The People of the Cradle of Civilization included people who are now known as the Fon people of Benin (Dahomey), in whose language it is called FA; the Yoruba and Benin Edo of Nigeria, in whose language it is called IFA; and the Ewe of Togo, in whose language it is called AFA. IFA is the oracle god who directed creation, formed the universe, formed the Earth, taught humans about divination, medicine, and language. From the Cradle of Civilization it spread to:
One way to follow the history of IFA is to look at the sequence of the 16 Tetragrams. The traditional Yoruba sequence shown above corresponds to the following 16 Odu:
The number before each Odu is the binary number corresponding to the pattern of that Odu. The descriptions of each Odu are not at all complete, they are just some characteristic ideas that it is sometimes useful to associate with each Odu. Each Odu has other very important aspects that are not described here, as you can see, for example, by clicking on the links at Ogbe, Edi, and Irosun, which links describe some other aspects of those Odu.
Obara meji (6-6) is a powerful and complex odu within diloggún and Ifá divination that can teach us much about our power as olorishas. This beautiful odu teaches us about the power of our words, the importance of our legacy that we leave behind and our own purpose in life. Whether you have this odu in your itá, or if you receive this in a reading, or if you are just a student of odu, this sign can show you how to cultivate your power as a priest.
The King Does Not Lie
In the odu Obara Meji we say “The King Does Not Lie”. This is an odu of royalty, and this sign indicates that the person being read with the shells is of a regal nature. But being a king does not mean you get to boss everyone around – as tempting as that may be. Royalty is not just about ancestry, it is about cultivating the proper manner of conduct and recognizing what it takes to lead people.
A simple trek through any history book teaches us about good monarchs and corrupt ones. Kings, being given a divine right to rule, are often unchecked, untrained leaders who run amok. If they are a malevolent, ill-tempered and volatile king who lashes out at anyone who challenges his rule, they are hated by their people and become the focus of bloody revolutions. However, if they are benevolent, even tempered, receptive and responsive to the needs of their people, they will stay firmly seated on their throne of power for their entire lives (as will their descendants).
This sign teaches us that to be a good leader, one must be honest, forthright and have integrity. To live up to the royal inheritance this sign promises we must learn that honesty is the cornerstone of power; and the more one lives an honest life the more power one’s words have in the ears of those around them.
But just as power can cut both ways, so too can honesty be a knife that cuts the wielder and the victim. Honesty must be delivered with tact. Tact is the sheath that keeps honesty from hurting everyone around you. Delivering truth in gentle and non-offensive ways is the mark of a good leader. Hiding truth behind lies or a resentful holding of the truth to avoid confrontation, however, is the mark of weakness. The king does not lie, and so we must learn to deliver the truth as a loving parent would to his children, without anger and without vengeful bitterness.
He Who Knows Doesn’t Die Like He Who Doesn’t Know
This famous saying is well-known by olorishas, aborishas and aleyos in Santeria. Many times it is said as an adage to remind us all that knowledge is power and to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Obara Meji teaches us that in order to survive we must know the ways of the world, the nature of our true self, and the path to destiny.
Divination gives us a glimpse of our path toward destiny. It is Eleggua orienting us and letting us know where we are in our path, what lies immediately ahead, and how to prevent any calamities through ebó. In ebó there is a solution to bring us back into the graces of iré, but most people forget that ebó had two parts to it: sacrifice and behavior modification. While sacrifice does give us a spiritual technology to dramatically alter the flow of ashé in our lives and give us the lift we need to overcome obstacles and osogbo, it is behavioral modification that prevents us from falling back into the patterns that caused that osogbo in the first place.
As a diviner, I’ve found that clients are too focused on things they have to do, versus on the kind of a person they need to be. There is more power and positivity to be found in following the behavioral restrictions, the taboos and the advise that odu gives us than just in the act of offering fruit to the orishas or taking a ritual bath. Yes, the offerings and rituals are important too, but they are in vain if you are unwilling to make the change within yourself after your consultation with diloggún.
He who knows doesn’t die, like he who doesn’t know. Obara Meji teaches us that knowledge is the key to our survival. Not only does divination forewarn us against our pitfalls that lead to osogbo, but so too does knowledge of self. In this sign, understanding one’s own weaknesses and strengths is critical. Weaknesses should be something we actively work on overcoming, healing and cultivating into strengths. Yet it is often our strengths, perverted by neurotic behavior that manifest as our weaknesses. For example, if you are incredibly well spoken (and Obara Meji does signal someone with a fast tongue) that may be a strength, until those fast-flung insults and quips start flying in a moment of anger. Now your strength of being a good speaker has become a weakness of being a rude and insulting jerk. Understanding the nature of your weaknesses is half the battle, and Obara Meji teaches us that it can save our very lives.
With Your Tongue You Can Save Or Destroy The Village
In Obara Meji we say that the client’s tongue (or speech) has lots of power. We say that the tongue can save or destroy a village, and we would be well served to remember this when we are under this odu’s influence. We often forget the power and influence that our words have over others. An innocent, but poorly-timed quip can utterly destroy a person’s self-esteem or ruin an event. Similarly, a well-timed and crafted word of encouragement can lift up a person’s spirit or even save a village. This is the power of Obara Meji.
We are well served to remember the power of the tongue when we are under the influence of Obara Meji. We can utilize this power to our advantage if we are crafty, intelligent and strategic. Our powers will manifest into reality, and as such anything we speak WILL BE! We can speak affirmations and positive goals when under the influence of Obara Meji knowing that this odu’s power will manifest them. We should avoid speaking negative comments, insults, curses and lies because our tongue’s ashé under this sign will make them be so. Remember that controlling the tongue is the key to succeeding under this sign. Use the tongue’s power for constructive ends and you will ride Obara Meji’s power to the benefit of all.
This is just a cursory exploration of Obara Meji but it is something every priest needs to keep in mind. Our ashé is seated on our heads, but manifests through our words and actions. Remember it is our actions that become the legacy we leave behind. We should all work to leave behind a legacy of constructive deeds, good character and positive memories that our descendants would recall us with fond memories and praise our names for generations.
Republic of New Afrika, Provisional Government’s Cabinet Members « Back to Projects Dashboard
OUR STORY
A Black Nation – a New Afrikan nation – exists in the United States. It began forming during colonial days, after 1660, when the Black Codes were instituted. It was fully evolved by the time of the Civil War in 1861, two hundred years later. We have common culture, common perspective and values, and group identity, and common gene pool, derived from our distinct group history. We are “New Afrikans” because We, an Afrikan people, evolved from not one but several Afrikan nations and have some Indian (Native/indigenous) and European genes, melded during the course of 200 years, between 1660 and 1861.
Those seeking independent statehood began once more in 1968. Three years after the assassination of Brother Omowale, Malcolm X, led by his inspiration and teachings, his followers in the Malcolm X Society lead over 500 Black activists at a national convention of our people. The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) was formed and brought into exstence on March 30-31 of that year and announced a parliamentary strategy for winning independence. They issued a Declaration of Independence of the Black nation; named it RNA; formed a Provisional Government [“Provisonal” means “temporary” or, in this case, “pre-independent], with officials elected in Convention; created basic law and adopted a constitution, “Code of Umoja” (revised); identified and designated the Five States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina as the New Afrikan nation’s National Territory [subject to agreement with the Indigenous People]; under a mandate the PG-RNA set as its main purposes and goals: to free the oppressed Black nation in North America making it even more independent than Canada, for those of us who want this; to win Reparations from the United States. PG-RNA cadres aim is to educate people about our existence as an oppressed, colonized nation and our right to self-determination; our right to “Free The Land” (our battle cry); and to create by an independence plebiscite (a vote of the people) an independent Black nation-state, to be held first in the counties of western Mississippi and the parishes of eastern Louisiana [the Kush District], in accordance to U.N. General Assembly resolutions.
Notables Prior to 1968
Gabriel Prosser Denmark Vesey Osborne Perry Anderson Tunis Campbell Edwin McCabe El Hajj El Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) Queen Mother Moore
Different Elements and Parts of PG-RNA
The People’s Center Council (PCC)– Congress, National Legislature or Parliament is made up of District Representatives from PGRNA electoral districts across the U.S.A.
The People’s Revolutionary Leadership Council (PRLC) — A Cabinet headed by the National President, three National Vice Presidents, Ministries, Court System, and Other Govt. entities, including the Land Fund Committee, etc.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1968:
1st President: Robert F. Williams (1925-1996) : He was in China 1966 to May 1968; Tanzania, May 1968 to Sept. 1969. 1st Vice President: Gaidi Obadele (Atty. Milton R. Henry) 2nd Vice President: Betty Shabazz (1934-1997) Minister of Information: Imari A. Obadele (Richard Bullock Henry) Minister of Health and Welfare: Queen Mother Moore (1899-1997) Minister of Education: Herman Ferguson Minister of State and Foreign Affairs: William Grant Minister of Defense: H. Rap Brown (now, Jalil Al Amin): He was also Minister of Justice for BPP in May 4, 1968 issue of The Black Panther. Co-Ministers of Culture: Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Maulana Karenga and Nana Oserjiman Adefumi Minister of Justice: Joan Franklin Minister of Finance: Raymond Willis Treasurer: Obaboa Owolo (Ed Bradley) Minister without Portfolio or Special Ambassador: Muhammad Ahmed (Maxwell Stanford)
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1969:
President: Robert F. Williams (1925-1997): He returned to U.S. (Detroit), Sept. 1969. (The Black Panther, Dec. 6, 1969; Jan. 3, 1970). 1st Vice President: Gaidi Obadele (Atty. Milton R. Henry) 2nd Vice President: Betty Shabazz (d. 1997) Minister of Education: Maulana Karenga: denounced and removed by PCC in Detroit, Apr. 5th. Herman B. Ferguson was afterwards appointed Minister of Education, East Coast Vice President, and acting director of Freedom Corps. Minister of State and Foreign Affairs: Wilbur Grattan Sr. Minister of Defense: Mwuesi Chui, commander of Black Legion
The “New Bethel Incident” took place in Detroit, Michigan, in March 31, 1969 during the First New Afrikan Nation Day Celebration at the New Bethel Baptist Church, on the West Side. One policeman killed and another wounded. Four Blacks wounded. Between 135 and 240 persons were arrested. Police later freed 125 persons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Crockett,_Jr. Criminal Court Judge George Crockett], frees 8 other Blacks. Chaka Fuller, Rafael Viera, and Alfred 2X Hibbets were charged with killing. All 3 were subsequent tried and acquitted. Chaka Fuller was mysterious assassinated a few months afterwards.
Southern Regional Minister of Defense: Jomo Kenyatta (Henry Hatches) Consul for Jackson, MS: Carolyn Williams April 2, 1969 – The New York BPP “21” arrested on conspiracy charges.
In 1969, a Newsweek magazine poll of Afrikans in the Northern U.S. showed that 27 percent of Afrikans under age thirty (and 18 percent of those over the age of thirty), wanted an independent Afrikan state.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1970:
President: Imari A. Obadele Minister of Defense: Alajo Adegbalola (Leroy Boston) Dara Abubakaru (Virginia Collins)
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1971:
President: Imari Obadele , Minister of Defense: Alajo Adegbalola Minister of Information: Aisha Salim of Philadelphia Consul from Detriot: Chokwe Lumumba
Workers of the PG-RNA also announced that they would not permit those who opposed the peaceful plebiscite to shoot at them with impunity. The RNA cadres in Mississippi and elsewhere, in 1970 and 1971 were armed for self-defense.
March 5th, BPP sponsors Day of Solidarity dedicated to “Freedom of Political Prisoners.”
On March 28th-Land Celebration Day-the RNA Capitol consecrated, Hinds County, Mississippi. Between 150 and 200 persons attended the dedication.
They used, and use, political means rather than military means. The United States Justice Department, instead of helping to organize the plebiscite; on 18 August 1971 a force of 60 FBI agents and 40 local Jackson police staged an armed attack on the official Government Residence (the main residence-office of the PG) in Jackson, Mississippi, supposedly to serve fugitive warrants on three RNA members (one being a FBI informant/agent provocateur). The seven people in the house were not wounded by the 20-minute barrage of bullets–a skirmish, but one police lieutenant died and another policeman and an FBI agent were wounded. Five young men and two young women at this house were captured, along with PG-RNA President, Imari Obadele, the Minister of Information and two others in a nearby office, and sent to jail.
In the face of this unprovoked attack, three PG-RNA workers: Antar Ra, Maceo Sundiata (fsn Michael Finney) and Fela Sekou Olatunji (fsn Charles Hill) from the Bay Area, left in response to the call for Mississippi to provide support and defense for our assaulted movement. Clearly the U.S. had declared war on us! While driving east, the three were intercepted by a policeman whose aggressiveness caused his death. They then commandeered an airline and arrived in Cuba. They were granted asylum.
(On August 19th, FBI and police tried to assassinate President Imari Obadele.)
They are convicted two years later. Most served long years in jail. Their sovereign immunity demand was flatly rejected by the United States’ courts and executive branch, and no one was accorded treatment as a prisoner-of-war.
The Republic of New Afrika-Eleven (RNA-11): Citizens of the RNA: Imari Obadele; Hekima Ana and his wife, Tamu Ana, and Chumaimari Askadi (fsn Charles Stallings), all of Milwaukee; Karim Njabafudi (fsn Larry Jackson) of New Orleans; Tarik/Tawwab Nkrumah (fsn George Matthews) of Birmingham; Addis Ababa (fsn Dennis Shillingford) of Detroit; Offogga Qudduss (fsn Wayne Maurice James) and Njeri Qudduss, both of Camden, New Jersey; Spade de Mau Mau (fsn S. L. Alexander) of New Orleans; and Minister of Information Aisha Salim (fsn Brenda Blount) of Philadelphia.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1972:
President: Gaidi Obadele Vice Presidents: Alajo Adegbalola, Chokwe Lumumba, Herman B. Ferguson New Afrikan Security Forces: Black Legion commander: Gen. Mwuesi Chui
In 1972, Ahmed Obafemi of New York had been sentenced on a gun charge clearly engineered by the F.B.I.’s Cointelpro. The F.B.I. succeeded in framing this key leader and officer of the RNA-PG. He was doing political work at the Democratic National Convention in Miami, Florida. Sentenced with him was Tarik Sonnebeyatta, of Camden, New Jersey. Brother Ahmed was jailed.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1973:
Jan. 7, 1973 – Mark Essex, 23; is killed atop New Orleans hotel after killing 6 and wounding 15. Jan. 19th – One policeman killed and 2 wounded as Black freedom fighters seize a Brooklyn sporting goods store. May 2nd – Assata Shakur (fsn JoAnne Chesimard) wounded and Sundiata Acoli (fsn Clark Squire) arrested. Nov. 14th – Twyman Fred Myers, 23, BLA member, ambushed by FBI and New York police; was 6th BLA member killed in this fashion.
1975
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1980:
President: Imari Obadele A study conducted among Afrikan college students by Professor Luke Tripp which showed that 34 percent of the students favored an independent Afrikan state in North Amerika.
By the middle of 1980, because of public support and intense legal work, almost all of the RNA-11 (except for one) were set free and out of jail.
In the fall, some members of BLA, and some accused of being BLA personnel, had come under intense oncentration by FBI and, principally, New York, New Jersey, and California police.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1981:
President: Imari Obadele PCC Chairperson: Fulani Sunni-Ali
July 1983 – People’s Center Council (PCC) Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, RNA National Territory.
Oct./Nov. 1984 – Third National New Afrikan Elections
Nov. 1985 – People’s Center Council (PCC) Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1986:
President: Imari Obadele Minister of Justice: Nkechi Taifa Minister of Defense: Gen. Chui
July 1986 – People’s Center Council (PCC) Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, RNA National Territory.
July 1986 – People’s Center Council (PCC) Meeting in Detroit, Michigan.
Sept. 1986 – People’s Center Council (PCC) Meeting in Brooklyn, New York.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1987:
President: Imari Obadele Minister of Justice: Nkechi Taifa
July 1987 – People’s Center Council (PCC) Meeting in Washington, DC (Banneker City).
Oct./Nov. 1987 – Fourth National New Afrikan Elections
Oct./Nov. 1990 – Fifth National New Afrikan Elections: Kwame Afoh elected president.
Nov. 1993 – National New Afrikan Elections: President Kwame Afoh re-elected.
In April 1994, several mainstream newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, and the Wall Street Journal) ran articles dealing with University of Chicago Professor Michael Dawson and Professor Ronald Brown of Wayne State University. The report concerned the findings of a random national survey of 1,206 Afrikans in the U.S., which in Dawson’s words showed ” a more radical Black America than existed even five years ago.” (Wall Street Journal). It found that fifty percent of Afrikans in the U.S. believe that our people are “a nation within a nation.”
Oct. 1996 – National New Afrikan Elections: President Kwame Afoh re-elected.
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1997:
President: Kwame Afoh PCC Chairperson: Marilyn Preston Killingham
PG-RNA Cabinet in 1998:
President: Kwame Afoh PCC Chairperson: Marilyn Preston Killingham
Oct./Nov. 1999 – National New Afrikan Elections
Recent Developments
Republic of New Afrika Republic of New Africa History and Select Documents of the Provisional Government of the REPUBLIC of NEW AFRIKA New Afrika (Blog)
Black Legion (New Afrikan Security Forces)
K. X Ali Rashid Fulani Sunni-Ali
Reference Material — Articles and Books
A Brief History of Black Struggle in America, by Kwame Afoh, Chokwe Lumumba, Imari A. Obadele, and Ahmed Obafemi, 1997.
A Short History of the Republic of New Afrika, 1970.
Crossroad, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 1997, p. 10.
We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, by Akinyele Omowale Umoja, 2013.
Ebony, Feb. 1995, pp. 76-82
Forty Acres and A Mule….In Search of Sherman’s Reservation, by Roger Clendening.
Nation Time, Vol. 1, Fall 1996
Nation Time, Vol. 2, Spring 1997
New Afrikan Prison Organization Calendar, 1978.
New Afrikan Prison Organization Calendar, 1979.
New York Times, March-August, 1969
New York Times, March-November, 1971
Provisional Government Legal Chronology, by Kwame Welsh. PDCLA, Sept. 1997.
Links and Related Organizations
The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa – Official Home Page PG-RNA – PEOPLE’S DISTRICT COUNCIL OF L. A. COUNTY The New Afrikan Creed Black Law–Code of Umoja The New Afrikan Declaration of Independence National New Afrikan Elections (NNAE) New Afrikan Nation Day (NAND) War in America: the Malcolm X doctrine America the nation-state: the politics of the United States from a state-building perspective Modern Black nationalism: from Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan The development of the United States from colonies to a world power (Google eBook) Republic of New Afrika: Reference – The Full Wiki Police violence and New Bethel Incident New Afrikan Independence Online Black Survival Network MXGM-Support – Malcolm X Grassroots Movement N’COBRA Reparations Forum Sons Of Afrika The Black Nationlist Lounge Walkin The Vision – Lady Gray Dissent and Repression in the Republic of New Africa, 1968-1973 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_(TV_movie) Deacons for Defense (TV movie)] Deacons for Defense and Justice.
In Virginia There was Once The Black Wall St of Richmond Jackson Ward 1870 Black Wall St of Amerika fewer then 50 Black own businesses were listed in city directories, 14 years later 400 business were own and operated by Men and Women of Afrikan Descent much of these businesses were spreaded throughout the city’s Commercial Districts. In 1889 Black Richmond’s Highly skilled professionals included 4 lawyers , 5 Doctors, 1 Dentist by 1921 the city’s black professional ranks included 24 Doctors, 15 Black Nurses, 12 lawyers , 7 Dentist and 55 dress Makers and Black Richmonder’s own 4 Banks , 3 news papers , 14 Funeral homes , 5 Theaters , 9 insurance firms, 135 barber and beauty shops, 139 Retail Grocery Stores.
In the years immediately following the American Civil War of the 1860s, thousands of African Americans, including both former southern slaves and northern soldiers, moved into a lively neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, the capital city of the defeated Confederate States. The neighborhood became known as Jackson Ward locally, and to blacks across the American East as the “Harlem of the South.”
It’s the perfect neighborhood to examine during the nation’s annual February observance of Black History Month.
Richmond is sometimes called the “Monument City” because of its boulevard of memorials to Confederate generals and admirals, as well as world-famous African-American tennis player Arthur Ashe. And in a grittier part of town not far from the Virginia State Capitol stands another, far less somber statue. High on a pedestal, a concrete figure saucily waves a bowler hat above his head as he dances up a short flight of stairs.
This monument honors Jackson Ward’s most famous son — Bill “Bojangles” Robinson — the pioneer tap dancer and occasional singer who dazzled vaudeville and movie audiences in the 1920s and ’30s.
During the first half of the 20th century —when restrictive rules called “Jim Crow laws” consigned whites and blacks to separate restaurants, bus seats, public toilets, and even drinking fountains —Robinson and other black celebrities often frequented night spots on the street that locals called “the Deuce.”
A building at the corner of Second and Jackson Streets today. (taberandrew, Flickr Creative Commons)
Duke Ellington, and singer Cab Calloway unwound with jam sessions in Jackson Ward after performing at the whites-only Mosque Theater downtown. Black athletes such as boxing champion Joe Louis and baseball st
ar Willie Mays stayed at the ward’s Slaughter’s Hotel.
On the Deuce, a fellow named Tom Mitchell was a regular customer at the Hippodrome and Globe “picture theaters,” as folks called those movie houses, and at the Armstrong Athletic Club, which was both a gymnasium and a bar.
“Nobody called it that, though,” Tom told me one day when I visited Richmond, where my middle daughter lives and works. “Everybody called it ‘Tat Turner’s Place.’ There’d be doctors and
lawyers, and at the end of the bar was the free trade — reserved for special friends and police. And as you know, the police have ears. And that was one of the main ears that they had on Second Street.”
During World War Two and the Korean War in the 1940s and ’50s, Jackson Ward swelled with black soldiers on leave from nearby Fort Lee. Clubs and restaurants such as the Golden Gate — Richmond’s largest dining room open to blacks —stayed open all night.
Memorabilia from Jackson Ward’s vibrant days are preserved at Richmond’s Black Museum and Cultural Center, housed in one of the neighborhood’s old mansions. Carolyn Brown, now retired, was a historian at the Center. She calls Jackson Ward a “city within a city,” where blacks formed what they called “benevolent societies” to look after one another.
The white insurance companies, most of them, would not insure black people. So they formed their own little societies. They saved money in these societies. And when someone became ill, there would be money that could be used for purchasing medication and what not. When someone died, there would be money for that person’s burial.
Jackson Ward is often acknowledged as the “birthplace of black entrepreneurship.” In addition to benevolent societies, blacks formed their own banks and savings institutions, and other African-Americans prospered in medicine, law, and similar professions.
Ah, yes. “Miss Maggie” Walker, the daughter of a former slave, who in 1903 became the first woman of any race to found and become president of an American bank. Three of its branches still operate. Maggie Walker also founded a newspaper and a department store called “Saint Luke’s Emporium.”
Walker was the matron of the “cradle of black capitalism,” as the Washington Post put it in a profile story earlier this month. At her home, now a National Historic Site, visitors were intrigued by one of Walker’s granddaughter’s dolls. It was, Post reporter Ellen Perlman wrote, “a ‘Tu-In-One’ doll’ . . .
. . . a Siamese-twin-like doll with a head on either end, instead of feet. It becomes a white doll with a bonnet or a black doll with her hair tied up in a red cloth, depending upon which head the dress covers.
These could possibly have dated to the days of southern slavery, which did not end until the Union victory in the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s. I can imagine children of both races playing with such a doll, with the “massa’s” child speaking with the slave child, depending upon which way one flipped a wrist.
“There were banks in Richmond that would simply not accept money from African Americans,” Carolyn Brown told me. “So they used, as they had a way of saying, ‘Miss Maggie’s Bank.’ This was because of devotion to her, because she was a person who did everything that she could to uplift people in the community.”
Maggie Walker went out of her way to hire black women at her bank and other businesses. “It meant that these women could escape the drudgery of working at one of the three main occupations available to black women [in Richmond] at the time: laundress, domestic servant, or tobacco factory worker,” National Park Service ranger Ben Anderson told the Post.
Visitors begin their tours by watching a short videotape in which an actress portrays Maggie Walker.
“All of these good things — the newspaper, the bank, the emporium, were possible because we put our hands, brains, and might together and made jobs for ourselves,” the character says, presumably quoting Walker. “There is no reason why any man, woman, or child should stand by idly waiting with folded arms, saying there is nothing else I can do. With education and determination, you can do anything.” Maggie Walker’s bank was one of more than 100 black-owned businesses in Jackson Ward, and most of them thrived, because of a loyal local clientele and patronage of African American visitors from across the nation.
Jackson Ward resident John Mitchell ran for the governorship of Virginia in 1921 at a time when many former slaves were still alive and living in the decidedly segregationist city. He ran on what was known as a “Lily Black” ticket, mocking what he called the usual “Lily White” team. Mitchell even led a boycott of the streetcars in Richmond. But despite the strident words, he and Walker worked amicably with the city’s mayor and Virginia’s governor to support universal voting laws and good schools — good by segregationist standards — in Jackson Ward.
Ironically, the civil-rights movement and desegregation of public accommodations in the 1960s, which gave a lift to Richmond’s black community as a whole, devastated Jackson Ward. As white-owned businesses and entertainment venues opened to blacks, Jackson Ward banks, shops, and theaters lost customers. Many closed. The city razed dozens of homes for a highway and a new convention center, and creeping blight in Jackson Ward became a stampede.
Today, Jackson Ward is a quiet, slowly improving neighborhood but is still an ungentrified collection of brick row houses, corner stores, hair parlors, carry-out stands selling fried fish and pork chops and beer, churches on many corners, community outreach centers, and a few remaining mansions with ornate but rusted ironwork.
The Globe and the Golden Gate and Tat Turner’s Place are gone.
But the Hippodrome Theater has been extensively renovated and reopened as a lively entertainment venue for dancing, stage plays and movies, and mixing and mingling by the Virginia capital’s over-30 crowd that doesn’t care for loud music and the noisy bar scene.
At the “Hipp,” as locals call it, and at the Black History Center, the Maggie O. Walker Home, and at the jaunty statue of Bojangles Robinson, you can still get a taste of the glory days of the Harlem of the South.
The black business districts were havens for African-Americans who were educated, including lawyers and accountants, but couldn’t find work in their profession. The districts also were a place where business owners could open shops, because selling to white consumers was, at best, difficult. “So the business of ‘captive black consumers’ fueled black business success,” Perry-Rivers said. “Nearly all of the needs of African-Americans, from cosmetology and music, to legal, mortuary and tax services, were able to be met by black businesses.” Richmond, she said, proved to be a particularly strong incubator for African-American capitalists and produced “some of the most important entrepreneurs ever.” Perry-Rivers singled out Maggie L. Walker, one of the first female American millionaires of any race and the first African-American woman to charter a bank, but she said that just as important were “the amazing 13 former slaves” who started the Richmond Planet in 1883.
Haki Kweli Shakur
ATCO NAPLA NEW AFRIKAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT
FREE THE LAND!!!
Jackson Ward Richmond Black Wall St ( New Afrikan Self – Determination ) – Haki Shakur x K.Kinte
Sekou Kambui, freed after 40 years in prison at the end of June, sends his Thanks, Love, and Appreciation to those that continue supporting him so generously.
After having surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, Sekou is scheduled to be released back to halfway house in the next few days. He will continue receiving health care as an outpatient.
Sekou Kambui will once again receive mail at: 305 W. Powell St. Dothan, AL 36303
Activist Assata Shakur is lying low. Somewhere in Cuba, the 67-year-old African American—born JoAnne Chesimard—is still hiding out, 40 years after she was branded a fugitive. Shakur was a prominent female member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army, and became the subject of a nationwide manhunt after she was named the prime suspect for a string of bank robberies and “execution-style” murders of New York City police officers in the early 70s.
Shakur was eventually apprehended on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. A routine roadside check by state troopers Werner Foerster and James Harper turned into a gun battle that left two out of five people dead and a whole lot of unanswered questions about who was responsible. Traveling in a car with Zayd Shakur (born James Coston) and Sundiata Acoli (born Clark Squire), two other well-known activists at the time, Shakur ended up with three bullets in her body and one arm paralyzed almost beyond recovery, according to reports from Vibe magazine, NPR, and Shakur’s own account in her recent autobiography. But the FBI and the American mainstream press (including Fox News, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, and the Associated Press) offer up a different story.
According to the Feds, Shakur shot and killed Foerster in cold blood and then tried to flee the scene. She was eventually convicted of Foerster’s murder in 1977 but served two years in prison before she broke out in 1979, lived underground for five years, and escaped to Cuba in 1984.
It wasn’t until May last year, though, that Shakur made history when she became the first woman to land on the FBI’s Most Wanted terrorist list—joining such company as plane hijacker Mohammed Ali Hamadei and Saudi national Ibrahim Salih Mohammed al Yacoub. “JoAnne Chesimard is a domestic terrorist who murdered a law enforcement officer execution-style,” said Aaron T. Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark Division, in a May 2013 press release regarding Shakur’s upgrade to the list.“Today, on the anniversary of Trooper Werner Foerster’s death, we want the public to know that we will not rest until this fugitive is brought to justice.” Why, decades after her escape and well into her 60s, was Shakur suddenly deemed to be a renewed threat?
To understand how this petite woman from Queens, New York, came to threaten the US government as much as men reportedly linked to Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, you have to backtrack. You’ve got to connect the dots between rappers like Common and Chuck D name-checking her in song, the wider context of the black power movement, and the tension between black revolutionaries and the state. Only then could you make up your mind about Shakur: Is she friend or foe? Fugitive and felon, or heroine to the children of the black power and civil rights struggles?
“You don’t get Assata Shakur lessons during Black History Month in elementary school, with the images of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King,” says writer and blogger Mychal Denzel Smith with a laugh, over the phone from New York. “It just wasn’t stuff I was exposed to. But in my teens, I started listening to hip-hop and artists who weren’t necessarily getting all the radio play. I started hearing Assata’s name mentioned in those folks’ rhymes.” Born in 1986, Smith wasn’t of the East Coast generation that would’ve been somewhat familiar with Shakur’s face from the Wanted posters the New York Daily News plastered around the city when she was charged with a spate of crimes in the late 60s and early 70s.
Instead, it was rappers whose music was released by the Rawkus Records label—Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch—who piqued Smith’s interest in Shakur’s story, as well as Common and Cee-Lo Green’s “A Song For Assata.” Tupac gave Assata a shout-out in “Words of Wisdom” and was both her godson and the stepson of her brother, Mutulu Shakur. Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s mother, was in the Black Liberation Army alongside Assata. Her connections to music extend further, with poet and rapper Saul Williams (who starred in the recent Tupac-tinged flop musical Holler if Ya Hear Me) name-checking her left and right. “If you want to understand Tupac, read the autobiography of Assata Shakur,” he told Noisey’s Drew Millard earlier this summer. “That’s his aunt, and read what’s happening with her right now, via the state of New Jersey. She’s listed as the number-two Most Wanted terrorist in America today… for something that went down in 1976, based on COINTELPRO.”
Yeah, about that. From 1956 until 1971 the FBI collected information for its anti-terrorism counterintelligence program, dubbed COINTELPRO. The program grouped the Black Liberation Movement, Black Panthers, and other black nationalist organizations with the Communist Party of the US, Socialist Workers party, and the Ku Klux Klan—terrorists, in the Bureau’s view. It wasn’t the most constitutional program at times. Or, in the FBI’s own words, “although limited in scope… COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging First Amendment rights and for other reasons.”
COINTELPRO’s cover was blown when a March 1971 break-in at an FBI office uncovered hundreds of documents detailing the surveillance that various groups had been placed under by both the FBI and local police forces. For example:
Together, the government and local law enforcement covertly monitored, anonymously called, and relentlessly arrested black power activists (often on charges “pushed against” them). They also used radio stations and newspapers to deliberately skew public opinion. Tactics like these demonstrate the sort of threat to national cohesion that Assata and other black nationalists represented at the time —clearly enough of a worry to warrant running a 23-city wide program like COINTELPRO.
To rapper Akala, raised in a pan-African tradition in London, it was Assata Shakur’s status as a black, female radical that pretty much encapsulates her place on the Most Wanted list. “She is a threat,” he tells me, on a sticky July afternoon. “But she’s not a threat in the way the FBI and the American government want us to believe she’s a threat. She’s a threat in that she represents the one that got away. Pretty much every other black revolutionary of her era was killed, imprisoned, silenced, put in exile.” Akala lists a flurry of names, ranging from Huey Newton and Malcolm X to Geronimo Pratt and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking with the sort of weary impatience that sounds as though he’s made (or labored) this point before, Akala continues, “When the American government says Assata Shakur is a threat, they mean what she represents—a black woman who refused to compromise in any way, shape, or form with white supremacy and escaped to the 21st century ‘maroon’ camp of Cuba (as she calls it)—is a threat.”
Akala hits on a basic point, reiterated by 20th-century American history academic Anna Hartnell: Shakur’s place on the list is both totally ludicrous and completely logical. “Why the US government want to flag this up now is both mysterious and disturbing,” Hartnell writes in an email. When we speak over the phone, she elaborates: “If they really were pursuing her for what they say they’re pursuing her for, it doesn’t make any sense. She was a large figure of threat, and the United States government are asserting the fact that they are still interested.”
They’re still interested because Shakur’s beliefs go against the American narrative of progress. She experienced a different America than the post-racial beacon of exceptionalism that people propagate today. In her view, the story of a nation built on white supremacy and black enslavement couldn’t be that simple. “America says that it’s the greatest nation on the face of the earth, the greatest nation to have ever existed. And it needs a history to match. So you tell this story so it doesn’t look so bad,” says Smith, articulating the perspective Shakur worked to debunk.
Shakur represents a challenge to that perfectly formed narrative. For the FBI, that level of dissent just isn’t acceptable. Her survival over decades that saw other radicals imprisoned, murdered, and snuffed out goes against the Bureau’s plan to “neutralize” and “frustrate” the activities of black nationalists. As such, perhaps it only makes sense that they’re still on her tail and that she’s still lying low.
Assata: An Autobiography, by Assata Shakur with forewords by Angela Davis and Lennox Hinds, is available now from Zed Books priced $15. There will be a launch event for the book on August 21st at the Black Cultural Archives with rapper Akala, performance poet Zena Edwards, and others.
Black August originated in the California penal system to honor fallen Freedom Fighters, Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain and Khatari Gaulden. Jonathan Jackson was gunned down outside the Marin County California courthouse on August 7, 1970 as he attempted to liberate three imprisoned Black Liberation Fighters: James McClain, William Christmas and Ruchell Magee. Ruchell Magee is the sole survivor of that armed liberation attempt. He is the former co-defendant of Angela Davis and has been locked down for 38 years, most of it in solitary confinement. George Jackson was assassinated by prison guards during a Black prison rebellion at San Quentin on August 21, 1971. Three prison guards were also killed during that rebellion and prison officials charged six Black and Latino prisoners with the death of those guards. These six brothers became known as the San Quentin Six.
Khatari Gaulden was a prominent leader of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) after Comrade George was assassinated. Khatari was a leading force in the formation of Black August, particularly its historical and ideological foundations. Khatari, like many of the unnamed freedom fighters of the BGF and the revolutionary prison movement of the 1970’s, was murdered at San Quentin Prison in 1978 to eliminate his leadership and destroy the resistance movement.
The brothers who participated in the collective founding of Black August wore black armbands on their left arm and studied revolutionary works, focusing on the works of George Jackson. The brothers did not listen to the radio or watch television in August. Additionally, they didn’t eat or drink anything from sun-up to sundown; and loud and boastful behavior was not allowed. The brothers did not support the prison’s canteen. The use of drugs and alcoholic beverages was prohibited and the brothers held daily exercises, because during Black August, emphasis is placed on sacrifice, fortitude and discipline. Black August is a time to embrace the principles of unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical training and resistance.
In the late 1970’s the observance and practice of Black August left the prisons of California and began being practiced by Black/New Afrikan revolutionaries throughout the country. Members of the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) began practicing and spreading Black August during this period. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) inherited knowledge and practice of Black August from its parent organization, the New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO). MXGM through the Black August Collective (now defunct) began introducing the Hip-Hop community to Black August in the late 1990’s after being inspired by New Afrikan political exile Nehanda Abiodun.
Traditionally, Black August is a time to study history, particularly our history in the North American Empire. The first Afrikans were brought to Jamestown as slaves in August of 1619, so August is a month during which Blacks/New Afrikans can reflect on our current situation and our self-determining rights. Many have done that in their respective time periods. In 1843, Henry Highland Garnett called a general slave strike on August 22. The Underground Railroad was started on August 2, 1850. The March on Washington occurred in August of 1963, Gabriel Prosser’s 1800 slave rebellion occurred on August 30 and Nat Turner planned and executed a slave rebellion that commenced on August 21, 1831. The Watts rebellions were in August of 1965. On August 18, 1971 the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was raided by Mississippi police and FBI agents. The MOVE family was bombed by Philadelphia police on August 8, 1978. Further, August is a time of birth. Dr. Mutulu Shakur (political prisoner & prisoner of war), Pan-Africanist Black Nationalist Leader Marcus Garvey, Maroon Russell Shoatz (political prisoner) and Chicago BPP Chairman Fred Hampton were born in August. August is also a time of rebirth, W.E.B. Dubois died in Ghana on August 27, 1963.
The tradition of fasting during Black August teaches self-discipline. A conscious fast is in effect from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm. Some other personal sacrifice can be made as well. The sundown meal is traditionally shared whenever possible among comrades. On August 31, a People’s feast is held and the fast is broken. Black August fasting should serve as a constant reminder of the conditions our people have faced and still confront. Fasting is uncomfortable at times, but it is helpful to remember all those who have come and gone before us, Ni Nkan Mase, if we stand tall, it is because we stand on the shoulders of many ancestors.
MXGM would like to thank the following for their contribution to this article: Kali Akuno, Kiilu Nyasha, Ayanna Mashama, David Giappa Johnson, Sundiata Tate, Louis Bato Talamantez of the San Quentin 6 and The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM).
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BLACK AUGUST INTERNATIONAL (2003): A Story of African Freedom Fighters, by Kiilu Nyasha
Black August is a month of great significance for Africans throughout the diaspora, but particularly here in the U.S. where it originated. “August,” as Mumia Abu-Jamal noted, “is a month of meaning, of repression and radical resistance, of injustice and divine justice; of repression and righteous rebellion; of individual and collective efforts to free the slaves and break the chains that bind us.”
Black August International (2003) will not only honor our national freedom fighters in the “belly of the beast,” it will celebrate the bicentennial anniversary of Haiti’s Revolution, the first and only armed struggle whereby Africans liberated themselves from chattel slavery. It began in August of 1791 and ended in victory over Napolean’s crack troops in 1803 with the celebration of independence, January, 1804. Nat Turner’s slave rebellion began on August 21, 1831, and Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad started in August. As Mumia stated, “Their sacrifice, their despair, their determination and their blood has painted the month Black for all time.”
On this 24th anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor our fallen freedom fighters, Jonathan and George Jackson, Khatari Gaulden, James McClain, William Christmas, and the sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee, it is still a time to embrace the principles of unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical fitness and/or training in martial arts, and resistance.
How did the concept of Black August originate?
The concept, Black August, grew out of the need to expose to the light of day the glorious and heroic deeds of those Afrikan women and men who recognized and struggled against the injustices heaped upon people of color on a daily basis in America. Black August represents the defining of socialist economics and ethics as applied to transforming the decadent social values of capitalist America and the people who suffer under and from the ill effects of these destructive values.
One cannot tell the story of Black August without first providing the reader with a brief glimpse of the “Black Movement” behind California prison walls in the Sixties, led by George Jackson, W. L. Nolen, Hugo Pinell, Kumasi, and many other conscious, standup brothers.
As Jackson wrote: “…when I was accused of robbing a gas station of $70, I accepted a deal…but when time came for sentencing, they tossed me into the penitentiary with one to life. That was 1960. I was 18 years old. I”ve been here ever since. I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me. For the first four years I studied nothing but economics and military ideas. I met black guerrillas, George “Big Jake” Lewis, and James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson, and many, many others. We attempted to transform the Black criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mentality. As a result, each of us has been subject to years of the most vicious reactionary violence by the state. Our mortality rate is almost what you would expect to find in a history of Dachau. Three of us [Nolen, Sweet Jugs Miller, and Cleve Edwards) were murdered several months ago [Jan. 13, 1969] by a pig shooting from thirty feet above their heads with a military rifle.”
In what has been described by witnesses as a setup, eight White prisoners and seven Blacks were sent to the yard in Soledad Prison whereupon the Whites attempted to take the basketball court from the brothers already on it. Nolen was known as the Marvin Haggler of the prison system, fearless and skilled, he was rarely challenged one on one. But on this day, one of the Whites attacked him and before Nolen could even hit back, he was shot. When Miller and Edwards tried to aid him, they were likewise shot by the lone White tower guard and left to bleed to death from wounds they could have survived.
The Black Movement prisoners demanded the guard be tried for murder but were met with resistance. Upon their continued insistence, the administration held a kangaroo court and three days later, the Monterey Grand Jury returned a verdict of “justifiable homicide.” Shortly after this was announced on the prison radio, a white guard was found beaten to death and thrown from a tier. Six days later, three prisoners were accused of murder, and became known as The Soledad Brothers.
“I am being tried in court right now with two other brothers. John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for the alleged slaying of a prison guard. This charge carries an automatic death penalty for me. I can’t get life. I already have it.”
On August 7, 1970, just a few days after George was transferred to San Quentin, his younger brother Jonathan Jackson, 17, invaded Marin County Courthouse single-handed, with a satchel full of handguns, an assault rifle and a shotgun hidden under his raincoat. (We have since learned he was not supposed to go it alone.) “Freeze!” Jonathan commanded as he tossed guns to William Christmas, James McClain, and Ruchell Magee, “We’re taking over.”
Magee was on the witness stand testifying for McClain, on trial for assaulting a guard in the wake of a guard’s murder of another Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley, beaten and teargassed to death. A jailhouse lawyer, Magee had deluged the courts for seven years with petitions contesting his illegal conviction in 1963. The courts had refused to listen, so Magee seized the hour and joined the guerrillas as they took the judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage to a waiting van. To reporters gathering quickly outside the courthouse, Jonathan shouted, “You can take our pictures. We are the revolutionaries!” Operating with courage and calm even their enemies had to respect, the four Black freedom fighters commandeered their hostages out of the courthouse without a hitch. What they failed to anticipate was the State’s willingness to sacrifice its own people to stop the escape. Jackson’s plan was to use the hostages to take over a radio station and broadcast the virulent, racist, murderous prison conditions and demand the immediate release of The Soledad Brothers.
But before Jonathan could drive the van out of the parking lot, the San Quentin guards had arrived and opened fire. When the shooting stopped, Jonathan, Christmas, McClain and the judge lay dead. Magee and the prosecutor were critically wounded, and one juror suffered a minor arm wound. Magee survived his wounds and was tried originally with co-defendant Angela Davis. Their trials were later severed and Davis was eventually acquitted of all charges. Magee was convicted of simple kidnap and remains in Corcoran State Prison — 40 years with no physical assaults on his record. An incredible jailhouse lawyer, Magee has been responsible for countless prisoners being released — the main reason he was kept for nearly 20 years in one lockup after another, or until his own jailhouse lawyering won his release from Pelican Bay SHU (Security Housing Unit).
“International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are the only ones (besides the very small white minority left) who can get at the monsterÃ*s heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slave of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday. I donÃ*t want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and licentious, usurious economics.” (Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson).:
In the latest edition of the 1970 best-seller, Jonathan Jackson, Jr. wrote in its Forward: “…Failure to understand the radical, encompassing viewpoint in the sixties led to reformism. In effect, the majority of the left completely deserted any attempt at the radical balance required of the politically conscious, leaving only liberalism and its narrow vision to flourish.
Nobody comprehended the radical dilemma more fully than George Jackson….He writes in Blood In My Eye:
“Reformism is an old story in Amerika. There have been depressions and socio-economic political crises throughout the period that marked the formation of the present upper-class ruling circle, and their controlling elites. But the parties of the left were too committed to reformism to exploit their revolutionary potential.”
We witnessed the so-called health-care reform of the first Clinton Administration. In a nutshell, there were approximately 37 million people without health insurance in 1992; there are currently well over 44 million and climbing as the insurance industry continues to profiteer from our most basic need for medical care, while Medicare and Medicaid are threatened with privitization and prescription drugs are out of control. “Welfare Reform” has resulted in “Welfare DEform” as the social safety net is unraveled and homelessness is insitituionalized. While our taxes are spent lavishly for a bloated military ($400 billion plus!), health care, housing, child care, food stamps, and jobs disappear; and factories and plants are located behind prison walls. California spends about $49,000 per year to incarcerate one prisoner. It spends about $7000 to educate one student.
“It all falls into place. I see the whole thing much clearer now, how fascism has taken possession of this country, the interlocking dictatorships from county level on up to the Grand Dragon in Washington, D.C. …Fascism has temporarily succeeded under the guise of reform.” (George Jackson)
And so we have it today, more obvious, much more blatant in the ghettoes and barrios — a form of fascism that has replaced gas ovens and concentration camps with death rows and control-unit torture chambers; plantations with prison industrial complexes deployed in rural white communities to perpetuate white supremacy and Black/Brown exploitation. An obscene concentration of wealth at the top with one percent owning more wealth than 95% of the U.S. population; individuals so superrich their wealth exceeds the total combined budgets of scores of nations — as they plunder the globe in the quest for more.
“The fascist must expand to live. Consequently he has pushed his frontiers to the farthest lands and peoples. This is an aspect of his being, an ungovernable compulsion. This perverted mechanical monster suffers from a disease that forces him to build ugly things and destroy beauty wherever he finds it. I just read in a legal newspaper that 50 percent of all the people ever executed in this country by the state were black and 100 percent were lower-class poor. I’m going to bust my heart trying to stop these smug, degenerate, primitive, omnivorous, incivil . . . and anyone who would aid me, I embrace you.” (George Jackson)
At the time Jackson wrote those words (1970), he was facing a mandatory death sentence even if only convicted of assaulting a guard (Ca. Statute 4500), and was already in solitary confinement where he spent most of the 11 years of his incarceration. Although that particular law and the indeterminate sentence are no longer on the books, the spirit of the law is being implemented through the no-parole policies of Republicrat Gov. Grey Davis and a death row that now totals over 600 human beings slated for state murder. Nationwide, the figures are about 3600.
On August 21, 1971, in what was described by prison officials as an escape attempt, George Jackson allegedly smuggled a gun into San Quentin in a wig. That feat was proven impossible, and evidence subsequently suggested a setup designed by prison officials to eliminate Jackson once and for all as they had tried numerous times. However, they didn’t count on losing any of their own in the process. On that fateful day, three notoriously racist prison guards and two inmate turnkeys were also killed. Jackson was shot and killed by guards as he drew fire away from the other prisoners in the Adjustment Center of San Quentin.
Six Black prisoners were put on trial — wearing 30 lbs of chains — in Marin County Courthouse charged with murder and assault. Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo L.A. Pinell (Yogi), Luis Talamantez, Johnny Spain, and Willie Sundiata Tate. Only one was convicted of murder, Johnny Spain. The others were either acquitted or convicted of assault. Pinell is the only one remaining in prison; all the others were released years ago. But Yogi has suffered prolonged torture in lockups since 1969, and is currently enduring his 13th year in Pelican BayÃ*s SHU. He remains amazingly strong and revolutionary.
Let us continue to build uncompromising unity and resistance through spiritual renewal and revolutionary inspiration this Black August as we honor all those who have fought and died for our freedom and self-determination.
In George JacksonÃ*s words: “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”
Free all political prisoners! Long live the guerrillas! Venceremos!
by Kiilu Nyasha The commemoration of Black August is inseparable from the lives and struggles of revolutionary freedom fighters: “George and Jonathan Jackson, James McClain, William Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, and sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee.”
The Revision and Origin of Black August by Kiilu Nyasha “As a slave, the social phenomenon that engages my consciousness is, of course, revolution.” –George L. Jackson “George was unequivocally an internationalist and a socialist. 2012 marks the 33rd anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor our fallen freedom fighters, George and Jonathan Jackson, James McClain, William Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, and sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee. During these three decades, we’ve witnessed a steady revision of the meaning of Black August and its inherent ideology, the undisputed leader of which was our martyred Comrade, George Lester Jackson. Sadly, lots of individuals – many of whom are straight-up Black capitalists and Black nationalists – have seized upon Black August as a means of profiteering and lime-lighting, self-aggrandizement, and promotion of their own agendas. For those reasons, I want to make very clear the ideology espoused by George and Jonathan Jackson and their comrades. First of all, George was unequivocally an internationalist and a socialist. He despised racism and, along with his brother, Jonathan, eschewed cultural nationalism. For example, in George Jackson’s second book (published posthumously in 1972), Blood in My Eye, Jonathan Jackson (17) was quoted as follows: “They say Gloves Davis – a black pig – killed Fred Hampton, while he was asleep. I certainly don’t have to mention all the so-called defectors who are now [1970] appearing before government committees testifying for the state. They were infiltrators to begin with. The house-niggers who ran to the high sheriff as soon as someone whispered revolt. I think I hate them worse than I hate the sheriff, or the ‘owner.’ “I’m just a young slave….but every time I think of [Gloves] Davis, Jess B. Simple, Karenga and the rest of these murderous turncoat idiots, my trigger finger fairly itches! Non-persons like Karenga, LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] and the other right-wing blacks are intelligent enough to know what they are doing. We cannot excuse them with the ease that we can excuse the average brother who has had no opportunity or inclination to search. The mantle of ignorance doesn’t cover their behavior. [my emphasis] They have to know that when they attack socialism, the communist ideal, and revolution that they are not logically…attacking all that is white, etc. They know that Ho Chi Minh isn’t white or Chairman Mao, or Nkrumah, Lumumba and Toure. They know that there isn’t but one fight going on across this planet, the one between the imperialist forces of capitalism and its victims. They know that it was for work that we were kidnapped – what else do you feed a slave for? These Black, Black, Black, Black men (if you can swallow their shallow shit) have had time to study, some have traveled, they ‘know’ that it was capitalist agricultural economics that first caused our pain, and that the only change since then is the decline of the agricultural elite and the rise of the modern bourgeoisie. A sweat-shop displaced the plantation. [In 2012, it’s the prison industrial complex and outsourcing.] Could it have escaped their notice that all the African states that really liberated themselves booted out the foreign businessmen and are now socialist states? [Unfortunately, the ‘foreign businessmen’ returned and there are no African states that remained socialist] “There isn’t but one fight going on across this planet, the one between the imperialist forces of capitalism and its victims.” “No, I think the strongest suggestion is that they are working for the government, the new house-niggers. And what better way is there for them to sell themselves to us than to scream Black, Black, Black, Black….” George Jackson wrote, “We find ourselves forced into a reexamination of the whole nature of black revolutionary consciousness and its relative standing within a class society steeped in a form of racism so sensitized that it extends itself even to the slightest variation in skin tone. “The great majority of blacks reject racism. They have never found it expedient, wise or honorable to take on the characteristics of the enemy.” (Blood In My Eye) I wish that statement remained true. But I think Comrade is turning over in his grave at the anti-white hostility and white exclusion so common today. We are now witnessing Blacks embracing reactionary politicians, like Barack Obama, because of their skin tones. As former Panther and political prisoner Larry Pinkney wrote: “Barack Obama’s secret negotiations with economic bloodsucking multinational corporations, his trillion dollar criminal ‘bailout’ of the corporate elite of Wall Street,… his ongoing wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere, his bombing of Libya, North Africa, his feverish clamp down on corporate and government ‘whistleblowers,’ and his infamous ‘Kill List’ are but a few of the horrible actions that Obama, has and is engaging in under the cover of insidious stealth and beguilement. Obama’s flagrant violations of U.S. constitutional and international law have, in less than four years, far surpassed even the outrages committed by his predecessors.” Larry has also noted that the Obama Administration has not hesitated to “Murder women, men and children with incessant predator drone missile strikes upon other sovereign nations. Utilize a self-legitimized ‘kill list’ to commit extrajudicial murders of Americans and non-Americans alike, without the bother of legitimate due process. Sign into law the draconian NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act]— which calls for the indefinite detention in this nation of U.S. citizens—without charge, trial, judge, jury, or legal defense. Continue operating the torture chamber at the U.S. gulag known as Guantanamo.” (Intrepid Report) In his first best seller of 1970, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, Comrade wrote, “The government buys and trains these running dogs very carefully, and sends them scrambling, tails and all, outward to represent the establishment. Whole kennels are sent to the African nations…on the supposition that the people of these nations will be able to relate better to a black face.” George goes on to say that they throw up “one more barrier to the communion that we must establish with the other oppressed peoples of the world.” In a letter written to a comrade, published in Blood In My Eye, George wrote: “We are now witnessing Blacks embracing reactionary politicians, like Barack Obama, because of their skin tones.” “We have finally arrived at scientific revolutionary socialism….I was hoping that you wouldn’t get trapped in the riot stage like a great many other very sincere brothers….They think they don’t need ideology, strategy or tactics. They think being a warrior is enough.” “You must teach that socialism-communalism is as old as man; that its principles formed the basis of mostly all the East African cultures (there was no word to denote possession in the original East African tongues)….Any black who would defend an African military dictatorship is as much a fascist as Hoover. Are you aware of how the people are living under these so-called Africanized fascist cultures? The Congo and the entire West Coast of Africa….are still slave states, dominated by Westernized black right-wing puppets. I’m thoroughly sick of the old Jess B. Simples (young ones too). They’ll be your main source of opposition in communizing the black colonies here. The ‘good white people’ who own things will always give them a few inches in their papers or other media. That’s how ‘fascism’ works influencing the masses and institutions through elites.” [my emphasis] George was adamantly opposed to participation in electoral politics: “The corporative state allows for no genuinely free political opposition. They only allow meaningless gatherings where they can plant more spies than participants. They feel secure in their ability to mold the opinion of a people interested only in wages. However, real revolutionary activity will draw panic-stricken gunfire. Or heart attacks.” The Origin of Black August A time to embrace the principles of unity and resistance, Black August had its origins in the “Black Movement” behind California prison walls in the 1960s, led by George Jackson, W. L. Nolen, James Carr, Hugo Pinell, Kumasi, Howard Tole, Warren Wells, and many other conscious, standup brothers who ultimately made it safe for Blacks to walk the yards of California’s racist gulags. As the decades passed, the tradition of honoring our fallen freedom fighters – sparked by the August events described below — was expanded to include commemorating revolutionary wars of resistance and self-determination, such as Harriett Tubman’s Underground Railroad and the Haitian Revolution of August of 1791 culminating in the first Black Republic of the world. August 7, 1970, the spectacular courthouse slave rebellion hit the front pages of newspapers around the world. Pictures of four, young Black freedom fighters emerging from Marin County court with guns and hostages, provoked panic among white supremacists. But most Black folks took great pride and inspiration from the sight of such courageous resistance to the ongoing brutality and murder of Blacks inside and outside of prison. “Freeze!” shouted 17-year-old Jonathan Jackson, “We’re taking over” – as he tossed guns to McClain, Christmas, and Magee. With courage and calm they ushered their hostages to a waiting van, planning to go to a radio station to broadcast the atrocities being committed behind the walls against Blacks, and demand the immediate release of the Soledad Brothers – George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette. “The corporative state allows for no genuinely free political opposition.” What Jonathan failed to anticipate was the State’s willingness to sacrifice one of its judges and the lives of everyone else to stop that escape. As Jonathan tried to leave the parking lot, the San Quentin guards arrived and opened fire, leaving Jackson, Christmas, McClain, and Judge Harold Haley dead, State prosecutor Gary Thomas and Ruchell Magee seriously wounded and one juror with a minor injury. One year later, on August 21, 1971, in what has been well established as a setup, George Jackson was murdered on the yard of San Quentin by prison guards. During this orchestrated attempted escape, however, three guards were also killed, along with two inmate “trustees.” This set the prison officials on fire and they’ve been exacting revenge ever since upon Hugo Pinell whom they can’t seem to torture enough – even though he was not convicted of murder in the case, as was Johnny Spain who was released in 1988. Yogi, now 67 years old is suffering his 48th year of incarceration, most in solitary confinement, the last 22 in Pelican Bay’s SHU (Security Housing Unit) locked down at least 23 hours a day in a torture chamber — no-contact limited visits, no phone calls, no windows, restricted property. Fortunately, Magee’s legal expertise got himself out of the SHU in 1994. Yogi’s current attorney, Keith Wattley of Uncommon Law, is trying to preclude a 15-year hit at his next board hearing, and needs all the help he can get to proceed in his behalf. For more information, go to http://www.hugopinell.org Ruchell Magee is enduring his 49th year in Corcoran’s maximum security prison – a classic case of this country’s racist repression of Black men. At 16, Magee was arrested, tried as an adult, and incarcerated in the infamous Angola State Prison in his home state of Louisiana (basically for associating with a white girl). Released after 8 years, but banished from the State, Magee lasted only 6 months in Los Angeles before suffering an egregious and brutal encounter with L.A. police (over a $10 bag of weed) that put him back in prison. An astute jailhouse lawyer, Magee continued to fight his case through the courts for 7 years to no avail, or until he seized the hour and joined the guerrillas on August 7, 1970. Seriously wounded but still alive, Magee was subsequently tortured and charged with everything they could throw at him. He continues to fight his case to this day. He said to me decades ago, “As long as you remain in the fight, you never know who’s going to win.” “They must be made to realize that the interests of the state and the ruling class are one and the same.” “So what is to be done after a revolution has failed?” asks George. “After our enemies have created a conservative mass society based on meaningless electoral politics, spectator sports, and a 3 percent annual rise in purchasing power strictly regulated to negate itself with a corresponding rise in the cost of living. …What can we do with a people who have gone through the authoritarian process and come out sick to the core!!! “Our overall task is to separate the people from the hated state. They must be made to realize that the interests of the state and the ruling class are one and the same. They must be taught to realize that the present political regime exists only to balance the productive forces within the society in favor of the ruling class. It is at the ruling class and the governing elites, including those of labor, that we must aim our bolts.” (Blood in My Eye) “We must accept the spirit of the true internationalism called for by Comrade Che Guevara….We need allies, we have a powerful enemy who cannot be defeated without an allied effort! The enemy at present is the capitalist system and its supporters. Our prime interest is to destroy them. Anyone else with this same interest must be embraced, we must work with, beside, through, over, under anyone, regardless of his or her external physical features, whose aim is the same as ours in this.” (Soledad Brother) “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done; discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” (Blood in My Eye) Please send our brothers some love and encouragement: Hugo L.A. Pinell A88401 D3-221 P.O. Box 7500 Crescent City, Ca. 95531-7500 Ruchell Cinque Magee #A92051 C-8-117 P.O. Box 5246 CSATF/State Prison at Corcoran Corcoran, CA 93212 Kiilu Nyasha is a San Francisco-based journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party. She can be contacted at Kiilu2(at)sbcglobal.net.
Crown Prince of the Black Order Revolutionary Organization details the meaning and history of Black August and Bloody
encourages conscious prisoners to rise up and participate in a work stoppage and demonstration on September 9th.
MIM-Prisons originally published this article.
Salute comrade, today we stand on this crest of time as we reach through the recess of our minds and commemorate, honor and salute our collective struggle as a people and our daring revolutionary heroes.
The month of August and September – Black August and Bloody September as it is referred to by many New Afrikan comrades, cadres and revolutionary organizations – are both months rich with our blood, our struggle, and our resistance as a people. During August and September we focus our energies around the discussions of New Afrikan revolutionary political education, progressive actions and revolutionary history.
We as progressive revolutionary thinking men and women do not view history through the lens of the bourgeoisie, who separates history into sub-parts. Under the Eurocentric bourgeois thought and ideological thought process history is a dead relic, a souvenir or memento of past events to be waved at with fleeting thoughts with no real or concrete links to the present.
The bourgeois power structure uses the disconnection of the past from the present as a tool or weapon of divide and conquer. The divide and conquer strategy has never been more effective than it is today: cut them off from their past, make them feel alienated, alone and separated from a collective historical past – you do that and you weaken them enormously. This moment of weakness gives our enemies great power to maneuver us into the corner of political, social, economic and cultural inaction.
But through the lens of a dialectical-materialist, we must see history as a never ending stream of past events that gave and constantly give birth to present realities. This chain of historical events is constantly moving us forward into the ocean of endless possibilities. We must use this view of a “living history” as a source of defining who we are and the direction we’re heading as a people.
A tree without roots is dead, and so is a people who is not rooted in their history. So let’s use Black August and September as months of mental reflection as we unearth and trace the glorious and bloody foot prints of our past as a people. Let this reflection galvanize us forward into a new level of political struggle and resistance.
Historical Overview
The 1960 and 70s liberation struggle and movement gave birth to New Afrikan revolutionary heroes such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Sundiata Acoli, and many, many others. Historically then as well as now, the United States judicial arm was/is used as a weapon of repression and class subjugation.
Men such as Malcolm X and George Jackson went to prison as colonial criminals. But within those prison walls the alchemy of human transformation began to take place. Inside the deep dark confines of a United States concentration KKKamp they both began to turn the cells that held them into libraries and schools of liberation. George and Malcolm both unceasingly strove to create new social relations and social realities in the world around them by and thru revolutionary transformation. They both knew to create a new world that they themselves had to be representations of this new being, this new man in word, thought, actions and deeds. So as their cells became classrooms they internalized the most advanced ideas about human development.
George Jackson stated: “I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao…they redeemed me. For the first four years, I studied nothing but economics and military ideas. I met the Black Guerrillas, George “Big Jake’ Lewis, James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson, and many others. We attempted to transform the Black criminal mentality into a Black revolutionary mentality.”
George Jackson and his comrades became the living example and inspiration for organized resistance for prisoners across the country. On August 21st, 1971, George Jackson and two other New Afrikan prisoners were killed (along with three prison guards) in a gunfight inside one of California’s maximum-security prisons called San Quentin.
To many, George Jackson was the embodiment of the New Afrikan man. George was fearless, upright, daring, self-educated and intelligent with revolutionary style. He took the lead with his brains and muscles.
In response to the murder and assassination of George Jackson, prisoners in one of New York’s prisons called Attica immediately responded. On the 22nd of August 1971 some 800 prisoners went into the chow hall not saying a word as they sat with black arm bands as a tribute to George Jackson. As one set of events leads to the next, 19 days later Attica prison went up in a revolt. The September 9, 1971 prison uprising and revolt in Attica led to the colonial captives controlling parts of the prison. In an address to the Amerikkkan people the rebels stated: “We are men! We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such.”
On September 13th, after five days of a heavily armed siege, the NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller gave the order to the state troopers to retake the prison. The state swine opened mass fire killing 32 colonial captives and 11 prison swine who were held hostage.
So today as we reach our hands through time and space – connecting our past to our present let’s use Black August and Bloody September as a moment of reflection, study, observation and movement in the direction of striking terror in the hearts of our captures by unifying in principle and action on September 8th to the 9th. We’re calling on all colonial captives/prisoners of war and political prisoners to stand up as a collective in a work stoppage.
Our aim is to bring attention and awareness to our collective situation.
George Jackson stated: “You will find no class or category more aware, more embittered, desperate or dedicated to the ultimate remedy – revolution. The most dedicated, the best of our kind – you’ll find them in the Folsoms, San Quentins and Soledads.”
