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Showing posts with label african history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label african history. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Sunday, 25 April 2010
Madam C. J. Walker - Black Inventor
Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female who became a millionaire by her own achievements.
She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana. She was the first member of her family to be born free, to parents who had been slaves. By the time she was seven, both of her parents had died. (Some sources claim that they died of yellow fever, but that information is not correct.) Her mother died first, probably of cholera. Her father then remarried and died shortly afterward. The exact cause of death is unknown and no death certificate exists for either. At age 14, Sarah Breedlove married a man named Moses McWilliams and was widowed at age 20. The cause of Moses's death is unknown. Although some sources claim he was lynched or murdered, there is absolutely no documentation or evidence to support this. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams then moved to St. Louis, Missouri to join her brothers. Sarah worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter. While living in St. Louis, she joined St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church, which helped develop her speaking, interpersonal and organizational skills.
Around the time of the St. Louis 1904 World's Fair, she worked as a sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur who manufactured hair care products. Unsatisfied with Malone's products, Sarah began to experiment with her own formulas. Later some sources say she consulted with a Denver pharmacist, who, may have analyzed Malone's formula and helped Walker formulate her own products. In addition, she often told reporters that the ingredients for her "Wonderful Hair Grower" had come to her in a dream. In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman , and changed her name to "Madam C.J. Walker". She founded the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and cosmetics. She and Charles Joseph Walker left Denver in 1906 after her daughter, A'Lelia McWilliams (who later changed her surname to Walker), had arrived in Colorado to run the Denver office. Madam Walker and her husband traveled for a year and a half until they settled in Pittsburgh, where they opened the first Lelia College of Beauty Culture, named after her daughter. In 1910 Walker moved her growing manufacturing operation to Indianapolis, IN where she built a new factory. In 1912 she divorced her husband.
'I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations...I have built my own factory on my own ground.'
Walker saw her personal wealth not as an end in itself, but as a means to promote economic opportunities for others, especially women and African Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment — and alternative to domestic labor — that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents. Her agents could earn at least $5 to $15 per day in an era when unskilled white laborers were making about $11 per week. Marjorie Joyner, who started work as one of her employees, went on to lead the next generation of African-American beauty entrepreneurs.
Walker was known for her philanthropy, setting aside in a trust two-thirds of her estate to educational institutions and charities, including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College. In 1919, her $5,000 pledge to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign was the largest gift the organization had ever received. Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the wealthy New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, near the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. Today that home is a private residence and a [National Historic Landmark]. She spent tens of thousands of dollars on furnishings. The Italianate villa was designed by architect Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in the state of New York, in 1915. Walker also owned houses in Indianapolis and New York.
Madam Walker died on May 25, 1919, at age 51, at her estate Villa Lewaro from kidney failure and other complications related to a long battle with hypertension. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Her daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on the tradition of hospitality, opening her mother's home and her own to writers, actors, musicians and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance. She promoted important members of that movement. She converted a section of her Harlem townhouse at 108-110 West 136th Street into the Dark Tower, a salon and tearoom where Harlem and Greenwich Village artists, writers and musicians gathered. Poet Langston Hughes called her "The joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" in his autobiography The Big Sea, because of the lavish parties she hosted in Harlem and Irvington.
Ms. Walker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992 and in 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Madam C. J. Walker on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. She also has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, the National Cosmetology Hall of Fame and the National Direct Sales Hall of Fame. On 28 January 1998 the USPS, as part of its Black Heritage Series, issued the Madam C.J. Walker Commemorative stamp. On 16 March 2010, Congressman Charles Rangel introduced HJ81, a Congressional House Joint Resolution, honoring Madam C. J. Walker. That legislation currently awaits a vote.
Warrior Woman - Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Warrior Woman - Ida B. Wells-Barnett
In the latter part of nineteenth century, social theories from Ida B. Wells-Barnett were forceful blows against the mainstream White male ideologies of her time. Ida Wells was born on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. It was the second year of the Civil War and she was born into a slave family. Her mother, Lizzie Warrenton, was a cook; and her father, James, was a carpenter. Ida's parents believed that education was very important and after the War, they enrolled their children in Rust College, the local school set up by the Freedmen's Aid Society (Hine 1993). Founded in 1866, the Society established schools and colleges for recently freed slaves in the South, and it was at Rust College that Ida learned to read and write.
Everything changed for Ida the summer she turned sixteen. Both of her parents and her infant brother died during a yellow fever epidemic, and Ida was left to care for her remaining five siblings. She began teaching at a rural school for $25 a month and, a year later, took a position in Memphis, Tennessee, in the city's segregated black schools. Upon arriving in Memphis were teaching salaries were higher than Mississippi, Wells-Barnett found out that even though there was a stronger demand for literate individuals to teach, there was a stronger need for qualified ones. According to Salley (1993), because she needed qualifications in order to teach, she enrolled into Fisk University and gained her qualification in under a year. While returning to Memphis from a teaching convention in New York, she was met with racial provocation for the first time while traveling by railway. Ida was asked by the conductor to move to the segregated car, even though she had paid for a ticket in the ladies coach car. She refused to leave, and bit the conductor's hand as he forcibly pushed her from the railway car. She sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and was awarded $500 by a local court.
Even though she won the case, the headlines read, "DARKY DAMSEL GETS DAMAGES," and the decision was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court and was reversed (Bolden, 1996). She was ordered to pay court frees in the amount of $200. This incident infuriated Ida and spurred her to investigate and report other incidents of racism. Outraged by the inequality of Black and White schools in Memphis and the unfairness of Jim Crow segregation, Ida became a community activist and began writing articles calling attention to the plight of African Americans. She wrote for a weekly Black newspaper called The Living Way. Wells-Barnett's teaching career ended upon her "dismissal in 1891 for protesting about the conditions in Black schools" (Salley, 1993, p.115). During her time as a school teacher, Wells-Barnett along with other Black teachers was said to have gathered and "shared writing and discussion on Friday evening, and produced a newspaper covering the week's events and gossip." (Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, p.151). The newspaper was officially established and published and distributed under the name Memphis Free Speech and Headlights throughout the Back community a year after she was dismissed. It has been said that her motivation to become a social analyst was the results of her involvement with the Memphis Free Speech and Headlights both as editor and columnist under the pen name Lola and as part owner.
Unfortunately, her printing press was destroyed and she was run out of town by a White mob (Sally, 1993). After getting dismissed from her teaching position, her attention then shifted from schools to the issue that would dominate her work for most of her life; lynching. Lynching was the brutal and lawless killing of Black men and women, often falsely accused of crimes, and usually perpetrated by sizable violent mobs of Whites.
It was during this Reconstruction Era, after the Civil War, that Black men made immediate civil gains such as voting, holding public office, and owning land. Yet, groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) developed at the turn of the century as a response. They made it difficult for Southern Blacks to vote or live in peace, attempting to maintain White supremacy through coercion and violence, including lynching (Salzman, 2004) . Infuriated by the Memphis lynching in 1892, which involved a close friend, Ida expressed her grief in an editorial: "The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the White man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are outnumbered and without arms. There is therefore only one thing left we can do; save our money and leave town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, when accused by White persons" (Hine, 1993).
At the same time Wells saw what lynching really was; an excuse to "keep the nigger down" and execute Blacks "who acquired wealth and property." (Duster, 1971) This sparked her investigation into the causes of lynchings. Since Whites could no longer hold Blacks as slaves they found in mob violence a different means of maintaining a system of "economic, psychological, and sexual exploitation" (Duster, 1971). In addition, the result of her investigation and editorial sparked the Black community to retaliate and encourage all who could to leave, and those who stayed to boycott the city Railroad Company. Ida saw the success of the boycott, and asserted, "the appeal to the White man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all appeals ever made to his conscience." (Duster, 1971.)
As mentioned earlier, because of Well-Barnett's racial identity, her social theory was well shaped by the events unfolding within her community as experienced by the first generation of African-Americans after Emancipation (Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998). According to Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley (1998): "This community took as one assumption that White dominance and its accompanying doctrine of White supremacy had to be confronted. American social Darwinists were giving doctrine of White intellectual legitimacy to Whites, which at this time meant Anglo-Saxon, imperialism abroad and supremacy at home, providing dogma such as that in James K. Hosmer's"Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom"(p. 159). Wells-Barnett's social theory is considered to be a radical non-Marxian conflict theory with a focus on a "pathological interaction between differences and power in U.S. society. A condition they variously label as repression, domination, suppression, despotism, subordination, subjugation, tyranny, and our American conflict." (Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, p.161).
Her social theory was also considered "Black Feminism Sociology," and according to Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley (1998), there was four presented themes within the theory: one, her object of social analysis and of a method appropriate to the project; two, her model of the social world; three, her theory of domination and four, her alternative to domination. Although those four themes were present in her theory, one could assume that the major theme above the four was the implication of a moral form of resistance against oppression, which is not farfetched seeing that oppression was the major theme in her life.
She used an amazingly straight-forward writing style to prove a very bold argument against lynching, discrediting the excuse of rape and other excuses. Wells used specific examples and sociological theories to disprove the justifications of lynching made by Southerners. Within her pamphlets, Wells portrays the views of African-Americans in the 1890s. Southerners allowed widespread lynchings while hiding behind the excuse of "defending the honor of its women."(Jones-Royster, 1997). The charge of rape was used in many cases to lynch innocent African-American men. The victim's innocence was often proved after his death. Wells states that the raping of White women by Negro men is an outright lie. Wells supports her statements with several stories about mutual relationships between White women and Black men. White men are free to have relationships with colored women, but colored men will receive death for relationships with white women (Duster, 1971). As shown by Wells, the excuses used by Whites to torture and murder African-Americans were false. In no way can these kinds of crimes ever be truly justified because of the victim's crimes. Perhaps the most obvious reasons these crimes happened are hate and fear. Differences between groups of people have always caused fear of the unknown, which translates into hate. Whites no longer depended on African-American slave labor for their livelihood. When African Americans were slaves they were considered "property" and "obviously, it was more profitable to sell slaves than to kill them"(Jones-Royster, 1997). With all restraint of "property" and "profit" lifted, Whites during and after Reconstruction were able to freely give into their fear and hate by torturing and killing African-Americans.
Wells' investigations revealed that regardless of whether one was poor and jobless or middle-class, educated, and successful, all Blacks were vulnerable to lynching. Black women, too, were victimized by mob violence and terror. Occasionally they were lynched for alleged crimes and insults, but more often these women were left behind as survivors of those lynched. Up to this time, African-Americans had almost never been free from some form of persecution; the period of Reconstruction was particularly difficult. With the occurrences of lynching steadily increasing with no hope of relenting, their new found freedom ensured little safety. Eventually, Wells was drawn to Chicago in 1893 to protest the racism of the exclusion of African Americans from the World's Fair. With the help of Frederick Douglass, she distributed 20,000 pamphlets entitled "The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the Columbian Exposition." On June 27, 1895, she married Ferdinand Lee Barnett, lawyer and editor of the Chicago Conservator, and continued to write while raising four children with him (Duster, 1971).
Ida believed firmly in the power of the vote to effect change for African-American men and women. She saw enfranchisement as the key to reform and equality, and she integrated the Women's Suffrage movement by marching in the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., with the all White Illinois delegation (Sterling, 1979). She continued to write in her later years, and remained one of the most widely syndicated Black columnists in America. She published articles on race issues and injustices that were printed in African-American newspapers nationwide. Toward the end of her life, Ida worked to address the social and political concerns of African-Americans in Chicago. She made an unsuccessful run as an independent candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1930, and died the next year of the kidney disease uremia (Duster, 1971). Wells-Barnett's influence was profound. When the federal government built the first low-income housing project in Chicago's "Black belt" in 1940, it was named in her honor (Sterling, 1979). Her autobiography was published posthumously by her daughter, Alfreda Duster in 1971. In Chicago, she helped to found a number of Black female and reform organizations, such as the Ida B. Wells Club, the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, and the Chicago Negro Fellowship League. She also served as director of Chicago's Cook County League of Women's Clubs. These clubs were a means for Blacks to join together for support and to organize to effect change (Duster, 1971). At the national level, Wells-Barnett was a central figure in the founding of the National Association of Colored Women, a visible organization that worked for adequate child care, job training, and wage equity, as well as against lynching and transportation segregation.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett's passion for justice made her a tireless crusader for the rights of African Americans and women. She was a social reformer, a suffragist, a civil rights activist, and a philanthropist. Her writings, regardless of the risk to her safety and life, raised public awareness and involvement to address a number of social ills resulting in the oppression or murder of African Americans. Her service of time through the creation of myriad clubs and organizations improved the lives of her people. Her work in Chicago, in her final years, focused on providing for the needs of the city's African American population. Modeled after Jane Addams' Settlement House efforts, Wells created urban houses for Black men, where they could live safely and have access to recreational amusements while they searched for employment (Hines, 1993). Ida B. Wells-Barnett is sometimes referred to as the "Mother of the Civil Rights movement." She refused to be moved from the Whites only railway car eighty years before the famous Rosa Parks held her seat on an Alabama bus. She encouraged the Black community to take steps to gain political rights, using the same means that would successfully be used much later during the Civil Rights movement such as economic and transportation boycotts (Hines, 1993).
In similar fashion to Margaret Sanger (of the Birth Control movement) and Susan B. Anthony (of the Women's Suffrage movement), Wells-Barnett was a woman who dedicated her entire life to upholding her firm beliefs about social reform. She began by writing about the disparity in education and school conditions for Black children and spent much of her life working to abolish lynching through public awareness (Hines, 1993). Ida, through her example, writings, speaking, and service in various organizations, elevated the voice of women's equality and suffrage. She was a pioneering Black female journalist, and led a very public life in a time when most women, Black or White, did not actively participate in the male political realm. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was connected to many prominent leaders and reformers, male and female, during her lifetime. Among them: Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a social reformer, social worker and the founder of Chicago's Hull House, the most famous of the settlement houses. Addams and Wells-Barnett successfully worked together to block the segregation of Chicago's public schools (Sterling, 1979). She was also connected to W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) who was a famous Black scholar, sociologist, researcher, writer, and civil rights activist who voiced opposition to the accomodationist views of his contemporary, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915). Washington urged African Americans to focus on self-improvement through education and economic opportunity instead of pressing Whites for political rights.
Ida B. Wells outwardly disagreed with Booker T. Washington's position on industrial education and was mortified with his implication that "Blacks were illiterate and immoral, until the coming of Tuskegee." (Hine, 1993) Outraged by his remarks, she considered his rejection of a college education as a "bitter pill." (Hine, 1993). She wrote an article entitled "Booker T. Washington and His Critics" regarding industrial education. "This gospel of work is no new one for the Negro. It is the South's old slavery practice in a new dress." (Hine, 1993).
She felt that focusing only on industrial education would limit the opportunities of aspiring young Blacks and she saw Washington as no better than the Whites that justified their actions through lynching. Wells-Barnett joined DuBois in his belief that African Americans should militantly demand civil rights, and the two worked together on several occasions, most substantially as co-founders of the NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), of which Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a founding member, is still a thriving organization with thousands of members nationwide (Hines, 1993). The association continues to advocate and litigate for civil rights for African Americans.
Two of the primary issues on which Wells-Barnett worked on, anti-lynching and women's suffrage, are now defunct issues. Lynching is a federal crime and women received the vote in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. For this reason, related groups that arose at the time, such as the Anti-lynching League, the Freedmen's Aid Society, and the National Association of Colored Women are no longer in existence. Yet, the League of Women Voters was created as an outgrowth of the suffragist movement, and is an organization that still educates men and women about their responsibilities as voters. Wells-Barnett's contribution to the field of sociology is so significant that her work "predates or is contemporaneous with the now canonized contributions of White male thinkers like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, George Simmel, and George Herbert Mead, as well as the contributions of White female sociologists like Adams, Gilman, Marianne Weber, Webb, and the Chicago Women" (Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, p.171). Ms. Wells-Barnett is an inspiring example of the power of the written word and the determination to succeed despite the odds. She was an African American woman, the daughter of slaves and considered the lowest of the low on the historical totem pole in American society and her tenacity, ambition, courage and desire for justice changed history. She was direct and possessed strength during a time when this was unheard of by a woman, especially a Black woman. A reformer of her time, she believed African-Americans had to organize themselves and fight for their independence against White oppression. She roused the White South to bitter defense and began the awakening of the conscience of a nation.
Through her campaign, writings, and agitation she raised crucial questions about the future of Back Americans. Today African-Americans do not rally against oppression like those that came before. Gone are the days when Blacks organized together; today Blacks live in a society that does not want to get involved as a whole. What this generation fails to realize is that although the days of Jim Crow have disappeared, it is important to realize that the fight for equality is never over. In the preface of On Lynching: Southern Horrors, A Red Record and A Mob Rule in New Orleans (a compilation of her major works), she writes, "The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance" (Wells, 1969).
By Kathy Henry
Ida B Wells Foundation
Thurgood Marshall - A Black Colored Legend
There are a number of legendary personalities who have come from the black community. When the whole black community was at stake due to the tremendous oppression by the white community, a number of national heroes were born to save the black colored people from the termination and destruction. The black community had no value in the society. They were compelled to do laymen's work without expecting the good wages. They were sold to rich businessmen or traders for higher amount and they were obliged to provide the free service to their masters.
King Luther was such a national hero whose heart ached for his black brothers and he started organizing the black colored people to unite for the revolution to secure their rights. However, there are other eminent political figures whose contribution to get the justice back to the black community is not negligible. However eventually after the Civil War, the slavery was stopped or banned or removed totally from the society. Thurgood Marshall is a black colored eminent scholar who has brightened the history of African Americans. If you review his biography, you will come to know that Thurgood was actually the son of a slave family. His forefathers were bonded laborers. However, his father was very good and conscious of the importance of the education.
Therefore, Thurgood was sent to school for getting qualitative education for the upgradation of his career in life. He was brilliant student and successfully completed his graduation from Howard University. He started his professional career as a lawyer. He has the brilliant performance track record. You will be surprised and enamored to check his performance graph. Marshall showed his expertise to fight against the indiscrimination and racial segregation. He is the representative of the black community. Marshal always tried to use his logistic aptitude to get victory over the racial segregation and color distinction. He won every case which he fought in the court to bring back the justice to the victims. He argued total 29 times and every time he was successful in getting legal victory. Thrugood Marshall became the chief council of NAACP.
You should remember the historical case proceeding which was Brown VS Board of Education. It was a severe legal battle to establish the civil rights in the schools where the black colored students were obstructed and prevented from meeting with white colored students. Thurgood Marshal was the lawyer on behalf of Brown and won the legal tussle. Finally, the school authority permitted the black boys to sit with white colored boys in the class and since then the racial segregation was eliminated from the education institutes. He studied lot to find out the possible ways to escalate the economic condition of the black community.
By Irsan Kao
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
The Rastafari Vision and Culture
It is in the Rastafari movement, with its origins in Jamaica, that Ethiopianism has been most consistently elaborated for nearly seven decades. The biblical enthronement of Ras Tafari Makonnen in 1930 as His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I, King of King, Lord of Lords, and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah was an event widely reported throughout the European and colonial world. It was the ensuing interpretation of the Solomonic symbols by which Ras Tafari took possession of a kingdom with an ancient biblical lineage which transformed Ethiopia into an African Zion for the nascent Rasta movement. The independence of Ethiopia as one of only two sovereign nations on the African continent ensured Selassie's placement at the symbolic center of the African world throughout the colonial and much of the post-colonial period. Indicative of this is the fact that the Organization of African Unity (founded in 1963), is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To this day, it is the biblical imagery associated with the theocratic kingdom of Ethiopia which fuels a Rastafari vision of nationhood and underlies their deification of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Today, it is probably fair to say that when most people hear the word "Rastafari" they think of Bob Marley, the "king of reggae." Through his inspirational music, Marley did more to popularize and spread the Rasta message worldwide than any other single individual. But neither Marley or reggae represents the roots of the Rastafari experience. Reggae, as a music of populist black protest and experience which has had a formative experience upon Jamaican nationalism, emerged in Jamaica only during the early 1970s. For at least three decades previous to this, Rastafari in Jamaica were evolving an African-oriented culture based on their spiritual vision of repatriation to the African homeland.
The "Roots" or Elders of the movement have built upon earlier sources of African cultural pride, identification, and resistance such as those embodied by Jamaica's Maroons --runaway slaves who formed independent communities within the island's interior during the 17th century. Rastafari, in fact, must be seen as a religion and movement shaped by the African Diaspora and an explicit consciousness that black people are African 'exiles" outside their ancestral homeland. As one Rasta Elder stated, "Rastafari is a conception that was born at the moment that Europeans took the first black man out of Africa. They didn't know it then, but they were taking the first Rasta from his homeland." From the early 1930s, Rastafari in Jamaica have developed a culture based on an Afrocentric reading of the Bible, on communal values, a strict vegetarian dietary code known as Ital, a distinctive dialect, and a ritual calendar devoted to, among other dates, the celebration of various Ethiopian holy days.
Perhaps the most familiar feature of Rastafari culture is the growing and wearing of dreadlocks, uncombed and uncut hair which is allowed to knot and mat into distinctive locks. Rastafari regard the locks as both a sign of their African identity and a religious vow of their separation from the wider society they regard as Babylon . In the island of its birth, Rasta culture has also drawn upon distinctive African-Jamaican folk traditions which includes the development of a drumming style known as Nyabinghi . This term is similarly applied to the island-wide gatherings in which Rastafari brethren and sistren celebrate the important dates on an annual calendar.
With the advent of reggae, this deeper "roots culture" has spread throughout the Caribbean, to North American and European metropolis such as London, New York, Amsterdam, Toronto, and Washington, D.C., as well as to the African continent itself. This more recent growth and spread of the movement has resulted from a variety of factors. These include the migration of West Indians (e.g., Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Antiguans) to North America and Europe in search of employment, the travel of reggae musicians, and the more recent travel of traditional Rastafari Elders outside Jamaica. At the same time, many African American and West Indian individuals who have become Rastafari outside Jamaica now make "pilgrimages" to Jamaica to attend the island-wide religious ceremonies known as Nyabinghi and to seek out the deeper "roots culture" of the movement. Despite the fact that Rastafari continue to be widely misunderstood and stigmatized outside Jamaica, the movement embraces a non-violent ethic of "peace and love" and pursues a disciplined code of religious principles.
Source: Dread History
Getting Up From Slavery - Booker T Washington
Getting Up From Slavery - The Climb From Poverty and Bondage of Booker T Washington
Sometimes one could find out that there are people whose abilities and energy take them far beyond any limitations life tries to place on them. Booker T. Washington was one such person. He rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the 19th century. For decades, he was the major African-American spokesman. He was lecturer, Civil Rights/Human Rights Activist, Educational Administrator, Professor, Organization Executive/Founder and Author/Poet. His childhood is recorded in his autobiography, Up From Slavery which this writer had the fortune of reading in his early years in an abridged edition at the second form of the Prince of Wales School at Kingtom, western Freetown in Sierra Leone West Africa from which end Washington's ancestors may well have hailed.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on April 5, 1856 on the Burroughs tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a "plantation."at the community of Hale's Ford, Virginia. This was in what he described as "the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings" His mother Jane was a black slave who worked as a cook for a small planter. His father was a white plantation owner whom he never knew. Under the laws then, his mother's status also made young Booker a slave. His childhood was thus one of privation, poverty, slavery and back-breaking work. He was from birth the property of James Burroughs of Virginia. His mother, Jane, raised him, and he was put to work as early as possible.
Since it was illegal for a slave to learn to read and write Booker T. Washington received no education. For as he states: "The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin," he wrote, "were not very different from those of other slaves."He went to school in Franklin County - not as a student, but to carry books for one of James Burroughs's daughters. It was illegal to educate slaves. "I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise," he wrote.
In April 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burroughs home. He recalled this in Up from Slavery. . He was seven years old when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves. It could not be enforced until the end of the Civil War by the Thirteenth Amendment. The former slaves were at first jubilant about being free but it quickly became apparent that there was no place for most of them to go. As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom
.... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper -- the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see...
After emancipation, his family was so poverty stricken that they could not make it on their own. So Booker Washington moved out with his mother and three siblings to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia. where he had been fortunate to have found work packing salt. The young boy took a job in this salt mine. Work began there at 4 a.m. so that he could attend school later in the day. The nine-year old Washington spent long, exhausting days packing salt.
He worked with his mother and other free blacks not only as a salt-packer in a salt mine. He also worked in a coal mine. He even signed up briefly as a hired hand on a steamboat. However, soon he became employed as a houseboy for Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Lewis Ruffner, who owned the salt-furnace and coal mine. Many other houseboys had failed to satisfy the demanding and methodical Mrs. Ruffner, but Booker's diligence and attention to detail met her standards. Encouraged to do so by Mrs. Ruffner, when he could, young Booker attended school and learned to read and to write. And soon, he sought even more education than was available in his community.
Always an intelligent and curious child, like many blacks after Emancipation he yearned for an education. So despite the exhausting days he used his free time to go to school in the evenings. .He was frustrated when he could not receive good schooling locally. So when he was 16 his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no money to help him, so he traveled 500 miles, often by walking, to enroll at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. He did not know if he could get in, and if he got in he didn't know how he was going to pay for it, He arrived with only 50 cents in his pocket. The head teacher suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction.
Students with little income such as Washington could get a place there by working to pay their way. So the institute gave him a job as a janitor to pay for school fees He thus paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor. The normal school (teachers college) at Hampton was founded for the purpose of training black teachers and had been largely funded by church groups and individuals such as William Jackson Palmer, a Quaker, among others. In many ways he was back where he had started, earning a living through menial tasks, but his time at Hampton led him away from a life of labor. Hampton Institute was started and run by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Armstrong and the institution he created were to become the one great influence in Washington's life. Armstrong believed in work, study, hygiene, morality, self-discipline and self-reliance - in large amounts. It was not a place for slackers. Armstrong's purpose was to train black teachers, but he believed every student should have a trade as well. Washington imbibed these principles so well in him that later, when he developed the Tuskegee Institute it emphasized these same qualities and convictions.
Booker T. Washington who had only managed to get a primary education that allowed his probationary admittance to Hampton Institute proved such an exemplary student, teacher, and speaker that the principal of Hampton recommended him to Alabamans who were trying to establish a school for African Americans in their state. There, he worked his way through, later attending Wayland Seminary to return as an instructor.
Arthur Smith
Sometimes one could find out that there are people whose abilities and energy take them far beyond any limitations life tries to place on them. Booker T. Washington was one such person. He rose up from slavery and illiteracy to become the foremost educator and leader of black Americans at the turn of the 19th century. For decades, he was the major African-American spokesman. He was lecturer, Civil Rights/Human Rights Activist, Educational Administrator, Professor, Organization Executive/Founder and Author/Poet. His childhood is recorded in his autobiography, Up From Slavery which this writer had the fortune of reading in his early years in an abridged edition at the second form of the Prince of Wales School at Kingtom, western Freetown in Sierra Leone West Africa from which end Washington's ancestors may well have hailed.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave on April 5, 1856 on the Burroughs tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a "plantation."at the community of Hale's Ford, Virginia. This was in what he described as "the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings" His mother Jane was a black slave who worked as a cook for a small planter. His father was a white plantation owner whom he never knew. Under the laws then, his mother's status also made young Booker a slave. His childhood was thus one of privation, poverty, slavery and back-breaking work. He was from birth the property of James Burroughs of Virginia. His mother, Jane, raised him, and he was put to work as early as possible.
In April 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burroughs home. He recalled this in Up from Slavery. . He was seven years old when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves. It could not be enforced until the end of the Civil War by the Thirteenth Amendment. The former slaves were at first jubilant about being free but it quickly became apparent that there was no place for most of them to go. As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom
.... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper -- the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see...
After emancipation, his family was so poverty stricken that they could not make it on their own. So Booker Washington moved out with his mother and three siblings to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia. where he had been fortunate to have found work packing salt. The young boy took a job in this salt mine. Work began there at 4 a.m. so that he could attend school later in the day. The nine-year old Washington spent long, exhausting days packing salt.
He worked with his mother and other free blacks not only as a salt-packer in a salt mine. He also worked in a coal mine. He even signed up briefly as a hired hand on a steamboat. However, soon he became employed as a houseboy for Viola Ruffner, the wife of General Lewis Ruffner, who owned the salt-furnace and coal mine. Many other houseboys had failed to satisfy the demanding and methodical Mrs. Ruffner, but Booker's diligence and attention to detail met her standards. Encouraged to do so by Mrs. Ruffner, when he could, young Booker attended school and learned to read and to write. And soon, he sought even more education than was available in his community.
Always an intelligent and curious child, like many blacks after Emancipation he yearned for an education. So despite the exhausting days he used his free time to go to school in the evenings. .He was frustrated when he could not receive good schooling locally. So when he was 16 his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no money to help him, so he traveled 500 miles, often by walking, to enroll at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. He did not know if he could get in, and if he got in he didn't know how he was going to pay for it, He arrived with only 50 cents in his pocket. The head teacher suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction.
Students with little income such as Washington could get a place there by working to pay their way. So the institute gave him a job as a janitor to pay for school fees He thus paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor. The normal school (teachers college) at Hampton was founded for the purpose of training black teachers and had been largely funded by church groups and individuals such as William Jackson Palmer, a Quaker, among others. In many ways he was back where he had started, earning a living through menial tasks, but his time at Hampton led him away from a life of labor. Hampton Institute was started and run by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Armstrong and the institution he created were to become the one great influence in Washington's life. Armstrong believed in work, study, hygiene, morality, self-discipline and self-reliance - in large amounts. It was not a place for slackers. Armstrong's purpose was to train black teachers, but he believed every student should have a trade as well. Washington imbibed these principles so well in him that later, when he developed the Tuskegee Institute it emphasized these same qualities and convictions.
Booker T. Washington who had only managed to get a primary education that allowed his probationary admittance to Hampton Institute proved such an exemplary student, teacher, and speaker that the principal of Hampton recommended him to Alabamans who were trying to establish a school for African Americans in their state. There, he worked his way through, later attending Wayland Seminary to return as an instructor.
Arthur Smith
Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman - First Black Female Pilot
Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first African American female pilot[1] and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license . Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George and Susan Coleman. Her father was part Cherokee.[4] Coleman began school at age six and had to walk four miles each day to her all-black, one-room school. Despite sometimes lacking such materials as chalk and pencils, Coleman was an excellent student. She loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. Coleman completed all eight grades of her one-room school. Every year, Coleman's routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted by the cotton harvest.
In 1901, Coleman's life took a dramatic turn: George Coleman left his family. He had become fed up with the racial barriers that existed in Texas. He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory as it was then called, to find better opportunities, but Susan and the children did not go with him. At the age of twelve, Coleman was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church. When she turned eighteen, Coleman took all of her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She completed only one term before she ran out of money and was forced to return home. Coleman knew there was no future for her in her home town, so she went to live with two of her brothers in Chicago while she looked for a job.
In 1915, at the age of twenty-three, Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist. There she heard tales of the world from pilots who were returning home from World War I. They told stories about flying in the war, and Coleman started to fantasize about being a pilot. Her brother used to tease her by commenting that French women were better than African-American women because French women were pilots already. At the barbershop, Coleman met many influential men from the black community, including Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, a real estate promoter. Coleman received financial backing from Binga and the Defender, which capitalized on her flamboyant personality and her beauty to promote the newspaper, and to promote her cause. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert Abbott encouraged her to study abroad.
Coleman took French language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet." On June 15, 1921, Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but the first African American woman in the world to earn an aviation pilot's license. Determined to polish her skills, Coleman spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September sailed for New York.
Coleman quickly realized that in order to make a living as a civilian aviator—the age of commercial flight was still a decade or more in the future—she would need to become a "barnstorming" stunt flier, and perform for paying audiences. But to succeed in this highly competitive arena, she would need advanced lessons and a more extensive repertoire. Returning to Chicago, Coleman could find no one willing to teach her, so in February 1922, she sailed again for Europe. She spent the next two months in France completing an advanced course in aviation, then left for the Netherlands to meet with Anthony Fokker, one of the world's most distinguished aircraft designers. She also traveled to Germany, where she visited the Fokker Corporation and received additional training from one of the company's chief pilots. She returned to the United States with the confidence and enthusiasm she needed to launch her career in exhibition flying.
In September 1921, she became a media sensation when she returned to the United States. "Queen Bess," as she was known, was a highly popular draw for the next five years. Invited to important events and often interviewed by newspapers, she was admired by both blacks and whites. She primarily flew Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplanes and army surplus aircraft left over from the war. In Los Angeles, California, she broke a leg and three ribs when her plane stalled and crashed on February 22, 1922. She made her first appearance in an American airshow on September 3, 1922, at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th American Expeditionary Force of World War I. Held at Curtiss Field on Long Island near New York City and sponsored by her friend Abbott and the Chicago Defender newspaper, the show billed Coleman as "the world's greatest woman flyer" and featured aerial displays by eight other American ace pilots. Six weeks later she returned to Chicago to deliver a stunning demonstration of daredevil maneuvers—including figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips—to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Checkerboard Airdrome (now Chicago Midway Airport).
But the thrill of stunt flying and the admiration of cheering crowds were only part of Coleman's dream. Coleman never lost sight of her childhood vow to one day "amount to something." As a professional aviator, Coleman would often be criticized by the press for her opportunistic nature and the flamboyant style she brought to her exhibition flying. However, she also quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring pilot who would stop at nothing to complete a difficult stunt.
Through her media contacts, she was offered a role in a feature-length film titled Shadow and Sunshine, to be financed by the African American Seminole Film Producing Company. She gladly accepted, hoping the publicity would help to advance her career and provide her with some of the money she needed to establish her own flying school. But upon learning that the first scene in the movie required her to appear in tattered clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on her back, she refused to proceed. "Clearly," wrote Doris Rich, "[Bessie's] walking off the movie set was a statement of principle. Opportunist though she was about her career, she was never an opportunist about race. She had no intention of perpetuating the derogatory image most whites had of most blacks."
Coleman would not live long enough to fulfill her greatest dream—establishing a school for young, black aviators—but her pioneering achievements served as an inspiration for a generation of African American men and women. "Because of Bessie Coleman," wrote Lieutenant William J. Powell in Black Wings 1934, dedicated to Coleman, "we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream".Powell served in a segregated unit during World War I, and tirelessly promoted the cause of black aviation through his book, his journals, and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, which he founded in 1929.
On April 30, 1926, Coleman, at the age of thirty-four, was in Jacksonville, Florida. She had recently purchased a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny in Dallas, Texas and had it flown to Jacksonville in preparation for an airshow. Her friends and family did not consider the aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it. Her mechanic and publicity agent, William Wills, was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat. Coleman did not put on her seatbelt because she was planning a parachute jump for the next day and wanted to look over the cockpit to examine the terrain. About ten minutes into the flight, the plane did not pull out of a planned nosedive; instead it accelerated into a tailspin. Coleman was thrown from the plane at 500 feet and died instantly when she hit the ground. William Wills was unable to gain control of the plane and it plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane burst into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had slid into the gearbox and jammed it, causing the plane to spin out of control. Experts noted at the time that gears in more modern planes had a protective covering — an accident like this need not have happened.
In 1901, Coleman's life took a dramatic turn: George Coleman left his family. He had become fed up with the racial barriers that existed in Texas. He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory as it was then called, to find better opportunities, but Susan and the children did not go with him. At the age of twelve, Coleman was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church. When she turned eighteen, Coleman took all of her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She completed only one term before she ran out of money and was forced to return home. Coleman knew there was no future for her in her home town, so she went to live with two of her brothers in Chicago while she looked for a job.
In 1915, at the age of twenty-three, Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist. There she heard tales of the world from pilots who were returning home from World War I. They told stories about flying in the war, and Coleman started to fantasize about being a pilot. Her brother used to tease her by commenting that French women were better than African-American women because French women were pilots already. At the barbershop, Coleman met many influential men from the black community, including Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, a real estate promoter. Coleman received financial backing from Binga and the Defender, which capitalized on her flamboyant personality and her beauty to promote the newspaper, and to promote her cause. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert Abbott encouraged her to study abroad.
Coleman took French language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet." On June 15, 1921, Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but the first African American woman in the world to earn an aviation pilot's license. Determined to polish her skills, Coleman spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September sailed for New York.
Coleman quickly realized that in order to make a living as a civilian aviator—the age of commercial flight was still a decade or more in the future—she would need to become a "barnstorming" stunt flier, and perform for paying audiences. But to succeed in this highly competitive arena, she would need advanced lessons and a more extensive repertoire. Returning to Chicago, Coleman could find no one willing to teach her, so in February 1922, she sailed again for Europe. She spent the next two months in France completing an advanced course in aviation, then left for the Netherlands to meet with Anthony Fokker, one of the world's most distinguished aircraft designers. She also traveled to Germany, where she visited the Fokker Corporation and received additional training from one of the company's chief pilots. She returned to the United States with the confidence and enthusiasm she needed to launch her career in exhibition flying.
In September 1921, she became a media sensation when she returned to the United States. "Queen Bess," as she was known, was a highly popular draw for the next five years. Invited to important events and often interviewed by newspapers, she was admired by both blacks and whites. She primarily flew Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplanes and army surplus aircraft left over from the war. In Los Angeles, California, she broke a leg and three ribs when her plane stalled and crashed on February 22, 1922. She made her first appearance in an American airshow on September 3, 1922, at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th American Expeditionary Force of World War I. Held at Curtiss Field on Long Island near New York City and sponsored by her friend Abbott and the Chicago Defender newspaper, the show billed Coleman as "the world's greatest woman flyer" and featured aerial displays by eight other American ace pilots. Six weeks later she returned to Chicago to deliver a stunning demonstration of daredevil maneuvers—including figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips—to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Checkerboard Airdrome (now Chicago Midway Airport).
But the thrill of stunt flying and the admiration of cheering crowds were only part of Coleman's dream. Coleman never lost sight of her childhood vow to one day "amount to something." As a professional aviator, Coleman would often be criticized by the press for her opportunistic nature and the flamboyant style she brought to her exhibition flying. However, she also quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring pilot who would stop at nothing to complete a difficult stunt.
Through her media contacts, she was offered a role in a feature-length film titled Shadow and Sunshine, to be financed by the African American Seminole Film Producing Company. She gladly accepted, hoping the publicity would help to advance her career and provide her with some of the money she needed to establish her own flying school. But upon learning that the first scene in the movie required her to appear in tattered clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on her back, she refused to proceed. "Clearly," wrote Doris Rich, "[Bessie's] walking off the movie set was a statement of principle. Opportunist though she was about her career, she was never an opportunist about race. She had no intention of perpetuating the derogatory image most whites had of most blacks."
On April 30, 1926, Coleman, at the age of thirty-four, was in Jacksonville, Florida. She had recently purchased a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny in Dallas, Texas and had it flown to Jacksonville in preparation for an airshow. Her friends and family did not consider the aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it. Her mechanic and publicity agent, William Wills, was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat. Coleman did not put on her seatbelt because she was planning a parachute jump for the next day and wanted to look over the cockpit to examine the terrain. About ten minutes into the flight, the plane did not pull out of a planned nosedive; instead it accelerated into a tailspin. Coleman was thrown from the plane at 500 feet and died instantly when she hit the ground. William Wills was unable to gain control of the plane and it plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane burst into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had slid into the gearbox and jammed it, causing the plane to spin out of control. Experts noted at the time that gears in more modern planes had a protective covering — an accident like this need not have happened.
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King - Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are two tremendous figures in the civil rights movement. Based on some of their famous sayings, such as Martin's "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that," and Malcolm's "Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery," you might believe the two men to be on complete extremes. However, both men actually had very similar policies in the end, as I'd like to show you.
So, Martin Luther King's an easy one. As the quote says, he believed in peaceful resistance a la Gandhi. He promoted peaceful protests like sit-ins and boycotts and all that hoopla. How can Malcolm X, a man known for promoting violence and separationist ideologies, be considered similar? To get a grasp of Malcolm X's ties, it's important to look at both ends of Malcolm X's political activism. First, while a member of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm promoted a sense of racial pride in being black. While he promoted nationalism and retaliation against whites (Malcolm once said "Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power."), he also instilled a sense of strength in the black race. Along these lines, Malcolm said "A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself."
Thus, while Martin Luther King was working to bring the whites into a place where they could accept blacks and to see them on the same level, Malcolm X was working to bring blacks to a place where they could accept themselves as being on the same level. Martin Luther King told the blacks to stand strong and love thy neighbor, no matter how that neighbor treated them. Malcolm X told the blacks to stand strong and love thyself, no matter how that neighbor treated them. While different, the ideas work hand in hand with one another and greatly benefit one another.
Second, after leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm formed his own organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. This group moved further from violence and served as a political attempt at unifying the black cause in America and building ties to the African community. Under this wing, Malcolm sought to unite with the civil rights movement and to elevate the cause of blacks in America to an international level. Using the organization as a jumping point, Malcolm sought to bring the blacks case to the United Nations and to file a human rights violation case against the United States. Unfortunately, Malcolm X was murdered shortly thereafter in February of 1965 so this part of his legacy often doesn't receive much attention.
To keep it simple, the two men were both strong members of the civil rights movement and despite all the differences between the men, I believe it's an easy task to respect everything they both did. To take some kind of message from all this though, I think it's good to use the teachings of Malcolm X to grasp this idea.
Before you can love someone else, you must first learn to love yourself.
Martin Fisher
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