|
Books by Kwame
Nkrumah
Consciencism:
Philosophy and the Ideology for Decolonization
(1970) /
Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) /
Africa Must Unite
(1963)
Ghana: Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah /
Dark Days in Ghana /
Class Struggle in Africa /
The Struggle Continues
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* * *
Osagyefo on
African Renaissance
First
Annual Meeting: EAP Editorial Board
University of Ghana, West Africa
September 24, 1964
Part 1
Distinguished members of the Editorial
Board of the Africana Project, Ladies and
Gentlemen:
It is a great pleasure and privilege for me
to inaugurate this first meeting of the Editorial Board of the
Africana
Project. The presence on this Board here today of
representatives from all parts of the Continent of Africa is yet
another token of the African cultural renaissance which
is manifesting itself side by side with the political resurgence
of the African Continent.
I must also confess, distinguished guests,
that today I feel a great sense of relief and joy to think that
at long last a first significant step has been taken towards the
positive realisation and consummation of a long cherished dream.
Years ago, I felt that Africa needs to
buttress her unimpeachable claim to political independence with
parallel efforts to expose to the world the bases of her rich
culture and civilisation through the medium of a scholarly
Encyclopaedia. I therefore invited
W. E. B. Du Bois of blessed
memory to come to Ghana to help us establish the framework for
this great natural heritage.
Dr. Du Bois was happy to come to Ghana in the
very evening of his life to embark upon this task; he took
Ghanaian citizenship, and immediately plunged headlong into the
stupendous work of setting out the general aims of this project
and securing the interest and support of eminent scholars
throughout Africa for its realisation. To him this was an
exciting States to produce such an Encyclopaedia. It is perhaps
not without significance that Du Bois should have had to wait
until the very sunset of his life to find and receive
encouragement and support for this project, not in the abundance
of the United States, but rather in an Africa liberated from the
cramping and oppressive conditions of colonial rule.
In taking upon ourselves this great
responsibility for Africa, we are reminded of an old Roman
saying: "Semper aliquid novi ex Africa" [Always
something new out of Africa].
Africa had a
noble past which astounded even the ancient Roman world with its
great surprises. Yet, it was only much later, after a millennium
and a half of African history that we are now busily engaged in
reconstructing for all the world to know, that racial
exploitation and imperialist domination deliberately fostered a
new and monstrous mythology of race which nourished the popular
but unfounded image of Africa as the "Dark
Continent."
In other words, a Continent whose inhabitants
were without any past history, any contribution to world
civilization, or any hope of future development—except by the
grace of foreign tutelage!
It is unfortunate that men of learning and
men of affairs in Europe and America from a century ago down to
yesterday, have spent much valuable time to establish this
unscientific and ridiculous notion of African inferiority.
A European author declared that
"the history of
civilization on the continent begins, as concerns its
inhabitants, with Mohammedan invasion" and that
African is poorer in recorded history than can be imagined. Even
the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica also
declared:
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Africa, with the exception of the
lower Nile Valley and what is known as
Roman Africa is,
so far as its native inhabitants are concerned, a
continent practically without history and possessing no
records from which such history may be conducted . . .
the Negro (referring to the Black man) is essentially
the child of the moment and his memory, both tribal and
individual, is very short," And "if
Ancient
Egypt and
Ethiopia be excluded, the story of Africa is
largely a record of the doings of its Asiatic and
European conquerors and colonizers. |
And here I want to sound a note of caution
about the term "Negro." I hope that in the record of
the term "Negro", whatever meaning or connotation has
been given to it, will not find a place, except perhaps in a
specific article proving its opprobrious origin and redundancy.
I would like that people of African descent and Africans in
general should be described as Black men, or Africans. I
personally would like to be referred to as a Black man, African
or Ghanaian, not referred to as a "Negro".
Leo Frobenius
It would be long to attempt to survey this
field of malicious distortion against Africa. But this would be
a useless and unprofitable venture, and I am sure that your
Editorial Board would not suffer this pointless waster of
valuable time. But listen a while to
Leo Frobenius in his
Voice
of Africa:
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The ruins of the mighty past lie
slumbering within the bosom of the earth but are
glorified in the memory of men who live beneath the
sun. He dwells on the "god-like strength of
memory in those who lived before the advent of the
written word" and he continues: Every
archaeologist can quote examples from the nations of the
North. But who would imagine that the Negro Race [here
again referring to the Black race] of Africa possessed
an equally retentive mind for its store of ancient
monuments. |
It may be argued, however, that this sort of
view about Africa is dying out, and we may be accused of
whipping a dying horse. It is also true that, particularly in
the years since
World War II, there has been a marked
improvement in much of the writing by non-Africans on Africa
and there are today a number of writers and scholars who have
made signal contributions to African
historiography.
Nevertheless, it is to be doubted if the popular image of the
so-called Dark
Continent has been much affected by the
widening horizon of knowledge of Africa.
The fact is that the powerful forces which
seek to block the advance of the 280 millions of Africans
to a place of full equality in the world community and which
strive to maintain neo-colonialist or even overt colonial
domination and white supremacy rule in Africa, find it in
their interest to perpetuate the mythology of racial
inferiority.
Thus it is not simple ignorance of Africa,
but deliberate disparagement of the continent and its
people that Africanists and the Africana Project must
contend with. The foulest intellectual rubbish ever invented by
man is that of racial superiority and inferiority. We know now,
of course, that this distortion and fabrication of the image
of man was invented by the apostles of imperialism to salve
their conscience and justify their political, cultural and
economic domination of Africa.
I understand that through the medium of the
Information Report, published periodically by the
Africana
Project Secretariat, have appeared expressions of support
and pledges of co-operation in the work of this great project
from numerous eminent scholars. And I am particularly happy that
among those who have expressed their endorsement of our work are
distinguished scholars in the United States, the Soviet
Union, China, India, Britain and other countries outside Africa.
I am sure the members of the Editorial Board
share my appreciation of this world-wide support of the idea
of an Africana Project. However, it is of course only
logical that an encyclopaedia work on Africa should be produced
in Africa, under the direction and editorship of Africans,
and with the maximum participation of African scholars in all
countries.
While I believe that no contribution to the
projected Encyclopaedia should be rejected solely and simply
because the author happens to be non-African, there are surely
valid reasons why the maximum participation of African scholars
themselves should be aimed at. Let me illustrate this point with
an example from a book published just fifty years ago by
George
W. Ellis, an Afro-American who served from 1901 to 1910 as Secretary
of the United States diplomatic mission in Liberia. From
this study came his book,
Negro Culture in West Africa,
published in 1914.
Part 2
In the Preface to this work Ellis tells
how he had sought to widen his knowledge of Africa, before
coming to Liberia, by the diligent study of encyclopaedias,
geographies, and works of ethnology and anthropology, only to
find that much of this information was "unsupported by the
facts" and gave a picture "substantially
different" from the character of African life which he
himself found in West Africa.
Acknowledging the services of European
authors such as
Harry Johnston, Lady Lugard and
others, Ellis stated that to him:
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it
seems more necessary and imperative that the African
should explain his own culture, and interpret his own
thought and soul life, if the complete truth is to be
given to the other races of the earth. |
But there were already men in West Africa who
had blazed a significant trail in this direction:
Edward Wilmot Blyden,
Joseph Casely Hayford and
John Mensah Sarbah. Many
other Africans in preceding generations helped to lay the basis
of our present efforts to project a new African image of Africa.
One thinks of such figures as
James Africanus B. Horton
and his
A Vindication of the African Race
(1868) and of
Carl Reindorf
[History
of the Gold Coast and Asante],
Attoh Ahumah,
Anthony
William Amu,
Samuel Johnson of Oyo,
Blaise Diagne,
Herbert Macaulay and others in West Africa, of
Duse
Mohammed Effendi of the Sudan,
Lewanika of
Barotseland,
Apolo Kagwa of Buganda, and leaders such as
John Tengo Jabavu,
Solomon T. Plaatje, and
Clements Kedalie in South Africa.
And let us not forget the important
contributions of others in the New World, for example, the sons
of Africa in Haiti, such as
Antenor Firmin and
Dr. Jean Price-Mars,
and others in the United States such as
Alexander Crummell,
Carter G. Woodson
and our own
Dr. Du Bois.
All of those whose names I have mentioned
believed in and urged the necessity of writing about Africa
from the point of view of African interests and African
assumptions and concepts—and not from the point of view of
Europeans or others who have quite different interests,
assumptions and concepts, whether conscious or unconscious. This
is precisely what we mean when we say that the Africana
Project must be frankly Afro-centric in its interpretation
of African history and of the social and cultural institutions
of the African and people of African descent everywhere.
It is to be hoped, therefore, that the work
on the
Africana
Project may provide both the forum and
the motivation for the development of a virile and salutary
new trend in the writing of African history, writing which
will rank in scholarship with any other
historiography, but
which will also be based upon a frame of reference that is
independently African, and will lead the way in independent
thinking about Africa and its problems.
I am anxious that I should not be
misunderstood in my emphasis on an Afro-centric point of view
for the
Africana
Project. There are some who will say that
his implies simply reversing the faults and distortions of the
colonialist minded writers on Africa, painting everything
white that they pictured as black, and everything black that
they pictured as white.
I should like to assure our guests, the
members of the Editorial Board, that that is in no sense my
conception of what the Encyclopaedia Africana
should be. Most certainly it must and will set the record
straight on many points of African history and culture. But
it will do this not simply on the basis of assertion backed by
nothing more than emotion, but rather on the foundation of
first-class scholarship linked with the passion for scientific
truth.
I will not romanticize or idealize the
African past, I will not gloss over African failings,
weaknesses and foibles, or endeavour to demonstrate that
Africans are endowed with either greater virtues or lesser vices
than the rest of mankind. There is undoubtedly considerable
evidence of much that is noble and glorious in our African past;
there is no need to gild the Lily nor to try to hide that which
is ignoble. But here again it is a question of whose standards
and values you are applying in assessing something as noble or
ignoble, and I maintain that the
Africana
Project must reject
non-African value-judgments of things African.
It is true that despite the great advances
made during the last twenty years in the various
disciplines of African studies, so much of Africa's history has
yet to be unearthed, scientifically analysed, and fully
comprehended. This sometimes gives rise to the question whether
enough is yet known to undertake at this time the compilation
of an encyclopaedia of the sort envisaged. Those who
entertain such hesitation and doubt only expose the extent of
their ignorance about Africa's great past.
Before the colonial era in Africa, Europeans
had had many encounters with Africans on the cross-roads of
history. They had married into African royal families,
received Africans into their courts as ambassadors and social
equals, and their writers had depicted African characters as
great heroes in their literature. In common with the rest of
mankind Africans made extensive use of cereals, they learned the
art of raising cattle, adapted metal tools and weapons to their
own use, and, to quote
Basil Davidson,
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undertook mining and smelting and
forging on a continental scale, borrowed crops from
other lands, introduced soil conservation, discovered
the medicinal value of a host of herbs and plants, and
worked out their own explanations of mankind and the
universe. All this had happened before the first ships
set forth from Europe. |
Let me give another quotation even at the
risk of boring you, this time from
Leo Frobenius again, a
well-known historian who made 17 expeditions into African,
North, East, West and South, in order to learn at first hand of
the culture of the African peoples. Frobenius makes a basic
statement in his book African Civilisation, which unfortunately
has not yet been translated into English. Doubtless, there is
reason why no complete translation has yet been made. From a
limited translation made by Anna Malise Graves, I quote:
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When they, European navigators,
arrived in the Gulf of Guinea and landed at Ouidah in
Dahomey, the captains were greatly astonished to find
streets well laid out, bordered on either side for
several leagues with two rows of trees, and men clad in
richly coloured garments of their own weaving. Further
south in the kingdom of the Congo, a swarming crowd
dressed in silk and velvet, great states well ordered
and down to the most minute details, powerful rulers,
flourishing industries, civilised to the manner of their
bones.
And the condition of the
countries on the eastern coast, Mozambique, for
instance, was quite the same. The revelations of the
navigators from 15th to the 17th century gave
incontrovertible proofs that Africa stretching south
from the edge of the Sahara desert was still in full
flower—the flower of harmonious and well-ordered civilisations. And this fine flowering the European
conquistadors or conquerors annihilated as far as they
penetrated into the country. |
Indeed, the history of Africa goes back into
the dim recesses of time and antiquity. There are even
scientists in our time who are beginning to claim that Africa
was the very cradle of mankind. The fossil remains of man
discovered by
Dr. L.S.B. Leakey in Tanganyika have been
dated by scientific processes as one and three-quarter million
(1,750,000) years old. From the head waters of the Nile in
Tanganyika let us move swiftly to its mouth on the Mediterranean
Sea and the Isthmus of Suez where the great civilization of
Egypt was fostered for thousands of years down to the
Christian era. There, as we all know, man rose to the
phenomenal heights of statecraft, science and religion and the
excellence of the arts. Evidence from language, religion,
astronomy, folklore and divine kinship, as well as geographical
and physical proximity, confirms the basic African origin of
this Egyptian cultural eminence.
This great flowering of the mind in Africa
was unfortunately scorched by the ravages of the slave
trade which encouraged extensive destruction through tribal
warfare. Close upon this set in the evil of colonisation
and the deliberate effort, to which I have already referred, of
painting the African black and backward as a valid
justification for colonial rule. I have endeavoured to touch
on some of these questions only as a means of making a clear
case for justifying our attempts to provide Africa with an Encyclopaedia
portraying vividly the glory of Africa's great past.
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After all, this is where the work should
be done . . . in Africa, sponsored by
Africans, for Africa.—W. E. B. Du Bois [1868-1963], Founding Director
of the Secretariat Encyclopaedia Africana Project (EAP),
Accra, Ghana, West Africa |
I should now like to say just a few words on
the vital question of how this great undertaking is to be
carried through to completion. I must say at the outset that a
broad policy having been laid down, the precise plans for
achieving it must be left to the Editorial Board and its staff
of competent experts. My purpose is only to call attention to
the underlying principle—the principle of Pan-African
co-operation—which I believe to be indispensable in any
concrete plans of work on the Encyclopaedia.
As you are aware, the preparatory work on
this project has been carried forward for a little more than two
years by a Secretariat here in Accra, functioning under the
aegis of the Ghana Academy of Sciences.
This Secretariat has not been content to work in isolation; it
has been continually active in establishing contacts with
scholars and institutions throughout Africa and abroad.
A motion declaring "that all African
countries should contribute to the work of the Secretariat"
was unanimously adopted at a Conference on the Africana
Project Encyclopaedia Africana attended by some 150 persons
from Africa and elsewhere in December, 1962. Soon thereafter,
the Secretariat undertook the establishment of Co-operating
Committees of scholars in various African countries.
The Secretary of the Secretariat, Dr. W.
A. Hunton, met with several of these Committees during a
tour which he made in East and North Africa some months ago.
Following this came the nominations by the Co-operating
Committees of their respective representatives to serve on the
Editorial Board of the Encyclopaedia. In this way the basis, at
least, of Pan-African co-operation in this work has been
established.
The members of the Editorial Board now have
before them the Secretariat's detailed prospectus of what
the Africana Project Encyclopaedia Africana should contain and
how the material should be presented. This is merely a blueprint
of what is to be constructed. The Editorial Board members
are asked to examine this blueprint with great care, proposing
whatever alterations they consider would result in a more
perfect plan for the Encyclopaedia. Once this has been agreed
upon, the stage will have been set for the play to begin—that
is to say, for the work of preparing and assembling the Encyclopaedia articles to commence. I sincerely trust that the
deliberations of the Editorial Board at this first meeting will
successfully hit that mark.
The progress of the work from that point only
will depend in the first instance, as I see it, on the degree of
whole-hearted and effectively organised support that can be
procured from African scholars in all countries, from the many
institutes of African studies and research agencies of various
kinds which are to be found today throughout our continent, and
from the various independent African governments which are ready
to provide the fullest measure of financial support for this
work.
So far, the financial burden has been borne
by the Government of Ghana alone. As I have already
stated, I have no specific proposals to present with regard to
these matters. But I am convinced that the task is not
insuperable. The fact that we have advanced this far in
accomplishing, almost single-handedly, the formation of a Pan-African
Editorial Board of the Africana Project.
Encyclopaedia Africana augurs success in the
further stages of the work. I trust this project will be
welcomed by all the African Heads of State, and will have
the full support of the
Organisation of African Unity. We
must now think in terms of continental political unity in
everything we do for Africa. Without such cohesion and unity
none of us can survive the intrigues and divisive forces of the
imperialists and neo-colonialists.
The work of this Africana Project (Encyclopaedia
Africana) will take us one further step towards the great
objective to which we are dedicated—a Continental Union
Government of Africa.
Speaking on behalf of the Government of the
Republic of Ghana and as Chancellor of our Universities, I can
assure the members of the Editorial Board that work on this
Encyclopaedia will have the fullest co-operation of our
Universities, learned societies and research institutions in
Ghana, as well as the financial support of the Government of
Ghana.
Distinguished scholars and members of the
Editorial Board of the Africana Project (Encyclopaedia Africana),
on behalf of the Government and people of Ghana and on my own
behalf, I extend a warm welcome to you. May this your first
meeting mark the auspicious beginning of your work in a great
undertaking for the benefit of mankind.
Source:
http://www.endarkenment.com/eap/legacy/scholars/index.htmKwame Nkrumah (21
September 1909 - 27 April 1972) was the leader of
Ghana and its predecessor state, the
Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's
independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the
first
President of Ghana and the first
Prime Minister of Ghana. An influential 20th century
advocate of
Pan-Africanism, he was a founding member of the
Organization of African Unity and was the winner of the
Lenin Peace Prize in 1963. . . . Nkrumah's advocacy of
industrial development at any cost, with help of longtime friend
and Minister of Finance,
Komla Agbeli Gbedema, led to the construction of a
hydroelectric power plant, the
Akosombo Dam on the
Volta River in eastern Ghana.
Kaiser Aluminum agreed to build the dam for Nkrumah, but
restricted what could be produced using the power generated.
Nkrumah borrowed money to build the dam, and placed Ghana in
debt. To finance the debt, he raised taxes on the cocoa farmers
in the south. This accentuated regional differences and
jealousy. The dam was completed and opened by Nkrumah amidst
world publicity on 22 January 1966. Nkrumah appeared to be at
the zenith of his power, but the end of his regime was only days
away.
Nkrumah wanted Ghana to
have modern armed forces, so he acquired aircraft and ships, and
introduced conscription.He also gave military support to those
fighting the
Smith administration in
Zimbabwe, then called
Rhodesia. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state
visit to
North Vietnam and
China, his government was overthrown in a military
coup led by
Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka and the
National Liberation Council. Several commentators, such as
John Stockwell, have claimed the coup received support from
the
CIA. . . .
Nkrumah never returned to
Ghana, but he continued to push for his vision of African
unity. He lived in exile in
Conakry,
Guinea, as the guest of President
Ahmed Sékou Touré, who made him honorary co-president of the
country. He read, wrote, corresponded, gardened, and entertained
guests. Despite retirement from public office, he was still
frightened of western intelligence agencies. When his cook died,
he feared that someone would poison him, and began hoarding food
in his room. He suspected that foreign agents were going through
his mail, and lived in constant fear of abduction and
assassination. In failing health, he flew to
Bucharest,
Romania, for medical treatment in August 1971. He died of
skin cancer in April 1972 at the age of 62.—Wikipedia
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* * *
Race for
the AU Chair: Africa’s Soul Searching Moment,
Unique In History—4 February 2012—Kwame
Nkrumah wrote in his book,
Africa Must Unite!
, as far back as 1960: “We in Africa
who are pressing now for unity are deeply
conscious of the validity of our purpose. We
need the strength of our combined numbers and
resources to protect ourselves from the very
positive dangers of returning to colonialism in
disguised forms. We need it to combat the
entrenched forces dividing our continent and
still holding back millions of our brothers. We
need it to secure total African liberation. We
need it to carry forward our construction of a
socio-economic system that will support the
great mass of our steadily rising population at
levels of life which will compare with those in
the most advanced countries.”
Just a year
after that, he published another book, I
Speak of Freedom, 1961, in which he laboured
the point: “Divided we are weak; united, Africa
could become one of the greatest forces for good
in the world. I believe strongly and sincerely
that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity,
the innate respect for human lives, the intense
humanity that is our heritage, the African race,
united under one federal government, will emerge
not as just another world bloc to flaunt its
wealth and strength, but as a Great Power whose
greatness is indestructible because it is built
not on fear, envy and suspicion, nor won at the
expense of others, but founded on hope, trust,
friendship and directed to the good of all
mankind.”
For many a
doubting Thomas, all they need to do to
understand what has been going on with our
African leaders, is to read from “Declassified
National Security Council and Central
Intelligence Agency documents”, which “provide
compelling, new evidence of United States
government involvement in the 1966 overthrow of
Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah.” In one of
these declassified documents, March 12, 1966
(Document 260), Robert W. Komer, according to
Paul Lee, “first joined the White House as a
member of President Kennedy’s NSC staff,” “had
worked as a CIA analyst for 15 years”, and “now
acting special assistant for national security
affairs, wrote a congratulatory assessment to
the President on March 12, 1966 (Document 260).
His assessment of Nkrumah and his successors was
telling:
‘The coup
in Ghana,’ he crowed, ‘is another example of a
fortuitous windfall. Nkrumah was doing more to
undermine our interests than any other black
African. In reaction to his strongly
pro-Communist leanings, the new military regime
is almost pathetically pro-Western.’”
“Where the
more subtle methods of economic pressure and
political subversion have failed to achieve the
desired result,” Nkrumah wrote from exile in
Guinea three years later, “there has been resort
to violence in order to promote a change of
regime and prepare the way for the establishment
of a puppet government.”
Today, what
is as stake, is not just a matter of
systematically replacing a revolutionary
anti-imperialist regime with a puppet
government, they want to swallow up the entire
continent with one full sweep. Once more,
another undeclared war between China and Africa
seems to top the priorities of those who pretend
to be our friends and stab us in the back, as
quickly as they can, in order to perpetuate and
maintain what they call “Full Spectrum
Dominance”.— PanAfricanistInternational
* *
* * *
A Statement Concerning
the Encyclopaedia Africana Project—by W.E.B. Du BoisDirector of
the Secretariat—Accra Ghana, West Africa—April, 1962—Early
in 1962 preparatory work toward the compilation and production
of an Encyclopedia Africana was formally initiated in Accra,
Ghana, under the sponsorship of the Ghana Academy of Sciences.
As Director of the Secretariat for this undertaking, I am
naturally most anxious that what we propose become both well
known and properly understood in scholarly circles throughout
the world, to the end that we may secure the widest possible
cooperation. It is with this purpose in mind that the present
brief, preliminary statement is offered.
First, a word of
background. In 1909 when I was teaching history and economics in
the Negro University of Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, I proposed
the preparation of an "Encyclopedia Africana". I secured as
members of the Board of Advisors, in addition to sixty-two
American Negro scholars,
Sir Henry
Johnston, K.C.B., and Professor
W.M.
Flinders Petrie, D.C.L, of England; Professor
Giuseppe
Sergi of Italy; Dr. J. Denniker of France; Professor William
James, LL.D., and
Franz Boas,
Ph.D. of Harvard and Columbia respectively, and many others.
However, I was never able to raise the funds to carry the
enterprise forward.
In 1934 the Phelps Stokes
fund initiated a new project to prepare and publish an "Encyclopedia
of the Negro." I was chosen as Editor-in-Chief and for the next
ten years gave intermittent effort to the project; but again the
necessary funds, which we estimated then at $260,100, could not
be secured. Perhaps it was too soon to expect so large an amount
for so ambitious a project to be carried out by Negroes and
built mainly on Negro scholarship. Nevertheless, a preparatory
volume summarizing the effort was published in 1944.
When I was in Ghana, West
Africa, in 1960 witnessing the inauguration of the independent
Republic, the President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, asked me if I again
would plan an Encyclopedia Africana. I consented to do this and
to consult personally and by letter a number of persons who
might be interested in this project.
My idea is to prepare and
publish an Encyclopedia not on the vague subject of race, but on
the peoples inhabiting the continent of Africa. I propose an
Encyclopedia edited mainly be African scholars. I am anxious
that it be a scientific production and not a matter of
propaganda. While there should be included among its writers the
best students of Africa in the world, I want the proposed
Encyclopedia to be written mainly from the African point of view
by people who know and understand the history and culture of
Africans. . . .—Endarkenment
*
* * * *
Marcus Garvey "Africa For The Africans" /
Look For Me in The Whirlwind
Marcus Mosiah
Garvey /
Marucs Garvey Speech
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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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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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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
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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
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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