Slavery in New York

Welcome to the most ambitious exhibition ever assembled on the subject of slavery in New York. On October 7, Slavery in New York, a multimedia exhibition, reveals a history of which most people are unaware, illuminates the contributions of the enslaved and explores the role slavery played in the making of New York and the United States.

Though it is barely mentioned in school textbooks, slavery was a key institution in the development of New York, from its formative years. We believe the philosophical notion that if you want to understand the present, you have to start by understanding the past.

What Americans know about freedom we learned in the school of slavery. Those in our past who spoke the language of liberty always had in mind – and often in view – shackles on the legs and manacles on the wrists of the enslaved.

At the height of the revolutionary conflict, George Washington, our greatest apostle of freedom but also the owner of hundreds of slaves, warned that if the Americans did not resist British tyranny they would become “as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.”

New York has preeminently been the capital of American liberty, the freest city of the nation – its largest, most diverse, its most economically ambitious, and its most open to the world. It was also, paradoxically, for more than two centuries, the capital of American slavery.

As many as 20 percent of colonial New Yorkers were enslaved Africans. First Dutch and then English merchants built the city’s local economy largely around supplying ships for the trade in slaves and in what slaves produced – sugar, tobacco, indigo, coffee, chocolate, and ultimately, cotton. New York ship captains and merchants bought and sold slaves along the coast of Africa and in the taverns of their own city. Almost every businessman in 18th-century New York had a stake, at one time or another, in the traffic in human beings.

During the colonial period, 41 perent of the city’s households had slaves, compared to 6 percent in Philadelphia and 2 percent in Boston. Only Charleston, South Carolina, rivaled New York in the extent to which slavery penetrated everyday life. To be sure, each slaveholding New Yorker usually owned only one or two persons.

In the urban landscape, there were no plantations. Slaves slept in the cellars and attics of town houses or above farmhouse kitchens in the countryside. They did virtually all of the work of many households – bringing in the firewood, the water, and the food; cleaning the house and the clothing; removing the wastes. They were vital to the work of early craftsmen and manufacturers, and many became skilled artisans themselves. And they performed almost all the heavy labor of building New York’s infrastructure.

Slaves constructed Fort Amsterdam and its successors along the Battery. They built the wall from which Wall Street gets its name. They built the roads, the docks, and most of the important buildings of the early city – the first city hall, the first Dutch and English churches, Fraunces Tavern, the city prison and the city hospital.

Slavery was no milder in the urban North than in the Deep South. Instances of abusive treatment permeate public and personal records. The city’s Common Council passed one restrictive law after another: forbidding blacks from owning property or bequeathing it to their children; forbidding them to congregate at night or in groups larger than three; requiring them to carry lanterns after dark and to remain south of what is now Worth Street; threatening the most severe punishments, even death, for theft, arson, or conspiracy to revolt – and carrying out these punishments brutally and publicly time and again.

Paradoxically, New York was also, from the start, a center for efforts to abolish slavery. SLAVERY IN NEW YORK also tells the story of how the black population began to plant its cultural roots, producing a rich legacy of poetry, art, music and literature in the face of adversity while at the same time, actively resisting injustice.

The records that document the oppression of the enslaved are, if one reads them carefully, evidence of just how creative and passionate they were in their quest for liberty.

With every obstacle in their way, the enslaved were able to form and nurture families, to overcome frequent loss and separation, and to pass along cultural legacies to their children.

First to arrive every market day to sell food and the products of their idle moments, they demonstrated an amazing combination of street smarts and entrepreneurial energy.

1. Disparaged for their passivity, the enslaved were twice able to shake the eighteenth-century British Empire with their revolts against slavery in New York.
2. Taken for granted by their Patriot slaveholding masters, they were acknowledged to be among the most valiant fighters on the British side during the Revolutionary War.
3. Mocked for their crudeness during slave times, they were able to fashion the musical, dance, and theatrical traditions that have been at the core of American culture ever since.
4. Without abandoning a treasured memory of African homelands, they came together to create a dynamic form of African American religion that continues to inspire today.
5. Deprived of the right to vote in the 1820s, they organized political pressure groups, created a lively press, and shaped a political rhetoric that has been at the heart of every civil rights movement in the United States and around the globe ever since.

The message is ultimately uplifting, even inspiring. In confronting, resisting, and eventually defeating an institution as powerful as chattel slavery, black New Yorkers and their white allies forged the tools of freedom that all Americans treasure today.

The black New Yorkers who survived enslavement left us legacies that shape life in this city and nation every day. Having persisted through our worst moments, they help us see the best in ourselves. The New-York Historical Society exhibition uncovers what has too long been hidden in our past and helps us find the resources to continue our long national experiment with liberty.

Source

Aboard the Underground Railroad: A National Register Travel Itinerary

Connecticut Freedom Trail

John P. Parker House

MAAP: Mapping the African American Past

Michigan Freedom Trail Commission

National Underground Railroad and Freedom Center

National Underground Railroad: Network to Freedom

REBELLION: John Horse and the Black Seminoles, the First Black Rebels to Beat American Slavery

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, Washington D.C.

The Harriet Tubman Home, Auburn NY

The Ohio Historical Society Underground Railroad Information Station

The Underground Railroad in Canada

William Still Underground Railroad Foundation

Amistad Research Center, Tulane University

The Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum of Philadelphia

Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site

The First Negro League Game at Yankee Stadium

Monday, July 26
$6-$12

> official website

Play Ball: The 80th Anniversary of the First Negro League Game at Yankee Stadium

On July 5, 1930, the first Negro League baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium, ushering in a new era in American professional sports. In addition to its historical importance, the game was also a benefit for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African-American labor organization to receive a charter from the American Federation of Labor. Join Negro League players Bob Scott and Jim Robinson, Dr. Lawrence Hogan, professor and author of Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (National Geographic, 2006), and baseball historian John Thorn for a conversation about the game, the times, and what the anniversary tells us about how America has, and hasn’t, changed in the last 80 years.

Dates:

• Monday, July 26, 2010 @ 6:30 pm

Reflections on Haile Selassie

The facts of his life are well known. Haile Selassie’s influence on the world is his most enduring legacy. Born Tafari Makonnen in 1891, Haile Selassie came to be identified inextricably with Ethiopia. Only rarely in the modern world does the story of a man become so closely linked to the story of a nation. It is said that great events beget great men, but they beget failures as well, and the boundary between the two is often defined by singular acts of courage. These the Ethiopian Emperor did not lack.

Not surprisingly, the fortitude of the man sometimes referred to as “The Lion” inspired Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and even Malcom X, each of whom corresponded with Haile Selassie –who advocated civil disobedience when it was necessary to remedy fundamental social injustice or restore freedom to the oppressed. The Emperor’s presence at President Kennedy’s funeral is still remembered. It seems somehow appropriate that the motion picture Born Free was filmed in Ethiopia during Haile Selassie’s reign.

One speaks of leaders of men as though their public lives were completely divorced from their private ones. For a hereditary monarch, this should not be the case. What his children think of him is as important as what everybody else thinks. Haile Selassie was a devoted husband and father. His wife, Empress Menen, died in 1962. His sons, Sahle Selassie, Makonnen, and Asfa Wossen, had a great sense of duty to their father and to their people. Of his daughters, Princess Tenagne, in particular, excercised various official duties.

Haile Selassie ascended the throne in the era of polar exploration and slow communication. Africa’s oldest nation was little more than a footnote to the great stories of the day –something that Americans and Brits read about in the pages of the National Geographic. Some people still called the country Abyssinia. In certain countries far beyond Ethiopia’s borders, segregation and apartheid were long established and little questioned. Most other African “nations” were colonies. Even at home, slavery was technically still legal.

In such an era, words like “pan-Africanism” and “civil rights” were little more than esoteric philosophical notions entertained by an enlightened few. That a country as backward as Italy, whose widespread poverty prompted the emigration of millions, would seek to devour a nation like Ethiopia, was an irony too subtle to raise eyebrows outside the most sophisticated intellectual circles. With British backing, Haile Selassie returned to defeat the Italian army which, in the event, the Allies never viewed as much more than a nuisance. The British themselves considered the Ethiopian campaign in its strategic context –as a way to free the Red Sea from possible Axis control– as much as the liberation of a sovereign nation. To the Ethiopians, it was as much a moral victory as a military one.

The Emperor’s speech to the League of Nations denouncing the Italian invasion is remembered more than the aggression itself. It prompted essentially ineffectual international trade sanctions against a European nation but, like the Battle of Adwa four decades earlier, represented in a tangible way one of the few occasions in the modern era that an African nation defied the arrogance of a European one.

There were very few world leaders of the post-war era who had actually led troops in combat. Haile Selassie and Dwight Eisenhower were exceptional in this respect, which partially accounts for their close friendship.

Even when the foe is truly formidable, courage has a psychological side that has little to do with combat or physical victory. One may seem defeated materially without being defeated morally. Perhaps it’s a question of confidence, values or knowledge. Haile Selassie’s greatest strength was as a builder of bridges –across rivers but also between cultures. His travels took him to many countries, and he became one of the most popular heads of state, and one of the most decorated men in the world.

It was during one such voyage, in 1960, that he had to rush home to confront an attempted overthrow of the existing order. This perhaps served as a reminder that the most dangerous revolutions are found in one’s own house. The sovereign who was once known as a reformer now found himself resented by many members of the very social class his economic and educational policies had helped to create. Internationally, however, his prestige did not suffer. The Emperor established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, with a headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The revolution of 1974 was supported by outside forces, and while its roots were domestic, its covert objectives cannot be said to have been supported by more than a small fraction of Ethiopians. Truth be told, administrative practices which worked well in 1950 were terribly inefficient by the 1970s, and a series of problems were cited as a pretext for a full scale coup d’etat. Ethiopia’s pre-industrial economy was no better prepared for Marxism than Russia’s had been in 1917. Communism’s ultimate social and economic failure, in Ethiopia as well as in Russia, certainly indicates democracy’s superiority, whether that democracy is embodied by a republic or a constitutional monarchy. The Derg’s alliance with the Soviet Union made Ethiopia the instrument of a foreign power, precisely the thing Haile Selassie resisted.

He had a Solomonic pedigree, but Haile Selassie was a man of the people. Perhaps that’s how he should be remembered.

Happy Earthday H.I.M. Haile Selassie (Jah Rastafari!!!)

Haile Selassie’s Address To The United Nations

Oct, 1963

Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates:

Twenty-seven years ago, as Emperor of Ethiopia, I mounted the rostrum in Geneva, Switzerland, to address the League of Nations and to appeal for relief from the destruction which had been unleashed against my defenseless nation, by the Fascist invader. I spoke then both to and for the conscience of the world. My words went unheeded, but history testifies to the accuracy of the warning that I gave in 1936.

Today, I stand before the world organization which has succeeded to the mantle discarded by its discredited predecessor. In this body is enshrined the principle of collective security which I unsuccessfully invoked at Geneva. Here, in this Assembly, reposes the best – perhaps the last – hope for the peaceful survival of mankind.

In 1936, I declared that it was not the Covenant of the League that was at stake, but international morality. Undertakings, I said then, are of little worth if the will to keep them is lacking. The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honor them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man’s basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act – and if necessary, to suffer and die – for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.

The record of the United Nations during the few short years of its life affords mankind a solid basis for encouragement and hope for the future. The United Nations has dared to act, when the League dared not in Palestine, in Korea, in Suez, in the Congo. There is not one among us today who does not conjecture upon the reaction of this body when motives and actions are called into question. The opinion of this Organization today acts as a powerful influence upon the decisions of its members. The spotlight of world opinion, focused by the United Nations upon the transgressions of the renegades of human society, has thus far proved an effective safeguard against unchecked aggression and unrestricted violation of human rights.

The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which the slow build-up of pressures would have long since resulted in catastrophic explosion. Its actions and decisions have speeded the achievement of freedom by many peoples on the continents of Africa and Asia. Its efforts have contributed to the advancement of the standard of living of peoples in all corners of the world.

For this, all men must give thanks. As I stand here today, how faint, how remote are the memories of 1936.How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men. We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit. But each one of us here knows that what has been accomplished is not enough.

The United Nations judgments have been and continue to be subject to frustration, as individual member-states have ignored its pronouncements and disregarded its recommendations. The Organization’s sinews have been weakened, as member-states have shirked their obligations to it. The authority of the Organization has been mocked, as individual member-states have proceeded, in violation of its commands, to pursue their own aims and ends. The troubles which continue to plague us virtually all arise among member states of the Organization, but the Organization remains impotent to enforce acceptable solutions. As the maker and enforcer of the international law, what the United Nations has achieved still falls regrettably short of our goal of an international community of nations.

This does not mean that the United Nations has failed. I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential highmindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests. Not even now, when so much is at hazard would many nations willingly entrust their destinies to other hands.

Yet, this is the ultimatum presented to us: secure the conditions whereby men will entrust their security to a larger entity, or risk annihilation; persuade men that their salvation rests in the subordination of national and local interests to the interests of humanity, or endanger man’s future. These are the objectives, yesterday unobtainable, today essential, which we must labor to achieve.

Until this is accomplished, mankind’s future remains hazardous and permanent peace a matter for speculation. There is no single magic formula, no one simple step, no words, whether written into the Organization’s Charter or into a treaty between states, which can automatically guarantee to us what we seek. Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgments. Peace is not an “is”, it is a “becoming.” We cannot escape the dreadful possibility of catastrophe by miscalculation. But we can reach the right decisions on the myriad subordinate problems which each new day poses, and we can thereby make our contribution and perhaps the most that can be reasonably expected of us in 1963 to the preservation of peace. It is here that the United Nations has served us – not perfectly, but well. And in enhancing the possibilities that the Organization may serve us better, we serve and bring closer our most cherished goals.

I would mention briefly today two particular issues which are of deep concern to all men: disarmament and the establishment of true equality among men. Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.

Ethiopia supports the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty as a step towards this goal, even though only a partial step. Nations can still perfect weapons of mass destruction by underground testing. There is no guarantee against the sudden, unannounced resumption of testing in the atmosphere.

The real significance of the treaty is that it admits of a tacit stalemate between the nations which negotiated it, a stalemate which recognizes the blunt, unavoidable fact that none would emerge from the total destruction which would be the lot of all in a nuclear war, a stalemate which affords us and the United Nations a breathing space in which to act.

Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men. Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions. This very Organization itself is the greatest such institution, and it is in a more powerful United Nations that we seek, and it is here that we shall find, the assurance of a peaceful future.

Were a real and effective disarmament achieved and the funds now spent in the arms race devoted to the amelioration of man’s state; were we to concentrate only on the peaceful uses of nuclear knowledge, how vastly and in how short a time might we change the conditions of mankind. This should be our goal.

When we talk of the equality of man, we find, also, a challenge and an opportunity; a challenge to breathe new life into the ideals enshrined in the Charter, an opportunity to bring men closer to freedom and true equality. and thus, closer to a love of peace.

The goal of the equality of man which we seek is the antithesis of the exploitation of one people by another with which the pages of history and in particular those written of the African and Asian continents, speak at such length. Exploitation, thus viewed, has many faces. But whatever guise it assumes, this evil is to be shunned where it does not exist and crushed where it does. It is the sacred duty of this Organization to ensure that the dream of equality is finally realized for all men to whom it is still denied, to guarantee that exploitation is not reincarnated in other forms in places whence it has already been banished.

As a free Africa has emerged during the past decade, a fresh attack has been launched against exploitation, wherever it still exists. And in that interaction so common to history, this in turn, has stimulated and encouraged the remaining dependent peoples to renewed efforts to throw off the yoke which has oppressed them and its claim as their birthright the twin ideals of liberty and equality. This very struggle is a struggle to establish peace, and until victory is assured, that brotherhood and understanding which nourish and give life to peace can be but partial and incomplete.

In the United States of America, the administration of President Kennedy is leading a vigorous attack to eradicate the remaining vestige of racial discrimination from this country. We know that this conflict will be won and that right will triumph. In this time of trial, these efforts should be encouraged and assisted, and we should lend our sympathy and support to the American Government today.

Last May, in Addis Ababa, I convened a meeting of Heads of African States and Governments. In three days, the thirty-two nations represented at that Conference demonstrated to the world that when the will and the determination exist, nations and peoples of diverse backgrounds can and will work together. in unity, to the achievement of common goals and the assurance of that equality and brotherhood which we desire.

On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further lesson: That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will; Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; Until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.

The United Nations has done much, both directly and indirectly to speed the disappearance of discrimination and oppression from the earth. Without the opportunity to focus world opinion on Africa and Asia which this Organization provides, the goal, for many, might still lie ahead, and the struggle would have taken far longer. For this, we are truly grateful.

But more can be done. The basis of racial discrimination and colonialism has been economic, and it is with economic weapons that these evils have been and can be overcome. In pursuance of resolutions adopted at the Addis Ababa Summit Conference, African States have undertaken certain measures in the economic field which, if adopted by all member states of the United Nations, would soon reduce intransigence to reason. I ask, today, for adherence to these measures by every nation represented here which is truly devoted to the principles enunciated in the Charter.

I do not believe that Portugal and South Africa are prepared to commit economic or physical suicide if honorable and reasonable alternatives exist. I believe that such alternatives can be found. But I also know that unless peaceful solutions are devised, counsels of moderation and temperance will avail for naught; and another blow will have been dealt to this Organization which will hamper and weaken still further its usefulness in the struggle to ensure the victory of peace and liberty over the forces of strife and oppression. Here, then, is the opportunity presented to us. We must act while we can, while the occasion exists to exert those legitimate pressures available to us, lest time run out and resort be had to less happy means.

Does this Organization today possess the authority and the will to act? And if it does not, are we prepared to clothe it with the power to create and enforce the rule of law? Or is the Charter a mere collection of words, without content and substance, because the essential spirit is lacking? The time in which to ponder these questions is all too short. The pages of history are full of instances in which the unwanted and the shunned nonetheless occurred because men waited to act until too late. We can brook no such delay.

If we are to survive, this Organization must survive. To survive, it must be strengthened. Its executive must be vested with great authority. The means for the enforcement of its decisions must be fortified, and, if they do not exist, they must be devised. Procedures must be established to protect the small and the weak when threatened by the strong and the mighty. All nations which fulfill the conditions of membership must be admitted and allowed to sit in this assemblage.

Equality of representation must be assured in each of its organs. The possibilities which exist in the United Nations to provide the medium whereby the hungry may be fed, the naked clothed, the ignorant instructed, must be seized on and exploited for the flower of peace is not sustained by poverty and want. To achieve this requires courage and confidence. The courage, I believe, we possess. The confidence must be created, and to create confidence we must act courageously.

The great nations of the world would do well to remember that in the modern age even their own fates are not wholly in their hands. Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse? It is not only the small and the weak who must scrupulously observe their obligations to the United Nations and to each other. Unless the smaller nations are accorded their proper voice in the settlement of the world’s problems, unless the equality which Africa and Asia have struggled to attain is reflected in expanded membership in the institutions which make up the United Nations, confidence will come just that much harder. Unless the rights of the least of men are as assiduously protected as those of the greatest, the seeds of confidence will fall on barren soil.

The stake of each one of us is identical – life or death. We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.

When I spoke at Geneva in 1936, there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the League of Nations. I am neither the first, nor will I be the last head of state to address the United Nations, but only I have addressed both the League and this Organization in this capacity. The problems which confront us today are, equally, unprecedented. They have no counterparts in human experience. Men search the pages of history for solutions, for precedents, but there are none. This, then, is the ultimate challenge. Where are we to look for our survival, for the answers to the questions which have never before been posed? We must look, first, to Almighty God, Who has raised man above the animals and endowed him with intelligence and reason. We must put our faith in Him, that He will not desert us or permit us to destroy humanity which He created in His image. And we must look into ourselves, into the depth of our souls. We must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.”

Lyrics from the song War, adapted from an excerpt of Ethiopian Emperor H.I.M. Haile Selassie’s address to the United Nations on October 1963 by Bob Marley.

What life has taught me
I would like to share with
Those who want to learn…

Until the philosophy which hold one race
Superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war

That until there are no longer first class
And second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man’s skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war

That until the basic human rights are equally
Guaranteed to all, without regard to race
Dis a war

That until that day
The dream of lasting peace, world citizenship
Rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion
To be persued, but never attained
Now everywhere is war, war

And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes
that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique,
South Africa sub-human bondage
Have been toppled, utterly destroyed
Well, everywhere is war, me say war

War in the east, war in the west
War up north, war down south
War, war, rumours of war

And until that day, the African continent
Will not know peace, we Africans will fight
We find it necessary and we know we shall win
As we are confident in the victory

Of good over evil, good over evil, good over evil
Good over evil, good over evil, good over evil

Source
Emperor Haile Selassie I Visited Trinidad & Tobago on April 18, 1966, then Jamaica on April 21, 1966

Fossil find could rewrite human history

Dr Ron Clarke is excited by his find

The skull is clearly visible in the rock

The skeleton is complete

Clake’s finger outlines the jaw

The team believes the find is the most significant since the discovery in 1924 of a skull belonging to the so-called Taung child, the first fossil found belonging to Australopithecus. That also was unearthed at Sterkfontein.

Previously, the most complete early hominid was “Lucy,” an Australopithecus whose partial skeleton was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia. The oldest complete skeleton before this latest discovery dates back to 1.8 million years, Clarke said. It was that of a Homo Erectus, found in Kenya.

The discovery, documented Wednesday in the South African Journal of Science, was to be reported in the magazine Nature in London on Thursday, researchers said at a news conference.

Source

Shirley Sherrod: American Racial Politricks Personified

I don’t have time or energy to rundown the whole Shirley Sherrod story. You’ll have to go dig out the specifics yourself if you’ve been under a rock the past 48 hours. But here’s what I think about this incident, and how it shows everything that’s wrong with race in America.

Breitbart Is An A**hole. Period. – Before we start pointing fingers at everyone else here, let’s get one thing clear: without Andrew Breitbart’s intentionally edited, clearly out of context video, Shirley Sherrod would be still working today, rather than becoming a trending topic. Anyone with half a brain could have looked at the wholly manufactured ACORN scandal and known something was iffy here. Of course, Breitbart now says this wasn’t about Sherrod, but about “showing how racist the NAACP is”. Bullsh*t. I really, really hope Sherrod sued this jacka$$ for slander.

The NAACP Is A Joke – Clearly the NAACP jumped the gun when the original edited tape dropped. After a week of clumsily (but correctly) accusing the some elements of the Tea Party of racism, they were so quick to show that they didn’t tolerate such activity within their own ranks that they didn’t bother viewing their own videotape. Of course they walked this back, but the damage was already done. Not that the NAACP had any credibility left anyway.

Obama Finds His Own Sister Soulja – I can’t let the Obama White House off the hook for this bullsh*t either. Instead of looking into the facts, Obama (who was briefed on this and agreed with the action taken) was so intent on avoiding another Gates-gate that he didn’t worry about whether or not Sherrod was innocent either. While I agreed with much of his prior racial roadkill (Rebb’n Wright, Van Jones, and even Gates) from a damage control standpoint, it’s becoming a bit harder to trust this guy on any matter of race. When in doubt, kick the black folks out!

Sherrod Is Gonna Get Paid – This woman’s entire career as an underpaid civil servant goes poof overnight, all because some jerk wanted to prove the Tea Party wasn’t racist. The funny thing is, this incident proves exactly what the NAACP was trying to get across, but they’ve got zero credibility left to double down on the point. I hope Sherrod lawyers-up, and hits Breitbart, The US Federal Government, and the NAACP for this. If there was any justice here, she’d be rehired with effusive personal apologies from the USDA and Obama. You and I both know that won’t happen.

Gotcha Journalism Rules! – The funny thing about all this is that a story that was completely fabricated and pointless was originally ignored by the MSM. But thanks to Fox News and Conservative media, an unsubstantiated slander can grow to the point that someone unfairly ends up fired. I’m sure Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave.

Question: Who is most to blame for this clusterf*ck? Who should Sherrod sue first? Will the USDA hire her back?

Source

more on Shirley Sherrod here:

Shirley Sherrod’s victory: A teachable moment on talking race

By Dr.Brittney on July 23, 2010 at 5:32 am

Shirley Sherrod should retire from the USDA, get her book deal, and tell her story. I certainly would not want to work for a group of people that were so quick to hang me out to dry. But seriously, Ms. Sherrod should pick the options that are best for her, because one of the many victories in this whole sordid situation is that she is now a Black woman with options.

Since the news of Andrew Breitbart’s sloppy and opportunistic editorial hatchet job on Sherrod’s career became apparent three days ago, everyone’s been tossing around the term, “teachable moment.” I’ve heard it repeatedly throughout this ordeal: “this is a teachable moment on race, on media, on government.” While many see the “teachable moments” here as being about taking more care and time when handling sensitive information, and about the willingness of the most extreme members of the right to jettison integrity and basic truthfulness for political capital, there is something much more fundamental at stake. That is, we need to stop trying to be anti-racial and focus on being anti-racist. There is a critical difference between the two.

In Shirley Sherrod’s speech, she talked about the emergence of white supremacist ideology as a way to divide and conquer similarly positioned poor black and white indentured servants. That information speaks to a more fundamental truth, namely the ways in which the ideology of racism and white supremacy is built into the fundamental fabric of these United States. We will not get beyond “race” then until we deal with racism itself.

Folks however keep putting the cart before the horse. Dealing with racism is a much more difficult proposition than dealing with race. Confronting racism means confronting privilege. It means confronting the reality of power, and the possibility of a redistribution of resources. In a society in which white privilege grants most white folks the right to believe wholeheartedly in the myth of meritocracy, the idea that they have everything they have solely based on their own merit and hardwork, rather than having a huge help from centuries of racial privilege, dealing with racism is a veritable nightmare. So rather than do that, we keep talking about “race.”

Anytime someone brings up “race” they are liable to be called racist. Surely, as Americans, we have the capacity for deeper thinking than that.

And herein lies my deep skepticism of this rhetoric of racial transcendence and transformation that has played out in the course of this story. Everyone kept talking about how Ms. Sherrod was almost going to be racist and discriminatory but then had a change of heart. No!!! This is a woman who’s father was killed by a white farmer; a woman who had a cousin to be lynched by the town sheriff; a woman whose family were personally the victims of discrimination at the hands of the USDA. Given that history, surely she would be offended by a condescending white farmer who needed her help, but also needed to keep his own personal sense of white supremacy intact.

The fact that she didn’t give him “the full force of what she could do” initially and that she sent him “to one of his own kind” are not inherently racist propositions. The full force of what she could do is not co-equal to what was required by her job. Her job required her to point this man to resources that could help in his plight. She did that. No more and no less. The full force of what she could do involved her tireless advocacy on his behalf, and she eventually did that, too. Doing the bare minimum might not be admirable, but it isn’t intrinsically racist either.  And frankly, the wholehearted expectation that Black folks act as Christ figures, always going above and beyond the call, in our national narrative of racial redemption is tired, old, and unfair.

I watched David Gergen, whom I admire, talk yesterday about Ms. Sherrod’s “ascendant quality,” about her ability to rise above the legitimate racial pains of her past to help this white farmer. And then ironically my morning meditation was on Ephesians 4:8-9, a passage about Christ’s ascension and freeing of the captives. So it dawns on me: Americans want Black women to be Jesus. We are to be spit upon, mocked, discredited, and crucified, but at the end we are to forgive and remain gracious. As a strategy of personal living and transformation, that’s fine, but no one should have to be Jesus to do their job effectively.

Second, Sherrod sent the Spooner family to a white lawyer on the basis of the fact that this lawyer would have more power, not less power, than a Black attorney. Such a move is the opposite of discrimination. And folks might not like it, but I’m gonna say it:  if a white person had reasoned in the ways Ms. Sherrod did, this would have been racism. Let’s stop kidding ourselves with these faulty notions that black folks and white folks enjoy the same amount of social, economic or political power. If a white person in power decides not to give the full force of what she or he can do for a Black person, the power dynamic in such a move means that this white person is using race plus power to discriminate, which is the definition of racism. If a white person sends a Black person to “one of his own kind,” coming from a white person this rhetoric cannot be understood outside a history of seeing Black folks as inferior and less than.

Shirley Sherrod’s story demonstrates that an honest engagement with the politics of racism makes the operation of power all the more clear, exposing even the often hidden reality of class. Our goal should not be to get “beyond race.” Our goal should be to work tirelessly to eliminate racism and the operations of white supremacy. I acknowledge that holding the concept race intact is complicit in the continuing operation of racism. But I think those folks who think that eliminating racism starts with eliminating “race” are just plain wrong.

In fact, we’re trying that strategy now, and what it has led to is a vacuous rhetoric of colorblindness and racial transcendence, all the while hard-working Black women can lose their jobs on a whim, immigrants who’ve been working hard and shoring up the service economy in this country for decades are being deported, and young Black men and women continue to be murdered by the police. Deciding that “whiteness” and “blackness” shouldn’t matter when they clearly do matter is not the solution.  But radically honest conversations, even when the truths they tell are ugly, followed by radically courageous policy implementation is the first step to the future we are seeking.

Photo: Andrew Breitbart, the rightwing blogger, has yet to apologise to Shirley Sherrod. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

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Michael Eric Dyson Schools the Racist Breibart. These are the games the establishment pays when we try to level theplaying field on institutionalized racism….

Financial Abortion: A White Woman’s Answer To Child Support

As a journalist, I am in constant search for controversial topics for my blog, however this story just fell in my lap as a gift from the gods. Sociology Professor Frances Goldschieder at Brown who happens to be a feminist decided that it would be in the best interest of the so-called nuclear family to level the playing field by giving the potential father amnesty from his fraternal obligations(financial abortion). My question is who does this slightly masculine woman think she is by making such a deficient hypothesis of scholarly inclined magnitude? Her audacious idea would allow a man to declare his desire not to become a father prior to intercourse and would be off the hook from all monetary responsibility so to speak.

Regardless of Professor Goldschieder’s sincerity it is safe to say that her opinions are not in the best interest of the African- American community due to the disproportionate demographic of Black absentee fathers in America? As a single father raising a 8 year old daughter, I find it amusing and appalling that we live in a country that places very little value on our importance and ironically believe that this idea would actually come from a old White woman. My presence in my daughter’s life has been one of the most fulfilling and challenging experiences to be able to provide her emotional and financial well being to substantiate Professor Goldschieder’s egalitarian belief system despite her utter hypocrisy.

I’ve experienced firsthand the difficulty of a father raising a single child in a society that appears to be biased towards men who are struggling to make ends meet. Despite President Obama’s “fatherhood initiative” nothing has been done to offer valid resources where dad’s can be able to earn more and give more on both fronts. One of the concerns I have are the lack of social services for fathers who are homeless with their children and the limitations of resources that are usually readily available for women.

Why would anyone believe that a higher tax bracket would alleviate the parental bond fatherhood encompasses for our children to develop in a healthy social environment? Last month on the one-year anniversary of the initiative Barack was quoted that he “can’t legislate fatherhood” and honestly we never asked him to, however he can take into consideration the dire need to reexamine today’s draconian policy’s to ensure that the playing field the professor speaks of come into substantiated fruition.

The manifestation of responsibility resides in the consciousness of a man to use condoms and practice the ancient art of keeping one’s organ in his trousers to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the future and in the first place. One alternative should embrace the possibility of allowing a small portion of a child support payment to be placed in a trust fund until a child reaches 18 years of age and that could be a plausible start . Are we dad’s important enough to invite a couple dozen of us unto the lawns of The White House and share our ideas over a couple of six packs and a few steaks on the grill?

Our concerns for our children are just as important as the 23 million that live without one and the time is now to take the necessary measures to assist in meeting the challenges us fathers face by first disregarding the divisive ramblings of a educated woman that offer no real solutions and obviously possess no hands-on experience. Although our children might not reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I strongly feel that their lives are just as important to abort a professor’s ignorance on the subject.

Krusher Kronkite

Educated Dad

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Media Anarchist: Jounalism in it’s purest form

Modern man in his activities have not only killed off animals but they have also made PEOPLE go extinct. We have to treat this planet and each other better or there will be nothing and no one left on this planet.

Amazon tribe down to five as oldest member dies

Ururu, the oldest member of the Akuntsu tribe, has died

‘The final stages of a genocide’

The Akuntsu tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has lost its oldest member, Ururú, leaving the tribe with only five surviving members.

Ururú was the oldest member of this close-knit, tiny group and an integral part of it.
Altair Algayer, head of FUNAI’s (Brazilian government Indian affairs department) team which protects the Akuntsu’s land said, ‘She was a fighter, strong, and resisted until the last moment.’ In addition, the oldest-surviving Akuntsu, Ururú’s brother Konibú, is seriously ill.

Ururú witnessed the genocide of her people and the destruction of their rainforest home, as cattle ranchers and their gunmen moved on to indigenous lands in Rondônia state. Rondônia was opened up by government colonisation projects and the infamous BR 364 highway in the 1960s and 70s.

With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people. While we shall perhaps never know the full horrors inflicted on the Akuntsu in the last half century, today’s survivors say their family members were killed when ranchers bulldozed their houses and opened fire on them. The two surviving men, Konibú and Pupak, have marks on their bodies where bullets entered as they fled.

FUNAI found the remains of houses which had been destroyed by ranchers who were clearing the forest for cattle pasture. The ranchers attempted to hide evidence of the crime, but wooden poles, arrows, axes and broken pottery were discovered.

When the Akuntsu were contacted by FUNAI in 1995 they numbered seven. The youngest, Konibú’s daughter, died in January 2000 when a tree fell on her house.

Today they live in a territory officially recognised by the Brazilian government, where FUNAI protects their land from invasion by surrounding ranchers.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘With Ururú’s death we are seeing the final stages of a 21st century genocide. Unlike mass killings in Nazi Germany or Rwanda, the genocides of indigenous people are played out in hidden corners of the world, and escape public scrutiny and condemnation. Although their numbers are small, the result is just as final. Only when this persecution is seen as akin to slavery or apartheid will tribal peoples begin to be safe.’

The story of the Akuntsu, their neighbours the Kanoê, and the elusive ‘Man of the Hole’ is graphically told in a new film, Corumbiara. The Akuntsu also feature in Survival’s short film, Uncontacted Tribes.

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Outrage as Botswana Bushmen denied access to water

Today’s ruling is a blow to the Bushmen. Xoroxloo Duxee died of dehydration in 2005

There was outrage today as Botswana’s High Court denied the Kalahari Bushmen access to water.

The Judge ruled that the Bushmen were not entitled to access an existing water borehole on their lands or to drill a new one inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of the driest regions in the world. The hearing of the case was held on June 9, but the judge reserved his ruling until today.

The ruling is a blow to the Bushmen who have struggled without water since 2002 when the Botswana government sealed and capped a borehole to drive them out of the reserve. In 2006, the forced evictions of the Bushmen were declared illegal and unconstitutional by the High Court, and hundreds have since returned to their lands.

Despite the ruling, the government banned the Bushmen from re-commissioning the borehole, leaving them to face what the UN’s top official on indigenous peoples, James Anaya, described as, ‘harsh and dangerous conditions due to a lack of access to water’. At the same time, Wilderness Safaris opened a luxury tourist lodge, complete with bar and swimming pool, on Bushman land; the government drilled new boreholes in the reserve to provide water for wildlife with funding from the Tiffany & Co Foundation; and Gem Diamonds was given environmental clearance to mine in the reserve on condition the Bushmen could not use any of its water.

Bushmen are also being prevented from bringing water to their relatives inside the reserve.

Bushman spokesman, Jumanda Gakelebone, said, ‘This is very bad. If we don’t have water, how are we expected to live? The court gave us our land, but without the borehole, without water, our lives are difficult.’

Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘In the last ten years Botswana has become one of the harshest places in the world for indigenous peoples. If Bushmen are to be denied water on their lands when it is freely provided for tourists, animals, and diamond mines, then foreigners should be asked if they really want to support this regime with their visits and jewellery shopping.’

Note to editors: the Bushmen’s lawyer is available for interview.

To find out how you can help click here: The Kalahari Bushmen

You can also help other indigenous groups in their fight for survival against global expansion of the capitalist colonialist model.