Those Who Blazed A Trail.
Click on a picture to read the bio.
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).
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.
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. 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 332nd 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 332nd 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 332nd "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 332nd 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 477th Composite Group and the 332nd 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. 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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."
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