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WADU
Leader
Dudley Thompson Transitioned
27 January 2012
On January 20, 2012, His Excellency Dudley Thompson,
President of the World African Diaspora Union (WADU) was
called to join the ranks of great African Ancestors such
as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Honorable Marcus Garvey, Dr. John
Henrik Clarke, Fannie Lou Hamer, Minister Malcolm
Omowale Shabazz, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, Ella Baker,
Walter Rodney, Kwame Touré, Sekou Touré, Asa
Hilliard-Nana Amankwatia Baffour and Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. Dr. Dudley was in New York City celebrating
his 95th birthday and planning for the WADU Annual
Executive Council Session in New Jersey when he made his
transition. According to Dr. Leonard Jeffries “I was
blessed to be with him as he took his last steps in his
great and mighty Pan African walk.”
His Excellency Dudley Thompson has been an enduring and
relentless servant of African people and humanity. A
WWII veteran of the Royal Air Force (RAF), he was a
participant of the famous 5th Pan African Congress (PAC)
of 1945 in England with leaders such as President Kwame
Nkrumah of Ghana, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois of the USA, Amy
Garvey of Jamaica, and George Padmore of Trinidad. He
was also an attorney for Jomo Kenyatta during the famous
Mau Mau revolution and a key supporter of the struggles
for African independence.
He also gave initial support to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere,
who at the time Ambassador Dudley was practicing law in
what was then Tanganyika, helped Mwalimu Nyerere in
setting up an office and assisted him with . . . writing
the constitution of what was to be become Tanzania. Born
in Panama, he became a Foreign Minister under the
Honorable Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica,
ambassador from Jamaica to numerous countries,
especially in Africa (Ghana, Namibia, Sierra Leone and
Zimbabwe) and an advisor to the late President-elect MKO
Abiola of Nigeria. Thompson played an effective role in
the independence movement of both Belize and Bahamas. He
was a Member of both the Senate of Jamaica and the
Leader of Government Business in the House and later a
Member of the House of Representatives.
In 2007, we elected Dudley Thompson as the first
President of WADU. Dr. Dudley Thompson’s work as the
President of WADU has been extremely successful beyond
expectations as a senior elder. Before his election as
President of WADU, the Pan African Movement was in a
vulnerable state entering the 21st century due to the
death and illnesses of many veteran Pan Africanists.
Ever cognizant of this weakness, Baba Dudley decided to
work with steel zeal to rebuild the Pan African Movement
to play a decisive role in the world, as it did in the
20th century. Almost instantaneously after taking
leadership with other great Pan Africanists over WADU,
the African world responded positively and with great
expectations under the robust and unified leadership of
WADU. Thereafter, WADU has attracted other diverse
powerful leaders bent on sharing WADU successes and more
importantly to support WADU's push toward Pan African
victory.
From the very beginning, Baba Dudley moved with resolute
and unprecedented speed to formally established WADU as
a powerful force in the African world. The initial plan
crafted by Baba Dudley called for WADU to establish a
leadership council with some of the most distinguished,
dedicated, and diverse veteran Pan Africanists in the
world. Second, with WADU unified Diaspora leadership,
Baba Dudley pressed decisively to influence the African
Union to hasten the unfulfilled objectives for African
Diaspora representation, repatriation, citizenship, and
sustainable development. Finally and most importantly,
Baba Dudley provided the African Diaspora with a 21st
century model for a comprehensive economic, political,
and cultural plan for the African Diaspora, to
accomplish the Pan African mission, with an integrated
Africa.
During his service in WADU, he consistently called for
us to “establish a new global order of justice and
equality for all and for African empowerment for the
accomplishment of the African Renaissance.” In 2011, he
stressed “military intervention is not an option..”
“Africa’s glorious history and civilizations were
disrupted by foreign influence, military interventions
and genocidal warfare against the people of Africa.”
In 2010, he announced, “Our work in Ethiopia is to
hasten the long struggle and work for the re-integration
of African people captured and dispersed from Africa for
centuries, to now build new enterprises to restore
dignity, pride and power of African people in the
world.” Also in 2010, he supported the quest of
Senegalese President Abdoulye Wade for Pan African unity
and was one of the prominent guests when the Senegalese
president unveiled the magnificent Renaissance monument
in Dakar, Senegal.
In 2009, Baba stated “My message of thanks to you
includes my personal appeal as a veteran Pan Africanist
to teach our youth of today their past history of
yesterday and their potential of today that their days
after tomorrow can be better if they take their
responsibility into their own hands and acknowledge
their duty to a united Africa, as our real Motherland.”
In 2008, he warned, “The price of Justice is Eternal
Vigilance. At a time when we are challenged by so many
downturns and difficulties in our daily lives, we have
now the clear duty and opportunity to save the next
generation. ”In 2007, when the Ambassador took
leadership of WADU, he proclaimed to the world “The
result of the Summit is historic and a great leap
forward for the full integration of the Africans of the
Diaspora as a powerful family partner for the rebuilding
of our Motherland, Africa.” Finally, on January 20,
2012, minutes before his death, Baba Dudley impressed
upon Dr. Leonard Jeffries that “Dr. John Henrik Clarke
was right, we must work for Pan Africanism or Perish.”
Indeed, Baba Dudley was preparing to complete his final
year as the President of WADU and to be elevated as the
venerated WADU Chair of the High Council Elders. The
global WADU family with sadness expresses peace with
love to the “Living Legend” His Excellency “Burning
Spear” Dudley Thompson. We especially send our
condolences to Ambassador Dudley’s wife Cecile, his
children, grandchildren, great-grand-children and the
other members of his family. The official funeral will
take place Friday, February 10th at 2:00 p.m. at Holy
Trinity Cathedral, Jamaica. Ambassador Thompson’s burial
will be with full military honors at Up Park Camp
Cemetery, immediately after the service.
The WADU leadership is extremely thankful to his eternal
contributions and remains steadfast to his vision for a
much brighter day for African people in the world. If
attending, you can join our new WADU President Dr.
Leonard Jeffries in a delegation to the funeral in
Jamaica. Also, you can participate in global tributes
and in the WADU 5-year campaign on behalf of our beloved
leader for the union of African people. Please send all
cards and condolences to Afrikan Poetry Theatre, 176-03
Jamaica Ave., Jamaica, N.Y. 11432-5503. We now close
with the daily sacred words of Baba Dudley “PEACE AND
LOVE.”
Source: John
Watusi Branch, World African Diaspora Union (WADU)
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PanAfrican and Jamaican statesman Dudley Thompson has
died. He was 95
By Jacqueline
Charles
21 January 2012
He was a historical
figure in the politics of Jamaica and in the larger
global struggle to unite people of African descent. Hard
to miss with his cheerful disposition, intellect and
passionate conversations, Ambassador Dudley Thompson
drew crowds no matter where he went.
A former Jamaican
cabinet minister who served as a minister of national
security, justice and foreign affairs, Thompson died
Friday morning in New York, the day after he turned 95.
He was scheduled to celebrate the next week in New
Jersey. He lived in Weston. “We will miss his intellect,
his stature,” said Jamaica’s Miami Consul General Sandra
A. Grant Griffiths, whose office confirmed the death.
“He was all over the place.”
Griffiths last saw
Thompson in December when he attended a holiday
gathering at her residence. There, like elsewhere, he
drew crowds to his side as he discussed Jamaica, and
Africa, the continent where he served as an envoy in
several countries including Nigeria, Namibia and Ghana,
and practiced law as a young man. It was while defending
the late Jomo Kenyatta during his Mau Mau rebellion
trial in Kenya that Thompson became well-known across
Africa.
Jamaican Prime
Minister Portia Simpson Miller described Thompson as “a
man of firm convictions, articulate, sharp on his feet
and witty. Dudley Thompson loved his country with a
passion and served it with honor and distinction.”
Thompson was up with the times. He blogged and had his
own website. www.DudleyThompson.4t.com. His dream was to
see a united Africa and was president of the World
African Diaspora Union..
According to his
website, he was born in Panama and raised in Jamaica. He
served in Britain’s Royal Air Force during World War II,
and he was a Rhodes scholar. In the early 1950s, he
practiced law in Tanzania and Kenya, and became involved
in the nationalists struggles in both countries. In
October, Thompson made history when the African Union
made him the first person to become a citizen of the
continent and gave him a passport. Dozens of African
presidents attended the ceremony, said Djibril Diallo,
senior advisor to the executive director of the UNAIDS
and advisor to the President of Senegal on Diaspora
Affairs.
Diallo said
Thompson left him a voice mail on his cell phone just
days ago telling him to call because he had some
suggestions on their ongoing collaboration to promote
Africa. “I was working on getting him an honorary
ambassadorship for the entire African continent,” said
Diallo, whose relationship with Thompson dates back more
than 20 years. “He’s amazing as a Pan-Africanist, and
has worked to the last hour just preaching Africa and
the diaspora.’’Herald special correspondent Daraine
Lutton contributed to this report from Jamaica.
Source:
Miami Herald
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Dudley Thompsons rich legacy
A brighter legal mind was hard to find
By HG Helps
22
January 2012
The late Jamaican
Cabinet minister and outstanding legal mind, Ambassador
Dudley Joseph Thompson has left an indelible mark on the
fields of life that he touched. Thompson, who died
Friday in New York, a day after he celebrated his 95th
birthday will, for some, be remembered for his legal
expertise, as well as his political and diplomatic
journeys for which all stories may not be told.
Few could equal Thompson's oratory and courtroom
dramatics when he went before judge and jury. . . .
Dudley Thompson had
hoped that he would have lived to age 100 and by that
time there would have been an official United States of
Africa. His legacy as a politician and lawyer preceded
him into a fruitful life in the field of diplomacy and
Pan Africanism where he managed to move tough mountains
that for ages had divided African states. "They (African
states) are moving in that direction. The constitution
is being ironed out now, a Parliament is being looked
at, and I hope to see it before I die," Thompson said in
a Sunday Observer interview two years ago.
"The target is
2017, that's seven years from now. In seven years from
now I hope to see a federation or confederation of
Africa. In seven years from now I will also be 100, God
willing. I have been through it and I have known every
one of the leaders," Thompson said. "It would mean one
government of a whole Africa . . . a federal government,
which would include the diaspora as the sixth district,
by which I mean a jurisdiction of a Central Africa over
North Africa, South Africa, East Africa, West Africa,
Central Africa and the diaspora as an integral part of
the African scenario. That is our aim, and once we do
that we would place Africa, us, as a major player in
global affairs.
"We have been so
far cut off from Africa that I have been trying my very
best to rejoin. We have neglected Africa, and we are
African, no matter how you take it. We must consider
ourselves non-resident Africans—Africans residing or
naturalising abroad, whatever your citizenship, whatever
your residence, whatever your domicile, our ancestors
did not give up their citizenship . . . they didn't have
any passports. They were wrenched from the heart of
Africa, taken by force and dispersed throughout the
world.
"We who descended
from them have always kept up that African-ness. Why is
it that we feel good when we hear of a black success . .
. a Michael Jackson, for example? Why is it that we feel
good when we see a Muhammad Ali on top? It's because we
feel something with them. There is an ethnic
relationship. We have never lost our African-ness and so
we are Africans who happen to be residing abroad. That
is our status. That is what I have been working for over
the last five years in the World African Diaspora
Union," Thompson said in the interview at the Jamaica
Pegasus Hotel.
The former Jamaican
ambassador to African nations Nigeria, Namibia, Senegal
and Ghana, who earned the nickname 'Burning Spear'
because of his defence of Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta (who
later became president of Kenya) in the Mau Mau treason
trials of 1952, told this newspaper that Africa has been
treated unfairly, globally. He wanted all that to
change. "The portrayal of Africa is quite unfair. People
think of it as a continent of corruption, and military
coups. That is there, but we are thinking about a place
that is large enough to include, geographically, the
whole of the United States, the whole of India, the
whole of China, the whole of Argentina... all of that
could fit into Africa. It's a big place," he said.
"Nigeria alone is about 80 times the size of Jamaica.
Now, with a place like that you can always pick out the
sores and the warts, but there are some very good spots
there.
"If you go to Dakar
in Senegal, you will see wider streets than you have in
any part of the West Indies. Wide streets that are kept
clean with street sweepers all dressed in uniforms. "You
will see people who are educated and sartorially
dressed... you will see advanced people, but we don't
know anything about that.
"There are good
things that we can take from Africa. There are more
people of African descent in Brazil than any country in
Africa, except Nigeria. Therefore we (African/Americans)
have the buying power in the trillions of dollars. Now,
if 10 per cent of that were invested in Africa, you
wouldn't have these pictures of starving babies and
famines and so on. We need to make the connection. We
can bring some things to Africa. We have the know-how.
Being African alone doesn't qualify you to become a
member of the diaspora, because we have people on the
outside who say, 'Oh I don't want to hear anything about
Africa... I am not African,' etc.
"To be a member of
the diaspora and to qualify, aside from your descent
from your ancestors, you need to have a mind that Africa
is your motherland and you have a duty to help her to
reach that position of number one in the world. You need
to have that mind and that contribution... that's when
you qualify," said Thompson.
He was equally
passionate about Jamaica and its development. Following
stints abroad when he practised law in Tanzania and
Kenya after graduating from Oxford University where he
had gone in 1947 as a Rhodes Scholar — the only man from
Mico College to achieve that—he returned to Jamaica to
do his bit to overcome the challenges that existed for
the masses. He had served as a minister of state for
foreign affairs when the PNP swept the JLP from office
in 1972 and stayed in that position until 1975. But
Thompson had been a part of the political process
before, when he, now an established lawyer, sat on the
PNP side of the Senate in 1962, following his loss in
the general election of that year to Edward Seaga in
West Kingston. He served in the Upper House until 1978
when he successfully contested a by-election for the St
Andrew West seat.
Thompson left an
indelible mark on the proceedings in the Parliament
despite his short stints as minister of mining and
natural resources, as well as national security and
justice between 1977 and 1980. He was Jamaican by
naturalisation, having come to the island as a youth
from Panama, the same country that eight years before
him produced another adopted Jamaican, the legendary
cricketer George Headley.
Despite his age,
Thompson remained lucid and was a reservoir of knowledge
and history. . . . The high esteem in which Thompson is
held resonates across the spectrum of the legal
profession. "Ambassador Dudley J Thompson, OJ, QC, the
'Burning Spear', was the advocate extraordinaire, an
intellectual, Rhodes Scholar, war hero, statesman and
raconteur of the highest order," said former Jamaica
Prime Minister PJ Patterson. "Dudley Thompson was simply
the best, in whatever field he chose to serve. His
contribution to the building of Jamaica as a nation --
to its constitution, its jurisprudence, its diplomacy,
its political system, global reputation and its
international standing -- is unparalleled," Patterson
said. Colleague and close friend, attorney Neita was
equally descriptive.
"He was a jack of
all trades and master of many. He was very diverse. He
excelled in everything that he did," Neita said. The
outstanding Miconian that he was had seen a young
Thompson becoming principal of the Retreat Elementary
School in Western St Mary by 1937 before he was 21, the
youngest headmaster of a public school in Jamaica's
history. He was later succeeded by Vin Lawrence Snr,
father of the former chairman of the Urban Development
Corporation Vin Lawrence Jnr and one of the architects
of the December 29, 2011 victory by the PNP, who was
born at Retreat, the same birthplace of former Jamaica
and West Indies cricketer, now radio commentator,
Maurice Foster.
Source:
JamaicaObserver
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 28 January 2012
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