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Books by Askia M. Touré
From the Pyramids to the Projects: Poems of Genocide and
Resistance! /
Dawnsong:The Epic Memory of Askia
Toure
African Affirmations: Songs for Patriots
/
Biography - Toure, Askia Muhammad Abu Bakr el (1938-)
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Black Arts and Cultural Revolution
A Brief History—1966 to 1980
By Askia M. Touré
People didn't
realize in the Sixties that we were part of an
historical Vanguard. What we were attempting was
innovating a revolutionary Black art. A bit later,
others like Ishmael reed expanded it into what became
the Multicultural Movement. We actually saw our Black Arts
Movement as a mass-based Cultural Revolution,
confronting U.S. domestic colonialism/apartheid.
BARTS and
Liberator Magazine
As per the Black
Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS),
Larry Neal and I
were daily in touch with Amiri, who was chair, and his
staff, including not only Bro. Steve, the Pattersons,
Cornelius Suarez, but Sonia Sanchez, Barbara Hamilton,
Barbara Carter, Sis. Kimako, Kelley Marie Berry, Ojijiko,
& others.
We participated in
discussions with Sun Ra, Andrew Hill & other musicians,
Harold Cruse, William White, etc., in stirring,
visionary seminars, debates, philosophical exchanges,
which we saw as expanding revolutionary consciousness.
(Later, certain lesbian-feminists tried to include
Audrey Lorde in BARTS, but she, with much integrity,
explained that she was not there; she was in graduate
school.)
Later, tensions
began to rise, due to the thug-Patterson’s & Johnny
Moore's treatment & disrespect for the sistas; and their
overall fascist-like behavior. They were very insecure,
and didn't like
Amiri's speaking with
Larry and me about
politics and Revolution.
Then came the
Breaking-point. Both
Larry and I were with Liberator
magazine—Larry as Arts Editor, I as staff writer. In
February 1966, Liberator magazine came out with a
Malcolm X Memorial Issue, which infuriated the Nation of
Islam! Additionally, the Harlem Community organized a
mass march to the Audubon Ballroom, led by Queen Mother Audley Moore (who had advised Malcolm after he left the
NOI). Larry Neal and I participated in the march, I
think
Amiri
was there.
Later, the word on
the street was that they might've attacked
Amiri—certainly those knuckleheads were capable of
it—and much worse. They pulled a coup, took over the
BART/S, and called for a "truce." When some of us came,
myself, Bro. Charlie,
Amiri's comrade, and two of
Malcolm's bodyguards, Bro. Uthman (Albert) & John
Ferris, who was also a poet. They got us in there,
locked the doors and pulled guns on us. Johnny Moore &
Charles Patterson announced themselves as "Captain
Johnny Moore, and Captain Charles Patterson of the NOI."
Then announced, "we
are going to execute a nigger before your eyes, —yeah,
Rolland, m--f--r, we don't like you—and that nigga,
Larry!" John Ferris stood up & challenged them. He had
his hand under his hat, which threw them into a panic,
because they thought he had a gun. Bro. Charlie had two
huge bodyguards w/him, probably armed. So there was a
standoff. We were able to back out of the "truce"
meeting alive.
I had a Harlem
appointment w/two young RAM cadres, bros. Roy and Joe
Johnson from L.A. I got word from Akbar (Max Stanford)
to get out. I put the young bros. on a plane to L.A. &
left Harlem. A bomb was thrown into our apartment next
day.
Underground:
Southward Into SNCC, Spring, 1966
I left Harlem and
went back into SNCC, in Atlanta. I had worked with SNCC
earlier, in 1964, in Mississippi, just before "Freedom
Summer." I had met leader John Lewis, and the great
revolutionary strategist & organizer,
James Forman, SNCC's Secretary General. I had changed my name, thinking of NOI pursuers. I joined SNCC's Atlanta Project.
A few words about
Mississippi SNCC, 1964: Max Stanford & I had met SNCC leader,
John Lewis in Nashville, Tennessee, and received permission to
work with SNCC's Mississippi project in Greenwood. While
witnessing a powerful, grassroots movement, Max & I also
witnessed a kind of Civil Rights "apartheid," in that
the grassroots Black SNCC workers were risking their
lives trying to get the plantation peasants to register
to vote, while the young elite white students were
sitting in the field offices "coffee-clutching" and
calling their friends on the Watts line, in NYC,
Philadelphia., Boston, etc.
They were part of
the Northern Student Movement, and were children of
wealthy liberal sponsors. I'm not saying that all were
guilty of this behavior, but certainly a significant
number. I also met SNCC genius Robert Moses Paris and
his wife, Dona (later Dr. Marimba Ani). Bob accused me
of "teaching propaganda" to the Black youths, because I
taught them African and African-American history in the
SNCC freedom school. I responded that wasn't teaching
them Euro-centric "history" and white supremacist values
also propaganda. He said he didn't want to go into it.
Later, Max Stanford
& I spoke with Black SNCC workers about the need to
control their own organization. They agreed, especially
the sisters who resented the white women moving on the
grassroots bros. They decided to take a vote the next
day. That night, the white women moved on the bros.
sexually, and compromised them. Needlessly, the Blacks,
mainly sisters, were outvoted.
Many white
activists were sincerely dedicated to helping to
liberate Black people. They later went on to help
organize the Anti-War Movement via Vietnam. . . .But
they were humble, and realized that eventually, they'd
have to organize white working people, in order to
change this country.
They are contrasted
w/arrogant white women like Saundra "Casey" Hayden who
asked Max and I what we were doing down in Miss. "Casey"
was from Texas, and acted like Miss. SNCC was her
personal plantation. I imagined that her ancestors had
fought for the Confederacy, and owned slaves. Certainly,
she had that attitude: Miss Ann! Another thing some of
the hippy-like white students did was to desecrate the
Black Churches by having sex in them overnight, before a
mass march.
The Black Community
was gracious and hospitable towards them, and that was
their response. Also this led to tensions within the
Black Community: the rightwing elements found out about
this behavior, and was publicizing this in their
newspapers—the KKK & white citizens councils. That's
partly my response to Dr. Mary E. King [author of
Freedom Song, a book that blames Askia and black
nationalists for driving whites out of SNCC; she also
charges that black men exploited white liberal women
sexually].
Fast Forward to
SNCC's Atlanta Project, Spring, 1966
While underground,
driven out of Harlem, I worked with Project Dir. William
Ware and his wonderful staff, Zoharah Simmons, Mike
Simmons, Dwight Williams, Don Stone, Bob Moore, Sissy
Roberts, etc. in urban grassroots organizing. By '66,
the tensions had erupted within the organization, and
SNCC was increasingly moving towards "Black
Power"/self-determination. Bill Ware, Donald Stone & I
sat down in Don's home and wrote what became
historically known as the "SNCC Black Power Position
Paper."
The media credited
Kwame Ture with writing it, but he vehemently denied it.
He said that what won over many SNCC people was that we
were pushing Malcolm's position of self-defense. We
indeed believed in non-violence as a tactic, but not as
a philosophy. I remember SNCC's legendary leader, Ruby
Doris Smith, being violently angry about our outlook;
but I saw her a year later, '67, she had grown an Afro
and embraced me like a lost brother. Times change, and
we often change with them.
San Francisco
and the Beginning of Black and Ethnic Studies: 1967-'68
After the Atlanta
Project was shut down, I was running a SNCC freedom
school in an Atlanta neighborhood. I received a call
from Sonia Sanchez asking me and my wife to join her,
Amiri Baraka, Dr. Nathan Hare & others in a Black
Studies experiment in both the San Francisco Black
Community, and later, San Francisco State University.
Aisha and I immediately came out to the Bay Area from
Atlanta.
What became
Africana Studies began not on the bright, shiny
campuses, but in the churches & community centers of the
Black Community. As in SNCC, Harlem & other places, the
African-American. Community birthed these mass
experiments in culture/self-determination. Sonia,
student leader, former-SNCC activist, Jimmy Garrett,
young actor Danny Glover, who had performed with Amiri
when he was out in San Francisco, just before I came;
the beautiful leaders, professor/poet Sarah Webster
Fabio, Marianna Awaddy, and others, including Bro. Bill
Bradley/Oba Tshaka, Dingane Joe Goncalves, Barbara
Goncalves, Nasser Shabazz, Abdul-Karim & Aubrey LaBrie,
Marvin X & others made this phase of Black Studies/Black
Arts possible.
After awhile, the
students rose up, demanding that Black professors teach
them, and we were ready!...Like the African-stylists of
the old Negro Leagues, we came onto the San Francisco
State U. campus accompanied by the Blk masses of San
Francisco! When we opened those classes, Ms. Minnie
Johnson, Junebug, her son, Bubber, Mosetta, Shaniqua,
etc. came right along with us. Though they weren't
getting course credits, they practiced discipline,
studied, and participated in discussions.
Dr. Ray Kelch,
headed the Humanities Dept., a rightwing Reaganite, with
a picture of "Ron," the governor in cowboy outfit on his
front door. When he spoke to me about my main text, I
informed him of Dr. Du Bois'
The World and Africa.
His response was that Africa had no history that he was
aware of; and "Du Bois is not a historian; he's a negro
civil rights leader." I asked him if he'd heard of the
Encyclopedia Africana? He looked at me as though I was
insane!
Be that as it may,
he pointed that we were out of faculty monitors (white
professors had to "monitor" our classes) so my class was
a mute point. A young, apparently radical white
professor, wearing a field jacket, volunteered to
"monitor" my class. Dr. Kelch asked to speak to him
alone. The young man came out red as a lobster. We asked
him what happened? According to him, Kelch called him a
hippy, a fool, a trouble-maker, and a traitor to his
race—in that order!. . . That was my intro to San
Francisco State.
When Sonia Sanchez,
other teachers and I walked about the campuses, a crowd
of white professors would follow around—like we were
rock stars! In our classes, we noticed tall, blond men
and women "sitting in" also. Snitches. When I began to
describe Kemet, Nubia and Nile Valley Civilizations,
they began to turn red in the face, and soon left our
classes permanently.
Sonia reported that
the FBI spoke to her neighbors about her teaching
The
Souls of Black Folks. They said
Dr. Du Bois was a
communist, and Sonia was a dangerous radical. I not only
began to lecture, but to speak at other universities. I
also missed New York, so I only taught a semester, and
took my family back to New York City. That autumn, 1968,
the famous San Francisco State student strike began.
I wasn't surprised:
the blatant arrogance and racism of the white students,
and their newspaper, caused Black students, and students
of color to rise up. The experiment at San Francisco
State was the opening gun on both the Africana and
Multi-cultural Studies movements. When the Latino,
Asian, Native American, women and gay students saw our
example, like all intelligent people, we learn from each
other—especially when we're all oppressed by the same
racist, sexist, imperialist forces.
Return to the
East Coast: New York/Philly, 1968-1976
In the late spring,
1968, New York seemed to literally "pull me" back to
her. I was still in a kind of quiet pain, having been
literally "run out" in '66, after the Malcolm X March.
We'd heard that they'd either assaulted, or attempted to
assault
Amiri; they had shot
Larry Neal down in the
street. They had threatened my life, and bombed my
apartment. Reactionary negroes, Charles Patterson,
Johnny Moore, "Farrakhan Muhammad" (not related to
Min.
Louis Farrakhan).
Life went on. . .
My marriage broke up. I remarried, a second time. Bro.
Quincy Troupe and I lived across the street from each
other. We saw each other on a fairly regular basis. This
was on West 105th St. In this period, summer, '68, we
re-established in Harlem. I linked up with
Ed Bullins
and the New Lafayette Theater, and Una Mulzak, and my
RAM comrade, Ernie Allen, who worked at Ms. Mulzak's
Liberation Bookstore. She was an outstanding radical
mentor and thinker. She played the role in Harlem, that
Baba Julian Richardson played in San Francisco.
In autumn, '68, on
125th St., Ernie & I participated in the radical Loft
movement. We founded the "Black Mind," where we taught
African & African-American History, Black Liberation
politics, principles of the Black Arts Cultural
Revolution to a group of Harlem high-school age
youngsters, and youth activists.
Our comrades,
The
Last Poets, founded the "East Wind," and
Sis. Barbara
Ann Teer, with Larry Neal's aid, founded the "National
Black Theatre Workshop." Ed Spriggs was around the
corner, on Fifth Ave., with the Studio Museum of Harlem.
We reestablished touch with Imamu Amiri Baraka and his
people in Newark; and the Spirit-House Movers (Amiri's
group) performed at the "East Wind."
Our youth leaders,
Hannibal and Malik Ahmed and their peers linked up with
the N.Y. Black Panther chapter, which was very
nationalistic. Zayd Malik Shakur often spoke with us,
and attended our programs when he could.
On to Gary and
Philadelphia: 1972-1980
After a good, long
struggle in NYC, I decided to move to Philadelphia. I
had re-linked up with my old comrades, Muhammad Ahmed
(formerly Max Stanford), and had met new ones, Bro.
Saladin Muhammad, Sis. Shafeah M'Balia, Bro. Changa
Chikuyo of the African Peoples Party (APP), which was
organizing in Philly and other cities trying to build
new formations in the '70s on the momentum of the dreams
and visions of the '60s.
I joined the APP,
and proudly became the editor of its fighting newspaper,
Black Star. We resisted Philadelphia's fascist
mayor, Frank Rizzo, and his killer police dept. The
young radio journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was trying to
defend a black utopian group, Move, against the killer
cops. We wished to defend the entire Black Community by
having it organize itself against attack.
We went with Rep.
Dave Richardson, and Sis. Falaka Fattah, along Father
Paul Washington of the Church of the Advocate, to form a
Philadelphia Black United Front (BUF). Bro. Saladin,
Sis. Shafeah and I were grassroots organizers for the
BUF. We linked up with the Puerto Rican Socialist Party,
and the Latino Community, and progressive whites to
drive the Big Bambino, Frank Rizzo from office! We
organized mass marches, from North Philly, and West
Philly, over 30,000 people to confront the fascist
mayor. He was a punk, man, his people rushed him out of
City Hall when they heard that the Black masses were
marching down there.
In 1976, we
organized a national "Anti-Bicentennial March" which was
larger than the U.S. government's march in Philly! We
brought Latinos, Native Americans, African-Americans,
and young progressive and radical whites together in
radical, anti-war, anti-imperialist coalitions. Most
critics and political analysts don't record this, but
the 1970s in many ways were much more radical, richer
and progressive than the 1960s. We were trying to build
the organizations, formations, independent political
parties to make the revolutionary visions of Malcolm,
the Black Panthers, and the RNA, etc. into political
realities.
We had formed mass
formations, the National Black United Front, the
National Black Independent Political Party, the National
Black Human Rights Coalition, the
National Black Political Conventions in Gary, Ind.
The Gary Conventions brought liberal and radical Black
people together in the 1972. This movement involved
both Cultural and Revolutionary Black Nationalists,
Black Marxists, and Black Democrats. The Black
petit-bourgeoisie was tied to the Democratic Party. They
sold us out, and tried to pimp the convention, rather
than uniting with us in the goal of building an
Independent mass Black Political Party. Evidently, they
feared Black Nationalism/Radicalism more than U.S.
Imperialism and White Supremacy.
Well, after those
magnificent attempts at Self-determination, the U.S.
Govt., CIA/FBI hit the Black Urban Communities with the
Drug Plague—Heroin, then Crack-Cocaine—setting back our
Movement, and paving the way for the rise of the
Neo-Fascist Reagan/Bush I and Bush II Era of today.
Well, that's enough
for now. I just want our writers/intellectuals to
realize that there's much more complexity to our Freedom
Struggle than is usually assumed. And, finally, we must
resurrect the role that Black Liberationist
Women/Revolutionary-minded Women who love their men,
while critical of their weaknesses (and whom the white
feminists have literally written out of history!) have
played in terms of Struggle.
I'll end by naming
a few: Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, Sarah Webster Fabio,
Marianne Al-Wadi, Carolyn Fowler, Carolyn Rodgers,
Johari Amini, Shafeah M'Balia, Fulani Sunni-Ali, Naeema
Muhammad, Jeanette Walton, Elaine Stanford, Ahada
Stanford, Zoharah Simmons, Afeni Shakur, Assata Shakur,
Paula Coar, Black Rose Nelmes, Helene Brathwaite,
Barbara Carter, Carol Freeman, Jackie Early, Nikki
Grimes, Kamaria Muntu, Shola Akintolayo, Nani Bowe,
Barbara Cox, Ashaki Binta, Binta Masoni. . . . May the
Creator bless them in their continuing to hold up Half
of the Sky!
Source:
IshmaelReed
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A Note from Askia
Dear Rudy,
Thank you for your
thoughtful, and much-needed, effort to revive our lost
revolutionary History! Many of the new/neo-colonial
elites have attempted to co-opt this history, or falsely
attribute this vast, generational political effort
mainly to the white-applauded and funded, Civil Rights
Movement. The Black Power-driven Seventies in many ways
were much more vital and dynamic than the
much-publicized Sixties; because we attempted,
courageously, to create and develop the revolutionary
and progressive Formations which would consolidate the
political and cultural gains of the radically explosive
Sixties.
I recently wrote
that the Sixties/Seventies African-American activists,
female and male, were equal to the Pre & Post-Civil War
Abolitionist/Black Nationalist Generation of
Harriet Tubman,
Frederick
Douglass,
Martin R. Delany, Henry H. Garnett,
Ida B. Wells, Mary
Church Terrell, W. E. B. Du
Bois, W. Monroe Trotter,
Booker T.
Washington and other freedom-fighters. But, sadly,
we allow others to write that history, and wonder why
we've inherited a confused, directionless people, who
now appear to place their fate in the hands of a
young, "bi-racial" populist who now lives in the White
House with his beautiful, courageous First Lady and
children. Unfortunately, we've surrendered the
historical initiative, and become followers again, when
we African-Americans had the Vanguard leadership
position of creating a new U.S. society.
Hopefully,
courageous, hard-working editors like yourself, Rudy,
can help create the conditions for another Black Freedom
Upsurge, in this emerging 21st Century. As an
African-American Djali (Griot), activist, and
writer-editor, it has been my honor to serve the valiant
African-American Nation and People, While we didn't
succeed in total liberation for our people, our effort,
as a heroic Generation, created a new liberation
Paradigm for our historical period. I hope your readers,
my sisters/brothers learn key historical lessons from
us, and not let the confusion and backwardness of the
Present prevent them from coming together and beginning
again to walk that Stony Road to African-American
Liberation and a new and just Society for all.
My
Honor and My Best,
Olubisi Askia Toure
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Askia Muhammad Touré, right alongside Amiri Baraka
,
Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez,
Audre Lorde,
June
Jordan,
etc., is considered one of the principal
architects of the 1960s Black Arts/Black Aesthetic movements. A
member of the legendary Umbra Group and of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Touré has remained an
activist poet of conscience throughout his years. His other
books include Earth (1968), JuJu: Magic Songs for the
Black Nation (with playwright Ben Caldwell / 1970),
Songhai! (1972), and
From the Pyramids to the Projects
(1990), which won an American Book Award. Widely published in
Black Scholar, Soulbook, Black Theatre,
Black World, and Freedomways, his poems and essays
have embodied the ideology of a people seeking to reclaim their
images and history. His recent publications include two
collections of poetry
Mother Earth Responds: Green Poems and Alternative Visions
(Whirlwind Press), and
African Affirmations: Songs for
Patriots (Africa World Press).
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Nathan Hare—Great post, Rudy, but you left out 1961 to
1966, my maiden years, when some of us were thinking black.
Baraka was there all the way— as Leroi Jones until 1967—and
just about everybody else. My first article was "The Black
Anglo Saxons," something like March of 1962. Negro Digest
was a godsend. Nothing like it now. Of course none of the
old publications, white or black—even when they haven't
folded—is what it used to be. Of course people have only to
google the other years, from 1961 to its switch to Black
World circa 1970. Black World in turn went on to fold, as
you know, switching to First World. Editor-Founder Hoyt
Fuller soon died of a heart attack at 53. A great loss.
Hoyt
was an important person who should not be forgotten. Thanks
for posting this notice of his stellar publication. P.S.
Negro Digest could even be found on a few white
drugstore racks, but it was black for those days. Of course
the Black Arts Movement, by that name, escalated art and
blackness as such and took it out of the magazine into
places like Black Dialogue after Black Power came in
1966. |
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posted 22 April 2009 |
