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Monthly Archives: July 2017

Mutulu Shakur: On The History Of The Use Of Acupuncture By Revolutionary Health Workers To Treat Drug Addiction, And US Government Attacks Under The Cover Of The CounterIntelligence Program (COINTELPRO)

30 Sunday Jul 2017

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Mutulu Shakur: On The History Of The Use Of Acupuncture By Revolutionary Health Workers To Treat Drug Addiction, And US Government Attacks Under The Cover Of The CounterIntelligence Program (COINTELPRO)

Announcer:But, it seems like things have straightened themselves out right about now. We are on. . .we have on the line with us a Brother, Mutulu Shakur, from the. . .who is currently being held in Lompoc Prison.

Let me tell you something about Brother Mutulu Shakur. Brother Mutulu Shakur is a doctor of acupuncture. As an acupuncturist and healthcare worker, Brother Shakur worked from 1971 to ‘78 for the Lincoln Hospital Detoxification Program in the Bronx in New York. Then, from 1978 to 1982 Dr. Shakur was the co-founder and co-director of the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America, also known as BAAANA and the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture.

At the Lincoln Detox Center, Dr. Shakur lead a program which used acupuncture to assist in the detoxification of thousands of drug addicts. The Lincoln Detox program was recognized as the largest and most effective of its kind by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the National Acupuncture Research Society and the World Academic Society of Acupuncture.

Further, at BAAANA, Dr. Shakur continued his remarkable work against drug addiction. He also treated and/or supervised the treatment of thousands of elderly and poor patients who otherwise would have received no treatment of this kind. Patients were able to receive quality healthcare at reasonable prices. Moreover, the clinic at BAAANA served on a regular basis many community leaders, political activists, lawyers, doctors and various international dignitaries. At BAAANA, Dr. Shakur and his co-founder, Dr. Richard Delaney, trained over 100 students in the medical sciences of acupuncture. Some of the trainees at the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture were already medical doctors licensed by various states in the United States.

Also in the late 1970s, just to tell you a little bit about this brother’s proficiency in his field, Dr. Shakur traveled with Dr. Mario Wexu, Director of Education at the International Association of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture in Montreal to the People’s Republic of China, where he observed and studied acupuncture applied as the primary form of medical care. We are not just talking about someone who, you know, dibbles and dabbles in his field, but he does some serious research, know what I’m saying.

Brother Shakur also worked with the Revolutionary Action Movement, RAM, in his early years. This was a revolutionary Black Nationalist organization which struggled for black self-determination and socialist change in America. Brother Dr. Shakur has furthermore been a dedicated worker and champion in the struggle against political imprisonment and political convictions of black activists in America.

He has also been a leader in the struggle against illegal United States and local American law enforcement programs designed to destroy the black movement in America and has worked to expose and stop the secret American war against its black colony. Brother Shakur served on the committee to defend Herman Ferguson, a leading black political activist and educator charged with conspiracy in the RAM conspiracy case of the 1960s. Dr. Shakur was a member of the National Committee to Free Political Prisoners. He has worked to legally defend and support political prisoners and prisoners of war like Imari Obadele, Ph.D. and the RNA-11, Reverend Ben Chavis and the Wilmington 10, Geronimo Pratt of the Black Panther Party, Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army, Sundiata Acoli also of the Black Liberation Army.

 

Haki Kweli Shakur : Who Are New Afrikan Political Prisoners via RBG Street Scholar

He contributed to the development of a petition to the United Nations by the National Conference of Black Lawyers and others. As a matter of fact, that petition is now documented in the book “Illusions of Justice” by Lennox Hinds. He used to also work with the National Conference of Black Lawyers on developing defense committees for numerous political prisoners and prisoners of war.

In addition, and I’m running out of breath with this Brother’s accomplishments, Brother Shakur was most importantly a co-founder and director of the National Task Force for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research which investigated, exposed and instigated suits against the FBI and other American law agencies for criminal acts, domestic spying, dirty tricks, repression, and low intensity warfare maneuvers against the New African independence struggle and others struggling against oppression in America.

 

Now, having given you this amazing biography, one thing I do have to say before I begin this program is that everything you hear on this show is not necessarily, you may be surprised to know, not necessarily the opinion of the University of Chicago or the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees. But having said that I would like to bring on the air Brother Shakur. Brother Shakur are you with us?

MS: Hello.

Announcer: Hello Brother Shakur.

MS: How you doing. Free the land, Brother.

Announcer: All right, free the land. Now, Brother Shakur, I just read over some of the things that you been doing. You been a busy Brother even now that you’re incarcerated and I’d just like to inquiry as to when we look at your accomplishments and we look at what you are doing with acupuncture a lot of people think first off think Ahmm acupuncturist hmmm…How is somebody with acupuncture going to serve in a struggle etc. etc. doesn’t usually strike one as the freedom fighter type of thing to do. So could you explain to us how acupuncture fed into your struggle for black liberation.

MS: Yes, Brother Tyehimba, first of all I would like to thank you and the University for allowing me to talk to the south side of Chicago, people I have not had many opportunities to speak to since I’ve been incarcerated or since I’ve come up from being clandestine. It’s important for us to understand that the struggle for our liberation is a complete process, Brother, and which requires of us to be prepared to address the causes of our oppression. From that context I have to say that in the ’60s we had the pleasure of feeling like we were going to be free in ‘73, you know. That used to be a slogan we would say.

Announcer: Yeah.

MS: And as the upheavals and the outrage and the rebellion of the ’60s was waged and the struggle between intellectual participation in the movement and the grassroots organized and the new movement began to formulate two lines of the approach to the struggle, some of us were caught in the period of looking at the community being attacked by chemical warfare.

Announcer: Right.

MS: And chemical warfare began to change the shape and the attitude of the brothers and sisters who participated in the, what we called then, the revolution. Whether it be the civil rights aspect of integrating into or assimilating into America or whether it be the revolutionary nationalist aspect of fighting for, in this context and in that period, self-determination and/or liberation by nationhood. So from that point of view the ability to fight chemical warfare was a significant contribution that many organizations gave to the liberation movement because it was at least a physical participation in fighting the ills that the community could still come to the liberation movement for assistance.

For example, the Nation of Islam was very instrumental in fighting drug, heroin addiction by having homes and clean up houses and sweat-out houses all around the country where they could take members of the community who are addicted to drugs and help them cold-turkey. So a lot of the nationalist formations and the grassroots formations began to do the same thing.

A lot of brothers coming out of the penitentiary, cause the penitentiary movement was important. Ex-cons was not what it was today. An ex-con was an individual who gave character, who established a code of conduct in the community. So they began to set up houses, cold-turkey houses and the like to help deal with the problem of drug addiction.

So from the mid’60s to the ’70s the ability to fight heroin and other addictions that were being pushed in our community, that ability to do that with the assistance of the liberation formations or organizations became an important material aid to the community.

In view of that, in New York in particular and nationally, the National Drug Abuse Conference and Richard Nixon with Rockefeller implemented into the black community an experiment that they had been experiment. . . a drug that they had experimented on for a long period of time in Kentucky which they had a Lexington, Kentucky experiment program. They implemented what they called a Methadone Maintenance Intervention Program. Now Methadone Maintenance is a drug that was used allegedly, theoretically, to get a person off of heroin but onto methadone monitored by methadone clinics and allegedly its intentions were to detoxify a person addicted to chemical warfare off the methadone.

We seen that as a clear, clear process of taking from the revolutionary movement and the grassroots movement an ability to stay in touch with the community and to render aid and an ability and a setting for a person to demonstrate their love for their brother and sister by spending time, working with that brother or sister through that terrible period of cold-turkey.

Announcer: Well it sounds like we need some of that out here today with all this crack out here. You know.

MS: No question….this is why the Methadone Maintenance Move was a sickness it can move. What happened is Rockefeller….the history of methadone is a very interesting one. I don’t know how much time we have and I’m going to try to cut it short. But the Methadone Maintenance came into the community as a requirement for aid to dependent children, a requirement if you wanted to get on welfare, a requirement for parole and requirement for probation. It was called the Rockefeller Program in New York. At the time that Jimmy Carter was Governor of Atlanta, under him was the man named Peter Borne. Peter Borne was the National Drug Abuse Counsel Coordinator for Richard Nixon. They brought methadone into the community. In New York City, 60 percent of the illegal drugs on the street during the early ’70s was methadone. So we could not blame drug addiction at that time on Turkey or Afghanistan or the rest of that triangle.

Announcer: It was the United States government and Rockefeller.

MS: It was coming in through Eli Lily and the Brinks trucks that was delivering the drugs to the various methadone clinics around the country. And instead of people being detoxified off of methadone, they were being increased in dosages. So acupuncture, in the hands of revolutionary thinking, Puerto Rican, Blacks, Progressive White people, was an intervention that the government was not willing to accept at the time because it attacked and exposed the intention of the government to impose a chemical warfare on a certain segment of the community. And it exposed the fact that the government wanted to control the flow of drugs into the community. So our. . . hello. . .

Announcer: Yes.

MS: . . .our ability to get involved with acupuncture and to learn it, and to learn it from a very fundamental basis was an important contribution to that struggle. So we became victims of counter intelligence not in the classical sense based upon the Hoover documents of stopping the rise of the black messiah or stopping the development of black nationalist hate groups that showed that famous ‘67 document. We became targets because we were intervening into the chemical war process here ?? was being dealt with by illegal drugs and was being moved into the phase of legal drugs.

Announcer: Well, that was when you were starting to get active with the Lincoln Detox program and could you tell us about some of the development that happened there and the development of BAAANA.

MS: Okay. The Lincoln Detox program was started by the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords Party and a white group called White Lightening. This group began to take over aspects of Lincoln Hospital in order to provide space and treatment care. . .hello?

Announcer: Yeah, we’re still here.

MS: . . .for people

Operator: Are you done with your call?

Announcer: No. Hello? Hello?. . .So ladies and gentleman, that’s where we left last week or I should say two weeks ago, that was October 4th, where there was just an interruption by the prison telephone operator. And well, you know, as they say the struggle must continue and so we’re going to continue on with Brother Mutulu. So, welcoming you back to WHBK, welcome back, Brother Mutulu.

MS: Free the land, Brother.

Announcer: All right, so it’s good to have you back.

MS: Yeah, well it’s all like you say a struggle always continues, you know, we just have to prepare for the unexpected. It’s our ability to handle the strain and allow for us to win anyway. You know.

Announcer: Right. Okay, so now you had been talking about. . . two weeks ago you were talking about the influx of drugs into the country and into the African community. . . the New African community and I was wondering if you could kind of pick up the pieces from where you were two weeks ago.

MS: Yeah,. . . hello? I hear someone messing with the phone so bear with me.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: This here conversation has been approved by the warden and the captain. Okay, so I should be able to continue the conversation. All right?

Announcer: I sure hope so.

MS: Okay. I was trying to illustrate how the liberation movements and the civil rights movement and the black. . .

Announcer: Can you speak up a little, Brother.

MS: Hello?

Announcer: Can you speak up a little?

MS: Sure. I was trying to illustrate how the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Nationalist movement was very fundamental to us in the early ’60s, late mid ’60s and ’70s. And that one of the ways that the organization becomes fundamental, respected and appreciated from the masses is that we as organizational members or organization forms provide some type of material aid to the ails of our community and to the needs of our community.

And so the drug program in Lincoln Hospital that was developed, as I said before by the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords Party and another formation called White Lightening of ex-drug victims. This became a center for revolutionary, political change in the methodology and treatment modality of drug addiction because the method was not only medical but it was also political. And I think that was the continuing from the independent basis that the various formations had prior to the’70s, various organizations as I mentioned the Nation of Islam, RAM and SNCC and other formations dealing with the problems themselves.

So the Lincoln Detox became not only recognized by the community as a political formation but its work in developing and saving men and women of the third world inside of the oppressed communities, resuscitating these brothers and sisters and putting them into some form of healing process within the community we became a threat to the city of New York and consequently with the development of the barefoot doctor acupuncture cadre, we began to move around the country and educate various other communities instead of schools and orientations around acupuncture drug withdrawal and the strategy of methadone and the teaching the brothers and sisters the fundamentals of acupuncture to serious acupuncture, how it was used in the revolutionary context in China and in Vietnam and how we were able to use it in the South Bronx and our success. Primarily because we had a love for our people and we had a commitment to our people, we started very rudimentary.

We started with just finger pressure point and as we began to continue and search for the truth the information came to us, we went to China, we went to Montreal, we went around in England and Switzerland and various parts of the world to understand the theory and the application of acupuncture to drug withdrawal. So we became predictable, we became the base of acupuncturists who were revolutionaries in this country. Most of us belonged to various political formations and we were a part of a cadre of men and women who were not licensed western doctors but we were acupuncturists and oriental medicine and so therefore we opened up a whole avenue of the standards and the oppression of American Medical Association (AMA)against oriental medicine and the whole line of struggle. So acupuncture and Lincoln Detox together was a political and medical threat to the theory of legalized chemical warfare within our community.

Announcer: Now that’s deep ’cause the more I find out about, you know, how to take care of one’s body, how to get medical treatment, there seems like there was some many concepts involved in what you were doing. The AMA involved and the concept of western medicine and pumping drugs into your system and the toxification of the community, the chemical warfare. This is a part of our history that, I guess, very few of us have had access to. Now, I wonder if you could also tell us a little bit about your case and exactly how things came to a head and how you wound up in prison.

MS: One of the things that’s got to be clear is that I am a part of a movement. I have been a part of the movement most of my life and when I became involved in the Lincoln Detox process, I had already been in the Republic of New Afrika, the black caucus, I have been the supporter of the RAM cases in Queens, New York. I had also been involved in the National Black Political Convention. I was already a political animal. When we all hooked up to Lincoln Detox there was major leadership of the Young Lords Party that was a part of what we called the Lincoln Detox Collective. We were also a part of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners. Some of us were a part. . . North Americans were a part of the Midnight Special. The Sister of Bernadine Dohrn was there, Jennifer Dohrn, was a part of the Lincoln Detox Collective. So we had a number of politically conscience people involved in carrying out the fundamental process of dealing with the needs of the community. You follow me?

Announcer: Uh huh.

MS: And seeing that there was too powerful of a access. . . too powerful access for the revolutionary community to have specially as we were moving into 1973 and the oil embargo and third-world nations emerging around the world, revolutionary struggle, the anti-imperialist struggle, struggle for national identity that was happening all over the world. The concept of self-determination within the minimum context of community control and control of one’s own health, was too much of a significant barometer for our community to see the potential of freedom, the potential of self-determination, so we became the target.

Announcer: So, it sounds like you’re talking about a whole type of medical wing of the liberation movement, almost. Like the various collectives that you were talking about. And I know here in Chicago they had a brother who was involved in starting up a health clinic etc. A whole new concept of medicine, medical care and how care should be provided.

MS: Really the principal of providing medical care wasn’t new because if you remember the Black Panther Party publicized people’s health clinics. They publicized it from the ’60s to the early ’70s. But, and I mean, the media publicized it. Other formations in the Libya movement in Cleveland and various nationalist formations in New York and Chicago and Mid West and South, were doing certain type of healthcare. And the voter registration campaign, they were doing certain things. But the significant part about this was that we had also caught them red-handedly providing a chemical addiction to a people that they alleged were trying to detoxify, to clean up the drugs. So it wasn’t only that we were providing medical care, we were providing medical care and exposing chemical warfare. We were not only providing medical care and exposing chemical warfare, we were challenging western occidental medicine to eastern medicine and natural healing. So all the fads and the health foods stores and all of the reflexology clinics and all of these things that allow to function today would not exist if revolutionary men and women did not fight tooth and nail to spread the possibilities of another form of healthcare system to the third world grassroots community.

Announcer: As you were saying before, a lot of us are familiar somewhat with the history of the FBI and the CIA, COINTELPRO operations, and the various search and destroy missions of various police departments across the country and in New York it was particularly fierce from what I understand.

MS: Oh it was very significant, it was very significant. A lot of the . . . the thing that you have to understand is people must read the COINTELPROl document directive clearly. And aspects of it talk about misdirecting, discrediting, taking off track, taking away credibility, preventing good work from looking like good work in the community. Fundamental stuff. And that is strategic as opposed to overt. You follow me. And so federally they were beginning to. . .they couldn’t come at us direct because it would be hard to explain. If men and women are trying to do something good, why are you attacking them. So, therefore, the misdirection and the discrediting and the media’s collaboration by refusing to announce to the community and to the readers what was going on, allowed for the Lincoln Detox Program to be targeted as if it was poverty pimps going on up there. At the time that we were moving there was a group called the National Caucus of Labor Committees.

They began to attack us. Now that we have seen their covert operations and understand them to be destabilizing and working for different forms all over the world, we realize that they were part of the covert action. We attached by Charles Schuman now a Congressman in Washington. He was a Congressman in Brooklyn. He lead an assembly evaluation of all the so-called third-party programs, which were a residential communities where you could keep people in over a certain length of time and try to heal. He felt that we had too much control, that men and women had too much control over brothers and sisters without them being certified, and you know certified men politicized to the Right Wing element. So, Mayor Koch who became the Mayor at the time, was the head of the New York City Board of Estimates. And so he lead, he won his campaign on attacking drug programs and anti-poverty programs in New York City.

So, during the end stages after they had murdered many BLA members, after they had tremendous trials and the Lincoln Detox community, the Lincoln Detox patients, the Lincoln Detox workers, the Lincoln Detox supporters were always in the eye of the storm when it came down to supporting revolutionary causes, positive issues, we’ve struck when the gypsy cabs went on strike, we struck with the workers. . . the healthcare workers in the hospital, we demanded better healthcare, we fought in the welfare department for proper treatment of welfare recipients, we had a legal defense fund and helped indigenous people who couldn’t afford legal services. These are the kinds of people services that were developed out of a revolutionary context from Lincoln Detox Drug Program as a result of politicizing victims of drug addiction and educating the community about chemical warfare, we were able to provide these types of community service, therefore, as the COINTELPRO and the media said that the liberation, they had broke the back of the liberation movement here in the South Bronx under a different banner, under a health banner we had cadres of men and women…in the community out there spreading the word of self-determination and liberation.

Announcer: So this is between the years in Lincoln Detox that’s from the years of 1971-78. Is that right?

MS: Yes.

Announcer: And now, eventually was Lincoln disbanded or what?

MS: The day that I was fired they sent 200 policemen up to the clinic, surrounded the clinic. . .

Announcer: 200 policemen!

MS: Yes. . . and just controlled the whole thing and fired all of us or told us that we were to be sent to other hospitals. Right now today you can go into New York City and in those municipal hospitals within the community, with the black and Puerto Rican and poor communities, a municipal hospital, not the private hospital, but the municipal hospitals, you can now receive acupuncture treatment for drug withdrawal as an alternative method of treatment. And that exists today because many men and women were put in jail, shot and killed, had mental disorder, all the things that go with on going low intensity warfare, all the suffering that can be attributed to that is for ??. The reason why men and women now can go get acupuncture and alternative healthcare has to do with that cadre of men and women. And they need to be praised and that situation needs to be correctly analyzed. Because if we do not analyze it. . .

[break in tape]

Announcer: You were involved with BAAANA, right?

MS: BAAANA was the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America. We went into Harlem and we bought a home in Strivers Row and opened it as an acupuncture clinic in Harlem. And that clinic began to teach brothers and sisters and others the skill of acupuncture to spread around the country in various segments of the population. And we began to certify them internationally, under . . . we were opened under the International Association of Acupuncture and the World Health Organization.

Because I have always been a revolutionary, I have always been a supporter and a member of the liberation movement. Nothing changes. The acupuncture clinic was a clinic and BAAANA was built on a similar structure as Lincoln Hospital. It must be political and any person who was going to learn from our clinic had to be somewhat socially conscience and committed to fighting the ills of the community. And so acupuncture. . . BAAANA became a target just like Lincoln Detox. The only difference is that it was easier to focus on BAAANA, to isolate BAAANA in order for them to deal with this raid on BAAANA that happened in March of 1982.

BAAANA became a target in a RICO conspiracy. What they allege is that because BAAANA was providing this kind of healthcare and the insurance companies were not giving money to BAAANA because they were a part of another counter-intelligence strategy to try to close us down by refusing to pay rightfully due insurance bills to the clinic, they alleged that the clinic was being kept alive by the Black Liberation Army. And they alleged that the Black Liberation Army was robbing armored trucks in order to keep the acupuncture clinic alive as well as other organizations and facilities in the black nation. And so I became a target of an investigation, March 20th, 1982 I was indicted for the liberation of Assata Shakur because I was her legal assistant on many of her cases during the ’70s. They target me with her liberation, I was targeted as part of the liberation of freedom fighters as well as the expropriation of 9 or 10 armored trucks during the course of ‘76 to ‘81.

So I went underground in 1981. I knew I was a target, Mtayari Shabaka was murdered. A great revolutionary by the name of Sekou Odinga who had been a part of the Panther 21 case, who had been a childhood friend of mine, who was a leader of the Black Panther Party, who went to Algiers and opened up the international section. Was captured at the time Mtayari was murdered and he was indicted for being one of the leaders of the clandestine formation of the Black Liberation Army, New African Freedom Fighters. Many other brothers and sisters, Kwasi Balagoon, Chui Ferguson-El, Assata Shakur, Nehanda Abiodun, great sister who was a part of the aboveground structure, who is still underground, who is still being hunted by the law, the FBI, CIA, Interpol, she was a sister who helped start BAAANA on 129th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue in Harlem. She was a great sister, she was a part of the Republic of New Afrika’s cadre and was one of the first organizers of the New African People’s Organization. Many people know of Assata Shakur and they should but there is another sister named Nehanda Abiodun that they have been hunting and trying to catch ever since we went underground and she is a great comrade, a great sister and all sisters need to know about her. She is a very important contributor to the development of acupuncture and drug withdrawal in the black community, New African community.

So, we felt the wrath of COINTELPRO. We were also, prior to and during the time of the Lincoln Detox Process, my political work was the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners and the National Committee for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research Committee. Now that formation was made up of various political formations and organizations who had suffered during the decline of the revolutionary movement, who were . . . these formations were victims of counter intelligence and COINTELPRO and low intensity warfare. We came together to try to find out why we, political formations such as the African People’s Party, the Republic of New Africa, All African People’s Revolutionary Party, segments of the Black Panther Party, segments of the Houses ??. How come we could not sit down and unite and further the struggle for human rights of New African people in America and socialist development of our struggle. And that discussion and those people coming together made us realize that we had not thoroughly understood and accepted low intensity warfare and counter intelligence in relationship to the ideological struggles that we were having so-called petty contradictions between ourselves. So that committee became the National Committee for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research. And what we did was begin to go out and look at issues that were dividing us. . .

Announcer: Excuse me, Brother. Give us an idea of what time period you are talking about.

MS: Now we’re talking between ‘73 and ‘77.

Announcer: Okay. I just wanted to get that.

MS: Right. We’re talking about after Assata Shakur was captured and Zayd Malik Shakur was killed and Sundiata Acoli was captured. Okay. Because between ‘70 and ‘73 there was complete assassination of BLA members. There was assassination of potential organizers within aboveground formations. There was also false charges ??. All over the country men and women were falling to all kinds of various situations. No this happened somewhat different then to ‘67 to, well let’s say ‘66 ’cause we have to put in Ahmed Evans and what happened in Cleveland, from the ‘66 to ‘70 period the consensus of the police and the FBI and the white community was that direct attacks against visible fronts of the black liberation movement was legal and proper. Do you follow me?

Announcer: Yeah.

MS: So that many organizations who had store fronts who were providing various care and office open to the community were being militarily attacked. Do you follow me?

Announcer: Yeah.

MS: And those attacks began to kill the momentum of the visibility of liberation formations within the community. So after they confronted us in that fashion, from ‘70 to ‘71, the low intensity hunt and destroy method was the second phase of COINTELPRO and us killing each other.

Announcer: A lot of people, I think a lot of people in the audience wonder what low intensity warfare is, but in terms of clearing it up, it’s the same tactics that the United States government used against Chile, used against El Salvador and uses around the world to destabilize governments and here, in the United States, to destabilize the African community, the Native American communities, the island of Puerto Rico, etc., etc., etc.

MS: Nothing spooky about it. I think a lot of times we put titles on things to cut the explanation and where we need to put the explanation, make the explanation more clear. Low intensity warfare very simply put, is the play on the weaknesses and uncovered flanks of organizations or formations that are a threat, to the powers that be or to your adversary. As it relates to us and the United States government and military government, we, the liberation movements, were infiltrated with agents, money was stolen and we were beginning to accuse each other, work that we were doing to educate and propagate to the community was being subverted and converted ’cause we did not control the media process. Our own egos were being used against us very fundamentally. Your mail was being stolen when you expected the mail to come for this, that or the other. Shoestring budgets were being stretched to the limits so we would fail to make certain deadlines. So we began to feel inconsistent, impotent, incompetent and we felt that the things were falling apart. So our morale began to weaken. So with a weak morale and a vicious military attack, an assassination of key leader, or a car accident driving him off the road, or an addiction or a supporter or something, anything that can breakdown the fundamental structure and the spirit of a formation is low intensity warfare. Where you’re being attacked everyday but it’s not the clear line that you anticipate. And it’s not haphazard attack. It’s a very fundamental, thought out, programmatic attack at the weaknesses that have been reported by the agent to the superior.

Announcer: Okay. Now, you experienced a lot of that as you were just saying in BAAANA and in the Detox, the Lincoln Detox, and as a matter of fact, one of your fellow doctors was killed or died on this scene.

MS: Well, Lincoln Detox was hot-bed for COINTELPRO. During the time from ‘71, ‘70 to ‘77 we had suffered at least 3 or 4 assassinations. The most notable assassination, if you will remember we were talking about the fact that we had. . . we were unlicensed in Western medicine but licensed in Eastern medicine?

Announcer: Yes.

MS: Well, during the time that we were licensed in Eastern medicine and practicing acupuncture, the only way that we were able to maintain and continue was that we had a western doctor to support the work program. He was the sign-off person.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: This person was not necessary have to be an acupuncturist, matter of fact they prefer he not be, or she not be. And during the course from ‘70 to ‘73 initially it was the man by the name. . . one was Steve Levine was the first doctor at Lincoln Hospital but he was not an acupuncturist. A man by the name of Frank Atfeld, M.D. was one of the first western medicine doctors working with the cadre, we evolved the acupuncture collectively together. He left and there was a man by the name of . . . his name was Richard Taft. Now Richard Taft was the grandson of President Taft, or the great grandson of President Taft. When Frank Atfeld left, Richard Taft was the resident doctor okaying the western. . .the eastern treatment modality. You follow me?

Announcer: Yes.

MS: And so therefore, he was essential to us in terms of continuing treatment.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: The day he was murdered, two days before he was murdered Charles Schumer and the National Caucus of Labor Committees created an attack, a verbal media attack as well as a mass rally to create a diversion of energy from the Lincoln Detox program. The day he was killed, the night he was killed, they had just attacked our clinic, physically. And anyone in the historical period would know that a National Caucus of Labor Committees had … tight tactics. They would just jump on the people, would beat them with nunchakus. That was their modus operandi. And so the day that Richard Taft was killed Peter Borne who was Reagan’s . . . I mean. . . I’m sorry. . . Carter’s East Coast Regional Campaign Manager, and the survey of the International Acupuncture availability for drug addiction, came to the clinic. He was the one. . . he was there was Richard Taft’s body was found. You want to know who Richard Borne was, I mean . . . Borne, his father was the person in Grenada who owned the American Medical University over there, who called in the troops saying that the Americans were under attack. So his son was there the same day that. . . Richard Taft was murdered. Now the murder was he was shot up with drugs in the back of the auditorium. That’s how he died. So that was to discredit the Acupuncture clinic as if the doctors of the clinic was drug addicts.

Announcer: Right, right. That he O.D.’ed

MS: And now, even if you accept the fact that he used drugs, which we don’t, why would he use it in the back of the auditorium. And die. Very shaky circumstances. Another great man that was killed, associated with the Lincoln Detox program was a man by the name of Stanley Cohen. A fantastic lawyer. This man had won every case that we had from Lincoln Detox. BLA cases, cases dealing with rights of the welfare clients, workers rights. He had defended Assata Shakur from three major trials. He was getting ready to go into Jersey for the last and final trial, because Assata Shakur was never convicted of the things that they allegedly were looking for her for. She was convicted for defending herself against an assassination plot on the New Jersey Turnpike which killed my brother Zayd Shakur and imprisoned Sundiata Coli. That last trial, just before we were going into that last trial, they found Stanley Cohen O.D.’ed on cocaine. He was the best attorney that the clinic had and that the revolutionaries had at that time, not famous like the rest of them.

Announcer: Okay. Now, we’ve covered so much. It’s been so fascinating.

MS: The reason why I’m covering all of this is because when you read about me and the Big Dance or you read about my POW position in the courts and the stand I take on international laws relates to our struggle. When I say that I’m a prisoner of war, I’m talking about low intensity warfare. I’m talking about a warfare that has been sanctioned as legitimate war by Protocols 1 and 2 of the International UN Convention. You follow me?

Announcer: Yeah.

MS: And I’m saying that we have to recognize that our suffering cannot be passed off as criminal. Follow me?. . .violation. I am part of a liberation movement. I accept that. I accept the fact that the United States government has waged war on us as a people and I believed in my actions are part of resistance to that war. Consequently, I am catching as a prisoner of war. Do you follow me?

Announcer: Yes.

MS: And so when I tell you what the war was like. When I talk to you about acupuncture, and I talk to about healing and I talk to you about legal work, and I talk to you about welfare work, that work is work that must be considered war work. Do you follow me?

Announcer: Right.

MS: Because if we are to save ourselves, we must be clear about what we’re dealing with. The lack of clarity creates the confusion. Do you follow me?

Announcer: Right.

MS: And so I give you this whole background because when you read about me or when they say things. . . I mean most of the time they don’t like talking about me because they can’t make me a classic criminal. They can’t make me a petty thief. You see. They have to deal with the whole, you can’t deal with the part. And so when we talk about all the ??, Abdul Majid of the Queens Two and Bashir Hameed. These men worked on housing. They worked for better housing in areas like Chicago and New York and Detroit and Philadelphia and Boston. We know what it is to have cold water flats. We know what it is to have rats and roaches and the landlord not coming taking care of that. More tropical areas might not understand the significance of fighting landlords and slumlords. You follow me?

Announcer: Uh huh.

MS: But these brothers, that’s the work they did in the community. And so now they are in jail fighting for a new trial for allegedly killing the policemen. You got Mumia in Philadelphia who was a radio personality, a person who dealt with the media, who gave the news, who dealt with the arts of African people, New African people. He’s getting ready. They are trying to execute him for defending himself against a policeman. Now how can you execute a political prisoner, a prisoner of war. You can’t do that and not violate the treaties of war. When you look at what’s going on with African National Congress (ANC) and the Pretoria government right now. The release of prisoners, the phases of release of prisoners. And this is why we must save Mumia, because if we allow him. . . allow them to kill Mumia, execute Mumia all of our future will be executed in pursuant of political struggle. When in other countries, prisoners of war are put in detention camps and saved until the negotiation happens.

Announcer: Well I find that in this country most people say Aprisoners of war, well you must be talking about those people that Ross Perot is talking about or something like there aren’t any prisoners of war or political prisoners in this country. I think that’s probably the myth that we have to dispel.

MS: Well it’s a myth because our movement, our people who deal with the media, do not our interpret our situations properly. So sure, if there’s only one war that people know about, the war against Saddam Hussein, then that’s the only war they’re going refer to. The war against drugs, Noriega. Then that’s the only war they’re going to refer to. So, we have to understand and we can’t charge genocide, we can’t demand reparations if we don’t realize that we can’t say at the same time that the existence of New African people is a war-like existence inside an oppressive colonized situation.

Announcer: Yes. You know that it seems to me along with the concept of being in war is the concept of nationhood. And when we talk about the concept of nationhood, in context of black people, New African people, we’re talking about a land base on this country. I wonder if you will tell us. . . if you could just elaborate for me how through your struggle you came to become a New African. What compelled you, what were the things that compelled you to identify yourself as such.

MS: Let me just say. You can’t put the cart before the horse.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: Right?

Announcer: Yeah.

MS: The issue is, are we at a state of conflict. If we are at a state of conflict, what is going to be the solution.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: You have to first accept there is a conflict. If you don’t accept there is a conflict, then you can’t fathom a separate nation. And if you do, it’s egotistical. Well I want my own. It’s without basis. But if you understand that we do not coexist in a vacuum, that we are in a life and death struggle. That the history of us being brought here and how we are treated since we’ve been here, demands that we come up with some formula to resolve this contradiction or else our condition, our condition and our circumstances might be the cause of the fall of all humanity on the planet earth. Because we must be free. Now, everybody doesn’t agree with that scenario. You follow me?

Announcer:Yeah that’s true.

MS: Some people believe that we can formulate a better living and life condition by participating in an integrated political and economic cultural system. Now, I do not say that they’re not revolutionaries. If they are hell bent on changing and changing the rights of people and forcing this government and developing a new government that integrates everybody into an equal formation and rights for everybody, well then all praises due to Allah. Fine. It still does not deal with the question: where do we find ourselves as New African people brought here as slaves. Okay?

Announcer: Right.

MS: But even in that society I will co-exist because you allow me to have my own culture or at least try to find where I’m going. You follow me?

Announcer: Yes.

MS: But, I contend that Utopia or that possibility for the last 150 years has not come to be. And in the process, we have been dying, dying, dying, dying, dying. And in order for us to understand what it is that we were fighting for, we must label what we’re for, and I’m fighting for a nation. A nation of New African people, not exclusively, but conclusively our nation that develops a culture that deals with our experience and that a culture that will allow the exercise, creativity, the potential of every man, woman and child that enters our nation. So, I come to that because I understood that I have to know why I’m fighting and might die. Why I sacrifice.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: People come to it for different reasons. You follow me?

Announcer: Yeah.

MS: And so we can intellectualize it. We can talk about what Malcolm talked about that all struggle is fought for land. The Turkish struggle, the struggle that you see in Europe and in the Soviet Union is a struggle for national identity. The different nations in the Soviet Union feel that they must have their own land base, they must make their own decisions, and formulate their own policies as it relates to other peoples in the world. And that was the mighty Soviet Union. So are you saying that that is not possible in America? And if it is possible, it’s going to be a war of Armageddon. Well I might agree with you. But it does not take away from the fact that you must know why your fighting and why you’re sacrificing and why you might die. You can’t be vague about that. ‘Cause what we’re struggling for is the control of the natural resources. And what you saw in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq was a struggle to take a piece of the natural resources that has escaped the U.S. Imperialist’s powers because the emergence of territory nationalism.

Announcer: Okay. Now, let me ask you this, I’ve heard about the Shakur family. I mean, I’ve heard a lot of beautiful, positive things about. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about how that. . . what that family is or that connection is. Could you?

MS: Yeah.

Announcer: I mean, it’s out of curiosity. I just heard a little bit about it.

MS: The Shakur family extends from a man by the name of Aba Saladin Shakur. Aba Saladin Shakur was responsible for fathering ?? Shakur, Zayd Malik Shakur, myself, Assata Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Abdul Majid, Malika Majid and many other New Africans who were part of the Republic of New Africa and the Black Panther Party and we were of the Shakur tribe. A very . . . Abba Shakur was one of the loyal members of the OAU and the Muslim Mosque Incorporated and a close associate of Brother Macolm Shabazz.

Announcer: Okay. Now, I understand your brother Tupac Shakur is . . . raises some consciousness through his records. As a matter of fact, I heard his last record. It was great.

MS: Yeah. Tupac is my son.

Announcer: Wow, Great, no kidding.

MS: He is being attacked by the powers that be because of his own individuality, his own message and ways of demonstrating how our lives, the absence of his extended family, me, Lumumba, Zayd, his mother a great woman, Afeni, one of the only two women in the Panther 21 case, who defended herself during the Panther 21 case and won. She was also a very key figure in the national COINTELPRO Litigation and Research formulation. A fantastic worker in housing and one of the key supporters of political prisoners and prisoners of war during the 1970’s. We understand that our children and a lot of things that men. . . you know it’s interesting that up, ’cause we just been talking in the family about how we’re going to handle the ?? confrontation. Let us be very clear, it is always admirable to have your children believe what you believe. It is always the legacy you like to continue. You feel like you commit yourself, your sacrifices so that they will know, and we have many children. Many of our children, the X-Clan is Sonny Carson’s son brother Lumumba. A great comrade. We grew all . . . this is all our family. But they all have seen what low intensity war means. My other son, little Mutulu is involved . . . was involved in the Toni Toni Toni thing, now him and his brother are together.

Announcer: Okay.

MS: Yeah. But we see is that many of our children suffer in ways that is yet to be analyzed from the intensity of the war that we have been struggling against. And because our community has not accepted that as a reality and because we are in jail. We are not able to give our family what you might give, not you personally, but they might be able to do in the confines of their home and in founding the culture and in going back to the Egyptology and the history of the Nile and the great cultural lessons that our children are getting. They always seem to forget to give the real, or research the struggle, the contemporary struggle that a major part of our people played a part in, in the ’50s, ‘60, ’70s and ’80s and ’90s. And because we forget that our children who are directly connected to the intensity of the war are constantly evaluating the consequences.

Announcer: I see.

MS: And the way that they respond to the repression, oppression, sometimes might not be what we want them to do. But we, we have begun to understand what the residue of war means. Just like the people, the fathers and mothers in Angola who’s children have been shooting their mothers and shooting their fathers at the orders of Savimbi. Just like in South Africa where necklaces was required to rid the townships of informers. Just like the killings and beatings of young kids that are in the ANC and PAC. We will have to see in another generation how that has affected ?? ??, how that affected the masses of people. Are we immune to life and death. Does that mean we lose our passion for living. Is that why we see the killing of old ladies and the drive by shootings of innocent children and the lyrics. . . you know, explaining phenomena heretofore not connected to the principals of our community. We must make that analysis and when you make that analysis I think that the audience will agree that we have a serious problem and you cannot call it genetic like their trying to evaluate our children and say that we are violence prone. And if we allow that you going to allow the gas chambers. If you allow every child to be fingerprinted and foot printed, you’re going to allow the gas chambers. If you do not understand that the Tuskegee experiment about the sex allowing men to walk around with syphilis for 30 and 40 years and then we come up with AIDS. If you don’t see it, I mean, you know. . .

Announcer: Yeah, what can you say?

MS: It’s nothing. . .so you know we all go to the next level with a different understanding. So yeah, those are our children and, you know, KRS1 and MC Light and all of the Rappers, brother Prince and all of these people are yelling out what they see as a political reality. But for lack of a structure and you have to accept the fact that Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are overtly courting and supporting Ice T and Ice Cube and rightfully they should, they should. And say you got to admire that, but we must do the same. Not we meaning separate from the Nation of Islam but a non-religious formation must purely embrace and support and protect the ?? of the youth of today.

Announcer: Wow. It’s been just fantastic having you on the air. I really hope we can do this again sometime. It has been. . . you know we talk. . . I talk about it on the air, the history that you didn’t get from Eyes on the Prize.

MS: Oh no question.

Announcer: You know what I’m saying.

MS: But it’s a good foundation. It’s a good foundation. I think what is missing from Eyes on the Prize is the filler. How did Willy Ricks get to. . .you know. . .Black Power. And how did the struggle between SNCC develop and. . . you know. . .how did the love that you see between Martin and Kwame even though they disagreed practically.

Announcer: Yeah. yeah.

MS: I think it’s important to see that when the Deacons for Defense were securing the men and women marching from Montgomery to Mississippi that they were being protected by the Deacons for Defense. That was a capitulation on Martin’s behalf that security was needed at some point. So everybody was growing. You know. It’s an evolutionary process. And we have to analyze that. One of the things that it made clear is that we had to clearly define what it is we want. Non-violence cannot be an objective, it can be a strategy but it can’t be an objective.

Announcer: Okay, Brother. We’re about to sign off right now ’cause I’m about to run out of time in about 2 minutes. If there is any final message that you like to shout out the Chicago land audience and who ever else this may go out to.

MS: Yes. I’d just like to say that I’ve met some great men that have come out of Chicago, that have been in prison. This is my first time in prison. I think that we need . . . all the communities need to come closer together. I think we have to realize that we must support our political prisoners. We must internationalize our support for our political prisoners. We must make that a requirement for our support for other causes because all other causes support their political prisoners. It is not suspicion for the whole half of America to raise up for Nelson Mandela and not raise up for Sekou Odinga and Mumia Abu Jamal and Geronimo Pratt. We must see our struggle in its proper context and we must see the severity of it. And we must have more love for each other. And we must stop being afraid to be in the community offering the solution and deal with it completely and decisively.

Announcer:, All right, Brother. It’s been good having you on the air.

MS: Okay.

Announcer: Free the land.

MS: Free the land and the man.

Announcer: Okay. Bye bye. All right brothers and sisters, that was sure inspirational. Man, some type of history, huh. I’m going to be clearing the airways here…

 

Haki Kweli Shakur August Third Collective NAPLA NAIM

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The July 26th Movement Cuba 🇨🇺 Long Live The Revolucion

26 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by newafrikan77 in Uncategorized

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Fidel Castro is seen here wearing a 26-7-53 arm band which is the symbol for the July 26 Movement, the date of the Moncada Barracks attack.

The date of the Moncada Barracks attack, July 26, 1953, would give Fidel Castro the name of his organization, the 26th of July movement, and would become the most sacred date of communist Cuba. And, speaking of sacredness, why did Fidel Castro choose the 26th of July for the commencement of his Revolution? Sources tell us Fidel chose July 26 because the patron saint of the city of Santiago de Cuba was the Apostle James the Elder. In medieval Spanish tradition he was resurrected as Santiago the Moorslayer, the avenging angel of the Spanish knights during the Reconquista, as well as the charging fury that led the indomitable conquistadores of Hernán Cortes when battling the Aztecs of Mexico.

The saint was honored every July 25, which also coincided with the end of the sugar harvest, hence the day of the most joyous celebration in Santiago de Cuba. Fidel Castro, “the new Moorslayer, would destroy Batista.” Indeed, Fidel had told his Ortodoxo friend, José Pardo Llada, after Batistas bloodless March 10, 1952 coup d’état in which Batista had seized the government, “We have got to kill that Negro.”

It is of interest that Fidel has admitted in moments of candor that the Moncada attack was carried out for sensationalism to stir up the public and to begin his Revolution with a splash. The fact is that despite the infamous Batista coup of March 10, 1952, Cuba was and remained prosperous and at peace. There was no popular protests or public outcry, except for the measured protests by the intellectuals chiefly in Havana. Fidel, then, had to do something spectacular to get the people’s attention and rally them against Batista. In Fidel’s view, the Moncada Barracks attack was “a gesture which would set an example for the people of Cuba.”

 

Haki Kweli Shakur 7-26-52 ADM Talks Scientific Socialism ATC- NAPLA NAIM MOI

 

On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro, along with his brother Raúl, led an attack on a remote outpost, the Moncada Barracks, in Oriente province, the easternmost province of Cuba. As discussed above, the fortuitous day was chosen after a major celebration in Santiago de Cuba. He expected Batista’s soldiers to be drunk and stuporous when his band of revolutionaries would surprise them at the crack of dawn. He had 160 men, which included as mentioned, his brother Raúl, Abel and Haydée Santamaría, and several others like Juan Almeida, who would become better known as the Revolution unfolded. Fidel Castro and the principal group of assailants were to attack the main post in the barracks.

In the meantime, the doctor in the group with Abel Santamaría and the two women, Haydée Santamaría and Melba Hernández, were to secure the infirmary. But everything went wrong. In the lead vehicle, Ramiro Valdés encountered one of the guards and smashed his face in with the butt of his rifle. The vanguard of the group surprised the sentries, who, nevertheless, were able to warn the garrison. They suffered eight deaths in the ensuing gunfight. Fidel Castro did not even enter the compound. In the infirmary, the small group viciously killed the sleeping soldiers, accounting for the majority of the 22 enemy casualties.

Abel and the women were captured by Batista forces, and the soldiers, upon discovering the slaughter of their sick and wounded comrades in the infirmary, retaliated. Abel was tortured and brutally killed while in police custody. He would later become an icon of the Revolution. In the chaos that followed, 56 revolutionaries were killed, the majority of them after their capture, in retaliation for the infirmary massacre.

Years later, Abels sister Haydée, a member of the ruling nomenklatura, would commit suicide while working in Castro’s communist government as director of the States official publishing house, Casa de las Américas. She had become disillusioned, it seemed, with the course of the Revolution and her equally failed marriage with playboy and compañero Armando Hart, Minister of Culture.

Comandantes Juan Almeida and Ramiro Valdés would remain in Fidel’s revolutionary hierarchy for decades(Almeida as Communist Party apparatchik and Valdés working in the dreaded internal State security apparatus). Valdés, along with the dissolute quartet of Osmony Cienfuegos, Sergio del Valle, José Abrantes, and Manuel Piñeiro (“Red Beard”), would put Batista police and military chiefs such as the Salas Cañizares, the Masferrers, the Mirabales, and Estéban Ventura to shame in using effective repressive tactics to squelch opposition and spread terror.

And yet, Batista forces in that remote outpost fought back and defeated Fidel and his ragtag band. Fidel, who stayed safely behind during the attack, was also protected after his arrest and apprehension by the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Mons. Enrique Pérez Serantes. Fidel and the members of his band were rounded up, tried, and convicted. Fidel’s failed legal defense of himself at his trial on October 16, 1953 became a major revolutionary document, History will absolve me. While in prison, Fidel accused his wife Mirta Diaz Balart, who he abandoned along with their infant son, of collaborating with the dictator’s Internal Ministry. Mirta would be forced to divorce Fidel.

Interestingly, before the Moncada Barracks attack, Fidel had visited Batista at his palatial home at least twice. On one occasion, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Rafael Diaz Balart, Fidel had promised the dictator that he would support his government. Before that, when Fidel and Mirta went on their honeymoon in 1949 to the Bronx, New York, they had both received a $500 bill from Senator Batista as a wedding present.

For his part, Batista, the corrupt and vengeful dictator, released Fidel Castro and his men from prison in 1955 as a gesture of national reconciliation in a general amnesty release. Fidel and his men had been treated exceptionally well. While Fidel and his conspirators were sentenced by the presiding judge specifically to be incarcerated in the dreaded old fortress prison of La Cabaña to serve his sentence of fifteen years, the Cuban Minister of the Interior, Ramón Hermida, ordered them, instead, sent to the newest Modelo Prison on Isla de Pinos. There, they were classified as political prisoners, and rather than being treated harshly and inhumanely, they were treated with the same respect and special privileges that Batista gave to “political prisoners” at the time. As we shall see, when the tables are turned and Fidel is doing the incarcerating, things would be totally different.

Yes, the Moncada assailants who survived the attack and the immediate vengeful aftermath were treated favorably with special privileges following their prosecution and conviction. While in prison, Fidel and his conspirators were given books and magazines and were allowed to keep subversive political literature, including books of Marx, Lenin, and other revolutionary subversives.

Quirk notes that while at the modern Modelo Prison, Fidel was more influenced by Nikolai Ostrovskis How the Steel Was Tempered and Hewlett Johnson’s (the “Red Dean” of Canterbury), The Secret of Soviet Strength, than by the more lengthy and soporific works of Marx and Lenin. Thus, Fidel had ample time to expand his egalitarian, collectivist sentiments and transform them into solid, communist ideology. Quirk sees Fidel and his writings and speeches as being those of an idealist egalitarian who admired FDR’s New Deal and who only later, after the Revolution, pragmatically or for personal reasons, became a socialist. “Because,” writes Quirk, “he was open to the moral, if not intellectual appeal of Marxism.”

Any careful study of Fidel Castros pronouncements during his years in prison in 1953-1954 and his actions thereafter, 1955-1958, reveal that the young autocratic revolutionary was carefully adding details to his elitist mentality and collectivist frame of mind. He was becoming an authoritarian, whether fascist or communist, only time would tell, but by the 1950s, fascism was certainly on the decline, whereas communism was on the rise.

In addition to the works of communist authors, Fidel Castro treasured Benito Mussolini’s volumes and avidly read the works of Spanish Falangist José Antonio Primo de Rivera, both of whom are said to be on the far right side of the political spectrum. Let me explain.

Since the turbulent days of the early 1790s, when the Jacobins and Girondins held the raging debates at the National Convention during the French Revolution, the meaning of “right” and “left” which was dictated by the seating arrangement of the delegates, has changed considerably. Then, it was moderate versus radical in the ideological political spectrum. Today, it supposedly separates liberal from conservative.

As Fidel’s choice of political books demonstrates, collectivist writings appeal to authoritarians because birds of a feather tend to flock together. All forms of authoritarianism and collectivism – whether national socialism (Nazism), communism, or their seemingly milder cousins, corporativism and fascism – are, in reality, all nuances of the same ideology of the left side of the political spectrum, where the collective power of the State becomes all powerful and supreme over the individual.

On the other end of the spectrum, we find anarchy, the extreme condition of having no government at all, which occupies the far, extreme right. Imagine then, a horseshoe with an accentuated bend, the ends almost meeting at the extreme right and left. The gap, a narrow one, can be easily traversed from one side to the other by the extremisms of a police State on the one hand or rampant terrorism and chaos on the other. The end result is anarcho-tyranny. Anarchy, tyranny, or their confluence are neither conducive to economic prosperity nor political freedom.

In the stable middle of the horseshoe where the bend occurs, lay the blessings of constitutional rule, as is the case in the United States and was the case, to some extent, in Cuba with the constitutions of 1901 and 1940. Restoration of the Constitution of 1940 is what Fidel promised the Cuban people, but never delivered, and never intended to deliver.

Whether Fidel’s Marxism was inchoate or inveterate in 1955 or 1958, or even 1959 or 1961, in the final analysis, becomes moot. In the end it does not matter for how long he deceived the Cuban people. The reality is that he betrayed the Cuban people and did not reveal his Fidel Castro enters Santa Clara, CubaMarxism-Leninism until he was fully entrenched in power with his State Security apparatus equally and firmly in place. No matter how much the United States had tried to appease him, tolerated his insults, or even forgiven the nationalization of U.S. properties (i.e., expropriations without compensation), in the end, Fidel would have turned to the Soviets. Deep inside, he had become, like Raúl and Ché, a dedicated communist.

Communism allows autocrats to maintain power over the individual citizens. It is a symbiotic relationship. Fidel Castro needed communist tactics to seize power, and the communists needed a populist autocrat to accomplish their objective. They worked hand in glove and wanted similar ends totalitarianism and collectivism while crushing individual freedoms and holding onto power.

To camouflage his true intentions, Fidel allied himself to Cuban politicians and personalities as long as they were useful to him to make himself more acceptable, to emanate, to effuse the aura of respectability he had always yearned for and desired. For example, after the Revolution, there was Manuel Urrutia, who had been a judge voting favorably at the trial of Granma survivors captured by Batistas soldiers, and Prime Minister José Miro Cardona, a former law professor at the University of Havana. After Fidel took power, he would force Miro Cardona out of office as Prime Minister, and the good judge, Urrutia, out of the presidency. Fidel would eventually assume the duties and capacities of both of these offices. Before that, he allied with and took money from former foes, like Justo Carrillo and even mortal enemies like Prío Socarrás, in his quest for power. And he never kept any accounting of the monies received.

The truth is the Cuban people did not know Fidel, and what they (and the world) learned came mostly from the image Herbert Matthews created after he visited the Sierra Maestra, and the articles he wrote for The New York Times and faithfully reprinted in Bohemia, Cuba’s popular and largest circulation weekly magazine, as well as the photographs of Matthews and Castro jovially conversing in the Sierra Maestra. To the very end, until it was too late, Cuba’s and America’s major magazines and newspapers kept the Cuban people benighted about Fidel’s intentions, his past shenanigans, and his authoritarian proclivities. The fact is Fidel was always an autocrat, and he became more so as the years passed, although he was careful to conceal it from the Cuban people.

After their imprisonment, Fidel and his comrades were kept in the hospital wing of the Modelo Prison away from common criminals. There, Fidel was permitted to organize and conduct a school for his fellow insurgents where political economy, philosophy, and history were taught. Not until the audacious prisoners insulted President Batista on an official State visit to the Isla de Pinos prison did the situation change, and their privileges were withdrawn. By then, Fidel and his prison conspirators would have less than eight months left to spend in prison. Moreover, while incarcerated, Fidel continued to have friends in the press and on the radio air waves who helped to keep his name alive with the populace – friends like Luis Conte Agüero and José Pardo Llado, and in Bohemia, writers like Jorge Mañach and Ernesto Montaner, as well as the magazines influential chief editor, Miguel Angel Quevedo.

And, of course, there was ex-communist Carlos Franqui, who helped Fidel Castro as a journalist and radio broadcaster beginning in 1955 and who would later head clandestine Radio Rebelde from the Sierra Maestra. After the triumph of the Revolution, Franqui would also edit the official organ Revolución. All of these capable journalists would later see the light and be forced into exile.

In 1955, when Ramón Hermida, Batistas Minister of the Interior, found that Fidel was despondent in prison because of the break up of his marriage with Mirta Balart, he went to see young Castro to cheer him up. Fidel had found that Mirta had a sinecure job with his Ministry, and this was not only an embarrassment to Castro but also an actual “betrayal.” Hermida reassured him saying, “Don’t be impatient. Youre still a young man. Keep calm. Everything will pass.” Could you imagine the sanguinary and dissolute Ramiro Valdés or José Abrantes or any of Fidel’s henchmen in the Ministry of the Interior, visiting a prison cell to give hope and encouragement to a gusano (worm), serving time in Castros jails after leading a counterrevolutionary insurrection?

What a difference from the way Castros jails treat thousands of political prisoners today! Allow me to digress and mention here the barbaric and ghastly treatment of Cuban physician, Oscar Elias Biscet, a prisoner of conscience who only protested human rights abuses in Cuba. He pleaded for Castro’s communist regime to honor the U.N. Charter of Human Rights. He was thrown in jail after a sham trial. Requiring medical attention, he has been denied medical care, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement.

Dr. Biscet completed his sentence in 2002 (incarcerated from November 3, 1999 October 31, 2002) only to be rearrested and incarcerated on December 6, 2002, in another of Castros waves of repression. In April 2003, Dr. Biscet was one of 75 dissidents given long prison sentences (25 years) for engaging in what the communist dictator called “an attempt to undermine the social order.” His brutal treatment and suffering continues, but he remains unbroken.

This article is extracted from Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002) by Dr. Miguel Faria.

Dr. Faria is a former professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History at Mercer University School of Medicine. He is the author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995), Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997), and Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002). His books are available at http://www.haciendapub.com.

This article may be cited as: Faria MA. Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement. Newsmax media. July 27, 2004. Available from: http://www.haciendapub.com/articles/fidel-castro-and-26th-july-movement

2 Months after Cambridge Maryland Rebellion H Rap Brown Captured Taken to Richmond Virginia City Jail then Extradited Back to Maryland

24 Monday Jul 2017

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F i v e Cambridge Negroes also were indicted on charges stemming from the racial dis- orders. Brown now is awaiting ex- tradition to Maryland from Richmond, Va., where a hear- ing will be held Aug. 23. He is free on $10,000 bond set by Virginia authorities after his arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation two days after the riot.

Black power militant H. Rap Brown, wanted in Maryland on charges of inciting … At the request of Alexandria officials, he was taken to the city jail in Richmond, Va., 100 miles to the City Jail!

Haki Kweli Shakur 7-24-52 ADM

July 24 1967 Cambridge Maryland Rebellion, Cambridge Non-Violent Action Committee (CNAC) & Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee 1963-1967

24 Monday Jul 2017

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In the midst of ongoing fist fights, rock throwing and gun battles between white segregationists and African American seeking civil rights in 1963 Cambridge, Maryland, there was an astonishing phenomenon.

White workers sought black leadership to aid the struggle to organize and strengthen interracial unions in the town.

Cambridge Struggle Breaks Mold

The Cambridge, Maryland. civil rights struggle from 1963-67 involved the longest occupation by armed forces of a U.S. town since Reconstruction and presents a far different narrative than that of the Civil Rights movement taught in schoolbooks today.

Early on, the leadership deviated from other concurrent civil rights struggles for legal equality by taking up social justice demands such as good jobs, housing, schools and health care. It was also different because it was an indigenous struggle to the town as opposed to one orchestrated by national rights leaders.

The leadership of the Cambridge Non-Violent Action Committee (CNAC) also did not reject armed self-defense. CNAC, which affiliated with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was the only chapter led by adults and probably the only one whose principal strategist was a woman.

Much has been written about Cambridge elsewhere and a good blow-by-blow account can be found in Civil War on Race Street by Peter B. Levy.

However, less well-known is how in the midst of violent racial clashes between African Americans and whites in the town, white and black workers united behind the local civil rights leaders in their long quest to form labor unions there.

Background

Frederick Douglas: 1870 ca.
Frederick Douglas, abolitionist leader in the 19th century, was enslaved near Cambridge.
Cambridge, located on the Choptank River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was the trading center for the plantations that surrounded the area. The abolitionist and political leader Frederick Douglas was born on a plantation about 25 miles north of there. The underground railroad conductor Harriet Tubman was born about 10 miles south of Cambridge.

 

 

During most of the first half of the twentieth century, the Phillips Packing Company (a vegetable processing and packinghouse) dominated the town and surrounding farms that provided produce for the plant.

Harriett Tubman: 1911
Harriet Tubman, abolitionist, underground railroad conductor, and rights advocate, also escaped slavery near Cambridge.
Although Maryland is a border state, the economic and social relations were more akin to the Deep South. Racial segregation and prejudice were intense and poverty among both black and white workers was prevalent.

A promising interracial attempt at achieving economic justice began in 1937 when several thousand workers staged a strike at Phillips to form an interracial labor union in the midst of Jim Crow Cambridge.

The strike was defeated by owner Albanus Phillips who set up a company union to ward off the left-leaning CIO union.

A ten-year campaign by the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing & Allied Workers, CIO followed, but also ended in defeat. The union lost a close representation election supervised by the federal government in 1947 in the midst of accusations of communist leadership against the national cannery union.

Union Business Cambridge Strike 1937 – Hi-Res
1937 Phillips Packing Company strike.
Phillips’ company union became the hiring hall for nearly all the plants in Cambridge. Workers were screened for any independent union sympathies. Phillips remained a source of employment for black workers who generally had lower paying and less desirable jobs than white workers until the company’s decline in the mid to late 1950s.

Cambridge Movement Starts

By 1962 the Civil Rights movement was picking up steam around the country and an initial movement by students attempted to desegregate public facilities in Cambridge, a town of about 11,000 people at that time of whom about one-third were African American.

The initial protests were through peaceful picketing and sit-ins. A number of white racists attacked demonstrators but police often arrested the protesters.

These tactics produced few results until 1963 when a woman from a prominent black family in town, Gloria Richardson, was chosen to head up the movement and CNAC.

One of the first things Richardson did was conduct a survey of the black community to help determine priorities. Data were collected door-to-door and analyzed by faculty at Swarthmore College. In a 1994 interview by Peter Szabo, Richardson recalled,

I forget now which was first. What it ultimately meant to us was that we were going to have to attack the whole thing [effects of segregation] at one time-the housing, the health, because it made very little difference. I think maybe health may have come first and housing second, and schools, but it wasn’t that much difference when those compilations came back.

Demand Equality, Jobs & Freedom in Cambridge MD: 1963
1963 Cambridge MD picket line demanding jobs, equality and freedom.
Much to the chagrin of established black leaders, Richardson changed the focus of the protests to demand both economic and social equality—targeting discrimination in employment, poor wages, inferior schools and health care and segregated facilities.

As more militant tactics–such as a boycott of white owned businesses—and new demands were employed, white resistance also increased.

Two 15-year-old students, Dwight Cromwell and Dinez White, were arrested for praying outside a segregated facility. Both were sentenced to indeterminate sentences in a juvenile facility—meaning they could be held for up to six years.

The sentences outraged the black community and increasingly large marches were held that were in turn met by white mobs. State troopers were present, but mostly sided with the white demonstrators.

Armed Self-Defense

At this point, the philosophy of non-violent resistance moved to a philosophy of armed self-defense of the black community in Cambridge. Herbert St. Clair, a prominent African American businessman active in the movement said, according to Peter Levy,

We are not going to initiate violence. But if we are attacked, we are not going to turn the other cheek.

On June 13, 1963 another mass civil rights march was held, this time with armed black men protecting the demonstrators and setting up a perimeter around the black community.

The following night fighting broke out between whites and blacks that included an exchange of gunshots and several people were wounded. Some white businesses were set on fire and when police attempted to enter the black ward, they were driven back by rocks and gunshots fired into the air.

Gloria Richardson: 1964 ca # 1
Gloria Richardson in an undated photograph.
Gloria Richardson noted in 1994,

There were some people at SNCC that [saw non-violence] really, almost as a religion, and that whole Gandhi concept. I never saw it as that. I saw it as a tactic, because certainly you couldn’t start out picking up guns running out in the street or you’d be slaughtered.

But, to create as much chaos as you could with it [non-violence], and if violence was perpetuated against you, that as long as there wasn’t a demonstration going on, you had the right to defend yourself.

It was the men that protected the community, and had to lay out in those fields with guns all night. They understood exactly what was going on and so did the women. Those men that thought they could be non-violent enough to go in the marches did. Those that didn’t did other things.

Cambridge Protester Helped from Scene of Beating: 1963
One of six youths beaten by whites during a sit-in is helped away from the scene.
The administration of Gov. Milliard J. Tawes offered a plan of gradual desegregation that was rejected by CNAC. Tawes then sent in the National Guard for three weeks.

Following withdrawal of the Guard, CNAC resumed protests. On July 12th, a mob of whites attacked a half-dozen protesters sitting in at a restaurant. A brawl ensued as black residents fought back. Later that night a white mob attacked another civil rights march.

When night riders attempted to enter black neighborhoods, they were met with gunfire and shots were exchanged. Twelve white people were wounded by gunfire and some white owned-stores were set on fire.

Cambridge Rally Against Indeterminate Sentences: 1963
Protest in the African American section of Cambridge July, 12 1963.
The Baltimore Afro-American wrote:

For what seemed like an eternity the Second Ward [the predominantly African American area] was a replica of the Old West as men and boys of all ages roamed the streets, stood in the shadows, and leaned out of windows with their weapons in full view.

Gov. Tawes sent the National Guard back in, and they remained for almost two years—the longest occupation of any community since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. Civil rights activists staging protests were seized and sent to the Pikesville, Maryland Armory 90 miles away for “protective custody.”

Human Rights, Not White Rights

Guard Moves On Cambridge Rights Protest: 1964
Guard moves to break up protest demanding jobs and aid to low income families February 1964.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy brokered a settlement whereby CNAC would suspend protests in return for an end to segregation in public accommodations, desegregation of public schools, construction of public housing, and implementation of a jobs program funded by the Federal government. Kennedy also worked to free Dwight Cromwell and Dinez White after three months in the juvenile prison.

The agreement broke down almost immediately when the all-white Dorchester Business and Citizens Association filed referendum petitions to overturn the agreement.

CNAC leader Gloria Richardson took a principled, but controversial stance, when she announced that CNAC would not take part in the referendum. She said, according to Theoharis and Woodard,

A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the white power structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights.

In October 1963, the racists won the referendum. In the end the white segregationists had bought nine months of continued legal segregation before the passage of the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Unity from Below

Preventive Detention for Cambridge Rights Protesters: 1964
Cambridge protesters under preventive detention at the Pikesville Armory in February 1964.
The civil rights campaign and the vote had unanticipated effects that threatened the power structure in town in new ways. Poor and working class whites began to seek out civil rights leaders for help.

After the vote failed to end segregation, African American Congressman from New York Adam Clayton Powell arranged for food and other supplies to be delivered to Cambridge.

Richardson remembered in 1994,

The people [authorities] in Cambridge refused to distribute [the food], so the [National] Guard distributed it.

At that time what happened is white folks started calling us on the telephone telling us that they were on welfare and they needed food, but they [racist leaders] had told them that if they went out and got any of that food, or if they saw them on the lines, they were either gonna fire them or take them off welfare or whatever… and that they couldn’t come, and what could they do?

CNAC proceeded to get cars and loaded them up with food … and went and took the food to them. Subsequently, I think they finally got enough nerve to begin to come out.

Interracial Union Organizing

Gloria Richardson brushes off National Guard: 1963
Gloria Richardson unfazed by National Guard during Cambridge civil rights protests.
The fight over segregation also led to the victories in union organizing that had failed in the decade 1937-1947. Richardson related in the 1994 interview,

What had happened was we had gone to a couple of meetings over on the other side of town where union organizers had come down from New York, and we had gone in to fight for black folk. And then when we got there, we ended up fighting for them all, because while there were some black folks in there to stand up and voice their complaints, the white folks would stand but they would come up and just go, ‘Would you tell me about that [the civil rights struggle] …?’

You know, it was weird, it was mind boggling. So then everybody stood up and said, ‘She’s gonna stay.’ So, it’s really very strange because we also were fighting these other things that probably most of them, I would assume most of them, didn’t want to go on, in terms of desegregation.

But that was because black and white people both needed more money and needed a union rather than each of them fighting for the other’s job…. They were working together and they had to come out to the black community in order to meet [at the black Rod & Gun Club]. That was the meat packers union…

The United Packing House Workers of America drive at the Coastal Foods plant (the successor company to Phillips Packing Co.) was successful with the support of CNAC.

Leadership Intertwined

Peter Levy noted how the union leadership and the struggle for civil rights were intertwined.

Leroy Banks spearheaded the organizing campaign inside the Coastal Foods Plant and was subsequently elected head of the local. His wife, Marva Banks, served as CNAC’s first treasurer.

CNAC leader Enez Grubb’s relatives had a history of labor activism dating back to the Phillips plant.

Grubb’s own father quit working at the Phillips Packing Company during World War II because the company union treated German prisoners of war who worked in the plants better than it treated native blacks.

Women Strikers in Cambridge Md.: 1937 – Hi-Res
Some activists had relatives who had been active during the 1937 strike at Phillips.
Still others had relatives who had been active in the 1937 strike at Phillips.

George Cephas had been killed during the 1937 uprising. Gilbert Cephas beame a leader in the local union. Still other civil rights and student activists found work with the UPWA.

“All the Way with UPWA” became a slogan for activists. Civil rights volunteers worked the picket lines during the campaign, helping to convince migratory workers not to cross the picket lines.

After the winning drive at Coastal food, District 6 of the UPWA invited Richardson to their convention in New York City where she was greeted with renditions of civil rights songs. In return, Richardson gave a unequivocal pro-union speech, according to Levy.

Proclaiming that a revived labor movement was one of the keys to uplifting workers, especially African Americans, she [Richardson] pledged her continued cooperation with the union.

The unionization of Coastal was followed with successful campaigns at Maryland Tuna and Chun King.

The UPWA drive aggravated the differences between white “moderates” and CNAC. Those whites, mainly medium and large business owners, saw Cambridge’s non-union status as a boon to businesses. Some prominent African American in town were not happy with the unionization drives either. However, both black and white workers overwhelmingly supported UPWA’s drive for higher wages that in turn addressed issues of inequality.

White Garment Workers Stand with CNAC

Maryland Tuna Plant: 1955 ca. #1
The production line of Maryland Tuna Co. in 1955. The civil rights struggle in Cambridge, Md. led to its unionization in 1964.
In another instance, CNAC took up the plight of garment workers at the Rob Roy factory. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union had negotiated lower rates for Cambridge workers as compared to the Rob Roy facilities in New York City that were doing the same work. Richardson said, according to Faith Holseart,

The Cambridge local had both black and white members, but because of segregation, they didn’t usually meet together. But this time the black trade unionists, with support from white workers, asked us [CNAC] to come to the meetings.

For one large meeting of about two to three hundred people, ILGWU headquarters in New York sent people down who supported the wage discrepancy. In the heat of the conflict over this issue, the New York representatives red-baited me [accused of being a communist] and moved to put me out of the meeting.

When they did that, surprisingly, local white ILGWU members who in the day before civil rights demonstrations probably had been throwing stones at us, got up and said, ‘Oh, no. If she goes, all of us go.’

Richardson remembered in an interview with Joseph Mosnier that the white men in the union were afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation by white authorities in Cambridge and asked CNAC if the black men could speak for them.

CNAC representatives, relating the experiences of SNCC workers assisting a 1963 miners strike in Hazard, Kentucky, inspired the white workers to speak up.

Gloria Richardson: 1964 # 3
Gloria Richardson leading a civil rights march in Cambridge, Md in 1964.
Richardson received a visit from New York ILGWU representatives later that week at her home. She said in her interview with Holseart,

[They] told me they were going to call Jim Forman [the executive secretary of SNCC] and have him stop me from interfering with union business. I said, ‘Jim Foreman is not my boss, and he cannot tell me what to do.’

The union leaders responded, ‘Well somebody must be able to tell you, because you need to just stay out of Rob Roy. This isn’t your business.’ They went to far as to say, ‘And you better be careful.’

I replied, ‘Well you know, we are used to threats here. If you think you can get Jim Foreman to get us to stop, you go right ahead.’ I didn’t hear anything more about that from them.

In these instances, white workers were inspired by the CNAC campaign and recognized the power and leadership that it represented.

Black and white unity was achieved on this level not by Robert Kennedy’s intervention, but by the recognition by white workers that the black struggle for freedom represented new power that could benefit them also.

Aftermath

Following the 1962-64 protests, some federal dollars began to flow into Cambridge for parks, schools, streets, public housing and other projects. However, problems in Cambridge were not erased by the passage of civil rights legislation and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs.

Discrimination continued despite the legal end of segregation. The Cambridge economy was also continuing to slide and African Americans were faring worse in the slumping town than whites.

As protests picked up in 1967 CNAC, now named the Cambridge Black Action Federation, decided to invite H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) to speak on black power. Brown was chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and an outspoken advocate of black power who no longer believed that non-violent change was possible.

CNAC turned to Richardson who had moved to New York City with her new husband in late 1964, but still had relatives living in Cambridge. She knew Brown and invited him to speak in the town.

Brown spoke on July 24, 1967 to a crowd of several hundred people in the African American section of town.

1967 Uprising

H. ‘Rap’ Brown Speaks to Cambridge MD Crowd: 1967
H. ‘Rap’ Brown gives a speech July 24, 1967 to several hundred in Cambridge, Maryland.
Brown gave a fiery speech on black pride, a critique of U.S. white society and willingness of black people to fight for a better life.

Brown stayed in town for another hour or two and at one point escorted a young woman home along with several others. A shot was fired at Brown who was hit by a shotgun pellet, then gunfire began to be exchanged between white gunmen and black shooters.

At one point a carload of whites sped through the black section of town indiscriminately firing weapons.

Scene of the Pine Street Fire in Cambridge: 1967
Aftermatch of the Pine Street fire in Cambridge, Maryland July 25, 1967.
In the early morning hours, someone set fire to the Pine Street Elementary School in the African American area of town. The white fire department refused to answer the call, and as a result two blocks and 20 buildings in the black section of town burned to the ground.

While the fire was burning, Richardson desperately tried to get help.

I had to end up calling his [National Guard Commander Gelsten’s] wife, who had just talked to him and everything was quiet … I had to finally tell her, ‘My daughter is there, Miss, she’s calling me, the firemen didn’t come in, the coals are flying all over,’ and she finally called him. And then somebody called me from the press and told me that the Guard was on its way….

I think it was finally some people way down, what we consider really racist part of the county, that let them have a fire truck. Because the city wouldn’t.

Throw Away the Key

Guard Arrives in Cambridge: 1967
Maryland National Guard arrives in Cambridge for the third time in four years July 25, 1967.
Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew again mobilized the National Guard and showed up in town the next day saying, “”I hope they pick him [Brown] up soon, put him away and throw away the key.”

Brown was soon charged with inciting to riot, among other charges, and ultimately arrested by the FBI on additional charges of fleeing prosecution and a weapons violation. Brown was scheduled to go to trial on the riot charge in Maryland in March 1970.

On March 9, 1970 two SNCC officials, Ralph Featherstone and William (“Che”) Payne, died on U.S. Route 1 south of Bel Air, Maryland when a bomb on the front floorboard of their car exploded, completely destroying the car and dismembering both occupants. The next night the Cambridge courthouse was bombed.

Brown disappeared for 18 months before being arrested on unrelated charges. The Cambridge “inciting to riot” charge was ultimately dropped.

Cambridge Afterwards

State Police Patrol Cambridge Streets: 1967
Maryland state police patrol Cambridge, Maryland July 25, 1967.
The five-year mass movement in Cambridge ended in the aftermath of the 1967 uprising. Federal representatives offered aid, but Agnew refused to accept it. Richardson remembered that,

Anything else that was left over from the two years or three years before-got agreement on it from Washington … Agnew stopped it. That was it. They did not control him like they did Tawes, and it fell apart at that point. … I think the [federal] government was sincere at that time, but it was just that Agnew said no. He hated Rap Brown. He hated Stokely Carmichael.

Richardson remembered that when Agnew came to town the day after the fire, he maligned all African Americans in the town.

[He said] ‘These were thugs.’ He made the mistake of standing up and calling them thugs. That’s after they’d been up all night long trying to put out the fires.

Agnew went on to further his career seeking to pit white voters against African Americans. Ironically he had initially been elected governor of Maryland when liberals flocked to him in 1964 in opposition to Democrat candidate George Mahoney’s slogan, “Your home is your castle,” a call for resistance to open housing legislation.

Agnew was chosen by Richard Nixon to be his vice-presidential candidate in 1968 and became the mouthpiece for Nixon’s “law and order” crusade against left-leaning African Americans and white antiwar activists.

The hypocrisy of the Nixon/Agnew campaign was revealed when Agnew was forced to resign the vice-presidency in 1973 because he was facing corruption charges and Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 after his cover-up of crimes committed during the Watergate scandal.

The Pine Street neighborhood, once thriving, has never recovered. As the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries became increasingly polluted and overfished and economic changes made vegetable production less profitable, most of the packinghouses throughout Maryland closed.

While legal segregation ended, economic conditions and opportunities for the vast majority of African Americans in Cambridge improved briefly in the mid 1960s, but little over the subsequent decades.

Author’s Notes

As the Black Lives Matters movement today increasingly makes connections to economic and social repression, it opens the possibility of the movement expanding its influence by taking up the economic and social struggles much in the way Richardson’s CNAC was able to extend its influence and leadership to build more powerful organization.

Unions, besieged today with relentless attacks, have in large part stood on the sidelines of the movement against unwarranted police violence. Perhaps both movements would do well to apply some of the lessons drawn from a small Maryland town some 50 years ago.

The sources for this post include Civil War on Race Street by Peter Levy; Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America by Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard; Hands on the Freedom Plow by Faith Holseart; Transcript of H. “Rap” Brown’s 1967 Cambridge Speech by Lawrence Peskin and Dawn Almes; Oral History Project interview with Gloria Richardson with Joseph Mosnie, 2011; Maryland Historical Magazine, Fall 1994; The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Afro-American among others.

Postscript

H ‘Rap’ Brown at Press Conference: 1967
H. ‘Rap’ Brown at a press conference two days after his Cambridge speech. Bandage from shotgun wound is visible.
Some excerpts of H. Rap Brown’s (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) 1967 speech in Cambridge:

On the word black:

It takes a lot of effort to love black in America. You’ve been told all your life if you’re black, you’re wrong. If you’re black, there’s something wrong with you. They tell you black cows don’t give good milk; black hens don’t lay eggs. Devil’s food cakes. You know, you put on black to go to funerals. When you put on white you go to weddings.

On taking on the white power structure:

They run around and tell you: “Don’t start no fight with the honky pecker `cause you can’t win. He outnumber you. Hell! Don’t you know they always outnumber us? David was outnumbered when he fought Goliath. He was outnumbered. Hell! Daniel in the lion’s den was outnumbered. Moses was outnumbered. All of us is outnumbered. That don’t make no difference.

FBI Wanted Poster for H. ‘Rap’ Brown: 1967
FBI wanted poster for H. Rap Brown following his Cambridge, Maryland speech in 1967.
On looting that occurs during an uprising:

He run around and he talk about black people looting. Hell, he the biggest looter in the world. He looted us from Africa. He looted America from Indians. Man can you tell me about looting? You can’t steal from a thief. This is the biggest thief going.

On President Lyndon Johnson:

Now we’re gonna talk about Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson is the greatest outlaw going. He is a two-gun cracker. He killing black folks here and he killing them in Vietnam. That’s Lyndon Johnson, your President. That’s who he is.

And they talk about how bad Hitler was. At least before Hitler burned the Jews he killed them with gas. Lyndon Johnson is throwing napalm on human beings in Vietnam. Burning them to death. He burning babies. He burning hospitals. He can’t be nothing but an outlaw.

Any time a man sends a plane full of napalm over a village of children, over school houses and blow them up and burn children, believe me, brother, the only reason he do it is because the Viet Cong is black, too.

Closing Remarks:

He’s [white man] been running around here letting them do everything they want. I mean, don’t be trying to love that honkey to death. Shoot him to death. Shoot him to death, brother. ‘Cause that’s what he’s out to do to you.

‘Do to him like he would do to you, but do it to him first.’ Like I said in the beginning, if this town don’t come ‘round, this town should be burned down. It should be burned down, brother.

They going to have to live in the same stuff I live in ’cause I ain’t going to make it no better for them. But do this brother — don’t burn up your own stuff. Don’t tear up your own stuff. Whenever you decide to fight the man, take it to his battleground.

One thing that man respects. It’s money. That’s his god. When you tear down his store, you hit his religion. You hit him right where it hurt him on Sunday. In his pocket. That’s his best friend. In his pocket. So, when you move to get him, don’t tear up your stuff, don’t tear up your brother’s store, hear?

50 Years Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin/ H Rap Brown’s Cambridge Maryland’s Speech July 24 1967

24 Monday Jul 2017

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A Collation of transcripts of a speech given by
H. Rap Brown on July 24, 1967, in Cambridge Maryland by Lawrence Peskin and Dawn Almes, Archival Interns, Maryland State Archives

Note: the following collation is based upon a transcript made by Wayne E. Page which is an appendix to his masters thesis “H. Rap Brown and Cambridge Incident: A Case Study,” University of Maryland, 1970, and is used with his permission. Mr. Page’s transcript was checked against one which appeared in the 1967 Congressional hearings on the Antiriot Bill (H.R. 421), Part 1, pp. 31-36, and a court reporter’s transcription made in 1967 or 1968 found among the papers of Governor Agnew. Bold words are as found in the Page transcription with the differences between it and the court reporter’s transcription immediately following in brackets [ ]. The court reporter’s version has two paragraphs and a sentence of a third at the beginning of the speech which do not appear in the Page or the Congressional transcript. Words in parentheses ( ) are found in the Page transcript but not in the court reporter’s version.
[Black Power. That’s the way to say it. Don’t be scared of these Honkies around here. Say Black Power. I come back a few years later and I still find Race Street out there still dividing the community. That ain’t bad because we want to be by ourselves anyway, we don’t want to be with no animals. A Honkie is an animal. A Cracker is an animal. We don’t need to be with him. There is one thing we want to do. We are going to control our community.

We ain’t going to have the Honkie coming over here and appointing five or six nigger cops to come down here and control our community. That’s what we are going to do. That’s Black Power. That’s what you talk about when you talk about Black Power.]

[A great black man named Winston Hughes wrote a poem one time called A Dream Deferred] A poem went [which said]: “What happens to a dream that were [deferred]? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it fester like a sore [?] — and then run? Or does it sag like a heavy load? Or does it explode?” Uh… that question was never anwered. Detroit answers [ed] that question. Detroit exploded. New York [Newark] exploded. Harlem exploded. Dayton exploded. Cincinnati exploded. It’s time for Cambridge to explode, ladies and gentlemen [baby].

They say [I heard someone up in Dayton once say, they say] “If Dayton don’t come around, we are gonna [going to] burn Dayton down.” Black folks built America. If America don’t come around, we going [should] burn it down, brother. [And] We are going to burn it down if we don’t get our share of it.

It’s [It is] time black folks stopped [to stop] talking about being non-violent `cause we [you] ain’t non-violent towards [to] each other. Every Friday and Saturday you prove that. You cut up more people among your race than any other race.

As for being [If you are going to be] violent, (you) don’t be violent to your brother. Be non-violent in your communities [community] and let it end right there.

“Take your violent [ce] to the hunkies. Take it to the (loud cheering blurred word) [cracker].

(It takes a lot of effort…) It takes a lot of effort to love black in America. You’ve [have] been told all your life if you’re [are] black, you’re [are] wrong. If you’re black, there’s something wrong with you. [Something wrong with you, if you’re black.] They tell you black cows don’t give good milk; black hens don’t lay eggs. Devil’s food cake(s). You know, [when] you put on black to [you] go to funerals. When you put on white you go to weddings. They talk about flesh-colored band-aids. You [I] ain’t never seen a black [colored]-flesh-colored band-aid. So [But] they tell you (there’s) something wrong with (being) black.

You’ve got to be proud of being [to be] black. You’ve got to be proud of being black. You can’t run around here calling yourself (colored. And calling yourself) Negroes. That[`s] a word the honkies gave you. You’re [are] black, brother, and be proud of it. It’s beautiful

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[Just be proud] to be black. [It’s beautiful to be black]. Black folks got to understand that. We built this country. They tell you you(`re) lazy. They tell you [And that] you stink. Brother, [do] you realize what the state be of this country if we was lazy? [that the slaves built this country? If we was lazy how we built this country?]
(Brother,) they captured us in [from] Africa and brought us over here to work for them. Now, who(`s) lazy? [Who is lazy?]

He walks [runs] around and tells you: [that] “You Lazy.” You don’t want to work [do nothing]. All you want to do is lay around [down]. Hell! You can’t do nothing but lay down after he done work[ed] you to death. I tell you what — [I tell you what. Old Sam, before he died, he made a record saying change is going to come] (first thing I’m ( ) representing the change gonna come. Now) w[W]e got to make the change come, see? `Cause it’s [That become] our job. Now, [cause you see,] my mother. She worked from kin to kate [can till can’t] every day of her life. My old man Tommed [Tom] so I wouldn’t have to. Brother, [we ain’t got no excuse] the streets belong to us. We got to take them.

 

 

They ain’t gonna [going to] give it to us. We got to take `em [them]. (There) ain’t no reason in the world why [for] on the other side of Race Street the honky pecker-wood “cracker” owns all the stores [and he takes our money from us. If I can’t own, If I can’t own my stores over here.] If I can’t control my community over here, he ain’t gonna [going to] control his over there. [He ain’t going to control his over there.]

They run around and [they] tell you [,they say,]: “Don’t start no fight with the honky pecker [cracker] `cause he [you] can’t win. He outnumber you. Hell! Don’t you know they always outnumber us [, always they outnumber us]. David was outnumbered when he fought (the) Goliath. He was outnumbered. [Hell!] Daniel in the lion’s den was outnumbered. Moses was outnumbered. All of us is [are] outnumbered. That don’t make no difference . `Cause let me tell you, brother, we work[ing] in their houses. They ain’t got to leave home [, they ain’t got to leave home]. When they want to do work they [and] let us come in their house (and) that shows you how stupid the honky is. Cause [Because] he ain’t got to leave home.

And [Now] we look at what the man does to black people. A 10-year old boy in Newark (is) dead! A 19-year old boy shot 39 times, 4 times in the head. It don’t take but one bullet to kill you. So they’re [are] (really) trying to tell you something else. [They tell you] How much they hate you. How much they hate black folks. [They had a poke in the paper (unclear).] When they shot him 39 times they said: [“This nigger ain’t dead,] “Die, nigger, die.” And they shot him some more. [He was] 19-years old — he’s dead today. But we go over to Vietnam and fight the races crapper [racist cracker] war. We got to be crazy. Something’s got to be wrong with black men. Our war is here.

If I can die defending my Mother land, I can die defending my mother. And that’s what I’m going [the one I want] to die defending first. See, you are less than a man if you can’t defend [protect] your mother, [and] your brother and your family. You ain’t doing nothing, brother. That war over there in Vietnam is not the war of [for] the black man. This is our war.

(You’ve) got to understand what they are doing, though. America has laid out a plan to eliminate all black people who go against them. America is killing people down south by starving them to death in Alabama. Babies die. 500 people [kids] die a year for lack of [proper] food and nourishment. (And) yet we got enough money to go to the moon. Think about that. People in New York and Harlem go rife and bites to death [die from the bites of rats]. Big old rats bite them (to) death and you tell [the man] about it and the honkey say: “Hell, man, [he say] we can’t do nothing about them rats.” Do you realize this is the [same] man who exterminated the buffalo? [He killed the buffalo.] Hell, If he wanted to kill the [get rid of the] rats he could do it.

(See), all this stuff is [called] genocide. This is what the Germans did to the Jews. They got black folks minds so they goin’ [can] kill you off and you won’t rebel. You won’t do nothing but sit back and let them kill you off and that’s what they(`re) doing. They’re [are] killing you off. And they’re [They are] escalating (it). They’re [are] moving (it) up to kill as many black folks [people] as they can. You look at what happens when a brother goes to that war to fight. Do you realize the casualty rate [is 30% black]? (It’s 30% black.) That means that 30% of

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everybody that [who] goes to Vietnam and gets killed is black. [And] They tell us we [is] just 10% of the United States. Something(`s) wrong with their [the] statistics. Something(`s) wrong with their [the] numbers. [You got to look at —] They say (the) brother[s] who in Vietnam comprise 22% of that fighting force and we 10% over here. You got to look at they killing you off.And they killing off the black young men, so ladies, you better get ready. [Cause] You got to fight them, too. You [ain’t] got no business letting your brother, [and] your sons, your nephews go to that war. That ain’t your war. All right, you’d [But you] better get you some guns. You(`s) better get you some guns. The man’s [is] moving to kill you. And the only thing the [that] honkey respects is force. He proved this [it] up there in Plainfield, New Jersey. Let me tell you what he did in Newark. He killed 24 people. That’s too many people to lose. We ain’t got no business losing 24 people. (But) in Plainfield, which is about 12 miles from Newark, the brothers broke in some [into] stores and stole themselves some guns. They stole some guns. They stole [them] 46 guns. That ain’t stealing. How can you steal from a thief? He(`s) done stole everything from us.

He run around and he talk(s) about black people looting. Hell, he [is] the biggest [greatest] looter in the world. He looted us from Africa. He looted America from [the] Indians. Man can you [How can he] tell me about looting? You can’t steal from a thief. This is the biggest thief going. So don’t you worry about [that], but look what the brothers did in Plainfield. The brothers got their stuff. They got 46 automatic weapons [,46 automatic weapons]. So the peckerwood goes down there [and wants] to take the weapons and they stomp one of them to death. They stomp the cop to death. Good. He(`s) dead! They stomped him to death. They stomped him. You all might think that’s brutal, but it ain’t no more brutal than killing a pregnant woman. And that’s what the honkey does. He kill[s] pregnant black women. They stomped him to death and threw a shopping basket on his head, took his pistol and shot him and then cut him. [And] You know he was hurt. [Yes] They don’t like to hear about niggers cutting. They don’t never want to hear about niggers cutting. But [And] they cut [him]. And [But] then they went back to their community with the(ir) 46 weapons and they told that peckerwood cop, they say [said]: “Don’t you come
in(to) my community.” We going to control our community. And the peckerwood cop says: “(Huh), well, we got to come down there and get them weapons.” The brother(s) told him, “Don’t come in my community.” He didn’t come. And the only reason he didn’t come is [was `cause] he didn’t want to get killed. And the brothers had the material to do it. They had 46 carbines down there. That’s what he respects. Power. He respect[s] that kind of power. So, the next day they were [was] looking back [bad all] across the country, so they say, well, we going to go down there and take them guns. We going to search the houses. So the brothers say, “Cool.” and they hid the guns. And they say we’ll [said, well,] go [ahead] down there and look. So, when he went down there he started kicking down doors and tearing up brothers’ property. and the brothers saw what was going on and the brothers told him: “If you kick down one more door, I’m [am] going to shoot your leg off.” And look what the honky did. He left. That’s the kind of force he respects.

Brothers, you’ve got to [you better] get some guns. I don’t care if its B-B guns [it is a B-B gun] with poison(ed) B-Bs. He’s done [The man has] declared war on (the) black people. [He has declared war on black people and] He don’t mind killing them. It might be your son he kills next. (Or) it might be your daughter. Or it might be you. So, wherever [whenever] you go, brother, take some of them with you. That’s what you do, (brother.) An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth. Tit for tat, brother, that’s the only kind of war that man knows. That’s the only thing he recognizes. Ain’t no need in the world for me to come to Cambridge and I see all (of) them stores sitting up [over] there and [with] all them honkies own [over there owning] them. You got to own some of them stores. I don’t care if you have to burn him [them] down and run him [them] out. You’d better [You got to] take over them stores. The streets are yours. (Take `em.) They gave you the streets a long time ago; before they gave you houses. They gave you the streets. So, we own the streets. Take `em [them]. You’ve [You] got to take `em [them]. They ain’t going to [won’t] give them to you.

Freedom is not a welfare commodity. It ain’t like that old bad food they give you. They can’t give you no freedom. You got to take your freedom. You were born free. You got to exercise that right though,

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brother, cause the honkey got you where he want(s) you.

You making money for him. [So] If you make money for that honkey, you don’t make money for yourself. You make money for him [. You make money for him and come home] and then take it back to him. And he take(s) it to his community. And he lets you live over here amidst your roaches, [and] your rats, and mosquitoes. And he lives over home. Then he comes back. You see that school, over there — I don’t know whether the honkey burned that school or not but y’all [you all] should have burned that school a long time ago. You should have burned it down to the ground [,brother]. Ain’t no need in the world, in 1967, to see a school like that sitting over there. You should have burned it down and then go take over the honkey’s school. Go take over his school(s). He burned down your Elks home be[`]cause he didn’t want you out there doing no dancing and stuff. He wants you to go home and suffer the whole summer. He wants you to sit [set] in them hot houses and say [tell you], see what we can do to you when we get ready. He [We] control(s) you niggers. That’s what he’s been [he] telling you and [baby] you been sitting back there saying, “Yassuh, Yassuh [you all control us].” You been sitting back there telling him: “Yassuh, y[ou]’all control us [, yassuh].” They gave you 5 nigger cops who can’t whip [came with] nothing but black heads.

You’ve got to understand, that’s part of that man’s trick. [That’s part of his trick.] You ain’t making no progress [be]cause them niggers ain’t walking but [and they are riding] in a car. (They think they’re making progress, brother.) They ain’t [think they are] making (no) progress. [Brother, that ain’t no progress.] Not when they can’t whip [How come they came with] no honkeys.

You got to understand. You got to know that, all your enemies ain’t white. You got some black enemies, too [, yassuh]. (And) when you find your enemies [y], brother, you got to get rid of him, just like you get rid of the honkey(s). Now if these cops down here, (if they) ain’t doing what you want them to [do], then they shouldn’t [oughtn’t to] be in the community. Put [th]’em out of the community. You got the power. [If one of them, if a cop,] If a black cop ships [puts] a black brother and they ain’t got no more than [but] one car. I know [that] they ain’t going to give him [them] no more than one car. They’re supposed [He is going] to be walking, (cause) from then on [because] I’m going to burn his car up. [Because] I know the white man ain’t going to give him no other [another] car so that means he is going to be walking [walk]. [And] Every time he walks I’m going to bomb him with some bricks. I’m, going to run him out of town cause he ain’t got no business here. He ain’t nothing but a handkerchief-head nigger. A handkerchief-head nigger. He doing what the honkey want(s) him to do. And that’s what all black people do. You got to [are doing who don’t] fight that man. [You got to fight that man toe to toe.] We ain’t behind in terms of manhood, brother; we behind in terms of executing him [it]. If a man runs around and let a honkey cop, or (a) black cop, beat his wife . . . and he don’t do nothing, when his wife get(s) out of jail and go(es) home she oughta beat him. People laughed a few years ago when an [our] organization called the Deacons for Defense came up [out]. Brother[s], you got to [better] get you(rself) [a whole bunch of Deacons for Defense. Cause if you don’t, you better start getting] a whole bunch of some sisters and some ushers for defense. Cause the man is moving. He’s moving to kill black people. He might be doing it one by one but you look at it. [and] In Newark, they lost 24. Beautiful thing about Detroit [is that], they ain’t lost but two [a tooth] and they killed three peckerwoods. Three peckerwoods. That’s tit for tat.

They burned down over a hundred million dollars worth of that peckerwood’s property and that[`s] his god. Money is his god. Don’t you let him tell you the church and the Bible is his god. You look at what he do, man. Who leads the prisoner to the electric chair? The preacher, And he say “Thou shalt not kill.” A preacher! That’s the way the man’s mind works. That’s the way it [he] works. He don’t think nothing of black folks. All you can do for the honkey is work for him and spend your money in [at] his stores.

That’s all he wants you to do. He don’t (even) want to see you no other time. He don’t want to see you. But [Because], brother, he done told you black is bad and he believes[ing] it. But he don’t know how bad black is until you show him. Black is bad, brother. Get that! Black is bad.

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But you ain’t knowing [You don’t know] how bad black is. Until the brothers get their minds together and start moving on that man. You got to start talking about taking your community and controlling it. You got to control everything in your community from your Elk Hall to your school to your barroom. You got to control that. [Be]Cause if you can’t [don’t] control it, you see it’s a weapon against you. Anything you don’t control in your community is a weapon. Public education is a weapon. [Be]Cause they(`re) teaching people how to hate black. They(`re) teach(ing) little children how to hate black. They(`re) put(ting) in their old stinky [own stinking] history books that Columbus discovered America. How in the world is some (dumb) honkey going to discover a country with people living there? The Indian was here, but he was saying . . . he was saying that the Indian ain’t human [be]cause he ain’t white. So [we had to, it didn’t start], the country didn’t begin util we discovered it. And Columbus was looking for India. (To) show you how dumb he was, did you ever look [at] where India was is on the map? Columbus was the white Joe Louis. That’s who [what] he was. He was the white Joe Louis. He didn’t know nothing. [He didn’t know nothing. Then he come back around and] He tells you that George Washington [,he tell you George Washington] is the father of the country and you should celebrate his birthday. And you do [it]. George Washington had slaves. He had your grandfathers, and your great-grandfathers and their (great-)grandfathers. They were his [He had] slaves. How he going to be the father of my country? That’s a lot of junk, brother[s].

He don’t mean nothing to me. He just another dumb honkey. [He don’t mean nothing.] Abraham Lincoln. [They tell you all niggers should love Abraham Lincoln. Huh-uh.] Love him for what? [Love him for what.] The only reason (he gave,) he declared war against [with] the north, is [was] cause they were losing money. He didn’t dig no black folks. [He didn’t dig black folks.] He didn’t like you. But they got the stuff down there in their [that got in the] history books and you read it and you believe it. You run out (t)here and celibrate their birthday. (The) Fourth of July. Independence Day, and we still in chains. See, [There] ain’t no such thing as second-class citizenship, brother; you either free or you (a) slave. Don’t run around here telling nobody you [is] citizens. [You ain’t. Know] How many black mayors (has) Cambridge got? None. Not [Got] none. How many black councilmen (has) Cambridge got? [None.]

All you got is five nigger cops. [That’s all you got. Five cops.] Them [Your] 5 cops ain’t even working for you. [Because] If you was to go and march down Race Street tonight, the first one [to] hit you in the head, [and] try to lose all the strength [splinters] in his stick in your head, is going to be my man. See people run(ning) around. Yeah, they [its] got a whole bunch of Uncle Toms and you better watch them. [You got a whole bunch of Uncle Toms.] But let me tell you what to do with Uncle Toms. Of course, [Cause] the white man hate(s) niggers so bad, when he move(d) he moves against everybody. He moves agianst everybody, — Uncle Toms included. One day you going to [gonna] wake up one morning and [you going to] be an(d) Uncle Tom knocking on your door saying [you going to know your Uncle Tom and your door knocking]: “Let me in, man [they after me].” You know what you do? [You] Open your door and give him a gun and tell him to shoot some of them. And if he shoots some of them, he can come in. [I know where he at cause I know the man really own him, see.] If he shoots a whole bunch of them, he can come in my house.

But, brother, the man hates everything black. Everything black but black Cadillacs and black shoes. Everything else black he ain’t got nothing else to do with.

Now we’re gonna [And we got to] talk about Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson is the greatest outlaw going. He is a two-gun cracker. He(`s) killing black folks here and he(`s) killing them in Vietnam. That’s Lyndon Johnson, your President. [That’s your president, brother.] That’s who he is. [That’s who it is.] And they talk [tell you] about how bad Hitler was. At least before Hitler burned the Jews he killed them with gas. Lyndon Johnson is throwing napalm on human beings in Vietnam. Burning them to death. He(`s) burning babies. He(`s) burning hospitals. He can’t be nothing but an outlaw. [He can’t be nothing but an outlaw.] Any time a man sends a plane full of napalm over a village of children, [over school houses and blow them up and burn children, and] believe me, brother, the only reason he do [is doing] it, (brother), is because the Viet Cong is black, too.

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You (are) going to have to start studying your history. You going to have [got] to understand that black folks is not a minority. We [They] got more black folks across the world than we [they] got white people. You got to start looking at China like brother[s], because they are yellow people. Viet Cong[s]. Some of the Viet Congs are browner than some of us [nigger]. They get [Or] . . . India. Indians are dark skinned people. These are the colored people of the world. These are the black people of the world. That’s the third world [that] they be talking about. [All other people,] Now, the honkey is surrounded. He is surrounded. He don’t know what to do. But, brother, believe me, he knows what to do here because you let him do it. (See), he done renovated 26 concentration camps across the world. If you don’t know what a concentration camp is, let me run it down. You read about all them [heard about all the] Jews that got burned up by Hitler. They burned `em up, they take(n) them to concentration camps [And then they took them to the concentration camps] to the ovens. [They] Told them they were gonna [was going to] get showers and then they turned on the gas and took them out to a furnace and burned them. That[`s a] concentration camp(s).

(Now), America done renovated 26 and they [it] ain’t for the Indians, cause they [are] on reservations. [Now], think who it’s for. All right, now that you know who it’s for, [now that you know who it’s for] look at the way we were then [being] four years ago. We were so non-violent it wasn’t funny. Cause the white man told us we had to be non-violent and he would love us. And we believe[d him] it. All the while he was shooting us, he was telling us to love him to death. And we [was believing] believed it. [These twenty —] A few years ago, if the honkey President had sent out a letter with the President’s seal on it saying report to the concentration camps at 9 o’clock in the morning, every nigger in America would have been there on time. [He would have been there on time.] And to follow that same thing, he’d tell you [, cause he know you love religion, see, he would tell you] to go in there and be baptized and he’d [he would] turn the gas on you. [See,] I mean(s), don’t. . . religion [resistance] is good.

I met [heard] a lady in Alabama once who said [say once, you know,] “Prayers is good in prayer meeting(s) but it ain’t worth a damn in bear meeting(s).” Brother, you need the [meeting a] bear every day. You need the [meeting a] animal(s). You need the [meeting a] animal every day. [You see] He runs around and he tells you how bad you are but [look] how violent that man [is]. He tells you not to be violent [, but look how violent he is]. A few weeks ago, in the Bowery — that’s where all the poor, poor, trashy honky peckerwoods live — who ain’t got no money [cause they lazy and that’s why they ain’t got no money] they live in the Bowery, but look what happened: Some young honkeys went over and poured gas on these people and set them on fire. Bums, drunkards. They set `em on fire. [That’s violence. See?] Charles Whitland [Whitman], in Texas, who shot all them honkies. . . That’s violence. The white man don’t never look at that. Vietnam is violence. But soon as you go out there and burn down a few old filthy stores, that you may own anyway, the man say you trying to be violent. [Hell,] We ain’t trying [can’t try] to be violent with him. He knows all about violence. He taught us how to be violent. But we been using our violence in the wrong way. We been using violence against each other. Ain’t no need in the world for black people [to] have to fight each other. You ain’t got no business in the world hating [hitting] your brother. I don’t care if he make(s) you mad. If my brother make(s) me mad, I’m going to [gonna] go look for a honkey.

I’m going to take out 400 years’ worth of dues on him too. Every time you hit one of them take out 400 years’ worth of dues, cause that’s the dues he owe(s) you for knowing you and owing you. So every time you catch him, brother, you do it to him.

And don’t let him come into your community. Ain’t got no reason [business] for white folks (to) be leisurely walking up and down your community. [You got no… ] He(`s) got no business [over here,] coming over [here], talking about taking black women out (of) your community. [You ain’t a man, you ain’t a man if you let that animal come over here and take a black woman out your community] To do what he want to do with her. And that’s what he[`s] doing. He doing what he want to do with her. Brother[s], it’s up to you to stop that. [You can stop that. I mean] You don’t need God to stop that. You can stop that. (See,) God gave you two arms, [gave you] two legs and everything [just like] he gave [you everything] the honkey [gave you],

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but the honkey’s been using his. You ain’t been using yours.

He’s [You just] been running around here letting them do everything they want. I mean, don’t be trying to love that honkey to death. Shoot him to death. [Don’t love him to death.] Shoot him to death, brother. [Be]’Cause that’s what he'[i]s out to do to you. “Do to him like he would do to you, but do it to him first.” [Just like I told you, brother, like I told you.] Like I said in the beginning, if this town don’t come [a]round, this town should be burned down. It should be burned down, brother. They(`re) going to have to live in the same stuff I live in [be]’cause I ain’t going to [gonna] make it no better for them. [I ain’t gonna make it no better for them.] But do this brother — don’t burn up your own stuff. Don’t tear up your own stuff. Whenever you decide to fight the man, take it to his battleground. (It’s) one thing that man respects. It’s [That’s] money. That’s his god. When you tear down his store, you hit[ting] his religion. You hit him right where it hurt(s) him on Sunday. In his pocket. [That’s the only god that man got.] That’s his best friend. In his pocket. So, when you move to get him, don’t tear up your stuff, don’t tear up your brother’s stuff, hear? [store here.]

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July 23rd 1903 & 1904 Richmond’s Motormen Trolley Riots, Richmond’s Street Cars Boycott Planted The Seeds of Southern Blacks Resistance 1900s

23 Sunday Jul 2017

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During the summer of 1903, Richmond was under nearly martial law when a two-month long streetcar strike broke out in late June.

Between 1895 and 1929, almost every major city in the United States experienced a streetcar strike. The Richmond strike followed on the heels of streetcar strikes in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1902 and Waterbury, Connecticut, earlier in 1903. The San Francisco Streetcar Strike of 1907 was among the most violent, with thirty-one people killed and over 1,000 injured. A 1910 labor strike by trolley workers of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company grew to a city-wide riot and general strike. The Richmond strike was by the street railway employees of Richmond, Manchester, and Petersburg lines, all run by the Virginia Passenger and Power Company.

The striking employees were asking for a raise of three and half cents per hour, or if denied, to submit the matter to arbitration. The motormen were at that time paid between 15 to 18 1/2 cents per hour; the requested raise would be a 14-20% increase in pay. General Manager of the company, S.W.Huff, declined both options in a letter dated June 15, 1903. The employees had strong support in the community – to the point that militia later called in from around the state at first complained that local police officers were intervening on behalf of strikers.

All but 7 of the 650 present members of the Local Union No.152 Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees voted early on June 17 to strike. No trolley cars ran that day.

That evening 23 special policemen were sworn in by the Police Board and Chief Howard. The Times-Dispatch estimated that 200 strike breakers had already arrived in town, with cots being available in the trolley barns for the breakers. The strikers were taking shifts picketing at the train station to deter the arrival of others.

Using strike breakers from Pennsylvania, the company was able to operate four or five cars on the Main Street line from Robinson Street to Ninth Street for almost four hours that Thursday, June 18th. A street cleaner was arrested at 7th and Main for cursing at the strike breakers, precipitating “an ugly situation that approximated a mob” that “at one time threatened violence”. There were reports that some cars were pelted with “mud, eggs, and filth”, with one lady being struck on the arm by a mud ball thrown by someone in a crowd of women and children. The company president, Sitterding, was hit by an egg.

 

Partial map of Richmond’s trolley lines circa 1903

On the 3rd day of the strike, cars were run from the Reservoir to Fulton with little incident. Strike breakers were “jeered in the suburbs”, and one car was stoned in Fulton. Six more special police were added to the force, and the police worked to keep crowds from forming. There were a few arrests, for “using language calculated to promote disorder.” The trolleys stopped running at dark, as the police were unable to provide adequate protection.

On Monday, June 22nd, the 6th day of strike, the company moved to resume service on Broad Street. Later that evening, the situation began to heat up. Between 6 and 7PM, a crowd gathered at 18th and Broad threw “stones, potatoes, and other missiles” at the cars turing from Broad. The police were unable to disperse the crowd.

A band of about 40 young men were seen in the night gathering “bricks, stones, rocks, huge boxes, and other impediments” to prevent the running of the cars in that stretch the next morning. The curve running around Lester Street in Fulton was thoroughly blocked. An attempt was made to cut the pole at Denny and Second supporting the electric wires, and someone tried to burn Rocketts bridge. Cars were attacked in the West End of the city “by mobs”, in one instance forcing a strike-breaking motorman to flee to avoid injury.

 

On June 23rd there was a “riotous” scene at 29th and P Streets, in which 2 company men were hurt and trolley cars were “roughly used”. At least 50 company men were sent to the hospital after being hit by thrown objects after a riot at Main and Vine Streets during which a trolley car was derailed. In response to the escalating violence, Governor Montague called out 16 companies of militia: the Richmond Blues Battalion, the Richmond Howitzers, and other groups from Danville, Farmville, Charlottesville, Staunton, Lynchburg, Alexandria, and Roanoke to protect the employees and property of the railway company. Sharpshooters were given permission to fire at anyone throwing objects at trolley cars.

 

On June 24th, railway company guards fired into a crowd of between 500-1000 gathered that evening at Lombardy and Main, wounding six people. After a day of having “missiles hurled at the cars and obstructions placed on the track”, the trolleys were recalled to the barns under cover of a Gatling gun. Richmond Mayor Richard Taylor asked women and children to remain at home.

The end of June followed a similar pattern: the cars ran by day, guarded by militia men, and violence broke out at night. Two soldiers were shot near Walnut Street. Warning volleys were fired after rocks were thrown at trolleys near 22nd and Church Hill Avenue. Sixteen-year-old Lester Wilcox was shot in the hip and hand by militia soldiers after an incident on Lester Street after yelling “scab” at a passing street car. The soldier who did the shooting was never identified. Sticks of dynamite were found concealed in the grass by Williamsburg Road.

By June 30, the company was describing the strike as broken.

On July 4, Luther Taylor was shot and killed by a soldier while attempting to escape arrest at Cowardin Avenue and Hull Street. His horse was also shot and killed at that time.

On July 16, two cars were fired upon on the Oakwood line, and an attempt was made to wreck a car near Barton Heights.

By mid-July the militia were being sent home and some of the special police were being withdrawn from the streets.

 

By the end of July, all lines were running back on regular schedule, manned by replacement workers.
William Fox was arrested for dynamiting Car No. 118 at Broad and Lombardy on July 31. There were no injuries.

August’s early headlines turned to the trial of 5 men arrested during the Fulton street car riot on July 15. A.B.Jordan, John Lammie, E.Kane, and John Kane were charged with riotous conduct and throwing and shooting at trolley cars. The 12 members of the jury were proudly identified by the Times-Dispatch as “twelve businessmen” and “well known citizens”.

The defense said that the riotous action was sparked by Detectives Newman and Hanks, two employees of the rail company, to create sympathy for the company and break the strike. This view was attested to under oath by Lt.Ranklin of Colonel Anderson’s staff. Other witnesses for the defense admitted that Power and Passenger officers knew that the riot was to take place, and arranged for the car to be at the particular place at a certain time, and that it had been arranged for the lights to go out. The conductor of the specific car denied allegations that he received $100 to make the Fulton run that fateful evening. The alleged Fulton rioters were acquitted on August 11.

On August 24, the men of Local Union No.152 Amalgamated Association of Street Railway Employees voted unanimously to end the strike which had been nominally over several weeks.

The image at the top is from the Virginia Historical Society. The map is from Carlton McKenney’s Rails in Richmond. All others are from The Times Dispatch issues available at the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America.

John Mitchell Jr’s Richmond Planet & The 1904 Streetcars Boycott

Mitchell’s Planet, on the other hand, ran a front page story on the streetcar boycott in nearly every issue until the Virginia Passenger and Power Company finally went out of business late in 1904. Week after week, articles in the Planet encouraged the African American community to continue the boycott and strongly urged people to keep walking. Using his newspaper as a mouthpiece, Mitchell worked tirelessly to maintain momentum against the growing menace of complete segregation. The Planet’s May 7, 1904 issue reported, “The street-car situation remains unchanged. Few colored people are riding in the ‘Jim Crow’ department.” The front page of May 14, 1904 stated that the “street-car situation here remains the same. Eighty or ninety percent of the colored people are walking.” The June 11, 1904 issue published words to the “Jim Crow Street-Car Song” and on August 20 an article titled “Equal Rights Before the Law” showed just how unequal Jim Crow was. The article explained that a white man who didn’t know the streetcar rules had been forgiven of his Jim Crow offense, while Addie Ayres, the maid of local actress Mary Marble, was arrested and fined ten dollars when she declined to move after a conductor ordered her to do so.

Although momentum for the boycott slowed during the stifling summer months, the Planet’s continued efforts to sustain it may have helped hasten the bankruptcy of the Virginia Passenger and Power Company. On July 23, 1904, the Planet ran the story “The Street Car Co. Here Busted.” By December 3 of that year, the Planet reported that the “Virginia Passenger and Power Co., better known as the ‘Jim Crow’ Street Car Company continues to have no end of trouble and it now seems that the entire system will be sold at auction.” While the boycott probably did contribute to the company’s collapse, it blamed its failure on the 1903 conductor’s strike, not acknowledging the effects of the boycott. After the local streetcar system was taken over by new management, the policy to segregate continued. In 1906 the Virginia legislature passed a mandatory law “to provide separate but equal compartments to white and colored passengers.” Passengers and companies who failed to comply would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined. Sadly, Mitchell’s courageous and persistent fight to end segregation ended with Jim Crow even more firmly entrenched in Virginia.

The Royal African Virginia Company & King James , First Enslaved Afrikans Were Brought to Hampton Virginia Not James Town

23 Sunday Jul 2017

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The 100 year Plan Your ancestors are the origin of Stocks & Bonds African Property – We ain’t rocking wit no Pseudo Role Reversals of King James and The Colonist Were Crackers with Black collaborators help He Genocided Hundreds of Thousands of The Melaninated Indigenous Wahunsenacawh/Powhatan Nation/Confederacy & Imported thousands of Political Prisoners (Enslaved Afrikans) of Indigenous Afrikan Nations to The Colony of Virginia! The English Oligarchy are enemies of New Afrikan & Indigenous Sovereignty Globally and Nationally in Virginia!

Hampton Virginia aka Fort Monroe is The Landing Spot of The First English Colonialist in Virginia Not Jamestown! In April 1607 Englishmen aboard three ships—the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery—sailed forty miles up the James River (named for the English king) in present-day Virginia (Named for Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen”) and settled upon just such a place. The uninhabited peninsula they selected was upriver and out of sight of Spanish patrols. It offered easy defense against ground assaults and was uninhabited but still located close enough to many Indian villages and their potentially lucrative trade networks. But the location was a disaster. Indians ignored the peninsula because of its terrible soil and its brackish tidal water that led to debilitating disease.

The Royal African Virginia Company ( Stock Company ) in 1618: any person who migrated to Virginia would automatically receive 50 acres of land and any immigrant whose passage they paid would entitle them to 50 acres more.In 1619 the Virginia Company established the House of Burgesses, a limited representative body composed of white landowners that first met in Jamestown. That same year, a Dutch slave ship sold 20 Africans to the Virginia colonists. Southern slavery was born. King James I England had realized the money to be made trading slaves to the West Indies and Virginia. By 1668, over a quarter of the new company’s profits was derived from the slave trade.

 

The Company’s Beginnings

At first, trading directly with other European countries was common in Virginia. But the Navigation Act of 1660 brought such relations to a close. Only English-owned ships could enter colonial ports. The Crown had realized the wealth that could be achieved through trade and wanted that wealth for England. Once the Navigation Act was passed, Virginia planters were forced to rely on the Mother Country to supply them with their labor force. To address this dearth, the Royal African Company was formed in 1672.

Agents in Jamestown

Merchants in London associated with residents of Jamestown were also heavily involved in the slave trade. John Jeffreys, one of these merchants, owned part of a rowhouse in New Towne, and historians speculate that slaves were sold in front of the building on a wharf. The Royal African Company also had agents in Virginia to whom slaves were delivered. These agents received a seven-percent commission on sales. John Page, Colonel Nathaniel Bacon and William Sherwood were all prominent Virginians who served as factors, agents or representatives for the Company.

 

 

The Company’s Decline

Many factors contributed to the loss of the Royal African Company’s monopoly in 1689. First and foremost, the Company was not achieving a profit; as a matter of fact, it resorted to borrowing money to pay dividends. Then there were the complaints from the planters. The demand for slaves was always too high for the Company alone to supply, and the planters urged that the monopoly be abolished so that more slaves could be imported. Finally, the Company, which was always heavily patronized by the Stuart monarchs, fell out of favor when James II was deposed and William and Mary came to the throne.

Cleveland/Detroit Days of Rebellion , Hough Rebellion , Glenville Shootout, Detroit Uprising , July 23rd 1966, 1967, 1968

23 Sunday Jul 2017

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July 23 66, 67, 68, Days of Rebellion & Resistance Cleveland /Detroit : Photo of Detroit Panthers during 12 Street Riots/ 1967 Rebellion … Forty-three persons killed in rebellion in Detroit. Federal troops were called out for the first time since the Detroit riot of 1943 to quell the largest racial rebellion in a U.S. city in the twentieth century. More than two thousand persons were injured and some five thousand were arrested. Police reported 1, 442 fires. Rioting spread to other Michigan cities..

The 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street riot, was a violent public disorder that turned into a civil disturbance in Detroit, Michigan. It began on a Saturday night in the early morning hours of July 23, 1967. The precipitating event was a police raid of an unlicensed, after-hours bar then known as a blind pig, on the corner of 12th (today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and Clairmount streets on the city’s Near West Side. Police confrontations with patrons and observers on the street evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in the history of the United States, lasting five days and surpassing the violence and property destruction of Detroit’s 1943 race riot.

Shortly before midnight on Monday, July 24, President Johnson authorized the use of federal troops in compliance with the Insurrection Act of 1807, which authorizes the President to call in armed forces to fight an insurrection in any state against the government. This gave Detroit the distinction of being the only domestic American city to have been occupied by federal troops three times

Haki Kweli Shakur MOI Guest on The K.Kinte Show 2017

In the early hours of Sunday (3:45 a.m.), July 23, 1967, Detroit police officers raided the unlicensed weekend drinking club in the office of the United Community League for Civic Action, above the Economy Printing Company, at 9125 12th Street. They expected a few revelers inside, but instead found a party of 82 black people celebrating the return of two local GIs from the Vietnam War. The police decided to arrest everyone present. While they were arranging for transportation, a sizable crowd of onlookers gathered on the street. Later, in a memoir, Walter Scott III, a doorman whose father was running the raided blind pig, took responsibility for riot.

The Hough riots were race riots in the predominantly African-American community of Hough (pronounced “Huff”) in Cleveland, Ohio that took place over a six-night period from July 18 to July 23, 1966. During the riots, four African Americans were killed and 30 people were critically injured. In addition, there were 275 arrests, while more than 240 fires were reported.

On July 18, 1966, at dusk, someone posted a sign outside the 79’ers bar, situated on the southeast corner of E.79th Street and Hough Avenue. The sign read, “No Water For Niggers”. Adding to the volatility of the situation, the bar manager and a hired hand, both white, patrolled the front of the bar, armed with shotguns An African American woman described as a “prostitute” was seeking money for charity. An altercation occurred and she was told to leave.

Later, an African American man entered the building and bought a bottle of wine. When he asked for a glass of water, he was told that blacks were not being served.

On July 18, 1966, at dusk, someone posted a sign outside the 79’ers bar, situated on the southeast corner of E.79th Street and Hough Avenue. The sign read, “No Water For Niggers”. Adding to the volatility of the situation, the bar manager and a hired hand, both white, patrolled the front of the bar, armed with shotguns An African American woman described as a “prostitute” was seeking money for charity. An altercation occurred and she was told to leave.

Later, an African American man entered the building and bought a bottle of wine. When he asked for a glass of water, he was told that blacks were not being served. #HoughRebellion

July 23 1968 Rebellion Cleveland Eleven persons, including three policemen, were killed and National Guard was mobilized. Riot was sparked by alleged ambush of police detail by Black radicals.

The Glenville shootout was a series of violent events which occurred in the Glenville section of Cleveland, Ohio, United States, beginning on the evening of July 23 and continuing through July 28, 1968. By the end of the conflict, seven people were killed: three policemen, three suspects, and a bystander. Fifteen others were wounded.

The shootout began on the evening of July 23, in the eastern section of the Glenville neighborhood when two police department tow truck drivers, wearing uniforms similar to those worn by police officers, were shot at in an ambush by heavily armed snipers while checking an abandoned car. Cleveland police officers, who were watching Fred Evans (1928-1978) and his radical militant group, suspected of purchasing illegal weapons, exchanged fire with the militants at this time. It was not clear who fired first. The shootout attracted a large crowd that was mostly black, young, and “hostile”. Before the night was over, seven were dead (three of the seven were Cleveland Police officers) and fifteen were wounded. When it became clear that the police were ill-equipped to handle the situation, Mayor Carl B. Stokes asked Governor James A. Rhodes to activate and deploy elements of the Ohio National Guard the following day.

Evans surrendered to police on the morning of July 24. He was tried and found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair. His term was eventually commuted to life imprisonment, and he died of cancer in 1978. During his trial, it was discovered that Evans had received some $6,000 in funds from Cleveland: Now!, a program Mayor Stokes had initiated to help revitalize Cleveland neighborhoods.. #FredAhmedEvans #ClevelandRebellion

Igbo Ancestors Imported to Virginia in Slavery Gave Rise to Afro-Virginian Culture, Gabriel Prosser Was Possibly Igbo Black Smith & Rebellion Leaders, Bight of Biafra

22 Saturday Jul 2017

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Walter C. Rucker Jr. (2010). Igbo. In: Encyclopedia of African American History. ABC-CLIO. p. 53.

Awka (African) Metallurgy in America

The acknowledgment of the contribution of enslaved Igbo people in the United States recurrently includes their influence on blacksmithing that’s largely associated with the ancient blacksmithing town of Awka. Northern Igbo areas, including Awka, were especially the worst affected by slave raiding attacks by other Igbo towns. Blacksmithing, and particularly iron, held significant spiritual value among Igbo groups. Some suggest Awka blacksmiths were the makers of the ‘Igbo Ukwu’ leaded-bronzes noted for being more advanced than most metal workmanship around the world in the 9th century, and the Lower Niger Bronze Industry. Iron smelting in the region dates back to at least 2000 BC.

Enslaved Africans in the Americas were often chosen for the expertise they held back in Africa, for example rice planting Africans from the Senegambia and Guinea areas were overrepresented in rice planting Georgia. For enslaved Igbo people in particular, planters thought them more sensitive to mistreatment and better suited for the more domestic-oriented work in the Chesapeake area of Virginia on its isolated plantations, another possible reason was for their knowledge of metalworking and craftsmanship.

Gabriel Prosser Forum Richmond VA – Haki Kweli Shakur

Gabriel’s Rebellion – Haki Kweli Shakur

Gabriel’s Brook Hill Marker – Haki Kweli Shakur

Gabriel’s Historical Meeting Spot Organize 1000 Afrikans for Rebellion

 

Gabriel’s Rebellion Meadow Plantation – Haki Kweli Shakur

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The Dashiki – The History of The Radical Garment

21 Friday Jul 2017

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By DAMOLA DUROSOMO

DIASPORA—The dashiki is clothing as politics.

It might not exactly seem that way in its present state—a revived, streetwear trend largely associated with the intricate and highly recognizable ‘Angelina print,’ but its story is one of African innovation and Black resistance.

The word “dashiki” comes from the Yoruba word danshiki, used to refer to the loose-fitting pullover which originated in West Africa as a functional work tunic for men, comfortable enough to wear in the heat. The Yoruba loaned the word danshiki from the Hausa term dan ciki, which means “underneath.” The dan chiki garment was commonly worn by males under large robes. Similar garments were found in sacred Dogon burial caves in Southern Mali, which date back to the 12th and 13th centuries.

The roots of the garment are not lost on anyone—it is an unmistakably African item. Its symbolic significance, however, was molded thousands of miles outside of the continent’s borders. It was those of African descent, whose ancestors were hauled to North America in chains, who carried this torch. The Civil Rights and Black Panther Movements of the 1960s and early 70s gave the dashiki its political potency. African Americans adopted the article as a means of rejecting Western cultural norms. This is when the dashiki moved beyond style and functionality to become an emblem of Black pride, as illustrative of the beauty of blackness as an afro or a raised fist.

Its meaning developed in the same vein as the “Africa as Promised Land” rhetoric that fueled movements like Pan-Africanism and Rastafarianism. Perhaps ironically, these Afrocentric philosophies—birthed outside of continental Africa—helped shaped some of the fiercest notions about African identity and the politics of blackness.

Many of these outward concepts of African identity adopted by Black Americans were once again reinforced by people on the actual continent. Principles taught by Civil Rights leaders were widely embraced by leaders of African liberation movements, and the revolutionary politics of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, helped transform Fela Kuti’s relaxed highlife into the socially-charged afrobeat that he’s lauded for today.

This transference of ideas is much less odd than it seems—perhaps such philosophies could have only been nurtured within the context of the Black American and Caribbean experience. The “promised land” could be more clearly envisioned by those savagely removed from its promise, and the dashiki could become something greater than itself when worn by Black folks who were, for hundreds of years, denied the opportunity to embrace anything that represented their African heritage.

Haki Kweli Shakur 300 Year Struggle of The Richmond African Burial Grounds

 

Like the Black Americans who championed it in the mid 20th century, the dashiki is no less African because the bulk of its identity was shaped in a different land. The dashiki, whether worn in Lagos or Washington D.C. is loudly and proudly black.

The dashiki’s political vigor weakened towards the end of the 60s when it became popular among white counterculture groups, whose adoption of the garment—based primarily on its aesthetic appeal—undermined its status as a sign of Black identity. Retailers began to import dashikis made in India, Bangladesh and Thailand in large numbers. These versions, often featured the East African-associated kanga print, commonly worn as wrappers by women in Kenya and Tanzania.

During this period, notable Black intellectuals began to warn their communities against the trivialization of dashikis and other symbols of Black beauty. “Donning a dashiki and growing a bush is fine if it energizes the wearer for real action; but ‘Black is beautiful’ is dangerous if it amounts only to wrapping oneself up in one’s own glory and magnificence,” wrote Civil Rights activist and politician, Sterling Tucker in his 1971 book Black Strategies for Change in America.

The dashiki lost some of its fervor in the tail-end of the 20th century when its use in the United States was largely limited to ceremonies or festivities, or as a pop culture stereotype.

Through it all, the dashiki maintains its underlying cultural significance—even with its recent reappearance on the fashion landscape, which some might consider a fad—the dashiki still relays a commanding message. It can’t be worn without the acknowledgment of the impression that it gives to others: that the wearer has made the conscious decision to put on something that is recognized as being distinctively and uniquely African.

Haki Kweli Shakur Talks Dr Mutulu Shakur & New Afrikan Political Prisoners The k.Kinte Show

 

The dashiki has become a ready-to-wear conveyor of blackness, linking the continent and the diaspora by a shared assertion of the value of an original Black creation. Its inherent symbolism comes from a struggle against white supremacy and an embracing of African culture as its antitheses—yes, this is a lot of weight to put on a clothing item, but symbols are truly that powerful. So much so, that when a Black person dons a dashiki they are sporting one of the most universally understood interpretations of the phrase “I’m Black and I’m proud,” without having to utter a word.

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