Ed then and now Edward Poindexer pictured the day of his arrest and in 2016 in prison where he still remains (credits: Omaha Police Department/Mary Loan)
Nebraska Vs David Rice ( Mondo We Langa ) RIP & Ed Poindexter The Omaha 2
Edward Poindexter was born November 1, 1944 at the Logan Fontenelle housing project in Omaha, Nebraska. Living a segregated childhood, Ed rarely ventured outside of the Near-Northside. Poindexter volunteered for the Army within months of graduating from North High School where he was active on sports teams.
“I went to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood and my next duty station was Frankfurt, Germany, and then I came back to the States and I re-enlisted….I went to another school at Fort Lee, Virginia. And from there to Fort Lewis, Washington, for a couple of months and then to Vietnam.” Ed became politically conscious while serving in Vietnam where he spent time in the stockade for fighting.
Ed received an honorable discharge from the Army, found a job, lost his wife, and moved, all in a short period of time as he made his transition to civilian life. “Following my discharge from the Army I took a job for a few months at the post office in Atlanta, Georgia. Gloria had agreed to join me later after I got settled in. It never happened, as she began accusing me of having affairs and spending my money on drugs. She was right and we separated. I was at a crossroads in my life.”
Ed’s sister mailed him an article on the Black Panther Party while he was in the Army and he was intrigued at the time. Suddenly events in his life provided Poindexter an opportunity to explore Black Panther activism in his hometown. “After hearing about a Black Panther Party chapter in Omaha, I decided it was time that I made my life count for something.”
“From the first Panther meeting I attended, I knew it was my calling to become a revolutionary black militant, because I never felt more of a sense of belonging or a sense of kinship with any real organization before. It’s difficult to explain, but I just knew I belonged.”
“I attended a Panther meeting…and instantly fell in love with the concept of the Black Revolutionary Marxist, socialism and everything associated with it.”
“One of the important lessons I learned during my work with the Black Panther Party was how to communicate with people and how to resolve problems in a creative, intelligent manner. I was proud of myself, as I’d come a long way from the days when I’d bust someone in the mouth first, then talk later.”
Despite Poindexter’s new communication skills he was a target of a harassment campaign by the Omaha Police Department and the clandestine COINTELPRO operation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Joining the competing police rivalry to get Poindexter off the streets was agent Thomas Sledge of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division. Convicted after a controversial trial that was marred with conflicting testimony, false testimony, withheld evidence, and planted evidence, Poindexter is serving a life without parole sentence for the August 17, 1970 murder of Omaha policeman Larry Minard.
Poindexter’s co-defendant, Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, then David Rice, was also sentenced to life without parole and died at the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary in March 2016.
Ed Poindexter has never wavered in his steadfast denial of any guilt or role in the Minard murder and continues to maintain his innocence. “I was unjustly accused of a crime I did not commit.”
The story of Ed Poindexter, the flawed investigation, prosecution, and trial is now available in my new book, FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO & the Omaha Two story, in print edition at Amazon and in ebook format at Kindle. Portions of the book may also be read free online at NorthOmahaHistory.com.
On Saturday, Aug. 21, George Jackson was shot and killed by a San Quentin prison guard as he allegedly attempted to escape. His death, the deaths of two other prisoners and three guards, and the bizarre circumstances that characterized the violence have given rise to numerous questions. Some will be answered at official hearings and at the trial of John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, the two remaining Soledad brothers. But others, those concerning Jackson himself, are perhaps best answered by turning back to his best‐selling book, “Soledad Brother.”
When initially published a year ago, the book was almost unanimously praised by reviewers for both its literary merit and its revealing depiction of the brutality of a black convict’s existence. Julius Lester, writing in the Book Review, called “the most important single volume from a black since ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Rereading it, one concurs with this opinion. At its best, Jackson’s prose was as sharp and powerful as that of any black American essayist writing today; and his descriptions of “the madness of ribald, protrusive racism” that prevails in American prisons makes most prison literature seem dim and uninspired.
The Struggle Inside: The Murder of George Jackson
Once one has geared himself to the sensory shock of Jackson’s descriptions of prison life, a subtle aspect of “Soledad Brother” emerges. Despite Jackson’s disclaimer (“I don’t recognize uniqueness, not as it’s applied to individualism, because it is too tightly tied into decadent capitalist culture”) and despite the fact that the book is primarily composed of letters not intended for publication, “Soledad Brother” does, as Jean Genet states in his introduction, “perfectly articulate the road traveled by [its] author.” It is finally a moving autobiography—and a significant one, since it clearly charts that tortuous psychological course that leads one from the presumed normality of disengaged selfinterest to a revolutionary stance that allows Jackson to assert: “Fear… is totally lacking in me. I could look upon my total ruin with as detached an unconcern as I look upon theirs. The payment for life is death.”
The letters in “Soledad Brother” were written during 1964‐70. Read chronologically, they reveal the process, with all its agonizing vacillations, by which a man strips aside his safe, learned responses and unleashes the repressed need for human dignity and the outrage he feels toward his oppressors. In the early letters, he often writes awkwardly; his difficulty with syntax and vocabulary is obvious. He is unsure of his direction but is probing, toying with ideas and philosophies as well as with grammar. Occasionally there is an indication of what is to come: “Though I owed allegiance to no one other than myself, I clearly understand that my future rests with the black peoples of the world.” Later, as his prose and his thoughts become clearer, a new positive concept of himself comes into focus. He disposes of his childhood‐conditioned muddle‐mindedness, defeatism and self‐loathing. It is as if his intellectual breakthrough and his achievement of revolutionary consciousness are simultaneous acts.
Original Black Panther Parties: Ram, SNCC, Watts Freedom City, Lowndes County, – Haki Kweli Shakur
The letters written during the time Jackson was actually making his revolutionary commitment —being pushed “over the line from which there can be no retreat”—provide the most luminating writing in the book. They have an immediacy and evocative power that is often frightening. They vividly delineate the tenuous psychic demarcation that separates the average black man from the black revolutionary.
“I guess there is something to be said for a person who does as he is told, lives by the routine set up by his self‐appointed bosses, etc.,… I go to bed each night, hoping, trying to avert the storm that is now coming on. I find each morning, as final this one, freighted with the possibilities of my own disaster… I’ve told myself uncountable times that anger is emotion, a degenerative emotion, unnecessary and controllable, but I couldn’t control it… I am charged to right the wrong, lift the burden from the backs of future generations. I will not shrink from my duties…. I place no one and nothing above myself. I have nothing left but myself… I have no habits, no ego, no name, no face. I feel no love, no tenderness for anyone who does not think as I do.” Thus George Jackson’s position was altered—from a young, naively conservative thief who made a “deal” and confessed to a crime to “spare the county court costs in return for a light county jail sentence” to a committed revolutionary sworn to “destroy the malefactor and root out all his ideals, moralities and institutions.”
This alteration in consciousness which “Soledad Brother” describes so graphically, perhaps explains more about the events of Aug. 21 than anything that is likely to come out of the official hearings.
Many will rationalize Jackson’s actions and his end with the easy thought that he was simply a convict. And undoubtedly his imprisonment did affect the course of his life. In a letter written to Jessica Mitford before Aug. 21, another San Quentin inmate commented: “It seems to me that [Jackson’s] rebellion against the system now precludes his ever being pragmatic about his imprisonment…. In a sense prison has crushed him. Think of it, nine years in an area not much larger than a broom closet. Reduced to living like a caged animal. You cannot wonder if George Jackson doesn’t have a last trick with which he ultimately will defeat his tormentors.”
The idea that all black Americans are symbolically imprisoned is, of course, a cliché. But it may be realistically said that prison is an exaggerated facsimile of society for those who suffer from racism, violence and bureaucratic insensitivity. That George Jackson’s last trick did not defeat his tormentors should, then be no great consolation for America. There is probably something of Jackson in more Americans than most of us would like to consider.
SAN QUENTIN, Calif., Sept. 2—At 1:15 on Saturday afternoon, Aug. 21, George Jackson, 29 years old, the convict and author of “Soledad Brother,” put his prison denims back on after a thorough search and followed a guard to the prison visiting center to meet with a lawyer.
Within two hours Jackson and five other men — three guards and two inmates—had been killed and the forces of a deeply felt national controversy had begun to gather.
The prison authorities say that Jackson was shot down with a gun in his hand as he was making a desperate attempt to escape across the prison yard. Jackson’s supporters find that impossible to believe, some suggesting he was murdered by guards.
Neither the prisoners nor the guards who witnessed the bloodshed will talk about what they saw, the prisoners because they are suspected of murder and the guards because they are under orders to keep silent. As a result some gaps remain,
What follows is an effort to reconstruct, what happened on that afternoon at San Quentin, as pieced together over 10 days from conversations with prison officials, defense lawyers and Jackson’s family and friends.
When Jackson was taken to the visiting center he was not handcuffed, because of his cooperative behavior lately, and that, some guards said later, was a mistake.
It was optional with guards whether to shackle a prisoner’s arms to a chain around his waist during a visit. If shackled for the trip to the visiting center, the prisoner remained shackled for all of the visit and for the return walk to his cell.
Black August Memorial/ Commemoration Month & History Explained – Haki Kweli Shakur
A few minutes before Jackson and his escort began their walk, a 29‐year‐old lawyer, Stephen Mitchell Bingham, gradually radicalized after several years of following the many, causes of the nineteen sixties, had finally won permission to visit Jackson,
Mr. Bingham had been trying since 10:15 A.M., although he was not Jackson’s attorney. The visit was finally permitted because Mr. Bingham was listed as an investigator for Jackson’s defense against the charge that he had helped to murder Soledad prison guard.
With Mr. Bingham was black woman who signed the prison visitor register as Mrs Vanitia Anderson and gave the address of the Black Panther headquarters in Oakland as her home. She carried an 18‐by‐24‐inch briefcase. Inside was a tape recorder.
That day the cards listing authorized visitors were kept at the visiting center, so it was not until she and Mr. Bingham had been admitted to the grounds and passed through the electronic examination gate and into the visiting center itself that guards discovered she was not authorized to see Jackson. Mrs. Anderson waited in the visitor waiting room.
Tape Recorder Found
The briefcase failed the electronic examination. A guard opened it and found the tape recorder, a device frequently ised by lawyers interviewing prisoners. The guard opened the back of the recorder, saw hat it had batteries in it, and closed it again. He permitted he tape recorder to pass into the prison.
That was a mistake, the authorities now believe. They believe there was a gun inside the tape recorder. At about 1:25 P.M. Mr. Bingham walked across the corner of the main visiting room, where families seated in chairs on one side of long tables talk with inmates seated on benches on the other.
A guard sat at one corner of the room, his back to the tunnel from which prisoners entered after they had passed through two steel gates and ubmitted to a search.
At the other end of the tunnel, another gate opened onto the sally port that is the main entrance to the old prison’s central core. One sally port gate opens outside, the other opens into the inner prison.
A prisoner headed for a visit would walk across a courtyard —in the case of those in the heavy ‐ security Adjustment Center like Jackson, accompanied by a guard—pass into the sally port, be searched, then moved through a steel door into the tunnel, then through another steel door and into the main visiting room.
But Jackson was not to talk to Mr. Bingham in the main visiting room. They were to use the “A” visiting room, a small room—about 10 feet by seven feet, furnished with chairs and a table—that had originally been meant for condemned men’s visits with their relatives but that had come to be used for attorney‐inmate visits.
Could Exchange Objects
That day it was possible to pass objects freely across the table top because a grill separating both sides had been left open. Since then, it has been closed.
The guard on duty in the main visiting room opened the door to the “A” visiting room end let Mr. Bingham inside. Then the guard went back to Iris chair and desk at the corner to watch the big visiting room and to keep books on the goings and comings of prisoners for visits.
A guard on duty at the sally port end of the entrance tunel brought Jackson to the steel door opening off the tunnel into the “A” visiting room. He opened the door, locked Jackson inside, and went back to his station. Although there is window in each door — the one Mr. Bingham went through and the one Jackson went through — no guard watched while they visited. Guards now watch visits in the “A” visiting room.
The District Attorney of Marin County filed an affidavit Tuesday stating that he be lieved Stephen Bingham had brought a 9‐millimeter automatic pistol and ammunition clips into the prison, together with a black wig, and passed them to George Jackson during the interview. He accused Mr. Bingham of five counts of murder under a California law that makes accomplices equally guilty.
Part way through the visit, Mr. Bingham summoned the guard and said he wanted to be let out of the “A” visiting room briefly. One report was that he had wanted to buy cigarettes. Guards came and took Jackson out and did not return him until Mr. Bingham returned about five minutes later. The two men remained locked together in the visiting room until about 2:25 P.M., when they signalled they had finished the visit.
Accompanied by Officer
Frank P. De Leon, an officer on escort duty that day, took control of Jackson as he came out of the tunnel and walked with him across the landscaped courtyard for about 150 feet to the door of the Adjustment Center.
The visit seemed to be about to end quietly, as had the approximately 250 others that Jackson had had with reporters and lawyers and other persons not in his family during the last two and a half years. But within half an hour both Jackson and Mr. De Leon were dead.
It was 2:27 P.M. when Mr. De Leon signed the register to show he had returned Jackson to the Adjustment Center. This building, with three tiers of cells, houses the most difficult custody cases, as they are defined by prison authorities.
Inmates and their attorneys have said the place gives cruel and vicious punishment to its inhabitants, the prison authorities say it must exist to provide a place of confinement for prisoners who will not conform to rules. The first tier, where Jackson had a front cell, is the most heavily guarded part of the prison. The second and third tiers are used to house condemned men.
Every time a prisoner goes in or out, he is “skin‐searched,” which means he removes his clothing so that his entire body may be examined for contraband.
What happened next, according to Warden L. S. Nelson, was this:
With Officer De Leon at one side, his duty finished, Jack son stood between Sgt. Kenneth Mc,Cray and another officer, U. V. Rubiaco, who were to search him.
Mr. Rubiaco was in front, and noticed something like a pencil protruding from Jackson’s hair. The guard reached toward the prisoner’s hair, and Jackson jumped aside, as the prison authorities have described it, and whipped off a wig, from which he took a pistol and two clips of ammunition. In one motion, the authorities say, he swept a clip of ammunition into the pistol and turned on the guards, who, like all guards who move within reach of prisoners, were unarmed.
“This is it!” Jackson said.
The gun, recovered later, is eight inches long, five inches high and one and one‐quarter inches thick.
At this point in the narrative by the prison authorities, the chain of events becomes highly confused and vague as to specific acts. In all cases the authorities have refused to identify prisoners involved in specific acts. There are no obvious inconsistencies, however.
Warden’s Account
Warden Nelson said that Jackson ordered a guard to open the cell and free the other prisoners — 17 blacks, four Chicanos, four whites and one Puerto Rican—so they could move within the corridor of the first‐floor tier.
Some of the prisoners seized Sergeant McCray, covered his head with some fabric, bound his hands and took him into Jackson’s cell, where his throat was slashed with a knife made of half a razor blade attached to a toothbrush handle, the warden said. Sergeant McCray survived. Officer Rubiaco’s throat was also slashed — apparently with the same weapon —and he, too, survived.
Warden Nelson was asked if the guards’had not failed to follow their instructions when they did not attempt to disarm Jackson and instead complied with his order to release the others.
“All we expect our employes to do is to use their best judgment,” the warden said in an interview in his office. Later in the interview, he indicated that the officers might not have realized they were surrendering to be murdered.
“Their purpose could have been served just as well by trussing and gagging the offi cers,” the warden said. “What happened was just senseless butchery.”
Soon Mr. Rubiaco was tossed on top of Sergeant McCray and then Mr. De Leon’s body was thrown on the pile. His throat was cut, he was strangled with an electric cord, and he was shot in the back of the head by a bullet that went out in front of his right ear.
At some point another officer, Paul W. Krasenes, was captured and killed by strangling and slashing of his throat. Still another officer, Charles Breckenridge, had his throat slashed and was left for dead but survived.
Two white inmates were killed, their throats slashed.They were Frank M. Lynn and Ronald L. Kane. One of them was tossed on the floor of Jackson’s cell, and the other was left in the corridor in front of, the cells.
Officials have said they do not know why the two whites were killed. One unconfirmed report is that they refused to take part in the break. The other two whites among the 27 prisoners stayed in their cells with the doors tied shut, officials said.
The officials believe that while all this was going on, Jackson was in command of the tier. Warden Nelson said it was 2:40 P.M. when the alarm was sounded after Jack son was seen with the gun. The alarm was sounded by an officer, Carl Adams, who was on duty outside the Adjustment Center and glimpsed Jackson with a gun after unlocking the door for. Sgt. Jere Graham to go in. The sergeant wanted to give an escort assignment to Mr. De Leon.
Another Alarm Sounded
Also, an unnamed officer on the second floor of the Adjustment Center, sensing a disturbance below, came part way downstairs and saw Jackson. He, too, turned in the alarm.
Inside the center, Sergeant Graham encountered Jackson and was forced into Jackson’s cell. There the sergeant was killed with a bullet in the back of his head.
This bullet lodged at the base of the sergeant’s skull, and was recovered. It has been compared by microscope with other bullets test‐fired from the gun that Jackson had when he was killed: Officials will not say what the comparison showed because, they say, they want to “save it for the trial.”
When Mr. Adams opened the door and caught sight of Jackson inside, Jackson fired a shot at him through the window, grazing his arm.
It was shortly after the alarm went off that officials say Jackson jerked open the Adjustment Center’s outer door and ran across the landscaped yard to a paved passage that winds downhill alongside the north wall of the prison.
A Volley From His Right
From his right came a volley of shots from a balcony gun walk above the entrance to the sally port. As he reached the paved surface, he was under fire of a guard in a gun walk that was south of the Adjustment Center.
Larry Jack Spain, 21 years old and black, a convicted murderer from Los Angeles, followed Jackson out of the Adjustment Center and across the courtyard.
When the guards began to fire, Spain dived into decorative shrubbery in front of the chapel, which is across from the Adjustment Center. He concealed himself there until guards dragged him out when they took control of the Adjustment Center again.
Spain’s lawyer, Elaine Wender, said she had interviewed him but that he had not told her anything about what he had seen while he was in the bushes less than 30 feet from where Jackson fell dead.
Warden Nelson said he be lieved that Jackson had been shot down by a guard from the gun walk south of the Adjustment Center. But this does not fit with the wounds found in the autopsy. Dr. Donovan Cooke, the Marin County coroner, described those.
Jackson had two bullet wounds, and the bullets that made them passed through his body. One struck him in the top of the head, shattered his skull, passed down in front of his spine, shattered two ribs and went out the lower back. It was this shot that killed Jackson instantly.
Version Held Unlikely
Since this shot came from behind the direction in which he had fled, according to Warden Nelson’s description, it appears unlikely that it struck him while he was running toward the north wall, headed away from the rifle that fired the shot.
When asked to resolve this conflict the prison authorities said they would have no further comment on events surrounding the actual shooting of Jackson. A spokesman said that there were many witnesses available to describe what happened and that they would testify when the proper time arrived.
One hypothesis is that shots from the balcony gun walk ricocheted against Jackson’s ankle, knocking him down, and that as he was struggling to his feet, facing toward the south, a shot from the gun walk to the south struck him in the top of the head and penetrated as Dr. Cooke described.
The second Jackson wound was in his left ankle, and the bullet left a fragment of its copper jacketing against the bone.
Warden Nelson said that Jackson staggered a step or two at most, then fell across the roadway, his head to the east, his feet to the west. He was on his face when guards came and turned him over. Later, they marked in chalk two places where he had fallen, but these lines have now been washed away.
Mrs. Georgia Jackson, mother of the dead convict, said that her son had been murdered inside the Adjustment Center, and his body dragged outside by guards.
No subgtantiation for this story has come from the prisoners who were in the tier, according to lawyers who have talked to the prisoners.
Mistreatment Charged
Officials have said that all of these prisoners are suspects in the murders of the five killed there, and they have said little, even to their lawyers.
The prisoners’ attorneys have been visiting them since late last week but no specific details of What occurred have come from the attorneys. A group of lawyers held a news conference in Sah Francisco.
They had all met with their clients. They said their clients had been mistreated after Jackson was killed. They offered no narrative that explained how the guards and white inmates were killed, although all were critical of the version given by prison authorities.
“Front everything we’ve been able to gather, there was no escape attempt—certainly not with respect to any of the men that we represent,” said one attorney, Bob Della Valle. At another time, he said, “I really don’t know what went on in the Adjustment Center.”
Elaine Wender said she believed that Jackson was murdered but she would not disclose the evidence that she said would support her conclusion.
Mr. Della Valle said the prisoners had told their lawyers that they had heard scuffling, then shots, and had been told to go out of their cells and stand against the wall. Then came machine gun fire, he said, and the men were ordered to come out of the tier naked, then handcuffed and made to lie face down on the lawn.
Warden Nelson said that it took 25 minutes to get enough help to regain control of the Adjustment Center. He said that a machine gun burst of four or five shots had been fired into the Adjustment Center, and that a convict had shouted “We’ve got hostages.”
A guard answered, “That won’t do you any good,” the warden said, and fired another burst.
Officers Breckenridge and Rubiaco ran out. Then the prisoners came out one by one and the guards went into the center to find the piled bodiei and Sergeant McCray still alive at the bottom of the pile:
Uniforms had been stripped from two of the guards.
“I suppose,” said Warden Nelson, they planned at one point to have a couple of inmates pose as guards and lead Jackson back to the Visitor Center, where they would grab hostages and try to get out.”
The warden was asked if the guards had been unnecessarily rough with the prisoners after the escape attempt had been broken up.
“I’ll plead guilty to that,” he said. “At a time like that, you do what has to be done. They acted with restraint, having seen what they saw. We are being criticized over bruises and they will heal, but there is no way to get the dead back.”
The idea of interviewing George Jackson about his writing occurred to me last autumn when I read “Soledad Brother,” his remarkable and moving col lection of prison letters. Although I had never done an author interview, I have read many and know roughly how they go: “When do you do your best work?” “At dusk, in a Paris bistro, over a glass of Pernod.” “What childhood in fluences shaped your literary tastes?” “My parents’ home was a gathering place for the foremost writers of the day.”
But authors are sometimes elusive and this one, through no wish of his own, proved excep tionally so. Prison walls, I soon discovered, are not only to keep convicts in but to keep reporters out. After months of frustrating and fruitless negotiations with prison officials, who refused to permit the in terview, Jackson’s lawyer, at his reauest, secured a court order for my visit.
George Jackson, now aged 29, has been in prison almost continuously since he was 15. Seven of those years were spent in solitary confinement. [Eleven years ago he began a term of one year to life for allegedly stealing $70; last year he was charged, along with two other black convicts, with murdering a white prison guard. Jean Genet in his introduction to “Soledad Brother” calls it “a striking poem of love and combat.” and says the letters “perfectly articulate the road trav eled by their author—first the rather clumsy letters to his mother and his brother, then letters to his lawyer which be come something extraordinary, half‐poem, half‐essay, and then the last letters, of an extreme delicacy.” What was that road, and what kind of person is the author?
As to the latter question, the San Quentin guard in charge of visitors undertook to enlighten me. “We have to set up the interview for you,” he said. “You’ll be seeing Jackson in the attorney’s room. Now we suggest posting a guard in the room for your protection. He’s an extremely dangerous, desperate man, liable to try anything.” I replied, a trifle stiffly, that I preferred a private inter view as specified in the court order. “Then we can post a guard by the window—he won’t hear the conversation, but he’ll be able to look through and see everything that goes on.” No thanks. “We can erect a heavy wire screen between you and the prisoner?” No wire screen, thank you. Thus my interlocutor unwittingly acted out for my benefit the most pervasive cliché in all prison dom: “They treat the convicts like caged animals.”
Jackson’s appearance surprised me in two respects: un like other prisoners I have met, whose stooped, impoverished physique attests to their long years of confinement, he has the bearing of an athlete. Nor does he affect the stony, un giving glare of so many of his black revolutionary contempo raries on the outside; on the contrary, he came forward with both hands outstretched, face wreathed in smiles, and ex claimed, “How wonderful to see you!”
Scientific Socialism is The Combatant to Eliminate Captialism – Haki Kweli Shakur
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I had been warned by no less an authority than Alex Haley, editor of “The Autobiography Of Malcolm X,” that it is ex tremely difficult to get political, revolutionary people to talk about themselves. This proved true in Jackson’s case. From a long discussion, ranging across the globe and over the centuries, I distilled the following interview:
Q. What time of day do you do your writing?
A. I don’t stick to any regimen. I generally get two or three hours of sleep a day, six hours of exercise, and the rest reading and writing. [In the letters, Jackson describes the exercises possible in his tiny solitary cell: “One thousand fingertip push‐ups a day. I probably have the world’s record on push‐ups completed…”]
Q. Do you get a certain number of hours of writing in each day?
A. Of course. After my six and three, I write. At present Fm engaged in a study of the working‐class movement here in the United States and an in depth investigation of history of the last 50 years, when Fascism swept the Western world. I split my writing time between that and correspondence with people I love.
Q. Do you revise much?
A. I write strictly of the top of my head. I don’t go over it because I haven’t time.
Q. What about writing equipment? I noticed that the letter you sent me was written with a very stubby pencil.
A. That’s all they allow you. I have 30 pencils in my cell right now. But keeping them sharp—the complication is have to asks the pigs to sharpen them.
Q. Yes I see. But do they sharpen them?
A. Sometimes yes, sometimes no, depending on whim.
Q. Typewriters are not allowed?
A. No, of course not. There’s metal in typewriters.
Q. Your book has been hailed here and in Europe as’ a superb piece of writing. How did you become such a good writer?
George Jackson Speaks! 1971!
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A. You’ve got to understand that I’m from the lumpen, that every part came real hard spend a lot of time with the dictionary. I spend 45 minutes a day learning new words. I’ll read, and I’ll come across words that I’m not familiar with. I record them on a piece of paper, in a notebook I have laying beside me. I look them up in a dictionary and familiarize myself with the entire meaning.
Q. Were there any problems about sending the original letters to your family that make up the bulk of “Soledad Brother”?
A. The letters that went to the family had to go through the censor, of course, and they were all watered down. Three fourths of the letters were returned. There’s a rule here stipulating one cannot make criticisms of the institution or society in general.
Q. What’s the mechanism for censorship of letters? It starts with the guard, right?
A. They go through about three censorships. The first one is the unit officer who picks the mail up. He reads them. Then they go to the mail room and a couple of people over there read them. And in special cases—when it was a question of whether I was attacking the institution or the social system —they go from the mail room to the warden or the assistant warden, and he reads them. Every one of my letters has been photostated or Xeroxed, and placed in my central file folder.
Q. If the warden decides he doesn’t want a letter to go out, does it come back to you with notations, or what?
A. Either that or they’ll just put it in my file and I’ll never hear anything else about it.
Q. In other words, you eventually find out from the person you wrote it to that it was never received?
A. That’s all.
Q. In “Soledad Brother” you describe your grandfather, the stories and allegories he made up to tell you. Did anyone else stimulate your imagination as a child?
A. Well, my mother. She had bourgeois ideas, but she did help me. I can’t give all the credit to my grandfather, Papa Davis. My mother had a slightly different motivation than my grandfather. Her idea, you know, was to assimilate me through the general training of a black bourgeois. Consequent ly, her whole presentation to me was read, read, read. “Don’t be like those niggers.” We had a terrible conflict, she and I. Of course I wanted a life on the street with guys on the block, and she wanted me to sit on the couch and read. We lived in a three‐story duplex and the only way out was through the kitchen. It was well guarded by Big Mama. I’d throw my coat out the window and volun teer to carry out the garbage, and she wouldn’t see me any more for a couple of days. But while I was home, Mom made me read.
Q. What books did she give you?
A. “Black Boy,” by. Richard Wright, was one. All of her life she had the contradictions of black people living in this country. She favored W.E.B. Du Bois. She tried to get me interested in black intellectualism with overtones of integration. When I was 12 or 13 I’d read maybe two books a week, also newspapers and periodicals.
Q. Can you think back and remember a favorite book you read as a child?
A. Strangely enough, “The Red and the Black.” I read that when I was about 13. I got a deep, let’s say, understanding of some of the degenerate, contradictory elements of Western culture from reading “The Red and the Black.”
Q. What about reading in prison? In your book you mention reading Sabatini and Jack London?
A. I was about 15 in Paso Robles [Youth Authority facil ity] when I read those light things. I like Sabatini. Sabatini is fabulous. I read Shakespeare, Sabatini, Jack London with my bathrobe on. I played dummy. Went along with what they told me to do; pretended I was hard of hearing, an absent minded bookworm, an idiot. And I got by with it. I’ve read thousands of books. Of course years ago I read Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” but mainly my interests are economics and political economy.
Q. What are the books that you’d say impressed you most of all?
A. A brother gave me a copy of Engels’s “Anti‐Dahring.”
Q. About what year — how old would you have been then?
A. It was in ‘61. I struggled with That, it took me three months. The same brother gave me a copy of the “Communist Manifesto.” Then I went deep into such things as William J. Pomeroy—“The Forest,” “On Resistance.” And then Nkrumah. And do you know who I was really impressed with, although he isn’t a socialist or a Communist? I was impressed with Henry George’s stuff. I’ve read all his stuff.
Q. Oh, really? His theories of economics?
A. Yes. His single‐tax idea is not correct. But I like his presentation — I like the ex planation he advanced explaining how the ruling class over the years managed through machinations to rob and despoil the people.
Q. What particular books are you reading for your historical study?
A. “The Nature of Facism” edited by Wolfe; and then Wil helm Reich’s “Mass Psychology of Facism.” That’s a beautiful book. I think it should be required reading for all of us, and there’s one statement in there that appeals to me in a very, very, very significant way. It goes like this: “Man is Biologically Sick!”
Q. What about black poetry, fiction, biography?
A. Poetry is not my bag. Not my medium. I have no sense of poetry at all. You know, the formalistic meter‐type poetry. But I like some of the Langston Hughes stuff. Nice old guy. I like some of his stuff. Of course, I read the outstanding poems—and I’ve quoted them, such as the one that arose out of the riot written by Claude McKay. I like such things as “Invictus.” But as a student of poetry—no.
Q. What black biographies have you read?
A. Malcolm’s, of course. And let me think. Several. I’ve had Wright’s stuff. And—what’s his name? — Little skinny guy. James Baldwin.
Q. Now, since the book has been published, who do you feel you have reached with this book; what do you think the effect has been on readers?
A. Well, I have mixed opinions, mixed emotions about the whole thing. But one strange thing has evolved out of the whole incident: It seems that parts of the book anneal to the right‐wing blacks and parts appeal to the left. I’ve had letters of commendation from a hun dred different sects that renre sents the whole black nolitcal spectrum from right to left. So there’s parts in there that the progressive left, black left, can relate to. I’ve gotten letters from black people 8 feet tall, celebrities, entertainers, etc.
Q. What were the prisoner’s reactions?
A. Well, the prisoners accepted it, of course. They loved it, especially the sections near the end. Well, you know we’re all considered trapped in here, without voice, and they seem to be gratified that one of us had the opportunity to express himself. For one, you under stand we’re an oppressed people. And that events like that, you know, a prisoner getting a book published, getting ideas across, speaking for them, speaking for us — all that’s appreciated.
Q. Did the guards ever say anything to you about the book?
A. Well, you have a difference of character, a character difference. Some laughed and said “I’m reading, I’m learning about myself,” and then there are others that look at me with daggers in their eyes. And it’s pretty clear that what they’re saying is that “first chance I get, nigger, I’m going to kill you.” They’re saying, “Look, we have a mutual understanding,” When I use the word “pig” one officer will take it as a terrible, terrible attack on him, whereas another will laugh.
Q.’ When Greg Armstrong [senior editor at Bantam Books] presented you with the first copy of your book on the day it was published, it was imme diately confiscated by a guard, is that true?
A. True. Later on my lawyers raised a fuss and they finally let me have a hard‐back and soft‐hack copy. But without the fuss, I’d never have gotten them.
Q. Is your book available in the prison library at the present time?
A. No. The publisher sent 100 copies to the prison library. The librarian distributed the books, but one month later, after the officials had read the book, they started confiscating it, so now it’s underground. It’s being picked up by the search‐and destroy squad. They invade the cells and look for contraband. It’s considered contraband, but there’s copies circulating around, underground. Now I’m locked up, hut that’s the way I heard it.
[I checked with Officer Mc Henry, librarian at San Quentin. He told me the prison had re ceived 35 copies of “Soledad Brother,” they were checked out immediately to inmates who wanted to read them, there was never any censor ship of the book so far as he knew. The mystery was further compounded by Jackson’s law yer, John Thorne, who told me his copy of “Soledad Brother” was taken from his briefcase by a guard and held as contra band when he went to visit his client—what is the truth of the matter? With Jackson locked up, and me locked out, we can each but report what we are told.]
Q. Now, at the time of publication Greg Armstrong flew out here for the customary publisher’s champagne party— which, in this case, was held at the gates of San Quentin. What did the prisoners think about that?
A. They love that sort of thing. You know, after years of isolation, all of a sudden to find out that people really are interested in you and that peo ple can relate to you in spite of the fact that sociology books call us anti‐social and brand us as criminals, when actually the criminals are in the Social Register—well, we did relate to that, to the whole incident. ▀
In African societies, oral tradition is the method in which history, stories, folktales and religious beliefs are passed on from generation to generation. Webster’s dictionary defines “oral” as, “spoken rather than written,” and it defines the word “tradition” as, “transmittal of elements of a culture from one generation to another especially by oral communication.”
For the African people, oral tradition is linked to their way of life. Most African societies place great worth in oral tradition because it is a primary means of conveying culture. It is also a mode of transmitting feelings, and attitudes. For centuries, African people depended upon oral tradition to teach the listener’s important traditional values and morals pertaining to how to live. Oral tradition delivers explanations to the mysteries of the universe and the meaning of life on earth. In African religion, it is the guiding principle in which to make sense of the world.
Oral tradition is non-written history, it is spoken word only. Historically, most African societies did not have an invented alphabet. African scholar and writer, John S. Mbiti asserts:
…Most African people did not invent an alphabet for the art of reading and writing. Therefore they could not keep written records of their history. Instead they passed on information form one generation to another, by word of mouth.
Indigenous Afrikan Spirituality Didn’t Start in a Book – Haki Kweli Shakur
The human voice is the key element in Oral tradition. Africans have been primarily vocal people throughout their history. Language is regarded as a powerful force. Although there are many ethnic languages that coexist in Africa, (researchers say there may be as many as 1000), African stories and folklore were communicated across different regions. Oral tradition relies on the human voice to communicate varied messages. Dr. Vincent Muli Wa Kituku explains:
Voice was the vehicle in which knowledge was passed on from one generation to another. Voice unified a family, clan, or community. Enforcement of customs depended on voice. When a person died…his or her voice was no longer to be heard, it was as if a whole library had been destroyed. Voice is important. Another integral part of Oral tradition is the integrating of music. Music plays an important role in African societies. According to Mbiti, “Africans are very fond of music. Therefore music, dance and singing are found in every community.”
Music also transmits knowledge and values, and it is way of celebrating important community and personal events. Combined with oral tradition and dance, a visual art form is created for the message being communicated.
The most important musical instrument of Africa is the drum. It has been said that no one knows how the drum came into being or how the first drum looked or sounded. Drums accompany different forms of communication, including storytelling, singing, and dancing. Drums are made in different sizes and shapes for different purposes.
Mbiti explains:
We also find many kinds of musical instruments, the commonest being the drum. There are drums of many shapes, sizes, and purposes. Some drums are used only in connection with kings and chiefs: the royal drums are often considered sacred and may not be played commonly or by anybody. There are war drums, talking drums, ceremonial drums, and so on.
Although the drum is the primary musical instrument and it is used to send and receive messages, it is also essential in the preservation of Oral tradition. In African religion the drum is considered sacred. It is used to send and receive spiritual messages. Because the drum is sacred, the drummer must be skilled as an oral communicator, and skilled at the art of drumming. Precise rhythms are connected with religious ceremony and ritual as well as entertainment. Jacob K. Olupona declares:
…For the African the drum is sacred. Created by god-like humans, and the drummer is a speaker and communicator of the sacred fixed text…the drummer can be compared to a poet. Just as the poet uses his voice to entertain people, so the drummer uses the drum to entertain. The drummer therefore must not be regarded as a technician alone; he is an artist in his own right. Even if the texts are fixed and unchanging, he still has to learn the words and acquire the special art of drumming. If he is not a good artist, the message cannot be reproduced fully. In addition, on the issue of the language of the drum being fixed, it was observed that while there may be some sets of phrases, proverbs, and wise sayings that form the drummer’s repertoire, the drummer is free to improvise in-between in order to make his message fit the particular occasion.[5]
Africans value Oral tradition more than any other culture. No person is more valued within a tribal group than the Griot (pronounced gree’oh). Griots have been said to be living archives, the links to the past.
To be continued.
Sharon Wilson is a student at St. Xavier University in Chicago. This article is used by permission.
[1] John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion (Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1975) 4.
[2] Vincent Muli Wa Kituku, East African Folktales (Little Rock: August House Publishers, Inc., 1997) Preface.
[3] Mbiti 9.
[4] Mbiti 9.
[5] Jacob K. Olupona, African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1991), 7.
(Original Caption) Philadelphia: Panther Minister of Information Elbert (Big Man) Howard (L) confers with Panther Afeno Shakur (C) and Minister of Education Ray Massi Hewitt (R) Zay Malik Shakur prior to press conference. Howard and Hewitt announced that Washington, DC,
PM Press: The Day the Black Panthers Came to Town (with Tupac Shakur’s Step-Uncle)
In March 1970, Jean Genet, the radical French author, lifelong rebel and supporter of deviant causes, began touring US college campuses known for their activism with members of the Black Panther Party, hoping to win support for the Black Panthers from left-leaning students and faculty. When Genet and two members of the Black Panther Party came to SUNY Stony Brook, the university refused to allow them on campus, so my parents (both professors) invited them to hold a fundraising event in OUR living room.
It was quite a gathering, with students, faculty and some media coverage . Besides Genet, the main speakers were Zayd Shakur (Tupac’s step-uncle, in photo at left with Genet), another member of the Black Panther Party whose name I don’t recall, and Professor Robert O. Paxton, a history professor best known for Vichy France, an exposé of official French complicity and collaboration with the Nazis during WWII, who translated for Mr. Genet.
I got caught up in the excitement and went around selling issues of The Black Panther, the Party newspaper, and soliciting donations at $1 a pop, which prompted Shakur to dub me a “cool revolutionary cat.” At one point I asked if I could take his picture with my Kodak Instamatic, and he said something like, “Sure, go ahead,” holding his arms slightly away from his body (this photo–see below–has never been published). He also taught me what “Right on!” meant. When I asked in that innocent way kids can get away with (I was 9 years old at the time), he said it means, “You’re doing something RIGHT and we want you to keep ON doing it.”
I also distributed free copies of the Black Panther Party Platform and Program (above). The event raised around $2,000 for the Panther 21 legal defense fund, a pretty decent amount in 1970.
Historical note: Zayd Shakur’s brother, Lumumba Shakur, was married to Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, but Lumumba is not Tupac’s father. Zayd Shakur was killed in a shootout with New Jersey State Troopers in 1973.
That’s the sad part.
That, and reading the Party platform, which includes statements like: #7: “We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.” Yeah, it can be pretty depressing to realize this issue is still with us, still unresolved, still an emotional flashpoint nearly 50 years later (check out all those people wearing “Blue Lives Matter” T-shirts in response to the “Black Lives Matter” movement). The Panthers also had the audacity to ask for decent education, housing, and full employment. Good thing we solved those problems! Oh, right…
But there are some funny parts, too.
First, I caused quite a stir in my 4th grade class the next day when I brought the Panther Party paper to Show and Tell, and stood there reading the headline about how “The fascists have already decided to murder Chairman Bobby Seale in the electric chair.” The teacher took me aside the next day and talked to me about how we have to “give people choices,” and not present “just one side,” or something like that, and even at age 9 I knew that the school must have gotten phone calls from irate parents, and that the unspoken meaning of my teacher’s comments was something along the lines of “Please don’t do that again or I’m going to get in big trouble.” I promised him I wouldn’t.
The other funny part is when Professor Paxton was driving Jean Genet back to the city. They talked the whole way, and at one point Genet says, There’s this word the Panthers keep using: “Qu’est-ce que c’est, ‘motherfucker’?” So Prof. Paxton explains the literal meaning, prompting Genet to ask, “La mère de qui?” (“Whose mother?”) Prof. Paxton explains that it’s a derisive term aimed at a certain class of white male who, due to his white supremacist/authoritarian views, actions, and tendencies, is labeled as being a direct descendant of the privileged white men who exploited enslaved African-American women’s bodies, using them as sexual slaves.*
Now I’m really oversimplifying things here, but let’s just say that Genet’s best known novels and plays depict all kinds of sexual “perversions” and other deviant acts as a symptom of, and a rejection of, capitalist decadence, hypocrisy and degradation.
So after he drops Genet off, Prof. Paxton has an epiphany: “Oh my God: I translated ‘motherfucker’ for Jean Genet!”
So remember people, don’t call racist pricks like Attorney General Jeff Sessions “cocksuckers.” (Some of my best friends are cocksuckers, after all.) But him and his kind are some real motherfuckers. Say it loud.
*(Note: crime novelist Chester Himes uses the term “mother raper” because most of his novels were published before you could legally say “fuck” in a commercially published novel.)
Native Virginian of Norfolk & Petersburg Declares The Republic of Liberia a Independent Country in West Africa a former Colony of The U.S. on This Day July 26 1847. #LiberiaIndependenceday
Independence for Liberia July 26, 1847 A young African American man from Norfolk ,Virginia named Joseph Jenkins Roberts declared the colony of Liberia in West Africa an independent republic on July 26, 1847. The following year he became the first elected president of the new country. Roberts had moved there in 1829 at the age of twenty from Petersburg, Virginia. At that time, Liberia was a colony owned by a group of people in the United States.
Early life
Roberts was born free in Norfolk, Virginia, the second oldest of seven children.
Joseph’s mother Amelia, described as a mulatto who was quite fair, was the planter’s slave mistress or concubine. He freed Amelia and her children when she was still young. Amelia gave all of her children but one the middle name of Jenkins, which suggests that may have been the name of their biological father.
Once free, Amelia married James Roberts, a free black. Roberts gave her children his surname and raised them as his own. Roberts owned a boating business on the James River. By the time of his death, he had acquired substantial wealth for an African-American of those times.
After hearing of the plans of the American Colonization Society to colonize the African coast at Cape Mesurado near modern-day Monrovia, Roberts decided to join an expedition. The restrictions in Virginia on free Negroes played an important part in his decision. The Roberts family was strongly religious and they felt called to evangelize the indigenous people of Africa. On February 9, 1829 they sailed for Africa on the Harriet. along with his mother and five of his six siblings. Travelling the same ship was James Spriggs Payne, who would later become Liberia’s fourth president.
The Liberia Plantation – Haki Kweli Shakur
Once in Monrovia, Roberts and two of his brothers established a business with the help of their friend William Colson of Petersburg. The company exported palm products, camwood, and ivory to the United States, and traded imported American goods at the company store in Monrovia.
The Liberia Plantation Manassas Virginia
1825 Harriett Bladen Mitchell Weir and her husband William James Weir built the house that would become known as Liberia. On the eve of the Civil War the plantation had grown into one of the largest and most successful in western Prince William County. With the labor of 90 slaves the plantation produced grains and vegetables and raised sheep, horses, cattle, and hogs.
In 1861 Liberia became the headquarters for Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard, and it also played a role in wartime espionage. The house became the military headquarters of Union General Irvin McDowell in 1862. It was during this period that President Abraham Lincoln came to Liberia to confer with his general.
Manassas Virginia Liberia Plantation This emphasis on slave life is even reflected in discussions about such topics as the names of plantations. a new appreciation of the history of the African diaspora, plantations such as Liberia have begun to afford the accounts of slave life and culture a more central role that runs counter to the often romanticized depictions of plantation life. At the Liberia Plantation, for example, scholars and historians have engaged in an extended debate about whether the name is a reference to the nation of Liberia, where African Americans settled in 1820, , or a nod to the Libra sign of the zodiac. The plantation’s original owner, William James Weir, was a registered member of the American Colonization Society. The group thought slaves should be freed and sent to Liberia, which was largely founded by emancipated slaves. We suspect he named his house after his belief in this society , Little is known about the lives of slaves at Liberia Plantation. By 1860, Weir owned 90 -100 slaves on the nearly 2,000-acre plantation. The other theory is that the house was named after a zodiac sign, because Weir’s in-laws often nicknamed homes in that fashion. The plantation’s original owner, William James Weir, was a registered member of the American Colonization Society. The group thought slaves should be freed and sent to Liberia, which was largely founded by emancipated slaves.
Former Enslaved New Afrikan Samuel Naylor Owned and Purchased Acres of Land on the Liberia plantation for 500$
______________________________
The name highlights Weir’s ambivalence about slavery—he supported general emancipation with resettlement of former slaves in Liberia, Africa.In 1860, eighty enslaved people lived at Liberia. Among them were Nellie Naylor and her seven children. Her husband Samuel had purchased his freedom and worked for the Weirs. Their son Cornelius “Neil” operated a gristmill nearby that Weir also owned
During the Civil War, William and Harriet Weir moved to Fluvanna County for safety. Twenty-two enslaved people accompanied them, including the Naylor’s daughter Sallie. Other slaves were sent farther South, some seized the opportunity for freedom behind Union lines, while some black workers—likely including Samuel, Nellie, and Neil Naylor—stayed on at Liberia and managed the property during the owners’ absence.In November 1865, after the Weirs returned, Samuel Naylor bought over fifty acres of land from them in exchange for $500 he managed to save. The Weirs gave Nellie another twelve acres in recognition of “the love and affection they have for their faithful servant.” The Naylor children eventually inherited the property, though most moved away. Sallie Naylor Randolph inherited the family house on Centreville Road and lived there in 1920.most intriguing is the name of the plantation. Liberia is, of course, a country in Africa. In the Antebellum period, many white opponents of slavery advocated colonizing freed slaves to Liberia.The Weirs, while they owned slaves, advocated this plan, too. They also demonstrated a lot of trust in their slaves: when they left in 1862, they put an elderly slave couple in charge, and one of their mills was run by a slave.
#SacredSpace The Life of a Slave on Historic Manassas Plantation Liberia
Living conditions varied from one plantation to another. Slave Josiah Henson wrote of her experience: “Wooden floors were a luxury. In a single room were huddled, like cattle, ten or a dozen persons, men, women and children. We had neither bedsteads, nor furniture of any description. Our beds were collections of straw and old rags, thrown down in the corners and bxoed in with boards; a single blanket the only covering.”
Imagine working from sun up to sun down six days a week, Eighty to 90 slaves worked for the Weir family on Liberia Plantation in Manassas. Both house and field slaves maintained the thriving farm during the mid-19th century. House slaves, including cooks, laundresses and blacksmiths, typically received more comforts than field slaves who toiled on the plantation.
It was illegal for slaves to read and write. Owners feared that literate slaves might read the Bible and “interpret the teachings of Jesus Christ as being in favour of equality.” This interpretation could lead to a slave uprising and the loss of cheap labor. For this reason, southern slaves were also forbidden to attend church. If neighbors provided slaves with half a pound of ration each week, this became the precedent among neighborhood slave owners. Few slaves were freed as a result of this unspoken rule, since one freed slave might lead to many freed slaves.
ALVIN V. BROWN Minister of Foreign Affairs Provisional Government Republic of New Afrika E-Mail: alvin.abantu@gmail.com
25 July 2018
All Citizens & Government Workers, i greet you with “FREE THE LAND!!”
First and foremost, let us recall that the Basic Policy of the Government has not changed. Our policy as stated in the platform papers of December 1969 state:
The basic policy of the government is to establish national strength through sovereignty, effective international relations, and inherent viability. Our position is that all the land where Black people live, in what has been called “the continental U.S.,” is our land, where we have lived on it traditionally, worked and developed it, and fought for it. This is the subjugated territory of the Republic of New Africa. Our basic national objective is to free this land from subjugation: to win sovereignty.
Imari Obadele ( Republic of New Afrika ) Political Prisoners & Cointelpro
The New Africans’ claim, by rights of heritage and reparations, five states of the Deep South: Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. In this area in many counties New Afrikans/ /Blacks already constitute a numerical majority. One set of these counties lies along the Mississippi River from Memphis to the Louisiana border and constitutes a contiguous territory containing more than 15,000 square miles – a territory which We call the Kush District, almost twice as large as the state of Israel. It is here that the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa has opened its struggle for land and independence.
In 2004 Imari Abubakari Obadele wrote an Exploration: “The Struggle for Independence And Reparations From The United States” in which he states;
One important reason that many New Afrikans still work for an independent Black state is economic: it has to do with jobs for our people and meaningful careers, the economic power to develop industry, science and world trade – to stand on our feet as a nation-state with the respect of the world – a respect now lacking.” ✱
He went on to state The Key things which We must do are these: 1.We must go into the streets and back roads, and make the following facts known to all our people. The New Afrikan nation grew up in North America during 200 years between 1660 and 1865, and We have continued to grow as a nation. The Black nation, the New Afrikan nation, is now 300 years old. Some of our people, like Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Osborne Perry Anderson,
AN AFRIKAN NATION IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE STRUGGLING FOR COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE!!
took up arms during slavery to help create a free New Afrikan nation-state here in North America. Men like Malcolm X and women like Queen Mother Moore and Dara Abubakari, have kept alive this work. Today the international law supports us.
In 1968 500 Black people met in Detroit and formed a Provisional Government for the nation. This “PG” has the job of leading the struggle to Free the Land”, the five states of the deep south, and to build a powerful independent nation-state for those who want it. This work is led today by President Joseph Reco Forbes.
2. Second, We must win support of all Black people for the Provisional Government. The more people use PG courts and support the independent Black foreign policy the stronger will the Provisional Government and the work for independence become.
3. Third, We must organize people to participate in a people’s vote (a plebiscite) for independence. We must run this vote ourselves, in accordance with the international law, and We must select polling places, create ballots, arrange for exact and verifiable counting of the votes and, or course, organize people to participate in all of this.
4. Finally, We must be ready to defend ourselves politically and military against those who would try to keep us from controlling the land after the vote. We must keep the will of our people strong. At the same time We must keep up pressure for support from the U.S. congress, from the United Nations and from countries all over the world. In the end, provided that We persist, the United States will have to make an honorable peace treaty with the Provisional Government. The United States will be forced to recognize the independence of our land, people, and government, the Republic of New Afrika. We will then establish peaceful and prosperous relations between our two nation-states, assuming that the United States does continue to exist. With all this, We must begin to build schools, health centers, media centers- and industry owned by the people, before independence.✱
HOW CAN AN INDEPENDENT BLACK STATE SUCCEED?
How can an independent New Afrikan state succeed today against the power of the United States, which destroyed our earlier states?
Today We have not only our basic human right to political self-determination, a matter of common sense, but the international law is on our side. The international law supports our right to an independent New Afrikan nation-state . We are not United States citizens now and cannot be until and unless We have exercised our right of choice. Before you can exercise this right of choice you must know that you have it. We are persons whose ancestors were kidnapped to these shores and held here against our will. Once freed We, as kidnapped people, possess- and still possess- the right to choose our political future. Whether to be U.S. citizens, whether to go somewhere else or whether to build our own independent nation-state right here and be citizens of it. For the most part, our people have never been taught about this right of choice right to self-determination and We have not had the opportunity to use it.
Remember that the basic reason that any of us should vote in U.S. elections is to protect ourselves and have some say over the tax money which they take from us. But voting does not make us U.S. citizens—-even though the state governments make us swear that We are U.S. citizens in order to vote. Such duress never results in a valid act. We have, above, all a right to a voice over the use of our tax money, taken from us without right, and a right to protect our
AN AFRIKAN NATION IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE STRUGGLING FOR COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE!!
persons by any means necessary.
Even being born in the United States does not make us U.S. citizens. The reason is that, unlike other people, our foreparents did not come here voluntarily; they were kidnaped and brought here by force. They were held here by force. Therefore, common sense and the international law both stand for the fact that Indians and the descendants of Afrikans held as slaves still have the right to choose their political future. The kidnapper the colonizer, cannot make that choice for us. That right, of choice, belonged to our foreparents and, since none of them was ever allowed to exercise it, it now belongs to each of us.
We have four natural choices: (1) to go back to Afrika; (2) to go to some other country; (3) to be a U.S. citizen, and (4) to be a citizen of the still-not-free New Afrikan nation-state.
The main international law agreements which support our right to choose and our right to have an independent New Afrikan state are these :✱
1. United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 1514, dated 14 December 1960: “The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.”
2. United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 1541, dated 15 December 1960: “Principles which should guide members … under article 73 of the Charter.”
3. United Nations General Assembly Resolution No. 2625, dated 24- October 1970: “The Declaration on Principles of International law.”
4. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which went into force internationally in 1976 and was ratified by the united States in 1992.
But We all know that the international law, while it is a great help to us, will not ALONE win our independence. Independence will be won ONLY by our own determination, courage, struggle, and Imara. (“Imara” means steadfastness and persistence, in the Afrikan Swahili language.)✱
#makeamericapayreparations 🚢 It’s deeper then beliefs, fairytales & he say she say They say merchant ships that used to carry kidnapped Afrikans ( Contraband ) didn’t exist I’ve seen many dated in the slavery period in the Virginia Archives there’s more evidence and pictures then this i just don’t need to pull it out! Conversation Reparations
The regions in Africa from which they embarked to Virginia included the following:
* Bight of Biafra and Gulf of Guinea islands: 29,744
* Senegambia and offshore Atlantic: 11,797
* West-Central Africa and St. Helena: 10,842
* Gold Coast: 5,823
* Windward Coast: 2,821
* Bight of Benin: 2,144
* Southeast Africa and Indian Ocean islands (essentially Madagascar): 2,071
* Sierra Leone: 1,622
* Other places in Africa: 7,121
As the primary mode of transportation, the James River was vital to transportation and commerce between the 17th and 20th Centuries. Richmond’s economy was built on the human slave trade, flour-milling, tobacco production, and iron production, all relying on the natural power of the James River. Shipbuilding, cotton mills, paper mills, quarries, and hydroelectric plants also relied on the James and were historically important to Richmond’s economy.
The Slave Ships Controversy – Haki Kweli Shakur X K.Kinte Show
Between 1628 and 1773, 74,015 enslaved people who embarked in Africa disembarked in America with a location in Virginia as the principal landing port. The ports they came through included Hampton, Lower James River, Rappahannock, South Potomac, Upper James River and York River (17,741 came through unspecified ports).
Richmond was among the largest Atlantic slave trade markets in the United States, second to New Orleans. As many as 500,000 African Americans were sold into slavery through Richmond before the passage of Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Many slaves were sold in the eight-block neighborhood of Shockoe Bottom on the north bank of the James River. The slave trade was a prominent economic activity in Richmond until the abolition of slavery at the end of the American Civil War. In April 1865 Union troops entered Richmond. Not wanting their supplies taken by the enemy, Confederates set them on fire. Unfortunately the fire quickly burned out of control and much of the city’s commercial area along the river was destroyed.
Biafr: The Richmond Virginia Slave Trail, Igbo Connection to Virginia
Republic of New Afrika VP Kwesi Jumoke Ifetayo in Historic Shockoe Bottom Ancestral Prayer and Libation
Today at 6:13 am, Elbert “Big Man”, one of the original founding members of the original Black Panther Party, joined the ancestors. Above all else, Elbert “Big Man” Howard loved his comrades and all oppressed people, who he never stopped fighting for.. Big Man would say, “All Power Belongs to the People” Born in Tennessee in 1938, Howard was also the first editor of the Black Panther Party’s newspaper.
Elbert “Big Man” Howard is one of the original founding members of the Black Panther Party. Big Man was a Black Panther from 1966 to 1974. During that time he served as Deputy Minister of Information and was a member of the Central Committee and the International Solidarity Committee.
As the Black Panther Party grew in numbers, their programs grew in depth, “Big Man” Howard held several positions and worked on many projects. “Big Man” Howard himself was responsible for a free medical clinic for sickle-cell anemia and a work-study program for parolees at the college. The Black Panther Party also created a free-breakfast program, piqued by poor children’s inability to succeed in school due to malnourishment. This latter operation has actually been the unstated model for generations of government-run breakfast programs.
How The Black Panther Party Changed Community Organizing- Elbert Big Man Howard
In efforts to appeal to the community and voice their cause, the Black Panthers decided to found a weekly newspaper—and looked for an editor. “Big Man” Howard was the first editor of the Black Panther Party newspaper and Party international spokesperson. As a Black Panther Party spokesman, he traveled and lectured on the conditions and treatment of African-Americans and other minorities in America. “Big Man” Howard helped build Solidarity Committees in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
As the first editor of the Black Panther’s newspaper, “Big Man” Howard, help building its circulation to 200,000 copies per week. “Big Man” Howard traveled the world as the Black Panther’s deputy minister of information and international and established a community medical clinic and an educational program for ex-offenders at Merritt College.
After leaving the party in 1974, Howard returned to Tennessee. In Memphis, he served on the boards of directors of several African American progressive educational institutions. In 2001, Howard self-published his memoir, Panther on the Prowl, covering the rise and fall of the Black Panthers. In 2003, he was a coordinator for the All of Us or None Ex-Offender Program, and also was a member of the Millions for Reparations committee.
