts at various colleges.

Alexander's first work to attract critical attention was Asia & Haiti. Writing on the collection for Sulfur, John Olson commented: "Poetry and politics make peculiar bedfellows. One is private experience made public, the other public experience made private. In Will Alexander's Asia & Haiti . . . poetry writhes like a wounded snake in a miasma of brutality and oppression." He added, "Shelley called poets legislators and prophets, visionaries who drew their authority from 'that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion.' This is what gives Asia such tremendous pathos, taking China's invasion of Tibet as point of departure. It is a poem with a surrealistic aperture, oracular lens and Delphic tripod."

In discussing a passage from Towards the Primeval Lightning Field, Eshleman wrote, "The desire in such writing is for a paradise of language, for the creation, in language, of a reality that uses particles from the observational world to foment interlocking nonsequitor constellations that ignite new constellations as they burst." As Alexander wrote in the first paragraph of the work, "It is not with the steepness of vultures that I seek to procure an arcane stability in the void, but by the blending of halts and motions, like the vertical equilibria of fire, brought to an incandescent pitch of value." In his introduction to Towards the Primeval Lightning Field, Andrew Joron (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=98389) pointed out that Alexander's imagination is embued with the pre-Romantic idea of imagination as "the link of links": "Here, the energy of the imagination has not yet been harnessed (as it would be in Romanticism) to the goals of bourgeois subjectivization. It can never be a matter of 'possessing' this imagination, but only (as in the communalistic spirit of voudou) of being possessed by it. Imagination is the conductor of primeval lightning, the fiery trickster leaping between frozen and fragmented realia, the universal translator of the multitude of tongues (both human and inhuman) emitted by the Signal of signals."

In American Book Review, Mark Scroggins stated that Alexander is "acutely conscious of the issue of poetic voice, and is unwilling to let poetry's potential for ventriloquizing or exploring the voices of others be subsumed in an impersonal écriture or ultimately homogenous montage. He seems as well interested in the spiritual dimension of poetry, especially in the degrees to which poetry can give us access to spiritual or emotional states beyond those we normally experience."

Critics have observed that Alexander reaches for almost a whole new language, while making use of the inferences of the language he has at his disposal. Mullen explained: "Although Alexander resists discussions of the technical aspects of writing, it would be useful to have a fuller account of his process of lexical selection and combination; to understand how his reading habits and writing practices overlap in the intertextuality and diverse vocabularies incorporated into his poetry; to appreciate how certain rare, unusual, specialized, foreign, or archaic words are used in the poem for their precise denotative meaning, connotative meaning, metaphorical resonance, aural or phonemic qualities, or all of the above." As is common with surrealists, Alexander works through automatic writing, trying to achieve a state of trance, as Mullen pointed out. His preference for the British spelling of English words adds a whole dimension to his use of language, which becomes more than simply American and certainly differs from the "black" language of many modern African-American writers. Mullen concluded: "His literary influences connect him to an international avant-garde, just as his experience as an African American connects him to a black diaspora, and to the political struggles of Third World people."

In her explanation of the book Above the Human Nerve Domain, Mullen wrote: "The domain of poet Will Alexander's nervy curiosity ranges from the icy Himalayas, to African savannahs, from physics, astronomy, and music, to alchemy, philosophy, and painting. Orishas, angels and ghosts all sing to this poet, instructing him in their art of verbal flight. This is a poet whose lexicon, a 'glossary of vertigo,' might be culled from the complete holdings of a reconstituted Alexandrian library endowed for the next millennium."
CAREER

Poet, teacher, painter. Writer in residence at University of California, San Diego, New College (San Francisco, CA), and Hofstra University. Taught at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Boulder, CO.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

Vertical Rainbow Climber, Jazz Press (Aptos, CA), 1987.
Arcane Lavender Morals, Leave Books (Buffalo, NY), 1994.
The Stratospheric Canticles, Pantograph Press (Berkeley, CA), 1995.
Asia & Haiti, Sun & Moon Press (Los Angeles, CA), 1995.
Above the Human Nerve Domain, Pavement Saw Press (Columbus, OH), 1998.
Towards the Primeval Lightning Field, (essays), O Books (Oakland, CA), 1998.

Contributor to various small press publications, including Callaloo, Conjunctions, apex of the M, Orpheus Grid, and Gem.

RED DAVE

8th February 2011, 12:46

If you don't love Monk, you bunk, you a punk!

OMmeNsmQaFw

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

9th February 2011, 05:18

Bebop Hoofer "Baby" Laurence Jackson

VdoBh58fOFw

RED DAVE

apawllo

9th February 2011, 06:25

Paul Laurence Dunbar

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/pictures/paul_laurence_dunbar.jpg

Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet to garner national critical acclaim. Born in Dayton, Ohio (http://www.dayton.net/dayton/), in 1872, Dunbar penned a large body of dialect poems, standard English poems, essays, novels and short stories before he died at the age of 33. His work often addressed the difficulties encountered by members of his race and the efforts of African-Americans to achieve equality in America. He was praised both by the prominent literary critics of his time and his literary contemporaries.

Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872, to Matilda and Joshua Dunbar, both natives of Kentucky. His mother was a former slave and his father had escaped from slavery and served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War. Matilda and Joshua had two children before separating in 1874. Matilda also had two children from a previous marriage.

The family was poor, and after Joshua left, Matilda supported her children by working in Dayton as a washerwoman. One of the families she worked for was the family of Orville and Wilbur Wright, with whom her son attended Dayton's Central High School. Though the Dunbar family had little material wealth, Matilda, always a great support to Dunbar as his literary stature grew, taught her children a love of songs and storytelling. Having heard poems read by the family she worked for when she was a slave, Matilda loved poetry and encouraged her children to read. Dunbar was inspired by his mother, and he began reciting and writing poetry as early as age 6.

Dunbar was the only African-American in his class at Dayton Central High, and while he often had difficulty finding employment because of his race, he rose to great heights in school. He was a member of the debating society, editor of the school paper and president of the school's literary society. He also wrote for Dayton community newspapers. He worked as an elevator operator in Dayton's Callahan Building until he established himself locally and nationally as a writer. He published an African-American newsletter in Dayton, the Dayton Tattler, with help from the Wright brothers.

His first public reading was on his birthday in 1892. A former teacher arranged for him to give the welcoming address to the Western Association of Writers when the organization met in Dayton. James Newton Matthews became a friend of Dunbar's and wrote to an Illinois paper praising Dunbar's work. The letter was reprinted in several papers across the country, and the accolade drew regional attention to Dunbar; James Whitcomb Riley, a poet whose works were written almost entirely in dialect, read Matthew's letter and acquainted himself with Dunbar's work. With literary figures beginning to take notice, Dunbar decided to publish a book of poems. Oak and Ivy, his first collection, was published in 1892.

Though his book was received well locally, Dunbar still had to work as an elevator operator to help pay off his debt to his publisher. He sold his book for a dollar to people who rode the elevator. As more people came in contact with his work, however, his reputation spread. In 1893, he was invited to recite at the World's Fair, where he met Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist who rose from slavery to political and literary prominence in America. Douglass called Dunbar "the most promising young colored man in America."

Dunbar moved to Toledo, Ohio, in 1895, with help from attorney Charles A. Thatcher and psychiatrist Henry A. Tobey. Both were fans of Dunbar's work, and they arranged for him to recite his poems at local libraries and literary gatherings. Tobey and Thatcher also funded the publication of Dunbar's second book, Majors and Minors.

It was Dunbar's second book that propelled him to national fame. William Dean Howells, a novelist and widely respected literary critic who edited Harper's Weekly, praised Dunbar's book in one of his weekly columns and launched Dunbar's name into the most respected literary circles across the country. A New York publishing firm, Dodd Mead and Co., combined Dunbar's first two books and published them as Lyrics of a Lowly Life. The book included an introduction written by Howells. In 1897, Dunbar traveled to England to recite his works on the London literary circuit. His national fame had spilled across the Atlantic.

After returning from England, Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore, a young writer, teacher and proponent of racial and gender equality who had a master's degree from Cornell University. Dunbar took a job at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He found the work tiresome, however, and it is believed the library's dust contributed to his worsening case of tuberculosis. He worked there for only a year before quitting to write and recite full time.

In 1902, Dunbar and his wife separated. Depression stemming from the end of his marriage and declining health drove him to a dependence on alcohol, which further damaged his health. He continued to write, however. He ultimately produced 12 books of poetry, four books of short stories, a play and five novels. His work appeared in Harper's Weekly, the Sunday Evening Post, the Denver Post, Current Literature and a number of other magazines and journals. He traveled to Colorado and visited his half-brother in Chicago before returning to his mother in Dayton in 1904. He died there on Feb. 9, 1906.

http://www.dunbarsite.org/biopld.asp

We Wear The Mask.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties,

Why should the world be over-wise.
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To Thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask !

Digital collection of a fair number of his works: http://www.libraries.wright.edu/special/dunbar/

brigadista

9th February 2011, 20:23

Toni Morrison
if you haven't read
the bluest eye
or
beloved

she is one person of the few people who deserved her nobel and pulitzer prizes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison

x359594

10th February 2011, 19:30

This is by Will Alexander Los Angeles based Black poet.

To Begin...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

RED DAVE

12th February 2011, 04:33

http://i52.tinypic.com/33a7b07.jpg

The murders of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black man from Meridian, Mississippi; Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old white Jewish anthropology student from New York; and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old white Jewish CORE organizer and former social worker also from New York, symbolized the risks of participating in the Civil Rights Movement in the South during what became known as "Freedom Summer", dedicated to voter registration.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers_murders

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

13th February 2011, 01:00

-3-B9vSFSb4

Mary Lou Williams (May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements, and recorded more than one hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions).[1] Williams wrote and arranged for such bandleaders as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lou_Williams

RED DAVE

RED DAVE

16th February 2011, 13:35

Nina Simone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_simone):

I Put A Spell on You

CpjGYQz8GBQ

RED DAVE

Communist

19th February 2011, 05:07

from the Pan African News Wire (http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2010/02/claudia-jones-life-of-struggle-and.html)

Claudia Jones: A Life of Struggle and Exile

http://www.blackpast.org/files/blackpast_images/jones_claudia.jpg (http://blackhistorypages.net/pages/cjones.php)

Claudia Jones, a Life in the Struggle

By Clara West

Claudia Jones was born Claudia Cumberbatch in 1915 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, a British colony. Though her family was well off, economic crisis after World War I forced the family to migrate to the Harlem section of New York City in 1922 to seek work. Jones' mother, Sybil, worked in the garment industry to support the family, but died in 1927.

Jones' father, Charles, lost his job as an editor of a West Indian newspaper with the onset of the Great Depression and took meager-paying work as a building superintendent. Poverty and poor living conditions caused Claudia to contract tuberculosis in 1932 at the age of 17, which would haunt her the rest of her life.

Claudia was a brilliant student, earning academic awards and high honors. But career choices for a Black immigrant woman were severely limited. Instead of going to college after high school, Jones took work in a laundry, then a factory, and a variety of other jobs in Harlem stores. Jones joined a drama group sponsored by the National Urban League and began to write a column called "Claudia Comments" for a Harlem periodical.

In the mid-1930s, Jones joined with thousands of Harlemites to protest the injustice surrounding the case of the Scottsboro Nine. In 1931, nine Black youths had been accused of raping a white woman. Tried without adequate counsel and before an all-white jury, the nine youths were quickly convicted. The International Labor Defense, a civil rights legal group organized by the Communist Party, took over the case and tied the appeal process to a global campaign to free the nine and to expose the racist criminal justice system prevailing in the U.S.

As a result of these experiences, Jones joined the Young Communist League in 1936. Soon after, Jones took a position on the staff of the Daily Worker, forerunner of today's People's Weekly World, the newspaper of the Communist Party. Jones became politically active in the youth movement, becoming the YCL's Harlem organizer and an activist in both the National Negro Congress and the Southern Negro Youth Congress. Her eloquence as a writer and speaker, her effectiveness as an organizer and leader, and her understanding of Marxist theory speeded her advancement through the Party ranks.

In the early 1940s, she served on the National Council of the YCL, headed its educational section, and sat on the editorial board of its periodical Weekly Review. In 1943, Jones took over as editor of Spotlight, the monthly journal of the American Youth for Democracy. Throughout this period, Jones' political work focused on organizing unemployed youth in the struggle for jobs and equality. Jones worked closely with Harlem youth clubs, civil rights and religious groups, and immigrant organizations.

In the summer of 1943, according to government documents, the FBI included Jones among those subversives they felt may be "considered for custodial detention." Under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's direct orders, bureaucratic processes to have Jones eventually detained were begun. It is important to note that when this order was handed down, the FBI appeared to know nothing of Jones' birthplace and believed her to be a natural born U.S. citizen. The documents do not seem to reflect that Jones' application for citizenship several years earlier had been denied because of her political beliefs. Orders for Jones’ detention at this point were drawn up purely because she was an important figure in the communist movement.

Other than her political activities gathered by informants, FBI agents knew precious little about her except that she had "good" teeth, had a "neat appearance," and attractive "dimples on her cheeks." At this point, records indicate the FBI were unsure about her address, and, until several months later, they failed to record that she was married to Abraham Scholnick. By 1947, the FBI labeled Jones a "top functionary" and demanded "continuous, active, and vigorous investigation" of Jones from its informants and agents.

In 1945, Jones was appointed "Negro Affairs" editor of the Daily Worker as that paper's youngest staff person. That same year she helped found and was assigned to the National Negro Commission of the Communist Party by the Party's National Committee. She worked closely with organizations such as the New Jersey Labor School, taught symposia at the Jefferson School for Social Research, and with inter-faith groups on the issue of civil rights and racial equality. In 1946, Jones helped organize a mass demonstration in Albany, New York to protest the slaying of two Black youths in Freeport, Long Island in New York.

In the post war period, Jones' published numerous articles criticizing the emerging Cold War mentality offered by the likes of Winston Churchill, rejected the anti-Semitism of the ultra right and the anti-Communists, called for end to lynching and terrorism against African Americans, and opposed the anti-labor Taft-Hartley law. In 1947, Jones accepted the position of chair of the National Women's Commission of the Communist Party. It was during her tenure at this post that Jones first formulated the theory of the triple oppression of working-class women of color who represent a "vital link" to a "heightened sense of consciousness" of the need for a common, united struggle against oppression and exploitation.

In her report to the Communist Party’s 1950 national convention, Jones asserted the need to "demonstrate that the economic, political and social demands of Negro women are not just ordinary demands, but special demands, flowing from special discrimination facing Negro women as women, as workers and as Negroes." Jones also viewed racial oppression as a strong motivation and justification for proponents of U.S. imperialism and aggressive wars, making international solidarity, a strong peace movement, and a vigorous movement for equality more necessary than ever.

In January 1948, Jones was arrested on immigration charges, despite the fact that the Immigration and Naturalization Service had told the FBI just a few months before that it did not view Jones as in violation of immigration law. Jones was held at Ellis Island and awaited deportation. The American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born came to her aid providing legal assistance and $1,000 bail. The Communist Party immediately launched a large campaign to prevent Jones' deportation. Marches were held in Harlem and at federal offices downtown, and thousands of readers of the Daily Worker sent letters of protest to President Truman.

With the able legal counsel from George Crockett, Jr., a prominent African American lawyer and future member of Congress from Detroit, Jones was not deported at this point. But in 1951, Jones was arrested again with several other Communist Party leaders, including James E. Jackson, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Simon Gerson, and others, for violating the Smith Act, which outlawed "advocating" the overthrow of the US government. Government agents and prosecutors ignored the fact that the Communist Party never taught or advocated such a thing. Jones was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay a heavy fine. Meanwhile, Jones continued to advocate for equality. Working with the Congress of American Women, Jones protested the exclusion of women from juries, police brutality against people of color, and full employment for African American youth. Along with the Civil Rights Congress, she led protests against McCarthyism and the imprisonment of Communist Party leaders.

Jones remained free while her case was under appeal until 1955. That year, the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal, and she was sent to federal prison in West Virginia. While in prison, Jones suffered a heart attack and was weakened by a cardiovascular disease from which she would never fully recover.

Released in October of 1955 after a campaign led by the Civil Rights Congress to have her sentence reduced, Jones was forced into exile to Britain. In Britain, Jones continued to advocate for racial equality and the liberation of Britain’s colonial possessions. She published the West Indian Gazette, founded London’s Caribbean Carnival (now called the Notting Hill Carnival), and traveled to the Soviet Union and China in the early 1960s.

Jones may have even visited Viet Nam in her trip to the East. Diseases she had contracted while in U.S. prisons plagued her in her remaining years. In and out of hospitals, Jones finally succumbed to heart disease and died on Christmas Eve 1964. Her remains were buried near the grave of Karl Marx in London’s Highgate Cemetery.

In an article that appeared in the journal Masses and Mainstream just months before her prison term would begin, Jones denounced the US government's continued imprisonment of Communist Party leader Benjamin Davis. In Jones' view, Davis had been arrested and imprisoned for the views he advocated, not simply his Party affiliation and certainly not for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Davis had called for peace, workers' rights, full equality for African Americans, all racial, ethnic, and national minorities and women, and for the rights of the poor and exploited.

In a statement that would foreshadow her own future and even our own time, Jones wrote: "They've jailed Ben Davis. But his ideas are still abroad. It is Ben Davis himself who can best express his ideas from ladders on the streets of Harlem, in the broad arena of political and legislative struggle, in unity meetings with his people, Negro and white, and with white allies, and in the councils of his own Party. Until he can do so, the McCarthyites and the racists will have a strong weapon with which to spread fear and subversion."

____

:star2: