Marcus Garvey – acrylic portrait by Ken YAHW McCalla
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
Look for me in the Whirlwind.
Black politics are not monolithic, nor cut from one single cloth. There are many historical strands which woven together may be called "African-American" or "African-diasporic" but upon a closer inspection of the fabric we need to follow those strands back into history and recognize the complex interrelationship of the disparate points of view that to outsiders may seem to be seamless.
Some of those threads are often overlooked unless we pick the fabric apart. One of them, often ignored, is the strand that leads us back to Marcus Mosiah Garvey, born today, August 17th in 1887, in St. Ann's Bay Jamaica.
On the anniversary of his birth, let us explore today his life, and how if affected the fabric of black politics and ideology.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., National Hero of Jamaica (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940 was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black Nationalist, Pan-Africanist, and orator. Marcus Garvey was founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). Prior to the twentieth century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement focusing on Africa known as Garveyism. Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam, to the Rastafari movement (which proclaims Garvey as a prophet). The intention of the movement was for those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave it. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World titled "African Fundamentalism" where he wrote:
" Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality... let us hold together under all climes and in every country... "
Much of what is broadcast or written about in the TM about "black politics" follows only one thread – the one from slavery, through the civil rights movement – with a heavy emphasis on the thoughts and ideologies the NAACP, SCLC and Martin Luther King and today’s crop of Democratic Party black elected officials – most of whom are woven into that patch of our quilt.
The threads left unfollowed, or the stitches that get dropped are those that lead oft-times to Malcom X, or the Nation of Islam, or even to SNCC and leaders like Stokley Carmicheal and Hubert Rap Brown, or to the the Black Arts Movement and Imamu Baraka, to the Black Panther Party and ironically to its arch opponent, Maulani Ron Karenga, founder of Kwaanza.
But the threads are so interwoven that we rarely see that even Dr King paid homage to Garvey.
The brief biography of Garvey in Wikipedia lists some of these links and influences:
Garvey's memory has been kept alive. Schools, colleges, highways, and buildings in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States have been named in his honor. The UNIA red, black, and green flag has been adopted as the Black Liberation Flag. Since 1980, Garvey's bust has been housed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C.
Malcolm X's parents, Earl and Louise Little, met at a UNIA convention in Montreal. Earl was the president of the UNIA division in Omaha, Nebraska and sold the Negro World newspaper, for which Louise covered UNIA activities.
Kwame Nkrumah named the national shipping line of Ghana the Black Star Line in honor of Garvey and the UNIA. Nkrumah also named the national soccer team the Black Stars as well. The black star at the center of Ghana's flag is also inspired by the Black Star Line.
During a trip to Jamaica, Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta Scott King visited the shrine of Marcus Garvey on 20 June 1965 and laid a wreath. In a speech he told the audience that Garvey "was the first man of color to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny. And make the Negro feel he was somebody."King was also the posthumous recipient of the first Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights on 10 December 1968 issued by the Jamaican Government and presented to King's widow.
The massive movement founded by Garvey, which had a strong appeal among the black poor and working classes, here in the United States and in other parts of the diaspora, as well as on the African continent has never as yet been eclipsed. Yet, it has been for the most part, largely ignored here, or at best misinterpreted. Complicated by Garvey’s anger at the "colorization" of Negro leaders who for the most part were pale threads in the quilt, light-skinned and part of an elite dubbed by W.E.B DuBois as "the talented tenth". Any cries for embracing "blackness" were and often still are subject to a push-back and charges of "racism". Terms like "Black pride", and "Black Power" are threatening to the powers that be, as are similar ideologies of Brown Pride among Latinos, and the pushback against Black and Latino studies programs that grew out of these movements are a subject to heated debate, even here on Daily Kos. The existence of Black Kos has been challenged as "racist", "tribal" and "separatist", by some of our detractors.
My grandfather – a proud black man of dark hue, born in 1875 and the son of slaves, was described in a local black newspaper in Kansas in 1918 as a "race man". A term that is probably not understood today, but was influenced by the ideology of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League (UNIA-ACL)is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey. The organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1920's, prior to Garvey's deportation, after which its prestige and influence declined. Since a schism in 1949, there have been two organizations claiming the name.
According to the preamble of the 1929 constitution as amended, the UNIA is a "social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive and expansive society, and is founded by persons desiring to do the utmost to work for the general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the world. And the members pledge themselves to do all in their power to conserve the rights of their noble race and to respect the rights of all mankind, believing always in the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. The motto of the organization is 'One God! One Aim! One Destiny!' Therefore, let justice be done to all mankind, realizing that if the strong oppresses the weak, confusion and discontent will ever mark the path of man but with love, faith and charity towards all the reign of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world and the generations of men shall be called Blessed." The broad mission of the UNIA-ACL led to the establishment of numerous auxiliary components, among them the Universal African Legion, a paramilitary group; the African Black Cross Nurses; African Black Cross Society; the Universal African Motor Corps; the Black Eagle Flying Corps; the Black Star Steamship Line; the Black Cross Trading and Navigation Corporation; as well as the Negro Factories Corporation.
The history of the founding of the movement follows Garvey in his travels from Jamaica, to England and to the United States.
During his travels, Garvey became convinced that uniting Blacks was the only way to improve their condition. Towards that end, he departed England on 14 June 1914 aboard the S.S. Trent, reaching Jamaica on 15 July 1914. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in August 1914 as a means of uniting all of Africa and its diaspora into "one grand racial hierarchy." Amy Ashwood, who would later be Garvey's first wife, was among the founders. As the group's first President-General, Garvey's goal was "to unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own." Following much reflection the following day and night about what he learned, he named the organization the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League."
After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey arrived in the U.S. on 23 March 1916 aboard the S.S. Tallac to give a lecture tour and to raise funds to establish a school in Jamaica modeled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Garvey visited Tuskegee, and afterward, visited with a number of Black leaders. After moving to New York, he found work as a printer by day. He was influenced by Hubert Harrison. At night he would speak on street corners, much like he did in London's Hyde Park. It was then that Garvey perceived a leadership vacuum among people of African ancestry. On 9 May 1916, he held his first public lecture in New York City at St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery and undertook a 38-state speaking tour.
In May 1917, Garvey and thirteen others formed the first UNIA division outside Jamaica and began advancing ideas to promote social, political, and economic freedom for Blacks. On 2 July, the East St. Louis riots broke out. On July 8, Garvey delivered an address, titled "The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riots," at Lafayette Hall in Harlem. During the speech, he declared the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind." By October, rancor within the UNIA had begun to set in. A split occurred in the Harlem division, with Garvey enlisted to become its leader; although he technically held the same position in Jamaica. Garvey next set about the business of developing a program to improve the conditions of those of African ancestry "at home and abroad" under UNIA auspices. On 17 August 1918, publication of the widely distributed Negro World newspaper began. Garvey worked as an editor without pay until November 1920. By June 1919 the membership of the organization had grown to over two million.
Interestingly enough, few historians and literary critics link Garvey to the Harlem Renaissance and Langston Hughes, whose most popular fictional character in the black community was Jesse B. Semple (Just be Simple) an unabashed "Race Man".
Hughes and his contemporaries were often in conflict with the goals and aspirations of the black middle class, and of those considered to be the midwives of the Harlem Renaissance, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Alain LeRoy Locke, whom they accused of being overly fulsome in accommodating and assimilating Eurocentric values and culture for social equality. A primary expression of this conflict was the former's depiction of the "low-life", that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata and the superficial divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community. Hughes wrote what would be considered the manifesto for him and his contemporaries published in The Nation in 1926, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain:
The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express
our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.
If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,
it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.
The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people
are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure
doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain
free within ourselves.
Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé, and he didn’t go much beyond the themes of black is beautiful as he explored the black human condition in a variety of depths. His main concern was the uplift of his people, of whom he judged himself the adequate appreciator, and whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience. Thus, his poetry and fiction centered generally on insightful views of the working class lives of blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African American identity and its diverse culture. "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind," Hughes is quoted as saying. Therefore, in his work he confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself; a "people’s poet" who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality. An expression of this is the poem My People.
Moreover, Hughes stressed the importance of a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate that united people of African descent and Africa across the globe and encouraged pride in their own diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic. Langston Hughes was one of the few black writers of any consequence to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists.His African-American race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers, such as Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire. With Senghor and Césaire and other French-speaking writers of Africa and of African descent from the Caribbean like René Maran from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guiana in South America, the works of Hughes helped to inspire the concept that became the Négritude movement in France where a radical black self-examination was emphasized in the face of European colonialism. Langston Hughes was not only a role model for his calls for black racial pride instead of assimilation, but the most important technical influence in his emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride.
We follow the threads from Garvey’s militant nationalism to Hughes’ pen , to the influences on contemporary expressions and depictions of the complexity and diversity within our communities, often captured most clearly by black cartoonists.
DeWayne Wickham, when writing about Aaron McGruder’s "Boondocks" linked the cartoonists work to the Semple character crafted by Hughes to express the perspectives of the black working class.
"Simple," as Hughes' character was called, challenged the orthodoxies of his day. In a 1944 column, Hughes — reacting to an actual incident — used Simple to explain what might have motivated a black soldier who'd just returned from fighting abroad to strike a white officer on a Southern military base. "It seems to me that his might have been merely a case of Jim Crow shock, too much discrimination — segregation fatigue, which, to the sensitive Negro, can be just as damaging as days of heavy air bombardment or a continuous barrage of artillery fire," Simple said.
Hughes' character represented "the Negro everyman," Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper wrote in Not So Simple, a book that chronicles the history of Hughes' use of this literary device. The same can be said about "Huey Freeman," the central character in McGruder's strip. As much as it might pain some to hear this, the barbs offered up by Freeman — McGruder's black everyman — closely track the thinking of a broad cross section of African-Americans. That's a truth many of the strip's critics avoid as assiduously as a stroll through an inner-city neighborhood.
Few think of Garvey when reading Boondocks, but the links are there.
Dopper wrote about Garvey’s influence on the ideology of the Rastafari, back in March.
Rastas see Marcus Mosiah Garvey as a prophet, with his philosophy fundamentally shaping the movement, and with many of the early Rastas having started out as Garveyites. He is often seen as a second John the Baptist. One of the most famous prophecies attributed to him involving the coronation of Haile Selassie I was the 1927 pronouncement "Look to Africa, for there a king shall be crowned," although an associate of Garvey's, James Morris Webb, had made very similar public statements as early as 1921. Marcus Garvey promoted Black Nationalism, black separatism, and Pan-Africanism: the belief that all black people of the world should join in brotherhood and work to decolonize the continent of Africa — then still controlled by the white colonialist powers.
He promoted his cause of black pride throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and was particularly successful and influential among lower-class blacks in Jamaica and in rural communities. Although his ideas have been hugely influential in the development of Rastafari culture, Garvey never identified himself with the movement, and even wrote an article critical of Haile Selassie for leaving Ethiopia at the time of the Fascist occupation. In addition, his Universal Negro Improvement Association disagreed with Leonard Howell over Howell's teaching that Haile Selassie was the Messiah. Rastafari nonetheless may be seen as an extension of Garveyism. In early Rasta folklore, it is the Black Star Liner (actually a shipping company bought by Garvey to encourage repatriation to Liberia) that takes them home to Africa.
Garvey, one of the first targets of J Edgar Hoover, was set up, tried, convicted of fraud (purportedly defrauding a man of 25 dollars) and sent to jail for 5 years. Garvey's sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge who had him deported.
The entire story of that period in his life and the resulting destruction of his movement is still shrouded and distorted. The role played by Negro leaders of that time who were complicit in the finger –pointing against him speaks to political and class divisions that still affect black folks here in the US and in the Caribbean.
Garvey, though deported was not done with writing, organizing and speaking out.
In 1928, Garvey travelled to Geneva to present the Petition of the Negro Race. This petition outlined the worldwide abuse of Africans to the League of Nations. In September 1929, he founded the People's Political Party (PPP), Jamaica's first modern political party, which focused on workers' rights, education, and aid to the poor.Also in 1929, Garvey was elected councilor for the Allman Town Division of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). However, he lost his seat because of having to serve a prison sentence for contempt of court. But, in 1930, Garvey was re-elected, unopposed, along with two other PPP candidates. In April 1931, Garvey launched the Edelweiss Amusement Company. He set the company up to help artists earn their livelihood from their craft. Several Jamaican entertainers — Kidd Harold, Ernest Cupidon, Bim & Bam, and Ranny Williams — went on to become popular after receiving initial exposure that the company gave them. In 1935, Garvey left Jamaica for London. He lived and worked in London until his death in 1940. During these last five years, Garvey remained active and in touch with events in war-torn Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) and in the West Indies. In 1937, he wrote the poem Ras Nasibu Of Ogaden in honor of Ethiopian Army Commander (Ras) Nasibu Emmanual. In 1938, he gave evidence before the West Indian Royal Commission on conditions there. Also in 1938 he set up the School of African Philosophy in Toronto to train UNIA leaders. He continued to work on the magazine The Black Man.
During this period, Evangeline Rondon Paterson the grandmother of the current (55th) Governor of New York, David Paterson served as his secretary. On 10 June 1940, Garvey died after two strokes, putatively after reading a mistaken, and negative, obituary of himself in the Chicago Defender which stated, in part, that Garvey died "broke, alone and unpopular". Because of travel conditions during World War II, he was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. Rumours claimed that Garvey was in fact poisoned on a boat on which he was travelling and that was where and how he actually died. In 1964, his remains were exhumed and taken to Jamaica. On 15 November 1964, the government of Jamaica, having proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero, re-interred him at a shrine in National Heroes Park.
Marcus Garvey Grave in National Heroes Park, Jamaica
To this day he is a subject of controversy, but none can deny the mark he made on black politics, the discussion of race and racism, and the rise of Pan-Africanism.
Some of his most notable quotes:
~A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots~
~If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won before you have started~
~Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences~
~Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself~
~God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement~
Look for Me in the Whirlwind: The Collective Autobiography of the New York 21
http://www.amazon.com/...
is the story of the "Panther 21", members of the Black Panther Party put on trial in NY, based on trumped up charges spawned by J Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO machine, uses as its title part of one of Garvey’s most famous quotes:
"Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life."
taken from his First Message to the Negroes of the World From Atlanta Prison
in which he threw down, yet again the gauntlet against the NAACP and DuBois.
The whole affair is a disgrace, and the whole black world knows it. We shall not forget. Our day may be fifty, a hundred or two hundred years ahead, but let us watch, work and pray, for the civilization of injustice is bound to crumble and bring destruction down upon the heads of the unjust.
The idiots thought that they could humiliate me personally, but in that they are mistaken. The minutes of suffering are counted, and when God and Africa come back and measure out retribution these minutes may multiply by thousands for the sinners. Our Arab and Riffian friends will be ever vigilant, as the rest of Africa and ourselves shall be. Be assured that I planted well the seed of Negro or black nationalism which cannot be destroyed even by the foul play that has been meted out to me.
Continue to pray for me and I shall ever be true to my trust. I want you, the black peoples of the world, to know that W.E.B. Du Bois and that vicious Negro-hating organization known as the Association for the Advancement of "Colored" People are the greatest enemies the black people have in the world. I have so much to do in the few minutes at my disposal that I cannot write exhaustively on this or any other matter, but be warned against these two enemies. Don't allow them to fool you with fine sounding press releases, speeches and books; they are the vipers who have planned with others the extinction of the "black" race. My work is just begun, and when the history of my suffering is complete, then future generations of Negroes will have in their hands the guide by which they shall know the "sins" of the twentieth century. I, and I know you, too, believe in time, and we shall wait patiently for two hundred years, if need be, to face our enemies through our posterity.
It is also the title of the PBS Documentary on Garvey, produced by Stanley Nelson
Marcus Garvey: Look For Me in the Whirlwind
Garvey Documentary
THE INFLUENCE OF MARCUS GARVEY PT. 1
THE INFLUENCE OF MARCUS GARVEY PT. 2
THE INFLUENCE OF MARCUS GARVEY PT. 3
THE INFLUENCE OF MARCUS GARVEY PT. 4
THE INFLUENCE OF MARCUS GARVEY PT. 5
Garvey's stamp on our history and ideologies is indelible. He imprint will never be erased, nor will he be forgotten.
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News by dopper0189
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I must say I was shocked by this fact. Halle Berry Is the First Black Woman to Appear on Vogue’s September Issue Since 1989
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The most important cover of fashion magazines' most important month of the year may remind you of its editor: Halle Berry has exchanged her signature cropped hairstyle for a little Anna Wintour–esque bob on Vogue's September issue. Berry is the first black woman to appear on Vogue's September cover since Naomi Campbell in 1989 (Campbell was the first black woman ever to appear on the magazine's September cover). So Berry is the first black celebrity to enjoy the honor — and she looks gorgeous doing so.
We don't have our paper copy of the issue yet, so it's unclear if the lack of September cover-girl diversity is something Wintour will address in her editor's letter. The magazine has used the Internet (bravo!) to take a look back at the last ten September covers, but doesn't acknowledge that they all have white people on them. Berry briefly acknowledges her cover's significance in explaining why she finally agreed to do a big interview after being silent for so long:
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The Grio: Urban Prep provides blueprint for blacks seeking higher ed.
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The nation's first all-male charter public high school, Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men - Englewood Campus, opened just over four years ago. I led a team of educators to design and open this school because I saw the need for new and better educational opportunities in low-income African-American communities. Nationally, data shows that over 50 percent of black boys drop out of high school, and according to the American Council on Education, only 37 percent of African-American male high school graduates will go to college. A University of Chicago study found that only one in forty African-American boys in Chicago Public Schools will complete college by age 25.
Urban Prep's students reflect the makeup of the school's surrounding community - all are African-American, and most come from low-income homes. National statistics might indicate that our students are destined for failure -- but at Urban Prep and across the country, this trend is beginning to change: high numbers of urban black boys are gaining admission to college. At Urban Prep, 100 percent of the students in our first graduating class are headed to four-year colleges.
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One of the most inspiring vidoes teamed with one of the most depressing stories. The Atlantic: "Depressing Because It Is So Persuasive" Ctd
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A reader writes:
The school systems in black neighborhoods are underfunded and undeniably worse on average than those in white neighborhoods. The quality of the school, its teachers and leadership has a direct influence on graduation rates.
As an inner city teacher, I am sick and tired of being the nation’s scapegoat for all of the problems in the inner city. There are cultural and socio-economic patterns that have been set in motion by racism that have taken on a life of their own in the inner city. As the teacher there, I inherit these patterns and have to somehow deal with them. For example, when my students enter our school in 9th grade, they come in with low reading and writing scores, on average 3 to 4 years behind. The parents are apathetic, and do not seem overly concerned about this. On report-card pickup night, the teachers in my school see on average about 10-20 parents from the 150 students on their roster. During the school year I cannot get in touch with many of the parents by phone because they are many times disconnected. They move and change their phone numbers so often, so it is very difficult to keep in contact. I also have many homeless students. Studies show that parent involvement is key to student success, and as you can see, this is a challenge for the inner city teacher.
My students are also entering full-blown puberty and exploring their sexuality. Getting pregnant and having a child in high school is perfectly acceptable in the black and Hispanic inner city community. I see it all around me on a regular basis and it seems like an epidemic. Most of my students are themselves children of teenage mothers, and when they have their own baby, their mothers are home raising them while they come to school. If they don’t have someone helping them, they drop out. They are putting themselves on track for a life of poverty, and as their teacher, I am powerless to reverse this trend.
Violence among students is another daily occurrence and is such a serious safety issue that the police have their own office set up in the school I work at.
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Take a $2.2 million settlement for 27 years of his life or file a civil suit to expose the truth. NYT: Cleared, and Pondering the Value of 27 Years.
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Since a judge let him out of prison for a rape that prosecutors now say he did not commit, Michael A. Green has had trouble sleeping.
Late at night, he walks the neat, quiet sidewalks in the neighborhood where he is staying with an aunt, chain-smoking cigarettes, his mind spinning furiously with questions about why he was convicted 27 years ago and how to spend what is left of his life.
He also ponders, he says, whether to take a $2.2 million compensation payment from the State of Texas or file a civil lawsuit in the hope of exposing the truth about the investigation that led to his incarceration. To receive the compensation, he must waive the right to sue.
"What I really need to do is to make them pay for what they done to me," he says. "Two-point-two million dollars is nothing when it comes to 27 years of my life, which I spent with mental torture and physical abuse."
Mr. Green, 45, was set free by a state judge two weeks ago after DNA tests on the rape victim’s clothing proved that he could not have been responsible for the crime. His exoneration was the work of a new unit in the Harris County district attorney’s office dedicated to reviewing claims of innocence.
The story of Mr. Green’s nightmarish imprisonment — and how a prosecutor, Alicia O’Neill, eventually unearthed biological evidence that led to the real culprits — throws a harsh spotlight on an uncomfortable reality in American justice: the identification of a suspect in a lineup or in an array of photos is not always reliable.
More than three-quarters of the 258 people exonerated by DNA tests in the last decade were convicted on the strength of eyewitness identifications, according to the Innocence Project, the Manhattan-based organization dedicated to freeing innocent prisoners.
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The jazz singer and songwriter was one of a kind -- and that was always her goal. The Root: An Appreciation of Abbey Lincoln.
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Going to a jazz show is usually about hearing this piano player or that saxophonist, but attending a performance by vocalist Abbey Lincoln was about performing a pilgrimage: It was about the confirmation of shared truths and a glimpse of the potential of those ideas. She died Saturday at age 80 in New York.
Lincoln could make large concert halls seem intimate, and she made small jazz clubs feel like a living room. At her best, she held her audience rapt; there was a bright flame that burned inside her, and if you paid close enough attention, she would share it.
Abbey Lincoln found her inner flame early in life, and it burned brightly until the end. She was born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago on August 6, 1930, the 10th of 12 children, and grew up in rural Michigan. Her pursuit of a show business career initially led her to the West Coast in the early 1950s, where she met Billie Holiday, whose plaintive style became a big influence, and Louis Armstrong. At the suggestion of her manager, she changed her name to Abbey Lincoln, which fused Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln.
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NPR: Many Black Social Movements Began In The Pulpit.
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For African-Americans, social movements tend to start in the pulpit. From slavery to civil rights to the election of the first African-American president, preachers have given sermons that moved black Americans to tears and to action. NPR's Guy Raz talks to the Rev. Martha Simmons about the new book she edited, called Preaching with Sacred Fire.
((( Listen Here )))
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Pat Robertson’s least favorite religion comes out in Brooklyn, N.Y., to celebrate the trigger of the Haitian revolution. The Root: Voodoo in the Park.
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Practitioners of Vodou (or voodoo) gathered in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Prospect Park Saturday evening to celebrate the anniversary of Bwa Kayiman, a ceremony credited with launching Haiti's 1791 slave revolt.
The devil was not invited.
The history of the Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caïman, in French) ceremony is shrouded in mystery, but it's generally agreed that on August 14, 1791, slave revolutionaries sacrificed a black pig, swore an oath to overthrow the French and sealed the pact by drinking the pig's blood. "The god of the white man calls him to commit crimes," the Vodou priest Dutty Boukman reportedly said. "Our god asks only good works of us. But this god who is so good orders revenge!"
It was quite the call to arms, and it inspired the New World's only successful slave mutiny, culminating in Haiti's independence. Or, according to people like preacher Pat Robertson, it inspired more than 200 years of misery. This is the same ceremony that he slandered, nanoseconds after a massive earthquake devastated the country in January, as the swearing of a "pact to the devil."
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Color Lines: Letter Urges French to Repay Haiti’s "Independence Debt".
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It may be payback time for Haiti.
A group of international academics and writers has sent an open letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy asking that France repay Haiti for its "independence debt." The debt was imposed on Haiti nearly 200 years ago it won its independence and became the first free black republic in the western hemisphere. The New York Times now estimates the debt is worth $22 billion, and the letter wants it repaid to help aid reconstruction costs after January’s devastating earthquake.
Signatories include American scholars Cornell West and Noam Chomsky, journalist Naomi Klein, and several well renowned French philosophers, according to the Guardian. The letter also includes signatures from activists in the UK, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Germany.
The letter is the latest in a series of moves that shed light on the economic disaster that preceded this year’s natural one. The debt was originally imposed in 1825 by French Monarch Charles X after the country’s former slave owners demanded compensation. The debt was ultimately reduced, but Haiti didn’t pay it off until 1947.
Meanwhile, Haiti became the poorest country in the Western hemisphere largely due to having to pay back the debt instead of focusing on strengthening its own infrastructure.
In 2004, Haiti sued France in an effort to reclaim the debt. The effort was led by then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide but was soon abandoned after France backed a coup to overthrow Haiti’s government. The coup was successful and Aristide remains exiled in South Africa.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
I had the great fortune to meet Abbey Lincoln backstage at Yoshi's in Oakland's Jack London Square in 2004. I was a little awe-struck, not so much by her fame as a jazz great, but more because of her actions and voice over all these years for civil rights. Though her albums were prominent on our turntable growing up, it was the poetry in her songs, the poetry that gave voice to the struggle of man and woman, that we spoke about in our family. It is the same poetry I give to my ten year old grandson and six year old granddaughter, as they embark on their own journey of life.
Abbey Lincoln's journey is done and she has gone home. May her rest be at ease.
Story Of My Father
Do we kill ourselves on purpose?
Is destruction all our own?
Are we dying for a reason?
Is our misery all our own?
Are the people suicidal?
Did we come this far to die?
Of ourselves are we to perish?
For this useless, worthless lie?
My father had a kingdom
My father wore a crown
They said he was an awful man
He tried to live it down
My father built us houses
And he kept his folks inside
His images were stolen
And his beauty was denied.
My brothers are unhappy
And my sisters they are too
And my mother cries for glory
And my father stands accused.
My father, yes my father
Was a brave and skillful man
And he led and served his people
With the magic of his hand.
My father, yes my father
His soul was sorely tried
‘Cause his images were stolen
And his beauty was denied.
Sometimes the river’s calling
And sometimes the shadows fall
That’s when he’s like a mountain
That is in master over all.
This story of my father
Is the one I tell and give
It’s the power and the glory
Of the life I make and live
My father has a kingdom
My father wears a crown
And he lives within the people
And the lives he handed down
My father has a kingdom
My father wears a crown
And through the spirit of my mother, Lord
The crown was handed down.
Well sometimes the rivers callin’
And sometimes the shadows fall
That’s when he’s like a mountain
That’s a master over all.
My father has a kingdom
My father wears a crown
And he lives within the people
And the lives he handed down
My father has a kingdom
My father wears a crown
Through the spirit of my mother, Lord
The crown was handed down
Through the spirit of my mother
The crown was handed down
Through the spirit of my mother, Lord
The crown was handed down!
-- Abbey Lincoln
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Throw It Away : Abbey Lincoln (1930-2010)
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The front porch is now open. Pull up a chair, put your feet up and relax.
Jerk Chicken, rice and peas, with corn porridge on the side on the table.
Jamaican Rum Punch to drink, or non-alcoholic ginger beer.