Books by Jomo Kenyatta
Facing Mt. Kenya /
African Socialism and Its Application to Planning in Kenya
/
Suffering Without Bitterness
Harambee! The Prime Minister of Kenya's Speeches, 1963-1964
/
The Challenge of Uhuru
* * * *
*
Books by Roi Ottley
New World
A-Coming: Inside Black America
(1943) /
Black Odyssey: The Story
of the Negro in America (1948)
/
The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S.
Abbott
(1955) /
White Marble Lady
(1965)
The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History, 1626-1940
(1967)
* * * *
*
Books by George Padmore
The Memoirs of a Liberian Ambassador: George Arthur Padmore
/
Pan Africanism or Communism /
The Life and Struggles of Toiling Africans
How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire /
Africa and World Peace /
How
Britain Rules Africa /
The Gold Coast Revolt * * * *
*
 |
God Save His Majesty's Blacks
By Roi Ottley Back in 1945, six African editors arrived in
London to place urgent native grievances before the British
Colonial office. The Nigerian, Nnandi Azikiwe, who had been
educated in the U.S., led the group which represented four
British colonies in west Africa. Before leaving home these men
had spent months gathering documented material to support the
arguments they planned to present. They might have stayed in
their tropical beds. |
When they saw the Rt. Hon. Oliver Frederick Stanley,
Secretary of State for the Colonies, in his seedy office in
Downing Street, this gentleman opened the meeting with a long
innocuous discussion of English weather, food and customs, made
some thoughtful inquiries about wives, children and friends, and
had tea brought in to complete the amenities.
His Majesty's blacks had hardly swallowed the tea, when
Colonel Stanley rose abruptly and announced that he had a
cabinet meeting to attend. the four Negroes were flabbergasted.
After all, they had spent nearly a year in correspondence
arranging this particular conference arranging this particular
conference with His majesty's minister. they somehow hastily
managed to explain the bundles of material they had brought
along.
Colonel Stanley accepted the documents, thanked them warmly,
and promised to arrange a second meeting soon. Not until six
weeks had elapsed, and they were scheduled to return to Africa,
did they hear from him. He sent them a polite note, explaining
they would hear from him in due course and wishing them bon
voyage. He closed this missive with that wonderfully meaningless
anachronism, "I remain your obedient servant." This
was the brush-off, British style.
* * *
There was no recourse in London for these frustrated Negroes,
as British imperialists operate in Africa without the checks of
English public opinion. Actually, Africa is beyond the control
of rank-and-file Englishmen, and very often beyond their
knowledge or concern. The Dark Continent is the exclusive
preserve of British officials and planters and they run the show
as they choose, brooking no interference. one soon learns that
freedom and liberty applied to Africans, as Americans understand
these words, are completely outside the vocabulary of official
England.
Americans presumptuous enough to apply these terms to Negro
colonial peoples are considered not only naïve but showing bas
taste. today British imperialists stand squarely before the
dikes, so to speak, trying to stem the tide of history.
Fundamentally, English racialism is inspired by the need to
control the blacks of Africa who form a population of more than
one hundred millions.
Winston Churchill made the Tory position clear in the midst
of World War II--a position essentially that of the socialist
Labour Government today. In his absence, deputy prime Minister,
Clement R. Attlee, had told a meeting of Negroes in London that
the Atlantic Charter, as he understood this document,
implied that freedom would not be denied to any races of
mankind.
Churchill corrected him publicly and
bluntly. He declared in a Parliament address that Point
Three of the Charter, providing for "the right of
all peoples to choose the form of government under which
they will live," applied to white people only.
"We had in mind, primarily," he said,
"the restoration of the sovereignty,
self-government and national life of the states and
nations of Europe now under the Nazi yoke . . . so that
it is quite a separate problem from the progressive
evolution of self governing institutions in the regions
which owe allegiance to the British Crown."
|

|
There was a dramatic footnote to this speech: I noticed in
the House of Commons in the summer of 1944 that the Tories were
so confident of the status quo being preserved that when
the fate of India was debated and the stark fact of famine
faced the Indian people, only twenty-seven members were present.
Afterwards I talked with pugnacious Leopold Amery, formerly
Secretary of state for India and Burma, who seemed to me to
display contempt for the Indian people in a manner which bore
broadly on official British thinking about all colored peoples.
He branded the saintly Gandhi a "Fascist" and his
Hindu followers "rabble," even though he himself had
been born in India. "Incredible as it may be to
Americans," he declared, "the Indians would rather
have us there than any foreigners. And they are not likely to be
weakened in their attitude by incidents that they notice in the
U.S.--incidents which are exemplified by race riots!"
To be sure, imperialism's end is a terrible idea for most
Britons to face, whether they belong to the right or left.
before the recent elections, English newspapers, with notable
impartiality, published the platforms of every party. Not one
party had included a plank for colonial reformation or civil
rights for Negroes. The position of the left-wingers is
especially ludicrous. This was illustrated to me one day while I
lunched with Peggy Cripps, daughter of Sir Stafford Cripps.
This young lady was manifestly shocked, for example, that
Negroes were victims of racial discrimination in the U.S. Her
pleasant freckled face lighted up, though, when she spoke of the
racial progress made in the Soviet Union, where she had lived
while her father was British ambassador. This remark, plus her
employment by the Soviet Information Service in London, betrayed
me into sharply criticizing British racial policy. I suppose my
observations were a bit heavy-handed, because she flushed
perceptibly.
But she countered in a quietly modulated aristocratic voice:
"There are so many, many problems to be solved of races,
religions, and minorities, which you Americans know very little
about. If Americans did know, maybe they wouldn't be soc
critical, and so quick to judge ill of us."
Peggy Cripps urged me to talk with her father, who she
declared could "clarify" my thinking. I talked with
Sir Stafford Cripps at Whitehall. He defended British racial
policy as stoutly as any hard-bitten Tory. His views turned out
to be old hat. But towards the end of our conversation, he did
advance a novel theory of racial democracy which gave me sharp
pause.
"It is important to bear in mind," the bespectacled
minister declared with considerable emphasis, "the fact
that racial and religious minorities are in a very different
position in a democracy from political minorities. the political
minority can always hope to become by propaganda and persuasion
a majority and so control government. But a religious or racial
minority is permanently relegated to a position of inferiority,
in which it can be oppressed by the majority race or
religion."
* * *
The magnitude of Black Africa's problem is staggering--beyond
the grasp of most people. To begin with, Africa south of the
Sahara Desert, where the bulk of Negroes are concentrated,
covers 8,260,00 square miles--an area three times the size of
the U.S. The section has a population between one and two
hundred million. Actually no one knows exactly. only some two
million are white people. Yet fifty-five percent of the total
population, ninety-six percent of the white population,
forty-four percent of the area and seventy-seven percent of the
capital, comes under the British flag. Each of the colonies,
actually black nations, ruled by Britain has a British governor
and British civil servants to administer its affairs.
Africa's interior resembles a gigantic saucer. Mountains rim
the continent from Algeria down the west coast to the Cape, and
from the Cape all the way up the east coast to Egypt. To reach
the sea African rivers must plunge through mountains, reaching
the coast by waterfalls and cataracts. Ships cannot navigate
these rivers, which explains why much of the interior was sealed
off from nearly all European contacts for hundreds of years.
Besides, the area straddles the equator, where the Africans have
to fight disease and pests unknown to Europe. Africans in the
interior have to scrape a living from the desert and endless
bush. those on the coast have to fight predatory whites.
[British African colonies include Gambia, Sierre Leone,
Nigeria and the Gold Coast on the West. In the east and Central
Africa, Britain has Tanganyika Nyasaland, Uganda, Southern
Rhodesia, and Anglo Sudan, and such protectorates as Basutoland,
Bechuanaland and Swaziland.]
Africa's Negro society, as compared with that of Europe, was static
when white men first invaded the continent. Nearly every tribe
and nation observed the same laws and taboos. These ruled every
action and every hour of the day. The tribal codes determined
what each member should wear. The food he should eat. The work
he should do. The beasts he should kill. the hut he should
build. the crops he should grow. The woman he should marry. The
god he should worship. These codes bound everyone, from the
oldest chief to the youngest child. through the rigid
uniformity, however, the African found the means for survival
and stability.
[Editor's emphasis. Yambo
Ouologuem's perspective suggests that African nations,
though not moving toward its own Industrial Revolution, had
their own dynamism, however negative, in their individual contest
for wealth and power. Ottley, I am afraid, describes a
stereotypical view of an isolated primitive society. His static view of
African nations with their rise and fall may be an atypical
characteristic.]
The British shattered this forever. But they have given
little in return. For only in this century have some Englishmen
come to regard colonies, not as "possessions" but as
"trusts." However, it is the abuses of
"ownership" which threaten Africa today. The one-crop
system, for instance, is swiftly ruining the soil and famines
are more and more frequent. Those Africans who have abandoned
farming for paid employment have become victims of a new
man-made plague--unemployment.
Under the old ways of living, when an Africa's hut became
unlivable or too small as his family increased, he could burn it
and erect a new one. Now he often must rent one from English
landlords and pay the crushing hut-tax which caused nineteen
thousand Africans in Kenya alone to be jailed for inability to
pay.
Black Africa exports eight products mainly--gold diamonds,
copper, wool, cotton and cotton-seed, palm products, ground nuts
and cocoa. The African's dependence upon products chosen by his
English masters exposes him tot he violent and unpredictable
fluctuations of prices in the world markets, and his ignorance
of the causes of "bonus" and "depressions"
makes his resentments and revolt against his condition all the
fiercer, because he feels himself in the grip of some blind,
incalculable force.
London merchants and financiers swallow the gravy of this
system. Ben Riley, Laborite M.P., in criticizing British
colonial administration, accurately reported that only one
million pounds has been spent in a five-year period for the
social welfare of some fifty-odd million Negroes, which,
according to his computation, averaged about one cent a year per
African.
* * *
Before leaving London, I went to see the secretary of State
for the Colonies, the Rt. Hon. Oliver Frederick Stanley, hoping
to hear some positive statement about the future of Negroes in
Africa. As I reached the entrance to Downing Street--that small
symbolic dead-end where the empire is ruled--two skeptical
bobbies stopped me. I was escorted to the Colonial office
building, one of a group facing a square black with the soot of
ages.
A one-armed man ushered me up a wide sweeping marble
stairway, by a shabby statue of Queen Victoria, down a long hall
and into a small, paneled anteroom, which somehow resembled a
country doctor's waiting-room. Three secretaries to the minister
bounded to their feet as I entered. One came forward and
exchanged pleasantries. A blonde woman swished up, smiled
engagingly, shook hands warmly, and took my hat and hung it on a
nearby wall hook.
Everyone's manners were impressive. Colonel Stanley's private
office was a huge affair, with massive mahogany furniture, and
had the quiet ornateness of English interiors. Tarnished gold
frames held paintings of England's past colonial secretaries,
who seemed now to be keeping a vigilant eye on present-day
goings-on. The floor was covered with a faded green carpet,
frayed about the edges. A tall, spare figure stood erect
opposite a tremendous desk. The sunlight from a huge window at
his back made his body cast a long shadow at my feet. the shadow
lengthened as he walked toward me and extended his hand. He wore
black rimmed glasses and a dark sack suit. On a long table lay
the paraphernalia of British diplomacy--a black Eden hat and
umbrella.
This was the man who administered Britain's vast chain of
Negro colonies in the midst of World War II -- a man who in his
entire lifetime has spent exactly three weeks in Africa. We
spent an unhurried hour or so talking. the total of what he said
concretely about the future of the colonial blacks can be boiled
down into one thin cliché: "The faults of British
colonization have been those of omission rather than
commission." He was sure that beneficial social changes
would follow eventually.
What, precisely, he was unable to predict, though he added:
"I put education in the forefront of plans for the
future." I asked if he envisioned eventual self-government
for the African peoples. he was frankly shocked by the question.
His manner made me feel as though I had said something
offensive, at the very least impertinent. His reply nailed Tory
policy into place. "You must remember," he countered,
"the Africans are savages, still eating each other in
places like Nigeria."
A word about these African. I talked a great deal in Europe
and Africa with those detached from their tribes. I think I came
to know a few quite well. We exchanged experiences about life
for black men under white rule. I reported the manner in which
Negroes in the U.S. conducted movements for democratic rights,
the steady progress of the group, and, off the top of my head,
offered some advice about their own affairs. They, in turn, were
frank in describing their views and the conditions under which
they lived. But they were a great surprise to me in many ways. I
expected, I suppose, to feel the emotion of meeting a racial kinsman.
Actually, I was a little shocked to discover that we had
little in common beyond our complexions -- indeed, we were total
strangers, drawn as we were from vastly different social and
cultural environments. There were so many subtleties about them
which escaped detection, too many shadings beyond my grasp. The
soul of Africa eluded me.

|
Yet they met in every particular Leo
Frobenius' test of a Negro: they were people in
strange cultures still capable of emotional exaltation
and ecstasy; they were still musical, had kept their
sense of humor, and were able to smile at their fate
without cynicism or mockery. They showed in every way
the two dominant cultural strains which form the Negro:
the Ethiopian, which has always given to the Negro a
deep emotional life; and the Hamitic, which has given
him vitality and a healthy, practical outlook. And yet
they were foreign to me. the reason, perhaps, was that
they did not think and act like people who belonged to
an oppressed racial minority.
|
The black African is oppressed indeed--but mainly because
imperialist nations found him backward socially, economically
and militarily and therefore it was easy to exploit the riches
of his country, both human and natural. Race is a secondary
consideration in this equation, in the minds of both the
exploited and exploiter. Nor does the African see his problem in
racial terms altogether, though oppressed by white men mainly.
Actually, his is the problem of winning national liberation--not
racial or religious freedom. moreover, black men in Africa
belong to the dominant community and have a dominant group
psychology, not the minority temper of Jews in Europe and
Negroes in the U.S.
I first discovered this in a curious way. One
evening I was having dinner at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem
with the Ethiopian Consul to Palestine, M. Haddis Alemayhou. He
looked like any dark Negro seen on the streets of a Southern
city. But he was vastly different in outlook. He had very sad
eyes, his hair was prematurely white, and he walked with the
gait of an elderly man, though he was barely thirty-two years
old when I met him. His manner was deferential, perhaps out of
habit: he had survived seven years in a Sardinia prisoner-of-war
camp, having been captured by the Fascists when Italy invaded
Ethiopia. He was liberated by the Americans. Alemayhou was
unhappy, though not bitterly so, about having spent much of his
youth in prison--"the time when one should be free and
careless," he said wistfully.
As I remember, a story about Negro
participation in the invasion of Italy caused him to express
bewilderment about the racial attitudes of Negro Americans. He
told me about one who had been brought to Ethiopia to edit an
English-language newspaper in Addis Ababa. hardly had the fellow
arrived when the front-page appeared with an "Open
Letter" to Emperor Haile Selassie, complaining he was
being discriminated against by the Ethiopians because of
his color!
The reason, so the letter ran, was that the
Emperor's financial adviser, a white American banker, received
more wages than the Negro editor. He declared that Ethiopia was
a black man's country and therefore should treat white men as
black men are treated in the U.S. This sort of logic astonished
the Ethiopians; they do not think of themselves as a race, but
as a nation. Alemayhou shook his head and concluded with,
"Sir, we do not understand your countrymen!"
But Africans are tremendously concerned with
the white man. Those I met in England call him Mzunga --
pronounced ma-zon-ga -- a term which seemingly is used
universally in West Africa. The word has approximately the same
meaning as "ofay," which Negroes in the U.S. use to
label white persons. Mzunga, in a subtle way, implies certain
peculiar characteristics the African has discovered in the white
man's behavior and thinking.
To illustrate: The African is completely
bewildered by the white man's ethical standards, for most
Africans are deeply religious. When the white man says,
"Yes, this is the ethical thing thing to do, but it isn't
practical," the Africans recognize an inherent ethical
dilemma which is never resolved. But what completely amazes them
is the Christian missionary's support of an imperialism which
exploits Africa with little benefit tot he native. This is the Mzunga!
The African has a
tremendous case against the British and feels keenly his
condition. But what they say in the way of social comment is
good-natured, sometimes incisive, but mostly naïve about the
imperialist role of the white man. Yet one should not get the
impression that Africans are a simple people--far from it. They
are wise in a venerable, practical, mellow way. African wisdom
might well be adopted by American Negroes with profit to
themselves.
One key to the African's mentality is
found in the epigrams and sayings of a sort of African
Aesop named Kwegyir Aggrey [African missionary (AMEZ)
born 1875 in Gold Coast (now Ghana- died 1926 in New
York]. His aphorisms express the personality of Black
Africa. He said: "Be morose, resentful, and you
create your own inferno," and "You can never
beat prejudice by a frontal attack, because there is
mere emotion at the root of it." |
 |
Such thinking produces enviable resilience.
But black Africans, after all, are conscious of having a
distinct civilization, with historical and cultural continuity.
They proudly talk of the ancient civilizations in the
Sudan--Niger, Benin, and Timbuctoo. For example, when the Moors
marched on Timbuctoo in 1591, they found a flourishing society.
The capital city was in trade, art, scholarship, and gracious
living. the workshops produced embroidered robes, leather boots,
fabrics, soft carpets, perfumes, snuffboxes, mirrors, jewelry
and teapots, and a merchant fleet of river boats, operating on
the Niger, brought in dates and cloves, tea and coffee, paper
cups, needles and silks. The city's universities and libraries
were famous, and the manufacture and sale of books was one of
the important businesses until Timbuctoo was destroyed by
invaders.
African blacks astounded the most learned men
of Islam by their erudition. These people were the first to
smelt iron. They invented at least four different alphabets,
with characters as phonetic symbols. There are today
approximately six hundred languages and dialects among the
blacks in Africa. the richness and flexibility of these tongues
is reported to be such that each has twenty or more words to
describe a man walking, sauntering, or swaggering, for example.
Each manner is expressed by a single word. Thus, the African is
able to express the most delicate shades of thought and
sentiment. Built on systematic and philosophic foundations, and
grammatical principles, few languages have such breadth,
character and precision.
The black African,
in consequence, is completely without racial inhibitions. Who
else among Negroes but an African would write love letters to
Queen Victoria as one chief did the last century and seriously
offer himself in marriage as monarch to monarch! King Japa of
Nigeria, who was received by Queen Victoria, flatly refused to
observe the amenity of bowing before Her majesty with the
remark: "I am a King. She's a Queen. I need not bow to her.
She could be one my wives!"
 |
Racial inhibitions would prevent the
Negro American from performing in the manner of Jomo
Kenyatta, a native of Tanganyika [nay, Kenya] whom I met
in England. he published his own picture on a pamphlet
he wrote, Hands Off the Protectorates, which
showed him wearing a van Dyke beard, bearing a spear and
swathed in a bright leopard skin. When in mufti, Jomo
always went bare-headed, wore a pink shirt, brick-red
sports jacket, and carried a silver-headed cane. this
costume against his satiny black skin made a startling
picture along London's Piccadilly. But Jomo did not
regard himself as an exhibitionist. he explained simply
that he was unconcerned about Bond Street fashions, for,
after all, they belong to the Englishmen.
Jomo worked as a farm hand seasonally. he was an utterly
charming person and a fabulous story-teller. His
tales always had social content. One such story explained how an
African tribe ended lesbianism for all time. |
Because of the many
tribal wars, according to Jomo, the men of this particular tribe
were away from their womenfolk for long periods, often to nine
months. Lesbianism swept the community, and a situation
developed resembling the plot of the Greek pay Lysistrata.
To combat this development, since there
always would be wars, the men introduced the practice of
circumcision for women, a practice that afterwards became a
religious rite which every girl had to submit to in her puberty.
Jomo declared there is no more nonsense in this story than in
the vogue for chastity belts for women in medieval Europe during
the Crusades.
The African is
intrigued by America, which has provided black Africa with Negro
heroes. The names of Joe Louis, Marian Anderson, Duke Ellington,
Dr. Ralph J. Bunche and Paul Robeson, for example, are known and
admired by every literate African. Africans are proud that
members of their race, "a tribe that wandered off centuries
ago," made the most of their contacts with the white race.
I have before me a 50-page picture magazine, called Zonk,
published by Negroes in Johannesburg, South Africa, the contents
of which dramatically illustrate this point.
On this edition, dated August 1949,
nearly one-third of the stories are concerned with Negro
Americans. Under the head, "American Letter,"
is a full-page portrait of Lena Horner, accompanied by
"The Story of Miss Horne's Rise to Stardom." A
music feature, "Negro Spirituals," with a word
about Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949), observes that
"through the old Negro spiritual songs breathes a
hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of
man. the cadences of sorrow invariably turn to
joy." The article concludes with, "They were
never composed, but sprang into life as folk songs in
the days when African slaves worked plantations in
America." |
 |
A department in Zonk, called
"Books to enjoy," contains a review of Last of the
Conquerors by William garner Smith, a Negro American
soldier, with the remark that "the novel emphasizes the
moral poverty that exists between Black and White." The
well-dressed man, according tot he advertisements, is wearing a
jazzy hat called "The Harlem Special" and casual shoes
known as "The 5th Avenue Swagger." The Harlem
Swingsters, a Bantu aggregation who have adopted such un-African
nicknames as "Pork Chops," Gravy,"
"Manhattan" and "Brooklyn," are given a
layout. They are shown "going to town" wearing zoot-suits
and pork-pie hats. The "Record
guide," prominently featuring the "Negro Kings of
Swing," lists Louis Armstrong, teddy Wilson, Slim Gaillard,
Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie; and adds such local combos as
the "Broadway Black Boys" and "African Ink
Spots." Duke Ellington, who tops the list, is described as
"the number one gentleman of American music." But
much of this feeling about America is often inspired by a
curious sort of reasoning which is not altogether flattering.
Today Africans of every tribe and nation are encouraging all
young people to study in the U.S. The reason: strident prejudice
in the U.S. makes these young people much more race conscious
than if they go to relatively free Europe. The elders believe
the bitter racialism the young African will experience, as well
as contact with race-conscious Negro Americans, will afterwards
be useful in developing a cadre of racially truculent blacks to
deal with the white rulers of Africa.
 |
The rabid revolutionary George
Padmore, a British colonial forged in the crucible of
U.s. race relations, illustrates the profound
implications in the decision to educate Negro youngsters
in race-conscious America. the British today officially
label this angry agitator the most dangerous black
radical alive. He is in fact a first-class conspirator,
a specialist in decoys, codes, and stratagems. But his
bespectacled appearance certainly does not make him look
the part, despite the ample testimony of his exploits as
a New York radical, efficient Berlin streetfighter,
slick Moscow organizer and noisy London pamphleteer. |
He is dark, wiry and of medium height, with
the mild inoffensive manner of a Negro professor at a Southern
state college. His speech has a cultivated accent and his
manners are graceful. when, in characteristic fashion, he draws
a handkerchief from his jacket sleeve, the act is done with all
the grace of a courtier.
This Negro was born Malcolm Nurse in 1903, in
Trinidad, B.W.I., where he attended St. George's College
briefly. His father, a biologist, was a British civil servant
and tried earnestly to teach his son tractability. But young
Malcolm's radical career began early when he exposed British
exploitation of the island's peasants, as a fledgling reporter
for the Trinidad Guardian. to cool his radical ardor, his
horrified parents shipped him off to the U.S. to attend Fisk
University in Nashville, Tenn.
He arrived in 1925, only to be stunned by the
discovery that Negroes were forced to ride Jim Crow trains--a
discrimination unknown in the West Indies. He soon afterwards
kicked up a fuss when attempts were made to eject him from a
"white" theater.
His refusal to bulge caused a mild
consternation and made him into a campus hero. He became editor
of the student newspaper, Fisk Herald, and soon launched attacks
upon the school's administration. Fisk, in those days, was
administered in the backward manner of the period. President
Fayette McKenzie, a white man who believed Negroes should be
trained for accommodation to the parochial South, thought
Negroes were developing a dangerous assertiveness. He
arbitrarily suspended the student paper, council and athletic
association. Negroes, led by Malcolm, promptly went on strike.
But the Nashville police quickly clubbed them into submission.
Thirty boys were hauled off to jail. In protest three hundred
withdrew from the university. Fisk lost taste
for Malcolm's radical antics. He made his way to Washington
where he enrolled in Howard University's Law School. Malcolm's
matriculation at Howard brought him within the orbit of Marxist
thinkers and he moved North and joined the New York radical
groups. He entered the Workers' School, conducted by the
Communist Party, and had the dubious distinction of being the
school's first Negro graduate. He became a paid
"functionary" and formally made his bow as a
full-fledged radical under the name "George Padmore." He
already had been fired by the Chinese Revolution, which he had
followed through a countrymen, Eugene Chen. This revolutionary,
born in Trinidad of Chinese-Negro parentage, had migrated to
China, where he became a member of the Sun Yat-sen Government.
He kept up a steady correspondence with the Negro radical. but
it is more likely that Padmore's observations of British
imperialism in the West Indies, plus his cruel racial
experiences in the South, were the determining influences that
turned him into a political and racial activist, However, not
until the Stalin-Trotsky controversy did his political horizons
broaden into the international field and give his boiling racial
angers a chance for wide expression--and this because he had
stood staunchly with Stalin.
The reason was racial: Stalin had advocated a
drive to win Negroes everywhere and Padmore mad his choice to
side with Stalin. The Fourth World Congress in 1928 had heard
Chinese, Indian, and Negro delegates criticize the communist
leadership for neglecting their color problems--Padmore says
they already had received side-mouth encouragement to raise this
issue. Negroes from the West Indies and the U.S. were
particularly critical of the British and American Communists,
and proposed a special department in the Comintern to direct
this work. This proposal dovetailed neatly with Stalin's view,
for he saw as inevitable a war against nations with big Negro
populations. Thus was the policy of the Communists adopted to
develop "a struggle for liberation of the Negro
peoples."
George Padmore, né Nurse, was chosen
to head the new Comintern racial department. And thus was an
implacable enemy of the British set into motion. he left the
U.S. and went to Moscow, where he was installed as chairman of a
Negro bureau. The office opened in 1930, with the announced
objective of finding Negroes to be trained in Moscow. Padmore
operated with a staff of several hundred, with experts on every
phase of Negro and colonial life. He published in English,
French, and Spanish an internationally circulated newspaper, The
Negro Worker. Sufficient progress had been made by 1931 to
hold a Congress of Negro Workers in Hamburg, Germany. About a
thousand Africans, West Indians, and American Negroes
participated and formulated plans for a world-wide struggle
against colonialism and color prejudice. These
were extraordinarily thorough operations. Padmore tells a story
to illustrate this "Russian penchant for political and
racial organization." One day, he said, he was in his
office conferring with an African recruit, Albert Nzula, known
as "Comrade Jackson." Nzula developed into one of the
ablest Marxists in the Comintern--but, oddly, died drunk in
Moscow, so say the reports. While they talked, an official
unknown to them rushed into the office and instructed the two
men to follow him. he gave no explanation but urged them to
hurry. He led them to a waiting automobile and they were whisked
off to a flower shop. The official bounced in and struggled out
with a huge wreath. "What's
happened?" Padmore asked anxiously. "Wait!" was
the laconic reply. They finally drew up before
a building in Red Square, where the two Negroes were hurriedly
ushered into a small ante-room, given red armbands, instructed
what next to do, and led to the entrance of a great, bare hall.
In the distance they saw a coffin standing on wooden stilts.
Bearing the huge wreath between them, they marched up to the
bier, and before the flashing bulbs of a battery of
photographers, gingerly placed the wreath at the foot of the
coffin. They drew back respectfully to
view their handiwork--and only then did did they discover that
the body lying in state was that of Stalin's deceased wife. They
had been paying solemn homage to her in the name of the
"Negro Communist Party"--that is, according to the
legends on the armbands and a red banner strung across the
wreath which bore the gold inscription: "With sympathy to
Comrade Stalin from the Negro Proletariat." The
black radical found time to meet and rub shoulders with the
Soviet great. He became a friend of Marshal Budenny, an
associate of Molotov, and was elevated to a colonelcy in the Red
Army. He also found time to run unradical errands in Europe for
his Moscow friends--one such errand involved buying razor blades
for Molotov. Padmore says in Moscow he had social equality
aplenty but no intellectual, racial or personal freedom. But
this he was to discover much later--a fact which was to turn
him, belatedly, into a racial radical exclusively. Before
this, however, Padmore had been dispatched to organize in Europe
and Africa. He had unlimited funds placed at his disposal. there
was, according to him, a network of Communists in Europe which
facilitated his movements, legal and illegal. He selected
Hamburg as the key point from which to direct his operations.
His work made headway in this city, because Russian ships had
free movement in and out of the ports, which meant he could
receive money and instructions without too much difficulty with
the German authorities. For example, from time
to time British operatives would discover inflammatory
anti-British literature in Africa. They would lodge formal
protests with the German Government, as the place from which the
material had emanated. But on such occasions the German police
would visit Padmore and inform him of the complaint and advise
him that they planned a raid to satisfy the British. They would
seize leaflets and pamphlets and inform the British that they
were being destroyed. next morning Padmore would be called to
retrieve them. His work took him to Africa
finally, which he entered with the credentials of an
"anthropologist" who planned to study the life and
customs of primitive peoples. Padmore utilized the trip to make
strategic contacts and recruit Negroes. His facility with
languages aided him immeasurably. When the race-conscious Union
of South Africa attempted to bar him, he entered that country
posing as the chauffeur of a white man, actually a
Communist. He succeeded in recruiting a
bumper crop of potential radicals. He personally smuggled sixty
out of Africa. They were shipped to Moscow where they formed the
first Negro cadre. They were trained in the hard methods of
protest and agitation, and returned to Africa eventually to
become headaches to the British. Today George
Padmore is very sad about all this. he feels that somehow he
hoodwinked his black brothers. he says ruefully, "Negroes
assumed that it was their own movement." What actually
happened was that Communist tactics changed when Russia sought
recognition of the western democracies. one price, according to
Padmore, was that Stalin had to call of the Negro bureau's
activities. When the Communists became
alarmed by the rise of Hitlerism, Stalin proposed a policy of
"collective security," in which he sought to win the
democracies to a United Front against Fascism. This too had a
price says Padmore. Consequently the emphasis on Negro and
colonial problems became secondary in the Soviet's scheme of
things. Hence they were soft-peddled and the Comintern's Negro
office was left stranded. Padmore protested
vigorously, within prescribed limits. he declared he would be
selling out those black people who had trusted him and had
accepted his leadership. The Communists denounced him as a
"black nationalist"--something akin to being called a
traitor. He quickly broke his association with the Comintern,
and with a few faithful black followers moved his office to
Berlin, and, in his words, "attempted to give a new
organization a real Negro face." He appealed to the British
labor Party for help. He says bitterly, "They reacted like
Tories." This was the beginning of the
end. Without funds, and without the disciplined personnel of the
Communist party in key places, the Negro organization floundered
and finally died. By now, Hitler had come to power and the Negro
was seized and thrown into jail. He afterwards was deported to
England where he renewed his angry struggle against British
color prejudices. Britain, in his view, is the
fountainhead of all race prejudice in the world today.
"Lest we forget," he reminded," Englishmen
introduced color prejudice into the U.S." When
told that American Negroes were deeply moved by the civilized
treatment they had received from the English people, and perhaps
might not understand his unrelenting attacks, Padmore laughed
and said: "It's the [white] pukka Sahibs who are mainly
prejudiced against the dark skin. Britons rarely go in for
rough-house prejudice within England. But meet these fellows in
Africa and you'd think you were dealing with a Georgia
cracker!" He offered as an
illustration of the English attitude the fact that in 1945 not
one British party including the Communists included a plank in
its party platform for Negro social and civil rights in the
British Isles. His fateful tussle with the
British came during World War II when he flatly refused to serve
in the army. his loud objections were typical of the man.
"If in this fifth year of war," ran his truculent
letter to the Minister of Labour and National Service, "the
mighty British Empire considers that its existence depends upon
my active cooperation, then I am afraid its chances of survival
are slim, for I am prepared to face the maximum penalty for
disregarding the summons and stand four-square behind my
political principles rather than be used as an instrument of its
imperialist policy . . . I think it is a piece of bold
effrontery to expect a victim of imperialism, who is excluded
from all the lofty declarations of the Atlantic Charter, to
contribute to the perpetuation of my own enslavement." The
Negro, who today ranks as an elder statesman of the struggle
against British prejudice, envisions the collapse of the British
Empire within our time, and consequently the collapse of
racialism--with the U.S. gleefully kicking the props from under
the racial structure. He sees little hope for Negroes under the
rule of the British Labour Party. "Remember,"
he warned, "a British Socialist is a Briton first, and a
socialist second. I don't even believe there is any such thing
as a 'British radical'--actually the words are contradictions.
Even with them in power, the Empire will never survive another
storm, for the next war will be fought as an anti-racial and
anti-imperialist war. There will be no more anti-Fascist slogans
to cover up the old racial racket of the British!" Today
this man is an unhappy and forlorn exile, with the British
keeping a wary eye on his movements. when he sought a passport
to return to the U.S., perhaps the one place the British might
permit him to go, the American embassy in London informed him
that he is forever barred from this country. Padmore suspects
collusion. So today his flat in London is a racial way-station
for Negro radicals of independent political persuasion. he has
spent the last few years in research, reflection and
writing. His book, How Britain Rules
Africa, a wholly racial approach to colonial problems,
brought him praise from Sir Stafford Cripps. Today his ably
written columns in Negro newspapers in the West Indies, Africa,
and the U.S., have profound if distant influence on the Negro
world and keep alive anti-British feelings among Negroes. Source: Chapter 4 of Roi Ottley.
No Green Pastures
. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952* *
* * *
 |
Roi Ottley
(2 August 1906-1 October
1960) was born in New York City and educated at St. Bonaventure
College (1926-1927), University of Michigan, and St. John's Law School
(Brooklyn). Ottley worked for the Amsterdam News as reporter,
columnist, and editor (1931-1937). In 1937, he joined New York
City Writers' Project as editor. His bestseller
New World
A-Coming: Inside Black America (1943), a survey of Harlem's
history, incorporated Writers'
Project reports and became a bestseller and was adapted into a
series of radio programs. Harry Hansen called it "a
book that might be classified as a social study, actually so
entertaining that it reads like a novel.
Roi Ottley grew up in Harlem, "the nerve center of
advancing Black America," and was for several years a
reporter and columnist for Harlem's Amsterdam Star News,
as well as a social worker. more
bio |
 |
George Padmore (1901-1959), born in
Trinidad, joined the Communist Party and broke away in 1935.
Leaving Russia, he set up in London the International
African Service Office (IASO), an establishment which adopted
Marxism but disentangled itself completely from Soviet
communism. In 1944, IASO became the Pan-African Union (PAU)
embracing all black students' associations and trades union in
Britain. The PAU adopted an action program which called for
self-determination and independence for all African people; the
first such call in the history of Pan-Africanism. Kwame Nkrumah
became his protégé. |
Dedicated all his life to black liberation,
Padmore authored a great number of books. The most prominent
are:
The Life and Struggles of Toiling Africans;
How
Britain Rules Africa; Africa and International Peace;
The White Man's Burden; Africa: The Third British
Empire;
The Gold Coast Revolt; and Africa Or
Communism: The Future Struggle for Africa, the book
presently under review.
Africa Or Communism: The Future Struggle
for Africa is important in that it provides the layout for
Negro movements. It gives us an insight into Garveyism and Pan-Africanism
on the intellectual and institutional planes, both in its New
World and African settings. It tells of the many battles fought
to insure Africa's unity and solidarity. The book targets young
Africans fighting for their freedom as well as for that of their
mother continent.
Inside the Caribbean Source: Current Biography 1943 |
* * *
* *
* * *
* *
Guarding the Flame of Life
/
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
* * *
* *
Ancient African Nations
Contemporary African Immigrants to The United States /
African immigration to the United States
* * *
* *
African Renaissance
/
Kwame
Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and the Old Order /
God Save His Majesty
For Kwame Nkrumah
/
Night of the Giants /
The Legend of the Saifs /
Interview with Yambo Ouologuem
Yambo
Bio & Review
African
Renaissance (Journal)
* * *
* *
Our African
Journey
We stood in El Mina slave dungeon, on the
Cape Coast of Ghana on a recent trip to West
Africa, overwhelmed by despair, grief, and
rage. Without needing to verbalize it, we
were both imagining what reaching this spot
must have felt like for some long-ago,
un-remembered African ancestor as she stood
trembling on the precipice of an unknown and
terrifyingly uncertain future.
It was hard to process the fact that for
over three hundred years, millions of women,
men and children, mothers, fathers,
grandmothers, aunts, sisters, brothers,
potters, weavers, had begun their long and
brutal journey of being captured, kidnapped,
sold, and enslaved from the very spot where
we now stood the portal now infamously known
as the door of no return.
Growing a Global Heart
Belvie and Dedan at the Door
of No Return |
 |
* * *
* *
Bob Marley— Exodus
Bob
Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and
musician. He was the lead singer, songwriter
and guitarist for the ska, rocksteady and
reggae bands The Wailers (19641974) and Bob
Marley & the Wailers (19741981). Marley
remains the most widely known and revered
performer of reggae music, and is credited
for helping spread both Jamaican music and
the Rastafari movement (of which he was a
committed member), to a worldwide audience.
* *
* * *
Exodus
By Bob Marley
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh-oh-oh,
yea-eah!
Well uh, oh. let me tell you this:
Men and people will fight ya
down (tell me why!)
When ya see Jah light.
(ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)
Let me tell you if you're not wrong; (then,
why? )
Everything is all right.
So we gonna walk—All
right!—through
de roads of creation:
We the generation (tell me why!)
Trod through great tribulation—trod
through great tribulation.
Exodus! All right! Movement of Jah people!
Oh, yeah! o-oo, yeah! All right!
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Yeah-yeah-yeah, well!
Open your eyes and look within.
Are you satisfied with the life you're
living? uh!
We know where we're going, uh!
We know where we're from.
We're leaving Babylon,
We're going to our father's land.
One, Two, Three, Four
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Movement of Jah people!—send
us another Brother Moses!
Movement of Jah people!—from
across the Red Sea!
Movement of Jah people!—send
us another Brother Moses!
Movement of Jah people!—from
across the Red Sea!
Movement of Jah people!
Exodus! All right! oo-oo-ooh! oo-ooh!
Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus!
Exodus! All right!
Exodus! now, now, now, now!
Exodus!
Exodus! oh, yea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eah!
Exodus!
Exodus! All right!
Exodus! uh-uh-uh-uh!
One, Two, Three, Four
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!
Open your eyes and look within.
Are you satisfied with the life you're
living?
We know where we're going;
We know where we're from.
We're leaving Babylon, yall!
We're going to our father's land.
Exodus! All right! Movement of Jah people!
Exodus! Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!
Jah come to break downpression,
Rule equality.
Wipe away transgression.
Set the captives free!
Exodus! All right, all right!
Movement of Jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus! Movement of Jah people! oh, now,
now, now, now!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!
uh-uh-uh-uh!
Movement of Jah people!
Move!
Movement of Jah people!
Move!
Movement of Jah people)!
Move!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people)!
Movement of Jah people)!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people!
Movement of Jah people! |
* * *
* *
 |
The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
In this
groundbreaking work, historian and scholar
Rediker considers the relationships between
the slave ship captain and his crew, between
the sailors and the slaves, and among the
captives themselves as they endured the
violent, terror-filled and often deadly
journey between the coasts of Africa and
America. While he makes fresh use of those
who left their mark in written records (Olaudah
Equiano, James Field Stanfield, John
Newton), Rediker is remarkably attentive to
the experiences of the enslaved women, from
whom we have no written accounts, and of the
common seaman, who he says was a victim of
the slave trade . . . and a victimizer.
Regarding these vessels as a strange and
potent combination of war machine, mobile
prison, and factory, Rediker expands the
scholarship on how the ships not only
delivered millions of people to slavery,
[but] prepared them for it. He engages
readers in maritime detail (how ships were
made, how crews were fed) and renders the
archival (letters, logs and legal hearings)
accessible. Painful as this powerful book
often is, Rediker does not lose sight of the
humanity of even the most egregious
participants, from African traders to
English merchants.—
Publishers
Weekly |
Marcus Rediker
is professor of maritime history at the University of
Pittsburgh and the author of
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987),
The Many-Headed Hydra (2000), and
Villains of All Nations (2005), books that
explore seafaring, piracy, and the origins of
globalization. In The Slave Ship, Rediker
combines exhaustive research with an astute and highly
readable synthesis of the material, balancing
documentary snapshots with an ear for gripping
narrative. Critics compare the impact of Rediker’s
history, unique for its ship-deck perspective, to
similarly compelling fictional accounts of slavery in
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved and Charles Johnson’s
Middle Passage. Even scholars who have written
on the subject defer to Rediker’s vast knowledge of the
subject. Bottom line:
The Slave Ship is sure to become a
classic of its subject.— Bookmarks
Magazine
* * * * *
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
/
Anniversary of a Lynching
Willie
McGhee Lynching /
My Grandfather's Execution
Dr. Robert Lee Interview /
African American Dentist in Ghana
*
* * * *
African Aid breeds African dependency
*
* * * *
Speaking Truth to Power: Selected Pan-African Postcards
By Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (Author)
Salim Ahmed Salim
(Preface), Horace Campbell (Foreword)
Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's
untimely death on African Liberation Day 2009 stunned the
Pan-African world. This selection of his Pan-African postcards,
written between 2003 and 2009, demonstrates the brilliant wordsmith
he was, his steadfast commitment to Pan-Africanism, and his
determination to speak truth to power. He was a discerning analyst
of developments in the global and Pan-African world and a vociferous
believer in the potential of Africa and African people; he wrote his
weekly postcards for over a decade. This book demonstrates Tajudeen
Abdul-Raheem's ability to express complex ideas in an engaging
manner. The Pan-African philosophy on diverse but intersecting
themes presented in this book offers a legacy of his political,
social, and cultural thought.
Represented here are his fundamental respect for the
capabilities, potential and contribution of women in
transforming Africa; penetrating truths directed at
African politicians and their conduct; and
deliberations on the institutional progress towards
African union. He reflects on culture and emphasises
the commonalities of African people.
|
 |
Also represented are his denunciations of
international financial institutions, the G8 and
NGOs in Africa, with incisive analysis of
imperialism's manifestations and impact on the lives
of African people, and his passion for eliminating
poverty in Africa. His personality bounces off the
page—one can almost hear the passion of his voice,
'Don't Agonise! Organise!'
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (1961-2009)
was a Rhodes scholar and obtained his D. Phil in Politics from Oxford
University. In 1990 he became Coordinator of the Africa Research and Information
Bureau and the founding editor of
Africa World
Review. He co-founded and led Justice Africa's work, becoming its
Executive Director in 2004, and combined this with his role as General Secretary
of the Pan-African Movement. He was chair of the Centre for Democracy and
Development and of the Pan-African Development Education and Advocacy Programme
in Uganda and became the UN Millennium Development Campaign's Deputy Director in
2006.
* *
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updated 16 October 2007
|