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Books by Ellen Tarry
The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman
(1955) /
Janie Belle /
My Dog Minty
/
Hezekiah
Horton
Young Jim: The Early Years of James Weldon
Johnson /
The Other Toussaint
/
Saint Katherine Drexel
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Books on A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph: Pioneer of the Civil Rights
Movement /
A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard
A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait /
A. Philip Randolph and the African American Labor Movement
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Mr. Randolph Visits Ghana
By Ellen Tarry
Listening to A. Philip Randolph, International
President of the brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and first
Negro to become a vice-president of the powerful A. F. L.-C.I.O.,
talk about his recent trip to Africa where he represented American
labor at the Independence Day Ceremonies in Accra, Ghana, was a
great experience. Besides sharing Mr. Randolph's impressions of
this portentous occasion, we also had the privilege of hearing him
discuss his views on the type of opportunity Ghana offers the
American Negro; and to learn that most of the African leaders he
met received their earlier training in Catholic mission schools.
In Mr. Randolph's voice, there was a note of
awe, tinged with the humility found only in the truly great, when
he described his impression of the ceremony which signaled the
birth of Africa's newest nation. he spoke of the tremendous crowd
on the grounds outside the parliament House in Accra which waited
in almost breathless silence for the moment when the cry of
"Freedom! freedom!" could ring out in observance of the
end of years of struggle for independence from great Britain.
"As I stood in the midst of that great
concourse of people on march 6th and, at one minute past 12
o'clock, watched the new red, green and gold flag of Ghana replace
the British colors," he said. "I knew I was witnessing a
part of the African drama which is so bewildering--as regards
scale and scope--that not even the Africans realize its full
import. Though normally imperturbable, i was visibly
touched," Mr. Randolph admitted.
In pursuit of a lighter note, he described the
colorfulness of the crowds attending the various ceremonies; the
women in their gaily flowered skirts and blouses; the men in
toga-styled robes of brilliant hues, with the native chieftains resplendent in ceremonial dress, protected by ornate umbrellas,
which servants held over these native rulers even when indoors.
Any discussion of Ghana takes on added
significance when mention is made of Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister
and head of the incumbent Convention People's Party who was
elected to office while serving a prison term for "unlawful
agitation." Mr. Randolph said he felt Nkrumah was largely
responsible for the startling lack of bitterness on the part of
the people of Ghana toward the British who had ruled them for
almost a century as a result of a pact which was signed by a group
of native chieftains, who had thereby unwittingly transferred most
of their power to England and her civil servants.
Mr. Randolph said Ghana's prime minister had
explained this lack of bitterness to him as being the result of
the determination of the people of the Gold Coast, the Ashanti,
the northern territories and Togoland--the four areas which united
to form Ghana--to achieve "consolidation and freedom, not
revenge."
Mr. Nkrumah's attitude toward the thinking
behind the popular slogan, "Africanization of Africa,"
which is heard throughout Africa and Asia, was of special interest
to Mr. Randolph.
"The prime minister admitted that he looks
forward to the day when his people can man the various agencies
and services of their government." Mr. Randolph said,
"but he maintained that though his administration would be in
complete control of policy, it would be some time before Ghana
would be in a position to dispense with the services of the
British specialists who have kept the wheels of government running
for so many years."
"What does all this mean to the American
Negro?"
we asked. "do you feel that Ghana offers us any
opportunity?"
"I will say this," Mr. Randolph
paused, "Ghana needs technicians. For American Negroes with
technical training who are looking for opportunities, I feel they
will find them in Ghana," and he spoke for several minutes of
the need of this new nation for a broad diversification of its
economy which, he said, is presently tied too closely to the cocoa
crop grown largely in the Ashanti section. he saw great hope for
diversification if and when the Trans-Volta dam is completed. this
one project, he pointed out, would supply enough power to launch
numerous manufacturing industries.
"Do the Ghanaians see a relationship
between their recent struggle for freedom and the American Negro's
fight for civil rights?" we asked.
"Our problem is so different from the
situation with which they were confronted inasmuch as we are
seeking recognition and integration instead of the independence
they sought that I am afraid the relationship is not too obvious
to them," Mr. Randolph explained that the Africans do not
have access to our Negro press, through which they might learn
more of the Negro's fight for the first class citizenship. Though
their leaders are familiar with the problems which face their
American brothers, the masses are more aware of America as a world
power.
"They have heard much about American
policy, pro and con," he continued, "And in considering
the American scene in general, I would say that Vice-president
Nixon was a most valuable and effective ambassador of good-will on
this African trip.
It was impossible to overcome the temptation to
ask Mr. Randolph why he thought the Vice-President of the United
States would travel thousands of miles to spread good-will in
Africa and at the same time refuse to accept the invitation of
Negro leaders to visit our own southern states for the purpose of
observing the manner in which brown Americans are denied their
constitutional rights in Dixie.
Tactfully, Mr. Randolph reminded us that Mr.
Nixon is not the president of the United States and must still
take orders from his superior and the Republican Party.
Being aware that we had strayed from the
subject, asked Mr. Randolph what his impressions were of the youth
of Ghana. he said Mr. Nkrumah and his administration are launching
plans to speed up their educational program as one means of
preparing the future leaders and also cutting the rate of
illiteracy, which is estimated to be between 75 and 80%.
Without knowing that his statement would fall
on prejudiced ears, Mr. Randolph said that most of the African
leaders he met on the trip had been trained in Catholic mission
schools. He said he thought the Catholic missionaries had gotten
closer to the Africans because they had granted the natives more
recognition than had any of the other religious groups. Though
two-thirds of Africa is still pagan, he is of the opinion that,
numerically, Catholicism is second only to Moslemism on that
continent.
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Mr. Randolph smiled as he told how he happened
to meet a dignitary well-known to the Catholic reading public.
"I saw a Negro priest standing a few feet from a crowd
attending one of the ceremonies," he said. "I went up
and introduced myself and the priest turned out to be Bishop
Bowers.
"The Most Reverend Jospeh O. Bowers, S.V.D.,
Bishop of Accra, whose consecration at Bay St. Louis, Miss., in
1954 attracted world-wide attention, was so pleased that A. Philip
Randolph had introduced himself. He took him on a tour of his
mission school there in Accra.
"If Catholicism and Moslemism are so
strong in Africa," we asked, "what about communism? Is
it a real threat?"
(Photo left) Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago and the
Most Rev. Joseph O. Bowers, SVD, Bishop of Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana)
with Sargent Shriver and other officers of the Chicago Interracial
Council
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"There is no doubt that Africa is
communism's major target," Mr. Randolph declared. "The
Soviet Union sent the largest delegation of any of the countries
to Ghana and they entertained more lavishly than any of the
others. There was little doubt about their intentions." "Do you foresee a struggle between
Democracy and communism in Africa?"
Mr. Randolph thought a second before he
answered; "I see three separate struggles going on in Africa
at the same time. There is the battle between paganism and
Christianity, then comes the struggle between Catholicism and
Moslemism, and finally the struggle between Democracy and
communism."
As to the outcome of the triple faceted African
struggle, Mr. Randolph had this to say: "First, Christianity
must be divorced from colonialism. Then Democracy, as practiced in
America, must be aware that it will not have wide-spread appeal or
integrity until the American Negro is given full recognition. Both
transformations must takes place if Christianity and Democracy
hope to win in Africa. if, on the other hand, Africa is allowed to
go the way of Red China--" Mr. Randolph shook his head and
the implication of doom needed no further words to reinforce its
meaning.
The wisdom of the charming, copper-colored man
before us who has been leading his people in their fight for
integration more than a quarter of a century, was reflected once
more when we asked if he was of the opinion that the United States
should send an American Negro to Ghana as Ambassador.
"I think it is important," he said,
"that the American Ambassador to Ghana be a person of sound
democratic instincts and possess a high degree of statesmanship,
along with a keen awareness of the world situation. If there are
Negroes in line for this position who possess these qualities,
they might well be screened by the State Department with this in
mind. However, I do not think the Ambassadorship of Ghana should
be limited to persons of color just as I do not feel that American
Negroes in diplomatic should be limited to assignments in African
or Asian countries."
Taking leave of A. Philip Randolph, we could
not help but reflect that he possessed the very qualities he had
underscored as important qualifications for an ambassador who is
charged with the task of representing the United States, whether
the assignment be to the new nation of Ghana, whose birth he had
witnessed, or to a country like Great Britain where diplomacy is a
fine and age-old art.
Source: Interracial Review, May 1957
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Ellen Tarry (September 26, 1906 –
September 23, 2008) was an African-American author of literature
for children and young adults. Tarry was the first African
American picture book author. She was born in Birmingham,
Alabama. Although raised in the Congregational Church, she
converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922. She attended Alabama
State Normal School, now Alabama State University, and became a
teacher in Birmingham. At the same time, she began writing a
column for the local African-American newspaper entitled
"Negroes of Note", which focused on racial injustice and
promoted racial pride. In 1929, she moved to New York City in
hope of becoming a writer. There she befriended such Harlem
Renaissance literary figures as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay
and Countee Cullen.
She was also a civil servant, social worker, and
educator. A friend of Claude McKay and James Weldon Johnson she
attended the Writer's Laboratory in New York and obtained a job
as writer-researcher in New York's Federal Writers' Project. She
also joined White Russian Catherine de Hueck's Harlem movement
"The House of Friendship." She was the author of such
children books as
Janie Belle,
My Dog Minty,
Hezekiah
Horton,
Young Jim: The Early Years of James Weldon
Johnson and made many aware of
The Other Toussaint. |
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Asa Philip Randolph
was born April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida, the second
son of the Rev. James William Randolph, a tailor and
minister in the
African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Elizabeth Robinson
Randolph, a skilled
seamstress. In 1891 the family moved to Jacksonville,
Florida, which had a thriving, well-established African-American
community.
From his father, Randolph
learned that color was less important than a person's character
and conduct. From his mother, he learned the importance of
education and of defending oneself physically against those who
would seek to hurt one or one's family, if necessary. Randolph
remembered vividly the night his mother sat in the front room of
their house with a loaded shotgun across her lap, while his
father tucked a pistol under his coat and went off to prevent a
mob from
lynching a man at the local county jail.
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He was a
leader in the
U.S.'s Negro
civil-rights movement and the
American labor movement. He organized and led
the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first
predominantly Negro labor union. In the
early civil-rights movement, Randolph led the
March on Washington Movement, which convinced
Franklin D. Roosevelt to desegregate
production-plants for military supplies during
World War II.
In 1963, Randolph was the head of
the
March on Washington, which was organized by
Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his
I Have A Dream speech. Randolph inspired the
Freedom budget, sometimes called the "Randolph
Freedom budget," which aimed to deal with the
economic problems facing the Negro community,
particularly workers and unemployed Negroes. . . .
Randolph died
May 16, 1979. A statue of A. Philip Randolph was
erected in his honor in the concourse of
Union Station in Washington, D.C. In 1986 a
nine-foot bronze statue of Randolph by Tina Allen
was erected in Boston's Back Bay commuter train
station. On February 3, 1989, the United States
Postal Service issued a 25 cent postage stamp in his
honor. In 2002, scholar
Molefi Kete Asante listed A. Philip Randolph on
his list of
100 Greatest African Americans
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Books on A. Philip
Randolph
Jervis Anderson,
A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (1973;
University of California Press, 1986).
Sarah E. Wright,
A. Philip Randolph: Integration in the Workplace (Silver
Burdett Press, 1990),
Paula Pfeffer,
A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement
(1990; Louisiana State University Press, 1996).
Andrew E. Kersten,
A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard (Rowan and
Littlefield, 2006).
Cynthia Taylor,
A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of An African American
Labor Leader (NYU Press, 2006).
Source:
Wikipedia
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Ghana—Samia Nkrumah
hGhana became African's first country to
gain freedom in 1957 and has since grown tremendously both
politically and economically. Kwame Nkrumah is known as the
country's founding father and we meet his daughter Samia Nkrumah
in our next story -- who is determined to follow in her fathers
footsteps.
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Relations
Between Africans and African Americans: Misconceptions, Myths
and Realities
By
Godfrey Mwakikagile
(Grand
Rapids, Michigan: National Academic Press, 2005) 302 pages
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Cape Coast Castle. A Collection of Poems By Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang
/
Forts and Castles
of Ghana by
Albert van Dantzig
Chiefs in Cape
Coast, Ghana /
Grand Durbar Parade
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Dentist Dr. Robert Lee
Championed African-American Community in
Ghana
In the
mid-1950s, Dr. Robert Lee, a dentist from
South Carolina, moved to Ghana to escape
racism in the south. Over the next half
century, Lee became a fixture in the
African-American community in the West
African country. Dr. Lee died on Monday,
July 5th at the age of 90. But few here in
his home state, or in the States at all,
knew of his work. But in Ghana, he made a
name for himself. Dr. Robert Lee, trained as
a dentist, moved to Accra in the mid-1950s.
Over the past half century, Lee became a
fixture in the black American ex-patriot
community in Ghana.
NPR
Host Michel Martin talks to NPR West African
correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about his
life and legacy.
Dr. Robert Lee NPR Interview
Dentist Championed
African-American Community In Ghana
Dr Robert Lee passes on
Dr. Robert Lee (right) in
2009 with Kwame Zulu Shabazz |
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Submission of King Prempeh—Lord
Baden Powell of the boyscouts (who was said
to love young boys a BIT too much)— who was
buried in Kenya and killed many Africans,
was the leader of the expedition to
overthrow King Prempeh the First of Ghana.
He made the deposed king kneel in front of
him, as he sat on a throne made of boxes of
biscuits.—
Binyavanga Wainaina
The Downfall—Then came the demand
for payment of the indemnity for the war.
Due notice had been previously given, and
the Ashantis had promised to pay it; but
unless the amount, or a fair proportion of
it, could now be produced, the king and his
chiefs must be taken as guarantee for its
payment. The king could produce about a
twentieth part of what had been promised.
Accordingly, he was informed that he,
together with his mother and chiefs, would
now be held as prisoners, and deported to
the Gold Coast. The sentence moved the
Ashantis very visibly. Usually it is
etiquette with them to receive all news, of
whatever description, in the gravest and
most unmoved indifference; but here was
Prempeh bowing himself to the earth for
mercy, as doubtless many and many a victim
to his lust for blood had bowed in vain to
him, and around him were his ministers on
their feet, clamouring for delay and
reconsideration of the case. The only "man"
among them was the queen. In vain. Each
chief found two stalwart British
non-commissioned officers at his elbow,
Prempeh being undercharge of Inspector
Donovan. Their arrest was complete.—PineTreeWeb |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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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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Chiefs in Cape
Coast, Ghana /
Grand Durbar Parade
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 10 February 2012
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