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Letters On
Africa
from Ben
Schwartz
Dear
Rudy,
Thank you for refreshing my
memory. I should very much like to meet and talk with Mr.
Rogers. Although I would love to visit Cuba and capture their
theater and dance for world audiences, my Spanish is limited to
cafe con leche. My friend Mauro who is in charge of our
Argentina events is, of course Portuguese speaking. I would love
to go with Mr. Rogers along with my son. If Mr. Rogers is
willing I could help defer his expenses.
Anything I send you you are
welcome to use as you wish. As a young man I sold watermelons on
the streets of Washington. At the end of a summer my attorney
said I should buy six acres and an old house on the corner of
Wisconsin and Western Ave in Chevy Chase. I asked him how much
cash was needed and he replied $3000. down and $23,000 mortgage.
I told him I needed my money to get married and go to school.
So, he lent me the $3,000.
One year later the property
was zoned commercial and I sold it to Lord and Taylor for over a
million dollars profit. And from there to dealing with a very
wealthy oil man about whom The Ugly American was written, and
then as Vincent Astor's son ( Tony Marshall) as Vice-President
in Charge of investments for The African Research and
Development Company, then my own company Intervest, and so on.
I was involved in the most
exciting adventures in South Africa, Nigeria, Niger, Gabon,
Kenya, Southern Rhodesia ( I sent my 16 year old five years ago
to Zimbabwe) Ghana, Angola, et al. Did you read my attachment,
"Glory Days," that pokes a little fun at my naiveté.
So it is. When we meet
I will do my best to regale you with my tales of Africa
including delivering 50,000 dollars to Lumumba in Paris.
However, let God grant me a little more time for at least one
grand adventure, and I will give up thanks. I am hooked on
adrenalin and lust for adventure. As I grow older I realize that
Americans were cursed by Puritanical ideas.
"The only black woman I had ever touched was my mammy,
Maud. And she was seventy years old and smoked a corncob
pipe and used snuff. And now I was being asked to double-date
with two young maids whose skin was the color of ripe black
olives" (“Glory
Days” ).
After making money in Africa I returned to NY and bought The
Little Theater (next to Sardi's) and we opened with Langston
Hughes Tambourines to Glory starring Clara Ward, and featuring
Bob Guillaume, Lou Gosset, Mickie Grant, Roxy Roker, all young
and unknown artists.
Anyhow, it is a long story and much better told over a glass of
wine. I believe I can revolutionize and democratize theater.
Sound ambitious. It's a piece of cake.
By the way my daughter is a doctor at John Hopkins (after a
career in the Army) and lives in Towson.
Regards, Ben
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Dear
Rudy,
Thank you for your kind
interest in my stories. I write for my own pleasure and “Glory
Days” needs to be finished. My
trip was motivated by the same lust and greed that prompted the Conquistadors. "Glory
Days” is very personal. We went
to Africa to exploit. We went to make a fortune and come back to
London or New York and spend the money. To my surprise I fell in
love with the impossible, a black woman. Nor Lena Horne, but an
African woman six feet tall richer, better educated and much
brighter than I was.
I
write about the defeat of Colonialism, a defeat that after
Vietnam and Cuba we are just beginning to accept. Slavery, the
holocaust, and The Inquisition are the results of
"Colonialism" i.e. the taking of a people's resources
by a superior army. I write Glory days as a satire and point the
irony of White perception of their superiority. I knew Toure,
Lumumba, Vervord, Ian Smith, Welensky, Akintola, Festus Ekote
Iboh, Enaraho, Mandela, Jomo Kenyatta, Amadu Bello, Idi Amin,
and Nkrumah. Today the U.S. still indulges in Iraq this
colonialism and believes in the right to drop bombs on
innocent people.
I
believe with your editorial help I can give an insight into
the Africa of Change. When my son was sixteen I sent my son to
Zimbabwe to visit old friends. We ran into Mr. Mugabe
and that is another story. I would be happy to provide material
for your journal. At my age I am beginning to realize that most
of my life I have lived in Plato's cave, and not in a real
world.
I will send you more
material.
Regards, Ben
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Dear
Rudy,
I read your commentary on
Gangsters in Nigeria and was amused. We should do an article
entitled "Dash" (bribe) which was a way of life. A
character you will often meet in "Glory
Days" is Amadu Bello
(The Sardonna of Sokoto) who I first met in his Palace Parade
Grounds wearing the armor his ancestors had worn when conquering
Spain. He entered from one side preceded by 400 of his children
(wards of the state) who came bearing flowers for me.
During
negotiations he came to my rondeval at midnight with his
secretary and dictated a six million dollar letter of credit. I
asked him, " Sir, why are we doing it this way?" He
answered, "Because I do not trust my ministers!"
Several years later he was assassinated in his sleep. He was an
absolutely fair, just, and incorruptible officer of Africa. The
historic animosities between the Hausa, Fulani, Ibo, and
Christian are unrelenting and grim. During a meeting Bello began
speaking in Swahili, he looked at me and said, “your language
is better for business, but ours is better for politics.
Regards, Ben
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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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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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
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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update 26 July 2008
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