Those Who Blazed A Trail.

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W.E.B. Dubois

Black American historian and sociologist, who conducted the initial research on the black experience in the United States. His work paved the way for the civil rights, Pan-African, and Black Power movements in the United States.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

A descendant of African American, French, and Dutch ancestors, he demonstrated his intellectual gifts at an early age. He graduated from high school at age 16, the valedictorian and only black in his graduating class of 12. He was orphaned shortly after his graduation and was forced to fund his own college education. He won a scholarship to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he excelled and saw for the first time the plight of Southern blacks.

Du Bois had grown up with more privileges and advantages than most blacks living in the United States at that time, and, unlike most blacks living in the South, he had suffered neither severe economic hardship nor repeated encounters with blatant racism. As violence against blacks increased in the South throughout the 1880s, Du Bois’s scholarly education was matched by the hard lessons he learned about race relations. He followed reports about the increasing frequency of lynchings, calling each racially motivated killing “a scar” upon his soul. Through these and other encounters with racial hatred, as well as through his experience teaching in poor black communities in rural Tennessee during the summers, Du Bois began to develop his racial consciousness and the desire to help improve conditions for all blacks.

Du Bois received his bachelor’s degree from Fisk in 1888, and won a scholarship to attend Harvard University. Harvard considered his high school education and Fisk degree inadequate preparation for a master’s program, and he had to register as an undergraduate. Du Bois received his second bachelor’s degree in 1890 and then enrolled in Harvard’s graduate school. He earned his master’s degree and then his doctoral degree in 1895, becoming the first black to receive that degree from Harvard.

ad begun his research into the historical and sociological conditions of black Americans that would make him the most influential black intellectual of his time. His doctoral dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, was published in 1896 as the initial volume in the Harvard Historical Studies Series. After teaching for several years at Wilberforce University in Ohio, Du Bois conducted an exhaustive study of the social and economic conditions of urban blacks in Philadelphia in 1896 and 1897. The results were published in The Philadelphia Negro (1899), the first sociological text on a black community published in the United States. After he became a professor of economics and history at Atlanta University in 1897, he initiated a series of studies as head of the school’s “Negro Problem” program. These works had a profound impact on the study of the history and sociology of blacks living in the United States.

In 1897 Du Bois made a famous statement on the ambiguity of the black identity: “One feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body.” He advanced these views even further in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a powerful collection of essays in which he described some of the key themes of the black experience, especially the efforts of black Americans to reconcile their African heritage with their pride in being U.S. citizens.
With The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois had begun to challenge the leadership of Booker T. Washington, a fellow educator who was then the most influential and admired black in the United States. Du Bois objected to Washington’s strategy of accommodation and compromise with whites in both politics and education. Du Bois perceived this strategy as accepting the denial of black citizenship rights. He also criticized Washington’s emphasis on the importance of industrial education for blacks, which Du Bois felt came at the expense of higher education in the arts and humanities.

Du Bois also challenged Washington’s leadership through the Niagara Movement, which Du Bois helped to convene in 1905. The movement grew out of a meeting of 29 black leaders who gathered to discuss segregation and black political rights. They met in Canada after being denied hotel accommodations on the U.S. side of Niagara Falls and drafted a list of demands. These included equality of economic and educational opportunity for blacks, an end to segregation, and the prohibition of discrimination in courts, public facilities, and trade unions.

Although the Niagara Movement had little immediate impact on political or popular opinion, it was influential in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A group of black and white intellectuals opposed to the non-confrontational tactics of Booker T. Washington met in New York City on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday (February 12) in 1909 to discuss the formation of a new organization dedicated to improving conditions for blacks in the United States. The resulting group, the NAACP, was overwhelmingly white, but elected Du Bois as one of its founding officers in 1910.
Du Bois was hired to head the NAACP’s publicity and research efforts. He was also named editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, which soon became the most important national voice for the advancement of black civil rights, largely through Du Bois’s reporting and editorials. His writings on lynchings in the South, his positions on why blacks should support the U.S. war effort during World War I (1914-1918), and his criticisms of Marcus Garvey, the black separatist who led the “Back to Africa” movement, were all broadly influential.

Du Bois resigned from the NAACP staff in 1934 because he was unwilling to advocate racial integration in all aspects of life, a position adopted by the NAACP. Du Bois had argued that blacks should join together, apart from whites, to start businesses and industries that would allow blacks to advance themselves economically. He returned to Atlanta University, where he taught, wrote books, and founded a new journal, called Phylon. During these years he published two important books, Black Reconstruction (1935), a Marxist interpretation of the post-Civil War era in the South; and Dusk of Dawn (1940), an autobiography. Following extended conflicts with university officials, he was forced to retire from Atlanta University in 1944.
Throughout his adult life, Du Bois maintained a keen cultural and political interest in Africa. He attended meetings with Africans in London in 1900 and 1911, and beginning in 1919 he helped to organize Pan-African congresses to nurture worldwide unity among people of African descent. He attended Pan-African congresses in 1921, 1923, 1927, and 1945, by which time international leaders opposed to colonialism were calling him the “father of Pan-Africanism.” Du Bois returned to the NAACP in 1944 to head its research efforts, but was dismissed in 1948 after a dispute with the NAACP’s executive director, in which Du Bois accused the director of selling out the cause of black civil rights for his own political advancement.

After World War II (1939-1945), Du Bois became increasingly involved in promoting world peace and nuclear disarmament. In 1950 he became chairman of the Peace Information Center in New York City, a group whose stated objective was to gather signatures in the United States for a global petition to ban the use of nuclear weapons. In July of that year, after the organization had gathered more than one million U.S. signatures, the Peace Center was labeled a Communist-front organization by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
In August 1950, the U.S. Justice Department requested that the Peace Center register as the agent of a foreign government. The centers’ board members refused, and in January 1951 Du Bois was charged as an agent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Du Bois had joined the Socialist Party for a short time in 1911 and had supported many of its positions over the years, but he was not a member of either the Socialist Party or the Communist Party at the time. He was acquitted after a highly publicized trial, but the experience left him embittered and did not end his battles with the U.S. government. After the trial, Du Bois was repeatedly denied passports to travel outside the United States and was harassed for much of the decade by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the police, and a variety of government agencies.

In 1958 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the State Department could not demand the signing of loyalty oaths as a basis for issuing passports, and Du Bois was granted a passport. He then traveled in the USSR, where he met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and visited Communist China, a country that was on the State Department’s banned list. Immediately upon his return to the United States in 1959, Du Bois’s passport was revoked. He was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize that same year.
In 1961 Du Bois moved to the n

ewly independent West African nation of Ghana. In an act of defiance just before his departure, he joined the American Communist Party. Once in Ghana, he began work on the Encyclopedia Africana, a reference work on Africans and people of African descent throughout the world. When his passport expired in 1963 he applied to have it renewed, but it was denied by the U.S. government because he was a registered Communist. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of Ghana in February of that year, shortly before his 95th birthday. Ghanian President Kwame Nkrumah welcomed Du Bois’s decision and deemed him “the first citizen of Africa.” Du Bois died a few months later.

Du Bois wrote some 20 books during his lifetime. In addition to the previously mentioned titles, he wrote Africa—Its Place in Modern History (1930); Black Reconstruction in the South (1935); Black Folk Then and Now (1939); a trilogy, called Black Flame, which included The Ordeal of Mansart (1957), Mansart Builds a School (1959), and Worlds of Color (1961); and, published posthumously, his third and last autobiography, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois (1968).
 

Alexandre Dumas

One of the most famous French writers of the 19th century. Dumas is best known for the historical novels; The Three Musketeers and The County of Monte Cristo, both written within the pace of two years, 1844-1845, and which belong to the foundation works of popular culture. He was among the first who fully used the possibilities of Roman feuilleton, the serial novel. Dumas is credited with revitalizing the historical novel in France, although his abilities as a writer were under dispute from the beginning. Dumas’ works are fast-paced adventure tales that blend history and fiction. However, on the other hand, they are entangled, melodramatic, and actually not faithful to the historical facts.

Alexandre Dumas was born in Villes-Cotterets. His grandfather was a French nobleman who had settled in Santo Domingo (now part of Haiti). His paternal grandmother, Marie-Cessette, was an Afro-Caribbean who had been a black slave in the French colony (now part of Haiti). Dumas’ father was a general in Napoleon’s army, who had fallen out of favor. After his death in 1806, the family lived in poverty. Dumas worked as a notary’s clerk and went in 1823 to Paris to find work. Due to his elegant handwriting, he secured a position with the Duc d’Orleans – later King Louis Philippe. He also found his place in theatre, and as a publisher of some obscure magazines. An illegitimate son called Alexandre Dumas fils, whose mother Marie-Cathering Labay, was a dressmaker, was born in 1824.

Dumas was an omnivorous reader. He was especially interested in plays. His first produced drama was LA CHASSE ET L'AMOUR, written with Adolphe de Leuven and P.J. Rosseau. It opened on September 22, 1835 at Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique. As a playwright, Dumas made his breakthrough with HENRI III ET SA COUR (1829), produced by the Comédie-Française. The romantic drama about power and love was set in the Renaissance court of Henry III and drew on Louis-Pierre Anquetil's Histoire de France and Pierre de L'Estoile's Memoires-journaux. It gained a huge success and Dumas went on to compose additional plays, of which LA TOUR DE NESLE (1832, The Tower of Nesle) is considered the greatest masterpiece of French melodrama. It was written in collaboration with Frédéric Gaullardet. The action centered around the doomed Queen Marguerite de Bourgogne, who had ordered her illegitimate sons to be killed, but who appear into her life twenty years later. He wrote constantly, producing a steady stream of plays, novels, and short stories.
"All for one, one for all, that is our device." (from The Three Musketeers)
Before 1843 Dumas wrote fifteen plays. Historical novels brought Dumas enormous fortune, but he could spend money faster than he made it. He produced some 250 books with his 73 assistants, especially with the history teacher Auguste Maquet, whom he wisely allowed to work quite independently. Dumas earned roughly 200,000 francs yearly and received an annual sum of 63,000 francs for 220,000 lines from the newspapers La Presse and the Constitutionel. Maquet often proposed subjects and wrote first drafts for some of Dumas' most famous serial novels, including LES TROIS MOUSQUETAIRES (1844, The Three Musketeers) and LE COMTE DE MONTE-CRISTO (1844-45, The Count of Monte-Cristo). Dumas himself claimed that he only began writing his books when they were already completed in his head.

As a master dialogist, Dumas developed character traits, kept the action moving, and composed the all-important chapter endings - teaser scenes that maintained suspense and readers interest to read more. The adventures of the three musketeers has inspired many film versions. The story of the King's Musketeers was continued in Twenty Years After (1845) and The Vicomte Bragelonne (1848-50). The latter has also inspired several film adaptations of the unwanted twin brother of the king, Philippe, imprisoned in Bastille. His face is covered with an iron mask to hide his true identity.

Dumas' role in the development of the historical novel owes much to a coincidence. The lifting of press censorship in the 1830’s gave rise to a rapid spread of newspapers. Editors began to lure readers by entertaining serial novels. Everybody read them, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie, young and old, men and women. Dumas' first true serial novel was LE CAPITAINE PAUL (1838, Captain Paul), a quick rewrite of a play. It was addressed to a female readership and added 5,000 subscribers to the list of Le Siècle when it was serialized. Along with Balzac and other writers, he also contributed to Emile de Girardin's weekly, La Mode, which became the voice of an aristocratic and wordly tout-Paris.

Dumas lived as adventurously as the heroes of his books, and his way of life created a number of anecdotes. When he was asked to contribute 25 francs to bury a bailiff he gave 50 francs and said: "There you are - bury two of them." He took part in the revolution of July 1830 and became a captain in the National Guard, caught cholera during the epidemic of 1832, and traveled in Italy to recuperate. He married his mistress Ida Ferrier, an actress, in 1840, but he soon separated after having spent her entire dowry. With the money earned from his writings, he built a fantastic château de Monte-Cristo on the outskirts of Paris. In 1850 appeared The Black Tulip, a romantic adventure set in the 17th century Holland.

In 1851 Dumas escaped his creditors to Brussels. He spent two years there in exile and then returned to Paris and founded a daily paper called Le Mousquetaire. In 1858 he traveled to Russia and in 1860 he went to Italy, where he supported Garibaldi and Italy's struggle for independence (1860-64). He then remained in Naples as a keeper of the museums for four years. After his return to France his debts continued to mount. Called as "the king of Paris", Dumas earned fortunes and spent them right away on friends, art, and mistresses. He was professed to have had dozens of illegitimate children, but he acknowledged only three. According to a story, when Dumas once found his wife in bed with his good friend Roger de Beauvoir, he said, "It's a cold night. Move over and make room for me." Dumas died of a stroke on December 5, 1870, at Puys, near Dieppe. It is claimed that his last words were, "I shall never know how it all comes out now," in which he referred to his unfinished book.

Dumas did not generally define himself as a black man, and there is not much evidence that he encountered overt racism during his life. However, his works were popular among the 19th-century African-Americans, partly because in The Count of Monte-Cristo, the falsely imprisoned Edmond Dantès, may be read as a parable of emancipation. In a shorter work, GEORGES (1843, George), Dumas examined the question of race and colonialism.
 

Angela Davis

Born on January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, radical black activist, author and academic Angela Davis received a B.A. from Brandeis University in 1965. She later studied as a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, under the Marxist professor and One Dimensional Man'(1964) author Herbert Marcuse.

Davis joined the Communist Party in 1968 and suffered discrimination, like many blacks during the late 1960’s, for her personal political beliefs and commitment to revolutionary ideals. Despite her qualifications and excellent teaching record, the California Board of Regents refused to renew her appointment as a philosophy lecturer in 1970.
Davis worked to free the Soledad (Prison) Brothers, African-American prisoners held in California during the late 1960’s. She befriended George Jackson, one of the prisoners. On August 7, 1970, during an abortive escape and kidnap attempt from Marin County's Hall of Justice, the trial judge and three people were killed, including Jackson's brother Jonathan. Although not at the crime scene, Davis was implicated when police claimed that the guns used had been registered in her name.

Davis fled underground and was consequently listed on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Criminals list, sparking one of the most intensive manhunts in recent American history. Californian Governor Ronald Reagan publicly vowed that Davis would never teach in that state again. She was captured in New York City in August 1970, but was freed eighteen months later and cleared of all charges in 1972 by an all white jury. During this period, an international Free Angela Davis movement had grown, and Davis used the momentum to found the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which remains active today.
Davis resumed teaching at San Francisco State University after the fiasco, and has subsequently lectured in all 50 US states, as well as internationally throughout Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Russia and the Pacific. Her acclaimed books exploring the institutionalization of racial politics include If They Come In The Morning (1971), Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race & Class (1981), Women, Race and Politics (1989), Blues Legacies & Black Feminism (1999) and The Angela Y Davis Reader (1999).

Currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center, Davis now focuses on exposing racism that is an epidemic in the US prison system (which she calls the Punishment Industry in deference to unmonitored corporate culture and increasingly totalitarian privatization schemes), and exploring new ways to de-construct oppression and race hatred. Controversy and her radical past still haunts her. In 1994 Republicans objected to her appointment to a presidential chair at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is currently a professor in the History of Consciousness Department.

Her revolutionary politics and academic writings provide a link from 1960’s groups like the Black Panthers to contemporary cases including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal. Ultimately Davis represents a revitalizing force in New Left politics (she was at the forefront of Gulf War protests in the United States that were censored by the mainstream media) and individual life-affirming cultural studies (particularly blues and hip-hop music). She remains a powerful role-model for the Black Consciousness movement, and a reminder of how dictatorial the Police State can suddenly become towards minorities if it is not vigilantly monitored by free patriots.

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., on December 18, 1912.  In 1932 he began college at the West Point Military Academy.  Davis believed his classmates would accept him based on the content of his character and not reject him because of his race.  He was wrong.  He was shunned for four years, meaning other cadets would only speak to him for official reasons.  He had no roommate and took his meals in silence.  Those who caused this shunning had hoped to drive Davis from the Academy, but their actions only made him more determined to succeed.  He graduated thirty-fifth out of 276 in the Class of 1936.  Upon graduating, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. became one of only two black line officers in the U.S. Army at the time - the other was his father.

Initially assigned to the infantry in July 1941, he joined 12 cadets in the first flying training program for blacks at Tuskegee, Alabama.  In March of 1942 he received his wings after becoming the first black officer to solo an Army Air Corps aircraft.  These Tuskegee graduates went on to form the 99th Pursuit Squadron, which entered World War II in June 1943 with Lieutenant Davis in command.

After four months of flying P-40's in the Mediterranean Theater, Davis returned to the States, took command of the 332^nd Fighter Group, and deployed with his unit to Italy in January 1944.  By summer the group had transitioned to P-47s and began scoring their first kills.  On June 9, 1944 Colonel Davis led 39 Thunderbolts escorting B-24s to targets at Munich, Germany.  Near the target, the 332^nd took on more than 100 German fighters, destroying five Me-109s and damaging another.

For his leadership and bravery on this mission, Davis was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.  Later, flying the distinctive 332^nd "Red Tail" P-51 Mustangs, Davis led the first Italy-based fighter group to escort bombers to Berlin, a distance of 1,600 miles.  Approaching Berlin, they were attacked by 25 Me-262 jets, but the 332^nd downed three of the enemy fighters.  Under Davis' command, the Group flew more than 15,000 sorties against the Luftwaffe, shot down 111 enemy aircraft, and destroyed another 150 on the ground, while losing only 66 of their own aircraft to all causes.  Not one friendly bomber was lost to enemy aircraft during the Group's 200 escort missions.  The unique success of this all-black outfit highlighted Colonel Davis' leadership, along with the courage and discipline of his airmen.

Following the European War, Davis returned to the States to command the 477^th Composite Group and the 332^nd Fighter Wing.  He again saw combat in 1953 when he assumed command of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing and flew the F-86 in Korea.  With his promotion to brigadier general, Davis became the first black to earn a star in the US Air Force.

He retired as a lieutenant general in 1970, and served under President Nixon as Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Environment, Safety, and Consumer Affairs.

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. was born on July 1, 1877 in Washington, D.C. In 1897 he entered Howard University, but left the following year to serve in the Spanish-American War as First Lieutenant of Volunteers. He was discharged from the volunteers in 1899. He then enlisted as a Private, 9th U.S. Cavalry of the Regular Army. During his service in the Philippines, Davis rose rapidly through the ranks to a commission as a Second Lieutenant in 1901.

In 1905, with a promotion to First Lieutenant, Davis was detailed to Wilberforce University as professor of military tactics, where he remained for four years. From 1909-1912, he was military attaché in Monrovia, Liberia. For the following three years he was on garrison duty and border patrol duty in the West. In 1915 he returned to Wilberforce. From 1917-1920 he served another tour of duty in the Philippines, during which he advanced to Lieutenant Colonel. This was followed by assignment as professor of military tactics at Tuskegee Institute, where he remained until 1924.

For the next 14 years he alternated between teaching at Tuskegee and Wilberforce. In 1930 he received a promotion to Colonel. He was given his first independent command in 1938, that of the 369th National Guard Infantry Regiment. In October 1940, he became the first black soldier to hold the rank of General in the Army. His promotion to Brigadier General aroused a brief but intense controversy, both on account of his race and because it came just a month before the presidential elections. Some viewed this as politically motivated on the part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In command of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade at Fort Riley, Kansas, on promotion. He retired in 1941, but was immediately recalled to active duty, and he was assigned to the Officer of the Inspector General of the Army.
During World War II, he served in the European Theater of Operations as advisor on race relations in the Army, and he returned to his post of Assistant Inspector General. He retired again from the Army in 1948 after 50 years of service.

He died in Chicago, Illinois, on November 26, 1970 and was buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery. The year Davis retired, President Harry S. Truman issued an order banning discrimination in the armed services. His career honors included the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star, the French Croix de Guerre with Palm, and the Grade of Commander of the Order of the Star of Africa, Liberian government.

Stephen Bantu (Steve) Biko

Founder and martyr of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa
Date of birth: 18 December 1946, King William's Town, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Date of death: 12 September 1977, Pretoria prison cell, South Africa.

From an early age Steve Biko showed an interest in anti-Apartheid politics. After being expelled from his first school, Lovedale, in the Eastern Cape for 'anti-establishment' behavior, he was transferred to a Roman Catholic boarding school in Natal. From there he enrolled as a student at the University of Natal Medical School (Black Section). Whilst at medical school Biko became involved with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). But the union was dominated by white liberals and failed to represent the needs of black students, so Biko resigned in 1969 and founded the South African Students' Organization (SASO). SASO was involved in providing legal aid and medical clinics, as well as helping to develop cottage industries for disadvantaged black communities.

In 1972 Biko was one of the founders of the Black Peoples Convention (BPC) working on social upliftment projects around Durban. The BPC effectively brought together roughly 70 different black consciousness groups and associations, such as the South African Student's Movement (SASM), which played a significant role in the 1976 uprisings, the National Association of Youth Organizations (NAYO), and the Black Workers Project (BWP) which supported black workers whose unions were not recognized under the Apartheid regime. Biko was elected as the first president of the BPC and was promptly expelled from medical school. He started working full time for the Black Community Program (BCP) in Durban which he also helped found.

In 1973 Steve Biko was 'banned' by the Apartheid government. Under the 'ban' Biko was restricted to his home town of Kings William's Town in the Eastern Cape – he could no longer support the BCP in Durban, but was able to continue working for the BPC – he helped set up the Zimele Trust Fund which assisted political prisoners and their families. (Biko was elected Honorary President of the BPC in January 1977.)

Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977 under Apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation. On 21 August 1977 Biko was detained by the Eastern Cape security police and held in Port Elizabeth. From the Walmer police cells he was taken for interrogation at the security police headquarters. On 7 September "Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, after which he acted strangely and was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him (naked, lying on a mat and manacled to a metal grille) initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury."
By 11 September Biko had slipped into a continual, semi-conscious state and the police physician recommended a transfer to hospital. Biko was, however, transported 1,200 km to Pretoria – a 12-hour journey which he made lying naked in the back of a Land Rover. A few hours later, on 12 September, alone and still naked, lying on the floor of a cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage.

The South African Minister of Justice, James (Jimmy) Kruger initially suggested Biko had died of a hunger-strike and said that his death "left him cold". The hunger strike story was dropped after local and international media pressure, especially from Donald Woods, the editor of the East London Daily Dispatch. It was revealed in the inquest that Biko had died of brain damage, but the magistrate failed to find anyone responsible, ruling that Biko had died as a result of injuries sustained during a scuffle with security police whilst in detention.

The brutal circumstances of Biko's death caused a worldwide outcry and he became a martyr and symbol of black resistance to the oppressive Apartheid regime. As a result, the South African government banned a number of individuals (including Donald Woods) and organizations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely associated with Biko. The United Nations Security Council responded by finally imposing an arms embargo against South Africa.
Biko's family sued the state for damages in 1979 and settled out of court for R65,000 (then equivalent to $25,000).
The three doctors connected with Biko's case were initially exonerated by the South African Medical Disciplinary Committee. It was not until a second enquiry in 1985, eight years after Biko's death, that any action was taken against them. The police officers responsible for Biko's death applied for amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings which sat in Port Elizabeth in 1997. The Biko family did not ask the Commission to make a finding on his death.
 

Bob Marley

Bob Marley was a hero figure, in the classic mythological sense. His departure from this planet came at a point when his vision of One World, One Love - inspired by his belief in Rastafari - was beginning to be heard and felt. The last Bob Marley and the Wailers tour in 1980 attracted the largest audiences at that time for any musical act in Europe.

Bob's story is that of an archetype, which is why it continues to have such a powerful and ever-growing resonance: it embodies political repression, metaphysical and artistic insights, gangland warfare and various periods of mystical wilderness. And his audience continues to widen: to westerners Bob's apocalyptic truths prove inspirational and life-changing; in the Third World his impact goes much further. Not just among Jamaicans, but also the Hopi Indians of New Mexico and the Maoris of New Zealand, in Indonesia and India, and especially in those parts of West Africa from which slaves were plucked and taken to the New World, Bob is seen as a redeemer figure returning to lead this planet out of confusion.

In the clear Jamaican sunlight you can pick out the component parts of which the myth of Bob Marley is comprised: the sadness, the love, the understanding, and the God-given talent. Those are facts. And although it is sometimes said that there are no facts in Jamaica, there is one more thing of which we can be certain: Bob Marley never wrote a bad song. He left behind the most remarkable body of recorded work. "The reservoir of music he has left behind is like an encyclopedia," says Judy Mowatt of the I-Threes. "When you need to refer to a certain situation or crisis, there will always be a Bob Marley song that will relate to it. Bob was a musical prophet."

The tiny Third World country of Jamaica has produced an artist who has transcended all categories, classes, and creeds through a combination of innate modesty and profound wisdom. Bob Marley, the Natural Mystic, may yet prove to be the most significant musical artist of the twentieth century.

Bob Marley gave the world brilliant and evocative music; his work stretched across nearly two decades and yet still remains timeless and universal. Bob Marley & the Wailers worked their way into the very fabric of our lives.

"He's taken his place alongside James Brown and Sly Stone as a pervasive influence on R&B", says the American critic Timothy White, author of the acclaimed Bob Marley biography 'Catch A Fire'. "His music was pure rock, in the sense that it was a public expression of a private truth."

It is important to consider the roots of this legend: the first superstar from the Third World, Bob Marley was one of the most charismatic and challenging performers of our time and his music could have been created from only one source: the street culture of Jamaica.

The days of slavery are a recent folk memory on the island. They have permeated the very essence of Jamaica's culture, from the plantation of the mid-nineteenth century to the popular music of our own times. Although slavery was abolished in 1834, the Africans and their descendants developed their own culture with half-remembered African traditions mingled with the customs of the British.

This hybrid culture, of course, had parallels with the emerging black society in America. Jamaica, however, remained a rural community which, without the industrialization of its northern neighbor, was more closely rooted to its African legacy.

By the start of the twentieth century that African heritage was given political expression by Marcus Garvey, a shrewd Jamaican preacher and entrepreneur who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The organization advocated the creation of a new black state in Africa, free from white domination. As the first step in this dream, Garvey founded the Black Star Line, a steamship company which, in popular imagination at least, was to take the black population from America and the Caribbean back to their homeland of Africa.

A few years later, in 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia and took a new name, Haile Selassie, The Emperor claimed to be the 225th ruler in a line that stretched back to Menelik, the son of Solomon and Sheba.

The Marcus Garvey followers in Jamaica, consulting their New Testaments for a sign, believed Haile Selassie was the black king whom Garvey had prophesied would deliver the Negro race. It was the start of a new religion called Rastafari.

Fifteen years later, in Rhoden Hall to the north of Jamaica, Bob Marley was born. His mother was an eighteen-year-old black girl called Cedella Booker while his father was Captain Norval Marley, a 50-year-old white quartermaster attached to the British West Indian Regiment.

The couple married in 1944 and Robert Nesta Marley was born on February 6, 1945. Norval Marley's family, however, applied constant pressure and, although he provided financial support, the Captain seldom saw his son who grew up in the rural surroundings of St. Ann to the north of the island.

For country people in Jamaica, the capital Kingston was the city of their dreams, the land of opportunity. The reality was that Kingston had little work to offer, yet through the Fifties and Sixties, people flooded to the city. The newcomers, despite their rapid disillusion with the capital, seldom returned to the rural parishes. Instead, they squatted in the shanty towns that grew up in western Kingston, the most notorious of which was Trench town (so named because it was built over a ditch that drained the sewage of old Kingston).

Bob Marley, barely into his teens, moved to Kingston in the late Fifties. Like many before them, Marley and his mother eventually settled in Trenchtown. His friends were other street youths, also impatient with their place in Jamaican society. One friend in particular was Neville O'Riley Livingston, known as Bunny, with whom Bob took his first hesitant musical steps.

The two youths were fascinated by the extraordinary music they could pick up from American radio stations. In particular there was one New Orleans station broadcasting the latest tunes by such artists as Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Curtis Mayfield and Brook Benton. Bob and Bunny also paid close attention to the black vocal groups, such as the Drifters, who were extremely popular in Jamaica.

When Bob quit school he seemed to have but one ambition: music. Although he took a job in a welding shop, Bob spent all his free time with Bunny, perfecting their vocal abilities. They were helped by one of Trench Town's famous residents, the singer Joe Higgs who held informal lessons for aspiring vocalists in the tenement yards. It was at one of those sessions that Bob and Bunny met Peter McIntosh, another youth with big musical ambitions.

In 1962 Bob Marley auditioned for a local music entrepreneur called Leslie Kong. Impressed by the quality of Bob's vocals, Kong took the young singer into the studio to cut some tracks, the first of which, called "Judge Not", was released on Beverley's label. It was Marley's first record.

The other tunes - including "Terror" and "One Cup of Coffee" - received no airplay and attracted little attention. At the very least, however, they confirmed Marley's ambition to be a singer. By the following year Bob had decided the way forward was with a group. He linked up with Bunny and Peter to form The Wailing Wailers.

The new group had a mentor, a Rastafarian hand drummer called Alvin Patterson, who introduced the youths to Clement Dodd,, a record producer in Kingston. In the summer of 1963 Dodd auditioned The Wailing Wailers and, pleased with the results, agreed to record the group.

It was the time of Ska music, the hot new dance floor music with a pronounced back-beat. Its origins incorporated influences from Jamaica's African traditions but, more immediately, from the heady beats of New Orleans' rhythm & blues disseminated from American radio stations and the burgeoning sound systems on the streets of Kingston. Clement - Sir Coxsone - Dodd was one of the city's finest sound system men.

The Wailing Wailers released their first single, "Simmer Down", on the Coxsone label during the last weeks of 1963. By the following January it was number one in the Jamaican charts, a position it held for the next two months. The group - Bob, Bunny and Peter together with Junior Braithwaite and two back-up singers, Beverly Kelso and Cherry Smith - were big news.

"Simmer Down" caused a sensation in Jamaica and The Wailing Wailers began recording regularly for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One Company. The groups' music also found new themes, identifying with the Rude Boy street rebels in the Kingston slums. Jamaican music had found a tough, urban stance.

Over the next few years The Wailing Wailers put out some thirty sides that properly established the group.

Despite their popularity, the economics of keeping the group together proved too much and the three other members - Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso and Cherry Smith - quit. Bob's mother, Cedella, had remarried and moved to Delaware in the United States where she had saved sufficient money to send her son an air ticket. The intention was for Bob to start a new life. But before he moved to America, Bob met a young girl called Rita Anderson and, on February 10, 1966, they were married.

Marley's stay in America was short-lived. He worked just enough to finance his real ambition: music. In October 1966 Bob Marley, after eight months in America, returned to Jamaica. It was a formative period in his life. The Emperor Haile Selassie had made a state visit to Jamaica in April that year. By the time Bob re-settled in Kingston the Rastafarian movement had gained new credence.

Marley was increasingly drawn towards Rastafari. In 1967 Bob's music reflected his new beliefs. Gone were the Rude Boy anthems; in their place was a growing commitment to spiritual and social issues, the cornerstone of his real legacy.

Marley joined up with Bunny and Peter to re-form the group, now known as The Wailers. Rita, too, had started a singing career, having a big hit with "Pied Piper", a cover of an English pop song. Jamaican music, however, was changing. The bouncy Ska beat had been replaced by a slower, more sensual rhythm called rock steady.

The Wailers new commitment to Rastafarianism brought them into conflict with Coxsone Dodd and, determined to control their own destiny, the group formed their own record label, Wail 'N' Soul. Despite a few early successes, however, the Wailers' business naiveté proved too much and the label folded in late 1967.

The group survived, however, initially as songwriters for a company associated with the American singer Johnny Nash who, the following decade, was to have an international smash with Marley's "Stir It Up". The Wailers also met up with Lee Perry, whose production genius had transformed recording studio techniques into an art form.

The Perry/Wailers combination resulted in some of the finest music the band ever made. Such tracks as "Soul Rebel", "Duppy Conqueror", "400 Years" and "Small Axe" were not only classics, but they defined the future direction of reggae.

In 1970 Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and his brother Carlton (bass and drums respectively) joined the Wailers. They had been the rhythm nucleus of Perry's studio band, working with the Wailers on those ground-breaking sessions. They were also unchallenged as Jamaica's hardest rhythm section, a status that was to remain undiminished during the following decade. The band's reputation was, at the start of the Seventies, an extraordinary one throughout the Caribbean. But internationally the Wailers were still unknown.

In the summer of 1971 Bob accepted an invitation from Johnny Nash to accompany him to Sweden where the American singer had taken a film score commission. While in Europe Bob secured a recording contract with CBS which was also, of course, Nash's company. By the spring of 1972 the entire Wailers were in London, ostensibly promoting their CBS single "Reggae on Broadway". Instead they found themselves stranded in Britain.

As a last throw of the dice Bob Marley walked into the Basing Street Studios of Island Records and asked to see its founder Chris Blackwell. The company, of course, had been one of the prime movers behind the rise of Jamaican music in Britain; indeed Blackwell had launched Island in Jamaica during the late fifties.

By 1962, however, Blackwell had realized that, by re-locating Island to London, he could represent all his Jamaican rivals in Britain. The company was re-born in May, 1962, selling initially to Britain's Jamaican population centered mostly in London and Birmingham.

The hot Ska rhythm, however, quickly became established as a burgeoning dance floor beat with the then growing Mod culture and, in 1964, Blackwell produced a worldwide smash with 'My Boy Lollipop', a pop/Ska tune by the young Jamaican singer Millie.

Through the Sixties Island had grown to become a major source of Jamaican music, from Ska and rock steady to reggae. The company had also embraced white rock music, with such bands and artists as Traffic, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Cat Stevens, Free and Fairport Convention so, when Bob Marley made his first moves with Island in 1971, he was connecting with the hottest independent in the world at that time.

Blackwell knew of Marley's Jamaican reputation. The group was offered a deal unique in Jamaican terms. The Wailers were advanced ?000 to make an album and, for the first time, a reggae band had access to the best recording facilities and were treated in much the same way as, say, their rock group contemporaries. Before this deal, it was considered that reggae sold only on singles and cheap compilation albums. The Wailers' first album Catch A Fire broke all the rules: it was beautifully packaged and heavily promoted. It was the start of a long climb to international fame and recognition.

Years later the acclaimed reggae dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, commenting on Catch A Fire, wrote: "A whole new style of Jamaican music has come into being. It has a different character, a different sound. . . what I can only describe as International Reggae. It incorporates elements from popular music internationally: rock and soul, blues and funk. These elements facilitated a breakthrough on the international market."

Although Catch A Fire was not an immediate hit, it made a considerable impact on the media. Marley's hard dance rhythms, allied to his militant lyrical stance, came in complete contrast to the excesses of mainstream rock. Island also decided The Wailers should tour both Britain and America; again a complete novelty for a reggae band.

Marley and the band came to London in April 1973, embarking on a club tour which hardened The Wailers as a live group. After three months, however, the band returned to Jamaica and Bunny, disenchanted by life on the road, refused to play the American tour. His place was taken by Joe Higgs, The Wailers' original singing teacher.

The American tour drew packed houses and even included a weekend engagement playing support to the young Bruce Springsteen. Such was the demand that an autumn tour was also arranged with seventeen dates as support to Sly & The Family Stone, then the number one band in black American music.

Four shows into the tour, however, The Wailers were taken off the bill. It seems they had been too good; support bands should not detract from the main attraction. The Wailers nevertheless made their way to San Francisco where they broadcast a live concert for the pioneering rock radio station, KSAN.

The bulk of that session was finally made available in February 1991, when Island released the commemorative album, Talkin' Blues.

In 1973 The Wailers also released their second Island album, Burnin, an LP that included new versions of some of the band's older songs: 'Duppy Conqueror', for instance, "Small Axe" and "Put It On" - together with such tracks as 'Get Up Stand Up' and "I Shot The Sheriff". The latter, of course, was a massive worldwide hit for Eric Clapton the following year, even reaching number one in the U.S. singles' chart.

In 1974 Marley spent much time of his time in the studio working on the sessions that eventually provided Natty Dread, an album that included such fiercely committed songs as 'Talkin' Blues', "No Woman No Cry", "So Jah Seh," "Revolution", "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)" and "Rebel Music (3 o'clock Roadblock)". By the start of the next year, however, Bunny and Peter had quit the group; they were later to embark on solo careers (as Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh) while the band was re-named Bob Marley & The Wailers.

Natty Dread was released in February 1975 and, by the summer, the band was on the road again. Bunny and Peter's missing harmonies were replaced by the I-Threes, the female trio comprising Bob's wife Rita together with Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt. Among the concerts were two shows at the Lyceum Ballroom in London which, even now, are remembered as highlights of the decade.

The shows were recorded and the subsequent live album, together with the single "No Woman No Cry", both made the charts. Bob Marley & The Wailers were taking reggae into the mainstream. By November, when The Wailers returned to Jamaica to play a benefit concert with Stevie Wonder, they were obviously the country's greatest superstars.

Rastaman Vibration, the follow-up album in 1976, cracked the American charts. It was, for many, the clearest exposition yet of Marley's music and beliefs, including such tracks as "Crazy Baldhead", "Johnny Was", "Who the Cap Fit" and, perhaps most significantly of all, "War", the lyrics of which were taken from a speech by Emperor Haile Selassie.

Its international success cemented Marley's growing political importance in Jamaica, where his firm Rastafarian stance had found a strong resonance with the ghetto youth. By way of thanking the people of Jamaica, Marley decided on a free concert, to be held at Kingston's National Heroes Park on December 5, 1976. The idea was to emphasize the need for peace in the slums of the city, where warring factions had brought turmoil and murder.

Just after the concert was announced, the government called an election for December 20. The campaign was a signal for renewed ghetto war and, on the eve of the concert, gunmen broke into Marley's house and shot him.

In the confusion the would-be assassins only wounded Marley, who was hastily taken to a safe haven in the hills surrounding Kingston. For a day he deliberated playing the concert and then, on December 5, he came on stage and played a brief set in defiance of the gunmen.

It was to be Marley's last appearance in Jamaica for nearly eighteen months. Immediately after the show he left the country and, during early 1977, lived in London where he recorded his next album, Exodus.

Released in the summer of that year, Exodus properly established the band's international status. The album remained on the UK charts for 56 straight weeks, and its three singles - "Exodus", "Waiting in Vain" and "Jammin" - were all massive sellers. The band also played a week of concerts at London's Rainbow Theatre; their last dates in the city during the seventies.

In 1978 the band capitalized on their chart success with Kaya, an album which hit number four in the UK the week after release. That album saw Marley in a different mood; a collection of love songs and, of course, homage’s to the power of ganja. The album also provided two chart singles, "Satisfy My Soul" and the beautiful "Is This Love".

There were three more events in 1978, all of which were of extraordinary significance to Marley. In April he returned to Jamaica to play the One Love Peace Concert in front of the Prime Minister Michael Manley and the Leader of the Opposition Edward Seaga.

He was then invited to the United Nations in New York to receive the organization’s Medal of Peace. At the end of the year Bob also visited Africa for the first time, going initially to Kenya and then on to Ethiopia, spiritual home of Rastafari.

The band had earlier toured Europe and America, a series of shows that provided a second live album, Babylon By Bus. The Wailers also broke new ground by playing in Australia, Japan and New Zealand: truly international style reggae.
Survival, Bob Marley's ninth album for Island Records, was released in the summer of 1979. It included "Zimbabwe", a stirring anthem for the soon-to-be liberated Rhodesia, together with "So Much Trouble In The World", "Ambush In The Night" and "Africa Unite"; as the sleeve design, comprising the flags of the independent nations, indicated, Survival was an album of pan-African solidarity.

At the start of the following year - a new decade - Bob Marley & The Wailers flew to Gabon where they were to make their African debut. It was not an auspicious occasion, however, when the band discovered they were playing in front of the country's young elite. The group, nevertheless, was to make a quick return to Africa, this time at the official invitation to the government of liberated Zimbabwe to play at the country's Independence Ceremony in April, 1980. It was the greatest honour ever afforded the band, and one which underlined the Wailer's importance in the Third World.

The band's next album, Uprising, was released in May 1980. It was an instant hit, with the single, "Could You Be Loved" a massive worldwide seller. Uprising also featured "Coming In From the Cold", "Work" and the extraordinary closing track, "Redemption Song".

The Wailers embarked on a major European tour, breaking festival records throughout the continent. The schedule included a 100,000-capacity crowd in Milan, the biggest show in the band's history. Bob Marley & The Wailers, quite simply, were the most important band on the road that year and the new Uprising album hit every chart in Europe. It was a period of maximum optimism and plans were being made for an American tour, in company with Stevie Wonder, that winter.

At the end of the European tour Marley and the band went to America. Bob played two shows at Madison Square Garden but, immediately afterwards, was taken seriously ill.

Three years earlier, in London, Bob hurt a toe while playing football. The wound had become cancerous and was belatedly treated in Miami, yet it continued to fester. By 1980 the cancer, in its most virulent form, had begun to spread through Marley's body.

He fought the disease for eight months, taking treatment at the clinic of Dr. Joseph Issels in Bavaria. Issels' treatment was controversial and non-toxic and, for a time anyway, Bob's condition seemed to stabilize. Eventually, however, the battle proved too much. At the start of May Bob Marley left Germany for his Jamaican home, a journey he did not complete. He died in a Miami hospital on Monday May 11, 1981.

The previous month, Marley had been awarded Jamaica's Order Of Merit, the nation's third highest honour, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the country's culture.

On Thursday May 21, 1981, the Hon. Robert Nesta Marley O.M. was given an official funeral by the people of Jamaica. Following the service - attended by both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition - Marley's body was taken to his birthplace at Nine Mile, on the north of the island, where it now rests in a mausoleum.Bob Marley was 36-years-old. His legend, however, has conquered the years.

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington recalled his childhood in his autobiography, Up From Slavery. He was born in 1856 on the Burrough's tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a "plantation." His mother was a cook, his father a white man from a nearby farm. "The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin," he wrote, "were not very different from those of other slaves."

He went to school in Franklin County - not as a student, but to carry books for one of James Burroughs' daughters. It was illegal to educate slaves. "I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise," he wrote. In April 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burroughs home. Booker's family soon left to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia. The young boy took a job in a salt mine that began at 4 a.m. so he could attend school later in the day. Within a few years, Booker was taken in as a houseboy by a wealthy towns-woman who further encouraged his longing to learn. At age 16, he walked much of the 500 miles back to Virginia to enroll in a new school for black students. He knew that even poor students could get an education at Hampton Institute, paying their way by working. The head teacher was suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes. She admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction.

In one respect he had come full circle, back to earning his living by menial tasks. Yet his entrance to Hampton led him away from a life of forced labor for good. He became an instructor there. Later, as principal and guiding force behind Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which he founded in 1881, he became recognized as the nation's foremost black educator.
Washington the public figure often invoked his own past to illustrate his belief in the dignity of work. "There was no period of my life that was devoted to play," Washington once wrote. "From the time that I can remember anything, almost everyday of my life has been occupied in some kind of labor." This concept of self-reliance born of hard work was the cornerstone of Washington's social philosophy.

As one of the most influential black men of his time, Washington was not without his critics. Many charged that his conservative approach undermined the quest for racial equality. "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers," he proposed to a biracial audience in his 1895 Atlanta Compromise address, "yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." In part, his methods arose for his need for support from powerful whites, some of them former slave owners. It is now known, however, that Washington secretly funded anti segregationist activities. He never wavered in his belief in freedom: "From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery."

By the last years of his life, Washington had moved away from many of his accommodations policies. Speaking out with a new frankness, Washington attacked racism. In 1915 he joined ranks with former critics to protest the stereotypical portrayal of blacks in a new movie, "Birth of a Nation." Some months later he died at age 59. A man who overcame near-impossible odds himself, Booker T. Washington is best remembered for helping black Americans rise up from the economic slavery that held them down long after they were legally free citizens.

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

At two years old Che Guevara developed asthma from which he suffered all his life, and his family moved to the drier climate of Alta Gracia (Cordoba) where his health did not improve. Primary education at home, mostly by his mother, Celia de la Serna. He became a voracious reader of Marx, Engels and Freud which were all available in his father's library, it is probable that he had read some of their works before he went to secondary school (1941), the Colegio Nacional Dean Funes, Cordoba, where he excelled only in literature and sports. At home he was impressed by the Spanish Civil War refugees and by the long series of squalid political crises in Argentina which culminated in the 'Left Fascist' dictatorship of Juan Peron, to whom the Guevara de la Sernas were opposed. These events and influences gave the young Guevara a contempt for the pantomime of parliamentary democracy, and a hatred of military politicians and the army, the capitalist oligarchy, and above all the U.S. dollar and imperialism. Although his parents, notably his mother, were anti-Peronist activists, he took no part in revolutionary student movements and showed little interest in politics at Buenos Aires University (1947)where he studied medicine, first with a view to understanding his own disease, later becoming more interested in leprosy.

In 1949 he made the first of his long journeys, exploring northern Argentina on a bicycle, and for the first time coming into contact with the very poor and the remnants of the Indian tribes. In 1951, after taking his penultimate exams, he made a much longer journey, accompanied by a friend, and earning his living by casual labor as he went: he visited southern Argentina, Chile, where he met Salvador Allende, Peru, where he worked for some weeks in the San Pablo leprosarium, Colombia at the time of La Violencia, and where he was arrested but soon released, Venezuela, and Miami. He returned home for his finals sure of only one thing, that he did not want to become a middle-class general practitioner. He qualified, specializing in dermatology, and went to LaPaz, Bolivia, during the National Revolution which he condemned as opportunist. From there he went to Guatemala, earning his living by writing travel-cum-archaeological articles about Inca and Maya ruins. He reached Guatemala during the socialist Arbenz presidency; although he was by now a Marxist, well read in Lenin, he refused to join the Communist Party, though this meant losing the chance of government medical appointment, and he was penniless and in rags. He lived with Hilda Gadea, a Marxist of Indian stock who forwarded his political education, looked after him, and introduced him to Nico Lopez, one of Fidel Castro's lieutenants. In Guatemala he saw the CIA at work as the principal agents of counterrevolution and was confirmed in his view that Revolution could be made only be armed insurrection. When Arbenz fell, Guevara went to Mexico City(September 1954) where he worked in the General Hospital. Hilda Gadea and Nico Lopez joined him, and hemet and was charmed by Raul and Fidel Castro, then political émigrés, and realized that in Fidel he had found the leader he was seeking.

He joined other Castro followers at the farm where the Cuban revolutionaries were being given a tough commando course of professional training in guerrilla warfare by the Spanish Republican Army captain, Alberto Bayo, author of Ciento cincueto preguntas a un guerrilleo, Havana 1959. Bayo drew not only on his own experience but on the guerrilla teachings of Mao Tse-tung, and 'Che', as he was now called (it means chum or buddy and is Italian origin), became his star pupil and was made a leader of the class. The war games at the farm attracted police attention, all the Cubans and Che were arrested, but released a month later (June 1956). When they invaded Cuba, Che went with them, first as doctor, soon as a Commandante of the revolutionary army of barbutos. He was the most aggressive, clever and successful of the guerrilla officers, and the most earnest in giving his men a Leninist education. At the triumph of the Revolution Guevara became second only to Fidel Castro in the new government of Cuba, and the man chiefly responsible for moving Castro towards communism, but a communism which was independent of the orthodox, Moscow-style communism of some of their colleagues. Che organized and directed the Instituto Nacional de la Reforma Agraria to administer the new agrarian laws expropriating the large land holders; ran its Department of Industries; and was appointed President of the National Bank of Cuba.

In 1959 he married Aledia March and together they visited Egypt, India, Japan, Indonesia, Pakistan and Yugoslavia. Back in Cuba, as Minister for Industry he signed (February 1960) a trade pact with the USSR which freed the Cuban sugar industry from dependence on the teeth of the US market; in it is the foreshadowing of his failure in the Congo and Bolivia, in an axiom which proved to be hopelessly misleading: ' It is not always necessary to wait until the conditions for revolution exist, the instructional focus can create them.' And, with Mao Tse-tung, he believed that the countryside must bring the revolution to the town in predominately peasant countries. Also at this time, he glorified his own kind of communist philosophy. ( published later in the Socialism and Man in Cuba, March 12 March 1965). It can be summed up in him ' Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity.' He was moving away from ”Moscow", towards Mao, and beyond into what is essentially the old idealistic, Anarchism. His formal breach with the Soviet Communist Party came when, addressing the Organization for Afro-Asian Solidarity at Algiers(February 1965) he charged the USSR with being a 'tacit accomplice of imperialism' by not trading exclusively with the Communist bloc and by not giving underdeveloped socialist countries aid without any thought of return. He also attacked the Soviet government for its policy of coexistence; and for revisionism. He initiated the Tricontinental Conference to realize a program of revolutionary, insurrectionary, guerrilla cooperation in Africa, Asia and South America. On the other hand, after a halfhearted attempt to come to some kind of terms with the USA, he was also attacking the North Americas, at the UN as Cuba's representative there, for their greedy and merciless imperialist activity in Latin America.

Che's intransigence towards both capitalist and communist establishments forced Castro to drop him (1965), not officially, but in practice. For some months even his whereabouts were a secret and his death was widely rumored: he was in various African countries, notably the Congo, surveying the possibilities of turning the Kinshasa rebellion into a Communist revolution by Cuban-style guerrilla tactics. He returned to Cuba to train volunteers for that project, and took a force of 120 Cubans to the Congo. His men fought well, but the Kinshasa rebels did not, they were useless against the Belgian mercenaries and by autumn 1965 Che had to advise Castro to withdraw Cuban aid.

Che's final revolutionary adventure was in Bolivia: he grossly misjudged the revolutionary potential of that country with disastrous consequences. The attempt ended in his being captured by a Bolivian army unit and shot a day later.

Because of his wild, romantic appearance, his dashing style, his intransigence in refusing to kowtow to any kind of establishment however communist, his contempt for mere reformism, and his dedication to violent, flamboyant action, Che became a legend and an idol for the revolutionary- and even the merely discontented- youth of theaters 1960s and early 70's a focus for the kind of desperate revolutionary action which seemed to millions of young people the only hope of destroying the world of bourgeois industrial capitalism.

Crispus Attucks

In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a black man, became the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Although Attucks was credited as the leader and instigator of the event, debate raged for over as century as to whether he was a hero and a patriot, or a rabble-rousing villain.
In the murder trial of the soldiers who fired the fatal shots, John Adams, serving as a lawyer for the crown, reviled the "mad behavior" of Attucks, "whose very looks was enough to terrify any person."
Twenty years earlier, an advertisement placed by William Brown in the Boston Gazette and Weekly Journal provided a more detailed description of Attucks, a runaway: "A Mulatto fellow, about 27 Years of Age, named Crispus, 6 feet 2 inches high, short curly hair, his knees nearer together than common."

Attucks father was said to be an African and his mother a Natick or Nantucket Indian; in colonial America, the offspring of black and Indian parents were considered black or mulatto. As a slave in Framingham, he had been known for his skill in buying and selling cattle.
Brown offered a reward for the man's return, and ended with the following admonition: "And all Matters of Vessels and others, are hereby cautioned against concealing or carrying off said Servant on Penalty of Law. " Despite Brown's warning, Attucks was carried off on a vessel many times over the next twenty years; he became a sailor, working on a whaling crew that sailed out of Boston harbor. At other times he worked as a rope maker in Boston.
Attucks' occupation made him particularly vulnerable to the presence of the British. As a seaman, he felt the ever-present danger of impressments into the British navy. As a laborer, he felt the competition from British troops, who often took part-time jobs during their off-duty hours and worked for lower wages. A fight between Boston rope makers and three British soldiers on Friday, March 2, 1770 set the stage for a later confrontation. That following Monday night, tensions escalated when a soldier entered a pub to look for work, and instead found a group of angry seamen that included Attucks.

That evening a group of about thirty, described by John Adams as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish Teague’s and outlandish jack tarrs," began taunting the guard at the custom house with snowballs, sticks and insults. Seven other redcoats came to the lone soldier's rescue, and Attucks was one of five men killed when they opened fire.
Patriots, pamphleteers and propagandists immediately dubbed the event the "Boston Massacre," and its victims became instant martyrs and symbols of liberty. Despite laws and customs regulating the burial of blacks, Attucks was buried in the Park Street cemetery along with the other honored dead.
Adams, who became the second American president, defended the soldiers in court against the charge of murder. Building on eyewitness testimony that Attucks had struck the first blow, Adams described him as the self-appointed leader of "the dreadful carnage." In Adams' closing argument, Attucks became larger than life, with "hardiness enough to fall in upon them, and with one hand took hold of a bayonet, and with the other knocked the man down." The officer in charge and five of his men were acquitted, which further inflamed the public.

The citizens of Boston observed the anniversary of the Boston Massacre in each of the following years leading up to the war. In ceremonies designed to stir revolutionary fervor, they summoned the "discontented ghosts" of the victims.
A "Crispus Attucks Day" was inaugurated by black abolitionists in 1858, and in 1888, the Crispus Attucks Monument was erected on the Boston Common, despite the opposition of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which regarded Attucks as a villain.
The debate notwithstanding, Attucks, immortalized as "the first to defy, the first to die," has been lauded as a true martyr, "the first to pour out his blood as a precious libation on the altar of a people's rights."

Denmark Vesey

Rebel General, Organizer, Teacher, Revolutionary, Prime Example of Black Manhood.

Little is known of Denmark Vesey's early personal life. He was African born, free spirited, and he hated slavery. While in the Virgin Islands with his master, he learned to read and speak several languages, including French, Danish, English and Spanish. He read everything he could get his hands on, and continued to read when his master later settled in Charleston, S. C.
While a boy, Denmark undoubtedly heard talk of the Haitian Revolution and of other Black men rising up and killing whites. After arriving in Charleston, he heard more of the same type news; of the Black Abolitionist Movement, the anti-slavery Quakers and the Underground Railroad. These type messages made him all the more resentful of slavery. He worked hard, saved his money, played the lottery regularly and, as a result, was able to purchase his freedom for $600. when he was 33 years old.

While a slave Denmark was a carpenter, the best in the area. After acquiring his freedom, he continued his work and was able to travel all over Charleston and throughout South Carolina (he was in such great demand). He took these opportunities to talk, discuss and teach Black People across the state about resistance and revolution. At the same time, he amassed property valued at more than $8000, an amount that very few white men in Charleston could match.
Denmark was a man to be respected. Along with his reputation of being a carpenter of distinction, he earned the reputation of being an "uppity nigger." He never called any white man "master" nor tipped his hat to one if he passed him on the street (which was the custom in those days). If he ever saw a Black man bowing to a white man, he would scold him loudly, for both Black and white to see. "You're a man born equal to any other man," Denmark would say. "How can you degrade yourself by scraping and bowing to another? I will never cringe before the whites." Not surprisingly, most of his friends were slaves, not freed Blacks. His wife was a slave and he was able to see her and their children only with her master's permission. Denmark tried to buy his family's freedom but their master would not sell them. Of all the indignities suffered by Denmark as a free man, the ownership of his own wife and children by another man angered him the most. "What kind of freedom is it when a man's wife and children don't belong to him?" he would ask. How could they be free yet not respected, nor have any rights which could not be neglected when it suited a white person to do so.

As far as Denmark was concerned, slavery was total war. He always maintained that the slave must be his own salvation. "Nobody's going to liberate us but our own Black selves... It's time we stopped talking about it... It is time we started acting on it... We will never talk these people into freeing us... We must put words into doing."
With liberation as their religion, Denmark and others began to conspire. They studied various slave revolts that had occurred in South Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia. They discussed the rebellion at Richmond led by Gabriel Prosser and the Gullah War, an insurrection that was very widespread in Carolina. They devised a plan that called for the killing of every white person in the Charleston district of South Carolina and immediately began recruiting enlistments, being careful to avoid those who received presents of old coats (house slaves) from their masters. Almost every Black man spoken to agreed to join the conspiracy.
Day and night Denmark worked for the insurrection. When he slept he dreamed about it. Everywhere he went he carefully spread the word for insurrection. He made recruiting trips as far as 70 and 80 miles away from Charleston, in every direction. In all of these places Black men cast their lot with the insurrection. In fact, seldom did he meet a slave who said he was happy with his situation. By the time recruitment had been completed, more than 9000 slaves had cast their faith with rebellion.

Men were assigned to check on all the places in town where arms and ammunition were kept. Places like arsenals, guardhouses, armories and stockades would be among the first points of attack. Surprise the guards, overwhelm them, take the guns, seize the arms and ammunition and use them in the insurrection--- that was their general strategy.
General Vesey divided his troops into units according to their trade or occupation. In some cases he made up companies of those who spoke the same African language. He also organized a detachment of French speaking Blacks, slaves of Haitian refugees. Responsibilities were allotted out according to skills and occupations. The most important element in favor of the slaves was the element of surprise; without it they could not obtain the weapons necessary to carry out the rebellion. Unfortunately, this was lost when one of the rebels attempted to recruit a house slave, who told the whites everything. Some of the whites found it hard to believe that their slaves didn't truly love them.

The thing that shocked the whites the most was the vastness of the plot. White mobs roamed around the city like mad wolves on the prowl in search of helpless prey. On the day the insurrection was supposed to begin, the whites were totally armed for war. Denmark and his forces had to retreat. As the magnitude of the conspiracy was revealed, the grand illusion of the happy slave was blown to smithereens, and the name Denmark Vesey was to excite bitterness and fear among whites for decades to come.
Denmark Vesey realized that organized resistance and organized plans are necessary if Black People are to relieve themselves of the inequalities and hostilities which are heaped on them daily. Denmark Vesey, with foresight and patience, attempted to lay the foundation for that organization. In so doing he proved himself a model of Blackness and established himself as a Profile in Black.

Elijah Muhammad

Thirty-four years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was born on or about Oct. 7, 1897 in Sandersville, Georgia.
The exact date of his birth remains unknown because record keeping in rural Georgia for the descendants of slaves was not kept current, according to historians and family members. Nevertheless, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said his birth took place some time in the first or second week of October in 1897 and set forth Oct. 7 as the anniversary date of his birth.

Indeed, life in the rural South at the turn of the century was quite hard. Poverty and survival were at war with each other. Elijah Poole, the son of a minister, and whose parents, William (later named Wali) and Marie Poole, had 12 other children, had to quit school after barely finishing the third grade to work in the fields as a sharecropper so his family could eat.
Just before the roaring twenties came in, Elijah Poole married the former Clara Evans, also of Georgia. They had eight children, Emmanuel, Ethel, Lottie, Nathaniel, Herbert, Elijah, Jr., Wallace and Akbar.
In April 1923, Elijah Poole moved his young family from Macon, Georgia, where he worked for the Southern Railroad Company and the Cherokee Brick Company to Detroit, Mich. Black families, like the Pooles, were leaving the south, at that time, in search of better economic and social circumstances. Detroit was a bustling upwardly mobile city with its burgeoning auto industry.

The stock market crash in 1929 was the gateway to economic misery that sparked the fuel of the "Great Depression" of the 1930s. Moreover, America's racial situation continued its downward spiral. Lynchings, race riots and other forms of terrorism against Blacks continued unabated.
But Detroit, with its huge population of 1.5 million people including 250,000 thousand Blacks, was beginning to see changes in its social scene. On July 4, 1930, the long awaited "Saviour" of the Black man and woman, Master W. Fard Muhammad, appeared in this city. He announced and preached that God is One, and it is now time for Blacks to return to the religion of their ancestors, Islam.
News spread all over the city of Detroit of the preaching of this great man from the East. Elijah Poole's wife first learned of the Temple of Islam and wanted to attend to see what the commotion was all about, but instead, her husband advised her that he would go and see for himself.
Hence, in 1931, after hearing his first lecture at the Temple of Islam, Elijah Poole was overwhelmed by the message and immediately accepted it. Soon thereafter, Elijah Poole invited and convinced his entire family to accept the religion of Islam.

The Founder of the Nation of Islam gave him the name "Karriem" and made him a minister. Later he was promoted to the position of "Supreme Minister" and his name was changed to Muhammad. "The name 'Poole' was never my name," he would later write, "nor was it my father's name. It was the name the white slave-master of my grandfather after the so-called freedom of my fathers."
Mr. Muhammad quickly became an integral part of the Temple of Islam. For the next three and one-half years, Mr. Muhammad was personally taught by his Teacher non-stop. The Muslim community, in addition to establishing religious centers of worship, began to start businesses under the aegis of economic development that focuses on buying and selling between and among Black companies. Mr. Muhammad establishes a newspaper, "The Final Call to Islam," in 1934. This would be the first of many publications he would produce.

Meanwhile, Mr. Muhammad helped establish schools for the proper education of his children and the community. Indeed, the Muslim parents felt that the educational system of the State of Michigan was wholly inadequate for their children, and they established their own schools.
By 1934, the Michigan State Board of Education disagreed with the Muslim's right to pursue their own educational agenda, and the Muslim Teachers and Temple Secretary were jailed on the false charge of contributing to the delinquency of minors. Mr. Muhammad said he committed himself to jail after learning what had happened. Ultimately, the charges were later dropped, and the officials were freed and Mr. Muhammad received six months' probation to take the Muslim children out of the Islamic school and put them under white Christian teachers. "This I did not do," he said. He moved to the city of Chicago in September of that same year.
His Teacher, Master W. Fard Muhammad, was also harassed by the police and was forced out of the city of Detroit and moved to Chicago where he continued to face imprisonment and harassment by the police.
Hence, on February 26, 1934, Master W. Fard Muhammad, departed the scene and left the Honorable Elijah Muhammad with the mission of resurrecting the Black man and woman.

By 1935, Mr. Muhammad faced many new challenges. His teacher had instructed him to go to Washington, D.C. to visit the Library of Congress in order to research 104 books on the religion of Islam, among other subjects.
Also, after assuming the leadership of the Temple of Islam by the order of the Founder of the Nation of Islam, Mr. Muhammad faced a death plot at the hands of a few disgruntled members. Mr. Muhammad avoided their evil plan and went to Washington, D.C. to study and build a mosque there. He was known under many names, "Mr. Evans," his wife's maiden name, "Ghulam Bogans," "Muhammad Rassoull," "Elijah Karriem" and "Muhammad of 'U' Street."
Consequently, Mr. Muhammad, while in Washington, D.C. Was arrested on May 8, 1942, for allegedly evading the draft. "When the call was made for all males between 18 and 44, I refused (NOT EVADED) on the grounds that, first, I was a Muslim and would not take part in war and especially not on the side with the infidels," he wrote in "Message To The Blackman." "Second, I was 45 years of age and was NOT, according to the law, required to register."
Many other male members of the Nation of Islam at that time were imprisoned for being conscientious objectors to World War II.
After World War II ended, Mr. Muhammad won his release from prison and returned to Chicago. From Chicago, the central point of the Nation of Islam, Mr. Muhammad expanded his membership drive to new heights. Among the many new members enrolled in the ranks of Islam included Brother Malcolm X and his family.

During the 1950s, Mr. Muhammad promoted Min. Malcolm X to the post of National Spokesman, and began to syndicate his weekly newspaper column, "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," in Black newspapers across the country. Membership was increasing when, in 1955, Minister Louis Farrakhan, then Louis Walcott, an entertainer, enrolled in the Nation of Islam after hearing Mr. Muhammad deliver a speech in Chicago.
Persecution of the Muslims continued. Members and mosques continued to be attacked by whites in Monroe, La., Los Angeles, Calif., and Flint, Mich., among others. Publicity in the white owned and operated media began to circulate anti-Nation of Islam propaganda on a large scale. By the early 1960s, the Readers Digest magazine described Mr. Muhammad as the most powerful Black man in America.

In Washington, D.C., Mr. Muhammad delivered his historic Uline Arena address and was afforded presidential treatment, receiving a personal police escort.
Subsequently, television commentator Mike Wallace, in conjunction with Louis Lomax, a Black journalist, aired the documentary, "The Hate That Hate Produced," on a local New York City station. The documentary misrepresents the message of the Nation of Islam, calling it a hate teaching. James Baldwin, a famous Black author, released the book, "The Fire Next Time," based largely upon his interview with Mr. Muhammad.
At the same time, white political leaders such as Senator Al Gore Sr., began to denounce the Nation of Islam and hold hearings on alleged "un-American" activities. Minister Louis Farrakhan and the ministers of Islam defended the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam against these attacks in mass media in their public speeches, written editorials and other public relations thrusts.

Meanwhile, by 1964, Minister Malcolm X decided to separate from the Nation of Islam and formed his own religious and political organization. His very public defection from the Nation of Islam was based on his misinterpretation of the domestic life of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.
Nevertheless, the atmosphere of rancor on both sides made ripe the environment for the secret police to meddle in the affairs of the Nation of Islam, according the late attorney, William Kuntsler. Mr. Kuntsler cited a declassified memo obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that revealed that the U.S. Government played a role in the 1965 assassination of Brother Malcolm X.
After the assassination of Brother Malcolm X, the New York mosque was fire bombed and the Muslim community was reeling. Mr. Muhammad then dispatched Minister Louis Farrakhan to New York City to take over the mosque there and begin the rebuilding effort. In 1965, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad promoted Minister Louis Farrakhan to the post of National Representative.

By the mid-sixties, Mr. Muhammad's ever-growing Islamic movement extended itself to more than 60 cities and settlements abroad in Ghana, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America among others places, according to the Muhammad Speaks newspaper, the religion's chief information apparatus.
A host of Islamic and African governments all over the world received him and donated generously to his mission. He made Hajj, (holy pilgrimage) to Mecca on more than one occasion and advocated worldwide brotherhood and sisterhood.
Every February 26, he brought together the faithful for Saviour's Day conventions in Chicago to remember his Teacher's birthday, to re-emphasize his message of moral and spiritual renewal and to announce his plans and agenda for the upcoming year. Economic development combined with moral and spiritual renewal began to show signs of progress with the establishment of farms, livestock and vegetable cultivation, rental housing, private home construction and acquisitions, other real estate purchases, food processing centers, restaurants, clothing factories, banking, business league formations, import and export businesses, aviation, health care, administrative offices, shipping on both land, sea and air, and men's and women's development and leadership training units. In 1972, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad opened a $2 million mosque and school in Chicago. During this important grand opening of Mosque No. 2, he praised and let it be known who his top helper was in his work.

He asked Min. Farrakhan to come before the religious community and then the following announcement while digressing from his previously stated remarks: "I want you remember, today, I have one of my greatest preachers here-what are you hiding behind the sycamore tree for brother? (He chuckled)-c'mon around here where they can see you. (A rousing round of applause ensued).
"We have with us today," the Messenger continued, "our great national preacher. The preacher who don't mind going into Harlem, New York, one of the most worst towns in our nation or cities. It is our brother in Detroit and Chicago or New York. But, I want you to remember every week he's on the air helping me to reach those people that I can't get out of my house and go reach them like he.
"I want you to pay good attention to his preaching. His preaching is a bearing of witness to me and what God has given to me," he declared. "This is one of the strongest national preachers that I have in the bounds of North America. Everywhere you hear him, listen to him. Everywhere you see him, look at him. Everywhere he advises you to go, go. Everywhere he advises you to stay from, stay from. For we are thankful to Allah for this great helper of mine, Min. Farrakhan." (Another rousing round of applause ensued). "He's not a proud man," he said. "He's a very humble man. If he can carry you across the lake without dropping you in; he don't say when you get on the other side, 'You see what I have done?' He tells you, 'You see what Allah has done.' He doesn't take it upon himself. He's a mighty fine preacher. We hear him every week, and I say continue to hear our Min. Farrakhan. I thank you."
In watching Minister Louis Farrakhan and the followers of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, the legacy of the Nation of Islam continues to make unlimited progress as witnessed in the miracle of the Two Million Man March among other truly amazing accomplishments.

Geronimo
Goyathlay ("one who yawns")

Geronimo {jur-ahn'-i-moh}, or Goyathlay ("one who yawns"), was born in 1829 in what is today western New Mexico, but was then still Mexican territory. He was a Bedonkohe Apache (grandson of Mahko) by birth and a Net'na during his youth and early manhood. His wife, Juh, Geronimo's cousin Ishton, and Asa Daklugie were members of the Nednhi band of the Chiricahua Apache.

He was reportedly given the name Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, although few agree as to why. As leader of the Apaches at Arispe in Sonora, he performed such daring feats that the Mexicans singled him out with the sobriquet Geronimo (Spanish for "Jerome"). Some attributed his numerous raiding successes to powers conferred by supernatural beings, including a reputed invulnerability to bullets.
Geronimo's war career was linked with that of his brother-in-law, Juh, a Chiricahua chief. Although he was not a hereditary leader, Geronimo appeared so to outsiders because he often acted as spokesman for Juh, who had a speech impediment.

Geronimo was the leader of the last American Indian fighting force formally to capitulate to the United States. Because he fought against such daunting odds and held out the longest, he became the most famous Apache of all. To the pioneers and settlers of Arizona and New Mexico, he was a bloody-handed murderer and this image endured until the second half of this century.

To the Apaches, Geronimo embodied the very essence of the Apache values, aggressiveness, and courage in the face of difficulty. These qualities inspired fear in the settlers of Arizona and New Mexico. The Chiricahuas were mostly migratory following the seasons, hunting and farming. When food was scarce, it was the custom to raid neighboring tribes. Raids and vengeance were an honorable way of life among the tribes of this region.

By the time American settlers began arriving in the area, the Spanish had become entrenched in the area. They were always looking for Indian slaves and Christian converts. One of the most pivotal moments in Geronimo's life was in 1858 when he returned home from a trading excursion into Mexico. He found his wife, his mother and his three young children murdered by Spanish troops from Mexico. This reportedly caused him to have such a hatred of the whites that he vowed to kill as many as he could. From that day on he took every opportunity he could to terrorize Mexican settlements and soon after this incident he received his power, which came to him in visions. Geronimo was never a chief, but a medicine man, a seer and a spiritual and intellectual leader both in and out of battle. The Apache chiefs depended on his wisdom.

When the Chiricahua were forcibly removed (1876) to arid land at San Carlos, in eastern Arizona, Geronimo fled with a band of followers into Mexico. He was soon arrested and returned to the new reservation. For the remainder of the 1870s, he and Juh led a quiet life on the reservation, but with the slaying of an Apache prophet in 1881, they returned to full-time activities from a secret camp in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

In 1875 all Apaches west of the Rio Grande were ordered to the San Carlos Reservation. Geronimo escaped from the reservation three times and although he surrendered, he always managed to avoid capture. In 1876, the U.S. Army tried to move the Chiricahuas onto a reservation, but Geronimo fled to Mexico eluding the troops for over a decade. Sensationalized press reports exaggerated Geronimo's activities, making him the most feared and infamous Apache. The last few months of the campaign required over 5,000 soldiers, one-quarter of the entire Army, and 500 scouts, and perhaps up to 3,000 Mexican soldiers to track down Geronimo and his band.

In May 1882, Apache scouts working for the U.S. army surprised Geronimo in his mountain sanctuary, and he agreed to return with his people to the reservation. After a year of farming, the sudden arrest and imprisonment of the Apache warrior Ka-ya-ten-nae, together with rumors of impending trials and hangings, prompted Geronimo to flee on May 17, 1885, with 35 warriors and 109 women, children and youths. In January 1886, Apache scouts penetrated Juh's seemingly impregnable hideout. This action induced Geronimo to surrender (Mar. 25, 1886) to Gen. George CROOK. Geronimo later fled but finally surrendered to Gen. Nelson MILES on Sept. 4, 1886. The government breached its agreement and transported Geronimo and nearly 450 Apache men, women, and children to Florida for confinement in Forts Marion and Pickens. In 1894 they were removed to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Geronimo became a rancher, appeared (1904) at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, sold Geronimo souvenirs, and rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade.

Geronimo's final surrender in 1886 was the last significant Indian guerrilla action in the United States. At the end, his group consisted of only 16 warriors, 12 women, and 6 children. Upon their surrender, Geronimo and over 300 of his fellow Chiricahuas were shipped to Fort Marion, Florida. One year later many of them were relocated to the Mt. Vernon barracks in Alabama, where about one quarter died from tuberculosis and other diseases. Geronimo died on Feb. 17, 1909, a prisoner of war, unable to return to his homeland.

Haile Selassie

Haile Selassie was born Tafari Makonnen in Ethiopia in 1892. He married Wayzaro Menen in 1911, daughter of Emperor Menelik II. By becoming prince (Ras), Tafari became the focus of the Christian majority's approval over Menelik's grandson, Lij Yasu, because of his progressive nature and the latter's unreliable politics. He was named regent and heir to the throne in 1917, but had to wait until the death of the Empress Zaubitu to assume full kingship. During the years of 1917-1928, Tafari traveled to such cities as Rome, Paris, and London to become the first Ethiopian ruler to ever go abroad. In November of 1930, Zaubitu died and Tafari was crowned emperor, the 111th emperor in the succession of King Solomon. Upon this occasion he took the name Haile Selassie, meaning "Might of the Trinity." This paper will focus on Selassie's progressive politics and attempts to modernize Ethiopia through technological advances and membership in the world community. Relevant to these topics is Ethiopia's struggle with Italy in World War II, Selassie's embracing of the League of Nations, and his popularity and attention worldwide because of his efforts towards humanitarianism and Ethiopian sovereignty.

Ethiopia was a culturally and resourcefully rich land recognized by the European colonial powers as sovereign from as early as 1900. Selassie's predecessor expanded his empire successfully in the 1880's and formed treaties with the Italians, who recognized the imperial potential of northern Africa. Relations became strained, however, in the 1890's when Britain and Italy agreed that Ethiopia should fall under Italian influence. Despite occasional conflicts, Ethiopia under Menelik remained sovereign, and thus we see a stage set for the leadership of Selassie: a free Ethiopia with Italian, British, and French colonies nearby, and an Italian will to expand its territorial claims when its power and opportunity arise.

Well before Selassie's crowning as negus (king), he began work modernizing Ethiopia to rival that which he saw in Europe during his time abroad. He took steps to improve legislation, bureaucracy, government schooling, and health and social services in preparation for his new reign. More importantly in a diplomatic focus, Selassie acted to promote Ethiopian power and sovereignty and secure allies abroad. In 1919 Ethiopia applied for membership into the League of Nations but was banned because its practice of slavery was still strong. By 1923, working with the Empress Zauditu, the slave trade was abolished and Ethiopia was unanimously accepted into the League. He further acted to seek approval of other nations by emancipating existing slaves and their children and created government bureaus to do so. Also prior to his taking of power, Selassie promoted a twenty year treaty of friendship with Italy in 1928 and established legislation in 1930 to ban illegal sales of arms in Ethiopia, and to establish the government's right to procure arms for protection and internal unrest.

In 1931, upon assuming power, Selassie established the first Ethiopian constitution, which aimed to re-focus governmental power from many races to his blood line solely. This move was effective in aiding Ethiopia's modernization through bureaucracy and solidarity, and forced the many regional races to either oppose him treasonably or join him with their support. (Marcus, 98-100) By 1934, after several suppressed revolts, all the major races were either supporters or outside the empires influence in the outer regions of Ethiopia. Much of Selassie's loyalty was fostered by the building of schools, universities, and newspapers, as well as increased availability of electricity, telephone, and public health services. The Bank of Ethiopia was also founded in 1931 and introduced Ethiopian currency.

Though the changes in Ethiopia sponsored by Selassie and his new progressive government seemed very promising, there lingered a new threat to the growing country when Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922. The North African colony of Eritrea, held by the Italians, was harmonious in its African/Italian co-existence from the 1890's until 1922, when Mussolini's administration began to emphasize the superiority of Italian inhabitants, and even enforced the segregation of the population. As late as 1928, motions of peace were made by Italy, but it seemed as though Mussolini wanted Eritrea only as a strategic base for future conquest in Africa. (Marcus, 108) In December 1934, there was an incident seemingly provoked by Italian forces which involved an Ethiopian escort to the Welwel wells used by desert nomads. The League of Nations exonerated both parties in the battle in September 1935, and it seemed to Mussolini that he would not be condemned for his future hostilities. (Marcus, 148-49) Italy invaded Ethiopia one month later without declaring war; the League of Nations condemned Italy as the aggressor, but no actions were taken. The fighting persisted for seven months, and Ethiopia was pushed back quite forcefully. Selassie found his forces unmatched militarily and was shocked at the use of chemical weapons by Italy, and the lack of action taken by the League of Nations. He was forced to exile on May 2 of 1936, a move which raised harsh criticism from many who were used to a warrior emperor of Ethiopia. On June 30, Haile Selassie went to Geneva to seek help from the League of Nations. He made a powerful speech in which he addressed the lack of enforcement of the Italian arms embargo, and quite effectively illustrated the consequences of the League's stifled actions: either there would exist collective security or international lawlessness. (Selassie, Internet) His speech was taken quite emotionally by audiences around the world, especially in America, where he achieved much sympathy. Selassie succeeded in raising the support of the United States and Russia, at least verbally, but Britain and France still recognized the Italian possession of Ethiopia by Italy.

While Selassie was in exile, the Italian forces established new government and attempted to crush the continuing revolts by massacres and segregation. In Britain for most of his exile, he attempted to raise public support for the plight of his country, but gained little attention until Italy entered the war on the side of Germany in June 1940. After the entrance, Britain and Selassie worked together to rally the remaining revolutionary forces in Ethiopia. He proceeded to Khartoum in 1940 to be in closer contact with his troops and British coordinators. With an army of British, South African, African, and Ethiopian soldiers, Haile Selassie re-entered Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, but fighting continued on Ethiopian soil until January 1942. During the years of war, Selassie controlled internal affairs, but with required British approval. Upon his return he, without consulting Britain, appointed a seven member cabinet and a governor of Addis Ababa. The British aided Ethiopia in training a new army with advisers, which helped him substitute experienced administrators in place of traditional nobility, but he rejected British help whenever the reforms threatened his own personal control over his country. His stubbornness and foresight to retaining power showed Selassie to be a determined dictator, but certainly not without Ethiopia's benefit in mind. The modernization's made by Britain concerning currency, industrialization, and bureaucracy made Selassie see the major importance in modernizing in order to survive. He attempted to secure Eritrea as Ethiopian, but the decades of Italian influence imparted an independent sense on the part of the Eritreans, and the British denied his wishes.

When Selassie returned to power, he realized the necessity of a dependable tax base and issued a flat tax based on the richness of the land. Unfortunately, the nobles of several provinces battled the tax and the path was lain for opposition to the newly re-established government. Selassie backed down from his new tax brackets and issued a flat tithe to all noble landowners who resisted, but this merely passed the tax on to the tenants of the regions, who carried the entire burden of taxation. Another huge reform made by Selassie was the 1948 change in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He removed the responsibility of appointment of the Church's patriarch from Alexandria to himself, a move which revolutionized the sixteen century old tradition.

After World War II, Selassie saw himself as a humble, but emerging, world leader. (Prouty, 93) Ethiopia was a founding member of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity. Haile Selassie, after his aid from Britain wound down in 1953, sought and developed an aid-based relationship with the United States, and later sought and received aid from such diversified nations as Italy, China, West Germany, Taiwan, Yugoslavia, Sweden, and the Soviet Union.

Within his country, Selassie favored political realism, and attempted to make peace with the many Ethiopian factions- ethnic, religious, and economic- through appeasement and compromise. Despite his growing international stature, however, his internal influence lacked major support which would, in the future, lead to problems in his stability as a ruler. The emperor attempted to further strengthen the national government by placing newly educated ministers with more specific powers, establishing a central judiciary and self-appointing its judges. He also proclaimed a new national constitution in 1955. The constitution was enforced by a new, younger, foreign-educated staff, who sympathized with Selassie’s reforms and was intellectually supportive of his claims. It was also heavily influenced by Selassie's concern for international image, as many African countries were thriving under colonial support and Ethiopia was still laying its claim to Eritrea. (Prouty, 93) The new constitution emphasized Selassie's religious right to power, and while it promised several inherently American rights (freedom of speech, assembly, and due process), the Ethiopian population lacked the literacy and independence from local nobility to really appreciate its declarations.

Selassie's major changes in form of the Ethiopian government promised huge reforms, and when these were realized to be slowly obtained, a coup d'état occurred in Addis Ababa in December 1960, while Selassie was abroad on one of his frequent diplomatic missions. (Prouty, 40) While initially successful, the coup led by the Imperial Bodyguard, police chief, and intellectual radicals lacked the public support necessary, and fell upon the return of the emperor and his assertion of the loyalty of the army and air force, as well as the church. The coup's failure did, however lead to the polarization of the traditional and progressive factions, and the public awareness of the need to improve the economic, social, and political position of the population.

After the coup, Selassie tried to calm his opponents mostly through land grants to officials, but with little social or political reform. In 1966, a plan to reform the tax system with intent to destroy the landowners grasp on the economy was drafted, but opposed vigorously by the parliament, who were all landowners. The years prior to 1974 were filled with rising inflation, corruption, and famine, as well as growing discontent by many of the organized urban groups and unions. Selassie had organized his military so that each branch opposed each other in class, benefits, or treatment in order to keep one from becoming so powerful as to threaten his power. It was perceived that the droughts and famines within the army and the public were intentional, and that civil freedoms were increasingly disappearing. Mutiny in the army branch of the military began on January 12, 1974, and was followed by several provincial takeovers in February. In early June, a group of about 120 military officers formed a group known as the Derg (committee) who represented the military and worked behind closed doors to gain power militarily. Although they claimed allegiance to the emperor, they began arresting aristocracy and parliament members who were associated with the old order. This group effectively removed Selassie's means of governing, as they had complete military control. In July 1974, the Derg demanded a new constitution; when it was found to be unsatisfactory to their "Ethiopia First" ideology, they proceeded to undermine the emperor's authority, and enjoyed much public support. (Tareke, 204-13) The emperor's estate and palace were nationalized and in August, Selassie was directly accused of covering up famine of the early 1970's which killed hundreds of thousands of people. On September 12th, he was formally deposed and arrested and power was given to the Derg, formally renamed the Provisional Military Administrative Council. In August 1975, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie died under questionable circumstances under house arrest, and was secretly buried. (Prouty, 93) His early legacy of Ethiopian pride and sovereignty, had transformed itself to a major struggle of the old versus the new orders. The old order was effectively destroyed by 1977, and the Derg began its new agenda of socialism in the Ethiopian government.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Ross was born in Dorchester County, Maryland in 1820. Her parents were from the Ashanti tribe of West Africa, and they worked as slaves on the Brodas plantation. In addition to producing lumber, Edward Brodas raised slaves to rent and sell. Life was difficult on the plantation, and Harriet was hired out as a laborer by the age of 5.

Harriet did not like to work indoors, and she was routinely beaten by her masters. By her early teens, Harriet was no longer allowed to work indoors and was hired out as a field hand. She was a hard worker but considered defiant and rebellious. When she was 15 years old, Harriet tried to help a runaway slave. The overseer hit her in the head with a lead weight, which put Harriet in a coma. It took months for her to recover, and for the rest of her life, Harriet suffered from blackouts.

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. Harriet remained a slave, but she was able to stay in Tubman's cabin at night. Although she was married, Harriet lived in fear of being shipped to the Deep South, a virtual death sentence for any slave. In 1849, her fears were realized when the owner of the Brodas plantation died and many of the slaves were scheduled to be sold. After hearing of her fate, Harriet planned to escape that very night. She knew her husband would expose her, so the only person she informed was her sister.

Harriet made the 90 mile trip to the Mason-Dixon line with the help of contacts along the Underground Railroad. She had to hike through swamps and woodland. Harriet's trip was successful, and she settled in Philadelphia. She worked as a dishwasher and made plans to rescue her family. The next year, Harriet traveled back to Maryland and rescued her sister's family. She then returned to transport her brothers to the North. She went back for her husband, but he had remarried and did not want to follow her. In 1857, Harriet finally returned for her parents and settled them in Auburn, New York.

By this time, Harriet was becoming quite well known and huge rewards were offered for her capture. Harriet was the master of disguise A former master did not even recognize her when they ran into each other on the street. She was nicknamed the "Moses of her people" for leading them to freedom. In all, Harriet made 19 trips on the Underground Railroad and freed more than 300 slaves.

With the arrival of the Civil War, Harriet became a spy for the Union army. She later worked in Washington DC as a government nurse. Although Harriet won admiration from the military, she did not receive a government pension for more than 30 years. At the end of the war, Harriet returned to her parents in Auburn. She was extremely poor and the profits of a book by Sarah Bradford entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, published in 1869 were a financial great help.

In 1870, Harriet married Nelson Davis, who she had met at a South Carolina army base. They were happily married for 18 years until Davis' death. In 1896, Harriet purchased land to build a home for sick and needy blacks. However, she was unable to raise enough money to build the house and ultimately gave the land to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The church completed the home in 1908, and Harriet moved there several years later. She spent her last years in the home telling stories of her life to visitors. On March 10, 1913, Harriet died of pneumonia. She was 93 years old.

Harriet Tubman was not afraid to fight for the rights of African-Americans. Her story is one of dedication and inspiration. During her lifetime Harriet was honored by many people. In 1897, her bravery even inspired Queen Victoria to award her a silver medal.

Hatshepsut

Queen Hatshepsut ruled in the eighteenth dynasty. It was a time when female pharaohs were scarce. She was a female pharaoh to rule Egypt and would not be the last. She ruled in a time when women were allowed to own property and to hold official positions. They were given rights to inherit from deceased family members and were allowed to present their cases in court. Women of Ancinet Egypt had more freedom then other ancient cultures such as Greece - women were expected to stay home.

Hatshepsut’s parents were Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose. After the death of her father, her stepbrother Thutmose II succeeded the throne. As it was customary in royal families, the oldest daughter of the pharaoh would marry her brother. His reign would be short and his life short-lived. After his decease, Thutmose III became pharaoh and was very young when his father died. For a short time Hatshepsut ruled with her nephew until she took maters into her own hand and proclaimed herself pharaoh of Egypt.

Hatshepsut was very unique and intelligent. She had to use various strategies to legalize her position as pharaoh. To become a pharaoh, the child needed to be able to speak to the gods. Hatshepsut solved the problem by misleading her subjects and the uneducated public. In her temple in Beir el-Bahri, in the Valley of the Kings, Amon-Ra had visited her mother while she was pregnant. In turn, this untruthful story made the child godly and the position of pharaoh attainable. Hatshepsut was unique because she adopted several male characteristics. Unlike most women of that time, she attached a false beard, wore male clothing, and was depicted as a pharaoh. She might have done this to make her transition to kingship easy and the acceptance of the priesthood. Her strategy seemed to work and the priests supported her reign as pharaoh.

The temple of Beir el-Bahri was constructed by Thutmose II and later finished by Hatshepsut. The walls of the temple depict major achievements such as the expedition to Punt near the Red Sea. This trading expedition brought back many riches.

The death of Hatshepsut remains a mystery. She reigned for fifteen years and her nephew took the throne after her disappearance. It’s believed his hatred for his aunt pushed him to erase the memory and existence of her by destroying the monuments erected by Hatshepsut. Although her temple still stands, neither her tomb nor her mummy has ever been found. She would be the only female pharaoh to erect the most monuments.
 

Huey P. Newton

Huey P. Newton (1942-1989) founded the Afro-American Society and was a co-founder of the Black Panther Party, serving as its minister of defense during much of the 1960s. Later he turned to community service for the poor.

Huey P. Newton was born February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. The youngest of seven children, Huey was named for former Louisiana governor Huey Pierce Long. The Newton family moved to Oakland, California, in 1945 to take advantage of the job opportunities created by World War II wartime industries. In Oakland the family moved often, and in one house Huey was compelled to sleep in the kitchen. Even though the Newton’s were poor and victims of discrimination and segregation, Huey contends that he never felt deprived as a child and that he never went hungry.

Huey attended the Oakland public schools where, he claimed, he was made to feel "uncomfortable and ashamed of being black." He responded by constantly and consistently defying authority, which resulted in frequent suspensions. At the age of 14, he was arrested for gun possession and vandalism. In his autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, Newton wrote, "during those long years in the Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process they nearly killed my urge to inquire."

According to Newton, he did not learn to read well until he had finished high school. "I actually learned to read--really read more than just 'dog' and 'cat,' which was about all I could do when I left high school--by listening to records of Vincent Price reading great poetry, and then looking up the poems to see how the words looked." In order to prove that high school counselors were wrong in saying he was not college material, Newton attended Merritt College intermittently, eventually earning an Associate of Arts degree. He also studied law at Oakland City College and at San Francisco Law School.

Newton claimed he studied law to become a better burglar. He was arrested several times for minor offenses while still a teenager and he supported himself in college by burglarizing homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills area and running the "short change" game. In 1964, at age 22, he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to six months in the Alameda County jail. Newton spent most of this sentence in solitary confinement, including the "soul breaker"--extreme solitary confinement.

While at Oakland City College, Newton had become politically oriented and socially conscious. He joined the Afro-American Association and played a role in getting the first black history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. He read the works of Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and Che Guevara. A child of the ghetto and a victim of discrimination and the "system," Newton was very much aware of the plight of Oakland's African-American community. Realizing that there were few organizations to speak for or represent lower class African-Americans, Newton along with Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966, with Seale as chairman and Newton as minister of defense. Like a wary panther that would not attack unless attacked, so too was the organization regarded.

Cop-haters since childhood, Newton and Seale decided the police must be stopped from harassing Oakland's African-Americans; in other words, to "defend the community against the aggression of the power structure, including the military and the armed might of the police." Newton was familiar with the California penal code and the state's law regarding weapons and was thus able to convince a number of African-Americans of their right to bear arms. Members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense began patrolling the Oakland police. Guns were the essential ingredients on these patrols. Newton and other Black Panther members observed police procedure, ensured that African-American citizens were not abused, advised African-Americans of their rights, and posted bail for those arrested. In addition to patrolling the police, Newton and Seale were responsible for writing the Black Panther Party Platform and Program, which called for freedom, full employment, decent housing, education, and military exemption for African-Americans. But there was a darker side to the group, described in Former Panther Earl Anthony's book, Spitting in the Windas a party created with the goal to organize America for armed revolution. Moreover, Washington, D.C., intelligence spent many years trying to bring down what they believed to be "the most violence-prone of all the extremist groups."

Huey Newton proved to be as violent as the party he helped to create when he was thrust into the national limelight in October 1967; accused of murdering Oakland police officer John Frey. In September 1968 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. In May 1970 the California Appellate Court reversed Newton's conviction and ordered a new trial. After two more trials the State of California dropped its case against Newton, citing technicalities including the judge's failure to relay proper instructions to the jury.

After his release from prison Newton overhauled the Black Panther Party, revised its program, and changed its rhetoric. While he had been imprisoned, party membership had decreased significantly in several cities, and the FBI had started a campaign to disrupt and eventually bring down the Black Panthers. Abandoning its Marxist-Leninist ideology, Newton now concentrated on community survival programs. The Black Panthers sponsored a free breakfast program for children, sickle-cell anemia tests, free food and shoes, and a school, the Samuel Napier Intercommunal Youth Institute. However, as before, the Black Panthers were not without controversy. Funding for several of their programs were raised as the result of the co-operation of drug dealers and prostitution rings.

Newton tried to shed his image as a fire breathing revolutionary, but he continued to have difficulty with the police. In 1974 several assault charges were filed against him, and he was also accused of murdering a 17-year-old prostitute, Kathleen Smith. Newton failed to make his court appearance. His bail was revoked, a bench warrant issued, and his name added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most wanted list. Newton had jumped bail and escaped to Cuba, where he spent three years in exile. In Cuba he worked as a machinist and teacher. He returned home in 1977 to face murder charges because, he said, the climate in the United States had changed and he believed he could get a fair trial. He was acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith after two juries were deadlocked.

In addition to organizing the Black Panther Party and serving as its minister of defense, Newton unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. In 1971, between his second and third trials for the murder of John Frey, he visited China for ten days, where he met with Premier Chou En-Lai and Chiang Ch'ing, the wife of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. While there he was offered political asylum. Newton studied for a Ph.D. in the history of social consciousness at the University of California in 1978. In 1985 the 43-year-old Newton was arrested for embezzling state and federal funds from the Black Panthers' community education and nutrition programs. In 1989 he was convicted of embezzling funds from a school run by the Black Panthers, supposedly to support his alcohol and drug addictions. By this time the Panthers had turned to less violent activism. On August 22, 1989, Newton was gunned down by a drug dealer, ironically in the same city streets of Oakland that saw the rise of the Black Panthers 23 years ago. Bill Turque in Newsweek described a sad but appropriate farewell: "A small florist's card, resting with bouquets of red gladiolus's and white dahlias on a chain-link fence near the shooting scene, summed it up: 'Huey: for the early years.'"

Jack Johnson (1878-1946)

American boxer who became the first African American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson’s athletic success created racial tensions in the early 20th century, when many parts of the United States had laws that upheld racial segregation (the separation of people on the basis of their race).
John Arthur Johnson was born in Galveston, Texas
He left school after the fifth grade and worked in a succession of low-paying jobs. Johnson became interested in boxing while working as a janitor at a gymnasium. He quickly established himself as a leading black boxer in Galveston, and he turned professional in 1897. Over the next few years Johnson gained a reputation as a quick and powerful fighter.

By 1903 Johnson was recognized as the country’s best black heavyweight boxer, but he was unable to arrange fights against the top white heavyweights in the United States, John L. Sullivan and Jim Jeffries. They claimed that if they fought Johnson, they would sully boxing’s reputation. Johnson became known internationally, however, and in 1908 he traveled to Sydney, Australia, to fight Canadian boxer Tommy Burns, who held the world title. Johnson won the match and became the world heavyweight champion. Over the next two years, Johnson defended his title five times.

In 1910 former champion Jim Jeffries, spurred on by fans who wanted a white champion, came out of retirement to fight Johnson. Jeffries was billed as “The Great White Hope.” The two fighters squared off on July 4 in Reno, Nevada, and Johnson won the bout by knocking out Jeffries in the 15th round.
Johnson’s reign as the world champion created racial tensions, because some whites resented his success. Racial tensions also developed over his marriages to two white women: Etta Terry Duryea, who committed suicide in 1912, and Lucille Cameron. In 1913 Johnson was tried for violating the Mann Act of 1910, which forbade transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. The act had been passed to help fight prostitution, and Johnson was tried because he had at one point given travel money to a girlfriend who had worked as a prostitute. She used the money to travel across state lines. The case against Johnson was weak, but he was nonetheless convicted. Johnson moved to France to avoid serving time in prison.

In 1915 in Havana, Cuba, Johnson lost his heavyweight title to American boxer Jess Willard after being knocked out in the 26th round. Johnson returned to the United States in 1920 and served a year in prison for his earlier conviction. He and Cameron divorced in 1924, and he married Irene Pineau, another white woman. After retiring from competitive boxing, Johnson worked as a businessman, wrote, and appeared in boxing exhibitions. His life was the subject of The Great White Hope (1968), a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by American playwright Howard Sackler. The play was adapted as the movie The Great White Hope (1970), starring American actor James Earl Jones. In 1990, long after his death, Johnson was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)

American athlete who became a civil rights icon when he broke major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Born in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers, Jack Roosevelt Robinson attended Pasadena Junior College (now Pasadena City College) in California and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He demonstrated exceptional athletic ability and became the first UCLA student athlete to win varsity letters in four sports—football, basketball, baseball, and track.
In 1941 Robinson left college to join the United States Army.

. After graduating from Officers Candidate School, Robinson became a second lieutenant in what was then a segregated army. Troubled by the mistreatment of black soldiers in his unit, Robinson protested the U.S. Army’s discriminatory practices. Military police at Fort Hood, Texas, arrested Robinson when he refused the driver’s order to move to the back of a bus. A court-martial acquitted Robinson and he received an honorable discharge in 1944 with the rank of first lieutenant.
Robinson began his professional baseball career in 1945 with the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the leading teams of the Negro Leagues. Later that year, Robinson was recruited and signed by Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers). Robinson spent the 1946 season playing for the Montreal Royals of the International League—a minor league affiliate of the Dodgers. After one season with the Royals, Robinson was called up to the Brooklyn team, becoming the first black player to compete in the major leagues in the 20th century. He made his debut in a Brooklyn uniform on April 15, 1947, starting at first base.

Breaking baseball’s color barrier was a serious challenge, and Robinson met fierce resistance from many players and fans. Warned by Branch Rickey not to retaliate or acknowledge taunts, Robinson endured malicious catcalls and racial slurs shouted from the stands. He also received unsigned notes threatening death if he continued to play baseball. Some rival players went beyond verbal abuse in an effort to intimidate Robinson. They threw pitches at Robinson’s head, spat on him when he slid into a base, and attempted to injure him with the spikes on their shoes. With the support of Branch Rickey and the encouragement of teammates, the determined Robinson survived these attacks and helped the Dodgers win the National League (NL) pennant in 1947. During the season Robinson led the NL with 29 stolen bases and was named rookie of the year in the major leagues.

Graceful fielding, timely hitting, and aggressive base running typified Robinson’s electric style of play. Over ten major league seasons he executed one of baseball’s rarest and most exciting plays—stealing home—not once but 19 times. In 1949 Robinson was voted the NL’s most valuable player (MVP) after he hit for a .342 batting average with 37 steals and 124 runs batted in. His skill and flair increased Dodger attendance and helped make the club one of the most competitive teams in baseball. Brooklyn played in six World Series during Robinson’s ten seasons, and in 1955 the team finally won its first World Series title. Robinson’s success with the Dodgers also opened the way for other black players to sign major league contracts. Not until 1959, however, did all 16 major league clubs have at least one black ballplayer on their roster.

Robinson retired from professional baseball after the 1956 season rather than face a trade to another club. He finished with a career batting average of .311. Robinson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, the first black player to receive the honor. Robinson wanted to become the first black man to manage a major league team, but no club offered him the opportunity.
After leaving baseball, Robinson became vice president of a restaurant chain in New York City. He also promoted black business enterprises in New York’s Harlem neighborhood and became a leading advocate for black civil rights. From 1964 to 1968 he served as special assistant for civil rights to Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York. Robinson starred in the motion picture The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and was the author, with Alfred Duckett, of I Never Had It Made (1972). Robinson died October 24, 1972, in Stamford, Connecticut. The epitaph that appears on Robinson’s gravestone is one that he wrote for himself. It reads: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat
1960-1988
Also Known As: SAMO

Born December 22, 1960, in Brooklyn, NY; died of a cocaine-heroin overdose August 12, 1988, in New York City; son of Gerard (an accountant) and Matilde Basquiat. Education: Attended City as School, Brooklyn, NY.

Began painting SAMO graffiti messages on walls around SoHo, 1977; sold painted sweatshirts and postcards and performed in the experimental band Gray, New York, 1977-80; paintings exhibited in first group show, "New York/New Wave," New York, 1981; first one-man show, Modena, Italy, 1981; first one-man show in the U.S., Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, 1982; became youngest artist ever included in prestigious international survey of contemporary art, "Documenta," Kassel, Germany, 1982; paintings included in Museum of Modern Art's re-opening exhibition, "International Survey of Painting and Sculpture," New York, 1984; Basquiat-Warhol collaborative show, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, 1985; first museum retrospective, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1992. Paintings and drawings exhibited in 37 galleries (group and one-man shows) throughout the U.S. (including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, St. Louis, Norfolk, and Boca Raton) and worldwide (including Paris, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, Zurich, Bologna, Montreal, and Seoul), 1981-88.

No single artist represented the contemporary art scene of the 1980s more than Jean-Michel Basquiat. He rose from an anonymous, homeless graffiti artist spraying cryptic social messages on building walls around New York City's SoHo and East Village in the late 1970s to become, within five years, one of the first African American artists to receive international recognition, with sales of his works grossing millions of dollars. Basquiat's was a life of improbable contradictions and myths. His frenetic and prodigious artistic output--he produced thousands of paintings and drawings over a seven-year span--was often arrested by periods of heroin-induced stupor. During his career, he threw lavish parties, treated crowds to dinners at expensive restaurants, and painted in suits by Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani. When he died from a cocaine-heroin overdose, he was alone and facedown on his bedroom floor on a hot August afternoon in 1988. He was 27.

Assessment of Basquiat's art is diverse and often as tumultuous as the works he created. His admirers claim he was a genius, an untutored primitive whose drug addition provided internal connections among various mental states necessary to his creations. Other views spiral downward from there; while some believe he was a gifted black artist overwhelmed by the pressures of a greedy white art establishment, others feel he was a talented artist who knew and desired too well the price of fame. Finally, his detractors assert that he represented everything that was wrong with the art explosion of the 1980s: a little raw, malnourished talent that was exploited, hyped, and ultimately heated beyond any recognizable value. "His work," Roberta Smith nonetheless wrote in the New York Times, "is one of the singular achievements of the '80s."

Much of the growing legend surrounding Basquiat was self-generated. That he was raised on the streets of the ghetto, ignorant of art and its history, is false; his was an ordinary middle-class upbringing. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960. His father was an accountant and would bring home scrap paper for his four-year-old son to paint and draw on. Since that age, Basquiat wanted to do nothing else. "He was like no other kid," the elder Basquiat explained to Phoebe Hoban in New York. "He was always so bright, absolutely an unbelievable mind, a genius.... He wanted to paint and draw all night." The young Basquiat's artistic inclinations were further spurred on by his mother, who took him to various museums around Brooklyn and Manhattan, his growing artistic sensibilities informed by the works of Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Jean Dubuffet, and other modernist masters.

Another early influence was not a painter but a book-- Gray's Anatomy. When he was six, Basquiat was hit by a car; his spleen had to be removed. While recovering, he was given a copy of the medical textbook by his mother. The diagrams, labels, and skeletal structures--the integration of pictures and words--that would come to characterize his art found their genesis here.

Although his surroundings were ordinary, Basquiat was not. "A kid that bright thinks for some reason he is above the school system and teachers and rebels against it," his father told Hoban. Basquiat attended both private and public schools but could not be disciplined. He had already formed his own vision. At 15, he ran away from home, shaved his head, and retreated to Washington Square Park. When his father found him a few days later, as the elder Basquiat related to Hoban, he said, "Papa, I will be very, very famous one day."
While at the progressive City as School in Brooklyn, Basquiat's last attempt at structured schooling, he entertained thoughts of becoming a cartoonist and illustrated the school paper. "His drawings, executed in a bright Peter Max style," Andrew Decker observed in ARTnews, "sympathetically depicted the homeless and sarcastically mocked bourgeois values." They were portentous.

Just before he left school and his home at 17, Basquiat and fellow classmate Al Diaz began spray painting graffiti on walls and bridges around lower Manhattan. Unlike ordinary graffiti, either brightly colored murals or vacuous expletives, theirs was a mixture of strange symbols and social commentary, often poetic. Signed with the name "SAMO," representing both a corporate logo and the phrase "same old shit," the messages "were far more cerebral and literate than the merely vibrant work of some of the pure graffitists," Decker noted. Phrases like SAMO AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO GOD and PAY FOR SOUP, BUILD A FORT, SET IT ON FIRE soon captured attention.

What Basquiat desired, however, was a certain type of attention from a certain type of people. SAMO messages soon appeared on walls near important art galleries and nightclubs. Although anonymous, the young artist sought recognition. Sleeping in Washington Square Park or on the floors of friends' apartments, Basquiat made money by selling handmade postcards and hand-painted sweatshirts on street corners. He also helped form a "noise" band called Gray, in which he played guitar with a file. "I was inspired by [modern American composer] John Cage at the time--music that really wasn't music," he explained to Cathleen McGuigan in the New York Times Magazine. "We were trying to be incomplete, abrasive, oddly beautiful."

What was even more purely abrasive and oddly beautiful were the images and words Basquiat was putting on anything he could find: refrigerators, table tops, lab coats, foam rubber, typewriters. He sold several of his postcards to the Museum of Modern Art, and his other works were displayed in clubs where his band played and at other popular late-night spots where influential people in the art community gathered. His work was getting noticed; he made sure of that. "He knew the most people on the scene," Gray band member Michael Holman recalled to Hoban. "He knew what was going on."

Sometime around 1980, the phrase "SAMO IS DEAD" began to appear around SoHo. Basquiat killed off his alter ego after a disagreement with Diaz. But it had served its evolutionary purpose. He turned increasingly to his art, encouraged by individuals such as curator, critic, and artist Diego Cortez, whom Basquiat had met in 1979. "He looked like a combination of a fashion model and a nineteen-year-old Bowery bum," Cortez related to Hoban, describing his first meeting with Basquiat. "I was convinced from the first that he was very talented."

Although a section of a SAMO wall had been displayed at the "Times Square Show" in 1980, garnering Basquiat critical notice, it was Cortez's alternative presentation "New York/New Wave" in January of 1981 that was Basquiat's launching pad. His exhibited works--"generally spare, childlike scrawls in crayon or paint on unprimed canvas," as Decker described--came to the attention of three important dealers: Bruno Bischofberger, a Swiss dealer who would represent Basquiat in Europe beginning in 1982; Emilio Mazzolli, a dealer from Modena, Italy, who would give Basquiat his first one-man show in Europe in the spring of 1981; and Annina Nosei, a SoHo dealer who would take Basquiat on as a gallery artist later that year.

Cloistered in the basement of Nosei's gallery, Basquiat turned out a vast amount of work. Nosei would often bring collectors to see his projects while he painted; she frequently sold them before he thought they were finished. But in this "hothouse" Basquiat's work evolved and flourished. His drawings and symbols, annotated with lists of words, were more detailed and colorful than his previous offerings. In a review of his one-man show at Nosei's gallery in 1982, Lisa Liebman wrote in Art in America , "What has propelled him so quickly is the unmistakable eloquence of his touch," adding that his "mock-ominous figures--ape men, skulls, predatory animals, stick-figures--look incorporeal because of the fleetness of their execution, and in their cryptic half-presence they seem to take on shaman-like characteristics."

Basquiat rose to prominence. After two years his works were selling for $2,000 to $10,000, and by the time the artist was 24, his efforts earned $10,000 to $25,000 from private collectors and graced museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art. In February of 1985 he made the cover of the New York Times Magazine. But the intensity of his artistic success was matched by that of his economic excess. Basquiat's lifestyle became extravagant. He spent thousands of dollars on designer suits, only to ruin them by painting in them. He staged elaborate parties and dinners. He gave away paintings and money to friends and to people he didn't even know. "He always clung to the notion of making a name for himself," William Wilson wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "He started out wanting to be a cartoonist and wound up wanting to be a Star. Fatal desire."

"Since I was 17," Basquiat explained to New York Times Magazine contributor McGuigan, "I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix.... I had a romantic feeling of how people had become famous." These romantic notions were often unrestrained and contradictory. In 1978 he told a Village Voice reporter, as related by New York' s Hoban, that New York was "crawling with uptight, middle-class pseudos trying to look like the money they don't have; status symbols.... It's like they're walking around with price tags stapled to their heads. People should live more spiritually." But within a few years Basquiat would himself spend tens of thousands of dollars on televisions, stereo equipment, recording systems, and suits. He would fill his refrigerator with expensive French pastries, only to let them spoil. He would spend $150 a day on health food.

And he was spending $2,000 a week on cocaine and heroin. "He had a real romantic myth of heroin and of being a junkie," Lee Jaffe, a musician and friend of Basquiat, told Hoban. "He saw himself as painting's Charlie Parker." Indeed, some critics detected similarities between the ill-fated jazz saxophone great and the young painter. "Jazz was more than pleasant, syncopated patterns to Basquiat ... it was an analogue of life," Kay Larson proposed in New York. "His style is one fierce don't-look-back pulsation of words, diagrams, screeching colors, and over-the-edge bravado, much like that of his hero Charlie Parker."

One who helped rein in Basquiat's excesses was Andy Warhol. Since his days of selling postcards on street corners, Basquiat had idolized and sought out the 1960s pop-art icon. The close relationship the two men developed beginning in 1983 was symbiotic; from Basquiat, Warhol drew energy and a link to the contemporary art scene. In return, Warhol gave his colleague business advice and a healthy-living spirit. He encouraged Basquiat to exercise and helped wean him from his heavy drug use. The two artists began to work together; but after a 1985 collaborative show that was critically panned and from which only one piece was sold, Basquiat cooled relations with Warhol. Many critics felt Basquiat's work suffered from Warhol's slick Factory influence. And the art community, which only a few years earlier had reveled in Basquiat's neo-expressionism, began to change its mind. At that time, Basquiat's "wasn't a raw, screeching line," dealer Guillaume Gallozzi told Decker. "If you came really close to it, you could see where it quivered. He was vamping himself, turning out works a la maniere de Jean-Michel Basquiat." He did not exhibit in New York again until 1987.

"It was, in every sense, a triumphant return," Decker noted. "The works--which returned with a vengeance to the densely written style, most influenced by graffiti, that Basquiat had been using less and less--had a heavily layered, hieroglyphic feeling to them, and there was modest use of color." But the resurgence would not last. Warhol's death in February of 1987 unleashed any remaining tethers on Basquiat's emotional lid. He became reclusive. He produced many works, but his heroin intake increased. He rebounded slightly in 1988 with three shows, two of them abroad. Reviews were mixed. That summer Basquiat traveled to Hawaii for a retreat. He returned to New York in August, planning on seeking a cure for his heroin addiction--but not before one final "binge."
In retrospect, some felt "he was too concerned about prices and money," Mary Boone, one of Basquiat's many dealers, explained to Hoban. "He was too conscious of his place in the world and who he had dinner with and everything that implies. He was too externalized; he didn't have a strong enough internal life." Art critic Robert Hughes, writing in Time, agreed: "Basquiat had talent--more than some of the younger painters who were his contemporaries, though this may not be saying much. The trouble was that it did not develop; it was frozen by celebrity, like a deer in a jacklight beam."

Others contend, however, that Basquiat--in spite of the hype and the pressures of the 1980s art world--was a force of and for his time. Like any artist of depth, he saw and responded with both anger and vitality. And in his career there was an "often astounding sense of growth and maturation," Smith concluded in the New York Times, "a freewheeling physical inventiveness, ... and an agile curious mind. Basquiat's rich tapestry of subject matter ranges through the history and culture of the world, of America and of black America, tying things together in fresh ways."

Jesse Jackson

Civil rights leader. Born Jesse Louis Jackson on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, a city beset with the problems of racial segregation. From birth, Jackson faced his own personal brand of discrimination. As a young girl his mother, Helen Burns, became pregnant by her married next-door neighbor, Noah Robinson. Her son, Jesse, was shunned and taunted by his neighbors and school classmates for being "a nobody who had no daddy." Instead of letting this adversity defeat him, Jackson developed his exceptional drive and empathy for the oppressed. His mother eventually married and became a successful hairdresser while his stepfather, a postal employee, adopted Jackson in 1957. With helpful advice from his maternal grandmother and his own desire to succeed, Jackson overcame his numerous childhood insecurities, finishing 10th in his high school class, even though he was actively involved in sports. His academic and athletic background earned Jackson a football scholarship at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Jackson, eager to get away from the Southern racial climate, traveled north only to find both open and covert discrimination at the university and in other parts of the city.

After several semesters Jackson decided to leave the University of Illinois, return to the South, and attend North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (A&T) in Greensboro, an institution for African-American students. Jackson again proved himself an able scholar and athlete. When his popularity on the campus led to his victory as student body president, Jackson did not take the responsibility lightly. As a college senior, he became a civil rights leader. Although he was not in Greensboro when the four African-American freshman from A&T staged their famous Woolworth's sit-in in February 1960 the action which launched sit-down demonstrations throughout the South Jackson actively encouraged his fellow students to continue their protests against racial injustice by staging repeated demonstrations and boycotts. Much of the open discrimination in the South fell before the onslaught of these student demonstrations.
 

Civil Rights Movement.

In the mid-1960s, Jackson began working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King Jr. In 1966, Jackson helped found the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, as the economic arm of the SCLC was known.
In the spring of 1968, many officers of the SCLC, including Jackson, were drawn away from other civil rights protests by the garbage collectors' strike in Memphis, Tennessee. The situation in that city was especially tense because many African-Americans who professed to be tired of passive resistance were willing and ready to fight. Tragically, King met a violent death by an assassin's bullet while standing on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Some controversy surrounds the moments just after King was wounded. Jackson claimed on national television that he was the last person to talk to King and that he had held the dying leader in his arms, getting blood all over his shirt. The other men present unanimously agreed that this was not true, that Jackson had been in the parking lot facing King when he was shot and had neither climbed the steps to the balcony afterward nor gone to the hospital with King. Whatever the truth of the matter, Jackson's appearance on national television the next day with his bloodied turtleneck jersey vaulted him into national prominence. The image of Jackson and his bloody shirt brought the horror of the assassination into American homes. Jackson's ego, stirring oratory and charismatic presence caused the media to anoint him and not Ralph Abernathy, King's successor. Many observers believe that at this point, Jackson determined to become heir to King's position as the nation's foremost African American leader. In 1971, Jackson was suspended from the SCLC after its leaders claimed that he was using the organization to further his own personal agenda.

Operation PUSH
 

After his suspension from the SCLC, Jackson founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), an organization which essentially continued the work of Operation Breadbasket without SCLC's sponsorship. Standing in front of a picture of Dr. King, Jackson promised to begin "a rainbow coalition of blacks and whites gathered together to push for a greater share of economic and political power for all poor people in America." Throughout the decade, Jackson relentlessly spoke out against racism, militarism and the class divisions in American. He became a household name throughout the nation with his slogan "I Am Somebody".
By the mid-1970s, Jackson was a national figure. He realized that many of the problems plaguing the African-American community stemmed from drug abuse and teen pregnancy and not simply economic deprivation. In 1976, Jackson created the PUSH-Excel, a program aimed at motivating children and teens to succeed. A fiery orator, Jackson traveled from city to city delivering his message of personal responsibility and self-worth to students: "You're not a man because you can kill somebody. You are not a man because you can make a baby...You're a man only if you can raise a baby, protect a baby and provide for a baby."
Jackson's support within the African-American community allowed him to influence both local and national elections. Possibly the most important campaign in which he was involved was the election victory of the first African-American mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington, in 1983. Washington's victory was attributed in part to Jackson's ability to convince over 100,000 African-Americans, many of them youths, to register to vote. Jackson would also use his charisma to garner new voters during his 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Rainbow Coalition

Jackson's debut on the international scene occurred when President Jimmy Carter approved his visit to South Africa. Jackson attracted huge crowds at his rallies where he denounced apartheid, South Africa's oppressive system that prevented the black majority population from enjoying the rights and privileges of the white minority. Later in 1979, he toured the Middle East where he embraced Yassar Arafat, the then-exiled Palestinian leader. Jackson's embrace of a man considered a terrorist by the American government created yet another controversy. The result of these international excursions caused Jackson's fame and popularity to grow within the African-American community. As the 1980s began, Jackson moderated many of his political positions. He was no longer the flamboyant young man wearing long hair and gold medallions, but a more conservative, mature figure seeking ways to reform the Democratic Party from within. He continued to advocate his "rainbow coalition" as a way for all Americans to improve the country.

After growing increasingly disenchanted with the existing political scene, Jackson decided that he would campaign against Walter Mondale and Gary Hart in the 1984 Democratic presidential primaries. His campaign centered on a platform of social programs for the poor and the disabled, alleviation of taxes for the poor, increased voting rights, effective affirmative action initiatives for the hiring of women and minorities, and improved civil rights for African-Americans, poor whites, immigrants, homosexuals, Native Americans, and women. Jackson also took a stand on many world issues. He called for increased aid to African nations and more consideration of the rights of Arabs. His support for Arab nations and African-American Muslims provoked much criticism, especially from Jewish voters. In early 1984, Jackson used his popularity in the Arab world to obtain the release of an American pilot, Lt. Robert Goodman, who had been shot down over Lebanon.
When he returned home, Jackson concentrated on securing the African-American vote for his candidacy. He did not receive support from most senior African-American politicians, who felt that Jackson's candidacy would cause disunity within the Democratic camp and benefit the Republicans. However, many poor African-Americans enthusiastically supported him. Jackson received 3.5 million votes, and possibly 2 million of those voters were newly registered. He carried 60 congressional districts on a budget of less than $3 million. Although many Americans, both black and white, were decidedly opposed to Jackson, he earned grudging respect because his campaign fared better than most people had expected. When Jackson conceded defeat at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, much of America listened respectfully to his address. Although his campaign was unsuccessful, Jackson's powerful presence had broken new ground and involved more African-Americans in the political process.

After the 1984 election, in which Ronald Reagan triumphed over Mondale, Jackson devoted his time between working for Operation PUSH in Chicago and his new National Rainbow Coalition in Washington, D.C. This national coalition was designed to be a force for reform within the Democratic Party. It also provided Jackson with a platform from which to mount his 1988 presidential bid. Jackson's campaign received a much broader base of support than in 1984. His polished delivery, quick wit, and campaign experience helped him to gain many new supporters. Among the seven serious contenders for the Democratic nomination, Jackson finished second to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who lost to Reagan’s vice president, George Bush, in the general election.
In 1990, Jackson was named one of two "shadow senators" to Congress from Washington, D.C. to press for the district's statehood. Although the idea fizzled, it helped to keep Jackson in the public eye. In 1992, Jackson backed Democratic candidate Bill Clinton during the presidential campaign. He used his influence to urge African-American voters to support Clinton. These efforts helped Clinton to win the election over the incumbent Bush and return a Democrat to the White House for the first time in 12 years.

Critics often accuse Jackson of simply being a cheerleader of causes, a person who favors style over substance. Despite his unflagging energy and devotion to his causes, many felt that he was devoted only to his own self-aggrandizement. "This is the long-term pattern of Jackson's politics. He has always sought to operate and be recognized as a political insider, as a leader without portfolio or without accountability to any constituency that he claims to represent" wrote political critic Adolph Reed Jr. in The Progressive. "PUSH ran as a simple extension of his will and he has sought to ensure that the Rainbow Coalition would be the same kind of rubber stamp, a letterhead and front for his mercurial ambition."

Despite the criticism he has faced, Jackson continues to advocate for the rights of the downtrodden and challenge others to move beyond adversity. In 1995, Jackson wrote in Essence magazine, "People who are victimized may not be responsible for being down, but they must be responsible for getting up. Slave masters don't retire; people who are enslaved change their minds and choose to join the abolitionist struggle... Change has always been led by those whose spirits were bigger than their circumstances. I do have hope. We have seen significant victories during the last 25 years."
In November 1999, Jackson came to the defense of six high school students expelled for fighting in Decatur, Illinois.

The Decatur school board expelled the students for two years for their involvement in a brawl during a football game on September 17, 1999. After being pressured by Jackson, board members later reduced the punishment to one year and agreed to let the students attend an alternative school. Jackson met with the board to try to reach a compromise that would allow the students to return to regular classes, but the board refused to waver. As a result, Jackson led a protest march at Eisenhower High School where he was arrested on November 16, 1999, and later released on bond. He was charged with three counts each of criminal trespassing and contributing to the delinquency of a child. A federal judge later upheld the expulsions.

Jackson received his master of divinity degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary on June 3, 2000. He had been only three courses short of earning his degree when he left the school to work with a minister more than three decades ago. On August 9, 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jackson. The medal is the highest civilian honor and may be awarded only by a U.S. president to individuals who have made contributions "especially meritorious to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."
Jackson and his wife of nearly four decades, Jacqueline, have five children, including a son, Jesse Jackson Jr., who is a Democratic congressman from Illinois. In January 2001, in response to tabloid reports, Jackson issued a statement admitting that he fathered a daughter, born in 1999, with a former staff member of his Rainbow Coalition, Dr. Karin L. Stanford.

John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman was born in Washington, DC., in 1941. Shortly before his first birthday, his family moved to Homewood, an African-American community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has been the locale of much of his fiction. He attended Peabody High, one of Pittsburgh's best secondary schools, where he excelled in his studies as well as in sports.
He was awarded a Benjamin Franklin scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania, where he not only won a creative writing prize but also earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Matching his scholastic achievements with his athletic ones, he won All-Ivy League status as a forward on the basketball team and successfully competed on the track team.

In 1963, he graduated with a B.A. in English, and won a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford University's New College.

Returning to the United States in 1966, Wideman spent a year as a Kent Fellow at the University of lowa's Writers' Workshop, where he completed his first novel, A Glance Away, published in 1967. His other novels include Two Cities, Hurry Home, The Lynchers, Hiding Place, Sent for You Yesterday, Philadelphia Fire, and The Cattle Killing. He is the author of a memoir, Brothers and Keepers. His short story collections are Damballah, Fever, The Stories of John Edgar Wideman, and All Stories Are True. Houghton Mifflin will reissue the short story collection Damballah and the novel Hiding Place in September 1998 in the Mariner trade paperback series. Conversations with John Edgar Wideman -- 19 interviews spanning 3 decades-has recently been published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Wideman is the only writer to have been awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction twice-- once in 1984 for his novel Sent for You Yesterday and again in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire.

In 1998, Wideman won the Rea Award for the short story, an award judged this year by Grace Paley, Tim O'Brien, and Gina Berriault (previous winners include John Cheever and Eudora Wefty). In 1990, he also received the American Book Award for Fiction. He was awarded the Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction in 1991 and the MacArthur Award in 1993. Other honors include the St. Botolph Literary Award (1993), the DuSable Museum Prize for Nonfiction for Brothers and Keepers (1985), the Longwood College Medal for Literary Excellence, and the National Magazine Editors' Prize for Short Fiction (1987). In 1996, he edited the annual anthology The Best American Short Stories (Houghton Mifflin). He is currently at work on a collection of essays about race and basketball.

Wideman is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His articles on Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Michael Jordan, Emmett Till, Thelonius Monk, and women's professional basketball have appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, Esquire, Emerge, and the New York Tlmes Magazine. His son Dan is a published writer. His daughter, Jamila, is a professional basketball player for the L.A. Sparks. Wideman lives in Amherst with his wife, Judy, a lawyer specializing in death penalty cases.

Did you know?

John Edgar Wideman was the Second African American to win a Rhodes scholarship?

Jomo Kenyatta

Kenyatta, Jomo (1894?-1978), first prime minister (1963-1964) and then first president (1964-1978) of Kenya. Kenyatta was Kenya’s founding father, a conservative nationalist who led the East African nation to independence from Britain in 1963.

Kenyatta was born in Gatundu in the part of British East Africa that is now Kenya; the year of his birth is uncertain, but most scholars agree he was born in the 1890s.

He was born into the Kikuyu ethnic group, Kenya’s largest. Named Kamau wa Ngengi at birth, he later adopted the surname Kenyatta (from the Kikuyu word for a type of beaded belt he wore) and then the first name Jomo. Kenyatta was educated by Presbyterian missionaries and by 1921 had moved to the city of Nairobi. There he became involved in early African protest movements, joining the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1924. He quickly emerged as a leader within the KCA, and in 1928 he became editor of the movement’s newspaper. In 1929 and 1931 Kenyatta visited England to present KCA demands for the return of African land lost to European settlers and for increased political and economic opportunity for Africans in Kenya, which had become a colony within British East Africa in 1920. Kenyatta had little success, however.

Kenyatta remained in Europe for almost 15 years, during which he attended various schools and universities, traveled extensively, and published numerous articles and pamphlets on Kenya and the plight of Kenyans under colonial rule. While attending the London School of Economics, Kenyatta studied under noted British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and published his seminal work, Facing Mount Kenya (1938). In this book, Kenyatta described traditional Kikuyu society as well-ordered and harmonious and criticized the disruptive changes brought by colonialism. Facing Mount Kenya was well received in Great Britain as a defense of African culture, and it established Kenyatta’s credentials as spokesperson for his people.

Following World War II (1939-1945), Kenyatta became an outspoken nationalist, demanding Kenyan self-government and independence from Great Britain. Together with other prominent African nationalist figures, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenyatta helped organize the fifth Pan-African Congress in Great Britain in 1945. The congress, modeled after the four congresses organized by black American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois between 1919 and 1927 and attended by black leaders and intellectuals from around the world, affirmed the goals of African nationalism and unity. In September 1946 Kenyatta returned to Kenya, and in June 1947 he became president of the first colony-wide African political organization, the Kenya African Union (KAU), which had been formed more than two years earlier. Recruiting both Kikuyu and non-Kikuyu support, Kenyatta devoted considerable energy to KAU’s efforts to win self-government under African leadership. KAU was unsuccessful, however, and African resistance to colonial policies and the supremacy of European settlers in Kenya took on a more militant tone. In 1952 an extremist Kikuyu guerrilla movement called Mau Mau began advocating violence against the colonial government and white settlers(see Mau Mau rebellion). Never a radical, Kenyatta did not advocate violence to achieve African political goals. Nevertheless, the colonial authorities arrested him and five other KAU leaders in October 1952 for allegedly managing Mau Mau. The six leaders were tried and, in April 1953, convicted.

Kenyatta spent almost nine years in jail and detention. By the time he was freed in August 1961, Kenya was moving towards self-government under African leadership, and Kenyatta had been embraced as the colony’s most important independence leader. Shortly after his release, Kenyatta assumed the leadership of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), a party founded in 1960 and supported by the Kikuyu and Luo. He led the party to victory in the pre-independence elections of May 1963 and was named prime minister of Kenya in June. Kenyatta led Kenya to formal independence in December of that year. Kenya was established as a republic in December 1964, and Kenyatta was elected Kenya’s first president the same month.

As president, Kenyatta, known affectionately to Kenyans as mzee (Swahili for “old man”), strove to unify the new nation of Kenya. He worked to establish harmonious race relations, safeguarding whites’ property rights and appealing to both whites and the African majority to forget past injustices. Kenyatta adopted the slogan “Harambee” (Swahili for “let’s all pull together”), asking whites and Africans to work together for the development of Kenya. He promoted capitalist economic policies, encouraged foreign investment in Kenya, and adopted a pro-Western foreign policy. Such policies were unpopular with radicals within KANU, who advocated socialism for Kenya. However, Kenyatta isolated this element of KANU, forcing radical vice president Oginga Odinga and his supporters out of the party in 1966. Odinga formed the rival Kenya People’s Union (KPU), which drew much support from Odinga’s ethnic group, the Luo. Kenyatta used his extensive presidential powers and control of the media to counter the challenge to his leadership and appealed for Kikuyu ethnic solidarity. The 1969 assassination of cabinet minister Tom Mboya—a Luo ally of Kenyatta’s—by a Kikuyu led to months of tension and violence between the Luo and the Kikuyu. Kenyatta banned Odinga’s party, detained its leaders, and called elections in which only KANU was allowed to participate. For the remainder of his presidency, Kenya was effectively a one-party state, and Kenyatta made use of detention, appeals to ethnic loyalties, and careful appointment of government jobs to maintain his commanding position in Kenya’s political system. Kenyatta was reelected president in 1969 and 1974, unopposed each time. Until the mid-1970s Kenya maintained a high economic growth rate under Kenyatta’s leadership, due to a favorable international market for Kenya’s main exports and external economic assistance.

After 1970 Kenyatta’s advancing age kept him from the day-to-day management of government affairs. He intervened only when necessary to settle disputed issues. Critics maintained that Kenyatta’s relative isolation resulted in increasing domination of Kenya’s affairs by well-connected Kikuyu who acquired great wealth as a result. Despite such criticism, however, no serious challenge to Kenyatta’s leadership emerged. Kenyatta died in office in 1978 and was succeeded by Kenyan vice president Daniel arap Moi. Moi pledged to continue Kenyatta’s work, labeling his own program Nyayo (Swahili for “footsteps”). Kenyatta was revered after his death as the father of modern Kenya. His published works include Suffering Without Bitterness (1968), a collection of reminiscences and speeches.
 

Malcolm X

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother, Louise Norton Little, was a homemaker occupied with the family's eight children. His father, Earl Little, was an outspoken Baptist minister and avid supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. Earl's civil rights activism prompted death threats from the white supremacist organization Black Legion, forcing the family to relocate twice before Malcolm's fourth birthday. Regardless of the Little's efforts to elude the Legion, in 1929 their Lansing, Michigan home was burned to the ground, and two years later Earl's mutilated body was found lying across the town's trolley tracks. Police ruled both accidents, but the Little's were certain that members of the Black Legion were responsible. Louise had an emotional breakdown several years after the death of her husband and was committed to a mental institution. Her children were split up amongst various foster homes and orphanages.

Malcolm was a smart, focused student and graduated from junior high at the top of his class. However, when a favorite teacher told Malcolm his dream of becoming a lawyer was "no realistic goal for a nigger," Malcolm lost interest in school. He dropped out, spent some time in Boston, Massachusetts working various odd jobs, and then traveled to Harlem, New York where he committed petty crimes. By 1942 Malcolm was coordinating various narcotic, prostitution and gambling rings.

Eventually Malcolm and his buddy, Malcolm "Shorty" Jarvis, moved back to Boston, where they were arrested and convicted on burglary charges in 1946. Malcolm placated himself by using the seven-year prison sentence to further his education. It was during this period of self-enlightenment that Malcolm's brother Reginald visited and discussed his recent conversion to the Muslim religious organization the Nation of Islam. Intrigued, Malcolm studied the teachings of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad taught that white society actively worked to keep African-Americans from empowering themselves and achieving political, economic and social success. Among other goals, the Nation of Islam fought for a state of their own, separate from one inhabited by white people. By the time he was paroled in 1952, Malcolm was a devoted follower with the new surname "X." He considered "Little" a slave name and chose the "X" to signify his lost tribal name.
Intelligent and articulate, Malcolm was appointed a minister and national spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad also charged him with establishing new mosques in cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Harlem, New York. Malcolm utilized newspaper columns, radio and television to communicate the Nation of Islam's message across the United States. His charisma, drive and conviction attracted an astounding number of new members. Malcolm was largely credited with increasing membership in the Nation of Islam from 500 in 1952 to 30,000 in 1963.

The crowds and controversy surrounding Malcolm made him a media magnet. He was featured in a week-long television special with Mike Wallace in 1959, The Hate That Hate Produced, that explored fundamentals of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm's emergence as one of its most important leaders. After the special, Malcolm was faced with the uncomfortable reality that his fame had eclipsed that of his mentor Elijah Muhammad.

Racial tensions ran increasingly high during the early 1960s. In addition to the media, Malcolm's vivid personality had captured the government's attention. As membership in the Nation of Islam continued to grow, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents infiltrated the organization (one even acted at Malcolm's bodyguard) and secretly placed bugs, wiretaps and cameras surveillance equipment to monitor the group's activities.

Malcolm's faith was dealt a crushing blow at the height of the civil rights movement in 1963. He learned that Elijah Muhammad was secretly having relations with as many as six women in the Nation of Islam, some of which had resulted in children. Since his conversion Malcolm had strictly adhered to the teachings of Muhammad, including remaining celibate until his marriage to Betty Shabazz in 1958. Malcolm refused Muhammad's request to keep the matter quiet. He was deeply hurt by the deception of Muhammad, whom he had considered a prophet, and felt guilty about the masses he had led into what he now felt was a fraudulent organization.
When Malcolm received criticism after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for saying, "[Kennedy] never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon," Muhammad "silenced" him for 90 days. Malcolm suspected he was silenced for another reason. In March 1964 he terminated his relationship with the Nation of Islam and founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc.

That same year, Malcolm went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The trip proved life altering, as Malcolm met "blonde-haired, blued-eyed men I could call my brothers." He returned to the United States with a new outlook on integration. This time, instead of just preaching to African-Americans, he had a message for all races.

Relations between Malcolm and the Nation of Islam had become volatile after he renounced Elijah Muhammad. Informants working in the Nation of Islam warned that Malcolm had been marked for assassination (one man had even been ordered to help plant a bomb in his car). After repeated attempts on his life, Malcolm rarely traveled anywhere without bodyguards. On February 14, 1965 the home where Malcolm, Betty and their four daughters lived in East Elmhurst, New York was firebombed (the family escaped physical injury).

At a speaking engagement in the Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965 three gunmen rushed Malcolm onstage and shot him 15 times at close range. The 39-year-old was pronounced dead on arrival at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Fifteen hundred people attended Malcolm's funeral in Harlem on February 27, 1965 at the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ (now Child's Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ). After the ceremony, friends took the shovels from the gravediggers and buried Malcolm themselves. Later that year, Betty gave birth to their twin daughters.

Malcolm's assassins, Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were convicted of first-degree murder in March 1966. The three men were all members of the Nation of Islam.

The legacy of Malcolm X has moved through generations as the subject of numerous documentaries, books and movies. A tremendous resurgence of interest occurred in 1992 when director Spike Lee released the acclaimed Malcolm X movie. The film received Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Denzel Washington) and Best Costume Design.

Malcolm X is buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 25*,1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted in 1961.

After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.

Nelson Mandela was released on February 18, 1990. After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organization’s National Chairperson.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Hailing from the West Indies, Marcus Mosiah Garvey was the first to forcefully articulate the concept of African nationalism of black people returning to Africa, the continent of their forefathers, to build a great nation of their own. He was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on August 17, 1887. He went to elementary school there and at the age of 14 became an apprentice in the printing trade. In 1903 he went to the capital, Kingston, to work as a printer. He soon became involved in public activities and helped form the Printers Union, the first trade union in Jamaica. He subsequently published a periodical called the Watchman.

In 1910 began a series of travels that transformed Garvey from an average person concerned about the problems of the underprivileged to an African nationalist determined to lift an entire race from bondage and debasement. He visited Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador. After briefly returning home, he proceeded to England, where contacts with African nationalists stimulated in him a keen interest in Africa and in black history. In each country he visited, he noted that the black man was in an inferior position, subject to the whim, caprice, and fancy of stronger races. His reading of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery at this time also had great effect upon him.

On his return in 1914 from England, where he had done further study, Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League. These organizations were intended "to work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the world."
In 1916 Garvey went to the United States to raise funds to carry on the work of his Jamaican organizations. He was immediately caught up in the agitation of the times, and his voice thundered in the evenings on the streets of Harlem in New York City. A New York branch of the UNIA was established, soon followed by branches in other cities in the United States, in Central and South America, and in the Caribbean. The expansion of the UNIA was fostered by its official organ Negro World, a newspaper published in English, Spanish, and French. Published in New York City from 1918 to 1933, it was succeeded by the monthly Black Man, which ran through the 1930s, published after 1934 in London.

The Negro World reached out to black communities all over the world. It even penetrated into the interior of Africa, although the white rulers had banned it there. Garvey stressed the need for blacks to return to Africa for the building of a great nation, but he realized that until this was accomplished Africans needed to make themselves economically independent wherever they were. He encouraged blacks to start their own businesses, taking the commerce of their ghettos into their own hands.

Together with the American clergyman Archbishop George A. McGuire, Garvey formed the African Orthodox Church. This was in accordance with one of his basic principles, for he believed that each race must see God through its own racial spectacles. The Black Christ and the Black Madonna were proclaimed at the UNIA convention of 1924.
The Black Star Line shipping company and the Negro Factories Corporation were to be the commercial arms of the Garvey movement. It was the failure of the shipping venture that gave Garvey's enemies their chance to destroy him. Investments in the line were lost, and Garvey was imprisoned in 1925 in the United States. After serving 2 years 10 months of a 5-year sentence, he was deported to Jamaica. Previously, his plans for colonization in Liberia had been sabotaged by the colonial powers who brought pressure to bear on the Liberian government. As a result, the land which had been granted to the Garvey organization for the settlement of overseas Africans was given to the white American industrialist Harvey Firestone, and the expensive equipment shipped to Liberia for the use of Garvey's colonists was seized.

In Jamaica, Garvey attempted to enter local politics, but the restricted franchise of the time did not allow the vote to the black masses. He went to England and continued his work of social protest and his call for the liberation of Africa. He died in London on June 10, 1940.
Marcus Garvey was married twice. His second wife, Amy Jacques, whom he married in 1922, bore him two sons. The Garvey movement was the greatest international movement of African peoples in modern times. At its peak, in 1922-1924, the movement counted over 8 million followers. The youngest cadres were taken in at 5 years of age and, as they grew older, they graduated to the sections for older children.

Garvey emphasized the belief in the One God, the God of Africa, who should be visualized through black eyes. He told black people to become familiar with their ancient history and their rich cultural heritage. He called for pride in the black race for example, he made black dolls for black children. His was the first voice clearly to demand black power. It was he who said, "A race without authority and power is a race without respect."
In emphasizing the need to have separate black institutions under black leadership, Garvey anticipated the mood and thinking of the future black nationalists by nearly 50 years. He died, as he lived, an unbending apostle of African nationalism. The symbols that he made famous, the black star of Africa and the red, black, and green flag of African liberation, continued to inspire younger generations of African nationalists.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Born near Mayesville, S.C. on July 10, 1875, on a rice and cotton farm, Mary Jane McLeod was the fifteenth of seventeen children, some of whom had been sold into enslavement. In order to do their best by their children, her parents sacrificed so they could buy land to farm. Mary had the same determination. From childhood on, she took advantage of opportunities that were presented to her. Her parents, who had been born into enslavement, wanted their children to have an education. When Mary was about eleven, the Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church opened a school for African-American children. It was about four miles from her home, and the children had to walk back and forth to school, but Mary wanted to go. Her mother commented that some of the children had to be forced to attend, but not Mary, who was well aware of her family's relative poverty. Mary saw education as the key to improving the lives of African-Americans. An incident that occurred when she was quite young may explain this. Mary picked up a book while she was playing with a white child whose parents employed Mary's mother. The white child grabbed the book and told Mary she couldn't have it because African-Americans couldn't read. For Mary, education became the answer to the question, how can African-Americans move up the ladder in American society?

A few years later, Mary had the chance to further her education when a woman in Detroit offered to pay for the expenses of one child at Scotia Seminary in North Carolina. Mary was selected by her teacher because she was an excellent student. After attending Scotia Seminary, she received a scholarship to the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where she continued to be a high achiever. Mary was the only African-American student there, and one of only a few non-whites.
As a child of twelve, Mary had been inspired by the words of a preacher who spoke of the need for missionaries in Africa. Mary completed the two year program, planning to go to Africa as a missionary, but was told that there were no open positions available at that time for African-Americans. Although disappointed, she returned to Mayesville and taught there for a year at the mission school she had once attended before requesting a new position from the Presbyterian Board of Education. She accepted a position as a teacher in Augusta, Georgia at Haines Institute, where she worked under the educator Lucy Laney. She gained a reputation as an "enthusiastic" teacher who held "Mission School" classes for children gathered off the streets on Sunday afternoons. She taught there for a year.

Mary was sent next to Sumter, S.C. where she taught for two years at Kendall Institute before marrying Albertus Bethune in 1898. The couple moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Albertus had a new job. Mary did a little social work, but mainly she concentrated on raising her son, Albert, who was born in 1899. The marriage was not a success, although the couple remained together until 1907 and on good terms thereafter. Mary was restless, and she felt called to public service. A visiting minister from Palatka, Florida urged her to move there and manage the new mission school he was starting. So in 1899 she moved to Florida with her son, followed by her husband. In Palatka she taught at the Mission School and visited prisoners in the county jail, reading and singing to them. She tried to help the prisoners in any way she could, and worked to free those who were not guilty. Because money was tight, Mary supplemented the family income by selling life insurance.

The school grew, but Mary was not content. She wanted to provide opportunities for African-American girls, and to do this she would found a school. She hoped to build the school in a new area, and a minister suggested Daytona. Five years after arriving in Palatka, she moved to Daytona, Florida. Almost penniless, she was sheltered by a local woman recommended by the minister, who helped her find the house that she would use to open a school for African-American girls. This was her dream, and she worked to make it come true. The house was bare, and Bethune was forced to repair furniture and use discarded carpets. She went to local stores to beg for boxes, which she used for chairs, and packing crates, which became her desks. In October of 1904, she opened the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School with a student body of five. Each child paid fifty cents a week in tuition. In line with beliefs of the day, Bethune's primary focus was on training girls to take care of the home, so cooking and sewing were offered as well as the three "R’s”. Before long, she also had several boarders. Bethune worked hard to keep her little school going, baking sweet potato pies to sell, and soon involving the community in her efforts. The school was a success, despite its difficult beginning. Within three years Bethune was able to relocate it to a permanent facility. Over the years, the one small house was replaced by a thirty-two acre campus with fourteen buildings and 400 students. A farm was purchased with the goal of making the school more self-sufficient. In 1923 the school became coeducational when it merged with Cookman Institute of Jacksonville, Florida, and became Bethune-Cookman College. Her house on the campus is maintained as a National Historic Landmark.

Bethune understood the importance of political participation. In the early 1900s, the battle for women's suffrage was underway, but there was little role for African-American women, especially in the South. In 1912 Bethune joined the Equal Suffrage League, an offshoot of the National Association of Colored Women. In an era when even African-American men couldn't vote, a frustrated Mary had to sit back and watch as white-dominated organizations marched and protested nationwide. But in 1920, after passage of the 19th amendment, the time for action had come. Bethune believed that if African-American women were to vote, they could bring about change. Riding a bicycle she had used when she was raising money for her school, she went door to door raising money to pay the poll tax. Her night classes provided a means for African-Americans to learn to read well enough to pass the literacy test. Soon one hundred potential voters had qualified. The night before the election, eighty members of the KKK confronted Bethune, warning her against preparing African-Americans to vote. Bethune did not back down, and the men left without causing any harm. The following day, Bethune led a procession of one hundred African-Americans to the polls, all voting for the first time.
The story of her defiance of the Klan spread, and soon she was in demand as a speaker for the rights of African-Americans. Meeting many prominent people was in some ways an eye-opener for her. She met the African-American leader and scholar W.E.B. Dubois, and after hearing him comment that because of his race he couldn't even check out one of his own books from a southern library, she made her own school library available to the general public. This was the only free source of reading material for African-Americans in Florida at that time.

Bethune continued her career in public service as the years went by. She was elected to the National Urban League's Executive Board in 1920, the only Southern woman of any race. She helped to establish a home for delinquent African-American girls, she was president of the Southeastern Federation of Women's Clubs, and she was elected as president of the 200,000 member National Association of Colored Women twice in the 1920s. She used her position in the latter organization to speak out in favor of education for African-Americans, making speeches. She also served as president of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools and on the Interracial Council of America. She was a founder and the first president of the National Council of Negro Women in the 1930s. In 1932 Bethune was featured in a newspaper story by a well-known journalist, Ida Tarbell, as one of the fifty greatest American women. She was number ten on the list.
The quality of Bethune's work was recognized by national politicians as well. Presidents from Coolidge to Roosevelt appointed her to government positions. President Coolidge invited her to attend his Child Welfare Conference in 1928. President Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health in 1930. Her experience in the education field and her knowledge of the state of African-American education made her a valuable asset to both Presidents. She was also President Roosevelt's Special Advisor on Minority Affairs from 1935 to 1944. Her home in Washington, D.C., the Council House, where she did much of her work, is maintained by the National Park Service.

From 1936 to 1944 she held the position of Director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, making her the first African-American woman to become a federal agency head. Black advisors had been appointed for each federal agency, and their power was minimal. Bethune, however, had an agenda. She wanted to see African-Americans fully integrated into American life. She gathered a group of prominent men at her apartment in Washington for the first of many informal discussions. Because she had access to the president, she was able to take the suggestions made by this group to him, and see more blacks appointed to advisory positions. Her group became the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, and became known as the "Black Cabinet". As a member and a leader of this group, Bethune served as an unofficial advisor to President Roosevelt.

After World War II, she was one of three African-American consultants to the U.S. delegation involved in developing the United Nations charter. Bethune served as the personal representative of President Truman at the inauguration ceremonies in Liberia in 1952.
Always opposed to segregation, Bethune networked with influential whites to gain more opportunities for blacks. She was first introduced to Eleanor Roosevelt at a luncheon held by Roosevelt's mother-in-law in the 1920s. The only African-American present, she had to face the horrified stares of several Southern white ladies who were present. Mrs. Roosevelt, senior, Bethune's hostess, led her into the dining room, seated her in the place of the guest of honor, and introduced her to her daughter-in-law, Eleanor.

As the years went by, the two younger women learned to know each other better. Bethune developed very close ties with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s. Bethune understood how to use the power structure. She spoke out vehemently when African-American women were not permitted to participate in the national advisory council of the War Department's Women's Interest Section in 1941, going public as well as complaining to the Secretary of War. She also worked behind the scenes with Mrs. Roosevelt, and eventually won that battle. Participation in the advisory council put her in a position to see that African-American women became officers in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps established a year later.

Bethune was recognized for her hard work during her lifetime and received many honors. She was a recipient of the Spingarn Medal in 1935, the Frances Drexel Award for Distinguished Service in 1937, and the Thomas Jefferson Award for leadership in 1942. She received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Rollins College in 1949, the first African-American to receive an honorary degree from a white southern college. She received the Medal of Honor and Merit from the Republic of Haiti in 1949 and the Star of Africa from the Republic of Liberia in 1952. After a lifetime of achievements, Mary Bethune died on May 18, 1955. On July 10, 1974, ninety-nine years to the day after Bethune's birth, she became the first woman and the first African-American to be honored with a statue in a public park in Washington, D.C. The statue, in Lincoln Park, is a reminder of her achievements. South Carolina has honored its native daughter as well, hanging her portrait in the state capitol in Columbia.

Matthew Henson: Arctic Explorer

Matthew Henson was only twelve when he walked from his home in Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland to get a job as a cabin boy on the three-masted merchant ship Katie Hines. At first Captain Childs, a square, tall 60-year-old man with flowing white hair, was reluctant to bring such a young lad on-board. When Henson told him that he was an orphan, Captain Childs relented and made the young man his cabin boy.
Henson had been born on August 8, 1866, in Maryland. His parents were freeborn black sharecroppers. When Henson was four, his family moved to Washington D.C. where more jobs were available. When his parents died, he and his siblings moved in with a nearby uncle. Henson was fascinated by stories about life at sea, so when he saw a chance to become a cabin boy, he took it.
Captain Childs was kind to Henson and under his tutelage Henson became an able-bodied seaman. Childs also instructed him in math, history, geography and the Bible as they traveled to such exotic locations as China, Japan, North Africa and the Black Sea. When Captain Childs died Henson gave up the sea, and eventually found a job as a clerk at a furrier back in Washington, D.C..

It was here fate brought him into contact with Robert Peary. Peary, an officer in the U.S. Navy Corps of Civil Engineers, had already made one exploration trip to Greenland. Peary's next naval assignment, however, would take him in quite a different direction. He was being sent to the jungles of Nicaragua to study the feasibility of digging a shipping canal there that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Peary (left) had brought back some Arctic furs to sell to the furrier and while there met Henson. Henson seemed to share Peary's interest in adventure and Peary decided to offer Henson a job as his personal assistant during the Nicaraguan trip. Henson, eager to resume traveling, accepted and spent two years in Central America with Peary. During this time Peary found Henson's skills as a mechanic, navigator and carpenter extremely valuable.

Peary, who was interested in becoming the first man to reach the North Pole, decided after the Nicaraguan trip to offer Henson a job as a messenger at the League Island Navy Yard in Philadelphia with an eye to having Henson come along on future ventures. Henson accepted. Two years later, in 1891, Peary, who had been granted a leave from the Navy to do more exploration in Greenland, asked Henson join him. This was the chance Henson had been waiting for and he accepted without hesitation, though it caused friction with his fiancée, Eva Flint, and her family.

In April 1891 Henson married Eva and two months later left her to join Peary aboard the ship Kite bound for Greenland. The exploration party consisted of Peary, Henson and four others. One of these was a doctor by the name of Frederick A. Cook. In an unusual move Mrs. Peary also traveled with the group.
The Kite struggled through the icy waters near Greenland to Wolstenholm Sound where the party set up a base camp. Henson's carpentry skills were called into play to build a two-room house that would serve as the expedition's headquarters. The building, which came to be called "Red Cliff House," was completed at about the same time as Henson's twenty-fifth birthday. Peary's wife threw a party to commemorate both events.

In the spring Peary and his men left the camp with the goal of crossing Greenland from west to east in an attempt to find the northern-most point of the island. Peary would then use this information to help him plan his trip to the Pole. Henson was injured , though, and forced to return to Red Cliff House.
At Red Cliff House Henson ran into direct conflict with John Verhoeff, another expedition member. Verhoeff had been left behind because Peary had found him insubordinate and undependable. He also resented the respect Peary accorded the black Henson.
Verhoeff and other expedition members also seemed to have little respect for the native Eskimo population too. Henson, however, quickly learned the Eskimo language, Arctic survival skills and local culture. What Henson learned from the Eskimos and shared with Peary would be key to them later conquering the pole.
This first trip led Henson to spend the next eighteen years with Peary in Arctic exploration. In 1893 they returned and Henson was the only one that remained with Peary when other members abandoned the expedition.

In 1895 Henson, Peary and Hugh J. Lee charted the entire ice cap of Greenland and discovered the island's northern terminus. This trip nearly ended in tragedy as the three came close to starving to death. At first they couldn't locate food they'd cached along the way due to new snow. Then the hunting became poor. They pushed on despite the hunger. Fortunately they managed to find a musk ox or rabbit just as things seemed hopeless. Finally they reached the northernmost corner of Greenland. Peary had planned to do more but was forced to turn back. As they retreated, they had to use the dogs that pulled their sleds as food. At one point Lee lay down to die begging Henson and Peary to go on without him. Peary answered "we will all get home or none of us will." Lee rallied and they straggled into their base camp two weeks later with only one dog left alive.
In 1896 and 1897 Peary and Henson returned to collect three meteorites they'd found on earlier expeditions. These were sold to the American Museum of Natural History and the cash used to finance future assaults on the Pole. The Peary Arctic Club was also formed to raise more money.
By this time Henson's continuous trips north had worn down his wife's patience She requested and received a divorce at the end of 1897.

Henson and Peary tried for the Pole several times over the next few years. Each attempt was frustrated and in 1902 the trip was disastrous. Six Eskimo helpers died and the food ran out. They were blocked from progress north across the icepack by melting ice.
In 1906 they returned with a new ship named the Roosevelt after the newly-elected President who was a supporter of the drive to the Pole. The vessel was specifically designed for cutting through ice. The hull was shaped so that if the ship was caught in a frozen sea the pressure would not crush the vessel, but push it upward. With this ship carrying them the first part of the way, the expedition was able to get closer to the Pole than any other human beings - within 174 miles. Melted ice blocked the final distance and they were forced to leave and try again in 1908.

It was during the 1906 trip that Peary spotted what looked like land to him some 120 miles off the coast of North America. The place, which he dubbed "Crocker Land" was discovered to be an Arctic mirage by a later expedition.
While Peary went off to raise support for this next trip, Henson stayed with the ship to oversee repairs and prepare equipment. It was at this time that Henson proposed to, and married, Lucy Jane Ross, who he had been courting for two years.
On July 6th, 1908, the USS Roosevelt departed from New York for what would be the final attempt on the Pole, success or not. Henson was forty and Peary fifty. Both knew they were getting too old for exploring the Arctic. It was then, or never.

Peary had carefully hand-picked his team. It included Henson, of course, Dr. John W. Goodsell, Donald B. MacMillan, Ross G. Marvin, George Borup and Robert Bartlett, who was the ship's captain. The plan was to sail to Cape Sheridan on the northern-most part of Ellesmere Island, Canada, then make the assault on the Pole using a relay strategy.

On September 5, 1908, the Roosevelt reached Cape Sheridan. They spent the long dark winter night there (remember above the Arctic circle the nights are six months long) preparing to strike out toward the Pole in the daylight of spring. The time was spent hunting musk-ox, deer and rabbits for food. Henson made ready the equipment. Donald MacMillan recalled, "with years of experience equal to that of Peary himself, [Henson] was indispensable." Henson used his carpentry skills to build all the sledges and trained the less-experienced members of the group on handling the dogs.
In February ,Henson and some of the Eskimos traveled by sledge to Cape Columbia which would serve as a base camp for the attempt. They built several igloos and cached supplies there. Soon the rest of the group joined them.

On March 1, 1909, Henson pointed his sledge north and, under Peary's orders, stated breaking the trail across the icepack toward the pole. Bartlett and Borup had left the day before.
There are few activities more dangerous than Arctic exploration on land. One of those, though, is Arctic exploration on the icepack. While traveling across the icepack there are all the hazards of the far northern climate: Sub-freezing temperatures, sudden storms, slow starvation, plus those particular to the great ice sheets that cover the Arctic Ocean.

One might picture that with the low temperatures near the North Pole the ice there must be thick, hard and smooth. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The movement of currents under the icepack cause constant changes on it's surface. Small, steep mountains of ice, called "pressure ridges" well up blocking the path. Sections of the pack are often rent apart creating open lanes of water called "leads." Anyone slipping into a lead can drown, or freeze to death in minutes.
Henson, and the rest of Peary's party, constantly ran into these dangerous obstacles. Peary fell into leads twice during the trip. Henson also slipped into one and was rescued just in time by his Eskimo assistant Ootah. Bartlett and his team nearly floated out to sea on an ice island formed by leads opening around their igloo in the middle of the night. Fortunately they were able to dash to safety.

Each of the Americans knew that not all of them would be able to go all the way with Peary to the Pole. The plan called for each team to go so far along the path, then cache the supplies it was carrying to be used by the other teams going closer to the Pole. However Peary had stated from the beginning that "Henson must go all the way. I can't make it there without him." Perhaps this was to fulfill a promise to Henson Peary had made when Henson had saved his life in Greenland years ago, but more likely it was because Henson was simply the best and most skillful of Peary's assistants. His loyalty and dependability had been proven over twenty years of exploration. Still, Henson knew he would only go to the Pole if conditions were right. Injury or sickness could easily force a change in plans.
As supplies ran out teams started to turn back. The first were those led by MacMillan and Goodsell. Then Borup. Then Marvin.

Henson went to Marvin's igloo to say goodbye, expecting to see him back on the ship. He never did. Marvin died on the return trip. His Eskimo companions said that he fell into an open lead and they were unable to rescue him. Later, one of them admitted he had killed Marvin in a dispute. The murder was probably brought on by the tension of the dangerous return trip and the inability of the American and Eskimos to communicate clearly.
The final team to turn back was Bartlett's. Bartlett had wanted to go on to the Pole, but admitted "Henson was a better dog driver than I." It was Henson's observation that "Captain Bartlett was glad to turn back when he did. He frankly told me several times that he had little expectation of ever returning alive."
Bartlett did make it back to the ship, but his fear of death was well-founded. As the Arctic spring continued, the icepack grew softer and more leads opened. The only way to get past a long, wide lead was to wait for it to freeze over again. If a big one opened behind the explorers, they might well starve to death as they waited for the lead to close.

Henson and Peary were only 174 miles from the Pole. They drove forward at an almost reckless pace. Peary used his sextant and chronometer-watch to constantly check their progress. Henson, using his astounding ability to reach a destination through "dead reckoning" broke the trail. He had once won a bet with Peary by estimating their position in his head to within twenty miles after a thousand mile trip. Now he let his sense of direction guide him north.
Five days after they had separated from Bartlett, they arrived at the top of the world. Peary made numerous measurements to check his position. Then they found a thin section of ice and broke through to do a sounding. The rope ran out at 9,000 feet. This surprised them as they hadn't thought the ocean would be so deep at the Pole.
Then they started the return. They were exhausted, but the planning they had put into the expedition paid off. With igloos and supplies already in position, they made the return to the base camp at Cape Columbia in record time. Four hundred and thirteen miles in sixteen days. When they finally arrived, Henson and Peary went to their igloos and collapsed in exhaustion.

It took until July for the Roosevelt to free itself from the ice and start working its way south. On August 17th the ship put in at Etah, Greenland. Here the party heard some startling news. Dr. Frederick A. Cook, the same man who had been with Henson and Peary on an earlier Greenland trip, was claiming that he had reached the Pole on April 21, 1908, a full year before Peary's party.
The group was at first stunned, then skeptical. Henson interviewed the two Eskimos that supposedly had gone with Cook. They laughed, admitting they had never gone more than 20 miles out on the icepack. An examination of Cook's sledge, which was still at Etah, showed it had hardly been used. It seemed obvious the Cook was telling a bold-faced lie.

A simple honor system had governed Arctic exploration, and Cook (left) took full advantage of it. By the time Peary had returned to the U.S., Cook had already received several honors in Europe and his success had been accepted by the public. Upon hearing Peary's charges against Cook, the National Geographic Society investigated and determined that Cook's claim was a hoax. A sea captain came forward and testified that he'd been paid by Cook to produce sextant readings that would be consistent with being taken at the North Pole.

Exposed, Cook disappeared. Eventually, in a separate matter, he was convicted and sent to jail for 14 years for selling bogus oil well stocks.
Decades after both Peary and Henson died, claims were made that they had gotten lost on their way to the Pole and missed it by a hundred miles. These claims, though, had little evidence to back them up. Peary took numerous sightings with his sextant to check his position and was as close to the Pole as his instrument would allow: about five miles. The position can be confirmed by looking at the sounding they did. The North Pole lays over a deep marine trench. Peary's sounding showed the depth was over 9,000 feet. If the Peary party had been carried west by drifting ice, as some believe, they would have been over shallower water. Further evidence can be found through a technique known as photogrammetic rectification. Photogrammetic rectification can be used to examine a picture and determine from the angle of shadows at what latitude the photo was taken. The photos taken by Peary have been analyzed and prove the expedition was truly at the Pole.

Unfortunately Cook's hoax stole much of the enthusiasm that the public might have had for the expedition's success. Eventually Peary was properly honored, but Henson, as a black man, got little recognition.
Belated Honors

It wasn't until 1937, at age seventy, that Henson got some of the attention he deserved. In that year he was made an honorary member of the famed Explorers Club in New York. In 1946 he was honored by the U.S. Navy with a medal. His most-prized award, though, was a gold medal from the Chicago Geographic Society.
Henson died on March 9th, 1955, and was buried in a small plot at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. In 1987, Dr. S. Allen Counter, a Henson biographer, led a movement to have the remains of both Henson and his wife moved to lay adjacent to Robert Peary in Arlington National Cemetery, a more fitting location for an American hero. President Ronald Reagan granted permission and on the seventy-ninth anniversary of the discovery of the North Pole, Henson was laid to rest near his old friend.

MOVE

The MOVE Organization surfaced in Philadelphia during the early 1970's. Characterized by dreadlock hair, the adopted surname "Africa", a principled unity, and an uncompromising commitment to their belief, members practiced the teachings of MOVE founder JOHN AFRICA.

During the early 1970's MOVE was based in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia (309 N. 33rd St.). Members had a preference for hard physical work and were constantly chopping firewood, running dogs, shoveling snow or sweeping the street. MOVE ran a popular car wash at this location, helped homeless people find places to live, assisted the elderly with home repairs, intervened in violence between local gangs and college fraternities, and helped incarcerated offenders meet parole requirements through a rehabilitation program. After adopting MOVE's way of natural living, many individuals overcame past problems of drug addiction, physical disabilities, infertility and alcoholism. MOVE welcomed dissenting views as an opportunity to showcase their belief and sharpen their oratory skills which they knew would be tested in their revolutionary struggle. MOVE presented their views at public forums and lectures of noted authorities including Dick Gregory, Alan Watts, Jane Fonda, Julian Bond, Richie Havens, Walter Mondale, Roy Wilkins, Buckminster Fuller, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Caesar Chavez and Russell Means, and none could refute JOHN AFRICA's teachings. By 1974 MOVE was appearing in public with increasing frequency.

The mainstream media began a long history of distorted MOVE coverage using misquotes, unverified rumors and biased stories. While those who actually met MOVE members could see the remarkable strength and health they exhibited, dehumanizing news accounts perpetrated the falsehood that members never bathed and were diseased.
Frank Rizzo, Police Commissioner from 1967-71 was the key figure in Philadelphia government and built his career on opposing black efforts to challenge the status quo. In 1967 Rizzo's first major action as Commissioner had been to halt a peaceful demonstration of some 3500 Black high school students asking for educational reforms and Black Studies programs by unleashing hordes of cops who charged with no provocation and chased students for blocks. Many were beaten. He ran the city with a prominent and heavy-handed police force that had a national reputation for brutality.

MOVE launched demonstration after demonstration aimed at focusing attention on police abuses. Community groups across the City sought MOVE's help in setting up demonstrations in their own neighborhoods. As a result of this activism, the police began a concerted campaign of harassment against MOVE, breaking up demonstrations by arresting MOVE members on disorderly conduct charges or violations of whatever local ordinance could be made to apply. On May 18, 1974, Leesing and Janet Africa, both pregnant at the time, were so brutally beaten by Rizzo's police that they both had miscarriages. By 1975, clashes between MOVE and the police reached increasingly brutal proportions, with frequent beatings, arrests and jail stays. On April 29, 1975, Alberta Africa, pregnant at the time, was held spread-eagle by four officers and repeatedly kicked in the stomach and vagina by a matron named Robinson, suffering a miscarriage as a result. Despite police violence against MOVE many MOVE mothers did bear children, including Sue Africa, in spite of several police beatings throughout her pregnancy, had a son, Tomassa, on Aug. 4, 1975 (Tomassa was later murdered by the city on May 13, 1985). Janine Africa's baby, Life Africa, was born March 8, 1976 but murdered by the police less than a month later, when his mother was grabbed by a cop, thrown to the ground with 3 week old Life Africa in her arms and stomped until she was nearly unconscious. The baby's skull was crushed. Police denied that the baby existed because there was no birth certificate.

MOVE took on the courts and eventually overwhelmed them, acting as their own attorneys in hundreds of trials and hearings. On November 5, 1976, Rhonda Africa was arrested and brutalized. Nearly 9 months pregnant, Rhonda went into premature labor the next day, giving birth to a bruised and injured baby that soon died. (Rhonda herself was later murdered by the City on May 13, 1985.)
On May 20, 1977, MOVE staged a major demonstration demanding the release of their political prisoners and an end to the violent harassment by the City. To keep an increasingly brutal police force at bay, MOVE appeared outside their house with firearms.

To force MOVE members out of their Powelton Village headquarters, Rizzo got court approval to starve them out. On March 16, 1978, the police set up a blockade around the house and shut off water lines. Those inside included pregnant women, nursing babies, children and animals Police arrested anyone who tried to break through the barricades, though some attempts to get food and water to MOVE were successful. During this time MOVE lost the farm they had paying on in Virginia. The blockade lasted almost two months and on April 16, 1978, thousands marched around City Hall protesting the City's action.
The City tried to negotiate a settlement. MOVE knew officials could not be trusted but entered into an agreement to expose the City's deceit. Terms of the settlement were publicized May 3, 1978 before MOVE had given final approval. MOVE then told mediators why those in the house could not be legally arrested. When newly installed D.A. Ed Rendell confirmed that the arrest warrants were indeed void as per Rule 1100. Terms were finalized after MOVE had a 90-day deadline for vacating the house deleted from the agreement. To obscure legal improprieties, a gag provision was included to prevent MOVE from talking to the media. Police were allowed to arrest, arraign and release on bail pending appeal, each wanted member in the house. Police searched the house for weapons and found only inoperative ones. The city agreed to dispose of all other pending MOVE cases within 4-6 weeks.

On August 2, 1978, Judge DiBona ruled that MOVE had violated the unagreed-to 90-day deadline and the D.A.'s office then solicited MOVE arrest warrants for not vacating the house. The fact that Rendell's office could not legally practice law at a civil proceeding went unpublicized and the media was instrumental in perpetuating the myth that MOVE had agreed to a 90-day time limit. The City was so bent on framing and hunting down MOVE members the DiBona signed bench warrants authorizing police to bring before him practically every known MOVE adult, though over half of them were not in the house and couldn't possibly have violated an order to vacate it.
On August 5, Philadelphia authorities, in collaboration with Virginia police, staged a midnight raid on the Richmond home of two MOVE women and 14 children, arresting Gail and Rhonda Africa at gunpoint and returning them to Philadelphia. The legal justification was Gail and Rhonda's alleged failure to leave a house that they weren't within a hundred miles of.

In the early morning hours of August 8, hundreds of police and firemen surrounded MOVE headquarters. Using heavy construction equipment they tore down the barricades and knocked out the windows. With guns drawn, over 20 officers entered the first floor of the house, only to find that MOVE had taken refuge in the basement. Fire hoses and deluge guns were then turned on, flooding the basement with water. MOVE adults were forced to hold children and animals in their arms to keep them from drowning. Suddenly gunshots rang out and immediately bullets filled the air as police throughout the area opened fire. Officer James Ramp was struck and killed by a single bullet. Three other policemen and firemen were wounded. MOVE never fired any shots and no MOVE members were arrested with any weapons. 12 adults were arrested, all suffering physical abuse at the hands of the police, and 11 children had been in the house. As news cameras recorded the event, officers Joseph Zagame, Charles Geist, Terrance Mulvihill and Lawrence D'Ulisse severely beat MOVE member Delbert Africa while taking him into custody. Without provocation, Zagame smashed Delbert in the face with a police helmet as D'Ulisse connected with a blow from the butt of a shotgun. This knocked Delbert to the ground and he was then dragged by his hair across the street where the other officers set upon him, savagely kicking him in the head, kidneys and groin.

An afternoon conference was held at City Hall during which Police Commissioner Joseph O'Neill said Officer Ramp was killed by a shot in the back. Moments later a typed police press release was distributed stating that Ramp was shot in the chest. Rizzo displayed a table of firearms and claimed they were taken from the MOVE house. Some reporters noted the seemingly new condition of the weapons; others wondered what these guns were doing in the mayor's office rather than impounded in the police crime lab as evidence. No MOVE fingerprints were found on any of these weapons. Although destroying evidence of a crime is illegal, police bulldozed and leveled the house as soon as MOVE members were taken away. No efforts were made to preserve the crime scene, inscribe chalk marks, or measure ballistic angles. MOVE told Judge Merna Marshall that the destruction of the house prevented them from proving that it was impossible for any MOVE member to have shot officer Ramp. The Fred Hampton case in Illinois was cited, where the preservation of the crime scene enabled the estates of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark to prove that all offensive fire came from the police. Judge Marshall denied MOVE's petition and held them over for trial. Three defendants were tried separately and those who disavowed MOVE were released. MOVE protested that they were being held strictly because they were MOVE members rather than on any evidence that they had anything to do with the death of James Ramp. After refusing to disavow MOVE, Consuewella Dotson was later tried and sentenced to 10-20 years. Even though the MOVE members were in the basement when the gunfire occurred and only one bullet struck Ramp, Judge Malmed pronounced the remaining nine defendants guilty of the murder and sentenced each one to 30-100 years. On a radio talk show the next day, a caller (Mumia Abu- Jamal) asked Malmed, "Who shot James Ramp?", he replied, "I have no idea."

The police assaults and court hearings continued for several years, and one of the few media people to accurately report on MOVE and make a serious effort to understand the organization was Mumia Abu-Jamal, a highly regarded Philadelphia journalist and president of the Association of Black Journalists. Throughout the 1978 confrontation and resulting trials, Mumia continued to produce in-depth coverage of MOVE issues, often against the directives of his employers. On December 9, 1981, Mumia was found shot through the chest and badly wounded on a downtown Philadelphia street. Nearby lay a police officer, dead from gunshot wounds. During his subsequent arrest and treatment in a hospital, Mumia was abused and beaten by police. Mumia maintained his innocence and conducted his own defense until Judge Albert Sabo ruled he was being disruptive and ordered a court-appointed lawyer to take over the case. Mumia then refused to participate and the events at the crime scene were never fully determined. A jury found him guilty of first degree murder and gave him the death penalty. There has been an international call for the release of Mumia from what is regarded as an unjust sentence based on his association with MOVE.

The primary activity of MOVE now became securing the release of innocent members facing not only 30-100 years in prison, but the wrath of a vindictive prison system and its abusive guards. Several members went on hunger strikes to obtain the basic rights other inmates received. In post trial motions, court-appointed lawyers neglected to raise the illegality of the arrest warrants from the 1978 confrontation. Judge Edward Bradley admitted there were inconsistencies but declined to take any action. D.A. Ed Rendell outright refused to meet with MOVE and Councilman Lucien Blackwell and City Council Chairman Joseph Coleman were non-committal. Starting in 1982, MOVE was able to meet several times with City Managing Director Wilson Goode. After consulting a lawyer on MOVE's legal claims, Goode agreed that MOVE was innocent and promised to remedy the situation after he was elected mayor. Media refused to cover the issue and there was blackout on any information about MOVE. MOVE began publishing their own newspaper and using loudspeakers to inform people of the injustice and the City's conspiracy to eliminate them.

In 1984 Wilson Goode became mayor, then quickly reneged on his earlier promise and took no action as another confrontation with MOVE took shape. Anticipating how far the City would go to silence them, MOVE began fortifying their rowhouse at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia. At the same time, police made preparations for a murderous assault by secretly obtaining from the FBI over 37 pounds of C-4, a powerful military explosive, although this violated police regulations, FBI policies and federal law regarding transfer of explosives. Media suddenly began covering MOVE again, focusing on Osage Avenue neighbors' disagreements with MOVE rather than MOVE's longstanding legal dispute with the City. MOVE held a meeting with neighborhood residents in May, 1984 to explain their position and police stepped up their campaign of intimidation and harassment. Between June and October Alfonso Africa was arrested and beaten bloody several times by police. On August 8, 1984, hundreds of police and firemen spent the day surrounding the Osage block in what came to be viewed as a dry run for the later disaster, but MOVE would not be provoked. MOVE told negotiators they wanted at least one official to honestly investigate the unjust jailing of MOVE members, but officials and the media ignored this. On May 11, 1985, Judge Lynne Abraham signed arrest warrants on charges of disorderly conduct and terroristic threats. On Mother's Day, May 12, police evacuated the 6200 Block of Osage Avenue and towed away parked cars.

On Monday, May 13, 1985, police and firemen launched a full scale military assault on the MOVE rowhouse using tear gas, water cannons, shotguns, Uzi's, M-16s, silenced weapons, Browning Automatic Rifles, M-60 machine guns, a 20mm anti- tank gun, and a .50-caliber machine gun. Some of these weapons were illegally obtained with the help of the U.S. Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Agency. Between 6:00 and 7:30 am police fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition at the house knowing there were women and children inside. They also tried to blast through the walls with the military explosives the FBI had illegally provided. When none of these measures succeeded in driving MOVE from the house, a state police helicopter was used to drop a bomb on the roof. This started a fire that officials deliberately allowed to burn, burning down the entire block of some 60 homes. MOVE members repeatedly tried to exit but were met with police gunfire which killed some of the adults and children in the alley behind the house. Six adults and five children died. Also on May 13, 1985, police in Chester, PA in cooperation with Philadelphia, used tear gas to storm the Chester home of Alfonso Africa. The only adult present, his wife Mary, was arrested and their 5 children were taken away as police ransacked the house. The legal basis for this action was Judge Lynne Abraham's warrant for Alfonso, although he had been incarcerated since May 8 on charges of threatening officer James McDonnell (who previously shot Alfonso on June 10, 1984).

Ramona Africa was charged with conspiracy, riot and multiple counts of simple and aggravated assault. Although no testimony was presented indicating she ever held or fired a weapon, a jury found her guilty and Judge Michael Stiles sentenced her to 16 months to 7 years. Mayor Goode appointed a special commission to investigate the catastrophe, but it had no power to indict. Findings released in March, 1986 were highly critical of City officials and included extensive recommendations, but as years passed these were largely disregarded and forgotten. In 1986, D.A. Ron Castille impaneled a grand jury to investigate criminal wrongdoing on the part of the City. Notwithstanding 11 deaths, 60 homes burned to the ground, unauthorized possession and use of military explosives, and a fire that was deliberately allowed to burn out of control, Castille's grand jury followed his recommendations and returned not a single indictment. A federal grand jury investigating civil rights violations also returned no indictments. None of the investigations looked at earlier legal improprieties.

There are currently 9 MOVE members imprisoned by the PA penal system. Locked away in remote areas, far from the public eye, they have endured years of continuous physical and mental harassment. Delbert, Carlos and Chuck Africa were kept in solitary confinement over five years for refusing to violate MOVE belief by cutting their hair. At Muncy prison, MOVE women upheld their religious principles by refusing to give blood samples and were repeatedly put in solitary confinement, sometimes for as long as 3 years. Sadistic prison guards were delighted to inform Delbert, Janet, Sue, Phil, Janine and Consuewella Africa that some of their children were killed in the police assault on May 13, 1985. No MOVE members were involved in a 1989 Camp Hill prison riot, but Chuck Africa was singled out by correctional officers Bray, Cywinski and Lt. Komsisky, and while handcuffed and shackled, Chuck was brutally attacked and beaten. He was then transported incommunicado across the country until lodged at the maximum security prison in Lompoc, CA, until his return to PA 16 months later. Delbert, Phil and Edward Africa were also abruptly transferred out of state and weeks passed before their family learned of their whereabouts. Phil and Edward were shuffled through a number of prisons before arriving at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, KS. Delbert was eventually taken to the military prison at Fort Gordon, GA. They spent many months, and in Phil's case, over a year at these locations before being returned to Pennsylvania.

Lack of media coverage has given the Parole Board the power to demand the special stipulation for MOVE members at parole hearings that they may be paroled if they agree never again to associate with MOVE, even when the person's husband or wife is a member. All MOVE members have refused this stipulation and are doing/have done their maximum sentences.

After the tragic deaths and destruction the city caused in 1985, the vast publicity surrounding the disaster continually overlooked the fact that MOVE's original demand for justice in the 1978 confrontation remained unresolved. Now, Ed Rendell is the mayor of Philadelphia, and Judge Lynne Abraham is now D.A. Lynne Abraham. Judge Sabo has been called out of retirement in the City's efforts to ensure the murder of Mumia-Abu Jamal.
MOVE points out that in their over 20-year history, destruction and death have always been the work of the police, so inquiries as to the future likelihood of such occurrences should be directed to city officials. MOVE has never dropped a bomb, burned down a neighborhood or killed anyone, they have only demanded the release of innocent members. The City of Philadelphia has murdered 17 MOVE members, including adults, children, 1 baby and 4 miscarriages.
Nine MOVE members remain unjustly incarcerated on 30-100 year sentences.
 

Oliver Reginald Tambo

Born five years after the birth of the ANC, Oliver Reginald Tambo spent most of his life serving in the struggle against apartheid. 'O R', as he was popularly known by his peers, was born on 27th October 1917 in a rural town, Mbizana, in eastern Mpondoland in what was then the Cape Province (now Eastern Cape). His parents had converted to Christianity shortly before he was born.
At the age of seven he began his formal education at the Ludeke Methodist School in the Mbizana district and completed his primary education at the Holy Cross Mission. He then transferred to Johannesburg to attend St Peters College, in Rossettenville, where he completed his high school education.
From St Peters, Tambo went to study at the University College of Fort Hare, near Alice, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree in 1941. It was at Fort Hare that he first became involved in the politics of the national liberation movement. He led a student class boycott in support of a demand to form a democratically elected Student's Representative Council. As a consequence he was expelled from Fort Hare and was thus unable to complete his Bachelor of Science honours degree.

In 1942, he returned to St Peters College as a science and mathematics teacher. At St Peters he was to teach many who later were to, play prominent roles in the ANC. Among these were Duma Nokwe who became the first black South African Advocate of the Supreme Court and a Secretary-General of the ANC.
It was while he was in Johannesburg that Tambo threw himself body and soul into the ANC. He was among the founding members of the ANC Youth League (ANC YL) in 1944 and became its first National Secretary. He was elected President of the Transvaal ANCYL in 1948 and national vice-president in 1949.
In the ANCYL, Tambo teamed up with Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Ashby Mda, Anton Lembede, Dr William Nkomo, Dr C.M.Majombozi and others to bring a bold, new spirit of militancy into the post-war ANC. In 1946 Tambo was elected onto the Transvaal Executive of the ANC. In 1948 he, together with Walter Sisulu were elected onto the National Executive Committee. This was of great significance to the ANCYL's efforts to change the ANC.
Instrumental in achieving this transformation was the Programme of Action, piloted by the ANCYL from branch level to the 1949 national conference at Bloemfontein O.R. Tambo served on the Committee that drew up the Programme of Action, which was adopted as national policy in 1949.

The Programme of Action envisaged the transformation of the ANC from an organisation that held public meetings and occasionally petitioned the government to a campaigning movement that would draw in large numbers of people through mass actions, Involving civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts and other forms of non-violent resistance. It was through these means that the ANCYL hoped to change the ANC from an organisation addressing the African elite to a movement of struggle involving the mass of uneducated and unskilled Black workers.
Tambo left teaching soon after the adoption of the Programme of Action and set up a legal partnership with Neslon Mandela. The firm soon became known as a champion of the poor, victims of apartheid laws with little or no money to pay their legal costs.

During the Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws of 1952, Oliver Tambo was among the numerous volunteers who courted imprisonment by deliberately breaking apartheid laws. His law firm partner and colleague, Nelson Mandela was the National volunteer in chief.
The South African government's attempts to suppress the Defiance Campaign resulted in one of the first mass trials in South African legal history. Though he himself was not among the accused, Tambo was close to the trial. It resulted in the designation of Sisulu and others found guilty of organising the Defiance Campaign as statutory "Communists". (That is, though they were not Communists, in terms of the violations of the Suppression of Communism Act they had committed, the judiciary declared them "Communists" in terms of the statute.) One result was in 1955 Walter Sisulu, Secretary General of the ANC was banned in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act and ordered to resign his post as Secretary General.

Oliver Tambo was appointed to fill the post, pending ratification by the annual conference.

Hounded by banning orders and other restrictions, many of Tambo's peers were unable to attend the Congress of the People in June 1955.
Oliver Tambo was not only on the platform but also served on the National Action Council which headed the mobilisation for the COP. It was because of this role that Tambo found himself among the 156 accused in the marathon Treason Trial in 1956.
In 1958, Oliver Tambo left the post of Secretary General to become the Deputy President of the ANC. The following year, 1959, he like many of his colleagues was served with five year banning order. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, Tambo was designated by the ANC to travel abroad to set up the ANC's international mission and mobilise international opinion in opposition to the apartheid system.
Working in conjunction with Dr Yusuf Dadoo he was instrumental in the establishment of the South African United Front, which brought together the external missions of the ANC, the PAC, the SA Indian Congress and the South West African National Union (SWANU). As a result of a very successful lobbying campaign the South African United Front was able to secure the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961. After this initial success the SAUF broke up in July 1961.

Assisted by African government, Tambo was able to establish ANC mission in Egypt, Ghana, Morocco and in London. From these small beginnings, under his stewardship the ANC acquired missions in 27 countries by 1990. These include all the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the exception of China, two missions in Asia and one in Australasia.
The suppression of the 1961 stay-at-home strike led to the ANC adopting the armed struggle as part of its strategy. Tambo was again an important factor in securing the co-operation of numerous African governments in providing training and camp facilities for the ANC.
In 1965 Tanzania and Zambia gave the ANC camp facilities to house trained Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) combatants. In 1967, after the death of ANC President General Chief Albert J. Luthuli, Tambo became Acting president until his appointment to the Presidency was approved by the Morogoro Conference in 1969.
During the 1970s Oliver Tambo's international prestige rose immensely as he traversed the world, addressing the United Nations and other international gatherings on the issue of apartheid. He became the key figure in the ANC's Revolutionary Council (RC) which had been set up at the Morogoro Conference to oversee the reconstruction of the ANC's internal machinery and to improve its underground capacity.

When Portuguese colonialism collapsed in 1975, the ANC stood poised to take maximum advantage of the geo-political changes. Angola offered camp and training facilities for MK, and the long- standing relationship with Frelimo enabled the ANC to acquire diplomatic facilities close to South Africa.
In 1985 Tambo was re-elected ANC President at the Kabwe Conference. In that capacity he served also as the Head of the Politico-Military Council (PMC) of the ANC, and as Commander in Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Among black South African leaders, Oliver Tambo was probably the most highly respected on the African continent, in Europe, Asia and the Americas. During his stewardship of the ANC he raised its international prestige and status to that of an alternative to the Pretoria Government. He was received with the protocol reserved for Heads of State in many parts of the world.

During his years in the ANC, Oliver Tambo played a major role in the growth and development of the movement and its policies. He was among the generation of African nationalist leaders who emerged after the Second World War who were instrumental in the transformation of the ANC from a liberal-constitutionalist organisation into a radical national liberation movement.
In 1989 Oliver Tambo suffered a stroke, and underwent extensive medical treatment.
He returned to South Africa in 1991, after over three decades in exile. At the ANC's first legal national conference inside South Africa, held in Durban in July 1991, Tambo was elected National Chairperson of the ANC. He was also chairperson of the ANC's Emancipation Commission.
Oliver Reginald Tambo died from a stroke at 3.10am on 24 April, 1993.

The Right Excellent Paul Bogle

Paul Bogle lived at Stony Gut in St. Thomas. He was born before the abolition of slavery, probably between 1815 and 1820. Paul Bogle grew up when slavery was ending. The owners did not want the slaves to be free. They did not want them to own land. The people wanted to own land. They had to grow their food. The land would give them security and independence. Most people in St. Thomas were small farmers and laborers. Paul Bogle was better off than many people. He owned about 500 acres of land. He could read and write. He could also vote. Only 106 people in St. Thomas could vote at this time. When the slaves were made free, most of the rulers tried to keep them down. They made the people pay a lot of taxes, and they punished them badly. They did not give them fair trials in court. They did not think freed slaves should get justice or opportunities. Bogle was a friend of the people he wanted to share their problems and help them and they respected him.

Paul Bogle's neighbor was George William Gordon. Gordon was a big landowner and a politician, but he cared about poor people. So Paul Bogle voted for him and got other people to do so. Gordon was a Baptist, and so was Paul Bogle. In 1864, Gordon made Paul Bogle a deacon in the Baptist church.

Paul Bogle led a group of people from Stony Gut to Spanish Town to tell the governor about their problems. Governor Eyre turned them away. People in Stony Gut gave up hoping that the Government would help them Paul Bogle was their religious leader and their political leader. He gave them some military training.

One day, in 1865, two men from Stony Gut went for trial at Morant Bay Courthouse. Paul Bogle and some of his people went to support them. A man called out in the trial the police tried to arrest him, but Paul Bogle and his men came between them. The man got away. The police went to Stony Gut to arrest Bogle but the people would not let them. They fought the police and sent them back to Morant Bay.

Then Paul Bogle and his people marched to Morant Bay . They went to the courthouse while a council meeting was going on. Armed police and soldiers were on guard. A fight broke out, the guards fired and about 20 of Paul Bogle's people were killed or hurt. The others drove the guards back into the courthouse. They set fire to the courthouse, and killed people who tried to run away.

Paul Bogle And his people went back to Stony Gut. The Governor sent troops into Portland and St. Thomas to stop people from rebelling. They shot or whipped many people and burnt 1000 houses. Paul Bogle's followers killed a few people and burnt some estates. They could not really fight, because the soldiers were well trained and they had a lot of weapons. The troops destroyed Stony Gut, and Paul Bogle's chapel. Paul Bogle was captured and taken to Morant Bay where he was put on trial. Then he was hanged at the burnt-out courthouse. Four hundred and thirty-eight other people were hanged too. Bogle's friend George William Gordon was accused of helping to plan the rebellion and hanged as well.

The Morant Bay rebellion made the Government listen to the people. It forced the Government to try to make life better for them. The Government set up fair courts and it made the roads better. It let people have better education and better medical services. So Paul Bogle did not die for nothing . We honor Paul Bogle because he did his best to help the people of our country. He died for what he believed was right, Today we are grateful to him.
 

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due.

Born in 1898, Paul Robeson grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. His father had escaped slavery and become a Presbyterian minister, while his mother was from a distinguished Philadelphia family. At seventeen, he was given a scholarship to Rutgers University, where he received an unprecedented twelve major letters in four years and was his class valedictorian. After graduating he went on to Columbia University Law School, and, in the early 1920s, took a job with a New York law firm. Racial strife at the firm ended Robeson's career as a lawyer early, but he was soon to find an appreciative home for his talents.

Returning to his love of public speaking, Robeson began to find work as an actor. In the mid-1920s he played the lead in Eugene O'Neill's "All God's Chillun Got Wings" (1924) and "The Emperor Jones" (1925). Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, he was a widely acclaimed actor and singer. With songs such as his trademark "Ol' Man River," he became one of the most popular concert singers of his time. His "Othello" was the longest-running Shakespeare play in Broadway history, running for nearly three hundred performances. It is still considered one of the great-American Shakespeare productions. While his fame grew in the United States, he became equally well-loved internationally. He spoke fifteen languages, and performed benefits throughout the world for causes of social justice. More than any other performer of his time, he believed that the famous have a responsibility to fight for justice and peace.

As an actor, Robeson was one of the first black men to play serious roles in the primarily white American theater. He performed in a number of films as well, including a re-make of "The Emperor Jones" (1933) and "Song of Freedom" (1936). In a time of deeply entrenched racism, he continually struggled for further understanding of cultural difference. At the height of his popularity, Robeson was a national symbol and a cultural leader in the war against fascism abroad and racism at home. He was admired and befriended by both the general public and prominent personalities, including Eleanor Roosevelt, W.E.B. DuBois, Joe Louis, Pablo Neruda, Lena Horne, and Harry Truman. While his varied talents and his outspoken defense of civil liberties brought him many admirers, it also made him enemies among conservatives trying to maintain the status quo.

During the 1940s, Robeson's Black Nationalist and anti-colonialist activities brought him to the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Despite his contributions as an entertainer to the Allied forces during World War II, Robeson was singled out as a major threat to American democracy. Every attempt was made to silence and discredit him, and in 1950 the persecution reached a climax when his passport was revoked. He could no longer travel abroad to perform, and his career was stifled. Of this time, Lloyd Brown, a writer and long-time colleague of Robeson, states: "Paul Robeson was the most persecuted, the most ostracized, the most condemned black man in America, then or ever."

It was eight years before his passport was reinstated. A weary and triumphant Robeson began again to travel and give concerts in England and Australia. But the years of hardship had taken their toll. After several bouts of depression, he was admitted to a hospital in London, where he was administered continued shock treatments. When Robeson returned to the United States in 1963, he was misdiagnosed several times and treated for a variety of physical and psychological problems. Realizing that he was no longer the powerful singer or agile orator of his prime, he decided to step out of the public eye. He retired to Philadelphia and lived in self-imposed seclusion until his death in 1976.

To this day, Paul Robeson's many accomplishments remain obscured by the propaganda of those who tirelessly dogged him throughout his life. His role in the history of civil rights and as a spokesperson for the oppressed of other nations remains relatively unknown. In 1995, more than seventy-five years after graduating from Rutgers, his athletic achievements were finally recognized with his posthumous entry into the College Football Hall of Fame. Though a handful of movies and recordings are still available, they are a sad testament to one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century. If we are to remember Paul Robeson for anything, it should be for the courage and the dignity with which he struggled for his own personal voice and for the rights of all people.

Rosa Louise Parks (1913- )

African American civil rights activist. In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her action led to the Montgomery bus strike, which was the first large-scale, organized protest against segregation that used nonviolent tactics. Rosa Parks’ personal act of defiance opened a decisive chapter in the civil rights movement in the United States.

She was raised by her mother, Leona Edward McCauley, on her grandparents’ farm at Pine Level, a small community outside Montgomery. Rosa received her primary education in a segregated rural school. In 1924 she enrolled at the private Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, known as "Miss White's school" after its principal and cofounder, Alice L. White. All the students were African Americans, and all the teachers were white women from the North. "What I learned best at Miss White's school,” Parks later wrote in her autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), "was that I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black."

As a teenager she attended Booker T. Washington Junior High School in Montgomery, and participated in a high school program at State Teachers College (now Alabama State University). She dropped out at the age of 16 to care for her grandmother, who died soon after, and then for her ailing mother. In December 1932 she married Raymond Parks, a 29-year-old barber. Rosa Parks received her high school diploma the following year and helped support the family by sewing and doing other jobs.

Parks’s husband had long been active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization founded to improve the conditions for blacks in the United States. Parks became increasingly committed to racial justice as she and her husband joined the campaign to save the "Scottsboro boys"—nine young black men who were accused of raping two white teenagers near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. An all-white jury convicted the nine boys of the crime and sentenced eight of them to death, despite strong evidence of their innocence. All of the Scottsboro boys eventually gained their freedom, but the process took nearly 20 years.
In 1943 Rosa Parks became secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP. That year, she made her first attempt to register to vote, although she did not succeed until her third try, in 1945. She also had her first dispute with a local bus driver when she tried to defy a rule that required blacks to board buses from the back door.

A turning point in her life and in the history of the struggle for racial equality occurred on December 1, 1955. Parks was riding home from work on the Cleveland Avenue bus line in Montgomery when she refused to give up her place in the front row of the "colored section" to a white man who could find no seat in the section reserved for whites. Her refusal to move to the back of bus defied local ordinances and Alabama state statutes requiring segregation in public transportation. The driver called the police, and Parks was arrested, jailed, and eventually convicted of violating segregation laws. She was fined $10, plus $4 in court costs.
The black community in Montgomery was outraged by the case and organized a bus boycott that began as a one-day demonstration; it continued for more than a year. Protesters formed an organization called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a minister who had recently moved to the city. The MIA urged sympathizers not to ride on Montgomery’s segregated buses and helped them find other means of transportation. In November 1956 a federal court ordered the Montgomery buses desegregated. (See also Segregation in the United States)

The Montgomery boycott was successful and brought King to national attention. It also inspired other civil rights protests around the South, such as sit-ins at segregated restaurants. However, both Rosa and Raymond Parks lost their jobs and suffered repeatedly from harassment and threats. In August 1957 the couple moved to Detroit, Michigan. They had difficulty finding work during their first years in Detroit. Rosa Parks took in sewing and worked as a fund-raiser for the NAACP. In 1965 Democratic congressman John Conyers, Jr., hired her to work in his Detroit office. Parks remained on his staff until her retirement in 1988.

Rosa Parks remained active in the NAACP and in other civil rights organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), until advancing age slowed her down. She received numerous awards and tributes, including the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1970 and the prestigious Martin Luther King, Jr. Award in 1980. Cleveland Avenue in the city of Montgomery was renamed Rosa Parks Boulevard in 1965. In 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which provides scholarships and guidance for young blacks. In 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that the U.S. government can give to a civilian, and in 1999 she received the Congressional Gold Medal from the U.S. Congress. In January 1999 President Clinton invited Parks to sit with Hillary Rodham Clinton during the annual State of the Union address. During the speech President Clinton recognized the contributions of Parks, who received a standing ovation from the audience.

Satchel Paige
(1906-1982)
 

Satchel Paige was the nearest thing to a legend that ever came out of the Negro Leagues. The tall, lanky right hander parlayed a pea-sized fastball, nimble wit, and a colorful personality into a household name that is recognized by people who know little about baseball itself, and even less about the players who performed in the Jim Crow era of organized baseball. His name has become synonymous with the barnstorming exhibitions played between traveling black teams and their white counterparts.

A mixture of fact and embellishment, Satchel's stories are legion. From this rich array of folklore come stories of his pulling outfielders to sit behind the mound while he proceeded to strike out the side with the tying run on base; stories of him intentionally walking the bases loaded so that he could pitch to Josh Gibson, the most dangerous hitter in black baseball; stories of him repeatedly striking out the first nine batters he faced in exhibition games; stories of him throwing twenty straight pitches across a chewing gum wrapper that was being used for home plate; stories of him throwing so hard that the ball disappeared before it reached the catcher's mitt. And the stories go on. They are endless. But the facts are also impressive.

Satchel began his professional career in 1926 and soon thereafter established himself as a gate attraction and began playing the year around. His greatest popularity came when he joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords during the early 1930's and for whom he compiled marks of 32-7 and 31-4 in 1932-33. His stay there was interrupted with frequent salary disputes during which intervals Satch would barnstorm against all levels of competition.
Ultimately he jumped to the Dominican Republic, and then to Mexico, where he developed a sore arm in 1938. After signing with the Kansas City Monarchs, his arm "came back," and he also developed a curve and his famous hesitation pitch to add to his "bee-ball," "jump-ball," "trouble-ball," "long-ball" and the other pitches in his repertoire.

Satchel pitched the Monarchs to four consecutive Negro American League Pennants (1939-42), culminating in a clean sweep of the powerful Homestead Grays in the 1942 World Series, with Satchel himself winning three of the games. In 1946 he helped pitch the Monarchs to their fifth pennant during his tenure with the team. Satchel also pitched in five East-West Black All-Star games, being credited with two victories in the mid-season classic.

Bill Veeck finally brought him to the major leagues in 1948 as the oldest rookie ever to play major league baseball. He registered a 6-1 record with a 2.48 ERA to help pitch the Indians to the pennant and World Series victory that year. Veeck and Paige teamed up again, with the St. Louis Browns in 1951, where Satchel relaxed in his own personal rocking chair in the bullpen when not in action. Twelve years after making appearances in the All-Star games of 1952-53, Satch at the dubious age of 59, pitched three innings for the A's to become the oldest man to pitch in a major league game.
In 1971, on the proudest day of his life, Satchel was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, becoming the first player elected from the Negro Leagues.

Years played:
1926-50

Positions played:
pitcher

Teams:
Birmingham Black Barons, Baltimore Black Sox, Cleveland Cubs, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Kansas City Monarchs, New York Black Yankees, Memphis Red Sox, Philadelphia Stars

Shirley Chisolm

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (born 1924) was the first Black woman to serve in the United States Congress. She served as the representative for the 12th district of New York from 1969 until 1982. In 1972, when she became the first black woman to actively run for the presidency of the United States, she won ten percent of the votes at the Democratic National Convention.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Barbadian parents, Chisholm was raised in an atmosphere that was both political and religious. Her father was a staunch follower of the West Indian political activist Marcus Garvey, who advocated black pride and unity among blacks to achieve economic and political power. Chisholm received much of her primary education in her parents homeland, Barbados, under the strict eye of her maternal grandmother. Chisholm, who returned to New York when she was ten years old, credits her educational successes to the well-rounded early training she received in Barbados.

Attending New York public schools, Chisholm was able to compete well in the predominantly white classrooms. She attended Girls' High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a section of the city with a growing poor black and immigrant population. She won tuition scholarships to both Oberlin and Vassar, but at the urging of her parents decided to live at home and attend Brooklyn College. While training to be a teacher she became active in several campus and community groups. Developing a keen interest in politics, she began to learn the arts of organizing and fund raising. She deeply resented the role of women in local politics, which consisted mostly of staying in the background, sponsoring fund raising events, and turning the money over to male party leaders who would then decide how to use it. During her school years, she became interested in the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and eventually joined both groups.

After graduating cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1946 Chisholm began to work as a nursery school teacher and later as a director of schools for early childhood education. In 1949 she married Conrad Chisholm. She continued to teach but her political interest never waned. After a successful career as a teacher, Chisholm decided to run for the New York State Assembly in 1964. She won the election.
During the time that she served in the assembly, Chisholm sponsored 50 bills, but only eight of them passed. The bills she sponsored reflected her interest in the cause of blacks and the poor, women's rights, and educational opportunities. One of the successful bills provided assistance for poor students to go on for higher education. Another provided employment insurance coverage for personal and domestic employees. Still another reversed a law that caused female teachers in New York to lose their tenure while they were out on maternity leave.

Chisholm served in the State Assembly until 1968 and then decided to run for the U.S. Congress. Her opponent was the noted civil rights leader James Farmer. Possibly because Chisholm was a well-known resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Farmer was not, she won easily. Thus began her tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives from the 91st through the 97th Congress (1969-1982). Always considering herself a political maverick, Chisholm attempted to focus as much of her attention as possible on the needs of her constituents. She served on several House committees: Agriculture, Veterans' Affairs, Rules and Education, and Labor. During the 91st Congress when she was assigned to the Forestry Committee, she protested saying that she wanted to work on committees that could deal with the "critical problems of racism, deprivation and urban decay." (There are no forests in Bedford-Stuyvesant.)

Chisholm began to protest the amount of money being expended for the defense budget while social programs suffered. She argued that she would not agree that money should be spent for war while Americans were hungry, ill-housed, and poorly educated. Early in her career as a congresswoman she began to support legislation allowing abortions for women who chose to have them. Chisholm protested the traditional roles for women professionals--secretaries, teachers, and librarians. She argued that women were capable of entering many other professions and that they should be encouraged to do so. Black women, too, she felt, had been shunted into stereotypical maid and nanny roles from which they needed to escape both by legislation and by self-effort. Her antiwar and women's liberation views made her a popular figure among college students, and she was besieged with invitations to speak at college campuses.

In 1972 Chisholm made the decision that she would run for the highest office in the land--the presidency. In addition to her interest in civil rights for blacks, women, and the poor, she spoke out about the judicial system in the United States, police brutality, prison reform, gun control, politician dissent, drug abuse, and numerous other topics. She appeared on the television show "Face the Nation" with three other democratic presidential candidates: George McGovern, Henry Jackson, and Edmund Muskie. George McGovern won the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, but Chisholm captured ten percent of the delegates' votes. As a result of her candidacy, Chisholm was voted one of the ten most admired women in the world.
After her unsuccessful presidential campaign, Chisholm continued to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives for another decade. As a member of the Black Caucus she was able to watch black representation in the Congress grow and to welcome other black female congresswomen. Finally, in 1982, she announced her retirement from the Congress.
 

From 1983 to 1987 Chisholm served as Purington Professor at Massachusetts' Mt. Holyoke College where she taught politics and women's studies. In 1985 she was the visiting scholar at Spelman College, and in 1987 retired from teaching altogether. Chisholm continued to be involved in politics by co founding the National Political Congress of Black Women in 1984. She also worked vigorously for the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. "Jackson is the voice of the poor, the disenchanted, the disillusioned," Chisholm was quoted as saying in Newsweek, "and that is exactly what I was."
In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Chisholm as Ambassador to Jamaica, but due to declining health, she withdrew her name from further consideration.
 

Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure)

groups in the 1960s. One of the most radical of the civil rights leaders, Carmichael sought to unify blacks under a more militant agenda, advocating revolution if necessary. His views ultimately led him into the Pan-African movement; he changed his name to Kwame Ture and became an international spokesman for the All-African People's Revolutionary Party.

A native of the British West Indies, Carmichael moved to New York City's Harlem in 1952 and was educated at the elite--and at the time, mostly white--Bronx High School of Science. It was during his high school years that he became aware of the civil rights movement and the thwarted aspirations of many African Americans. In 1960 he entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. and began participating in the Freedom Rides sponsored by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). In 1964 he joined what was then the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), where he gained influence as the leader of a task force sent to increase black voter registration in Lowndes County, Mississippi. The task force helped raise the number of registered black voters in the predominantly black county to a number that surpassed the white populace. Carmichael later helped organize the Lowndes County Freedom organization, an all-black political party that adopted the panther as its symbol.

His activism came at a cost. He was arrested more than thirty times and was once sentenced to Mississippi's notorious Parchman Penitentiary, where he served forty-nine days. Sickened by the violence that was perpetrated on black protesters, Carmichael grew disenchanted with the sort of nonviolent actions that had become associated with the SNCC. When he became chairman of the group in 1966 he used his skills as a speaker to incite his listeners to a new level of radicalism. With "Black Power"as their slogan, a younger generation of African Americans began to make both demands and threats. "Adverse reaction was powerful and immediate," noted Kaufman. "After the integrationist, nonviolent speeches and sermons of Dr. [Martin Luther] King and others, few Americans, white or black, were prepared for the uncompromising demands of black militants who rallied to Carmichael's cry." Some groups contended that "Black Power" embodied racism in reverse.

Carmichael left SNCC in 1967 to join the more militant Black Panthers, an urban group whose political base was primarily found in the ghettos of American cities. Carmichael rose to the level of prime minister with the Black Panthers, yet took issue with the party's acquiescence towards white radicals, and in May of 1969 left the United States on a self-imposed exile to Guinea, West Africa. Carmichael resigned from the Black Panthers in July of the same year, stating in a publicly disclosed letter: "The party has become dogmatic in its newly acquired ideology and thinks that it has the only correct position. . . . Furthermore, the alliances being formed by the party are alliances which I cannot politically agree with, because the history of Africans living in the United States has shown that any premature alliance with white radicals has led to complete subversion of the blacks by the whites, through their direct or indirect control of the black organization."

By the late 1960s, Carmichael's politics were Pan-Africanist in nature, advocating a homeland in Africa for oppressed black minorities throughout the Western world. Although now more international in scope, his aims were no less radical. As Yohuru Williams put it in the Negro History Bulletin, Carmichael "forwarded an ideology that called for international revolutionary cooperation in the struggle against imperialism." It was during this period that Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture, a name that honored two African politicians with whom he had become close: Kwame Nkrumah, a former president of Ghana, and Sekou Toure, the president of Guinea. It was in Guinea that Nkruma founded the All African People's Revolutionary Party to which Carmichael devoted much of his energy in his later life.

Carmichael's 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, co-written with Charles V. Hamilton, examines the concept "Black Power" and its implications for the Civil Rights movement. The book advocates the need for blacks to reject the values of an American society fraught with racism, and to develop their own independent, self-supportive organizations. In the authors' words, Black Power "is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and to support those organizations. It is a call to reject the racist institutions and values of this society." Carmichael and Hamilton explain that the concept "rests on a fundamental premise: Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks." In the preface to Black Power, the authors state the urgency of their message: "This book presents a political framework and ideology which represents the last reasonable opportunity for this society to work out its racial problems short of prolonged destructive guerilla warfare." Reception of Black Power, as well as Carmichael's 1971 collection of speeches and essays, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism, was mixed, ranging from those who saw the book as a major document of revolution, to those who viewed Carmichael and Hamilton's proposals as non-revolutionary or in need of a more thorough analysis.

Early in 1996 Carmichael learned that he had prostate cancer. He underwent treatment in the United States, some of which was paid for by donations from well wishers. As long as he could he continued to travel and lecture, but he finally lost his battle with the disease in November of 1998. The Los Angeles Times quoted the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who called Carmichael "one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down."

Toussaint L ‘Ouverture

Social historian James G. Leyburn has said of Toussaint Louverture that "what he did is more easily told than what he was." Although some of Toussaint's correspondence and papers remain, they reveal little of his deepest motivations in the struggle for Haitian autonomy. Born sometime between 1743 and 1746 in Saint-Domingue, Toussaint belonged to the small, fortunate class of slaves employed by humane masters as personal servants. While serving as a house servant and coachman, Toussaint received the tutelage that helped him become one of the few literate black revolutionary leaders.

Upon hearing of the slave uprising, Toussaint took pains to secure safe expatriation of his master's family. It was only then that he joined Biassou's forces, where his intelligence, skill in strategic and tactical planning (based partly on his reading of works by Julius Caesar and others), and innate leadership ability brought him quickly to prominence.

Le Cap fell to French forces, who were reinforced by thousands of blacks in April 1793. Black forces had joined the French against the royalists on the promise of freedom. Indeed, in August Commissioner Sonthonax abolished slavery in the colony.

Two black leaders who warily refused to commit their forces to France, however, were Jean-Francis and Biassou. Believing allegiance to a king would be more secure than allegiance to a republic, these leaders accepted commissions from Spain. The Spanish deployed forces in coordination with these indigenous blacks to take the north of Saint-Domingue. Toussaint, who had taken up the Spanish banner in February 1793, came to command his own forces independently of Biassou's army. By the year's end, Toussaint had cut a swath through the north, had swung south, and effectively controlled north-central Saint- Domingue.
Some historians believe that Spain and Britain had reached an informal arrangement to divide the French colony between them-- Britain to take the south and Spain, the north. British forces landed at Saint-Nicolas. They besieged Port-au-Prince (or Port Reublicain, as it was known under the Republic) and took it in June 1794. The Spanish had launched a two-pronged offensive from the east. French forces checked Spanish progress toward Port-au-Prince in the south, but the Spanish pushed rapidly through the north, most of which they occupied by 1794. Spain and Britain were poised to seize Saint- Domingue, but several factors foiled their grand design. One factor was illness. The British in particular fell victim to tropical disease, which thinned their ranks far more quickly than combat against the French. Southern forces led by Rigaud and northern forces led by another mulatto commander, Villatte, also forestalled a complete victory by the foreign forces. These uncertain conditions positioned Toussaint's centrally located forces as the key to victory or defeat. On May 6, 1794, Toussaint made a decision that sealed the fate of a nation.

After arranging for his family to flee from the city of Santo Domingo, Toussaint pledged his support to France. Confirmation of the National Assembly's decision on February 4, 1794, to abolish slavery appears to have been the strongest influence over Toussaint's actions. Although the Spanish had promised emancipation, they showed no signs of keeping their word in the territories that they controlled, and the British had reinstated slavery in the areas they occupied. If emancipation was Toussaint's goal, he had no choice but to cast his lot with the French.

In several raids against his former allies, Toussaint took the Artibonite region and retired briefly to Mirebalais. As Rigaud's forces achieved more limited success in the south, the tide clearly swung in favor of the French Republicans. Perhaps the key event at this point was the July 22, 1794, peace agreement between France and Spain. The agreement was not finalized until the signing of the Treaty of Basel the following year. The accord directed Spain to cede its holdings on Hispaniola to France. The move effectively denied supplies, funding, and avenues of retreat to combatants under the Spanish aegis. The armies of Jean-Francis and Biassou disbanded, and many flocked to the standard of Toussaint, the remaining black commander of stature.

In March 1796, Toussaint rescued the French commander, General Etienne-Maynard Laveaux, from a mulatto-led effort to depose him as the primary colonial authority. To express his gratitude, Laveaux appointed Toussaint lieutenant governor of Saint-Domingue. With this much power over the affairs of his homeland, Toussaint was in a position to gain more. Toussaint distrusted the intentions of all foreign parties--as well as those of the mulattoes--regarding the future of slavery; he believed that only black leadership could assure the continuation of an autonomous Saint-Domingue. He set out to consolidate his political and military positions, and he undercut the positions of the French and the resentful gens de couleur.

A new group of French commissioners appointed Toussaint commander in chief of all French forces on the island. From this position of strength, he resolved to move quickly and decisively to establish an autonomous state under black rule. He expelled Sonthonax, the leading French commissioner, who had proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and concluded an agreement to end hostilities with Britain. He sought to secure Rigaud's allegiance and thus to incorporate the majority of mulattoes into his national project, but his plan was thwarted by the French, who saw in Rigaud their last opportunity to retain dominion over the colony.

Once again, racial animosity drove events in Saint-Domingue, as Toussaint's predominantly black forces clashed with Rigaud's mulatto army. Foreign intrigue and manipulation prevailed on both sides of the conflict. Toussaint, in correspondence with United States president John Adams, pledged that in exchange for support he would deny the French the use of Saint-Domingue as a base for operations in North America. Adams, the leader of an independent, but still insecure, nation, found the arrangement desirable and dispatched arms and ships that greatly aided black forces in what is sometimes referred to as the War of the Castes. Rigaud, with his forces and ambitions crushed, fled the colony in late 1800.

After securing the port of Santo Domingo in May 1800, Toussaint held sway over the whole of Hispaniola. This position gave him an opportunity to concentrate on restoring domestic order and productivity. Like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henri (Henry) Christophe, Toussaint saw that the survival of his homeland depended on an export-oriented economy. He therefore re-imposed the plantation system and utilized non-slaves, but he still essentially relied on forced labor to produce the sugar, coffee, and other commodities needed to support economic progress. He directed this process through his military dictatorship, the form of government that he judged most efficacious under the circumstances. A constitution, approved in 1801 by the then still-extant Colonial Assembly, granted Toussaint, as Governor-general-for-life, all effective power as well as the privilege of choosing his successor.

Toussaint's interval of freedom from foreign confrontation was unfortunately brief. Toussaint never severed the formal bond with France, but his de facto independence and autonomy rankled the leaders of the mother country and concerned the governments of slave-holding nations, such as Britain and the United States. French first consul Napoleon Bonaparte resented the temerity of the former slaves who planned to govern a nation on their own. Moreover, Bonaparte regarded Saint-Domingue as essential to potential French exploitation of the Louisiana Territory. Taking advantage of a temporary halt in the wars in Europe, Bonaparte dispatched to Saint-Domingue forces led by his brother-in-law, General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. These forces, numbering between 16,000 and 20,000--about the same size as Toussaint's army--landed at several points on the north coast in January 1802. With the help of white colonists and mulatto forces, the French outmatched, outmaneuvered, and wore down the black army. Two of Toussaint's chief lieutenants, Dessalines and Christophe, recognized their untenable situation, held separate parleys with the invaders, and agreed to transfer their allegiance. Recognizing his weak position, Toussaint surrendered to Leclerc on May 5, 1802. The French assured Toussaint that he would be allowed to retire quietly, but a month later, they seized him and transported him to France, where he died of neglect in the frigid dungeon of Fort de Joux in the Jura Mountains on April 7, 1803.

The betrayal of Toussaint and Bonaparte's restoration of slavery in Martinique undermined the collaboration of leaders such as Dessalines, Christophe. Convinced that the same fate lay in store for Saint-Domingue, these commanders and others once again battled Leclerc and his disease-riddled army. Leclerc himself died of yellow fever in November 1802, about two months after he had requested reinforcements to quash the renewed resistance. Leclerc's replacement, General Donatien Rochambeau, waged a bloody campaign against the insurgents, but events beyond the shores of Saint-Domingue doomed the campaign to failure.

By 1803 war had resumed between France and Britain, and Bonaparte once again concentrated his energies on the struggle in Europe. In April of that year, Bonaparte signed a treaty that allowed the purchase of Louisiana by the United States and ended French ambitions in the Western Hemisphere. Rochambeau's reinforcements and supplies never arrived in sufficient numbers. The general fled to Jamaica in November 1803, where he surrendered to British authorities rather than face the retribution of the rebel leadership. The era of French colonial rule in Haiti had ended.