African-American history: oppression, resistance, and building community.
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• Sankofa (Akan word of Ghana) or to return and recover it. In Black Studies refers to all research or disciplines having root in the history.
• History is the struggle and record of humans in the process of humanizing the world, i.e., shaping it in their own image interests.
• History reveals itself as a human practice directed in its diversity toward:• Self-construction• Social construction• World construction
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
• History doesn’t just happen, it is five forces in effect.
1. It is human.
2. It is social – societal interaction with others, themselves and nature.
3. Conflictual or full of contradictions w/ four major oppositions, nature, society, others and self.
4. It is fluid and changeable.
5. It can be managed, not necessarily controlled but decisions can be made to deliberately alter history.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
3.3 Origins in East Africa
Humans (homosapiens) originated in Southern and Eastern Africa and not Mesopotamia. Egypt, the Nile, around 8000 bce.
3.4 The Nile Valley Civilizations
Nubia, Egypt and Ethiopia are the flower/sources of HUMAN culture and development.
• Nubia (3900-320 bce) is divided into four main periods and cultures with capital cities. Pre-Kerma, Kerma, Napata, Meroe.
• Egypt was the greatest civilization in antiquity, for neither Sumer, Babylonia nor any other earlier civilizations equaled her achievement (Trigger, 1983; Gardiner, 1961). Major world contributions include: (next slide)
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
1. spirituality and ethics, giving the world some of its most important spiritual and ethical concepts.
2. excellence in stonemasonry and architecture which included massive works.
3. contributed to science and math.
4. In the discipline of art, the Kemites left countless examples of not only architecture of great aesthetic value, especially columns, temples, and palaces, but also fine paintings, reliefs and sculpture and literature.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
• Ethiopia/Aksum
Was once the name for the whole of Africa. Is known for economic and business interaction with southwestern Arabia (500 bce). Aksum’ rapid growth and expansion is linked to two factors, extensive trade and the development of iron technology (led to development agriculture and military practices.) Has remained a special land for Africa and the African diaspora into modern day.
3.5 The Western Sudanic Civilizations
Ghana, Mali and Songhai are characterized by similarity and continuity and their interaction with the Islamic world. They are defined by large and powerful armies, industrious rulers, scholarship (University of Timbuktu).
3.6 The Moorish Empire in Spain
Represents a Golden Age of Africa, Europe and the World. Jebel Tarik in 711 in Spain.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Black History: Africans in America
4.2 Egypt, Mali and the Olmecs
Evidence that Africans came to Americas as early as 1200 bce and on voyages between 800-700 bce and again in 1311 and 1312. They Came Before Columbus, Ivan Van Sertima asserts that Africans helped build the Olmeca Civilization, the parent civilization of MesoAmerica.
Olmec heads with Ethiopian style braids, pyramids, and much, much more, such as fleets leaving Africa and never returning.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Black History: Africans in America
4.3 The Holocaust of Enslavement
50 to 100 million African lives were lost through mass murder, war and forcible transfer of populations AND the dehumanization and cultural destruction. This violent tragedy is distinct from the commercial aspect of slavery.
Three basic ways the Holocaust of enslavement expressed itself.
1. Morally monstrous destruction of life, millions of persons killed, whole peoples destroyed.
2. Morally monstrous destruction of human culture – cities, towns, villages, great works of art literatures.
3. Morally monstrous destruction human possibility.
“IT IS, IN A WORD, THE TRANSFORMATION OF PEOPLE INTO THINGS AND THUS ENGINEERING THEIR SOCIAL DEATH.”
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Slave versus enslaved African and affirm cultural identity and indicate that the African was enslaved, that s/he is a slave by social imposition and not nature. To say slave suggests a permanent and natural condition.
Impact of the Enslavement
1. Depopulation through mass murder societal disruption and destruction, and forced transfer of populations, especially in Angola and parts of West Africa.
2. the Holocaust of enslavement caused the loss of youth and skilled personnel, thus affecting the scientific, technological and cultural progress of Africa.
3. the Holocaust of enslavement affected economic activity. It not only interrupted and destroyed markets and industries, but grafted African economies on and subordinated them to the commerce and violence of enslavement, leaving other branches of the economic activity under-attended or unattended .
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Impact of the Enslavement
4. As a source of constant war and violence, it created and sustained patterns of destruction of life and material achievements as well as conditions of uncertainty and insecurity which accompanied them.
5. The European imposition of enslavement led directly to the underdevelopment of Africa and overdevelopment of Europe.
Enslavement Basis and System
1. Its profitability 2. its practicality 3. its justifiability in European racist thought
Can be defined by: 1. the extent of its brutality 2. its cultural genocide 3. its machinery of control. Brutality of enslavement is expressed on a physical, psychological and sexual level. “Breeding” and rape was inflicted, especially on women.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Implication of Patterson’s definition of enslavement as - the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons. He points out the need to concretely and symbolically dishonor the enslaved person and to humiliate and undermine the sense of self and connectedness with one’s own community.
Second major aspect of American enslavement is the cultural genocide against Africans. By cultural genocide is meant, the wholesale intentional destruction of a people‘s culture and cultural identity and their capacity to produce, reproduce and expand themselves.
5 Mechanisms of Control: 1. laws, 2. coercive bodies, 3. the church, 4. politically divisive strategies, 5. plantation punishments.
Resistance to enslavement
Began in Africa by free Africans and the enslaved. Differences in enslaved rebellion in the US vs. other plantations are many.Resistance come in 5 major forms: 1. cultural, 2. day-to-day, 3. abolitionism, 4. emigrationism, and 5. armed struggle.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Cultural Resistance: 1) cultural retention and synthesis; 2) cultural creation; and 3) maintenance and development of a family against all odds. Blassingame observes that most distinctive survivals or retentions are dances, moral narratives, music, magic and language patterns and spiritual beliefs.
Day-to-Day Resistance: include sabotage, i.e., breaking tools and destroying crops, shamming illness or ignorance, taking property, spontaneous and planned strikes, work slow-downs, self-mutilation, arson, attacks on whites and poisoning of slaveholders and their families. Also, this form included suicide and infanticide and flight.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Abolitionism: 1) fundraising efforts for purchase, aid and legal defense of enslaved Africans and anti-enslavement literature; 2) provision of security forces for defense and anti-enslavement rallies and to prevent kidnappings of fugitive and free Africans by former holders and catchers of enslaved Africans; 3) a massive publication effort including at its height major narratives of enslaved Africans, anti-enslavement books and 17 newspapers, including the first Black paper in the U.S., Freedom‘s Journal, 1827; 4) establishment of a distinguished speakers bureau of both formerly enslaved and free Africans to disseminate information and call for support in the struggle in the U.S., Canada and throughout Europe; 5) boycott efforts against products which though largely unsuccessful were significant as an expression of exhausting all avenues; 6) establishment of legal committees to defend free and enslaved Africans against enslavement and return; 7) establishment of vigilance committees, self-help and mutual aid societies to aid formerly enslaved Africans in adjusting to freedom; and 8) the building and maintenance of the Underground Railroad, a system of freeing, transporting and placing formerly enslaved Africans in the North or Canada.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Emigrationism: essentially a white initiated and dominated organization which had supported the founding of Liberia and advocated that all Blacks including free Blacks return to Africa. The free Africans opposed this wholesale immigration for four basic reasons: 1) they saw it as a way to get rid of free Blacks to better secure slavery; 2) they considered it their duty to stay and fight for emancipation; 3) they assumed it would give weight to the arguments of Black inferiority and inability to cope with ―civilization; and 4) they reasoned that they were as much Americans as whites in terms of their contribution and birth. Given these strong positions and fear of emigrationist sentiments being manipulated by racists wanting to get rid of all Blacks, emigrationism lost much of its appeal and appeared strongest at times of extreme oppression and anti-Black agitation.
Armed Resistance: In addition to revolts, four other basic forms stand out: ship mutinies, guerilla warfare, Afro-Mexican alliance and struggle, and Afro-Native American alliance and struggle.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Civil War & Reconstruction: In this decade, a series of events made war almost inevitable. First, was the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law which made the fugitive guilty until proven innocent, denied his/her testimony and was retroactive (Collison, 1998; Von Frank, 1998). Secondly, in 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1850 which prohibited enslavement in the Kansas-Nebraska Territory. This increased the bloody struggle in the territory and foreshadowed larger battles. Thirdly, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case (1857) that neither free nor enslaved Africans were citizens and had no rights whites were bound to respect. Fourthly, John Brown, a white radical abolitionist attacked Harper‘s Ferry in 1859 to gain arms for at least 500 enslaved Africans and wage a war in the South.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Eventually, however, the efforts to reconstruct the life of the African American and the South on the basis of freedom, justice and equality, failed for several reasons. (Harding, 1981:Chapter 16). These included: 1) the failure of the federal government to give Blacks land and equipment, thus forcing them into semi-enslaved status; 2) the return of Southerners to status of respect represented by the repeal of the loyalty oath requirement for re-entering national political life; 3) the rise of the white terrorist societies like the KKK and the Camelias in spite of the 1870 and 1871 laws against such societies; 4) the Supreme Court‘s eroding constitutional and legislative gains for Blacks through rulings favorable to the South; 5) the disintegration of the old coalition of abolitionists, Radical Republicans and northern industrialists through fatigue, retirement, disenchantment and the push for social peace in the South which would allow economic growth; and finally, 6) the Hayes-Tilden Compromise in 1877 which saw President Hayes grant the South federal troop withdrawal, assistance in internal improvements and better representation in Congress for its electoral votes. In 1878, federal troops were withdrawn leaving Blacks at the mercy of racist governments and terrorist societies. In 1896 the Supreme Court issued its Plessy vs. Ferguson decision, the ―separate but equal doctrine that lasted until 1954 with the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision.
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
THE TRAGEDY AND AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
In your opinion, was FEMA created to help civilians in times of crisis OR was it created to prevent dissent?
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
Karenga, Maulana. “Black History: A Critical Review.”
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