Abdul Rahman: A Prince Among Slaves

Oscar Micheaux

Micheaux, Oscar (1884–1951), director, producer, novelist, and leading director in early independent African American film. Oscar Micheaux was the first major African American director to produce feature films with black characters for black audiences. Over a thirty-year period from 1919 to 1948 he wrote, directed, and produced thirty-four pictures. Among these are Body and Soul (1924), a silent film starring Paul Robeson in his first American movie, and The Exile (1931), the first African American talkie made by a black film company. Micheaux was a legendary figure in early African American film, a field that began in earnest after the appearance of D. W. Griffith’s controversial Birth of a Nation (1915). The great public outcry over the racism in Griffith’s film created an underground movement of black filmmakers intent on presenting a more realistic appraisal of African American life.

Micheaux was born in Illinois and after a short period as a farmer and Pullman car porter turned his efforts to writing novels for black audiences. Over a ten-year period Micheaux wrote and self-published ten novels. In 1918 he founded the Oscar Micheaux Corporation in Harlem, New York, and turned to producing and directing films. After a series of short films he made The Homesteader (1919), based on his own novel. In rapid succession during the 1920s and 1930s Micheaux made many films, among them: Sons of Satan (1922), Birthright (1924), Wages of Sin (1929), Underworld (1936), and God’s Stepchildren (1937). Micheaux was also an indefatigable promoter of his creations, touring the country to publicize and finance his films. He convinced white theater owners to have special showings for black audiences; he also distributed his films to approximately one hundred black theaters. Filming on a shoestring budget, Micheaux used black actors and actresses anxious for work in films, among them Lorenzo Tucker, Ethel Moses, and Bee Freeman. Reputedly over six feet tall, Micheaux dressed in large black coats and wide-brimmed hats. As a maverick director he often chose his players on a whim and had them work without repeated takes. The films were shot in convenient locations such as friends’ homes and hastily constructed sets. Although most films were shot in less than six weeks, Micheaux created films showing black life on realistic terms while also providing entertainment for the black masses. His films contained a range of types and attempted to show that blacks were often just as rich, educated, and cultured as whites.

Recently Micheaux has been criticized for presenting a class system based on color in his movies. Often the most affluent or successful blacks in his films are the lightest-skinned with the straightest hair. Although the nightclub and cabaret scenes in Micheaux’s films provide valuable insight into black music and dance, some critics suggest they may have been added to entice white audiences to his films. Nevertheless Micheaux’s strongest films confront the race problem head on while presenting the lifestyle and attitudes of the black middle class. His heroes and heroines suffer through conventional romantic and financial crises complicated by the issues of passing and racial prejudice. In their own way Micheaux’s films make a plea for black unity and black independence through education and economic competition while presenting a positive image for black audiences.

Micheaux successfully fashioned almost singlehandedly a popular black cinema and a black star system that provided a prototype for African American independent cinema in general. He created dynamic roles for aggressive black female actresses and many of his films featured females in the stronger roles. He gave black actors and actresses roles far different from the usual Hollywood stereotype of servants, Uncle Toms, and buffoons. Micheaux’s extravagant personality, great creative flair, and independent vision made him a visionary filmmaker who could connect with the black audiences of the period. He examined and explored the shared, collective attitudes and outlooks of African Americans between the wars in a large body of films, many of which are now lost. Micheaux worked in both silent and sound film, one of the few black directors to bridge this important transitional era in American cinema. His final dream of widespread black and white audiences for his films was not to be. Micheaux’slast film, Betrayal (1948), opened in New York at a white theater and received major attention from the press, but the public took little notice and the movie failed. Soon after, Micheaux died in relative obscurity, and his films remained neglected for over thirty years.

Bibliography

• Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 1973.
• James P. Murray, To Find an Image: Black Films from Uncle Tom to Super Fly, 1973.
• Bernard L. Peterson, “Films of Oscar Micheaux: America’s First Fabulous Black Filmmaker,” Crisis 86.4 (Apr. 1979): 136–141.
• Kenneth Wiggins Portor, “Oscar Micheaux,” in DANB, eds. Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, 1982, pp. 433–434. “Oscar Micheaux” in World Film Directors 1890–1945, vol. 1, ed. John Wakeman, 1987, pp. 765–770.
• Donald Bogle, Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia, 1988.
• Marc A. Reid, “Pioneer Black Filmmaker: The Achievement of Oscar Micheaux,” Black Film Review 4.2 (Spring 1988): 6–7.
• Jane Gaines, “Fire and Desire: Race, Melodrama, and Oscar Micheaux” in Manthia Diawara, ed., Black American Cinema, 1993, pp. 49–70.—Stephen F. Soitos

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The Original Greatest Boxer of All time!!!

Rebel of the Progressive Era

Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, whose reign lasted from 1908 to 1915, was also the first African American pop culture icon. He was photographed more than any other black man of his day and, indeed, more than most white men. He was written about more as well. Black people during the early 20th century were hardly the subject of news in the white press unless they were the perpetrators of crime or had been lynched (usually for a crime, real or imaginary). Johnson was different—not only was he written about in black newspapers but he was, during his heyday, not infrequently the subject of front pages of white papers. As his career developed, he was subject of scrutiny from the white press, in part because he was accused and convicted of a crime, but also because he was champion athlete in a sport with a strong national following. Not even the most famous race leaders of the day, Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and W. E. B. Du Bois, founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and editor of that organization’s magazine, The Crisis, could claim anywhere near the attention Johnson received. Not even the most famous black entertainers and artists of the day—musical stage comics George Walker and Bert Walker, or bandleader James Reese Europe, or ragtime composer Scott Joplin, or fiction writer Charles W. Chesnutt, or painter Henry O. Tanner—received Johnson’s attention. In fact, it would be safe to say that while Johnson was heavyweight champion, he was covered more in the press than all other notable black men combined.

And, like the true pop culture figure, the way Johnson lived his life and, particularly, the way he conducted his sex life mattered a great deal to the public. He was scandal, he was gossip, he was a public menace for many, a public hero for some, admired and demonized, feared, misunderstood, and ridiculed. Johnson emerged as a major figure in the world of sports at the turn of the century when sports themselves, both collegiate and professional, were becoming a significant force in American cultural life and as the role of black people in sports was changing. Johnson arrived at a time when the machinery of American popular culture, as we know it today, was being put into place. Recorded music, which was to change entirely how music was made, sold, and distributed in the United States, came into being at this time. Movies were well established as a popular medium of entertainment at the time when Johnson became a big enough name in boxing to fight for a world title. Indeed, films were an important way for promoters and fighters to make money in boxing by showing the films of bouts in movie theaters. Boxing was, by far, the most filmed sport of its day.

The automobile, which became Johnson’s great passion and the most celebrated piece of technology connected with popular culture, was part of the brave new world of the early 1900s, replacing the bicycle. And, along with this came the rise of spectator sports, which changed how Americans spent their leisure time: baseball was a long-standing craze, college football was growing in popularity, basketball had been invented. There was also track and field, the modern return of the Olympic Games, golf, tennis, bicycle racing, race walking, horse racing, and probably the most popular of all sports at the time, professional boxing or, as it was commonly called, prizefighting.

Boxing was created in 18th-century Regency England. It was largely performed by working-class men who were often sponsored by upper-class gentlemen, many of whom had a passion for the sport. Boxing arose in a society where masculine honor was an important facet of a man’s ego and where a skillful display of self-defense was useful and appreciated. Some saw boxing as a less lethal form of dueling. Both gentlemen and poor men learned the art or the science, as some called it. However, what primarily drove the sport was betting on the outcome, which still largely attracts many people today to professional boxing as well as other sports, although these bettors were usually connoisseurs of the sport as well. Gambling has always been a particular stigma for boxing as it, because it is sport that involves a contest between only two men, can easily be fixed to produce a particular outcome favorable to a certain set of bettors. Boxing has been burdened by the specter of fixed fights, dishonesty and corruption, almost since its beginnings.

Blacks had an early presence in the sport. Ex-slaves Bill Richmond and Tom Molyneaux were both high-caliber boxers in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At this time, boxers fought without gloves, rounds were of indeterminate length, ending when a fighter was knocked down. A fighter was then given 30 seconds to recover and return to “scratch,” a mark in the center of the ring where the two fighters met to resume the contest. There were few punches thrown in these matches because the bare hand, which can be easily broken, is not well-equipped as a fist to be a durable weapon. The bouts mostly consisted of wrestling and pummeling.

The first great American champion was John L. Sullivan, who was champion from 1882 to 1892. He presided over the dramatic shift in boxing when it was transformed from bare knuckles to gloves. The Marquis of Queensbury rules changed boxing entirely, making it a more rational and disciplined sport: by the time Jack Johnson was a major fighter, it was a commonplace for fighters to use gloves (to protect their hands and enable them to punch more often). Wrestling was virtually eliminated from prizefights. Rounds were now timed at three minutes. Regular rest periods of one minute separated the rounds. Fights now had a determinate lengtha specified number of rounds, for the most part, instead of being a contest that went on until one of the two men was unable or unwilling to continue. If both fighters were still standing at the end of a predetermined number of rounds, the fight was awarded to the fighter who showed the best “ring generalship,” the best all-around display of fighting skills. These changes gave us the boxing match as we understand it today.

Black participation in any of these sporting endeavors was very limited, although African Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries were interested in virtually all aspects of sports-playing, coaching, watching, and administrating. Sports did not grow up willy-nilly, but were importantly connected with two significant institutions: colleges and universities, and the workplace (many sports teams and sporting events were organized by employers). Blacks, at the turn of the century, were virtually shut out of both. They were confined largely to rural work in the South where employers had little interest in creatively or competitively organizing their free time for economic gain or for prestige, the major motives for the creation of sports teams. Other than access to a small number of black colleges, there was no way and no reason for a black person to attend college. (Whites, overwhelmingly, did not attend college either at this time.) By the turn of the century, institutionalized racism had shut blacks out of baseball. They were forced out of jockeying for the same reason, indeed, virtually all sports. Blacks were largely confined to professional boxing.

Around the time that Johnson began to develop as a fighter, there were other noted black pugilists: Joe Walcott, who was welterweight champion from 1901-1904; Joe Gans, who was lightweight champion from 1902-1904 and again from 1906-1908, and George Dixon, featherweight champion from 1890-1897 and 1898-1900, and bantamweight champion from 1890-1892. But the most prestigious title in boxing, the one that claimed the greatest admiration of both the fans and the general public was heavyweight champion. The rest of it was small potatoes. Blacks were not permitted to fight for this title, as they were shut out of fair competition with whites in most other sports.

It must be remembered that professional and amateur sports emerged as a significant presence in American cultural life at the end of Reconstruction (1877) and developed throughout the age of racial segregation in America, which culminated in the 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson that declared that Jim Crow laws and state-sponsored racial segregation were not unconstitutional. It was, moreover, in the 1890s, the era of white imperialism: so-called Anglo-Saxon dominance over the “lesser breeds” and the “colored races” was seen as inevitable. The United States became, as a result of the Spanish American War of 1898 a true imperial power, claiming control of the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaiiall non-white nations whose occupants were seen as inferior by most white Americans. This, coupled with legislation abolishing Asian or “Oriental” immigration and the rampant belief in Social Darwinism or the superiority of the white race over others in the competition for world domination led to probably the most virulently racist period in post-Civil War American history. What is surprising is not that Jack Johnson, considering his times, should have had his ultimate downfall but that he was ever able to rise to the point where he was able to challenge for the heavyweight title in the first place.

Blacks were subjected to a harsh, abject system of racial segregation and second-class citizenship that was often backed up by lynching and white-instigated race riots where scores of blacks were killed. Clearly, during these years, neither the public, nor its leaders, were much interested in seeing any sort of race mixing or even the hint of it. From the time that Sullivan held the title until Jim Jeffries, who was champion from 1899-1905, no white heavyweight champion would even consider fighting a black, although there were many highly skilled black heavyweights at the time, most notably Peter Jackson. Other very good black heavyweights who were Jack Johnson’s contemporaries include Sam McVey, Sam Langford, Joe Jeanette and Denver Ed Martin. Most of the time black heavyweights had to fight each other. Sometimes, when they fought whites (in virtually the entire South, mixed race fights were illegal), it was expected that the blacks would lose or else the fight would be declared “no decision”—in other words, a draw. It was when Jeffries retired as champion in 1905 and tried to engineer a successor that a chain of events were set in motion that eventually permitted Johnson to fight for and win the title.

Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas in 1878, the year that Reconstruction failed. His father, Henry, was a laborer and his mother, Tiny, a domestic. Johnson, according to his autobiography, learned to read and write, and apparently was always restless as a child. He seemed to have a sense of ambition, that he was destined for better things than the world of the roustabout and the ordinary black laborer. It was in the tough world of manual black labor that Johnson, being a big man for the times, at 6 feet and 200 pounds, learned to fight. The world of boxing was tough; it required a great deal of travel; money was always uncertain as promoters often absconded with funds or simply did not pay what was promised and managers often cheated their fighters. Blacks had no choice but to use white managers, and these men would sometimes take extraordinary advantage of their fighters, many of whom were unlettered. Johnson never let his white managers control him, and he was not above firing them if they failed to do what he wanted them to do. As fighters mostly existed in the sporting world of whores, pimps, hustlers, pop entertainers, drugs, crime, and alcohol, it was difficult for any fighter to maintain his training regimen and his concentration. Many succumbed to alcoholism and venereal disease. Despite its hardships, being a fighter meant one was in a profession; one was a member of a fraternity. It was also, despite its drawbacks, not as difficult as the work of the average black laborer and it paid better, despite the cheating.

Johnson was more than a survivor in this world. He learned to thrive. He made a name for himself in the sporting publications. He practiced his craft and improved as a fighter. He did not allow himself to become dissipated, despite his surroundings. He was intelligent, he was determined, and he had considerable ring skills. And he wanted to be champion.

After Jeffries retired, a set of elimination matches was held. Eventually, out of the confusion, Tommy Burns emerged as the new champion. A tough, fiery-tempered man, small for a heavyweight (he was actually the size of a middleweight), Burns tried to avoid fighting Johnson, who pushed the issue. On Johnson’s side was a growing chorus of some influential in boxing circles like Richard K. Fox, publisher of the Police Gazette, probably the most popular sports newspaper in America at the time, who said that Johnson deserved a shot at the title. Burns made enormous demands, which, in the end, by and large, were conceded to by Johnson. Despite being criticized by other champions for giving Johnson a shot, Burns finally submitted—for the money, and because, despite the size difference between the two men, he thought he could win. They fought on December 26, 1908—Boxing Day—in Sydney, Australia. Johnson easily won the match in 14 rounds and became the first black heavyweight champion. It was almost immediate that the cry went up from whites for a “great white hope” who could wrest the title away from Johnson.

What most bothered whites about Johnson was that he openly had affairs with white women—and even married them—at a time when miscegenation of this sort was not only illegal but was positively dangerous. Johnson did not seem to care what whites thought of him, and this bothered most whites a great deal. He was not humble or diffident with whites. He gloated about his victories and often taunted his opponents in the ring. (This behavior was not unique to him as a champion boxer. Many boxers, notably John L. Sullivan, acted this way. It was unique for a black public figure.) He also did not care what blacks thought of him, as some were critical of his sex life. His preference for white women seemed an embarrassment and something that would bring the wrath of whites down on the heads of every black person. Jeffries was coaxed out of retirement to fight Johnson, some arguing that since Jeffries never lost his title in the ring, he was, in essence, the real champion. That fight took place in Reno, Nevada on July 4, 1910. It was the most talked-about, most publicized sporting event in American history. It was seen by nearly the whole country as a symbolic race war. It was also richest sporting event in American history: the two fighters split unevenly—the winner getting 60 percent—a sum of $101,000, a staggering prize for the time. Johnson once again won easily. Jeffries could not overcome a five-year layoff. Moreover, he probably lacked the skills, as he himself admitted after the fight, to have ever beaten Johnson. Since Johnson could not be defeated in the ring, the battle moved to defeating Johnson in the area where he most offended and where he was most vulnerable—his sex life.

If Johnson was born at the end of one major era of social reform—Reconstruction, he lived his years as a competitive boxer under the thrall of another—the Progressive Era. Between 1912 and 1920, the Constitution was amended four times, more than any other eight-year stretch in American history: the imposition of the federal income tax, the direct election of senators, the right for women to vote, and Prohibition were all added as amendments in what was one of the most intense periods of legislative social reform ever. The Mann Act was part of this social reforming zeal, an attempt to stem the tide of prostitution among working class and immigrant women that was plaguing the country, by prohibiting the transport of women across state lines for immoral purposes. Prostitution was a real problem in the United States at the time but the public was given lurid pictures in the taboo press of innocent white women who were lured into opium dens by sex-crazed “Chinamen” who turned these women into prostitutes. (The average white woman who was to enter this trade was not so terribly innocent and was likely to have been introduced to it by a white man.) So, somehow immorality was tied, in the public’s mind, to race mixing. Johnson, the rebel who advocated no cause but his own right to be himself, found himself squeezed between temperance and a national sex purity impulse. He was a boxer, so this made him something of an underground figure to begin with. Boxing was coming under attack by reformers at this time as a barbaric sport. He was black, which made him an outcast in his society. Finally, he consorted with white women, which made him a public menace.

On September 14, 1912, Johnson’s first white wife, Etta Duryea, blew her brains out in the upper floor of his Chicago nightclub (nightclub ownership being another sign of Johnson’s immorality). The government was already trying to put together a case against him under the Mann Act with a woman named Lucille Cameron, a white prostitute who had consorted with Johnson. On December 4, 1912, less than three months after his first wife died, Johnson married Cameron. The white public was outraged beyond words. In part, Johnson did this to prevent being prosecuted by the government. Cameron couldn’t testify against her husband. (He probably really loved her as well. The fact that she was white and that he had clearly been having an affair with her while his first wife was alive made it seem as Johnson was simply thumbing his nose at the moral and racial conventions of his society. With public sentiment so strongly against Johnson, the government was encouraged to continue its hunt for a witness against him for a Mann Act violation. They found one in Belle Schreiber, a white prostitute who had been Johnson’s girlfriend on and off for several years. The case was successfully prosecuted and Johnson was found guilty in 1913 of violating a decidedly bad law. Despite being found guilty of fairly minor offense, he was given the maximum penalty of a year and a day in prison. Johnson jumped bail and fled to Europe. He was to live abroad until 1920, when he returned to serve his sentence.

While he was abroad, Johnson continued to fight. He had to. He needed the money. Unfortunately for him, he was becoming less and less of an attraction and the fact that he had the title belt did not mean very much. The belt had no value because he was a fugitive, and was unable to fight in the biggest market for fights—the United States. In addition, with the start of war in Europe, he had become superfluous. Who cared about an out-of-shape, aging black American fighter who was hanging out in Europe? Eventually, he lost the title in Havana, Cuba in April 1915 to a big, lumbering Kansan named Jess Willard, who knocked out Johnson in the 26th round of their fight. Johnson claimed that the fight was fixed. Johnson probably lost cleanly: he was not in good fighting condition when he fought Willard, who was four years younger. Why would Johnson purposely want to lose the title? It was the only calling card to public notice of any sort that he had left. But whites finally got what they wanted: the return of the title to the white race. No black would fight for the heavyweight title for another 22 years, until Joe Louis did so, winning it in 1937.

After he served his time, Johnson did what many famous ex-athletes do: he tried to live off his name. He fought in exhibitions, told his life story in dime museums, appeared in a few movies in bit roles, and exchanged predictions about upcoming title bouts for meals from reporters. He took out a patent for a wrench in 1922 that apparently never caught on. (Taking out a patent is not an indication that one’s invention is a success in the market.) He continued to marry white women, but since he was no longer heavyweight champion, no one cared. He occasionally performed as a musician. There was an aspect of the shabby about his final years, but Johnson was a man of dignity and even of cultural bearing. He was an intelligent man—always a shrewd operator, looking for an angle. And he continued to drive fast, as he had when he was champion. He died in an automobile accident in 1946.

Johnson enjoyed a bit of renaissance in the late 1960s when Howard Sackler’s play, The Great White Hope, a thinly veiled fictional version of Johnson’s life, was performed on Broadway. But more people at the time thought the play was actually a commentary on then-heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, who openly identified with Johnson in interviews and in his autobiography, The Greatest: My Own Story (1975). Ali also got into trouble with the government—over the draft. Ali refused conscription on religious grounds, that he was a Muslim minister as a member of the Nation of Islam. Ali was convicted, like Johnson, but instead of leaving the country (he couldn’t because the government had confiscated his passport), Ali endured an exile from his profession, being denied a boxing license for three and a half years. But how alike were the two men, really? Not really very much at all, other than being black heavyweight champions who were convicted for violating a federal law. In some ways, the presence of Ali at the time obscured Johnson from view, as Johnson seemed to be important only inasmuch as he adumbrated Ali. Now, the late 1960s are over, as is Ali’s era. We can look back at Johnson now and give him the examination he deserves, without someone else getting in the way.

Gerald Early is Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture.

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Dedan Kimathi

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri (October 31, 1920 – February 18, 1957) was a Kenyan rebel leader who fought against British colonization in Kenya in the 1950s. He was convicted and executed by the British colonial government. The British colonial government that ruled Kenya at the time considered him a terrorist, but many Kikuyu and other Kenyans viewed him as a freedom fighter of the Mau Mau Uprising.

Early life – Kimathi was born in Thenge Village Tetu division, Nyeri District. At the age of fifteen, he joined the local primary school, Karuna-ini, where he perfected his English skills. He would later use those language skills to write extensively before and during the uprising. He was a Debate Club member in his school. He was deeply religious and carried a Bible regularly. He worked for the forest department collecting tree seeds to help him foot his school bill. He later joined Tumutumu CSM School for his secondary learning, but dropped out for lack of funds.

He dabbled with several jobs but never felt fully settled. Notable was his enlisting with the army to fight in the Second World War in 1941. However, in 1944, he was expelled for misconduct. In 1946, he became a member of the Kenya African Union. In 1949, he started teaching at his old school Tumutumu, but left the job within two years.

Mau Mau movement – Nevertheless, he managed to be very influential to whomever he met through the string of jobs he was able to obtain. He became radically political in 1950. He involved himself with the Mau Mau, and later that year administered the oath of the Mau Mau, making him a marked man. He joined Forty Group, the militant wing of the defunct Kikuyu Central Association in 1951. He was elected as a local branch secretary of KAU in Ol’ Kalou and Thomson’s Falls area in 1952. He was briefly arrested in that same year, but escaped with the help of local police. This marked the beginning of his violent uprising. He formed Kenya Defence Council to co-ordinate all forest fighters in 1953.

In 1956, he was finally arrested with one of his wives, Wambui. He was sentenced to death by a court presided by Chief Justice Sir Kenneth O’Connor, while he was in a hospital bed at the General Hospital Nyeri. In the early morning of February 18, 1957 he was executed by the colonial government. The hanging took place at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison

Legacy – Kimathi was buried in a mass grave and to this day the British government objects to his reburial as it felt (and continues to feel) that he was a terrorist. He is, however, viewed by many Kenyans especially from his tribe as a national hero. Many towns in Kenya have a building or street named after him, Including popular t-shirts designed to immortalize his image by brands like Jamhuri wear. The play “Trial of Dedan Kimathi” was written by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (the brother of a Mau Mau member) and provides a detailed account of Kimathi.

A statue of Kimathi is being built on Kimathi Street in Nairobi. Its foundation stone was laid in December 11, 2006 Kimathi was married to Mukami Kimathi. Among their children are sons Wachiuri and Maina and daughters Nyawira and Wanjugu

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The Struggle for Independence

(and “Mau Mau”)

A. African discontent over lack of influence on politics, and over loss of their land to the whites, eventually led to a guerrilla war.  This was a nationalist guerrilla struggle and definitely not the return to savagery as the “thin verneer of civilization wore off the bloody savages” as the whites portrayed it. B. It was fought largely in Kikuyu areas because of mountain hiding places there (used to be Aberdare Mountains, now called Nyandarua Mountains).  They had little connection with forces outside the country, so one would have predicted odds of success were low. C. They were opposed with much hysteria and brutality by British troops, flying planes and dropping bombs, using “protective villages” (a technique learned in Malaysia, and later used by US in Vietnam War) and putting Mau Mau believers through re-education (to return them to civilization).  The “re-education” often involved torture of one kind or another, some of it so bad that it eventually caused a stink in the British Parliament. D. There was much violence of African against African, and the use of “homeguards” who collaborated with the British.  Large numbers of Africans were killed, but only a small number of the colonists. E. Kenyatta and other presumed leaders became revered martyrs when they were sent to desert prison-camp.  Were actually more moderate than the radical true leaders. F. Led toward independence by giving Britain a black eye in world public opinion and raising the cost of continuing colonial domination.

Dedan Kimathi one of the leaders of the Land and Freedom Army soon after his capture by the British forces.

Footnote on the deaths in Mau Mau:

The official records of casualties for the Emergency period show:  11,503 Mau Mau fighters killed; 1,920 loyal Africans; 66
European soldiers; 29 European civilians; and 29 Asian civilians.  To quote Mazrui and Tidy, “These figures exclude the
uncounted thousands of Kikuyu, including many women and children, who died of starvation or disease in the overcrowded
and insanitary fortified villages.”

In the words of Barbara Slaughter, reviewing a program about Mau Mau on Channel 4 television in the United Kingdom:

In 1960 the state of emergency was lifted. The LFA death toll during the emergency was 11,500,
of whom around 1,000 were hanged. Eighty thousand Kikuyu were imprisoned in concentration
camps. One hundred and fifty thousand Africans, mostly Kikuyu, lost their lives, with many dying
of disease and starvation in the “protected villages”. On the other side, the KFA killed around
2,000 people, including 32 European civilians and 63 members of the security forces.

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Carnival, a festival in honor of the goddess of joy, imagination, and creativity, and a dance of sex hormones. Photo Credit: “So yuh going to Carnival” Magazine and Emmanuel Joseph

The African, and Spiritual, Origins of Carnival

By Grisso*

It has become the received teaching in all the countries of the New World where Carnival has become an institution — notably in Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, and Port of Spain — to ascribe its origins to white planters and costumed balls, rather than to its palpably African roots [1]. I want in this article to ground the Carnival firmly in Mother Africa, where it rightfully belongs.

The first point I would make in this regard is simply to note that everywhere in the New World where there is Carnival, you find the creative presence of an African genius. In Rio, you have African and Portuguese, in New Orleans you have African and French, and in Port of Spain you have African and again, French. It is also present throughout Hispanophone America, where African energy is again present, expressed now through an Hispanic voice. The one constant in all of these variations of carnival is an African presence.

But really, we shouldn’t end there. In the Bahamas, Carnival is known by another name … Junkanoo. There, the British never participated to any significant extent, and therefore there was no attempt at European expropriation; so that historically there has never been any doubt as to the African root of this festival. Junkanoo is known also in Bermuda, where again it is an undisputed African engine that propels this form of cultural expression … Jamaica also, where it is now a faded if not entirely lost cultural expression, now being resuscitated by the import of Trinidad-style carnival. Even in North America, few people are aware that Junkanoo was celebrated in North Carolina and other parts of the American South at one time. There, for a time, it even crossed cultures and was adopted by Anglos, only subsequently to die out.[2] One can speculate as to why Junkanoo died out in North Carolina and other parts of the American South; my speculation would be that it died of racial disdain — it is from the word Junkanoo that we get the derogatory terms “kooner” and “coon”, as in “acting like a …”, a folk etymology which reveals the disdain in which this African form of cultural expression was held. Even African-descended folk, I’m sure, many of them, especially “church-folk”, would have been persuaded to look down upon the Junkanoo. So that even where there is a large African population in the New World, namely the United States other than New Orleans, where it would appear to be an unknown, or at least alien, cultural expression, we find that it once existed. I therefore assert that everywhere in the New World where Africa is found, we also find carnival, or carnival by some other name such as junkanoo, or “crop-over” (its Barbadian form), except of course where it died a victim of racial disdain and/or racial self-hatred.

In making this assertion, a clear corollary is that the African carnival has nothing at bottom to do with Lent, Christmas, or the Christian calendar. For those who don’t know, the carnivals of Port of Spain, Rio de Janeiro, and New Orleans, also a host of others throughout the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe, are celebrated on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, and so are linked with the Christian church calendar. (Truth be told, the Christian calendar is littered with pagan retentions, most notably Christmas and Easter. Christianity was always alien to Europe and has never really been tried by the Europeans, but it certainly was used by them as an arm of conquest. But I digress.) Likewise, the Junkanoo celebrations of the Bahamas, Bermuda, Jamaica, and North Carolina, are associated with the Christmas season. But there is no organic connection. The African-inspired carnivals have an origin and substance of their own, but at least in this aspect of outward form, they assume a European cloak. But it is assuredly a cloak of convenience. As in the carnival itself, separation must be drawn between the mask and the masquerader. No, the African carnival took on a European mask because the structures of European domination permitted it no other choice.

It is on this outward appearance that the repeated lie is based that carnival is a European creation. I do not deny that French, Portuguese, and Spanish colonialists, whether in Port of Spain, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, or wherever else in Latin America, celebrated their own form of carnival in the costumed balls and parties that they had in the days and weeks prior to Lent. Nor do I deny that the British colonialists of the Bahamas, Bermuda, Jamaica, North Carolina and elsewhere gave themselves over to merriment and debauchery in the “holiday season” of Christmas and New Year. No doubt that is true. Junkanoo merely took the occasion for merry-making afforded by the enslaver’s calendar to re-create a palpably African tradition right here in the New World. And the carnivals of the Catholic enslavers provided yet another opportunistic avenue of expression for what always was, and remains today, a fundamentally African form of cultural expression in all the Lent-related carnivals.

So what’s the difference, you might ask. To get a sense of the European cultural expression in carnival, one of course looks to Europe. And likewise, to get a sense of the African cultural expression, one looks to Africa. It is of course the case that every society, however inhibited or repressed, finds occasion for celebration, feasts, festivals, merry-making, and the like: it is an aspect of humanity in which we all share. Most societies also have the idea of the masquerade or the costume in one or another form, whether in the theater of social or religious ritual, the theater of the stage or drama, or the theater of the street or parade. The lines dividing these various forms of masquerade/theater are not that sharp, and the reader may no doubt be able to think of yet other categories. Carnival is a form of theater, obviously, since masquerade is involved. If we remained stuck on the outward form — the name — we would think that carnival is defined by its name, but we would be mistaken if we thought that that was the end of it.

The word carnival is derived from Latin words meaning, as some have put it, “a farewell to flesh”, referring to that season of merry-making just prior to Lent, the Christian season of fasting and fleshly denial. But one can have a season of merry-making without necessarily saying farewell to flesh, which is the case, for example, with Christmas merry-making (and Junkanoo). Therefore, to understand carnival, at least in its New World African expression, we need first of all to think of it in broader, more abstract terms than its European name would imply. We also need to focus on the differences between the European and African cultural expressions that the Europeans call carnival, that the Africans call something else, which from a New World African perspective appears to be lost, but which, in the abstract, is a form of theater of the street … to play mas’ being literally to lose oneself in the character one is supposed to be portraying as part of the masquerade.

Where Africa and Europe appear to diverge in this respect is in the aspect of costumed bands. The writings on the historical origins of the New World carnivals all speak of French, Portuguese, or Spanish colonialists having costumed balls. Individuals wore individual costumes, and the merry-making was largely indoors, though spill-over onto the streets could be expected. It is the same today still with the European carnivals of Quebec, and Venice, etc. Individuals wear costumes to indoor balls, but spill over onto the streets. This European style of merry-making is present also in the North American Halloween. By contrast, the African style of street theater called for costumed bands, and for the merry-making focus to be outdoors, rather than indoors. Which is what we see with today’s New World carnivals. It is also what we see when we look at the African (Yoruba) Egungun festival. In the Egungun festival, during which every extended family honors its collective ancestors, all the members of an extended family lineage wear the same colors, thus constituting a “band,” [3] which is the defining feature of the carnivals of New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Port of Spain, and others like it, and conversely absent from the European tradition that we still see today in Venice, Quebec City, etc.

From the Egungun celebration also comes a feature that we find prominent in various of the Caribbean carnivals: throwing talcum powder on fellow masqueraders, from which comes the (Trinidad) expression — “you can’t play mas’ and ‘fraid powder!”. The Egungun festival is at bottom a religious festival, at which ancestral possession is invited; celebrants who become possessed are powdered down, for reasons which probably have to do with putting on a mask, that is to show outwardly that the celebrant is no longer himself, his or her bodily vehicle having been possessed by an ancestral spirit. So… although at some level the New World carnivals appear linked to European cultural expressions — Lent and Christmas notably — at a deeper level we find that the present form of these festivals really owe more to Mother Africa than to Europe, its wayward son.

But there is more! When we trace the origins even of the European carnivals, we find that it is again to Africa we must go. This time to the Nile Valley, and to ancient Egypt — Kamit. Herodotus’ “The Histories” [4] is replete with references to the borrowings that Greece owes to Kamit: “It was the Egyptians who originated, and taught the Greeks to use ceremonial meetings, processions, and processional offerings: a fact which can be inferred from the obvious antiquity of such ceremonies in Egypt, compared with Greece, where they have been only recently introduced.” (Book II, para. 58). Later, Herodotus goes on to describe one of the ceremonial processions, at the festival of “Artemis” at “Bubastis,” as follows: “… they come in barges, men and women together, a great number in each boat; on the way, some of the women keep up a continual clatter with castanets and some of the men play flutes, while the rest, both men and women, sing and clap their hands. Whenever they pass a town on the river-bank, they bring the barge close in-shore, some of the women continuing to act as I have said, while others shout abuse at the women of the place, or start dancing, or stand up and pull up their skirts. When they reach Bubastis, they celebrate the festival with elaborate sacrifices, and more wine is consumed than during all the rest of the year. The numbers that meet there are, according to native report, as many as seven hundred thousand men and women…” (same source, para. 60). That seems to describe what today we would call a carnival.

Just so there is no doubt, Herodotus also tells us that the ancient Egyptians — the Kamau — were a black people with woolly hair. Herodotus tells us this very plainly in many places in his “The Histories”, for example, in para. 55 of Book Two, he says “as to the bird being black, they merely signify by this that the woman was an Egyptian”, in explaining the Egyptian origin of the oracle of Dodona in Greece. Elsewhere, in para. 102, as another example, in explaining his belief that the Colchians, a people found near the Black Sea in what is now Russia, were a people of Egyptian descent, the remnant of an Egyptian army left behind, he says: “my own idea on the subject was based first on the fact that they have black skins and woolly hair.” And if all else fails — because Eurocentrist historians have found all sorts of reasons to discount Herodotus and other contemporaneous European writers who say that the ancient Egyptians were a Black African people, as did, by the way, the ancient Egyptians themselvs — it helps to look at the features of the Sphinx, which are clearly Black African in phenotype.

I had to laugh when I first read the part about women pulling up their skirts. Thousands of years later, they do the same thing, completely unaware that what they do with orgiastic abandon today, possibly even with some sense of Judeo-Christian-Islamic guilt or sin, would have been considered part of an approved social and religious ritual. The Kamitic deity corresponding most to Artemis, by the way, would be Heru. Although Artemis is female, and Heru male, we see from the Greek mythology that Artemis and Apollo were brother/sister twins, and Apollo clearly corresponds to Heru. In the Kamitic tradition, there is a close relationship between Heru and Het-Heru, evident even in the name. Het-Heru literally means “house of Heru.” This relationship exists at many levels. At one level, Heru represents the will, and correspondingly Het-Heru represents the imagination. That which is willed must first be brought into and entertained in the imagination. So the relation between Heru, and Het-Heru is here apt. At another level, Heru represents testosterone, for the presence of testosterone is critical to the aggressiveness needed to exert one’s will. Correspondingly, Het-Heru represents the gonads, the sex organs within which testosterone is produced. So a Kamitic festival in honor of Heru, in its female aspect, would be likely also to honor both testosterone and its means of production. For those who are familiar with the Yoruba deities, Shango would correspond to Heru. And Shango is known, among his many qualities, for being the “ladies’ man”, the embodiment of “testosterone city”, etc. So this festival that Herodotus characterized in terms of the Greek equivalent god Artemis, is likely to have been a festival in honor of one or both of Heru and Het-Heru, or in the Yoruba correspondence, of Shango and Oshun. The latter, in particular, governs joy, the imagination, sensuality, and, yes, the sex organs, [5] which might explain Herodotus’ reference to women pulling up their skirts in the festival in honor of the deity he characterized as corresponding to the Greek deity, Artemis. Anybody who has only looked on at a carnival, knows in his gut that carnival is a dance of sex hormones, male and female in symbiotic embrace.

Nor should we assume that there is anything spiritually or morally backward about celebrating the principles for which Het-Heru, and Oshun stand as spiritual exemplars, namely the principles of joy, the imagination and sensuality; rather the reverse, for it is the spiritual role of joyfulness to propel us forward on our spiritual path. Take that away, and you have piety perhaps, but piety by itself never caused a spirit to soar; or you have hypocrisy, which is corrosive of the spirit. By the same token, I hasten to add, joyfulness taken to extreme quickly propels one onto a downward trajectory of destruction, however much the short-term pleasures for example of drinking and feteing every night. The ancient Egyptians and the traditional African seem to have understood these principles very well, and in particular the need for balance. By contrast, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is riddled with contradictions on this score, which is why the enjoyment of sex and sensuality are considered somehow inherently sinful or dirty in these religions, the Song of Solomon apparently to the contrary notwithstanding. The traditional African religion, ancient Egyptian included, had no confusion on that score, all activities — 24 hours a day, seven days of the week — having a legitimate spiritual place and function within the religion. It is in this framework that a carnival, with all the lewd, sexually charged carryings-on, could be considered also religious, as Herodotus tells us it was in the case of the ancient Egyptian. We should credit that ancient wisdom, and seek to relearn it in a conscious way. I say in a conscious way, because the folk wisdom is such that all the Judeo-Christian-Islamic piety and proselytizing over two thousand years and more did not succeed in stamping out the practice; it only forced some of us to compartmentalize our existence in a way which cannot really be spiritually healthy, but is better than completely falling for the pious know-nothings who seek control above all, and so are afraid of anything that bespeaks liberation, carnival included.

Islam of course long ago stamped out such “pagan” rituals in Egypt. Christendom never quite succeeded in stamping out the pagan rituals of the past, but rather co-opted many of them, to the point now where the church calendar is littered with one and another pagan festival dressed up as Christian, the most important being Christmas, and Easter. [6] There clearly is no theological sanction for carnival either, but it too is tied resolutely to the Christian Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. So, based on Herodotus, I would speculate that Greece borrowed aspects of the carnival — festival of “Artemis” for one — from ancient Egypt, and that these practices, termed “pagan” in the Christian era, and accordingly derogated, survived in Europe in various forms up until Europe again culturally encountered Africa in the New World. Meanwhile, the ancient Egyptian practice was merely part and parcel of Mother Africa — of which Egypt remains a part, we need to be reminded — which gave it sustenance, and to which it gave back both culturally and genetically. [7] As Diop has informed us, the Yoruba, the Wolof, and other West African peoples also trace their heritage to the Nile Valley. [8] Hence, when Europe and Africa again met in the New World, the cultural transmission of ancient Egypt was embodied in both, in ways that neither knew. The cultural expression known as carnival was one of those transmissions. By the normal processes of cultural mutation, the European form differed from the African one when the two again encountered each other. But there was enough in common that in so many places of the New World, carnival could bring enslaver and enslaved together, however briefly when it happens, in joyous abandon.

Be that as it may, it is time to correct the record when it comes to carnival, and to the question to whom is owed the credit. Carnival is an African expression through and through, whether directly out of West Africa via the slave trade, or indirectly out of Africa (ancient Egypt) via Greece, Rome, and Western Europe. If that is not convincing enough, go to any one of the modern carnivals, whether Port of Spain, Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans, or Brooklyn on Labor Day. The sounds you hear, and the vibrations you feel, clearly, are “out of Africa.” So, please, let us hear no more of those “histories” of Carnival that look no further back than slavery or emancipation, that see the African implicitly as a blank sheet on which it is the European who writes, and see in the New World carnivals Africa imitating Europe, or newly freed slaves imitating erstwhile enslavers, when it is Herodotus, the European, who would tell us exactly the opposite.

Grisso

*Grisso is a 48 year old African of the diaspora, born and raised in Trinidad. . He may be reached via email at .

Notes:

[1] See, for example, http://www.allahwe.org/History.html,
http://www.noconnect.com/entrtn/events/mardigra/history/history.htm
http://www.tidco.co.tt/local/carnival/car7.htm
http://ipanema.com/carnival/home.htm
www.travelgrenada.com/carnival.htm

[2] See http://melanet.com/Johnkankus/ [Author's update (July, 2007): This link is now apparently broken -- try instead:
http://www.melanet.com/johnkankus/roots.html]

[3] Information based on lecture I attended given by Baba Wande Abimbola, Chief Spokesperson for Ifa in the world. (Ifa is the traditional religion of the Yoruba.)

[4] Herodotus hardly warrants a footnote, having been credited (by Europe) as the "father" of history. His "The Histories" is available in English translation from Penguin Classics (1954, 1972), with translation by Aubrey de Selincourt, which is the version on which I rely.[Author's update (July, 2007): See Book 2 online at
http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.2.ii.html.]

[5] See my article entitled "African Cosmology" in this publication: http://TheAfrican.Com/Magazine/cosmo.htm. See also "Metu Neter, vol. 1," by Ra Un Nefer Amen. And compare the Greek deities as described in http://www.mythweb.com/gods/index.html.

[6] See "African Cosmology", mentioned above, which cites Charles A. Finch, III (1991), "Echoes of the Old Darkland", p. 191

[7] See, for example, my article entitled "The Ancient Wisdom in Africa", at http://TheAfrican.Com/Magazine/MagAncWis.htm.

[8] See Cheikh Anta Diop, "African Origins of Civilization", and "Pre-Colonial Black Africa".

Dr. Chancellor James Williams

(1898-1992)

Of the recent towering figures in the struggle to completely eradicate the pervasive racial myths clinging to the origins of Nile Valley Civilization, few scholars have had the impact of Dr. Chancellor James Williams (1898-1992).  Chancellor Williams, the youngest of five children, was born in Bennetsville, South Carolina December 22, 1898. His father had been a slave; his mother a cook, nurse, and evangelist. A stirring writer, Chancellor Williams achieved wide acclaim as the author of the 1971 publication, The Destruction of Black Civilization–Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.

Totally uncompromising, highly controversial, broadly sweeping in its range and immensely powerful in its scope, there have been few books published during the past half-century focusing on the African presence in antiquity that have so profoundly affected the consciousness of African people in search of their historical identity.  Dr. John Henrik Clarke, now an ancestor and a contemporary of Dr. Williams and one of our most outstanding scholars, described The Destruction of Black Civilization as “a foundation and new approach to the history of our race.”  In The Destruction of Black Civilization Chancellor Williams successfully “shifted the main focus from the history of Arabs and Europeans in Africa to the Africans themselves–a history of the Blacks that is a history of Blacks.”

The career of Chancellor Williams was spacious and varied; university professor, novelist, and author-historian.  He was the father of fourteen children.  Blind and in poor health, the last years of Dr. Williams’ life were spent in a nursing home in Washington, D.C.  His contributions to the reconstruction of African civilization, however, stand as monuments and beacons reflecting the past, present and future of African people.

source

The Making of the Egyptian Revolution

By Esam Al-Amin
Egyptian tour guides call on tourists to return to the country at the Great Pyramids outside Cairo

Freedom lies behind a door, closed shut
It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist

– Egyptian Poet-Laureate Ahmad Shawqi (1869-1932)

On April 21, 2008, an assistant high school principal placed an advertisement in Al-Ahram, the largest daily newspaper in Egypt, pleading disparately with President Hosni Mubarak and his wife to intervene and release her daughter from prison.

It turned out that her 27 year-old daughter, Israa’ Abd el-Fattah, was arrested 10 days earlier because of her role in placing a page on Facebook encouraging Egyptians to support a strike in the industrial city of al-Mahalla that had taken place on April 6.

In her spare time, she and two of her colleagues created the Facebook page. Within days of posting it, over 70,000 people supported their call. After the security forces cracked down against the huge riots in al-Mahalla on April 6, Abd el-Fattah was arrested.

What was odd about this arrest was that although thousands of people have been arrested over the past three decades, it was the first time that a warrant was issued against a female under the notorious emergency laws imposed in the country since 1981. To get out of prison she had to apologize and express regret for her actions. But the experience made her more determined than ever to be politically active.

On that day, the “April 6 Youth” movement was created. For the next two and a half years it maintained its presence and created one of the most popular political forums on several social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

When the president of Tunisia, Zein al-Abideen Ben Ali, was deposed on January 14, following a four week popular uprising, the April 6 movement, like millions of youth across the Arab World, was inspired, energized, and called for action.

Changing of the Guard: the Youth leads

Looking at the calendar, Israa’ and her colleagues picked the next Egyptian holiday, which was ironically “Police Day” falling on Tuesday, January 25. Within a few days they called on all social media sites for massive protests and an uprising against the Mubarak regime.

They called for marches to start from all major squares, mosques and churches in Cairo and Alexandria while asking others to help plan in other Egyptian cities. They insisted that the protests would be peaceful and that no one should bring weapons of any type.

They had four demands: that the government develops programs to address poverty and unemployment; that it would end the state of emergency and uphold judicial independence; the resignation of the interior minister whose ministry was notorious for torture and abuse of human rights; and for political reforms including the limitation of presidential terms to two, the dissolution of the parliament, and for new elections to be held after the massive elections fraud of last November.

Within a few days, over ninety thousand youth signed up and charted a comprehensive protest throughout Egypt. Initially, neither the government nor the opposition took them seriously. Even former IAEA director Dr. Mohammad Elbaradei, who has been criticizing the regime for over a year, was abroad due to his frequent speaking engagements.

In a show of force, the government assembled over two hundred thousand of its security forces surrounding the protesters throughout the country. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched representing broad cross sections of society, men and women, young and old, educated and illiterate, and declared that their demonstrations were peaceful but that they were determined to press their demands.

When they could not control the crowds the police beat back the protesters using water canons, tear gas and rubber bullets. By the end of the day there were over a dozen casualties and hundreds of injuries. This not only outraged the demonstrators, but also ignited the whole country.

Most of the protesters refused to go home and escalated the confrontation declaring an open demonstration in Liberation Square in downtown Cairo and throughout the country. The government continued its crackdown calling for curfews in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez from 6 PM to 6 AM.

The curfews for the following days kept getting longer until the government called for a general curfew from 3 PM to 8 AM. But each time the people simply ignored it and increased their demands, calling for total regime change and the ouster of Mubarak.

An Uprising turns into a Revolution

By Thursday, the organizers called for “A Day of Rage” after Friday’s congregational prayers. The next round of protests included participation by all opposition groups, the largest of which was the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Immediately hundreds of their leaders were rounded up and detained. As millions of people across Egypt took to the street, all 350,000 security forces and police were mobilized, advancing on the protesters and turning Egyptian streets and neighborhoods into battlegrounds. By the end of the day dozens more were killed and thousands injured.

Afterwards, security forces evacuated from all the cities. Chaos and confusion ensued. Police stations and buildings belonging to the ruling party were torched. The secret police opened all police stations and prisons releasing all criminals in a scorched-earth attempt to spread fear and chaos. The regime hoped to regain the upper hand by proving its worth to the people as their source of security.

After a four-day absence, at midnight on Friday, the 82-year old Egyptian president addressed his nation of 85 million by blaming his government, describing it as “inept,” and promising to appoint a new cabinet. By the following day he appointed two generals, his chief of intelligence, Gen. Omar Suleiman as his first ever vice president and Gen. Ahmad Shafiq as prime minister.

People immediately dismissed the superficial gestures and demanded an end to Mubarak’s 30-year rule. By Monday the new cabinet was sworn in, retaining 18 of the previous ministers, including those occupying the important posts of defense, foreign, communications, justice, and oil.

The only major change was the sacking of the interior minister, appointing another general in his place. Not a single opposition party was consulted, let alone appointed. The first order of business of the new government was to reconstitute the security forces and restore order.

Although by Friday the authorities had completely cut mobile phone and Internet services, the genie was already out of the bottle. When asked by the French news service AFP, Abd el-Fattah, who has been camping with her colleagues since Tuesday in Liberation Square, said, after the government disrupted the internet, “We’ve already announced the meeting places. So we’ve done it, we no longer need means of communication.”

She continued, “We want the regime to go. We’ve been asking for reforms for 30 years and the regime has never answered or paid attention to our demands.” She then added, “It won’t just be tomorrow, but the day after and the day after that as well. We won’t stop, we won’t go home.”

Amidst the chant “the People demand the fall of the regime,” Abd el-Fattah talked to Al-Jazeera TV, which has been covering the unfolding events non-stop since it began four days earlier, and called for all opposition parties to form a transitional government. But by Saturday the regime interrupted all satellite channels including Al-Jazeera. Egyptians were now totally cut off from all means of information and communications.

By Sunday afternoon a provisional parliament, made up of the major opposition parties including the MB, the liberal Wafd, and the April 6 and Kefaya movements, met at Liberation Square and appointed a 10-member committee, headed by Dr. Elbaradei. Their mandate was to negotiate with the regime the departure of the embattled president. The April 6 youth was disappointed since they had hoped for a formation of a transitional government rather than a committee that would initiate negotiations with the despised regime.

Meanwhile, in the absence of the police and security forces, the president sent the army to restore order and intimidate the protesters. Tanks and armed vehicles were occupying major squares, thoroughfares, and public buildings. The following day F-16s and military helicopters were roaming the skies in a show of force. But the protesters immediately embraced the army, hugging them, chanting for them, and asking them to be on their side.

The head of the army declared that the military would not attack or intimidate the people but would only protect the country and maintain order. A few officers even joined the demonstrators in denouncing the regime. Overall, however, the army seems to have kept its loyalty to the regime despite the popular call to oust the president.

Meanwhile, people formed popular committees to protect their properties and neighborhoods. Hundreds of looters caught by the people were found to be either deserted police officers or common criminals released by the police. All were turned to the army for detention.

Despite the massive demonstrations, the total paralysis of the country, and the increasingly hardened will of the Egyptian people, President Mubarak remained arrogant, stubborn, and unmoved by his people’s rage towards his regime. He also was emboldened as he received support from other authoritarians such as the King of Saudi Arabia, and the leaders of Libya and the Palestinian Authority.

Furthermore, a former Israeli defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, considered one of the closest Israeli politicians to Mubarak, told the Jerusalem Post after speaking to Mubarak, “I have no doubt that the situation in Egypt is under control.” He then added, “Our relations with Egypt are strategic and intimate.”

As the events unfolded the regime seemed confounded and shaken. Initially, the official news agencies in Egypt blamed some members of the ruling party and low-ranking officials. For instance the party demanded and received the resignation of Ahmad Ezz, the right-hand man of Jamal Mubarak, the president’s son and undeclared heir apparent.

Ezz was a corrupt billionaire businessman who quickly rose through the party ranks and oversaw the latest fraudulent parliamentary elections where the party won 97 per cent of the seats. Just a few weeks ago, he was praised by ruling party officials for orchestrating the overwhelming victory despite more than 1500 judicial orders that overturned much of the election results, but were ignored by the government. Ezz and his family immediately left the country in his private jet.

Likewise, both of Mubarak’s sons and their families left to London in their private jets. The head of the Cairo International Airport also announced that 19 private jets owned by the richest families in the country left to Dubai on Saturday. One of these corrupt billionaires was Hussein Salem, a former intelligence officer and a close confidant of the president. Dubai airport officials declared that they seized over $300 million in cash from him.

Salem was the head of a private energy company that teamed up with an Israeli conglomerate to secure a long-term contract to sell natural gas to Israel. In June 2008 Les Afriques reported that Egypt was subsidizing Israel with hundreds of millions of dollars every year in energy purchase. By January 2010, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz exposed the secret and reported that Israel was in fact receiving natural gas from Egypt at a 70 per cent discount. The scandal was swept aside by the former Egyptian prime minister who refused to divulge to the parliament the terms of the contract. Subsequently when the government was sued, a judge ruled against it and invalidated the contract, which the government totally ignored.

Looking the other way: Human Rights but not for all

The Mubarak regime had one of the worst human rights records in the world. In June 2010, Human Rights Watch reported that “the Egyptian Government continued to suppress political dissent … dispersing demonstrations; harassing rights activists; and detaining journalists, bloggers, and Muslim Brotherhood members.”

Even the U.S. State Department 2008 Human Rights Report to Congress stated that “The (Egyptian) government’s respect for human rights remained poor, and serious abuses continued in many areas.” It continued, “The government limited citizens’ right to change their government and continued a state of emergency that has been in place almost continuously since 1967. Security forces used unwarranted lethal force and tortured and abused prisoners and detainees, in most cases with impunity.”

It concluded, “Security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals, in some cases for political purposes, and kept them in prolonged pretrial detention. The executive branch placed limits on and pressured the judiciary. The government’s respect for freedoms of press, association, and religion declined during the year, and the government continued to restrict other civil liberties, particularly freedom of speech, including Internet freedom, and freedom of assembly, including restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Government corruption and lack of transparency persisted.”

But despite this massive indictment of the Egyptian regime by the U.S. government, the U.S. continued to support the Mubarak regime, providing it with almost $2 billion annually, the second largest foreign aid recipient after Israel. According to the Congressional Research Report submitted to Congress in September 2009, the U.S. had subsidized the Egyptian regime with over $64 billion since it signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, including $40 billion in military hardware and security gear.

It also rewarded the regime with $7 billion debt relief in April 1991 for its support of the Gulf war earlier that year. Furthermore, it intervened with the Paris club to forgive half of Egypt’s $20 billion debt to Western governments. In short, the U.S. and other Western governments favored establishing a strategic relationship with Mubarak, because of the peace treaty with Israel, overlooking the nature of the regime’s corruption and repression.

After 9/11, the Mubarak regime played a major role in aiding and abetting the U.S. counterterrorism policy on rendition and torture. In 2005, the BBC reported that both the United States and the United Kingdom sent terrorist suspects to Egypt for detention. In that report, Egypt’s prime minister acknowledged that since 2001, the U.S. had transferred some 60-70 detainees to Egypt as part of the “war on terror.” According to journalist Jane Mayer’s investigative book “The Dark Side,” the new Vice President, Suleiman, was the coordinator of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program during the Bush era. [See Stephen Soldz’s account of Suleiman’s role on CounterPunch, January 31.]

Despite George Bush’s grandiose rhetoric on democracy and freedom, Bush welcomed Mubarak, calling him a “good friend” and explaining that he looked forward to “his wise counsel,” when the Egyptian president visited Bush in his Crawford ranch in April 2004. With Mubarak standing next to him Bush said, “Our nations have a relationship that is strong and warm. Egypt is a strategic partner of the United States.” He then thanked Mubarak’s efforts on rendition and torture when he said, “I’m grateful for President Mubarak’s support in the global war against terror.”

In fact, the Bush administration subsequently received Jamal Mubarak at the highest levels of government in an attempt to groom him to succeed his father. In May 2006, the Washington Post reported that, “It was unusual for a private foreign citizen with no official portfolio to receive so much high-level attention.” The younger Mubarak met with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, during his “private visit” to the U.S. While he was at the White House the former President stopped by to “welcome him.”

The sacred equation: Egyptian Dictatorship equals Secure Israel

The strategic relationship between Egypt and the U.S. was bipartisan. When President Barak Obama was asked by the BBC during his celebrated visit to Egypt in June 2009, whether he regarded President Mubarak as an authoritarian ruler, Obama answered with an emphatic “No.” Then he spelled out the strategic value of Mubarak when he said, “He has been a stalwart ally in many respects to the United States. He has sustained peace with Israel which is a very difficult thing to do in that region.”

This perceived security for Israel was key in the West’s continued support of the Egyptian regime. When Vice President Joe Biden was asked to comment about the turmoil in Egypt by Jim Lehrer of PBS, he shamelessly declared on January 27, that Mubarak was not a dictator. Presenting the Israeli viewpoint, Biden said, “Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on– relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel. I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

On the same day, while Egypt’s security forces were killing, beating and gassing the Egyptian people by the thousands, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered this flimsy reaction: “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

Likewise, when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked whether the White House believed the Egyptian government was stable, he replied without hesitation: “Yes.” When he was next asked whether the U.S. still supports Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, he reiterated that Egypt remains “a strong ally.”

Not a single U.S. government official or member of Congress condemned the Egyptian government for killing and attacking its own citizens. When Neda Agha-Sultan was killed in Tehran in June 2009, many Western governments immediately issued world-wide condemnations blaming the Iranian government. But not so for the hundreds of Egyptians gunned down by their own government in broad daylight. Regretting the loss of life without denouncing the culprits is a disguised attempt to cover for the crimes and protect the perpetrators.

As the Egyptian people showed determination and resilience while the embattled regime intensified its brutality, the administration tried to backtrack. President Obama offered a stark warning to Mubarak when he said on Friday evening, “Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.” Without condemning the regime he then urged Egyptian authorities to refrain from violence against their citizens,” Obama stressed that governments “must maintain power through consent, not coercion,” and that “Ultimately the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people.” Human rights advocates were encouraged and relieved by these statements.

Take a stand: Either with the people or with the regime

The following day the President convened his National Security Council and spoke to several world leaders. He gave a statement imploring Mubarak to open the political process and engage the opposition. Britain, France, Germany, and the European Uni0n also called for political openness as well as restraint against the demonstrators.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday January 30, Secretary Clinton, sensing the weakness of the Egyptian regime, gave implicit support to the guarded approach in handling the popular revolution when she said “What we’re trying to do is to help clear the air so that those who remain in power, starting with President Mubarak, with his new vice president, with the new prime minister, will begin a process of reaching out, of creating a dialogue that will bring in peaceful activists and representatives of civil society to, you know, plan a way forward that will meet the legitimate grievances of the Egyptian people.”

Yet all these mixed statements were not lost on the millions of protesters. In denouncing these ambivalent stands they chanted “No to Mubarak, No to Suleiman… No to the agents of al-Amrikan (the Americans).” Dr. Elbaradei declared that the moment of truth has arrived, “The U.S. has to side either with the people or the regime. They could not be with both.” But on Monday January 31, Press Secretary Gibbs said that the administration would not take sides in the confrontation between the regime and the people.

This hypocritical stand was in a stark contrast to the position Obama took two days earlier, or that of successive U.S. administrations with regard to the color revolutions in the past 20 years as in the Ukraine and Georgia in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, or the demonstrations by the opposition groups in Iran in the aftermath of its elections in June 2009.

So what happened over the weekend for the administration’s turnabout?

The answer to this double standard seems to be the influence of Israel and its supporters in Congress, where the new Republican Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders supported the administration’s ambivalent policy of not abandoning the Egyptian dictator.

In Israel, a real hysteria has engulfed the political establishment. On January 31, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference in Jerusalem that he was concerned about the fate of Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt should President Mubarak be forced out of power and replaced by someone more hostile toward Israel. He asked for support of the Egyptian regime lest an antagonistic regime emerges in its place.

The same day Haaretz reported that Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries over the weekend to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak to preserve stability in the region.

It was reported on the Cairo streets that when a speech writer of President Mubarak rushed into his office and said “Mr. President; this is your farewell speech to the nation.” Mubarak remarked, “Why? Are the people leaving the country?”

This Egyptian joke captures the essence of the stalemate in the streets. Mubarak insists on staying in power regardless of any consequence, counting on his security apparatus, the army, and the implicit backing of the West. Meanwhile, the popular committee headed by Dr. Elbaradaei is not recognized by the regime, let alone to engage with it in meaningful negotiations.

Meanwhile, the decisive moment seems to have arrived. The protesters called for a million-man march in Liberation Square in Cairo and for a similar one in Alexandria on Tuesday February 1. Upon hearing this move, the military sent an important signal to the people. Gen. Ismail Othman, the military spokesman declared on national TV that the army recognizes the legitimate demands of the people and would not shoot at them. With this declaration the army gave an unmistakable sign for the president to yield. The government immediately went overdrive blocking all entrances to Liberation Square and stopped all public transportations to Cairo and Alexandria including trains coming from the delta and upper Egypt.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to Liberation Square. Politicians and party leaders, Imams and priests, judges and lawyers, former military officers and veterans, labor and farmers, professionals and the unemployed, taxi drivers and garbage collectors, young and old, women and men, families with their children, as well as prominent actors, artists, poets, movie directors, journalists, and authors have declared their support and participation in this massive march. Egypt had never seen such unanimity in its modern history.

Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools

On Monday January 31, the new vice president Suleiman addressed the nation saying that he was asked by Mubarak to open a dialogue with all opposition groups and to ask the judiciary to overturn the disputed elections results of last November. It was a tactical retreat by the regime in order to waste time and exhaust the protesters.

However, the protest leaders instantly rejected this disingenuous offer and insisted on their main demand of the total removal of Mubarak and for regime change.

It seems that the embattled president would have to make a choice soon. He will either submit to the demands of the popular revolution and leave power or employ his exhausted security forces to battle his people, transforming Liberation Square to Tiananmen Square.

On the other hand, the challenge to the Egyptian people is whether they will stop their impressive revolution when the West and its local hirelings give up Mubarak in order to save his regime. The leaders of this revolution and civil society groups that have joined have so far insisted on regime change, not change of characters.

A few weeks after 9/11, the neo-cons persuaded Bush that after Afghanistan, the U.S. should pursue regime change in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and its allies in Lebanon, and to give Israel a green light to eliminate the Palestinian resistance in the Occupied territories.

After almost a decade, the U.S. is struggling in Afghanistan and has enormously enhanced Iran’s strategic regional posture by handing Iraq to its allies. Moreover, its ally in Lebanon was toppled while Hezbollah’s candidate is forming the new government. The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiating team have completely lost their credibility in the eyes of the Palestinian people after the recent publications of the Palestine Papers. The West has lost its ally in Tunisia, and is about to lose another in Egypt. Meanwhile its allies in Algeria, Yemen and Jordan are hanging on by their fingernails.

What a reversal of fortunes!

For most of the past sixty years, the U.S. has perceived the Middle East, and the Muslim world at large, from the dual prisms of Israel and oil. It has provided Israel with massive military aid, economic assistance, political cover and diplomatic shelter that not only denied the Palestinians their legitimate rights, but also prolonged their suffering and misery.

Furthermore, in securing its short-term interests of oil and military bases, successive U.S. administrations have favored dictatorships and repressive regimes in the name of stability at the expense of the right of self-determination to the people of the area.

Thirty-two years ago the U.S. lost Iran and has ever since been in a contentious relationship with it for its refusal to admit its role in maintaining the regime of the Shah. It is doubtful whether the U.S. government has learned that lesson and whether it would be willing now to clearly and completely side with the people or respect their will to be free and independent.

In his farewell address of 1796, George Washington warned his countrymen and women against the “passionate attachment” to a foreign country and advised them that “against the insidious wiles of foreign influence . . . the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

Esam Al-Amin can be reached at

source

One of my favorite writers and brilliant wombman. Kola Boof did with this pictorial essay what many would have to travel to Egypt to do prove they’re still Black Egyptians in Kmt. This will not and is not be shown publicly.  Black Egyptians and Nubian Egyptians LOVE African Americans. matter of fact they call us Nubian Americans that was my experience when I was in Egypt a few years ago.

TODAY’S BLACK EGYPTIANS: 2006

An Essay through PHOTOS

by Kola Boof

About a year ago,
one of my uncles wrote to
me from Egypt, quite bitterly.
He said:

People are so busy discussing
and fighting over whether or not
the ancient Egyptians were “black”
—that they forgot we’re still here.

We still exist.

The Arabs who claim to be Egyptians
have not exterminated ALL of
us yet.

Kola, you live in America, you’re somebody
over there. Why don’t you say something?

You’re only claiming SUDAN. But that’s not
right.

Your father was an Egyptian.

And he’s right. Because of my
own bitterness…my hatred and loathing
for my father’s country…I have been
remiss to mention anything about the
country.

My only real memory is a very
painful one…the memory of my White
Arab grandmother going to the Mullahs
after my birth parents had been executed
in SUDAN for speaking out against slavery
to get PERMISSION to put me up for
adoption (as adoption is primarily
illegal in EGYPT)…because of course,
my black skin would have exposed her
–Miss Najet Kolbookek—as having BLACK
African blood in her family’s veins.
A fact that she, unlike my Uncle, has
spent her whole life trying to hide
from the Arab Muslim social set.

BUT my uncle is right.
The true Egyptians–the Black Egyptians
do still exist, and instead of debating
about the “ancient” people….why do
we never force the WHITE MEDIA to show
images of the black ones?

Why is it that in America–only the
WHITE ARAB INVADER groups, the BEJA
and the Noor are ever shown on television
or in magazines?

Why do they insist on painting EGYPT
as a WHITE nation with no connection
to Africa?

Clearly..these photos of EGYPTIAN
Black people—photos that are NOW
TODAY—demonstrate that Egypt is not
a White nation. There are millions
of BLACK EGYPTIANS who still exist.

If I had not been
put up for adoption by
my colorstruck Egyptian grandmother
—I would never have been
adopted by the most wonderful
people in the world—my Black American
family…the JOHNSONS of Washington D.C.

And I would be somewhere
on the Nile River,
and like all other BLACK people of
Egyptian blood…I would be INVISIBLE.

But because I am a BLACK WOMAN who
is now an American citizen….I am
able to bring some clarity through
my work and activism….and this has
been extremely painful

….because as my good friend,
Derrick Bell pointed out to me
—AMERICA doesn’t want any image
that is black to represent the
Nile River Valley….and Derrick
told me that this is one of the
reasons that AMERICAN media has
been so hostile towards me–because
I am too black and my hair is NAPPY
as the Black Americans say. I am not
the right “image”

….and just like they WHITENED
the recent exhibition of KING TUT
when it toured California (and for
those of us who are North African,
we know full well that the CHARCOAL
Nubian Queen Tiye was TUT’s mother

and just
like they fought against the Scientists
who reconstructed the face of NEFERTITI
only to discover that she was a dark
brown black woman….

The Americans are very
racist against the idea of EGYPT
being represented by those of us who
are BLACK.

For those Egyptians reading
this post, I, Kola Boof, can promise
you that I have been treated like trash
by the American media—and because of
the controversies surrounding my life,
they even tried to pretend that I do not
exist. That I was made up and not a real
person. And they have slandered my name
with every chance they could slander it.

I tell you all….as AFRICANS…that
we must begin to recognize that there is
a hideous racism in these WHITE American
people–far worse than the African immigrants
have wanted to believe. They are not honest
people….and as they have falsely branded me
a LIAR…I know their real face now.

ANWAR SADAT:

Like me, our late Black Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat was half Sudanese, half Egyptian.

Unlike me, Anwar Sadat did everything he
could to distance himself from the title of
“black man”.

He insisted that he was NOT BLACK—that he
was an Arab.

His Sudanese mother was never seen and in
every political decision, every legal law
—he was the HARDEST on the blacks. He
married a White Arab woman. He despised
his African heritage and was basically put
in office by the SAUDI ARABIANS and the Arab
League….because they wanted to entice the
Black Americans after the Civil Rights
Movement and the Black Power Movement to
support all things MUSLIM, all things ARAB
….and especially to support PALESTINE.

Many of you in Egypt and in London write
to me—imploring me to speak up for the
Black Egyptians.

You do not realize that I am not popular
with Black Americans in the way that
Anwar Sadat was popular. I am a WOMAN
and I am compelled to fight for women’s
rights…as well as Black people’s rights.
I am also the wrong “image” to represent
Egypt–I am Black with African hair.

I have also had a very unusual life and
have been sinful….I am portrayed here
as a “crazy woman” and my intelligence
is not respected.

When I try to speak with
Black Americans about our lives
as Black people on the Nile River
….they are arrogant with their
own notions, many of which come
from Islamic leaders like Louis
Farrkhan.

The Black Americans run around
saying, “HOTEP”.

Can you believe that? We never
speak this way, but they want the fantasy
grandeur of ancient Kings and Queens
and they crave the past. Many of them
“talk, talk, talk” about Africa and
being BLACK….but their wives and
children are white. It’s all a farce,
because they don’t know who they are.

When I try to explain to them that as a
“BLACK” North African woman…I cannot
support PALESTINE, even though I am well
aware that ISRAEL has done horrendous things
to the Palestinians….they simply cannot
comprehend it.

Even after I told them about the Sudanese
slave women in Palestine and the “sterilizing”
of Black women by Palestinians, because the
Palestinians are so colorstruck—they still
bedamned me for getting weapons to defend
myself from ISRAEL and not supporting Palestine.

But my brothers and sisters…I am STILL
Naima Bint Harith.

Although the Sahara desert sun no longer
blackens me, I am still dark and beautiful.

I am here. And although there has been great
bitterness against EGYPT on my part, I have
not forgotten your beauty or your worth, nor
have I forgotten our solidarity as BLACK people.
And I promise you…that in my Autobiography,
I have done all that I can to tell our experience,
our truth…and to make us less invisble.

Long live the BLACK Egyptians!!!!!

tima usrah (through fire comes the family)

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and other books including her landmark essay
“The Authentic Black Man”—-in hardcover,
paperback and e-book.

AMAZON.COM, THE KINDLE STORE and MOBIPOCKET.

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_______________________

BOOKS BY KOLA BOOF:

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THE PROOF:  Authentic Blackness

By Kola Boof

Merita Proverb of the Month Tepia (February)  410 (2011)

Ntondo ikatondolaga. (Sukuma)
Kesho hufanya ijulikane mambo yake. (Swahili)
Demain se fait connaître demain. (French)
Tomorrow makes known to us what tomorrow will bring. (English)

Background, Explanation and Everyday Use

This Sukuma proverb in Tanzania has a play on words. Ntondo means “tomorrow.” Kutondola means “to reveal” and also “to shell peanuts.” The Sukuma people use this proverb in relation to shelling peanuts. When you break the shell you do not know what is inside – a ripe peanut or a rotten peanut. So to shell peanuts is to reveal something that is unknown or hidden. The meaning is that we can’t know today what will happen tomorrow. What is hidden today will be revealed tomorrow.

Biblical Parallels

Matthew 6:25-34: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

Contemporary Use and Religious Application

Our attitude in life should be to trust in God’s love. Don’t worry. This is the sacrament of the present moment. Worrying about tomorrow takes you away from living in the present moment of God’s love. Those who hope in the Lord renew their strength. Wings come to them like eagles. They run without weariness. They walk without fatigue. In the book Story of a Soul St. Therese of Lisieux says: “I find that we who run along the way of love must not think of anything painful that can happen to us in the future for this is lacking in trust and is like meddling in creation.”

In African cultures we are often paralyzed by fear (witchcraft, superstition, etc.) that enslaves us and prevents us from loving God perfectly.