LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

Join the Movement and Sign the Declaration

Click Here to Sign the Declaration

Look at the paternal lineage on this family tree, using my paternal lineage as an example. What's the thing that is constant? In every generation, it is the "Balanta" which is passed down. This is your LINEAGE or ETHNICITY. The different colored XX are part of your genetic profile but it is not the same as the CONSTANT thing that is passed down from fathers to sons or, on the other side, from mothers to daughters. Now, if either of your paternal or maternal lineage ancestor survived the middle passage, then you are directly related to the LINEAGE and ETHNICITY of that place and people. THAT is the PRIMARY culture which the LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT is helping people to RESTORE because that is the thing that was severed by the middle passage. The yellow XX in the chart, for example, is not the thing that you lost in the middle passage. In fact, if that was contributed after the middle passage, then we are not even having the same conversation. So, while we acknowledge the dna contributed to the ROOT BRANCH OF THE LINEAGE ANCESTRY, it is you maternal and paternal lineage ancestry that is of concern to those who want to reclaim what was lost because of the criminal trans-Atlantic trafficking of people of African lineage and heritage. That is where you will find the language that was taken from you and the culture that was taken from you.

Lineage Restoration Movement Declaration

1. AWARE that the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage consisted of a minimum of 36,000 voyages that are documented in Davis Eltis’ Trans-Atlantic Slate Trade Database;

2. NOTING that Thomas Cooper, in the Supplement to Mr. Cooper’s Letter on the Slave Trade , suggests that for every 100 people with African lineage and heritage who were kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved, 1,000 were murdered in European inspired or exacerbated warfare on the African continent, 20 were murdered on the “way of death” on the African continent and the Middle Passage, and 70 were murdered during the “seasoning” process, for a total of 170 million deaths;

3. FURTHER NOTING that Joseph Miller, in The Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730-1830, suggests that for every 100 people with African lineage and heritage who were seized, 74 reached the marketplace in the interior, 64 arrived at the slave forts and the holding pens on the coast, 57 stepped onto soil across the Atlantic, 48 lived to behold their first master or mistress, and only 28 to 30 of the original people with African lineage and heritage seized were alive three to four years later;

4. CLAIMING that Portugal and Brazil were and are responsible for at least 7,300 slave voyages (26.8%) and at least 5,074,900 (45.9%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally, and immorally transported from the African continent and, using Cooper’s order of magnitude, were and are responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of more than 73 million people of African lineage and heritage;

5. CLAIMING that Britain was and is responsible for at least 11,632 slave voyages (42.7%), and that least 3,112,300 (28.1%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of 52.2 million people of African lineage and heritage;

6. CLAIMING that France was and is responsible for at least 4,038 voyages (14.8%) and at least 1,456,000 (13.2%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and
enslavement of 21.6 million people of African lineage and heritage;

7. CLAIMING that Spain was and is responsible for at least 1,116 slave voyages (4.1%), and at least 517,000 (4.7%) of the people who were forcibly, illegally and immorally transported from the African continent, thereby being responsible for the murder, kidnapping and enslavement of 8.5 million people of African lineage and heritage;

8. EMPHASIZING that almost every country of the Western Hemisphere, and especially the British Mainland of North America, the British Leewards, the British Windwards and Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, the Spanish American Mainland, the Spanish Caribbean, Northeast Brazil, Bahia, Southeast Brazil and other areas, participated in some degree, in the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African lineage and heritage;

9. FURTHER EMPHASIZING that 40.6% of all kidnapped and trafficked people of African lineage and heritage were shipped to Brazil, 29 % to the British colonies in the Caribbean and North America, 14.3% to the Spanish colonies in the Americas, 12% to the French colonies, and 2.7% to the Dutch Americas;

10. LAMENTING that untold numbers of families, clans, tribes, societies, villages, nations and civilizations on the African continent were invaded, disrupted, disorganized, pillaged, raped and destroyed as a result of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African lineage and heritage;

11. COGNIZANT that for more than 6 centuries and 30 generations, the theft of the fruit of labor of the people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, and the nearly incalculable wealth that it produced, has redistributed income and wealth earned by the people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic to generations of people of European lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic, leaving the former impoverished as a group and the latter relatively privileged as a group;

12. INFORMED that Joe R. Feagin in Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation and Contemporary Discrimination: Are Reparations in Order for African Americans? calculates that the value of the slave labor expropriated by whites in the United States from 1620 to 1865 ranges from about $1 trillion to as much as $97 trillion, depending on the rate of interest chosen;

13. INFORMED that the cost of labor market discrimination for 1929-1969 (in 1983 dollars) was $1.6 trillion and that the cost of anti-black discrimination from the end of slavery in 1865 to the year 1965, the end of legal segregation would likely increase that wage-loss estimate to several trillion dollars;

14. INFORMED that the estimate of the cost of continuing racial discrimination in employment has been put in the range of $94-$123 billion dollars;

15. CONCLUDING that, since the 47.5 million people of African lineage and heritage in the United States represents less than 4% of all the people of African lineage and heritage in the world today, the sum total of the wealth transfer by means of slavery, segregation and contemporary discrimination from more than 1 billion people of African lineage and heritage to people of European lineage and heritage amounts to more than $600 trillion dollars (taking into consideration lost interest over time and putting it in today’s dollars) and does not count the value of the wealth that this stolen labor created;

NOW therefore, we the undersigned, hereby declare:

1. The economic damage to and condition of the victims of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of people with African Lineage and Heritage (CTATOPWALAH) has been well studied, identified, and calculated.

2. Less studied and understood is the damage to and condition of the IDENTITY of victims of CTATOPWALAH.

3. Identity locates an individual as a part of a family, a community, a region, a culture, and a historical period.

4. On the African continent prior to CTATOPWALAH, identity was formed by the knowledge and preservation of one’s maternal lineage, transmitted from mother to daughter and paternal lineage, transmitted from father to son. Depending on each family’s village tradition, identity, and all that it included – language, culture, spirituality, land, and one’s place in the world and universe (history), was determined either by maternal or paternal lineage.

5. Health and well-being, therefore, required the preservation of one’s lineage. If you did not preserve your lineage, you lost your location or place in the world.

6. In the same way that CTATOPWALAH caused severe and devastating economic damage, it also created severe and devastating LINEAGE DAMAGE.

7. By using violence and terrorism, people of European lineage and heritage prevented the victims of CTATOPWALAH from speaking their native language, using their native names, and returning to their families living in their ancestral homelands.

8. Consequently, the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH no longer retained knowledge of their lineage identities resulting in an IDENTITY CRISIS.

9. New identities such as Guinea-man, slave, negro, colored, mulatto, nigger, black, African American, New Afrikan replaced the lineage identities.

10. The strong existential yearning to reconnect with one’s family, community, region, culture and natural place in the word inspired noble attempts to reclaim one’s lineage identity and resulted in the appropriation of fictitious or place-holder identities such as African (a European construct and designation), Christian, Muslim, Jew, Moor, Hebrew Israelite, Kemetian, New Afrikan, Rastafarian, Pan African, Aboriginal, Native American, Blood, Crip, Black P Stone Ranger, Black Gangster Disciple, Nation of 5% and so many others. These man-made identities can and do change.

11. However, lineage is unchangeable – the descent from fathers to sons and mothers to daughters, is permanent. Thus, who you are, your identity, will always be determined by lineage. At the most fundamental level, you are your ancestral lineage.

12. Our most ancient ancestors admonished, “Man, know thyself.” One’s greatest duty on earth was to honor one’s ancestors. Not knowing who you are and who your ancestors are was considered the greatest tragedy that can befall someone.

13. Because health and well-being are dependent on the preservation of one’s lineage, the attempts to appropriate identities that are not based on one’s actual ancestors have failed to repair the LINEAGE DAMAGE.

14. THE CURRENT CONDITION OF THE DESCENDANTS OF THE VICTIMS OF THE CRIMINAL TRANS-ATLANTIC TRAFFICKING OF PEOPLE WITH AFRICAN LINEAGE AND HERITAGE REMAINS ONE OF IDENTITY CRISIS.

15. The identity crisis is now the main internal obstacle preventing the repair and advancement of the descendants of CTATOPWALAH.

16. The system of white supremacy remains the main external obstacle preventing the repair and advancement of the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

17. The Lineage Restoration Movement is the response to the IDENTITY CRISIS just described.

18. The objective of the Lineage Restoration Movement is to demonstrate that repair and healing for the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH will remain incomplete until such people RESOLVE ONCE AND FOR ALL THE IDENTITY CRISIS BY REDISCOVERING THEIR MATERNAL OR PATERNAL ANCESTRY.

19. Knowledge of one’s ancestral lineage is the foundation for answering all of the questions and solving all of the problems that people of African lineage and heritage face today. It reconnects the victims of CTATOPWALAH on both sides of the Atlantic. It identifies the natural organizing units needed for a United Front against the common enemy of those Europeans who today, still use a refined system of white supremacy.

20. The natural ordering and organizing of humanity is observable. Trillions of cells and several biological systems are organized and united into what is called an individual human being. That human being is part of a family, which is the product of previous family members or ancestors. This is permanent and unchangeable. Thus, the natural order of humanity is ancestors, family, individual. People of different families with common ancestors form a community. Communities form the highest unit of human organization which are nations.

21. Nations are the biggest unit which can organize the behavior and resources of a people through what is called government. Since there is no single planetary government, then the highest level of human organization at this time is a nation. Natural nations existed prior to CTATOPWALAH and were based on ancestral lineage and not on arbitrary designated territorial boundaries indicated by cartography.

22. The lessons of history teach that the natural nations of people with African lineage and heritage MUST FORM A UNITED FRONT to defeat the systems of white supremacy, colonialism, neocolonialism and any forms of exploitation and injustice committed against people of African lineage and heritage.

23. The stronger the natural nations of people with African lineage and heritage, the stronger the UNITED FRONT.

24. Until now differences in class, religion, culture, economics, geography, politics, education, music, fashion, language, skin tone, hair, noses, and even sports, were used to divide and conquer people with African lineage and heritage.

25. The Lineage Restoration Movement has observed that people who share lineage ancestry have the firmest foundation for uniting on both sides of the Atlantic.

26. When such unification happens for each group or nation of shared ancestry, communication and shared resources increase that group or nation’s strength, as the saying goes, “Strength in Unity”

27. A UNITED FRONT of all people of people of African lineage and history so organized by ancestry and strengthened, can be achieved PROVIDED that the necessity of such a UNITED FRONT is well understood.

28. Only in this way will the division and disunity between people of African lineage and heritage on both sides of the Atlantic be overcome and the dream of the previous generation’s Pan African ideal achieved.

THEREFORE , the Lineage Restoration Movement

1. DECLARES that for wealth to translate into well-being, people must have a spiritual element within them. Without that, “success” will work against the people;

2. DECLARES that the proper spiritual element needed by the victims of CTATOPWALAH can only be developed through restoring their ancestral lineage since their health and well-being, including their spiritual health and well-being, depend upon restoring and preserving their ancestral lineages;

3. ENCOURAGES the current Reparations movement to prioritize solving the IDENTITY CRISIS of the victims of CTATOPWALAH by using proprietary genetic testing from African Ancestry to restore knowledge of one’s maternal and paternal ancestral lineages;

4. REMINDS the international community that any Reparations must include the following: right of each person to choose among and receive the remedy of one of the four natural options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to the African continent, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new nation on American soil by and for the victims of CTATOPWALAH ;

5. RESOLVES that FOR THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF REPARATIONS RESOURCES, THE PRIORITY FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT is to train and develop a professional class of genealogy researchers from among the victims of CTATOPWALAH and deploy them as part of a modern day
government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry lineage and family history of every person claiming to be the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH;

6. DEMANDS that every college and university establish a special program for training this class of genealogy researchers and all students entering the program should be granted free tuition and a living stipend for four years of study.

7. DEMANDS that guaranteed employment (through the government program) is provided for the program graduates for the next fifteen years so that every descendant of the victims of CTATOPWALAH can have their ancestral lineage identity restored;

8. STRONGLY RECOMMENDS that each lineage ancestry group or nation form a centralized body in each country such as the Temne Abara Nation and the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America to whom Reparations resources can be transferred and managed;

9. FURTHER RECOMMENDS that all such centralized ancestry lineage groups in each country form an umbrella organization that serves as the UNITED FRONT for each country;

10. FURTHER RECOMMENDS that all such UNITED FRONTS in each country form an umbrella organization that serves as the highest UNITED FRONT for the LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT internationally;

11. WARNS that failure to restore the lineage of the victims of CTATOPWALAH severely threatens their future health and well-being;

12. WARNS that failure to restore the lineage of the victims of CTATOPWALAH is continued injustice;13. REPEATS that where there is NO JUSTICE there is NO PEACE.

Signed:

1. Foday K. Conteh (Jul 26, 2020 22:10 EDT)

2. Siphiwe Baleka (Jul 26, 2020 23:03 EDT) 

3. Sânsáu Tchimna (Jul 27, 2020 11:47 EDT)

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE LINEAGE RESTORATION MOVEMENT

1. The Lineage Restoration Movement (LRM) is a response by the descendants of the people who were trafficked from the African continent, carried across the Atlantic ocean, and enslaved.

2. The LRM recognizes and understands that in addition to the theft of land, people, and labor, IDENTITIES were also stolen creating the current IDENTITY CRISIS experienced by black people in the Americas today.

3. Justice and healing, therefore require the return of that which was stolen.

4. In order to return the land and people, the stolen identities must (first) be restored.

5. The principal aim of LRM is to restore the ancestral lineages that were severed as a result of the criminal Trans-Atlantic trafficking and enslavement of people from the African continent.

6. This can be achieved by taking proprietary genetic tests from African Ancestry which uses technology that enables the identification of one’s maternal and paternal lineage.

7. LRM is trans-national since people of the same lineage were trafficked by people from multiple nations and enslaved in multiple nations.

8. LRM aims to organize the various ethnic lineages in a Lineage United Front to more effectively achieve Justice due to the victims of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Trafficking of People with African Lineage and Heritage (CTATOPWALAH).

9. LRM believes that at this time, FOR THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF REPARATIONS RESOURCES, THE PRIORITY FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT is to train and develop a professional class of genealogy researchers from among the victims of
CTATOPWALAH and deploy them as part of a modern day government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry lineage and family history of every person claiming to be the descendants of the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

10. LRM demands any Reparations must include the following: right of each person to choose among and receive the remedy of one of the four natural options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to the African continent, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new nation on American soil by and for the victims of CTATOPWALAH.

CLASH OF CULTURES: EXPLAINING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP TO MY WIFE

WIFE: Ughhhh! We have no money! We still have a lot of credit card debt! You aren’t good at managing money!

ME: Wait a second. Our credit card debt was $6,900. I just paid $3,000 and reduced it by almost half. What are you talking about?

WIFE: We have no money!

ME: Let me explain something to you. I am President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA). It is a non-profit organization. The average salary for a nonprofit president/CEO is $118,678. For non profits with an operating budget less than $499,000, the average CEO salary is $60,206.

Thus, as the BBHAGSIA, my work this year is valued at between $60,000 and $119,000.

In the past, as a Driver Health Editor, I wrote bi-monthly articles for a magazine client. In the first three years, they paid me $600 for 600 words. The last three years, they paid me $300 for 600 words. Since September of 2019, I have written 81 articles for the Balanta website that average more than 2000+ words.

By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth between $72,900 and $145,800.

Now I have another client that started paying me $353 for a 2000+ word article. After 15 articles the pay increases to $470. After another 15 articles the pay increases to $588. After another 30 articles the pay increases to $706 and after another 15 articles the pay increases to $1,177.

By this calculation, the 81 articles I have posted to the BBHAGSIA website is worth $64,115.

Currently, I am consulting with two foreign governments, and I have diplomatic experience going back to 2003 when I worked at the African Union and negotiated immigration and citizenship issues in Ethiopia on behalf of the Rastafari community in Shashemane. In fact, my experience as an Ambassador for my people began when I was ten years old when, as a state champion swimmer in an all-white sport, my father groomed me to be an ambassador for the race since I had such high visibility and profile. Now, the average salary of an early career Diplomat with one to four years experience is $81,077. For a diplomat in the United States, the average salary is $105,511.

Thus, the value of my diplomatic work this year, which has included meeting with Ministers of Culture, Tourism and Sport in two countries, as well as organizing COVID-19 food distribution, should earn me a salary of $105,511

Finally, I am a consultant to another start-up venture which, at this time, doesn’t have the money to pay me. Nevertheless, I have put in 58 hours of work for them. My normal consulting fee is $100/hr but I am only invoicing them at $50/hr.

Thus, I have done another $5,800 worth of work.

Now add all of that up:

NGO President $118,700

Content Creator $72,900

Diplomat $105,511

Consulting $5,800

TOTAL $302,911

In addition, in 2019 I wrote and submitted 14 grants for a total of $581,804. If I received 10% to 20% of that as administrative fee/salary, that’s another $58,000 at least added to my salary.

So, this past year, I have legitimately done $360,000 worth of work, yet I have no money. WHY? This is what you don’t understand because you don’t understand the history of African American people. But I learned early in life four things:

1) If I were to depend on money for my happiness, I, as a black man in America, would NEVER be happy;

2) If I were to spend 40 hours a week working for someone else, I would never have the time to build my own business, build my own society, build my own government, and determine my own future;

3) If I were going to be a credit to my race and a leader of my people, I would have to sacrifice high paying jobs and their creature comfort rewards and do the things that needed to be done whether they paid or not;

4) I needed to pursue work that made me happy and was beneficial to my people and de-prioritize getting a high paying job with benefits working for white people.

So the fact that we don’t have any money has nothing to do with my being a lazy, unskilled, untalented man and unworthy husband. It has to do with what is called

THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP.

BACKGROUND TO MY MARRIAGE

My wife and I are happily married. Like most couples, however, occasionally we have an argument and from time to time, some of those arguments concern our finances. As a result, recently I had to explain to her THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP.

But first, you need a little bit of context about me and my wife. I met my wife through a mutual friend in June of 2016. At the time she was living in China and I was living in Springfield, MO. Before that I had been a wage slave employee working for a white-owned company and making $57,000 salary. However, I started my own company and in 2015, in my first year as Founder and CEO of Fitness Trucking, I made $109,000. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to worry so much about money. I could pay my rent and bills, eat whatever food I want, travel, and buy things. I started living life a little, not just surviving. At this time I was also paying $800 a month child support for my two sons, who lived just a few houses down the street with their mother. Life was good and I felt confident, except that I was lonely. Springfield is 97% white and during this time I resolved that I would only date black women. Unfortunately, that made things kinda tough.

I am a 5’8” 150 lb. national champion swimmer and my Fitness Trucking core business is health coaching. They say like attracts like and birds of a feather flock together, so I like my women smaller than me. It makes me feel “big”. But I am not shallow. The boys’ mother is a big woman (relative to me) - when we met she was about 190 lbs. but that didn’t stop me from falling in love with her and raising her seven kids from a previous relationship (yes, I said SEVEN)….

But our relationship became very unhealthy (like my parents’ relationship which ended in divorce when I was ten) and we decided that it was better if we separated. I realized that there were lots of requirements for a healthy relationship, among them physical attraction. Women like to feel “desired” and a vibrant sex life is the glue in a marriage. I learned that even though I loved my wife, I wasn’t physically attracted to her and this created some of our many problems.

So by 2016, I realized that besides all of the character and integrity requirements - honesty, caring and considerate, integrity, adventurous, feminine, etc. - there were other things that I needed, and a physique that I found attractive was one of them. But I wasn’t requiring anything that I myself didn’t have and wasn’t offering.

First, I wanted a woman who was fit and healthy and enjoyed physical activity as much as me so that we could share this aspect of life. Unfortunately, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, 80.6% of African American women over the age of twenty are overweight or obese. So that means that for every 100 black women, 80 of them are not attractive to me. That’s not saying anything against these women. Remember, I am a SMALL man but I like to feel BIG, so I like a woman I can wrap my arms around that fits into me and I can feel like her protector. I’m quite sure women like such a man and feeling, too.

Next, I have a high level of education, having graduated from Yale University in 1996. I’m what people call an “intellectual”. Fortunately, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that black women are the most educated group in America and earn 68% of all degrees awarded to black students. While formal educational achievement is not all that important to me (the boys’ mother never went to college and I was ok with that), at least a healthy intellect or the ability to value and respect my intellectual pursuits is important. I buy books the way a lot of women buy shoes….. which leads us to money.

My desire is that I make enough money so that my wife doesn’t have to work if she doesn’t want to. What makes her happy is her choice. As a man, I feel it is my responsibility to provide for her. If we have children together, my preference is for my wife to stay at home and raise the children. But if she wants a career, I support that, too.

But here’s the kicker - I’M NOT CHRISTIAN!!!! I’m not interested in the Bible or going to church. But, the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study revealed that 79% of African American identify as Christian. So, out of 100 women, 80 are overweight or obese, so that leaves just 20 women that I might be attracted to. Out of those 20 women, about 80% are Christian, and educated black Christian women love them some church and Jesus and are looking for a “god-fearing man” which to them means a Christian man. So if I exclude them, that leaves just 4 available black women for me. Now, at this point, these 4 black women have to 1) be single; and 2) be attracted to me. Now, what are the odds that I am going to find my black queen in Springfield, MO???? At 44 years of age at the time, such women were in their twenties and weren’t looking for a man my age….

So I started using dating apps and to my surprise, I wasn’t getting any attention. I couldn’t understand it! Here I was, a successful athlete, entrepreneur, I had traveled to forty countries, I was active, etc. . . I thought I was a good catch. But then I did some research and discovered that as a black man, I was the least likely to get any response. (But the situation was even worse for black women!!!!)

In 2016, I was a rising star. My business was becoming a success, I just signed a six-figure book deal with Touchstone Books (division of Simon & Schuster), a book tour was being planned for 2017, I had just won seven gold medals at the US Masters Swimming National Championships and set my first national record, I was ranked in the top three in the world and was heading to the 2017 FINA World Championships to become a World Champion. I even made an appearance on Good Morning America. I wanted someone to share this life with. I wanted a wife and I just couldn’t find one…..

One day I jokingly asked a Chinese friend of mine if she could find me a wife. Two days later she showed me a picture of Zhou YuTong, a friend living in Liuzhou, China, and the rest is history….

Now, the reason I went into this background is for two reasons. First, because there are a lot of people, some merely ignorant, others prejudiced, mean-spirited and hateful, who, without knowing me or my wife, have a lot of negative things to say about my marriage. In their eyes, I have betrayed the black woman and the black race. And I understand this point of view and have written extensively about the historically negative effect of mixed race relationships on African people, especially between blacks and whites. Thus, I am quite aware of the contradictions in my own life. However, to these people, I also point out that:

1) my marriage is to another non-white person

2) Balanta people and Chinese people have a history. When Balanta people waged war against their Portuguese colonizers, it was the Chinese who first gave Balanta people weapons and military training for the liberation war

3) A man of my stature in traditional African culture, is expected to have many wives and also have “diplomatic marriages” to form alliances with other peoples.

4) From the Balanta perspective, the point of marriage is to find another person that consistently increases your vital force energy and for whom your vital force energy increases theirs, and then have children together. This is a happy marriage. It ensures that the greatest amount of vital life force energy remains perpetually in one’s posterity. One can now understand the real and spiritual danger of being in a toxic marriage.

Since I fulfilled my debt to the ancestors by giving them two sons from a woman of African descent, I was free to find a wife that provided the greatest increase to my vital life force energy. That is called “the pursuit of happiness”.

5) when I asked my Balanta ancestors for a wife, they sent Zhou YuTong. This was confirmed when I visited the most ancient homeland of my Balanta ancestors.

Now, the other reason I brought up the background of my marriage is so that one can understand the challenge my wife and I face when it comes to navigating our life together, especially when it comes to wealth building. Coming from her culture, I found it necessary to explain the racial wealth gap to her.

EXPLAINING THE RACIAL WEALTH GAP TO MY WIFE

As soon as we met, Zhou YuTong and I decided we were both ready for marriage and we wanted to marry each other. In order to do this, we had to go through the K1 Visa process and I had to submit tax returns to prove that I could support her. She and her family were happy to see that for the past two years I was making more than $100,000. When I took two trips to China at the end of 2016, I paid for everything and showed my wife a wonderful time. When the K-1 visa was approved, I arranged for her to fly to meet me in Budapest, Hungary for the Masters Swimming World Championships (where I re-proposed to her) and from there she returned with me to start her new life in America. The first year she was not allowed to work (until she got her green card) so she stayed at home and I took care of her. At that time I was doing a lot of public speaking, earning $2,000 to $2,500 plus travel expenses for a one-hour presentation. Thus, during that first year, she traveled with me on all those business trips and in this way got to see America. I was making money, giving interviews, and she lacked for nothing. My income put me in the top 12% of Black American wealth (Upper middle-class) and our expectation was that life would just continue to get better and better.

Fast forward to October, 2019. After a seven year business relationship, I lost my flagship client. That was 70% of my income. Then in February 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. I lost more clients and there was no more travel for speaking engagements. Our finances tanked. I dropped back into the “working-class/poverty class. During this time I used a credit card to make ends meet, the first time in my life that I ever had credit card debt. Meanwhile, I don’t own my house. I still rent. I don’t have any retirement savings. Plus, I owe a lot of money in back taxes.

I stopped paying taxes after 2016 because I was no longer going to give the fruit of my labor to a government I don’t recognize nor support nor never chose to become its “citizen” (see my post Interpreting the 14th Amendment).

I realized that the majority of the government’s budget, $3.8 trillion, comes from average people like me and not from the super-wealthy people and their businesses.

MOST OF THE DISCRETIONARY SPENDING GOES TO THE MILITARY WHICH IS FIGHTING WARS, KILLING PEOPLE, AND SPREADING A SYSTEM THAT CONCENTRATES WEALTH INTO THE HANDS OF A FEW RICH WHITE PEOPLE. THIS IS A SYSTEM WHICH I DON’T SUPPORT.

THE MONEY THAT THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON HEALTH, HOUSING, EDUCATION AND OTHER SERVICES ARE CLEARLY FAILING THE BLACK COMMUNITY IN AMERICA, SO WHY WOULD I WANT TO SUPPORT SUCH A GOVERNMENT BY PAYING THEM INCOME TAXES ON MY EARNINGS???

Then I started learning about international law, the banking system and the Federal Reserve and realized

1) my great, great, great, great, great grandfather and grandmother were both brought to America against their will before the United States’ Declaration of Independence;

2) The Declaration of Independence states,

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

3) After President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, my emancipated great, great, great grandfather NEVER freely consented to be governed by the United States Government

4) The 14th Amendment forced citizenship on my great, great, great grandfather and his descendants who never freely consented to this citizenship

5) I am not required by law to file Income Taxes

I wanted to use my money to build build my business and achieve my dreams. For about 100 years my family had been working and giving 100% of the fruit of their labor to slave owners. Those slave owners built a government that today still wants me to give 33% of my earnings to them. How exactly, does one remove consent from the United States Government?

I refused to vote, I stopped paying taxes, and I started restoring my lineage ancestry.

As my wife began to realize how precarious our financial situation is, she began to feel very insecure and even accused me of being financially irresponsible because, in her eyes, from her cultural point of view, I should have been saving money and buying a house. In China, everything is about upward mobility and asset accumulation. This is what caused the argument. So I had to explain some things to her.

1. First, she didn’t understand African American history in general, or Balanta history specifically. So I had to explain to her that my family had been in the United States for five generations before me. The first two generations were enslaved - they worked from sun up to sun down with no pay. All the fruit of their labor was taken from them and used to build white businesses and white society.

2. Second, I had to explain to her that the third and fourth generation had to live through Jim Crow and all that entailed.

3. Third, I had to explain to her that the fifth generation and my generation (the sixth) live with the racial wealth gap that would take 228 years to overcome.

Now, let’s go into more detail or you can skip to the video at the end of this post.

In essence, I was trying to explain to her that she can’t hold me to the same standards and expectations for either a white family or a Chinese family.

So let’s get into some of the details why.

Wealthiest countries in the world.

The United States of America is the wealthiest country in the world, followed by China. However, income distribution in China is a lot more equitable than in the United States.

Compared to other countries, the concentration of wealth concentrated in the top 1% is far greater in the United States than anywhere in the world.

This means that more than anywhere, in the United States, a few people have most of the wealth and the vast majority of people are competing against each other for what is left over.

Compare the United States With China

Now, the ethnic diversity in China is very low. 90% of China is ethnically descended from the Han people. There are 55 other ethnic groups that make up the remaining 10% of the population. China’s economic development was not based on slavery, racism or ethnic discrimination. Thus, they have no system of racial superiority that distributes wealth to one racial group over others.

Meanwhile, the economic development boom in China allows for wealthy Chinese to come to America to invest. They come with capital and have the strength of a national economy behind them. With such a start, they are able to succeed and accumulate more capital in the United States compared to any other group. African American people, by contrast, didn’t choose to come to America. They were ripped from their families, kidnapped, and trafficked illegally. For their first 245 years in the United States, everything was taken from them, including all the fruits of their labor, and their status in law was on the level of being consider as a chattel, an animal, a piece of protperty.

Now, when slavery ended in 1865, the black people needed land. A few black people got land and by 1900, there were a million black farmers and African Americans had built very wealthy towns such as Tulsa, Oklahoma which was called “Black Wall Street”. However, the white racists took their land and took control of the local, state and federal government and created laws to cheat and steal from black people. They destroyed Black Wall street and the other towns, too.

The 1870 census showed that my great, great, great grandfather Yancey was one of two black men listed in the town business directory for Cary, North Carolina. He owned 12 acres at the time but I don’t know what happened to the land. Today, there are less than 40,000 black farmers and black people own only 0.9% of the land in the United States.

This was the result of 89 years of Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Meanwhile, eighty years ago, a federal agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created “Residential Security” maps of major American cities. These maps document how loan officers, appraisers, and real estate professionals evaluated mortgage lending risk during the era immediately before the surge of suburbanization in the 1950’s. Neighborhoods considered high risk, or “Hazardous” were often “redlined” by lending institutions, denying them access to capital investment which could improve the housing and economic opportunity of residents. This is why white neighborhoods are wealthier and black neighborhoods are so poor.

After the end of Jim Crow segregation in 1954, black people still faced lying, cheating white people and their governments. Though the laws changed, there was still discrimination and black people had to fight for their rights. The Civil Rights movement gained them some political rights such as voting, but not economic rights and the racist system to cheat black people remained. However, things were changing as a result of the black insurrections in the 1960’s and the white people had to come up with new ways to cheat black people and steal their labor and wealth. So they created a new kind of slavery system that was based on deception. First, they allowed some black people to go to college and get an education. They wanted a small group of black people to become successful, mostly entertainers and athletes, and a few smart black people to serve as managers. This they called “affirmative action” and they used it to trick black people into thinking that the United States was not a racist country and that black people had the same opportunities as white people. During this time, the President Nixon lied to my grand uncle John Blake and told him he wanted to help black people and give them jobs. President Nixon convinced my Uncle John to serve as the Director of Jobs Corps and gave him a $2.5 billion budget. Meanwhile, my father, Jeremiah Blake, was given one of those good affirmative action jobs when he graduated from Fisk University. However, at the same time, President Nixon came up with a plan to re-enslave black people and on June 18, 1971 right after hiring Uncle John and just two months after I was born, he announced the “The War on Drugs”.

The War on Drugs began when I was born and continues today. By the time I went to college, the United States was spending more money on the War on Drugs than they were spending on educating black people. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million. Department of Defense anti-drug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991. During that same period, DEA anti-drug spending grew from $86 to $1,026 million and FBI anti-drug allocations grew from $8 to $181 million. This is how the white supremacists used TAX dollars to establish the new system of legalized slavery.

By contrast, the budget of the National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 million to $57 million from 1981 to 1984 and anti-drug funds allocated to the Department of Education were cut from $14 million to $3 million.

Between 1988 and October 1989, the Washington Post alone ran 1,565 stores about the "drug scourge". This is an example of how the white supremacists used THE MEDIA to justify the War on Drugs.

In September 1986, the House of Representatives passed legislation that allocated $2 billion to the anti-drug crusade and shortly thereafter, the president signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that included mandatory minimum sentencing. Once elected, President Clinton endorsed the "three strikes and you are out" law and passed the $30 billion crime bill which authorized $16 billion for new prisons. During Clinton's tenure, the white supremacists slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion (a reduction of 61%) and boosted corrections by $19 billion (an increase of 171%), "effectively making the construction of prisons the nation's main housing program for the urban poor".

Drug offenses alone account for two thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the state prisoners. Approximately half a million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980 - an increase of 1,100 percent.

By 2005, four of five drug arrests were for possession. By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans - or one in every 31 adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole. 31 million people have been arrested since the drug war began. There were more than 1.5 million drug arrests in the U.S. in 2016. The vast majority – more than 80% – were for possession only. Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. One in nine black children has an incarcerated parent, compared to one in 57 white children. One in 13 black people of voting age are denied the right to vote because of laws that disenfranchise people with felony convictions.

A lot of money and military weapons were given to the police and they became armies of colonial occupation in cities wherever there were a lot of black people. Even though the white people use drugs more than black people, most of the people who were imprisoned were black people.

Even though the United States only has one-quarter the population of China, it imprisons almost twice as many people than China. Most of these people are black.

That means a lot of black children’s’ fathers are in prison. When they get out, they can’t get jobs because they have a criminal record. So black families become dependent on government aid just to survive. It has nothing to do with black people being lazy or stupid or violent. Most of the drug convictions were because of the cannabis plant!

The Drug War transferred the labor and wealth from black communities into the white employees of the legal system and the white investors of the prison industrial complex. For example, the largest private prison corporations, Core Civic and GEO Group, collectively manage over half of the private prison contracts in the United States with revenues of $3.5 billion in 2015.

Unfortunately, on August 6, 1999, I became a victim of the drug war, too. At that time, I was growing my own cannabis plants in abandoned buildings as well as raiding the US Army Corp of Engineers’ secret hemp field on Chicago’s south side coast along Lake Michigan. I took garbage bags full of low grade hemp, extracted the THC in the kitchen and put the THC into butters and cooking oils, as well as baking items and salad dressings. I managed to sell my products “low key” to restaurants and started a lucrative business. Except that President Nixon’s declared drug war, now under President Clinton, was considered criminal activity. I was arrested and charged with felony possession of a controlled substance. Because of my “status” as a privileged son of the Blake family who had graduated from Yale and the fact that I was going to reveal that the US Government was secretly growing cannabis, I was given probation and not sent to prison. However, that conviction prevented me from getting any good job despite my degree from Yale University.

But let’s look at what happened. From the moment of my birth until 2019, America declared the War on Drugs and sent an occupying force of militarized police into black areas of the largest cities, arrested large segments of the black population, seized their property, convicted them, and re-enslaved them under the legal justification of the 13th Amendment. The entire industry employed millions of people who took their paychecks from the city and out to segregated white suburban communities where they paid taxes and reaped the rewards of tax-based expenditures - better schools and services. In this way, for over forty years, black families were broken up, mostly black men were re-enslaved, and the wealth of black communities was transferred to white communities.

Then, on May 31, 2019, the Illinois House of Representatives passed House Bill 1438 by a 66-47 vote. The bill included expungement provisions for those arrested for marijuana possession prior to decriminalization.

“The most historic aspect of this is not just that it legalizes cannabis for adults but rather the extraordinary efforts it takes to reduce the harm caused by the failed war on marijuana and the communities it hurt the most,” state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, said during a Senate floor debate, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Thus, the state of Illinois is now admitting that they were wrong and that I was right. It is a victory, nineteen years delayed, but a victory, nonetheless.

However, let’s take an even more closer look at what happened. After declaring the Drug Way when I was born, then capturing, arresting, and convicting me as a prisoner of the war, which gave them the legal authority to re-enslave me, they then decided that the activity for which I was criminalized was no longer criminal, and overnight a $344 billion dollar industry was born.

Except, cannabis was legalized for some people and still criminal for others…. (the red line below represents the illegal market)

The sectors of the cannabis market with the most investment were cultivation, retail, and biotech pharmaceuticals. As we have already seen, black people no longer had land for cultivation, their business/retail districts had been destroyed and they certainly played no part in biotech pharmaceuticals.

What this means is that for more than forty years, white people decided that black people should become criminals and re-enslaved for building an economy based on the cannabis trade. Then these white people decided that they should be able to profit from the trade, so they created laws and a system that enabled them to benefit from a $344 billion market. The new system used non-racist language and laws, but access to the opportunities was certainly not equal. Instead of the profits of the new market being used to build the black communities and families that were the victims of the War on Drugs, it was used to make the white capitalists even more wealthy.

In late 2000, a new project called the Reparations Assessment Group began making preparations for lawsuits. The dollar sums mentioned were staggering. Harper’s magazine estimated that it could require $97 trillion to pay for the hours of uncompensated work done during the slavery era, which would require extracting, on average, about $300,000 from every American of non-slave descent.

None of this money has been returned to me. Combining Reparations with the value of my current labor (calculated at the beginning of this article) makes my TRUE net worth at least $650,000 . . . .

So after all this the result is that there are 47.5 million black people in America. 4.75 million own 75.4% of all black wealth.. These are mostly the celebrities and entertainers.

The rest of the black people - 90% - have just 25% of black wealth. In fact , the bottom 50% of black people in America - more than 23 million people - are worth less than 1 dollar.

IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW MUCH INCOME I MAKE . . . .

Even though for a few years I made more than $100,000 a year, my “wealth” doesn’t even come close to the wealth of white people making the same amount of money.

IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT I HAVE A DEGREE FROM YALE UNIVERSITY. A white person who dropped out of high school has greater wealth.

IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW HARD I WORK. I STILL WON’T CATCH UP TO WHITE PEOPLE.

NO MATTER WHAT WE DO, UNLESS WE ARE ENTERTAINERS OR CELEBRITIES IN THE TOP 10%, NOTHING WE DO WILL CLOSE THE GAP BETWEEN US AND WHITE PEOPLE.

THE SYSTEM IS SO RIGGED, THAT EVEN RICH BLACK PEOPLE WILL MOST LIKELY END UP BEING POOR LIVING IN AMERICA.

OWNING A BLACK BUSINESS ISN’T GOING TO HELP.

Few cities have enough black owned businesses to begin with and the rate of African American businesses failing today is at an all time high. 80% of businesses crash and burn within the first year.

Black-owned businesses nationally average only $58,000 in annual revenue compared to $546,000 for white-owned businesses and are outperformed by most ethnic groups.

As a result, only about 120,000 black-owned businesses, out of the 2.7m in the US, have employees on payroll.

Research shows that:

1. Prior family business ownership is less frequent among Black entrepreneurs than among Asian and White entrepreneurs.

2. Black entrepreneurs also have lower education levels and fewer years of managerial experience than Asian and White entrepreneurs do.

3. Black families have lower wealth levels than White families do, which results in the lower equity levels of new Black businesses compared to White businesses.

4. Black-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses experience less favorable loan application outcomes than do White-owned and Asian-owned businesses

5. Minority-owned firms that focus on co-ethnic retail markets do not perform as well as those that do not focus on co-ethnic retail markets

6. These traits result in lower success at starting new businesses, greater propensity to enter business lines with low entry barriers (thus higher failure rates), and lower business survival rates.

The major problem is this: To have a successful business you need customers who want and can afford your product or service. Because of this racial wealth gap, black owned businesses who’s business is targeted specifically for the black community have a very small customer base compared to America as a whole. Thus, if a black owned business wants to compete with white business, it must produce products and services tailored for white Americans. This can present a problem for some black businesses that want to serve their community. For example, when I write health articles for the white community, I get paid well. When I write articles for the Balanta community, I don’t get paid at all. The Balanta community needs the educational materials more than the white community. So I have to make the sacrifice and work for free in order to serve my people.

So the idea that I am going to become wealthy, that I am going to close the racial wealth gap, that we are going to live lives comparable to white and Asian people in America, is TOTALLY UNREALISTIC. Given the current conditions it will take 228 years for my offspring to close the racial wealth gap. The current efforts to reduce the wealth gap are all wrong.

EQUALITY in America isn’t going to do it. Changing the laws so that they are color-blind and race-blind and provide equality before the law and equal opportunity mean that black people will have to compete starting at the bottom and against overwhelming odds.

EQUITY in America isn’t going to do it. Even receiving Reparations is not going to close the racial wealth gap as long as the only systems in place are the systems of white supremacy that built America and their codification and refinement through positive law.

The only solution is JUSTICE which is defined as 1) no one is mistreated and those that need the most help receive the most help.

When JUSTICE replaces WHITE SUPREMACY (meaning whites must always be the most dominant and on top of the hierarchy), then we will be able to live and experience life. Remember, a healthy soul with a healthy spirit in a healthy body living in a sick society is not healthy!

INTERPRETING THE 14TH AMENDMENT: A CONVERSATION WITH A VETERAN OF THE BLACK LIBERATION LEGAL STRUGGLE

Note: The following is the direct transcript of a conversation I had with a veteran of the black liberation legal struggle who has taught law school for more than three decades. I asked to permission to make their identity known and received this response:

“First - thank you for asking. I would prefer that you not share it with any identifying information. Neither my name or my page name . My Facebook discussions are often intended to be short, incomplete and I often deliberately stop to avoid "value" battles. Again, thanks for asking.”

Therefore, respecting their privacy, I will use the honorable identifier BLM Legal Scholar where BLM stands for “Black Liberation Movement”

Siphiwe Baleka: I really would like some discussion on the interpretation that the 14th Amendment was only an offer and not a grant of citizenship, and the implications of the failure to make an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer.....

BLM Legal Scholar: I know that interpretation is around. It is not the way I interpret the clause.

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

At the time of adoption of the 14th amendment the cause applies to anyone is born in the United States or Naturalized. There is no qualification in the plain meaning of the amendment: It could have said "may" or "can" instead of "are". If the amendment said may or can it implies additional steps are required and uncertainty of outcome.

"Are" means to exist. Definitely not open to interpretation. 

So adoption of the amendment - everyone who had been born in the United States or naturalized were citizens, no additional step required. A person can always reject the citizenship.

Siphiwe Baleka:  At the moment of emancipation, isn’t imposing citizenship the antithesis of “freedom” and how would an emancipated slave meaningfully reject the citizenship?

BLM Legal Scholar: I am not arguing the correctness or the moral function -- I thought you were asking me a legal question. I gave you a legal interpretation.

Siphiwe Baleka:  Yes, I appreciate your response, but as I originally posted, I wasn't asking so much a question rather, I wanted "discussion on the interpretation that the 14th Amendment." You gave AN interpretation and one that is consistent with the historical application. However, that is what is being challenged and I am hoping that this group can help challenge that interpretation. To clarify status and jurisdiction at the moment of Emancipation IS a legal matter. What is the meaning of emancipation? What is the meaning of freedom? Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Edition states:

"Emancipation Proclamation. (1863) An executive proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all persons held in slavery in designated states and districts were free."

That same dictionary states,

"free, adj. 2. Not subject to the constraint or domination of another; enjoying personal freedom; emancipated <a free person>."

So it is not a moral question, it is a legal question on the applicability of the 13th Amendment (April 8, 1864) and the 14th Amendment (July 9, 1868) to "emancipated" or "free" people "not subject to the constraint or domination" of the United States Government. This is what I am hoping to discuss - were the emancipated free people "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" on July 9, 1868 and if so, how (beyond the simple assumption that the 14th Amendment has been so interpreted)?

BLM Legal Scholar  interesting. . . . what do you think "subject to jurisdiction thereof" means separate from formerly enslaved?

Siphiwe Baleka: According to Imari Obadele,

"the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."

By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slave-masters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will."

BLM Legal Scholar: That statement does not answer the question of what does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" mean. Independent of whether it applies or should apply to African descendants - at time. Your initial argument was freed African descendants were not subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

Siphiwe Baleka: Yes, my argument was freed African descendants were not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And Imari Obadle just explained why they weren't subject to the jurisdiction because "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside" is based on the international legal principle of jus soli - which is intended for legitimate accidents of birth as Imari Obadele described. Again, the legal principle of jus soli was not applicable to the emancipated slave because 1) his birth was not a legitimate accident; and 2) as previously mentioned, his status at the moment of emancipation was “free”, or "Not subject to the constraint or domination of another". As Imari Obadele further explained,

"The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom."

In other words, "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" only applies to people covered by the principle of jus soli . . . .

BLM Legal Scholar:  Okay. if they were not subject to the jurisdiction - that is a statement of interpretation and value. Interesting view.

Siphiwe Baleka: again, this is why we need discussion. According to the principle of jus soli, the United States had no jurisdiction at the time of emancipation. Could we get, for example, a coalition of black lawyers to make a determination on this?

Here's another perspective. The same Black's Law Dictionary, 11th Edition says:

"citizen, n. (14c) 1. Someone who, by either birth or naturalization, is a member of a political community, owing allegiance to the community and being entitled to enjoy all its civil rights and political protections; a member of the civil state, entitled to all its privileges."

Now then, the slave was emancipated January 1, 1863. The 14th amendment offered/imposed citizenship on July 9,1868. So during the interim, the emancipated slave could not have been a "citizen" else there would be no need for the 14th Amendment. Therefore, what was his status? Refugee? Stateless?.... Since the emancipated slave was not a "citizen", he owed no allegiance to the United States. Such allegiance was imposed by the 14th amendment without consent, thus re-enslaving him under a new status at law called "citizen".

Now concerning our current status vis-a-vis citizenship in the United States today, it can be argued that we are not citizens using a combined "threshold" and "seed of bad fruit" defense. Consider, for example, a case of an illegal search and seizure which discovered illegal drugs and resulted in seized property. The whole case, and therefore the return of the seized property, hinges on the probable cause issue. If it is demonstrated that police officers erred in searching the car and seizing property because there was no probable cause, then the possession of illegal drug charges disappears. In this instance we can combine what is call the “threshold “ defense and the “seed of bad fruit” defense.

Probable cause functions as a key which allows police to enter into one’s property. The moment a police enters your house or begins searching your vehicle, that officer crosses a threshold. Without probable cause, the officer can only cross that threshold illegally. Crossing the threshold illegally provides defendant the “seed of bad fruit” defense which states that because the officer’s action is illegal (foul or bad fruit) then everything that follows from that illegal action is also illegal (foul or the seeds from bad fruit) and therefore inadmissible. Thus, although police did seize illegal drugs, It is argued that it can not be used as evidence for a possession charge because it was obtained without probable cause, illegally and therefore not by the due process of law. 

Now, with respect to the issue of citizenship, the moment of emancipation made the slaves free, i.e., "Not subject to the constraint or domination of another", without citizenship from January 1, 1863 until July 9, 1868 and owing no allegiance to the United States of America. Citizenship could only be offered by the 14th Amendment and accepted or rejected because the emancipated slave did not embody the principle of jus soli.

CONSEQUENTLY, CITIZENSHIP REQUIRED THE FREE AND INFORMED CONSENT OF THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE. 

As a free person, the emancipated slave was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.Thus, the United States ILLEGALLY CROSSED THE CITIZENSHIP THRESHOLD BY INTERPRETING THE 14TH AMENDMENT AS A GRANT IMPOSING CITIZENSHIP IN VIOLATION OF THE FREEDOM OF THE EMANCIPATED SLAVE. Having thus illegally crossed the threshold, all following citizenship claims are now considered "bad fruit" unless the emancipated slave (and his or her descendants) expressly waive their right to make a free and informed acceptance or rejection of the 14th Amendment offer of citizenship. Technically (legally) speaking, then the status of African American people is undetermined and they are properly "stateless".

READ MORE

Balanta B'urassa Founders Day: Celebrating Those Who Resist, August 1, 2020 Chicago, IL

BALANTA B’RASSA, CHICAGO: THOSE WHO RESIST REMAIN

Celebrating the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America

Founders Day

Saturday, August 1st, 2020

Marcus Garvey Center, 330, East 37th Street, Chicago, IL

Download Flyer

11:00 am - Montu (traditional African Martial Arts) Presentation

All Ages, with Sansau Tchimna, Council Member, Historical African Martial Arts Association (HAMAA) - see videos below

12:00 Noon - Reparations: Re-Reading African History Using African Ancestry DNA Testing

Siphiwe Baleka, Founder and President, Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America; former Director, African Union 6th Region Education Campaign

1:00 pm - Free Lunch

2:00 pm - Balanta B’urassa, Chicago: New Narratives in the Resistance Struggle

Presentation by: The 21st Century Pan Africanist From Chicago That You Never Heard Of: Siphiwe Baleka

On October 5, 2000, Siphiwe Baleka, a native of Chicago, presented the Ethiopia to Chicago Exhibit to the Association of African Historians (AAH) at the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern University. The presentation was so extraordinary, that he was invited to present it again one month later, November 4, 2000 to the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). Five years later, Nana Baffour Amankwaitia II (Dr. Asia Hilliard III) said, “I still have my copy of the excellent piece that you did. I am waiting for more of your work. . . I am not at all surprised at the work that you have pursued and know that much more is to come.”

Biography

Siphiwe Baleka was born on April 14, 1971 to Jeremiah and Yolanda Blake and given the colonized name of Anthony “Tony” Nathaniel Blake.  Jeremiah graduated from the historical black college Fisk University, where, in 1962, he participated in the Nashville civil rights movement and was met with bricks and stones. He became determined to give his son the opportunities he didn’t have. At the age of ten, Tony became an Illinois State Swimming Champion and by the time he graduated from high school, was one of the nation’s fastest swimmers. At Yale University, he became the first African American on the All -Ivy League Swim Team. In 1992, Tony failed to qualify for the 1992 Olympic Trials and fulfill his boyhood dream of becoming the first black swimmer on the United States Swim Team.

At about this same time, Tony suffered an “identity” crisis. While studying African American history at Yale, he realized that he was part of what W.E.B. DuBois called “the talented tenth” and that he had a duty to excel on behalf of the race. On the other hand, after reading the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey and books by Franz Fanon, that though he was black and African, he had been socialized and educated by white Americans and thus, as Marcus Garvey said, required a “racial re-education” if he was going to be any use to the black race.  Having internalized this, and following the example of his heroes, Walter Rodney and Ken Saro Wiwa, Tony decided to become a scholar activist. That’s when he joined the black liberation struggle in America.

After leaving Yale during his senior year in 1993, Tony became attracted to the Rastafari Movement and began growing dreadlocks. He returned to Yale in 1995 to finish his final semester as Ras Nathaniel.

While still on campus, Ras Nathaniel felt compelled to join Union Local 34’s strike against Yale University, demanding a living wage for its mostly black workforce. He spoke at University forums, marched on the picket lines, and along with a group of students, boycotted their graduation ceremony from this prestigious University. At the same time, Ras Nathaniel was mentored by George Edwards of the New Haven Black Panther Party and began organizing and raising money for Black Panther political prisoners, and started working with the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal and the MOVE Organization.

Returning to and graduating from Yale University, Ras Nathaniel rejected opportunities to enter the corporate world and instead became an instructor and grant writer for the Nkrumah Washington Community Learning Center in the Englewood neighborhood. During this time, he became a member of N’COBRA under Republic of New Afrika legend Baba Hannibal Afrik and Sister Erline Arpo. He also worked with Aonde T.  Dansby Shaka, founder and President of the Marcus Garvey Institute and one of the last students of General Charles L James of Gary Indiana one of the original graduates of Marcus Garvey’s School of African Philosophy in 1937.

Under the tutelage of Dr. Y.N. Kly of the International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (IHRAAM) and his protégé, Irish “El Amin” Greene, a product of the National Council of Black Lawyers Community College of Law and International Diplomacy (NCBLCCLID) later re-named for Fred Hampton, Ras Nathaniel began studying the curriculum. He completed the Petition of the Nkrumah-Washington Community Learning Center On Behalf of their Members, Associates and Afro-American Population Whose International Protected Human Rights Have Been Grossly and Systematically Violated By the Anglo-American Government of the United States of America and Its Varied Institutions.  The petition was submitted under the United Nations 1503 Procedure.

In 2003, while serving as a journalist for the Rastafari Speaks newspaper published by Chicago’s very own Frontline Distribution, Ras Nathaniel. registered with the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Information & Culture Press and Information Department as a journalist and began working at the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa. He is the only African American to attend both the 1st Extraordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa, as well as African Union Grand Debate in Ghana in 2007. As a result, Ras Nathaniel became the Director of the African Union 6th Region Education Campaign. He has appeared on South African Broadcasting Company (SABC TV), negotiated the Rastafari citizenship issues in Ethiopia, helped the Central American Black Organization to elect its representatives to the African Union at their 12th Assembly in Honduras, and gave the inaugural Marcus Garvey lecture for the Government of Barbados’ Commission for Pan African  Affairs. In 2006 he was the roommate of Dr. Kamarakafego, counselor, consultant, official and friend to Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyere, CLR James, Walter Rodney and many others while organizing the 6th Pan African Congress in Tanzania in 1969. In 2007, while organizing the Global Unity Conference in Azania, Ras Nathaniel was given the name Siphiwe Baleka by a council of Elders.

Today, Siphiwe Baleka is known as “The Fitness Guru to the Trucking Industry” and has appeared in Men’s Health magazine, Sports Illustrated, the Huffington Post, Good Morning America, CBS Evening news, NPR, CNN, and BBC. He serves as the North American Regional Director of the African Sports Ventures Group, Senior Heritage Ambassador of the United House of Ancestry, and President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society of America. He is instrumental in launching the Decade of Return Initiative of the Government of Guinea Bissau.

PLEASE JOIN US FOR THIS EXTRAORDINARY PRESENTATION ABOUT CHICAGO’S UNTOLD RESISTANCE MOVEMENT, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE!

• Origin of the Pan African Movement in Chicago, 1893

• First person to repatriate to Ethiopia from Chicago in 1908

• The Chicago Origin (1913) of Marcus Garvey’s “Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black King”

• Ethiopia sends Ambassadors to Chicago in 1919 and the Rastafari movement starts in Chicago

• The Balanta influence in the Black Liberation Movement

• Using DNA to trace your history, reconnect with your people in Africa, and re-write African American History

• Getting citizenship in Africa

• Much, much more . . . .

Videos by Sansau Tchimna, Council Member

Historical African Martial Arts Association (HAMAA )

Balanta Society in America Continues Food Distribution in Guinea Bissau

The Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America made another emergency food distribution in the Cagna, Nfaidi, Unchor and Mpass villages in Encheia, as well as in Fanhe. This follows the first distribution in Tchomon Village and the second distribution in Tande, Sintcham and Samodje villages near Ingore.

WATCH THE TGB Televisão da Guiné-Bissau COVERAGE OF THE DISTRIBUTION

Below is the Bam’Faba distribution report.

1.      Introduction

In mid-December 2019, a disease called sars/cov/19 was diagnosed in China and which was later declared by the WHO as a pandemic due to its rapid spread and the number of fatalities it caused worldwide.

In Guinea-Bissau, the first cases were recorded at the beginning of the month of March, which led to the adoption of restriction measures, namely the decree of the emergency and state by the national authorities, i.e. by his Excellency, the president of the republic as a way to prevent the rapid spread of the disease at national level.

However, the enactment of the state of emergency has put the country in a situation of serious financial crisis whose effects affect all families, especially the most vulnerable residents in the villages. Yes, it limited the circulation and access to the market for the sale of its products, as well as the total stoppage of the commercialization of the cashew campaign.

As a result, a financial sum was made available by members of the Bam-Faba Association residing in the diaspora to support families, especially the most deprived, in this period of confinement.

2.      Activities carried out

Food products have been distributed in some tabancas, considered priority areas of intervention of the association, namely:

a)              Visit and distribution in the tabanca of Cagha

Cagha is a tabanca located in the Sector of Bissora section of Encheia, in which there was an accident that killed 24 people because of the explosion of a mine supposedly places since colonial times. Because of this suffering we understand will deliver 6 bags of rice to the popular village neighbor workking for his melioria.

b)            Visit and distribution in the tabanca of Nfaidi

We delivered 6 bags of rice to the young people of the tabanca of Nfaidi, on the occasion of the voluntary work to clean the road that accessed Encheia. It was a section that is impassable, but thanks to the awareness and work of young people has improved a lot.

c)              Visit and distribution in Uncor and  Mpass

These two villages were visited by the gender distribution team on the occasion of the voluntary twig lifting and dikes in the bolanhas belonging to the two tabancas.

Therefore, 20 bags of rice were delivered with a view to accelerating and completing the work.

It should be remembered that these two tabancas were disengaged due to the conflict between the parties and that it had culminated in a brawl, in which there were many wounded, especially the younger people. 

d)             Visit and distribution of foodstuffs in Fanhe tabanca 

In Fanhe, there was also a voluntary work to close dams and therefore received 20 bags of rice for this purpose.

3.      Conclusion

The work of visits and distribution of the donations to different villages went very well, however we faced a slight delay due to the breakdown of the vehicle carrying the donations. We also found many difficulties in accessing tabancas due to the degradation of access roads, because in this rainy period most roads are almost impassable.

In all the tabancas in which we distributed people not only thanked them for the gesture, but also took the opportunity to present other difficulties, namely, lack of access routes in this case roads, schools, health centers, difficulty in sealing fields of vegetable cultivation, lack of rice and corn peeling machines, in order to relieve the workload on girls and thereby encourage the participation of girls in schools. There is also difficulty in accessing water for pastoral activity because animals, especially cows, cannot get water because the area has only salt water in the surroundings, thus not allowing the animals to be satisfied.

It is noteworthy that the work has not yet finished, so we will continue the work according to the plan previously outlined, especially for the southern part of the country.

We also find that there is a lack of awareness of the coronavirus pandemic with the tabancas or a majority only listen on the radios but without detailed information on the subject. That is why most don't wear protective masks.

All views were accompanied by an artist with songs in the Balanta ethnic group in order to facilitate awareness of the coronavirus pandemic.

In the travel plan was planned visit the bolanhas but due to the time factor it was not possible to make all these visits staying for other opportunities.

4.      Thanks

In all the tabancas we have passed during the distribution of the genres have left a strong thanks to the members of the entourage as well as the funders of this initiative, leaving the hope that there will be more initiatives of this kind, and that all continue to be in good health and happiness with their families.

Rélatorio made by Robana Nhaté, coordinator of "Bam-Faba" in the région of Oio, Républica da Guine issau.

Filled, June 25, 2020 -Robana Nhaté- Coordin

INTEGRATION (ELECTORAL POLITICS) VS. NATIONALISM (SELF DEFENSE) VS. REVOLUTION (BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY): UNDERSTANDING THE ART OF COOPTING BLACK LIBERATION

“There is still a lack of understanding of the African American nationalist tradition and the context within which it reemerged in the 1960s. Little is known or understood about the important integrationist-nationalist debate of this same period. If this generation of African American youths is to be oriented toward revolutionary options, it must deepen its understanding of the African American protest tradition and the ideological and programmatic alternatives between which they must choose. . .

The study of Malcolm X is important because he was the best critic of an era and a movement which still holds significance for us today. Malcolm asked the right questions, some of which he found answers for. We must know these questions and and answers so that we don’t ‘recreate the wheel.’

The Black Liberation movement developed in the latter 1960s in marked contrast to the integrationist Civil Rights movement. It was repressed violently by the agents of the state. Even today it represents the only significant alternative to Civil Rights integration-ism that African Americans have ever developed. This movement, for a time, energized those groups in the ghetto who are today vilified as ‘the underclass.’

Our present oppression as a people is tied to the defeat and destruction of the Black Liberation movement. It is also tied to the sanctification of Black electoral politics within the confines of the Democratic Party, the sainthood of Dr. King, and the canon of nonviolence.

This sanctification stood as an alternative to the mobilization of poor and dispossessed African Americans outside of the institutions of electoral, legislative, and executive politics which are institutionally structured to maintain powerlessness. A rejuvenated Black Liberation movement can be constructed only upon an accurate understanding of the strengths and weaknesses, the accuracies and errors of our previous major efforts at rebellion. Critically studying Malcolm X is central to this reconstruction and rebuilding effort.

With a few notable exceptions in the tradition of Malcolm X, like the National Black Independent Political Party and the National Black United Front from the period of 1979-81,

the dominant strategic motion in the Black community has come from those in the tradition not of Malcolm X but of Martin Luther King Jr. Their bankruptcy and that of Black electoral politics, from the perspective of resolving the pressing needs of the masses of ghettoized Black people, has engendered a renewed interest in Malcolm X and the Pan-African nationalist and internationalist tradition of which he was the most elegant spokesman in the latter part of the 20th-century. . . .

While many years have passed, the questions which the Black Liberation Movement addressed are still with us. The groupings in the Black community are even more distinct and opposed than in Malcolm’s time. And we should not forget that, as Malcolm X said, if you want to know a thing, you must know its origins.”

- William W. Sales, Jr., From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro American Unity

More than any man in recent years Martin Luther King is responsible for this criminal crippling of the black man in his struggle. King took an incredibly beautiful, a matchlessly challenging doctrine — redemption through love and self-sacrifice — and corrupted it through his own disbelief. Martin Luther King’s non-violence is a shallow deceit: on no less than three occasions between 1961 and 1965 King called for or condoned (as when Watts occurred) the use of troops. But he urges black people to non-violence. If he did this because he did not think we could win violently, and said so, that would be one thing; but he tells black people to be nonviolent because violence is wrong and unjustifiable. And yet he calls for armies, WHITE-RUN armies. . .

- Imari Obadele, War in America: The Malcolm X Doctrine

Excerpt: From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro American Unity

“In assessing the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), we must begin by looking again briefly at the social and movement context within which Malcolm X hoped to intervene. The OAAU was designed to respond to a particular configuration of problems and trends in the Civil Rights movement at a particular and crucial juncture in that movement’s development. In the period 1963-1965, the Civil Rights movement faced challenges from both processes of cooptation and threats of repression. I will look more closely at the basis for cooptation and how the ideology and practice of the major Civil Rights organizations played into this strategy. As well, I will examine the factors which encouraged those in power seriously to initiate repression toward the more militant wing of the movement and how the ideology and practice of the Civil Rights movement generated demoralization as opposed to resistance in the face of this challenge. . . .

COOPTATION AND REPRESSION

In Chapter Three, I explained that the ideological hegemony of the ruling elite is the basis of the false consciousness of those they rule. In the particular case of the African American, that false consciousness had a duality characterized by Dr. DuBois as double consciousness. Another way of looking at this double consciousness is that in one psyche it combined two ideological orientations, the American Dream and the etiquette of race relations. These orientations often conflicted, causing confusion and indecisiveness or inaction in Black people. On the other hand, these two ideological orientations can be seen as working in tandem to facilitate ruling-class strategies of cooptation or repression.

Cooptation was facilitated by the ideology of the American Dream. The American Dream established not only the material but also the moral superiority of Western Civilization. The United States’ ‘manifest destiny’ was to become the epitome of Western Civilization, the only real civilization. It held out the possibility to African Americans that if they could disgard their African roots and assimilate they would be materially and spiritually rewarded. The status quo, through the ‘invisible hand’ in the marketplace, automatically provided for positive social change. It was not to be tampered with by the disgruntled. Any other course of action for a domestic minority was not only irrational bur from this vantage point morally bankrupt.

The etiquette of race relations emphasized that the power discrepancies between the races were necessary if Whites were to be able to tutor Black people in the methods of Western Civilization and protect them from their own ignorance, heathenism, and savagery. Force was openly subscribed to as a method to protect the purity of the White race from the pollution of the African strain.

Through force, exploitation, and deprivation of social necessities, Black people internalized the notions of minority status, and remained isolated from and ignorant of the larger world. They came to believe that physical resistance was impossible. African Americans were conditioned to believe that the violence which maintained White superiority and Black subordination could be minimized only through conforming with a code of behavior which at every turn symbolized racial power discrepancies and Black acceptance of them.

Double consciousness, embodied in the simultaneous pursuit of the American Dream and conforming with the etiquette of race relations facilitated the success of elite strategies of cooptation and repression. The American Dream caused Black disunity. It raised the needs of the individual above those of the group in an absolute sense. As a condition of success, it required the individual to maximize their cultural and social distance from the mass of Black people. Because the pursuit of the American Dream caused Black disunity, cooptive strategies facilitated repression. Repression severely punished group cohesion and all strategies which challenged the power inequities between the races. It reinforced the resort to individualistic solutions along lines consistent with the status quo. Repression facilitated cooptation. . . .

Cooptation was based on the extension of material incentives, prestige, power and responsibility to Civil Rights leadership. To get these rewards, Black leaders either left the Civil Rights organizations themselves or adjusted their programs away from confrontation with the various forms and levels of state power. The organizational characteristics and ideology of the mainstream Civil Rights organizations predisposed them to cooptation.

In the period under consideration the major Civil Rights organizations, especially the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Dr. King had limited funds, almost no bureaucracy or chain of command, low salaries, arrears, and a too-heavy dependence on volunteers. They were dominated by clergymen who were authoritarian and male chauvinists. Little or no major decision-making was shared with the rank and file of the organization. In fact, much of SCLC was a one-man show built around the leadership and charisma of Dr. King, supported by a few clergymen. Thus, the dangers were high but the individual rewards low. Given the ideological orientation of the Civil Rights mainstream, this situation facilitated cooptation.

The Civil Rights movement defined its tasks as struggling to remove the disabilities of race so Black people could be judged on their individual merits alone. To the extent that the movement was successful, when barriers fell the tendency was for the most meritorious Black people, disproportionately middle class, to be first to take advantage of the new possibilities. These barriers themselves were defined as barriers to individual, not group advancement. Thus, success was often defined in individual terms or as a series of ‘the first in the race to . . . ‘ The abandonment of the movement organizations by middle-class leadership was often disguised as taking advantage of the possibilities for making further advances in civil rights ‘inside the system.’

Cooptation was facilitated by false consciousness in Civil Rights leadership. I would argue that the susceptibility to cooptation was an outgrowth of the limitations in the Civil Rights critique of the U.S. system and led naturally to definitions of the problem focused on individual disability and solutions to the problem focused on equal opportunity . . . . Whatever fruits of victory were achieved deprived the movement of its middle-class leadership resources. In a sense, this process snatched ‘defeat from the jaws of victory.’

Civil Rights ideology appeared to extol the ‘noblesse oblige’ embodied in DuBois’s expression ‘talented tenth.’ However, the obligations of the ‘talented tenth’ were often fulfilled symbolically in the pursuit of individual career advancement as opposed to a lifetime orientation of service to the Black Community. The NAACP and the Urban League were the first to desert the Civil Rights coalition as a result of their cooptation by 1965, both organizations prematurely felt that African Americans had won unrestricted and routine access to governmental power and by 1965 could work from the ‘inside’ through mainstream political institutions as opposed to the ‘outsiders’ vehicle of protest.

While the Right wing of the Civil Rights coalition was preparing to jump ship, the government security apparatus had resolved not to depend on processes of cooptation alone to reign in the Civil Rights movement. Kenneth O’Reilly, in his excellent book Racial Matters, identified a transition in government thinking regarding the Civil Rights movement as of 1963 . . . . He noted that:

‘By the standards of the mid- and late- 1960s, FBI surveillance of Black political activists prior to the summer of 1963 was limited and cautious because Hoover [J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI] deemed the political risks of more aggressive involvement to be too great. But beginning in the summer of 1963 there was a fundamental change in Hoover’s willingness to assume the risks of more aggressive involvement, a change that can be explained by his belief that Blacks had gone too far with their protests, and now posed an imminent threat to the established order. Bureau documents immediately before, during and after the March on Washington are filled with references to an impending ‘social revolution.’’

O’Reilly went on to indicate that President John F. Kennedy concurred in this increased surveillance and intervention in the Civil Rights movement. Hoover’s position, however, was to destroy the movement as part of his crusade against communism.. . . .The incremental and marginal nature of change fostered by U.S. democratic institutions was unable to respond effectively to the demands for rapid fundamental change coming from the insurgent ghetto dwellers moving rapidly to the movement’s center stage. However, the following characteristics of the Black community suggested that there would be relatively low and acceptable costs associated with a policy of repression.

The African American community in the United States, while large, was distinctly in the numerical minority. It was dispersed in urban areas and occupied no significant contiguous part of the country’s land mass. The internal organization and solidarity of this race in the United States was low. The African American community at that time was more a loose coalition of organizations and independent institutions which often had to construct consensus around important issues from one crisis period to the next. Racism alienated the community from the domestic White majority, especially in northern urban areas where the new demands of the movement were emerging. The Black community in this country has today- few historic and continuing links to any ancestral power centers in Africa or to sources of support in the international arena.

African Americans were economically and technologically backward. This resulted from their function as a super-abundant pool of unskilled labor. Due to technological change, the Black community was no longer as crucial to the economy as it had been in slavery and later as the rural peasantry of the South.

The characteristics described above, however, were unstable, especially given the activities of the radical wing of the movement as embodied in a leader like Malcolm X. In the 1963-65 period, repression was an option which was viable if promptly initiated but might not have been if its use had been delayed. . . . During this period, repression promised significant dividends with few if any costs.

It should be noted here that militant rhetoric was not a major factor triggering repression. Rather, the mobilization of new social forces on a mass scale created the potential for serious disruption of the normal operation of the society and its social institutions. This potential became visible as a result of the early urban rebellions of 1963 and 1964. It was not so much what leadership was telling its Black following that scared J. Edgar Hoover, but the actual disruptive potential of such a large mobilized mass of Black people, whether as nonviolent activists or as Black nationalists.

Malcolm X recognized that the Civil Rights movement had entered a period of crisis which demanded a new and different direction if it were to make the transition from a reformist, regional movement to a revolutionary international movement. . . . .

As Doug McAdam described this process:

‘Truly revolutionary goals…are rarely the object of divided elite response. Rather, movements that emphasize such goals usually mobilize a united elite opposition whose minor conflicts of interest are temporarily tabled in deference to the central threat confronting the system as a whole.’

In addition, McAdam noted that non-institutionalized tactics pose a distinct threat to elite groups because

‘…[Their use] communicates a fundamental rejection of the established institutional mechanisms for seeking redress of group grievances; substantively, it deprives elite groups of their recourse to institutional power…elite groups are likely to view non-institutional tactics as a threat to their interests.’

It is clear that McAdam was right when he asserted that a weak opponent lessens the costs and risks associated with a strategy of repression and therefore invites such repression. . . . McAdam felt that in the period of movement expansion, which he identified as 1961-66, the movement was characterized by a strong centralized organizational structure, substantial issue consensus, and a certain ‘geographic concentration’ of movement forces. He identified the disappearance of these characteristics in the latter 60s as an element in the decline of the movement. I do not believe it is that simple. . . .

The strong centralized organizational structure he refers to was clearly beset by oligarchization by 1963. The consensus on issues was narrow and excluded the agenda of new social forces entering the movement, this timidity reflected the extent to which the established leadership of the movement was coopted by its institutional allies who funded the movement and provided it with legislative support. The geographical concentration of the movement forces could also be looked at another way. As long as the Civil Rights movement was a southern movement, it was confined to areas whose problems became less and less typical of the Black population as a whole. . . . Despite the clear commitment to reform strategies, the Civil Rights movement had invited repression long before Black Power ideologies became dominant in it. . . . Repression was possible without elite consensus and without an objective commitment to revolutionary strategies on the part of the insurgents. . . .

But he was wrong when he saw the transition to the Black Power period as the beginning of movement decline. The nationalism of the Black Power period. I would argue, was a response to the significant erosion of movement dynamism in the 1963-65 period due to cooptation. Its pursuit of a revolutionary option won for the movement a prolongation of life in the period 1965-68. The inability to construct such an option after initial advances facilitated the intensified repression then directed at the movement. . . . .

Malcolm’s Critique of Nonviolence

It was the multiple impact of Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon which many movement activists feel freed them from the cul-de-sac in which the non-violence strategies of the established Civil Rights organizations had imprisoned them, during a decade of rising violence, White backlash and official repression. Malcolm X’s critique of integrationist ideology and Civil Rights leadership was the first effective challenge to the monopoly those forces had over intellectual discourse in the Black community. Malcolm X exposed the hypocrisy behind the philosophy of nonviolence as an aspect of false consciousness.

In the ‘etiquette of race relations,’ the condition of the oppressed was ameliorated, if at all, through entreaty and supplication and only by the dominant class and at its pace.

Because of Malcolm, nonviolence never again exacted the allegiance which it previously had among movement activists. The effectiveness of his critique forced more creative thinking throughout the African American community and prodded the Civil Rights leadership to rethink its most cherished precepts and acknowledge its responsibility to respond to the agenda of urban street forces.. . . .

Putting Revolution on the Agenda

Malcolm X took the concept of an African American revolution beyond rhetorical flourish. After Maclolm X, revolution was a serious topic of discussion and planning with the Black Freedom movement. The notion that Black revolution in the United States was impossible was an important part of the ideological hegemony exerted by the Anglo-Saxon-dominated elite in the United States. . . . He argued that revolution became a crucial task because African Americans could no longer delude themselves into believing that White people could be persuaded to ‘save’ Black people. With Malcolm X, the movement took up the proposition that thee was no solution to the race problem within a Eurocentric civilization. Consequently, the main task for African Americans, Africans, and those in the Third World was to formulate an alternative to the Eurocentric worldview.

The OAAU Model after Malcolm

The organizational model represented by the OAAU continued to impact on subsequent movement organizations in the Black Power period and beyond. . . . In 1972, a structure was actually put in place to validate real grassroots leadership and authorize organizational representatives to the National Black Political Convention. Convened in Gary, Indiana in 1972, the delegates articulated their assessment of the situation in words clearly borrowed from Malcolm’s analysis of U.S. society:

‘A Black political convention, indeed all truly Black politics, must begin from this truth: 'The U.S. system does not work for the masses of our people, and it cannot be made to work without radical fundamental change… [The United States is] a society built on the twin foundations of white racism and white capitalism….the only real choice for us is whether or not we will live by the truth we know, whether we will move to organize independently, move to struggle for fundamental transformation, for the creation of a new direction, towards concern for the life and meaning of Man.’

Many of the commentators on the significance of Malcolm X stand outside or or even against the struggle of Black people today. There are those who now extol Malcolm who were very much alive and active in the latter 60’s and early 70s when his ideas were embodied in the Black Power and Black Liberation movements. Many of these people fought against everything Malcolm stood for. Today some of these same people expropriate the aura of Malcolm to shield from public view their lack of a viable program for Black liberation in the United States. First, because of the repression of the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) in the 1970s and 1980s, these impostors have been able to seize the initiative from Malcolm’s true discipline and define the politics of the Black community to suit their own opportunism. . . . Second, the history of the movement from Civil Rights to the BLM has scarcely been written, let alone told. Unaware of the role that these same political opportunists played in the destruction of the BLM, the younger generation is unable to see the hypocrisy in their posturing as followers of Malcolm X.

A Black ex-political prisoner, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, says that those who now embrace Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X consistently remain silent about the scores of African American political prisoners in jails today. They refuse to see, he argues, that had Malcolm X lived he might very well have become a political prisoner. Those Black political prisoners now behind bars are there either because they faithfully tried to put Malcolm’s ideas into action or were victimized by Cointelpro as Malcolm was. Today, Black electoral political leadership, with few exceptions, refuses to make the release of Black political prisoners a part of its agenda. In addition, this same group reduces Pan-Africanism to an unholy conspiracy among the African American bourgeoisie and the most retrograde political leadership and comprador bourgeoisie in Africa, to fleece the continent of its wealth.

SNCC Pursues the ‘Ballot of the Bullet’

Malcolm’s method, the ‘ballot of bullet’ approach, was assumed by SNCC in two important electoral experiments in the period 1964-67. The first of these was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). This was a satellite party which, working within the national Democratic Party structure, tried to reform the party’s southern Dixicrat wing. Its strategy was to demonstrate that local integrated MFDP party structures were both more democratically constituted and loyal to the national slate of candidates and the national party platform than the regular Democratic organization. On this basis it launched challenges to the credentials and seating of southern racists in the Democratic Party’s national convention and in the Congress.

The MFDP experiment was not only a challenge to the ability of the Democratic Party to reform itself, but also a challenge to the liberal conception of social change and the effectiveness of interracial coalitions of poor Blacks and liberal Whites. The MFDP and other satellite party experiments were not notably successful. The MFDP had not used Malcolm’s provisions against cooptation, party independence, and accountability only to the Black masses. It had, however, a direct link to Malcolm X through some of its leaders, including Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer.

The failure of the MFDP led SNCC to attempt a more perfect approximation of Malcolm X’s independent politics. This second experiment was the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), whose emblem was the black panther. This political party was independent of the Democratic and Republican parties. It sought to build grassroots Black political power without the need for White cooperation. In a Black Belt county where Blacks were the numerical majority but had been disenfranchised since the end of Reconstruction, the LCFO specifically endorsed self-defense and armed its organizers and militants against racist night-riders and physical intimidation. Through Black electoral power it aspired to take control of governmental and economic power in the county. The LCFO was to b the model for grassroots Black empowerment throughout the Black Belt. In its initial bid, LCFO failed. Nevertheless, the Black Panther Party idea found a lasting position in the movement, and its model of Black empowerment is clearly reflected in several national and local organizations of the Black Power period, most notably the Black Panther Party itself and the Republic of New Afrika. . . .

Leading the Black United Front

Those who ascribed to the ethnic-assimilationist model were heirs of the militant-assimilationist posture of the established Civil Rights leadership. They made their peace with Black Power by defining it as no more than the traditional strategy of European ethnic groups applied to the Black problem.

Politically, bloc voting within the Democratic Party would increase Black elected representation in the South and in U.S. cities. The resources obtained in this fashion - patronage, influence, and the control of government contracts - would be, as for European immigrants, major sources of African American empowerment. Economically, the construction of civic-minded Black middle-class business persons would be the center of gravity around which Black community development would occur. In this way, the struggle shifted from the arena of protest to the electoral arena, from tactics appropriate to those frozen out of the polity to those who now had access to the polity.

This represented an argument for extending leadership credentials to Black politicians and the Black middle class generally.

The masses of Black people were to give up the protest option and concentrate on expanding their voting power so as to increase the number of Black insiders who would then seek resources on behalf of the masses.

[Siphiwe note: this is where voting became elevated as THE tactic among black people. Until then, it was not considered a SACRED DUTY]

This tendency was responsible for greatly increasing the Black electorate and number of Black elected officials at all levels of government. It was responsible for the establishment of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Joint Center for Political Studies, and TransAfrica, the Washington-based African American lobby on African affairs. Almost all of the largest U.S. Cities have experienced the election of a Black mayor, and there is a greatly expanded African American presence in the Democratic Party. The high point of achievement for this tendency was the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson in 1988 and the election of Ron Brown as Democratic national chairperson. [Siphiwe note: this was superseded by the election of Barack Obama in 2008]

Nationalist forces generally reflected two alternative responses to this thrust: revolutionary nationalism and cultural nationalism. Both responses united in viewing the Black predicament as a form of domestic colonialism. Their position was that racism was not an aberration but inherent in the nature of U.S. society.

In the tradition of Malcolm X, revolutionary nationalists focused on the question of the achievement of self-determination for Black people.

They saw this task as one of revolutionary dimensions which would involve the destruction of the U.S. system and its imperial manifestations abroad.

Cultural nationalists focused on the psychological damage done by racial oppression. They felt that the major impediment to Black liberation was the effect of cultural imperialism on the Black psyche. They followed Malcolm X in their desire to rehabilitate Black people spiritually by restoring to them a sense of their Africanness and the superiority of traditional African institutions and values.

These tendencies diverged on several important issues: on the question of the role of electoral politics, on the question of whether politics should be put in command of economics, on the question of culture, on the relationship of domestic and international events, and on the question of the role of violence and armed struggle in the liberation of Black people

Those forces which followed an ethnic-assimilation model placed greatest emphasis on electoral politics and eschewed a continuation of the protest tradition. Revolutionary nationalists were committed to an intensification of the protest tradition and its flowering into full-scale rebellion. In their framework, electoral politics was realistic only if independent of the major parties, with Black political representation accountable to the masses. Such an electoral politics was validated only to the extent that it increased the power of Black people in their aspirations to destroy the imperialist system.

Cultural nationalists questioned the effectiveness of electoral politics and tended to put economics in command of politics in their quest for autonomy. In this, they were followed by a segment of the militant integrationists who also felt that more emphasis should be put on the development of economic self-sufficiency than on protest politics. . . .

“By Any Means Necessary?”

As one might expect, all three tendencies diverged on the question of the relevance of violence and armed struggle to Black liberation.

Militant integrationists dismissed such tactics as foolhardy and counter-productive. Such tactics would isolate Black people from their domestic allies and consolidate an overwhelming White reaction.

Cultural nationalists viewed the violence and armed struggle as largely irrelevant to the kind of psychological redemption and withdrawal they advocated for Black people. Nevertheless, they endorsed the concept of self-defense..

Revolutionary nationalists embraced the necessity of violence and armed struggle since they saw the essence of imperialist oppression as based on institutionalized racist violence. Given the rising tide of revolution in the world and their feeling that urban guerrilla warfare represented a viable tactic, the military option was given considerable examination by revolutionary nationalists. . . . .

The ‘field Negro’ tradition so important to Malcolm’s analysis of the politics of Black liberation still lives in our youth and in their street culture. Its potential for disruption was displayed again in open rebellion in South Central, Los Angeles; Atlanta, Georgia; and other locales {Siphiwe note: and everywhere around the world now as a result of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis). Events in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Lebanon, and Somalia clearly indicate that urban guerrilla warfare allows well-entrenched and committed minorities to immobilize a society and destroy its way of life. Malcolm X was right to argue that no oppressed people can ever give up this option and retain any hope of liberation. . . .

What does the OAAU idea of Malcolm X tell us about confronting the New World Order?

It is essential that our politics not be constricted to the electoral arena alone. In that arena Black politics must work to be organizationally and programmatically independent of both parties of the ruling class.

Malcolm X taught that only under particular and exceptional conditions can lasting gains be made by Black people in the electoral arena. Our politics must be a ‘field Negro’ politics that will not hesitate to disrupt the normal operation of society whenever that becomes necessary. . . .

With a few notable exceptions in the tradition of Malcolm X, like the National Black Independent Political Party and the National Black United Front from the period of 1979-81, the dominant strategic motion in the Black community has come from those in the tradition not of Malcolm X but of Martin Luther King Jr. Their bankruptcy and that of Black electoral politics, from the perspective of resolving the pressing needs of the masses of ghettoized Black people, has engendered a renewed interest in Malcolm X and the Pan-African nationalist and internationalist tradition of which he was the most elegant spokesman in the latter part of the 20th-century. . . . While many years have passed, the questions which the Black Liberation Movement addressed are still with us. The groupings in the Black community are even more distinct and opposed than in Malcolm’s time. And we should not forget that, as Malcolm X said, if you want to know a thing, you must know its origins.”

THE FIRST HARVEST

THUS, the civil rights groups which spoke for the black guerrillas in the wake of the first three years of guerrilla warfare (1964-1966) diluted the gains which were to be won by the black man. The call for recreational facilities brought a pittance — a contemptuous response of the powerful to the powerless. Requests for fair play from the police could not be granted because white people, in control of the machinery of state, regard the police as their protection against black people — whom they know to have just grievances. Worse, civil rights groups, which joined the white power structure in emphasizing training as the solution to joblessness, were also joining the white power structure in promoting the lie that the black man’s lack of training was the cause of his unemployment. They were thus protecting for the white power structure the real and statistically demonstrable cause of the problem: the white man’s orientation toward white supremacy and his commitment to white domination.

They were, in other words, often unwittingly , preventing movement toward a real solution by moving off on a tangent.

Black people are not only kept out of regular jobs by the bias of white hiring people, they are excluded from skilled trade apprentice programs purely by the bias of white skilled trade unionists. Neither situation could be remedied by the training of blacks.

The black militants who spoke for the guerrillas were generally more on target, for they emphasized “control.” They knew the invidious work of the schools and that the white man would not change what was going on in the schools, so they demanded control of black schools. They understood the function of the police, so they demanded partial control of them — review of their actions, increases in black policemen and black command. They demanded control of the federal government’s Poverty programs, supposedly designed to end black joblessness.

Fundamentally they failed, even as the civil rights groups failed for other reasons, because they, the militants, had reached the core of what the struggle was about: CONTROL — whether white men or black would control the black man and his destiny.

They failed because they, the militants, even supported by the guerrillas, had not arrayed the impression of enough power to make the white man relinquish that control. . . . .

MISSISSIPPI

BECAUSE of powers reserved to the individual states under the United States federal constitution, the state level of government is the ideal level (as opposed to the city or county level) at which black power could be brought to bear in creation of THE NEW SOCIETY. Even with the rapid and extensive growth of federal power and control since 1932, the state still retains tremendous regulatory and initiatory powers over life within its borders. Police and national guard, taxing and banking, election machinery and courts, licensing of many sorts all remain under broad state jurisdiction. And Mississippi, primarily because of its great black population and its seaports (on the Gulf of Mexico), seems the most favorable state in which Black People might reach toward the logical conclusion of our destiny in this land, might attempt to build THE NEW SOCIETY under black control. (The founding of the Republic of New Africa has made it unnecessary for revolutionaries to seek control of the state within the U.S. federal union. Our work is the direct work of winning consent of the people to the jurisdiction of the Republic of New Africa and away from the United States.)

If black people are successful in Mississippi, a systematic attempt would be made to bring three million similarly minded black people from the North into Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, so that these states might also be brought under black control and into a five-state union with Mississippi, with ports on both the Atlantic and the Gulf — a smaller union than the old 11-state Confederacy, to be sure, but with infinitely greater prospects for success. But THE ROAD TO BLACK CONTROL in Mississippi is perilous and by no means accomplished by our mere wishing it.

For if the state of Mississippi in 1966 contained the most valuable asset for black control (a near-majority of black people), it also contained all the obstacles to black control found in the other states — and one more: open and ubiquitous white violence.

THE ANTI-BLACK BLACKS

CONCERTED efforts of white organizations like the UAW to dominate the black vote in Mississippi are not the only obstacles to black control. There is what has become known as the “TUSKEGEE SYNDROME.” This refers to the state of the black mind in Tuskegee, Alabama, where, in 1965, a black voting majority, after a campaign by leading black people in the community against black government, voted a white majority into office.

The sources of this syndrome are not hard to identify. Raised on a saturation diet of white supremacy, believing that God himself and his son too are white, great numbers of black people in America have a secret, abiding love of the white man that flows from deep recesses of the subconscious mind. It is matched by a complementary subconscious hate of black people, of self, and manifests itself in a pervasive doubt of black ability to succeed at anything. These ingrained attitudes in black people have been played upon — to the detriment of every movement for black unity and black self-help in our history — by white-dominated organizations like the NAACP, which for 50 years has held the spotlight in the fight for freedom.

These organizations teach, as gospel, that racial INTEGRATION is the only solution to our problems (they preach this to black people, not to white) and that “all-black” organizations in the fight for freedom are “segregation” and this “segregation,” like the other segregation, is bad. (ALL-BLACK churches and undertakers and barrooms are alright.)

This teaching squares easily with the black man’s sub-conscious self-doubt: many black people are easily convinced, therefore, that “anything all-black is all wrong.”

They are especially convinced and led astray in this regard because the actions of MOST — thank God, NOT ALL — leaders of black communities are designed to lead them astray. Great numbers of black teachers and professors, great numbers of college-educated black people who fill leadership positions (often because they are designated by whites) in black communities believe in their own inferiority but believe even more in the inferiority of their less well situated brothers. It is they, together with the minority of cynical, bought blacks, who are the passkey to the first and greatest barrier — black disunity — to black control in any community. Because of these people, black unity in the past has been impossible; without these people, black people would have nothing to fear from attempts of outsiders, like the UAW, to control black candidates and black politics. We would have considerably less to fear than we now do from economic or even physical attacks from whites.

While these black leaders almost always profit from their subservience to whites, and some perform for whites for no reason other than profit, most are motivated by a conviction that there is no other course. For all this, these people are no less dangerous and obstructive to the acquisition of black power in Mississippi (or elsewhere) than were they motivated purely by profit. Those motivated by profit have from the very beginning forfeited their right to existence; those motivated by conviction are due a brief solicitation, but, after that, their further existence, unreconstructed, cannot be justified.

GOD, MEN AND VIOLENCE

WHEN black men are called upon to fight in the United States Army and are sent, as they are in Viet Nam, to take the lives of foreign patriots who bear them no ill will, no cry is raised that black men should practice non-violence and refuse to go. But when black men are urged to arms to protect themselves in the race struggle in the United States, the cry of non-violence for blacks fills all the land. It will fill it again now. It does not matter. What matters is what black men themselves think. Those of us in the struggle who are atheists and agnostics, those who are animists and those who follow Islam are unfettered by the chains which a perjured teaching has placed upon those of us who are Christian.

More than any man in recent years Martin Luther King is responsible for this criminal crippling of the black man in his struggle. King took an incredibly beautiful, a matchlessly challenging doctrine — redemption through love and self-sacrifice — and corrupted it through his own disbelief. Martin Luther King’s non-violence is a shallow deceit: on no less than three occasions between 1961 and 1965 King called for or condoned (as when Watts occurred) the use of troops. But he urges black people to non-violence. If he did this because he did not think we could win violently, and said so, that would be one thing; but he tells black people to be nonviolent because violence is wrong and unjustifiable. And yet he calls for armies, WHITE-RUN armies. . .

Black Christians must remember that while Christ taught peace, forgiveness, and forbearance, his disciple Peter carried a sword and used it in Christ’s defense at Gethsemane, Christ himself spoke of legions of angels who would fight for him, and Christ himself turned to violence to drive the money-changers from the temple.

There are Christian black men in the struggle, seeking to serve God and loving mankind, who like Christ with the money-changers, have seen the uselessness of further forbearance and have therefore committed themselves to unrelenting violence against violent whites. They are men who hate violence and seek a day when men will practice war no more, but who know that at this juncture in history we are left no other course. If the white man were to be redeemed and reconciled to us by our love, he would have been reconciled before the one hundredth year, because we have loved him mightily. If the white man were to be saved by our suffering, the last ten years from Montgomery through Magnolia County and Birmingham to Chicago — the sacrifice of the actual lives and sight and health and chastity of our dearest black children, many, like those in the Birmingham bombing, not yet teenagers — this non-violent, loving, unstinting sacrifice should have saved him.

The fact is that our continued non-violence will NOT change the white man and would lead US only to extermination.

God is with us, to be sure. But the natural miracle is a rare and thoroughly intractable phenomenon; for the most part, the miracles of God are worked through the brains and arms of men. God will deliver us, but CANNOT unless we act. And if we act, with resolve, we can hack out in this American jungle of racism, exploitation and the acceptance of organized crime, one place in this hemisphere where men of good will may build the GOOD NEW SOCIETY and work for the reconstruction of the whole human world.”

READ

WHAT EVERY AFRICAN AMERICAN MUST CONSIDER BEFORE VOTING IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Edward Eugene Onaci concludes,

“The early 1970’s marked an important decade in the political evolution of Black Power ideologies. Urban rebellion subsided as Black elected officials became mayors and congresspersons, and held many other positions previously unavailable to them due to the de jure (and de facto) racism. Further, activists incorporated the ‘Black Power’ slogan into everything from hair products to urban development programs, and even Nixon-sanctioned Black city development. African Americans from across the political spectrum strove to develop strategies to make the most of this relatively liberal political environment. They devised plans through institutional formations (such as the Congressional Black Caucus), several Black Power conferences and, the Gary Convention of 1972. Political science scholar Cedric Johnson describes

these political moves as the shift from progressive grassroots activism to elitist, stagnated, institutional political participation .“

UNDERSTANDING MY BALANTA FATHER: A NEW INTERPRETATION OF THOSE WHO RESIST IN AMERICA

John Lewis, right, a student at American Baptist Theological seminary, talks to reporters at Nashville city jail March 25, 1960, after his arrest at the downtown Moon-McGrath drugstore lunch counter. Also arrested were O.D. Hunt, left, and Dennis Gregory Foote, students at Tennessee A&I State University.(Photo: Jimmy Ellis / The Tennessean)

When my father was growing up in Gary in the 1950’s, it was one of the most segregated cities in America. The town was founded by US Steel Corp and when the steel industry was flourishing, so too was Gary. That changed, however, when growing oversees competitiveness caused U.S. Steel to lay off many workers. The subsequent “white flight” caused a city with a white population of 79% to become a city with a population of 84% black people, the highest among cities with a population of 100,000 or more. When the white people moved, surrounding suburban areas experienced rapid growth and prosperity. Meanwhile, when white people left, economic investment and money left, too, policies changed, and Gary became one of the worst, most desolate cities in America plagued by poverty and crime, and all of it painted “black”.

I was born and raised in Boulder Hill, a suburb of Montgomery, Illinois which is about 45 miles southwest of Chicago and Gary, Indiana. We were among the first black families to move there. My father came from Gary and my mother came from Chicago, and together they moved to Boulder Hill for a better life and for a good education for me and my sister. We were among the few black students in the entire school system, and thus, I was raised and socialized among white people.

As a kid, we would from time to time visit my grandmother, Lovely Blake (that’s her real name) in Gary, Indiana. This would be my first real exposure to other black people, and these visits had a profound impact on me. My reaction Gary, as a kid coming from the affluence of Boulder Hill and the neighboring town of Oswego, was shock and horror. It was very clear, white people lived in nice neighborhoods and black people did not. White people had good sports teams and black people did not. Everything white was better. Everything black sucked. To underscore this, every holiday when we went to visit my grandmother and my father’s family, they would cook chitterlings, the most foul-smelling food (pig intestines) one can imagine eating. Thus, there was a visceral “stink” to being black.

In 1975, at the age of 4, my family took a trip to Charleston, SC. My father, a former high school swimmer and diver (his father, my grandfather was a member of the US Coast Guard), was undoubtedly excited to bring his son to see the Atlantic ocean. However, when I was brought to the waters edge and touch the water where my great, great, great, great, great grandfather had arrived in America, I freaked out! I was deathly afraid of the water. So bizarre was my reaction that my father immediately resolved that I would start swimming lessons as soon as we returned home.

THAT WAS THE MOMENT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF MY GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT BALANTA GRANDFATHER ENTERED ME.

Around this same time, when I was six years old, I, like millions of Americans watched the television adaptation of Alex Haley’s Roots. One scene, in particular, scarred me forever - Kunte Kinte being whipped to accept his slave name.

In 1989, I enrolled at Yale University where I started to study African American history. I learned that most slaves took the names of their slave masters. All of a sudden, my birth name, Anthony “Tony” Blake, started to really bother me. Why did I, a black person, have a Spanish or Italian first name and an English surname when I am neither Spanish, Italian or English? Why, now that I am “free”, did I continue to use the foreign names of slave-owners? This was part of my identity crisis that started back in 1977 when I watched the movie Roots.

This new consciousness, however, also caused me to ask questions about my father who was a college student during the 1960’s Civil Rights and Black Power era. Why had he never talked to me about this? In my mind, I was wondering, why wasn’t my father a member of the Black Panther Party? How come he didn’t fight for our freedom? A part of me looked at my father as an Uncle Tom and a part of me was ashamed. He was the reason I was surrounded by white people as a kid and why I ended up at Yale University. My newly emerging black consciousness and black pride couldn’t reconcile this. I needed to understand my father’s story . . .

FROM GARY TO FISK

My grandfather, Jeremiah Nathaniel Blake, was born September 21, 1922 in Providence, Rhode Island. His father, Jacob S. Blake, moved to Gary, Indiana sometime thereafter according to the 1930 Census. In 1945, Jacob Blake moved to San Francisco, while Jeremiah Blake stayed in Gary. That same year, 1945, Jeremiah Blake had a son, Jeremiah Nathaniel Blake, Jr. - my father. Five years later, on January 10, 1950, Jeremiah Nathaniel Blake Sr. died. My father and his sister Ramona, were raised alone by Lovelee Blake. Her main priority was keeping Jeremiah Jr. out of trouble.

During the Korean War, the Selective Service began the policy of granting deferments to college students with an academic ranking in the top half of their class. Between 1954-1964, from the end of the Korean War until the escalation in Vietnam, the “peacetime” draft inducted more than 1.4 million American men, an average of more than 120,000 per year. My father often told me, “most of his friends were either being drafted and sent to war or were getting hooked on drugs. I didn’t want to end up like that.”

In 1962, my father left Gary, Indiana to enroll at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. At that time, Fisk University was the cradle of the revolutionary resistance to racism in America.

According to the Complete Coverage: The Civil Rights Movement in Nashville,

“WHEN PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA TOOK THE OATH OF OFFICE FOR THE FIRST TIME, CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS WAS THERE. ON A COMMEMORATIVE ENVELOPE HE SIGNED FOR LEWIS THAT DAY, OBAMA WROTE "BECAUSE OF YOU, JOHN." THAT’S BECAUSE LEWIS, AS A YOUNG MAN, WAS PART OF A UNIQUE GROUP OF NASHVILLE COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO SET OUT TO CHANGE THE WORLD. THEY SUCCEEDED BECAUSE THEY HAD RIGHT ON THEIR SIDE, AND ALSO BECAUSE THEY HAD THE COURAGE IT TOOK TO STAY THE COURSE EVEN WHEN THEIR LIVES WERE ON THE LINE.

The seeds of revolution were planted in a church fellowship hall, in dorm rooms and in a rented house along Jefferson Street.

They were nurtured in a pivotal emergency meeting at First Baptist Church Capitol Hill, with all who were there convinced that the very idea of America was up for grabs.

When the revolutionaries were ready, they attacked. But they didn’t fire guns, pull knives or throw punches.

They sat at lunch counters. They rode buses. They marched.

And they bled.

More than 50 years ago, a group of Nashville college students joined forces with local preachers to create a nonviolent army that went to war with the segregated South.

While similar groups did the same kind of work in other cities, the Nashville students had the first and most wide-ranging success in the decade when Jim Crow was routed. They stayed at it with such resolve that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., on a visit to Fisk University in the midst of the students’ efforts, said he came not to inspire but to be inspired.

And later, when violence threatened to break them, the students defied the adults who advised them and kept going. They rode buses into police-sanctioned assaults in Alabama, knowing they might die - a decision made during that crucial First Baptist meeting, after one of them, John Lewis, posed two simple questions.

“If not us, then who?” he asked. “If not now, then when?”

The students would go on to play key roles in the civil rights movement’s biggest victories.

“The Nashville students dramatically expanded the notion of what a movement was on two or three occasions,” said historian Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “America in the King Years.”

The students were - and are - complicated human beings. Many would go on to achieve spectacular successes, while others met spectacular failure. But most would come to view the protests as the most important undertaking of their lives.

‘This is the cradle’

The students came together under the Rev. James Lawson, a graduate divinity student who moved to Nashville after King “literally begged him to move south,” Branch said.

In the fall of 1959, Lawson started holding workshops on nonviolent action. Students from Fisk and Tennessee State universities, Meharry Medical College and American Baptist Theological Seminary gathered at Clark Memorial United Methodist Church on 14th Avenue North.

“Clark was the birthplace of the civil rights movement in Nashville,” said Matthew Walker Jr., who participated in Lawson’s workshops and the sit-ins as a Fisk student. “This is the cradle.”

As Lawson stood or sat on one side of the fellowship hall and the students sat in rows of chairs, they talked about Jesus, Gandhi and Thoreau. Or they would role-play a sit-in, with some students pretending to ignore those who stood behind them, yelling slurs and blowing smoke in their faces.

The goal was clear: to desegregate the lunch counters in downtown department stores and five-and-dimes, where black customers could shop but couldn’t buy a hamburger.

Lawson taught the students to react to violence by turning the other cheek and taking the blows. In a workshop captured on film, he urged them to imagine responding to their attackers in a “creatively loving fashion.”

“It wasn’t always easy, believe me,” said Walker, who lost his lower front teeth in a beating at the Greyhound bus station lunch counter but came back to join the Freedom Rides.

And yet the students were meticulous about their own conduct. Two student leaders from American Baptist, Lewis and Bernard Lafayette, passed out a list of rules: Don’t laugh out loud. Don’t block entrances to stores. Be friendly and courteous. Always face the counter.

They dressed like they were going to church. Often they went to jail.

The sit-ins begin

The Nashville sit-ins began on Feb. 13, 1960, nearly two weeks after four North Carolina A&T students spontaneously sat in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C. Lawson didn’t think the Nashville movement was ready, but his young charges wouldn’t wait.

“They finally ran out from under him,” Branch said.

Emerging from First Baptist, they would wind their way past the old National Life Building, walk down Union Street and south on Fifth Avenue, home to three department stores: Kress, McLellan’s and Woolworth’s. They also sat in at nearby Cain-Sloan, Harveys, Grant’s, Walgreens and the Moon-McGrath drugstore.

On the first two weekends, waitresses refused to serve the students, so they sat at the counters and quietly did their homework.

On the third Saturday, Feb. 27, the police moved in. Some of the students were assaulted by white shoppers. More than 80 students were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, while police left the attackers alone.

That began a nearly two-month standoff between the mostly black protesters - who kept coming and coming - and the white business owners. The students were spat on, gassed with insecticide and had beverages and condiments dumped on them.

Black residents began to boycott the downtown stores, punishing white merchants during the Easter season.

The tension exploded on April 19, when a bomb tore through the home of Z. Alexander Looby, a leading black civil rights lawyer who lived near the Meharry campus. Looby and his family somehow escaped unharmed, but the students and preachers had seen enough. They sent Mayor Ben West a telegram and started walking.

Led by Fisk junior Diane Nash and minister C.T. Vivian, thousands marched, three by three, to City Hall. After West met them on the plaza, Vivian delivered a blistering indictment. Then Nash quietly lowered the boom.

After getting West to acknowledge the evils of discrimination, she pressed him.

“Then, mayor, do you recommend that the lunch counters be desegregated?”

“Yes,” West replied.

Three weeks later, black students and residents ate at the lunch counters, and Nashville became the first city in the South to desegregate. By then the sit-ins had spread across the South, and students in other cities realized that victory was possible.

Movement spreads

But the Nashville students didn’t stop there. They “stood in” outside movie theaters. They protested outside restaurants. And in the spring of 1961, they moved to the forefront of a national campaign.

The Freedom Rides, designed to require enforcement of a new federal rule desegregating interstate bus facilities, appeared to be over after riders had been savagely attacked in Rock Hill, S.C.; Anniston, Ala.; and Birmingham. Federal officials had gotten the battered riders to New Orleans when they learned that the students had other plans.

Back in Nashville, after a meeting at First Baptist, the students decided to keep the Freedom Rides alive. Though the adults who advised them said they would get themselves killed, the students said they couldn’t let violence separate them from freedom. Several of them were beaten badly in Montgomery on May 20.

That was the first of 13 Freedom Rides to originate in Nashville, according to Raymond Arsenault’s book about the rides. Operating out of a Jefferson Street house, Nash and Tennessee State graduate Leo Lillard cashed money orders and bought tickets for students on their way to Jackson, Miss. They intended to fill the jails. . . .”

It is was into this environment that my father entered Fisk University in 1962. Recently, when I asked my father about his involvement in the movement in Nashville at Fisk he said,

“I remember Diane Nash (movement leader) and John Lewis. I went to a couple of the marches then in my sophomore year. We were met with bricks and stones. I wanted to go down to Mississippi to visit a friend and my friend said, ‘we can’t go out to eat’ because of the segregated restaurants. I was just appalled . . . .Then my mother called me after seeing some news about what was happening in Nashville and she asked me if I was involved. I lied and said ‘no’.”

The students at Fisk became even more revolutionary by 1964. According to William Sales, Jr., FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO BLACK LIBERATION: MALCOLM X AND THE ORGANIZATION OF AFRO AMERICAN UNITY

“Akbar Muhammed Ahmed (aka Max Stanford) has documented how very close Malcolm X was to a nationalist wing which had developed within the southern student movement. It was composed of students in and out of SNCC who were more oriented to the ideas of Malcolm X and the self-defense philosophy of Robert Williams. Its center was the Afro-American Student Movement (ASM) at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. These students wanted to introduce into the southern Civil Rights movement an explicit self-defense component coupled with a politics of Black empowerment based on nationalist values. At the urging of leaders of the National Liberation Front (the immediate precursor of RAM) student nationalists convened the first Afro-American Student Conference on Black Nationalism at Fisk University from May 1 to 4, 1964. The conference state that Black radicals were the vanguard of revolution in this country, supported Malcolm X’s efforts to take the case of Afro-Americans to the United Nations, called for a Black cultural revolution, and discussed Pan-Africanism. The conferences 13 Points for Implementation included several points that reflected the Basic Aims and Objectives of the OAAU.”

That conference took place during the spring semester of my father’s sophomore year at Fisk, and there was a follow-up National Afro American Student Youth Conference from October 30- November 1, 1964 so I asked him if he remembered it.

“I remember it but I didn’t attend. That was the year I pledged with the Kappas, and because I was the shortest, I led the line.I just didn’t have the consciousness back then and I was concentrating on not failing out of school and pledging Kappas.”

https://www.crmvet.org/docs/641030_student_conf.pdf

While I was disappointed to hear that my father was at the center of the Black revolutionary movement but was not participating, I could understand somewhat. When I was at Yale, I was focused on swimming and making the United States Olympic Swimming trials, so I was not politically active and didn’t participate in any events at the African American House on campus.

But I still couldn’t understand my father and some of his choices until I learned about Fisk President Charles Johnson. According to Marybeth Gasman in Instilling an Ethic of Leadership at Fisk University in the 1950s,

“In many cases, student activism on college campuses stems from alienation – alienation of one generation from another, alienation of students from administration. The atmosphere in Nashville, Tennessee, at Fisk University during the early 1950s included neither of these ingredients. Most students admired their professors and respected the University president. In the case of Fisk, activism grew out of a shared sense of values and demonstrated leadership – as well as a response to outside oppression. This leadership and these values were passed on to students by Fisk’s charismatic president, Charles S. Johnson . . .

A historically black college, Fisk was founded in 1866 and had a rich tradition of providing liberal arts education to its students. Its first black president, Charles S. Johnson, created a milieu at the University that gave young blacks the benefits of integration. At Fisk, prominent artists and intellectuals of all races came together to nurture students and encourage scholarship. Not only was the campus integrated in terms of its faculty and guest speakers, but also it boasted a diverse student body. According to one of these students, Jane Fort, ‘the campus burst with intellectual activity: the faculty was full of well-trained professors, the best in their fields... During my years, we heard from and had an opportunity to meet and interact with such notables as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes and so many others that we may have taken it all too much for granted’.

A nationally and internationally connected figure, Charles S. Johnson used his status as a researcher and adviser to several United States presidents, philanthropists, and the United Nations, to bring acclaim to the campus, and to attract prominent scholars to it. He came to Fisk in 1928, schooled in the Chicago style of sociology. His career and interactions were much more far-reaching than those of earlier Fisk presidents, thus playing a significant role in the changes taking place at Fisk. Johnson shared with other black leaders a sense of outrage over the injustices of segregation; however, his approach was liberal, not radical. His circle of friends included people of all races and he showed his advocacy of cooperation across racial lines. Johnson believed that by leading a first-rate historically black college in the South — a university whose academic program attained a level equivalent to many prominent white institutions — he was demolishing the notion that blacks were intellectually inferior. He was supportive of and demanded integration on the Fisk campus. He believed that Fisk would be an incubator for changes that might eventually happen throughout the country. In this sense, Johnson was an activist. Although Johnson had had many national and international experiences, it was his early years that had the greatest impact on his values and his method of ‘sidelines activism.’ . . . Johnson value[d] and [made a] life-long commitment to equality and the understanding people of all races.

Often ahead of his time, Johnson was heavily criticized and mistrusted by many black leaders and white southerners alike. . . .

One of his goals for academic and social preparation at Fisk was to build students up in ‘terms of their own strength and identity’. Johnson was fond of saying,

‘This is where we come to give these kids the strength that they are going to need to confront the rest of the world.’

[Siphiwe note: my father often told me he wanted to give me the opportunity to compete with anyone in the world which has translated to my desire to become a world champion as a masters swimmer even until today]

Much different from the challenge found in the Civil Rights movement — to prepare students for civil disobedience — Johnson’s focus was on ‘nurturing and incubating’ students: giving them academic tools, self-worth, and confidence. Johnson would say, ‘there are many different ways to make change’.

Making change, moving forward, and seizing opportunities were cornerstones of Johnson’s approach.

[Siphiwe note: my father definitely took the ‘nurturing and incubating’ approach with me, especially after my parent’s divorce and he raised me alone]

Fisk was the stage on which Johnson sought to make change. He saw Fisk and the education it provided to students as a way to instill values, challenge the status quo, and develop minds. . . . At Fisk, Johnson promoted his method of activism — activism through scholarship and leadership. . . .

Fisk was one of those places in Nashville where all people could get together and mingle without concern. . . This was consistent with Johnson’s overall effort to ‘renounce the philosophies of escape, and pin [his] faith in the power of life experiences.’ . . . On a daily basis, students were learning to reject the status quo through their scholarship and the campus environment. According to student Vivian Norton, ‘The Fisk campus was an international microcosm. There were regular and exchange students from all over the U.S. and the world. This taught all of us that the world has all kinds of people in it; we needed to be able to interact in important ways – differences in skin color were irrelevant. We lived in dorms with roommates of different colors, religions, and national origins’. The Fisk environment familiarized an integrated style of living and emboldened students to challenge the norms in the local community. . . .

The influence of the outside forces, brought to campus by Charles S. Johnson, encouraged the Fisk students to confront the absurdity of segregation in other ways as well. They would ‘go downtown and if [they] saw a colored fountain, [they] would say hey ‘this is a colored fountain and you can buy colored water.’’ Thus, the presence of outsiders encouraged the Fisk students to show contempt and mockery for a system that they had been raised to fear. Like Johnson years earlier, they ‘developed a new self-consciousness that burned’. . . .Students learned that academics could be activists by sharing research with practitioners and those on the front lines.

Charles S. Johnson was able to captivate the minds of the Fisk students and encourage them to be active in the pursuit of equality. Although he knew that direct protest and confrontation were valid and useful ways to make change, he showed students that there were multiple ways to be an activist. According to Johnson, ‘We are well enough aware of the disposition among many of the young to toss away moral codes along with the discovered fallacies and empty rituals and superstitions of outworn dogma’. Through an understanding of both scholarly issues and outside forces, Fisk students were able to sift through the “dogma” but also retain the moral foundations instilled and modeled by Charles S. Johnson. Johnson believed that scholarship and demonstrated leadership could ‘chip away at a problem’ by exposing it to the public. Fisk students were encouraged to change these conditions with their written words and spoken voice. Johnson continually returned to the words attributed to him by the Fisk alumni,

‘Don’t show your anger in your writing; make others angry with your writing.’

Certainly I see now that my father was a product of Fisk University and Charles Johnson’s style of sideline activism. Armed with a degree in mathematics, the courage to confront the world, a respect for all humanity, and preparation for integration, my father set out on the mission to change society through what my father constantly taught me: personal excellence.

It is within this framework that I can now understand my father’s decision to accept one of the earliest affirmative action opportunities offered by Northern Illinois Gas Company and the eventual relocation to the all-white Boulder Hill where I was born and raised. Such a transition didn’t happen completely smoothly, however. My father’s first attempts to move into white neighborhoods were met with restrictive covenants and outright white hostility. Undaunted and determined, my father did exactly as Charles Johnson taught - confront the absurdity of segregation , ‘renounce the philosophies of escape, and pin [his] faith in the power of life experiences,’ and ‘make change, move forward, and seize opportunities.’

Jeremiah Nathaniel Blake

Fisk University Class of 1966 celebrating the 150 year anniversary of the founding of Fisk and the 50th anniversary of the Class of 1966

On June 7, 1970, C. Eric Lincoln published an article in the New York Times entitled Voices of Fisk ‘70 —, stating,

“NASHVILLE, Tenn. THE Revolution has visited Fisk University in Nashville, as it has most other American colleges. But with a difference. Perhaps Fisk itself is different, as it perceives itself to be. Founded in 1866, the school is alma mater to generations of influential blacks, among them the late W. E. B. Du Bois, probably the most celebrated scholar Black Amer ica has produced; Congressman William Dawson of Chicago; A. Maceo Walker, millionaire Memphis banker and insurance company president; John Hope Franklin, chairman of the department of history at the University of Chicago, and Frank Yerby, best‐selling novelist. While Fisk has a scattering of white students, the school has always considered itself to represent the aristocracy of “Negro” education, and the “Fisk tradition,” though contested by other good schools like Morehouse in Atlanta, still suggests to many black house holds the best education available at a black college.

The Fisk graduate, class of '70, sees his situation as unique in a society torn between change and the status quo ante. He has learned the ambivalence and the anxieties of the black intellectual long before be coming one. It is as though his whole college career were a cleverly masked preparation for somehow surviving in a society so fraught with con traditions as to require some special psychological armor, or some chameleon versatility, “to make it.” The Fisk student accepts and rejects the Fisk pattern for success and adjustment. He wants to make it in the world, but he does not like the kind of world that is offered to him His ambivalence and frustration produce attitudes and behavior which are clearly inconsistent, and which are symptomatic of his longing for a respectable place in the society and his fear that he may succumb to values he can not wholly accept.”

Interestingly, a year after I was born, the black liberation struggle returned to Gary, Indiana which hosted the National Black Political Convention in 1972.

THE BLACK AGENDA

The Gary Declaration: Black Politics at the Crossroads

Introduction

The Black Agenda is addressed primarily to Black people in America. It rises naturally out of the bloody decades and centuries of our people’s struggle on these shores. It flows from the most recent surgings of our own cultural and political consciousness. It is our attempt to define some of the essential changes which must take place in this land as we and our children move to self-determination and true independence.

The Black Agenda assumes that no truly basic change for our benefit takes place in Black or white America unless we Black people organize to initiate that change. It assumes that we must have some essential agreement on overall goals, even though we may differ on many specific strategies.

Therefore, this is an initial statement of goals and directions for our own generation, some first definitions of crucial issues around which Black people must organize and move in 1972 and beyond. Anyone who claims to be serious about the survival and liberation of Black people must be serious about the implementation of the Black Agenda.

What Time Is It?

We come to Gary in an hour of great crisis and tremendous promise for Black America. While the white nation hovers on the brink of chaos, while its politicians offer no hope of real change, we stand on the edge of history and are faced with an amazing and frightening choice: We may choose in 1972 to slip back into the decadent white politics of American life, or we may press forward, moving relentlessly from Gary to the creation of our own Black life. The choice is large, but the time is very short.

Let there be no mistake. We come to Gary in a time of unrelieved crisis for our people. From every rural community in Alabama to the high-rise compounds of Chicago, we bring to this Convention the agonies of the masses of our people. From the sprawling Black cities of Watts and Nairobi in the West to the decay of Harlem and Roxbury in the East, the testimony we bear is the same. We are the witnesses to social disaster.

Our cities are crime-haunted dying grounds. Huge sectors of our youth — and countless others — face permanent unemployment. Those of us who work find our paychecks able to purchase less and less. Neither the courts nor the prisons contribute to anything resembling justice or reformation. The schools are unable — or unwilling — to educate our children for the real world of our struggles. Meanwhile, the officially approved epidemic of drugs threatens to wipe out the minds and strength of our best young warriors.

Economic, cultural, and spiritual depression stalk Black America, and the price for survival often appears to be more than we are able to pay. On every side, in every area of our lives, the American institutions in which we have placed our trust are unable to cope with the crises they have created by their single-minded dedication to profits for some and white supremacy above all.

Beyond These Shores

And beyond these shores there is more of the same. For while we are pressed down under all the dying weight of a bloated, inwardly decaying white civilization, many of our brothers in Africa and the rest of the Third World have fallen prey to the same powers of exploitation and deceit. Wherever America faces the unorganized, politically powerless forces of the non-white world, its goal is domination by any means necessary — as if to hide from itself the crumbling of its own systems of life and work.

But Americans cannot hide. They can run to China and the moon and to the edges of consciousness, but they cannot hide. The crises we face as Black people are the crises of the entire society. They go deep, to the very bones and marrow, to the essential nature of America’s economic, political, and cultural systems. They are the natural end-product of a society built on the twin foundations of white racism and white capitalism.

So, let it be clear to us now: The desperation of our people, the agonies of our cities, the desolation of our countryside, the pollution of the air and the water — these things will not be significantly affected by new faces in the old places in Washington D.C. This is the truth we must face here in Gary if we are to join our people everywhere in the movement forward toward liberation.

White Realities, Black Choice
A Black political convention, indeed all truly Black politics must begin from this truth: The American system does not work for the masses of our people, and it cannot be made to work without radical fundamental change. (Indeed this system does not really work in favor of the humanity of anyone in America.)

In light of such realities, we come to Gary and are confronted with a choice. Will we believe the truth that history presses into our face — or will we, too, try to hide? Will the small favors some of us have received blind us to the larger sufferings of our people, or open our eyes to the testimony of our history in America?

For more than a century we have followed the path of political dependence on white men and their systems. From the Liberty Party in the decades before the Civil War to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, we trusted in white men and white politics as our deliverers. Sixty years ago, W.E.B. DuBois said he would give the Democrats their “last chance” to prove their sincere commitment to equality for Black people — and he was given white riots and official segregation in peace and in war.

Nevertheless, some twenty years later we became Democrats in the name of Franklin Roosevelt, then supported his successor Harry Truman, and even tried a “non-partisan” Republican General of the Army named Eisenhower. We were wooed like many others by the superficial liberalism of John F. Kennedy and the make-believe populism of Lyndon Johnson. Let there be no more of that.

Both Parties Have Betrayed Us

Here at Gary, let us never forget that while the times and the names and the parties have continually changed, one truth has faced us insistently, never changing: Both parties have betrayed us whenever their interests conflicted with ours (which was most of the time), and whenever our forces were unorganized and dependent, quiescent and compliant. Nor should this be surprising, for by now we must know that the American political system, like all other white institutions in America, was designed to operate for the benefit of the white race: It was never meant to do anything else.

That is the truth that we must face at Gary. If white “liberalism” could have solved our problems, then Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy would have done so. But they did not solve ours nor the rest of the nation’s. If America’s problems could have been solved by forceful, politically skilled and aggressive individuals, then Lyndon Johnson would have retained the presidency. If the true “American Way” of unbridled monopoly capitalism, combined with a ruthless military imperialism could do it, then Nixon would not be running around the world, or making speeches comparing his nation’s decadence to that of Greece and Rome.

If we have never faced it before, let us face it at Gary. The profound crisis of Black people and the disaster of America are not simply caused by men nor will they be solved by men alone. These crises are the crises of basically flawed economics and politics, and or cultural degradation. None of the Democratic candidates and none of the Republican candidates — regardless of their vague promises to us or to their white constituencies — can solve our problems or the problems of this country without radically changing the systems by which it operates.

The Politics of Social Transformation

So we come to Gary confronted with a choice. But it is not the old convention question of which candidate shall we support, the pointless question of who is to preside over a decaying and unsalvageable system. No, if we come to Gary out of the realities of the Black communities of this land, then the only real choice for us is whether or not we will live by the truth we know, whether we will move to organize independently, move to struggle for fundamental transformation, for the creation of new directions, towards a concern for the life and the meaning of Man. Social transformation or social destruction, those are our only real choices.

If we have come to Gary on behalf of our people in America, in the rest of this hemisphere, and in the Homeland — if we have come for our own best ambitions — then a new Black Politics must come to birth. If we are serious, the Black Politics of Gary must accept major responsibility for creating both the atmosphere and the program for fundamental, far-ranging change in America. Such responsibility is ours because it is our people who are most deeply hurt and ravaged by the present systems of society. That responsibility for leading the change is ours because we live in a society where few other men really believe in the responsibility of a truly human society for anyone anywhere.

We Are The Vanguard

The challenge is thrown to us here in Gary. It is the challenge to consolidate and organize our own Black role as the vanguard in the struggle for a new society. To accept that challenge is to move independent Black politics. There can be no equivocation on that issue. History leaves us no other choice. White politics has not and cannot bring the changes we need.

We come to Gary and are faced with a challenge. The challenge is to transform ourselves from favor-seeking vassals and loud-talking, “militant” pawns, and to take up the role that the organized masses of our people have attempted to play ever since we came to these shores. That of harbingers of true justice and humanity, leaders in the struggle for liberation.

A major part of the challenge we must accept is that of redefining the functions and operations of all levels of American government, for the existing governing structures — from Washington to the smallest county — are obsolescent. That is part of the reason why nothing works and why corruption rages throughout public life. For white politics seeks not to serve but to dominate and manipulate.

We will have joined the true movement of history if at Gary we grasp the opportunity to press Man forward as the first consideration of politics. Here at Gary we are faithful to the best hopes of our fathers and our people if we move for nothing less than a politics which places community before individualism, love before sexual exploitation, a living environment before profits, peace before war, justice before unjust “order”, and morality before expediency.

This is the society we need, but we delude ourselves here at Gary if we think that change can be achieved without organizing the power, the determined national Black power, which is necessary to insist upon such change, to create such change, to seize change.

Towards A Black Agenda

So when we turn to a Black Agenda for the seventies, we move in the truth of history, in the reality of the moment. We move recognizing that no one else is going to represent our interests but ourselves. The society we seek cannot come unless Black people organize to advance its coming. We lift up a Black Agenda recognizing that white America moves towards the abyss created by its own racist arrogance, misplaced priorities, rampant materialism, and ethical bankruptcy. Therefore, we are certain that the Agenda we now press for in Gary is not only for the future of Black humanity, but is probably the only way the rest of America can save itself from the harvest of its criminal past.

So, Brothers and Sisters of our developing Black nation, we now stand at Gary as people whose time has come. From every corner of Black America, from all liberation movements of the Third World, from the graves of our fathers and the coming world of our children, we are faced with a challenge and a call:

Though the moment is perilous we must not despair. We must seize the time, for the time is ours.

We begin here and how in Gary. We begin with an independent Black political movement, an independent Black Political Agenda, and independent Black spirit. Nothing less will do. We must build for our people. We must build for our world. We stand on the edge of history. We cannot turn back.

REPORT: BALANTA SOCIETY IN AMERICA AND BAM'FABA DISTRIBUTE FOOD IN SINTCHAM, TANDE AND SAMODJE VILLAGES IN NORTHERN GUINEA BISSAU

Watch the TGB Televisão da Guiné-Bissau coverage of the distribution.

Today, June 3, the Balanta B’urassa History and Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA) made it’s second food distribution in Guinea Bissau. On May 17th, 750 kgs of rice, 15 buckets, 2 boxes of bleach and 2 boxes of soap were distributed to 76 households in Tchokmon. Of which, 250 kg of rice and 05 buckets were sent to the community of Bairro Militar, a total of 35 households. Previously, BBHAGSIA also helped the Tadja Fomi ngo deliver food basket for 400 beneficiary families averaging 9 people per family for a total of 3,703 people.

BBHAGSIA are working with the Bam’Faba Council in Guinea Bissau to get emergency food aid to Balanta rural villages. Bam’Faba has is organizing 9 regional coordinators and 39 sector coordinators throughout Guinea Bissau to work on a development plan for Balanta families.

Today, Bam’Faba council members traveled north of Bissau to the Ingore area to distribute food. Next week, the council plans to distribute food in the southern region of Tombali with the next transfer of $1,000 from the BBHAGSIA.

BAM’FABA REPORT OF THE SECOND PHASE OF FOOD DISTRIBUTION

(translated from Portugues)

The current health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented    economic  consequences of which ; especially  for the  most  vulnerable populations veis  who  are  confronted  by  exceptional  shortages of products  of  the first  need. Faced with  this  fragile  situation, the  BAM-FABA  organization is far from indifferent;   decided to  take  some   emergency  actions  with   communities  populated by the  Balantas. Bam -FABA's  actions   go through  the distribution   of  foodstuffs in order to try  to  minimize  the  precariousness  experienced at this  time  by  our  brothers.. géneros

Similarly  to  what  had    previously  been  done  in Tchokmon  in  Semelhança the Bissorã sector,  BAM-FABA  was able  to assist  the  brothers  of  three  villages, namely Sintcham, Samodje and Tande,  this sector  time.   all  located  in the  section  of  Ingoré  sector  of  Bigene  region of Cacheu. However,  the  aid  was summed  exclusively    in  rice acquisition arroz  whose  details  will be  quoted  later  in  the  following paragraphs. .

The BAM-FABA  team composed of President  Mário Cissé  and  Secretary  Sufri Afonso  Balanta,  departed  Bissau at  11:10am  along  with two  members  of  Guinea-Bissau o Television;  arrived  in  Ingoré  at  13:05  where they joined with  the  Quintino Medi in charge of the regional  Cacheu. From  13:05  to  14:00,  24  bags  of  rice  of 50Kg   each  capacity  were purchased.  From  das  14h4h  the  team  went to tabanca de  Sintcham where the  delivery of donations  began  at  14h30mn.

In sintcham  we were greeted by the escola  inhabitants   at  the school of tabanca  where  7 bags  of  rice were  donated.  During the delivery act   entrega  that  did not  exceed  20  minutes, Quintino Medi  began  the  act by first  presenting  the  distribution team as well  as  donations. Taking advantage  oflicar  the  goal of donation that  is to help  through    BAM-FABA the  brothers of Sintcham to  meet  some  of  their  needs. Next  to speak  was the  cumité   (respresponsável  de tabanca) who  used the word,  thanking  the  humanitarian gesture  made  and  uttering a few  words  of  blessing to BAM-FABA. Finally,  it was the  intervention  of  a  woman  who  was  pleased with the  gesture  and  thanking  BAM-FABAf or what she had  done..

Then we  continue our  walk  to  Samodje  where  we arrived  at  15h18mn.   Where  we were  received by the popular and  were  also  donated  7 bags  of  rice  of 50kg. Quintino Medi  used   the word  explaining  the  reason for  the  gift..  Then  it was the  cumité  de tabanca and  a  woman  who  thanked  BAM-FABA for the donations reassuring  us  tranquilizando  that the  distribution  of  them will be  equitable  without  forgetting  the  insistrates  of the incéndio and at the same time the  cumité took advantage of us to let  us  know  the BAM-FABA other  difficulties  that the tabanca  faces  such  as  the  lack  of  a  decent school,   lack  of a  health center . The  delivery act   entrega  ended  at  3:43 p.m..

Finally we went  to tabanca de  Tandé  where  we arrived  at  17:02 and   were  received in an impressive  way by the people of Tande. In  Tandé,  10  bags  of 50kg rice  were  given.  Quintino  explained the reason for    produção   arroz  Bam-faba's  intervention, whose  donation is intended to  help  in  the construction  of   dikes against invasion  of  salt water  in  the bolanhas  that makes local rice production  impossible. . It all  ended  at 5:30 p.m.

Finally,   President  Mário  Cissé  explained  the  objectives of the  creation  of the organization and its performance on  the ground

For this   distribution phase,  BAM-FABA  had  received  1,000 USDs  equivalent  to  570,000xof..    Posto the amount  left in the  BAM-FABA account  for its  maintenance  (20,000xof),,  and  the   logística expenses  (see  table  below) it was  possible to buy 24 bags of rice of 50Kg. The  unit value  of  each  bag  is  16,400fc, which  implies  a total value  of  393,600fc for    the purchase  of 24  bags.

NB : The total amount of expenses (550.000xof) + 20,000xof of   Bam-faba account maintenance, which corresponds to the value of 570,000xof equivalent to 1,000USD. manutenção

                                                                                   Mario Cissé, Sufri Balanta, Quintino Medi Done 03/06/2020

Watch the TGB Televisão da Guiné-Bissau coverage of the distribution.

EXPLAINING TO MY COLORLESS (WHITE) FRIENDS THE SOLUTION TO THE AMERICAN PROBLEM AND ENDING THE CIVIL WAR THAT WAS ESCALATED BY THE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD

"[Slavery] is one of the greatest crimes in history . . . . many of the issues that still trouble America have their roots in slavery".

- President George W. Bush, while visiting Senegal on July 8, 2003,

My father once told me, “If you want to solve a problem, you must go to the origin. Otherwise, whatever you do, the problem will continue to grow and rear its ugly head.”

America is in a new stage of the ongoing Civil War that previously escalated in 1967. The vast majority of the colorless (white) people who I talk to want two things: 1) peace/non-violence and 2) more dialogue. This, they believe, is the proper way of solving the situation that has escalated since the murder by torture of George Floyd by the Police officers whose job it is to serve and protect and keep the peace. Since the the 1960’s, we have been warning America,

“NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE”.

So you can’t say that this was a surprise to anyone except for people who refused to listen and understand. Every effort has already been made to protest peacefully, and every effort was met with resistance, not acceptance and action. Rather than discussing this, I am simply going to outline, very clearly, what must be done now to end the Civil War in America.

1. Recognize the origin of the problem.

2. Take Responsibility for the Crime Against Humanity

3. Pay Reparations

4. Conduct a United Nations Sponsored Plebiscite for African American Self Determination

5. Support the immediate formation of Black Community Protection Forces

Recognize the origin of the problem is that America was created by committing a genocide of indigenous and African heritage people, a crime against the humanity of African heritage people (trans-Atlantic kidnapping, trafficking and enslavement), and a riot and insurrection by a factious group of disturbers of the peace called the Sons of Liberty who attacked British police at the Battle of Golden Hill On January 19, 1770. This eventually led to the Boston massacre and the American Revolution against the British government led by colonial insurrectionists.Thus, the first action in the solution is the public acknowledgement of this narrative and a rejection of the established "patriotic” narrative taught in American society and schools.

America must then take responsibility for the Crime Against Humanity. Here I remind you of some of the efforts that have already been made to hold America accountable and why there is no need for any more dialogue:

September 2, 1924 - The Universal Negro Improvement Association submits its Petition of Four Million Negroes of the United States of America to His Excellency the President of the United States Praying for a Friendly and Sympathetic Consideration of the Plan of Founding a Nation in Africa for the Negro People, and to Encourage Them in Assisting to Develop Already Independent Negro Nations as a Means of Helping to Solve the Conflicting Problems of Race

1946 - The National Negro Congress submits its Petition to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Stating The Facts on The Oppression of the American Negro.

October 23, 1947 - W.E.B. DuBois submits AN APPEAL TO THE WORLD!: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress. Fearing that the double standard would be exposed, President Truman’s State Department worked relentlessly to undermine the emerging human rights infrastructure at the U.N. In internal documents, the State Department admitted that it was worried about the creation of an international forum where it would be too tempting to raise the “Negro problem.”

December, 1951 - William Patterson and Paul Robeson submit We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of The United States against the Negro People . The petition detailed, among other things, 152 incidents of killings of unarmed Black men and women by police and lunch mobs between 1945 and 1951.

April 3, 1964 - Malcolm X gives his famous, “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech stating, “Human rights are something you are born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth. And any time anyone violates your human rights, you can tak them to the world court.” Thus, Malcolm X revealed his intention to utilize the United Nations. On May 21, 1964, Malcolm X stated,

“The American black man needed to recognize that he had a strong, airtight case to take the United States before the United Nations on a formal accusation of ‘denial of human rights’ - and that if Angola and South Africa were precedent cases, then there would be no easy way that the U.S. could escape being censured, right on its own home ground.”

On November 29, 1964, Malcolm X stated,

“You and I must take this government before a world forum and show the world that this government has absolutely failed in its duty toward us.”

Finally, Malcolm X mentioned the United Nations topic for the last time on February 16, 1965, just days before his death. stating,

“as long as you call it civil rights your only allies can be the people in the next community, many of who are responsible for your grievance. But when you call it human rights it becomes international. And then you can take your troubles to the World Court. You can take them before the world. And anybody anywhere on this earth can become your ally.” A few days later, Malcolm X was killed.

1977 - The New Afrikan Prisoners Organization (NAPO) petition to the United Nations.

December 11, 1978 - The National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the Commission on Racial Justice for the United Church of Christ submit a petition to the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

November 5, 1979 - The National Black Human Rights Coalition organized a march of 5,000 people at the United Nations under the banner “Black People Charge Genocide” and “Human Rights is the Right to Self Determination.”

1994 - Mr. Silis Muhammad delivered Petition for Reparations to the UN under 1503 Procedure – to the UN Working Group on Communications on behalf of African Americans. This was followed up in 1997, 1998, 199 and 2000 with written and oral statements urging the Commission on Human Rights to assist African Americans in their effort to recover from official U.S. policies of enslavement.

May 1997 - As a response to revelations that the CIA was involved in the explosion of crack/cocaine in African American communities, the National Black United Front launched a historic Genocide Petition Campaign Against the United States Government and traveled to the United Nations Human Rights Center in Geneva, Switzerland to present the petition with over 200,000 signatures to Mr. Ralph Zacklin, Officer in Charge of High Commission of Human Rights, Centre for Human Rights. Also, this same Petition/Declaration was submitted to the High Commission of Human Rights in New York on May 27, 1997.

September 3, 2001 - World Conference Against Racism - 18,810 delegates from 170 countries, 16 heads of state, 58 foreign ministers, 44 ministers, 7,000 non-governmental representatives, and 1,300 journalists attending the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR)

declared that "slavery, and the slave trade, including the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature [and] especially their negation of the essence of the victims . . . [and] that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity..."

At the conference, on September 2, 2001, in a meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney presented Robinson with two documents as evidence of the US governments violations of both US and international law and, in particular, specific violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The first document given to Robinson was a confidential Memorandum 46, written by National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski on March 17, 1978 and it details the federal government's plan to destroy functioning black leadership in the United States. This document provides a critical insight into the federal government's concern at the apparent growing influence of the African American political movement. The second document is a report entitled "Human Rights in the United States [The Unfinished Story - Current Political Prisoners - Victims of COINTELPRO]" and it was compiled by the Human Rights Research Fund, headed by Kathleen Cleaver. This document provides an overview of the counterintelligence program which, from the 1950s to the 1980s, was run in the United States against political activists and targeted organizations.

Rather than face these charges, the United States Government's delegation to WCAR walked out of the conference. Days later, the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed.

November 22, 2010 - The National Conference of Black Lawyers and the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination submit a report on Political Repression – Political Prisoners to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review, Ninth Session of the Working Group on the UPR Human Rights Council. The report was endorsed by the following 34 organizations and 53 individuals:
Harold Rogers, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists; Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright; Association Americana de Jurists (American Association of Jurists); Bob Brown, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC); Ramona Ortega, Cidadao Global; Jane Frankin, Author; National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression; Professor Robert Starks, Jacob Caruthers Center for Inner-City Studies*; Rev. Paul Jakes, Christian Council on Urban Affairs; Sali Vickie Casanova, Black People Against Police Torture: Steve Saltzman, Civil Rights Attorney; Lawrence Kennon, Civil Rights Attorney; Black People Against Police Torture; Susan Gzesh, Human Rights Educator; Dr. Yvonne King, Educator; Atty. Efia Nwangaza; Alderman Lionel J. Baptiste, Attorney; Cliff Kelley, WVON Talk Show Host*;Calvin Cook, Black United Fund Illinois*; Family And friends of Dr. Mutulu Shakur: The Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee; AbdudDharr M.K. Abdullah, National Islamic Solidarity Front; Claude Marks, Director, Freedom Archives; People’s Law Office-Chicago, Illinois; Peter and Barbara Clark, Leonard Peltier Defense Committee-Support Group Coordinators; Jeffrey Segal, Attorney at Law, Louisville, Ky; Kamm Howard, Chicago Chapter, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, N’COBRA; Judith Mirkinson, San Francisco Women In Black; Leah Pemberton: Yusufu Mosley, Campaign In Support of C# Prisoners; Hondo T’Chikwa, Spears & Shield Publications; Rasheda Weaver, Community Activitist; Standish E. Willis, Civil Rights Attorney, Chicago, Illinois; Alice and Edward “Buzz” Palmer, educators; Alice Kim, A Movement Re-Imagining Change (ARC); Anne Lamb, NYC Jericho Movement; Chicago Committee To Defend The Bill of Rights; Dorothy Burge, Educator, Chicago; Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma’at, Past National Co-Chair of National Coalition of Blacks for Reparation in America (N’COBRA), Oakland, California; Patricia Hill, African-American Police League and Chicago Human Rights Council; Prof. Soffiyah Elijah, Harvard Law School, advisor to the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights; Henry English, Black United Fund of Illinois*; Prexy Nesbitt, Educator; Bill Ware; Randolph Stone, University of Chicago School of Law, Clinical Professor, Mandell Clinic; Josh Khaleed London, Shut-Up Prison Ministry; Emile Schepers, Ph.D., Great Falls Virginia; Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, Berkeley, CA; Jeffrey “Free” Luers, Earth First! Prisoner Support Project, Portland, Oregon; Prof. Raoul Contreras, Chair, Indiana Univ. NW, Minority Studies Dept*; Indiana U Social Justice Student Group*; Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for Self Determination; Larry Holmes, Activist NYC; Bonnie Kerness, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)*; Bruce A. Dixon, Journalist; Black Agenda Report; King Downing, Director, Human Rts-Racial Justice Center; Nahal Zamani and Annette Dickerson, Center for Constitutional Rights; Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Journalist; Dr. Kwame Kalamara, Educator; Hugh Esco, Georgia Green Party; Kevin Gray, author

Thus, the “problem” has meticulously been documented and presented to the international community, through the highest channels, of “the problem”. Meanwhile since the Black Studies Movement in the 1960’s, hundreds of thousands of books and articles written by African American professors, have discussed in detail, and added to the works produced by colorless (white) scholars to produce a national body of “knowledge of the problem.” The American public was recently educated about “the problem” by the New York Times 1619 Project. Again, we don’t need to discuss “the problem” anymore.

America must pay Reparations for the Crime Against African Heritage Peoples’ Humanity. In the book, The Wealth of Races: The Present Value of Benefits from Past Injustices edited by Richard F. America, William Darity, Jr writes:

"The later 1960s and early 1970s - a period of great social activism and ferment in the United States -witnessed a surge in calls from black Americans for reparations. . . . The rationale was twofold. First was a 'moral justification deriving .... from the debt owed to Blacks for the centuries of unpaid slave labor which build so much of the early American economy, and from the discriminatory wage and employment patterns to which Blacks were subjected after emancipation.' Second was a justification based on 'national self-interest' . [Robert S. Browne, director and founder of the Black Economic Research Center] perception that such 'gross inequalities' in the distribution of wealth would only further aggravate social tensions between black and whites.

Apparently, neither justification subsequently has proved COMPELLING for American legislators. No scheme of reparations of the type Browne advocated [wealth transfers] ever has been adopted in the United States."

What's important to understand, then, is that it is not for lack of knowing the history and legacy of the slave trade nor any lack of calculating the debt owed that has prevented reparations. In fact, the National Economic Association, the professional organization of black economists, from 1981 to 1985, addressed all of the issues and calculated the costs.

Ransom and Such (1990) calculated that the profits of the slave system from 1806 to 1860 compounded to 1983 came to $3.4 billion. The present value of that sum compounded to the present at an annual interest rate of 5 percent is $9.12 billion.

Larry Neal (1990) derived an estimate of $1.4 trillion based on the gap between the wage an enslaved African would have received had he or shebeen a free laborer and what was spent on slave maintenance by slave-owners between 1620 and 1840. Again, compounding the interest to the present at 5 percent interest yields a total close to $4 trillion by the end of 2004.

James Marketti (1990) utilized a concept of income diverted from enslaved Africans during the course of slavery in the United States to arrive at a figure of $2.1 trillion by 1983.The present value after compounding the interest is $6 trillion. If you use the "40 acres and a mule" from General Sherman's Special Orders No. 15 for a family of four, then, a conservative estimate of the price of land in 1865 is $10 per acre. A conservative estimate of the total number of ex-slaves at the time of emancipation is 4 million which would yield 40 million acres of land valued at $400 million should have been distributed to the ex-slaves in 1865. The present value of that sum of money compounded from 1865 at 6% would amount to $1.3 trillion. If there are approximately 30 million descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States today, the estimate based on 40 acres yields an allocation of slightly more than $400,000 per recipient.

Chachere and Udinskly (1990) estimate that the gains to whites from labor market discrimination during the period 1929-1969 to be $1.6 trillion.

By the year 2000, Joe R. Feagin in his paper Documenting the Costs of Slavery, Segregation and Contemporary Discrimination concluded that "Clearly, the sum total of the worth of all the black labor stolen by whites through the means of slavery, segregation, and contemporary discrimination...taking into account lost interest over time and putting it in today's dollars, is perhaps in the range of $5 to $24 trillion."

Now, according to Walter Olson in his article, "So Long, Slavery Reparations" published in the LA Times in 2008,

"Just a few years ago, at roughly the turn of the millennium, slavery reparations seemed the coming thing. A New York Times article in June 2001 reported that the movement to obtain compensation for slaves’ descendants had “taken on substantial force” and was “gaining steam” both in the nation’s universities and in the black community.

All the major black organizations had signed on, including the NAACP, the Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Randall Robinson’s book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” had hit the bestseller lists in 2000. Many state and local Democratic politicians started to talk up the idea.

Then: nothing. Today, reparations seem to have completely disappeared from the national agenda. Few mention them anymore. What happened? . . . .

In late 2000, a new project called the Reparations Assessment Group began making preparations for lawsuits. The dollar sums mentioned were staggering. Harper’s magazine estimated that it could require $97 trillion to pay for the hours of uncompensated work done during the slavery era, which would require extracting, on average, about $300,000 from every American of non-slave descent. So confident were reparationists of success that they began to map out how the court-ordered funds would be spent. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, broke this momentum with an abrupt jolt. It wasn’t just that for quite a few months thereafter Americans of all races preferred to discuss issues unrelated to reparations; it was also that some of the persistent themes that ran through those days, such as national unity, individual heroism, mutual dependence and the implications of mortality were at cross-purposes with the reparations narrative. According to LexisNexis, U.S. newspapers and wire services ran nearly 2,600 stories including the words “slavery” and “reparations” in the year leading up to 9/11. Since then, the yearly average has been less than 1,000."

In January of 1989, Michigan Representative John Conyers introduced

H.R. 40 - A Bill To Acknowledge The Fundamental Injustice, Cruelty, Brutality, And Inhumanity Of Slavery In The United States And The 13 American Colonies Between 1619 And 1865 And To Establish A Commission To Examine The Institution Of Slavery, Subsequently De Jure And De Facto Racial And Economic Discrimination Against African-Americans, And The Impact Of These Forces On Living African-Americans, To Make Recommendations To The Congress On Appropriate Remedies, And For Other Purposes; To The Committee On The Judiciary

The bill has been introduced every year since then but has never been passed.

HERE IS THE MOST RECENT AND MOST ACCURATE REPARATIONS CALCULATION

“We compare the 2018 per capita Black–White wealth gap of about US$352,250 with portions of the estimated total cost of slavery and discrimination to African American descendants of the enslaved. For the period of slavery in the United States, we arrive at estimates of about US$12 to US$13 trillion in 2018 dollars using Darity’s land-based and Marketti’s price-based estimation methods, respectively. Estimates using Craemer’s wage-based method tend to be higher ranging from US$18.6 trillion at 3% interest to US$6.2 quadrillion at 6% interest. The value of lost freedom (LF) based on Japanese American World War II internment reparations is estimated at 3% interest to amount to US$35 trillion and at 6% to US$16 quadrillion. Further research is required to estimate the cost of lost opportunities (LC) and pain and suffering (PS). Further research is also required to estimate the costs of colonial slavery, as well as racial discrimination following the abolition of slavery in the United States to African American descendants of the enslaved. Whether the full cost of slavery and discrimination should be compensated, or only a portion, and at what interest rate remain to be determined by negotiations between the federal government and the descendant community.”

America mus accept a United Nations Sponsored Plebiscite for African American Self Determination. This is really the heart of the matter. At the moment that the former slaves were Emancipated in 1865, they became “free”. What this meant is that the African, his freedom now acknowledged by persons who theretofore had wrongfully and illegally (under international law) held him in slavery by force, was entitled as a free man to decide for himself what he wanted to do -- whether he wished to be an American citizen or follow some other course. Following the Thirteenth Amendment, four natural options were the basic right of the African. As outlined by Imari Abubakari Obadele,

First, he did, of course, have a right, if he wished it, to be an American citizen.

Second, he had a right to return to Africa or (third) go to another country -- if he could arrange his acceptance.

Finally, he had a right (based on a claim to land superior to the European's, sub- ordinate to the Indian's) to set up an independent nation of his own.

Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment is incorrectly read when its Section One is deemed to be a grant of citizenship: it can only be an offer. . . . Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.)

The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required - was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

Towering above all other juridical requirements that faced the African in America and the American following the Thirteenth Amendment was the requirement to make real the opportunity for choice, for self-determination. How was such an opportunity to evolve? Obviously, the African was entitled to full and accurate information as to his status and the principles of international law appropriate to his situation. This was all the more important because the African had been victim of a long-term intense slavery policy aimed at assuring his illiteracy, dehumanizing him as a group and depersonalizing him as an individual.

The United States government still has the obligation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to ‘enforce' Section One (the offer of citizenship) in the only way it could be rightfully 'enforced' -- by authorizing US participation in a plebiscite. By, in other words, a reference to our own will, our self-determined acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship. There are further important ramifications. A genuine plebiscite implies that if people vote against US citizenship, the means must be provided to facilitate whatever decision they do make. Thus, persons who vote to return to Africa or to emigrate elsewhere must have the means to do so. . . .

Now then, we repeat: an obvious and important ramification of the plebiscite is that there must exist the capability of putting its decisions into effect. If the decision is for US citizenship, then that citizenship must be unconditional. If it is for emigration to a country outside Africa, those persons making this choice must have transportation resources and reparations in terms of other benefits, principally money, to make such emigration possible and give it a reasonable chance of success. If the decision is for a return to some country in Africa, the person must have those same reparations as persons emigrating to countries outside Africa PLUS those additional reparations necessary to restore enough of the African personality for the individual to have a reasonable chance of success in integrating into African society in the motherland. If, finally, the decision is for an independent new African nation on this soil, then the reparations must be those agreed upon between the United States government and the new African government. Reparations must be at least sufficient to assure the new nation a reasonable chance of solving the great problems imposed upon us by the Americans in our status as a colonized people."

As already noted above, the Reparations needed amount to about $97 trillion. In the past, the principle objection to Reparations has been the question, “How will we pay for it?” But as the COVID-19 experience has shown, the United States government will come up with trillions of dollars when it feels strongly enough that it is in the nation’s interest to do so.

And this is why property damage and disruption to peace, and an escalation of the conflict, is happening right now in America.

EVERY EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO MAKE AMERICA AND AMERICANS CARE ENOUGH TO PROVIDE JUSTICE TO BLACK PEOPLE AND IT HASN’T WORKED. ALL OUR ARGUMENTS, PLEAS, PEACEFUL PROTESTS, AND PETITIONS HAVE BEEN IGNORED. SINCE WE DON’T HAVE AN ARMY OR THE CAPACITY TO ENGAGE IN A MILITARY CONFLICT TO DEFEND OUR INTERESTS, OUR ONLY RECOURSE NOW IS TO DESTROY ENOUGH PROPERTY TO THE POINT WHERE AMERICANS WILL FEEL STRONGLY ENOUGH TO PAY THE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN REPARATIONS AND CONDUCT THE UN SPONSORED PLEBISCITE FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN SELF-DETERMINATION.

Now, why is the UN Sponsored Plebiscite for African American Self Determination THE SOLUTION?????

Simply because it is the only method for giving all black people in America what is owed to them while at the same time giving the colorless (white) Americans what they want: peace and dialogue.

Black people have been denied the opportunity to make their free choice and utilize reparations to set up a society of their choice, be it in America, Africa, or their own nation.. Since the 1830’s, there has been no consensus within the black community as to what path to pursue. At the African Peoples Commission held in 1998 under the theme “Building on the Tradition: Lessons of African American Conventions and Congress for the Black Radical Congress”,

“So, the continuously arising central question manifested itself again in 1975: What is the relationship of African Americans to the United States? Is this the land where we should struggle and attempt to transform after investing so many years? Or is this land beyond our abilities to reform, and therefore we should look for another place to live? Or is there some alternative?”

That question has never properly been settled because at the moment of Emancipation, the legal mechanism to settle the question - the plebiscite - was never conducted. Thus, to this day, you still have some blacks that believe in the American dream, some blacks who want to return to their ancestral homeland in Africa, and some blacks who want the same opportunity as any other people in the world to establish their own government and exercise national self-determination. THIS IS NEVER GOING TO CHANGE. SO IT IS ESSENTIAL TO SATISFY ALL OF THEM.

So the intelligent thing to do is to identify the people who believe in America, share its values, and want to stay and help build America and enable them to do so with equality and justice. Likewise, those who want to return to Africa and those who want their own nation, are never going to give that up and will always struggle to get what they believe is owed to them and is their right. So if America doesn’t give it to them, they will try to find a way to take it and make it happen. These are not the kind of Black people America wants so JUSTICE should be served for them so that they can exit America peacefully. Most Americans will have no problem with black people voluntarily returning to Africa (although they will object to paying for it), but it is the last one that is going to cause the most controversy.

In the aftermath of the 1967 rebellions, the Republic of New Afrika was established and sought to establish a land base for its government in nation in the area where black people where the majority population - the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. This effort, however, for various reasons, was not supported by black or white Americans. Given the complete frustration and hopelessness of African Americans in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by torture at the hands of the police, a significant segment of the black community has said enough and wants out of America, having concluded that justice cannot be obtained from within America. The objection, however, will come from white people forced to move from this territory. To this, the remedy is simple: the United States must compensate its own citizens who are forced to relocate as the cost of providing justice and reparations for the crime against the humanity of African heritage people.

However, the biggest objection will come from the United States Government that cares more about its national interest than rectifying the crimes against humanity and providing Justice. The United States Government will be loathe to peacefully cede some of its territory which it gained by conquest.

This is where the solution is depended on colorless (white) people’s willingness to combat white supremacy - the concept and its application that ensures that the interests of white people are more valuable and above justice for black people.

The problem now is not that we don’t know what the solution is. The problem now is whether or not colorless (white) people have the will to pursue justice, even when it requires sacrifice on their part. That’s really what the problem is…. As long as the United States Government compensates its citizens for their relocation, the sacrifice is only the pain of being forced from the homes and communities which they have become attached to. But isn’t that really the cost the must be paid for forcibly removing African heritage people from their homes, families and communities in the first place? How is it deemed acceptable and justifiable in the latter’s case but not in the former’s???

Edward Eugene Onaci concludes in SELF-DETERMINATION MEANS DETERMINING SELF: LIFESTYLE POLITICS AND THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRIKA, 1968-1989,

“Since the 1968 Black Government Conference, the RNA has worked hard to research and make the case for reparations. In 1972, the RNA released its “Anti-Depression Program,” a plan designed “To End Poverty, Dependence, Cultural Malnutrition, and Crime” and to “Promote Inter-Racial Peace.” Specifically, the program posits three legislative requests and delineates how their fulfillment would help solve some of U.S. society’s problems. The requests are as follows:

I. An Act authorizing the peaceful cession of land and sovereignty to the Republic of New Africa in areas where blacks vote for independence.

II. An Act authorizing payment of three hundred billion dollars ($300,000,000,000) in reparations for slavery and unjust war against the black nation to the Republic of New Africa.

III. An Act authorizing negotiations between a commission of the United States and a Commission of the Republic of New Africa to determine kind, dates, and other details of paying reparations.

The drafters of these acts were convinced that, if carried out, these measures would solve the overwhelming majority of problems the authors identified, namely un- and underemployment, economic and political dependence, poverty, inadequate health, subpar education, poor selfesteem, and unhealthy social relationships amongst Black people and between them and others, especially White Americans.

The program’s drafters establish an intimate connection between these problems and the Black Nation’s colonial relationship with the United States. Therefore, the authors contend addressing these issues by enacting the “Anti-Depression Program’s” three juridical proposals would result in the “removal of the [United Stands] hands” from Black people’s self-determination. In underscoring the necessity of abolishing white interference, the plan’s composers divulge, “And this may be, for whites, the most difficult part. Whites, so used to us as ‘our Negroes,’ must remove their hands from our culture, our economies, our schools, our government, our persons.” By calling for a “removal of hands,” the architects of this program reinforce their previous calls for independence as the solution to Black people’s problems while simultaneously attempting to hold White Americans responsible for their infractions against the U.S. Black population.”

Finally, in the meantime, while the effort to pursue the above is taking place, the immediate need of the black community is the ability to protect itself from police violence. The immediate solution to this is also simple: establish Black Community Protection Units and I have previously outlined the instructions on what the black community needs to be doing now completely independent of the colorless (white) community. The colorless (white) community - those who are demanding justice and and end to police violence - must explain to their fellow citizens why they need not fear the establishment of Black Community Protection Units whose only purpose is to arrive at the scene at the same time as police when there is the possibility for episodes of police violence as we just witness in Minneapolis. If there’s a counter force strong enough to act as a deterrent to police misconduct, then the police will not engage in misconduct.

As the last word on this, consider now the most distinguished human being of the the 20th century. On October 4, 1963, His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of Judah addressed the United Nations and said,

“Yet, this is the ultimatum presented to us: secure the conditions whereby men will entrust their security to a larger entity, or risk annihilation; persuade men that their salvation rests in the subordination of national and local interests to the interests of humanity, or endanger man's future. These are the objectives, yesterday unobtainable, today essential, which we must labor to achieve.

Until this is accomplished, mankind's future remains hazardous and permanent peace a matter for speculation. . . . .The goal of the equality of man which we seek is the antithesis of the exploitation of one people by another with which the pages of history and in particular those written of the African and Asian continents, speak at such length. Exploitation, thus viewed, has many faces. But whatever guise it assumes, this evil is to be shunned where it does not exist and crushed where it does. . . .

that until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned;

that until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation;

that until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes;

that until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race;

that until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained. . . .

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY AND PROTESTERS IN THE WAKE OF THE MURDER BY TORTURE OF GEORGE FLOYD.

1. ALL Black Military, Ex-Military, Police and Ex-Police (whose military and police credentials have been verified) who are committed to protecting the black community against police violence and brutality in the top 100 cities with black populations CALL AN EMERGENCY VIRTUAL MEETING between now and June 7th.

2. Use your vocational expertise to set up a COMMAND STRUCTURE and RIFLE CLUB for your city under ALL Federal, State and Local laws. Exercise your 2nd AMENDMENT RIGHTS and advocate nothing illegal. The goal is to have 1,000 armed, disciplined black men to serve as a Black Community Protection Force, ready at a moments notice, to mobilize anywhere within your city, when called upon.

REMEMBER, THIS IS NOTHING NEW. WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. PLEASE READ

Potential of A Minority Revolution in the USA.

&

REVISITING THE BLACK LIBERATION ARMY'S MESSAGE TO THE BLACK MOVEMENT IN RESPONSE TO THE KILLING OF GEORGE FLOYD

What is different now is:

1) A significant number of black men and women have been trained as soldiers, police and security guards;

2) A significant number of black households are already armed.

WHAT IS NEEDED NOW IS FOR #1 TO USE THEIR TRAINING TO FORM LEGAL AND ABOVE-GROUND UNITS TO COMMAND #2 FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROTECTING THE BLACK COMMUNITY. THIS WAS NOT ACHIEVED IN THE AFTERMATH OF 1967. THE QUESTION IS WHETHER OR NOT THIS CAN BE ACHIEVED NOW SINCE THE MURDER BY TORTURE OF GEORGE FLOYD HAS UNITED ALL SEGMENTS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY.

On May 31, 1968 about 30 leaders of the RNA met at 40 North Ashland Avenue in Chicago to address some of the biggest issues facing the new government. Among them was,

“the legislative act that established the Black Legion, the RNA’s military. Similar to the income tax, the creation of this body was supposed to resolve another perceived problem - this time not just for the RNA but for the larger African American community as well. Specifically, the RNA tried to address the heightened security threats to the black community by the overt behavior of racist police as well as other members of the white community. This addressed a longer historical problem as well.

The creation of the Black Legion was also tied to the greatest repressive fear of the organization: being directly hit by an over, aggressive assault like that waged [upon] nonviolent civil rights activists (from whites in general and the police in particular). The RNA vowed that it would never be hit in such a direct manner without preparation. Two reasons existed for this. On the one hand, the RNA vowed never put themselves in a position where they were vulnerable to this type of attack (i.e., being out in the open, unarmed and unprepared). Instead, the RNA would try to build themselves in the minds of black folk and then step forward to claim the nation en masse. On the other hand, the RNA would prepare to defend themselves by creating an armed wing, trained in shooting, hand-to-hand combat, and diverse survival skills. This was the essence of the organization’s reappraisal - armed self-defense from overt general assault, both immediately after the attack and a ‘second strike,’ which would be delayed after the initial attack as retribution. The plans for the former were pretty straightforward, whereas the plans for the latter were never quite clear, seemingly on purpose. For example, there was always reference to people being ‘underground’ but nothing concrete - across source material.

As conceived, the Black Legion would be composed of selected citizens between the ages of sixteen and fifty, the men and women being in separate units for reasons that were not provided in detail. All were to engage in two hours of training per week, and once a month there would be practice on a field training site. In addition to this, all male citizens between the ages of sixteen and fifty and all female citizens between the ages of sixteen and thirty (without young children) were mandated to join the Universal Military Training Force. Similar to the state of Israel, in an effort to have as many soldiers as citizens, this force involved at least two hours of military training a month, when individuals would learn how to shoot, dress wounds, and otherwise take care of themselves in a conflict situation. Finally, to prepare RNA members as soon as possible and engage the whole family, there was to be a Junior Black Legion composed of all children between the ages of nine and fifteen. In these units, youth would undergo a less rigorous but largely similar program.”

"A FAILURE TO BUILD THESE ARMED FORMATIONS CAN BE FATAL TO BOTH THE STRUGGLE AND BLACK PEOPLE. . . ."

- Black Liberation Army Message to the Black Community, 1975

There is nothing to fear. You are doing nothing illegal. This is not an call to "underground" violent action and it is your natural law right. Protesting is just one form of resistance. It is time for those who have defense and military training within the black community to be willing to sacrifice their lives in defense of HUMAN DIGNITY.

BLACK LIBERATION STUDY GUIDE 1977-78

These 80 Black men and boys testify to the fact that we must provide our own protection against the police and any other racist vigilantes.

1. Yassin Mohamed 
2. Finan H. Berhe 
3. Sean Reed 
4. Steven Demarco Taylor 
5. Ariane McCree 
6. Terrance Franklin 
7. Miles Hall 
8. Darius Tarver 
9. William Green 
10. Samuel David Mallard 
11. Kwame “KK” Jones 
12. De’von Bailey 
13. Christopher Whitfield
14. Anthony Hill 
15. De’Von Bailey 
16. Eric Logan 
17. Jamarion Robinson 
18. Gregory Hill Jr. 
19. JaQuavion Slaton 
20. Ryan Twyman 
21. Brandon Webber 
22. Jimmy Atchison 
23. Willie McCoy 
24. Emantic “EJ” Fitzgerald Bradford Jr.
25. D’ettrick Griffin 
26. Jemel Roberson 
27. DeAndre Ballard 
28. Botham Shem Jean 
29. Robert Lawrence White 
30. Anthony Lamar Smith 
31. Ramarley Graham 
32. Manuel Loggins Jr. 
33. Trayvon Martin 
34. Wendell Allen 
35. Kendrec McDade 
36. Larry Jackson Jr. 
37. Jonathan Ferrell 
38. Jordan Baker 
39. Victor White lll 
40. Dontre Hamilton 
41. Eric Garner 
42. John Crawford lll 
43. Michael Brown 
44. Ezell Ford 
45. Dante Parker 
46. Kajieme Powell
47. Laquan McDonald
48. Akai Gurley
49. Tamir Rice, 12
50. Rumain Brisbon
51. Jerame Reid
52. Charly Keunang 
53. Tony Robinson
54. Walter Scott 
55. Freddie Gray 
56. Brendon Glenn 
57. Samuel DuBose 
58. Christian Taylor 
59. Jamar Clark 
60. Mario Woods
61. Quintonio LeGrier 
62. Gregory Gunn 
63. Akiel Denkins 
64. Alton Sterling 
65. Philando Castile 
66. Terrence Sterling 
67. Terence Crutcher 
68. Keith Lamont Scott 
69. Alfred Olango 
70. Jordan Edwards 
71. Stephon Clark 
72. Danny Ray Thomas 
73. DeJuan Guillory 
74. Patrick Harmon
75. Jonathan Hart
76. Maurice Granton 
77. Julius Johnson 
78. Jamee Johnson 
79. Michael Dean
80. George Floyd