Freedom, Human Rights, Equality, Dignity…for the Black Race.

Now when we talk about freedom, human rights, equality, we talk general. We talk about racial discrimination, tribalism, ethnocentrism. We talk about harsh, unpaid labor, genocides caused by inhumane feelings.

Black History Month:

It’s a remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. It is celebrated annually in the United States and Canada in the month of February.

The remembrance originated in 1926 by historian Carton G. Woodson. Woodson chose the second week of February because it marked the birthdays of two Americans who greatly influenced the lives and social condition of African Americans: former President Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. When the tradition of Black History Month was started in the US, many in mainstream academia had barely begun to explore black history. At that point, most representation of blacks in history books was only in reference to the low social position they held as slaves and their descendants. Part of the aim of Black History Month is to recognize significant contributions to society made by black slaves and how their history is integral to mainstream narratives.

Now I say although Black History Month was created and is celebrated in the United States, Canada and other European countries, Africans are by no means unconcerned. The History of the blacks in America and other countries is very much related, linked to African History, to the African people. The struggles that the Africans went through might have slightly differed. Nevertheless,  the issue remains the same: equality for the Black Race, Dignity for the Black Race. Of course I desire the whole world to be united but however unity has no room for racism, nor has it room for ethnocentrism.

Black Leaders, Africans as well as African Americans have fought for freedom, for the rights of the Black People. One of these strong leaders particularly caught my attention: Kwame Nkrumah, the 1st President of Ghana; he was also the man who helped lead Ghana to independence. Let’s watch a part of one of his speeches:

It’s amazing indeed!

The story of an African American Women…

The story of an African American Women…

Assata Shakur: A strong figure

Shakur was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City on July 16, 1947, where she lived for three years with her parents and grandparents, Lula and Frank Hill. After her parents divorced in 1950, she spent most of her childhood in Wilmington, North Carolina with her grandmother until her family relocated to Queens when she was a teenager.For a time, she ran away from home and lived with strangers until she was taken in by her aunt, Evelyn Williams, later her lawyer. She dropped out of high school, but later—with her aunt’s help—earned a general equivalency diploma (GED). She attended Borough of Manhattan Community College and then the City College of New York (CCNY) in the mid 1960s, where she was involved in many political activities, protests, and sit-ins.

Shakur was arrested for the first time in 1967 (along with 100 other Manhattan Community College students) on charges of trespassing, after the students chained and locked the entrance to a college building, protesting what they alleged to be a curriculum deficient in Black Studies and a lack of black faculty.She married Louis Chesimard, a fellow student-activist at CCNY, in April 1967 and divorced him in December 1970. Shakur devotes only one paragraph of her autobiography to her marriage, attributing its termination to disagreements related to gender roles.

After graduation from CCNY at the age of 23, Shakur became involved in the Black Panther Party (BPP), eventually becoming a leading member of the Harlem branch. Prior to joining the BPP, Shakur had met several of its members on a 1970 trip to Oakland, California. One of Shakur’s main activities with the Panthers was coordinating a school breakfast program; however, that same year she left the Party to join the Black Liberation Army (BLA), and she changed her name to Assata Shakur. In 1971, Shakur also joined the Republic of New Afrika.

Exile since 1979
On May 2 1973, Black Panther activist Assata Shakur (fsn) JoAnne Chesimard, was pulled over by the New Jersey State Police, shot twice and then charged with murder of a police officer. Assata spent six and a half years in prison under brutal circumstances before escaping out of the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979 and moving to Cuba.

Sources:

http://www.assatashakur.org/

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