Thank Pa Ntr that he was ab;e to finish his important work before the ancestors called him home. Long live the Ka and Ba of Manning Marable

On Eve of Redefining Malcolm X, Biographer Dies

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: April 1, 2011

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Philippe Cheng

The author and historian Manning Marable.

In a statement, Paul Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, said, ”As much as conspiracy theorists may press to reach a sweeping, unsupported and untrue conclusion, the fact is the N.Y.P.D. was not complicit in Malcolm X’s assassination, and it’s gratuitously false to suggest as much.”

Based on his new material, Mr. Marable concluded that only one of the three men convicted of killing Malcolm X was involved in the assassination, and that the other two were at home that day. The real assassination squad, he writes, had four other members, with connections to the rival Nation of Islam’s Newark mosque — two of whom are still alive and have never been charged.

Since Malcolm X’s death, the posthumous “Autobiography,” along with “Malcolm X,” Spike Lee’s 1992 film drawn from it, has made a pop-culture hero out of the man who was born Malcolm Little. But the Marable book contradicts and complicates key elements of his life story.

Malcolm X himself contributed to many of the fictions, Mr. Marable argues, by exaggerating, glossing over or omitting important incidents in his life. These episodes include a criminal career far more modest than he claimed, an early homosexual relationship with a white businessman, his mother’s confinement in a mental hospital for nearly 25 years and secret meetings with leaders of groups as divergent as the Ku Klux Klan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” shows, for instance, that at a time when Malcolm X claimed in the autobiography to have “devoted himself to increasingly violent crime” in New York, he was actually in Lansing, Mich., his hometown. Mr. Marable attributes the embroidery of “amateurish attempts at gangsterism” to Malcolm X’s wish to demonstrate that the Nation of Islam’s gospel of pride and self-respect had the power to redeem even the most depraved criminal.

“In many ways, the published book is more Haley’s than its author’s,” Mr. Marable writes, noting that Haley, who died in 1992, was a liberal Republican and staunch integrationist who held “racial separation and religious extremism in contempt” but was “fascinated by the tortured tale of Malcolm’s personal life.”

The book maintains that several chapters of the autobiography explaining Malcolm X’s evolving but still radical political vision were deleted before publication, perhaps out of Haley’s desire to produce a work that “frames his subject firmly within mainstream civil rights respectability at the end of his life.”

The Marable book also sheds new light on Malcolm X’s departure from the Nation of Islam and the subsequent feud with the organization and its founder, Elijah Muhammad, preceding his assassination. That split is usually attributed to theological and political differences and the jealousy of Muhammad’s children and inner circle.

But Mr. Marable also points to an episode of almost Oedipal sexual duplicity, in which Elijah Muhammad impregnated a woman Malcolm X had loved since he was a young man. “Malcolm must have felt a deep sense of betrayal,” Mr. Marable writes.

Malcolm X’s subsequent trip to Mecca in 1964 — a likely turning point in his religious evolution — was recounted in both the autobiography and the biopic. The Marable book, however, provides extensive new material about a second, 24-week trip to Africa and the Middle East later that year, drawing on Malcolm X’s own travel diary and providing details on a campaign he waged to have the United States condemned for racism in a vote at the United Nations.

As part of that effort to open a foreign front for the civil rights struggle, which was closely monitored by American governmental agencies, Malcolm X met with numerous African heads of state as well as Chinese and Cuban diplomats. The Johnson administration was so upset, Mr. Marable writes, that Nicholas Katzenbach, the acting attorney general, considered prosecuting him for violating a law that bans United States citizens from negotiating with foreign states.

“These are new facts being unveiled, showing just how serious and sustained was Malcolm’s interest in the global dimension” of the domestic civil rights struggle, Mr. Dyson said. “They really do suggest he was a subversive figure, trying to undermine the best interests of the U.S. government” in the name of a larger pan-African cause. “That is a fresh insight, one of many.”

Mr. Marable’s editor, Wendy Wolf, said Friday evening that “his every fiber was devoted to the completion of this book.” She added: “It’s heartbreaking he won’t be here on publication day with us.”

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Manning Marable, Historian and Social Critic, Dies at 60

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: April 1, 2011

Manning Marable, a leading scholar of black history and a leftist critic of American social institutions and race relations, whose long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, more than a decade in the writing, is scheduled to be published on Monday, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 60.

His wife, Leith Mullings, said that the cause was not known but that Mr. Marable, who lived in Manhattan, had entered the hospital with pneumonia in early March. In July 2010, he had undergone a double lung transplant.

Mr. Marable, a prolific writer and impassioned polemicist, addressed issues of race and economic injustice in numerous works that established him as one of the most forceful and outspoken scholars of African-American history and race relations in the United States.

He explored this territory in books like “How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America” (1983), “Black Liberation in Conservative America” (1997) and “The Great Wells of Democracy” (2003), and in a political column, “Along the Color Line,” which was syndicated in more than 100 newspapers.

At nearly 600 pages, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” to be published by Viking, presents a hefty counterweight to the well-known account “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

The autobiography, long considered a classic of the 1960s civil rights struggle, was an “as told to” book written with Alex Haley and published in 1965.

Mr. Marable, drawing on new sources, archival material and government documents unavailable to Mr. Haley, developed a fuller account of Malcolm X’s politics, religious beliefs and personal life, as well as his role in the civil rights movement and the circumstances of his assassination.

He also offers a revisionist portrait of Malcolm X at odds with Mr. Haley’s presentation of him as an evolving integrationist.

“We need to look at the organic evolution of his mind and how he struggled to find different ways to empower people of African descent by any means necessary,” Mr. Marable said in a 2007 interview with Amy Goodman on the radio program “Democracy Now.”

Mr. Marable’s political philosophy was often described as transformationist, as opposed to integrationist or separatist. That is, he urged black Americans to transform existing social structures and bring about a more egalitarian society by making common cause with other minorities and change-minded groups like environmentalists.

“By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond ‘black’ and ‘white,’ we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression,” he wrote in the essay collection “Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics” (1995).

In a telephone interview on Friday, the scholar and author Cornel West called Mr. Marable “our grand radical democratic intellectual,” adding, “He kept alive the democratic socialist tradition in the black freedom movement, and I had great love and respect for him.”

William Manning Marable was born on May 13, 1950, in Dayton, Ohio. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., and a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin before receiving his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1976.

He directed ethnic studies programs at a number of colleges, notably the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University and the Africana and Latin American Studies program at Colgate University.

He was the chairman of the black studies department at Ohio State University in the late 1980s and also taught ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

At Columbia University, where he became a professor of public affairs, political science, history and African-American studies in 1993, he was the founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the Center for the Study of Contemporary Black History.

In addition to his wife, who teaches anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and who co-edited several of his books, Mr. Marable is survived by three children, Joshua Manning Marable of Boulder; Malaika Marable Serrano of Silver Spring, Md.; and Sojourner Marable Grimmett of Atlanta; two stepchildren, Alia Tyner of Manhattan and Michael Tyner of Brooklyn; a sister, Madonna Marable of Dayton; and three grandchildren.

His other books included “Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1982” (1984) and “The Great Wells of Democracy : The Meaning of Race in American Life” ( 2002), as well as two biographies published in 2005, “W. E. B. DuBois: Black Radical Democrat” and “The Autobiography of Medgar Evers,” which he edited with Myrlie Evers-Williams, Evers’s widow.

He was the general editor of “Freedom on My Mind: The Columbia Documentary History of the African American Experience” (2003).

In 1992 he published “On Malcolm X: His Message and Meaning,” a work that prefigured the consuming project of his later years. “Beyond Boundaries: The Manning Marable Reader,” a selection of his writings, was published in January by Paradigm.

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Reimagining Malcolm X

A new telling of the life of Malcolm X, from a biographer who’s already gone.

Malcolm X speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C., in 1963. (AP)

Malcolm X was fierce in his day and an icon in his death — the hard, tough black answer to Martin Luther King’s non-violent civil rights struggle.

“The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” as told to Alex Haley, became a touchstone for generations of young African-Americans and more. His archetypal journey from crime and trouble to wisdom and awakening.

Now, a new biography of Malcolm X takes the man beyond archetype. Fills in the picture. He becomes more human, but no less compelling.

This hour On Point: the new biography of Malcom X.

- Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Zaheer Ali, doctoral student at Columbia University and project manager for Manning Marable’s “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.”

Michael Eric Dyson, professor of sociology at Georgetown University and host of the Michael Eric Dyson Show.

Excerpt
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
By Manning Marable
(PDF)

From chapter 7, “As Sure as God Made Green Apples”

Malcolm may have publicly commanded his followers to obey the law, but this did little to lessen suspicion of the Muslims by law enforcement in major cities. Nowhere did tensions run hotter than in Los Angeles, where Malcolm had established Temple No. 27 in 1957. For most whites who migrated to the city, Los Angeles was the quintessential city of dreams. For black migrants, the city of endless possibilities offered some of the same Jim Crow restrictions they had sought to escape by moving west. As early as 1915, black Los Angeles residents were protesting against racially restrictive housing covenants; such racial covenants as well as blatant discrimination by real estate firms continued to be a problem well into the 1960s. The real growth of the black community in Southern California only began to take place during the two decades after 1945. During this twenty-year period, when the black population of New York City increased by nearly 250 percent, the black population of Los Angeles jumped 800 percent. Blacks were also increasingly important in local trade unions, and in the economy generally. For example, between 1940 and 1960, the percentage of black males in LA working as factory operatives increased from 15 percent to 24 percent; the proportion of African-American men employed in crafts during the same period rose from 7 percent to 14 percent. By 1960, 468,000 blacks resided in Los Angeles County, approximately 20 percent of the county’s population.

These were some of the reasons that Malcolm had invested so much energy and effort to build the NOI’s presence in Southern California, and especially the development of Mosque No. 27. Having recruited the mosque’s leaders, he flew out to settle a local factional dispute in October 1961. Such activities were noticed and monitored by the California Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, which feared that the NOI had “Communist affiliations.” The state committee concluded that there was an “interesting parallel between the Negro Muslim movement and the Communist Party, and that is the advocacy of the overthrow of a hated regime by force, violence or any other means.” On September 2, 1961, several Muslims selling Muhammad Speaks in a South Central Los Angeles grocery store parking lot were harassed by two white store detectives. The detectives later claimed that when they had attempted to stop the Muslims from selling the paper, they were “stomped and beaten.” The version of this incident described in Muhammad Speaks was strikingly different, with the paper claiming that “the two ‘detectives’ produced guns, and attempted to make a ‘citizen’s arrest.’ Grocery packers rushed out to help the detectives . . . and black residents of the area who had gathered also became involved. For 45 minutes bedlam reigned.” About forty Los Angeles Police Department officers were dispatched to the scene to restore order. Five Muslims were arrested. At their subsequent trial, the store’s owner and manager confirmed that the NOI had been given permission to peddle their newspapers in the parking lot. An all-white jury acquitted the Muslims on all charges.

Following the parking lot mêlée, the LAPD was primed for retaliation against the local NOI. The city’s police commissioner, William H. Parker, had even read Lincoln’s The Black Muslims in America, and viewed the sect as subversive and dangerous, capable of producing widespread unrest. He instructed his officers to closely monitor the mosque’s activities, which is why, just after midnight on April 27, 1962, when two officers observed what looked to them like men taking clothes out of the back of a car outside the mosque, they approached with suspicion. What happened next is a matter of dispute, yet whether the police were jumped, as they claimed, or the Muslim men were shoved and beaten without provocation, as seems likely, the commotion brought a stream of angry Muslims out of the mosque. The police threatened to respond with deadly force, but when one officer attempted to intimidate the growing crowd of bystanders, he was disarmed by the crowd. Somehow one officer’s revolver went off, shooting and wounding his partner in the elbow. Backup squad cars soon arrived ferrying more than seventy officers, and a full-scale battle ensued. Within minutes dozens of cops raided the mosque itself, randomly beating NOI members. It took fifteen minutes for the fighting to die down. In the end, seven Muslims were shot, including NOI member William X Rogers, who was shot in the back and paralyzed for life. NOI officer Ronald Stokes, a Korean War veteran, had attempted to surrender to the police by raising his hands over his head. Police responded by shooting him from the rear; a bullet pierced his heart, killing him. A coroner’s inquest determined that Stokes’s death was “justifiable.” A number of Muslims were indicted.

News of the raid shattered Malcolm; he wept for the reliable and trustworthy Stokes, whom he had known well from his many trips to the West Coast. The desecration of the mosque and the violence brought upon its members pushed Malcolm to a dark place. He was finally ready for the Nation to throw a punch. Malcolm told Mosque No. 7’s Fruit of Islam that the time had come for retribution, an eye for an eye, and he began to recruit members for an assassination team to target LAPD officers. Charles 37X, who attended one of these meetings, recalled him in a rage, shouting to the assembled Fruit, “What are you here for? What the hell are you here for?” As Louis Farrakhan related, “Brother Malcolm had a gangsterlike past. And coming into the Nation, and especially in New York, he had a tremendous sway over men that came out of the street with gangster leanings.” It was especially from these hardened men that Malcolm demanded action, and they rose to his cry. Mosque No. 7 intended to “send somebody to Los Angeles to kill [the police] as sure as God made green apples,” said James 67X. “Brothers volunteered for it.”

As he made plans to bring his killers to Los Angeles, Malcolm sought the approval of Elijah Muhammad, in what he assumed would be a formality. The time had come for action, and surely Muhammad would see the necessity in summoning the Nation’s strength for the battle. But the Messenger denied him. “Brother, you don’t go to war over a provocation,” he told Malcolm. “They could kill a few of my followers, but I’m not going to go out and do something silly.” He ordered the entire FOI to stand down. Malcolm was stunned; he acquiesced, but with bitter disappointment. Farrakhan believes Malcolm concluded that Muhammad was trying “to protect the wealth that he had acquired, rather than go out with the struggle of our people.”

A few days later Malcolm flew to Los Angeles, and on May 4 he held a press conference about the shootings at the Statler Hilton. The next day he presided over Stokes’s funeral. More than two thousand people attended the service, and an estimated one thousand joined in the automobile procession to the cemetery. Yet the matter was far from resolved. If Malcolm could not kill the officers involved, he was determined that both the police and the political establishment in Los Angeles should be forced to acknowledge their responsibility. The only way to accomplish this, he believed, was for the NOI to work with civil rights organizations, local black politicians, and religious groups. On May 20, Malcolm participated in a major rally against police brutality that attracted the support of many white liberals, as well as communists. “You’re brutalized because you’re black,” he declared at the demonstration. “And when they lay a club on the side of your head, they do not ask your religion. You’re black—that’s enough.”

He threw himself into organizing a black united front against the police in Southern California, but once more Elijah Muhammad stepped in, ordering his stubborn lieutenant to halt all efforts. “Brother, stay where I put you,” ran his edict, “because they [civil rights organizations] have no place to go. Hold your position.” Muhammad was convinced that integration could not be achieved; the civil rights groups would ultimately gravitate toward the Nation of Islam. When desegregation failed, he explained to Malcolm (and later to Farrakhan), “they will have no place to go but what you and I represent.” Consequently, he vetoed any cooperation with civil rights groups even on a matter as contentious as Stokes’s murder. Louis X saw this as an important turning point in the deteriorating relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad. By 1962, Malcolm was “speaking less and less about the teachings [of Muhammad],” recalled Farrakhan. “And he was fascinated by the civil rights movement, the action of the civil rights participants, and the lack of action of the followers of the Honorable Elijah.”

At heart, the disagreement between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad went deeper than the practical question of how to respond to the Los Angeles police assault. Almost from the moment Muhammad had been informed about the raid and Stokes’s death, he viewed the tragedy as stemming from a lack of courage by Mosque No. 27’s members. “Every one of the Muslims should have died,” he was reported to have said, “before they allowed an aggressor to come into their mosque.” Muhammad believed Stokes had died from weakness, because he had attempted to surrender to the police. Malcolm could hardly stomach such an idea, but having submitted to the Messenger’s authority, he repeated the arguments as his own inside Mosque No. 7. James 67X listened as Malcolm told the congregation, “We are not Christian(s). We are not to turn the other cheek, but the laborers [NOI members] have gotten so comfortable that in dealing with the devil they will submit to him. . . . If a blow is struck against you, fight back.” The brothers in the Los Angeles mosque who resisted had lived. Ronald Stokes submitted and was killed.

Some of Malcolm’s closest associates were persuaded that Elijah Muhammad had made the correct decision, at least on the issue of retaliation. Benjamin 2X Goodman, for one, would later declare, “Mr. Muhammad said, ‘All in good time’ . . . and he was right. The police were ready. It would have been a trap.” But Malcolm himself was humiliated by the NOI’s failure to defend its own members. Everything that he had experienced over the previous years—from mobilizing thousands in the streets around Hinton’s beating in 1957 to working with Philip Randolph to build a local black united front in 1961–62—told him that the Nation could protect its members only through joint action with civil rights organizations and other religious groups. One could not simply leave everything to Allah.

The Stokes murder brought to a close the first phase of Malcolm’s career within the NOI. He had become convinced that Elijah Muhammad’s passive position could not be justified. Malcolm had spent almost a decade in the Nation, and for all his speeches, he could point to no progress on the creation of a separate black state. Meanwhile, in the state that existed, the black men and women who looked to him for leadership were suffering and dying. Political agitation and public protests, along the lines of CORE and SNCC, were essential to challenging institutional racism. Malcolm hoped that, at least within the confines of Mosque No. 7, he would be allowed to pursue a more aggressive strategy, in concert with independent black leaders like Powell and Randolph. In doing so, he speculated, perhaps the entire Nation of Islam could be reborn.

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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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This week on Like it Is Gil Noble speaks with Dr Leonard Jeffries to create a biographical narrative of his life.

Elma Francois 1897-1944

by Corey Gilkes

October 14th marked the birth of one of the most vociferous Africentric activists in the history of Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean. She is Elma Constance Francois. In the study of the struggle of African people on the Continent and in the Diaspora to free themselves of European and Arab domination and redefine their existence the women who were the standard bearers of those struggles are often given less attention than their male counterparts. Even when they are acknowledged, the names of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis are the names spoken. Elma and her contemporaries gave the lie to the myths about meek acceptance of colonialism by the colonised and to the lack of political and social consciousness among women.

Elma Francois was born in Overland, St Vincent. In her youth she received primary education up to 5th Standard and she worked alongside her mother picking cotton. From an early age she struggles for the betterment of her people since life in St Vincent was very hard for labourers, especially women. Some could work picking up cotton chaff and separate the seeds for which they would receive 12-14 cents a day. Others worked as domestic servants while others worked at the Mt. Bentick sugar factory producing syrup or ‘sweetening’. The outspoken Elma quickly set about trying to organise the labourers of Mt Bentick sugar factory where she worked – of course, she was fired.

In 1917 her son Conrad was born; in 1919 however, she was forced to leave him in the care of his grandmother for she was migrating to Trinidad where there were better opportunities. There she first found work as a domestic servant. Not surprisingly she joined the Trinidad Workingman’s Association under Captain A. A. Cipriani. Cipriani, a former West India Regiment soldier, served in WWI and in spite of his ancestry was aware of the racism and squalid conditions of the working class of Trinidad. He sympathised with their plight and came to call himself the ‘champion of the “barefoot” man’. He continued this after the war and in 1923 was asked to assume leadership of the TWA, which functioned as a trade union. Cipriani reorganised the TWA into a political party, a wise move since two rights conferred upon trade unions in Britain by the Act of 1906 – the right of peaceful picketing and protection against actions in tort – were not extended to unions in the Caribbean and Africa.

Unlike other women members, Francois did not restrict herself to political activity as defined by the TWA. The outspoken and confrontational Elma certainly did not fit the mould of the Western or “Afro-Saxon” woman and her personality inevitably clashed with that of Cipriani. Cipriani, though a supporter of worker’s rights, favoured non-confrontational action. His outlook was also coloured by the fact that his class position as a landowner from the propertied Catholic French Creole class often presented a serious conflict of interest. Also he almost completely accepted the British labour party’s brand of ‘Labour and Socialism’ and his adherence to their policies and priorities as a yardstick by which he measured progress in Trinidad and Tobago. On the other hand Francois preferred direct action through the workers, not employers. She clashed wit him on the question of May Day which she felt should be declared a public holiday.

She was an avid reader, very conscious about her African heritage and loved nothing better than to engage people in debates. She was also one of the few people with the courage to challenge the Church and the authority of the bible. Elma spoke in Woodford Square (an open-air park in Port-of-Spain where to this day people gather to argue social, religious and political views), on street corners, in various towns. This is how she met Jim Headley who, together with Francois, became a founding member of the Negro Welfare Cultural and Social Association [NWCSA].

The Marxist oriented NWCSA, though it was committed to the empowerment of people of African descent, also had Indian and Chinese members. Also, from its inception it set out to attract women, hence the inclusion of the words ‘cultural and ‘social’ as these were the areas of work in which, it was felt, women could initially be most easily incorporated. The organisation took the position that women and men should cooperate in the development of their collective political consciousness. There was no separation of women into ‘women’s arms/auxiliaries’ and within the organisation executive positions changed regularly so that these responsibilities were shared equally. Elma usually, however, retained the position of Organising Secretary.

The NWCSA organised the unemployed, celebrated Emancipation Day, lobbied for small traders. Their “hunger marches” provided the impetus for the sugar workers’ Hunger March of 1934 and the 1935 Hunger March of another radical thinking leader, TUB Butler. The NWCSA was responsible for galvanising national response against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 – the outcry was so great that many dockworkers refused to unload Italian ships. The NWCSA was responsible for the formation of the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union and the Federated Workers Trade Union.

During the famous “Butler Riots” of 1937, the NWCSA mobilised support for the striking oil workers, held meetings in the north and the turbulent south Trinidad, partly under the auspices of Butler’s party the British Empire Workers and Citizens Home Rule Party. All this was done in spite of harassment by the police and their attempts to infiltrate the party’s meetings. The NWCSA also circulated false reports regarding Butler’s whereabouts when he was in hiding. Elma was eventually arrested. She became the first woman in Trinidad’s history to be tried for sedition. She defended herself and was found not guilty.

In 1944 Elma Francois died; the result, some say of a broken heart after her son Conrad joined the army to fight in a war in which she bitterly opposed the black involvement. She, along with fellow party members Jim Barrette, Clement Payne had publicly disagreed with the showing of solidarity to the British Crown on the grounds that the Western allies had allowed the rise of Hitler as a counter to Stalin in the Soviet Union. It was only when Hitler turned on them that they mobilised militarily to defend themselves and in the process drew in colonials, whom they otherwise discriminated against racially, to fight and die with them in their war. There certainly was a strong thread of anti-British sentiment at first; several leading calypsonians [folk singers] sang against the war and in his autobiography Through a maze of Colour Albert Gomes noted that cinema crowds cheered when film clips showed the British being defeated by Nazi forces. However, by 1940, colonial propaganda, plus the withholding of the Report of the Moyne Commission, which investigated the causes of labour riots in the Caribbean, had intensified to the point where loyalty to the Crown became the dominant outlook on the war. Francois was understandably crushed when she learned about Conrad’s decision to enlist. She regarded his decision to enlist as a personal failure on her part.

On September 25 1987, Elma Francois was declared a national heroine of Trinidad and Tobago.

For additional reading of Elma Francois and the labour struggles in Trinidad read:

¤ Elma Francois: the NWCSA and the workers struggle for change in the Caribbean in the 1930′s – Rhoda Reddock

¤ Atilla kaiso: a shorthistory of Trinidad Calypso – Raymond Quevedo [Atilla the Hun]

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Gregory Isaacs brings back tons of memories from my childhood to my teen years and adulthood too. He carried me through some very hard times in my life and some very memorable ones too. Long Live the Ka and Ba of the Cooler Ruler!!!!

‘Night Nurse’ reggae singer Gregory Isaacs died in London this morning (2510.10) from cancer.

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Toot, Lonely Lover or simply Cool Ruler are just some of the nick names of the rude boy of reggae. Born in Fletchers land Kingston Jamaica on the 15th July 1950, Gregory Anthony Isaacs was the first son of Lester Isaacs and Enid Murrary.

Gregory started out as an electrician and cabinet maker. His career in music remained his ambition. He was inspired by singers such as Sam Cooke, Percy Sledge, Delroy Wilson, Alton Ellis and Ken Boothe. Gregory began his recording career in the late sixties with “Another Heartache” for singer/producer Winston Sinclair. Although the record was not successful he was not discouraged and in 1969 he formed a group called The Concords with Penro Bramwell. They recorded a few 45s “Buttoo”, “I Need Your Loving” and “Don’t Let Me Suffer” for producer Rupie Edwards. Success did not follow so Gregory Isaacs decided to move on his career as a solo artist. He went on to record for Prince Buster entitled “Dancing Floor”. Still not content he decided to start his own label, assisted by his friend Errol Dunkley, around 1973 and that was the beginning of the legendary African Museum record label, until this day producing classics. in 1974 Gregory recorded “Love Is Overdue” for Alvin “GG” Ranglin at Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle Studio which was a major success. In 1975 he sold over 42,000 copies of the album “In Person”. Gregory continued to record for a number of producers as well as maintaining his own African Museum label. He produced Mr. Isaacs in 1976-77 and “Extra Classic” in 1977.

In the following year he signed a deal with Virgin and recorded two albums for their “Frontline” label, “Cool Ruler” in 1978 and “Soon Forward” in 1979. When his contract wih Virgin expired, UK-based label Charisma wasted no time in signing him up. For this record company he produced the classic albums “Lonely Lover” in 1980 and “More Gregory” in 1980. In 1982 Island Records made an undiclosed offer that Gregory Isaacs could not refuse. Gregory opted for a short term contract. He then demonstrated his unique talent and produced the album “Night Nurse”, which was a huge international success. In 1984 by mutual agreement he left Island Records and recorded for a friend and producer Tads “Green Back” Dawkins and produced two fine albums, “Easy” around September 1984 and “All I Have Is Love, Love, Love” in May 1986. In those mid-eighties he was beset by personal and legal problems and was even jailed in Kingston’s General Penitentiary. After being released from prison he served his fans with a new album entitled “Out Deh”. Due to these problems – including financial problems – Gregory was willing to record for anyone and everyone who was prepared to pay him.

In the second half of the eighties he was the most high prolific reggae artist recording for produces like King Jammy, Bobby Digital, Steely & Clevie, Redman, Sly & Robbie, Gussie Clarke, King Tubby, among others. Despite rumours about Gregory Isaacs’ rude boy lifestyle and the near destruction of his unique talents with the help of cocaine he is still recording and still creating hit tracks to this day. With a musical career spans over three decades by now and having delivered a trailer load of reggae classics – singles as well as albums – his legendary status and reputation in the reggae business are truly second to none.

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Gregory has left outta babylon.!!! R.I.P.

THEOCRACY REIGN IVINE ORDER OF THE NYAH BINGHI TRIBUTE TO ANCIENT BONGO ROCKY
by Ras Flako

Incient Bongo Rocky had repatriated to Ethiopia a decade ago with his Iloved Queen Baby I, since then he has served with distinction as Elder Statesman and Ambassador of the Rastafari Nation. He has headed delegations and meetings with Heads of State, politicians, AU representatives, as well as local and regional dignitaries on behalf of the Shashamanie community and the Nation of Rastafari.

‘Bongo Rock’, as he was fondly called was an inspiration to all those came before his presence , many were blessed by his word sound in cyberspace ,he set the example for Reparation with strong determination and was the focal point for to visitors to the Shashamanie Tabernacle

The wonderful works of the Ancient was manifested on the Shashamanie Nyah Binghi grounds whereby he used his small funds to decorate the place making it show piece to behold, Incient Congo Rock was unrepentant and declared the divinity of Qadamawi Haile Selassie without apology, his global appeal was for mass repatriation to Africa and the continuous struggle for African liberation and redemption from Neo-colonialism

Congo Rocky had multiple ailments and had being been suffering for some time and had lost considerable amount of weight. It is hardly necessary to say more of his suffering however we express ourselves profoundly about the greatness of his character, and about his dedication to a purposeful life, his selfless devotion to help those in trouble, his respect for truth and justice and his burning patriotic zeal for Ethiopia all of which touch our heart deeply at this hour

So when the flesh is down InI will keep his memory high, knowing that Qadamawi Haile Selassie is forIver Even though the storm of aggression that upset the tranquility of the world was a severe test of ancient Congo Rocky moral endurance, it did not overwhelm him, it was to him a test of faith to obey the great and merciful Qadamawi Haile Selassie

Now is the Iwah of transition, as life journey closes .Ancient Congo Rocky, you have slept but although you depart from us physically, your works and your name will always remain among us

Dry up your tears and chant Rastafari, dry up your tears and chant fear well to Incient Priest, Patriarch and Iloved Ancestor Congo Rocky

Guidance and blessings

Ras Flako Tafari

Nyah Binghi Ancient Council

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THE DEFINITION OF ADAMARI

Adamari (Qedamawi or Qadamawi) is Ethiopian for ‘first’, and may also mean ‘old’ or ‘holy’. Haile Selassie was often reffered to as Qadamawi Haile Selassie I, The First, by reknown artists such as Bob Marley, Dennis Brown & Garnett Silk.