Bobby Seale : Biography

Bobby Seale : Biography

Bobby Seale,  was one of the three children born to his mother, a homemaker, and his father, a carpenter. He  was born in Dallas, Texas, on 22nd October, 1936. During the Second World War the Seale family moved to Oakland, California.
After leaving Oakland High School he joined the United States Air Force. Seale served for three years until being court-martialed for disobeying the command of a colonel at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

In 1962 Seale entered Merritt College in Oakland, California. While a student he head Malcolm X speak at a public meeting. Influenced by what he heard, Seale joined the Afro-American Association and became active in the civil rights movement.
In 1966 Seale joined with Huey Newton to form the Black Panther Party (BPP). Initially formed to protect local communities from police brutality and racism, it eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group. The Black Panthers also ran medical clinics and provided free food to school children.

The activities of the Black Panthers came to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Hoover described the Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and in November 1968 ordered the FBI to employ "hard-hitting counter-intelligence measures to cripple the Black Panthers".
The Black Panthers had chapters in several major cities and had a membership of over 2,000. Harassed by the police, members became involved in several shoot-outs. In 1967 Huey Newton was found guilty of killing a police officer but his conviction was overturned 22 months later.

On 6th April, 1968 a carload of BPP members, including Bobby Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver, was ambushed by the Oakland police. A shoot-out lasted for over an hour before the Panthers surrendered. Soon afterwards the police shot Hutton more than twelve times.
In 1968 Seale was one of the radicals charged with conspiring to incite riots around the Democratic Party Convention which endorsed Hubert Humphrey as its presidential candidate to take on Richard Nixon. Seale's fellow defendants included David Dillinger (Liberation), Tom Hayden (Students for a Democratic Society), Rennie Davis (National Mobilisation Committee) and Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Youth International Party). When Seale repeatedly interrupted court proceedings the judge ordered him to be bound and gagged. Seale was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt of court.
While in prison Seale was charged with murdering Alex Rackley, a former Black Panther suspected of being a police informer. On 25th May, 1971, the trial ended in a hung jury and the judge ordered all charges against Seale to be dropped.
After being released from prison in 1972, Seale renounced political violence and concentrated on conventional politics. In 1973 Seale ran for mayor of Oakland and came second out of nine candidates with 43,710 votes.
Over the last twenty years Seale has worked on a variety of community projects and published several books including Seize the Time (1970), an autobiography, A Lonely Rage (1978) and Barbeque'n with Bobby (1987).

(1) Bobby Seale, Seize the Time (1970)
One Monday morning Huey Newton called me up and said, "Bobby, come over to the house right quick." I went over to the house. Huey showed me the papers. He said, "Look here, Mulford is up in the legislature now, trying to get a bill passed against us. We don't care about laws anyway, because the laws they make don't serve us at all. He's probably making a law to serve the power structure. He's trying to get some kind of law passed against us." He said, "I've been thinking. Remember when I told you we have to go in front of a city hall, in front of a jail, or do something like we did in Martinez, to get more publicity, so we can get a message over to the people?" This was Huey's chief concern, getting the message over to the people.
So Huey says, "You know what we're going to do?" "What?" "We're going to the Capitol." I said, "The Capitol?" He says, "Yeah, we're going to the Capitol." I say, "For what?" "Mulford's there, and they're trying to pass a law against our guns, and we're going to the Capitol steps. We're going to take the best Panthers we got and we're going to the Capitol steps with our guns and forces, loaded down to the gills. And we're going to read a message to the world, because all the press is going to be up there. The press is always up there. They'll listen to the message, and they'll probably blast it all across this country. I know, I know they'll blast it all the way across California. We've got to get a message over to the people."

Huey understood a revolutionary culture, and Huey understood how arms and guns become a part of the culture of a people in the revolutionary struggle. And he knew that the best way to do it was to go forth, and those hungry newspaper reporters, who are shocked, who are going to be shook up, are going to be blasting that news faster than they could be stopped. I said, "All right, brother, right on. I'm with you. We're going to the Capitol." So we called a meeting that night, before going up to the Capitol, to write the first executive mandate for the Black Panther Party. Huey was going to write Executive Mandate Number One.
(2) Bobby Seale, interviewed by CNN in August 1996.
I knew they (FBI) were watching us.... They heavily focused in on us when we started to grow so rapidly. We began to grow rapidly really after Martin Luther King was killed.... With Martin Luther King's death, by June, my party was jumping by leaps and bounds. In a matter of six months, we swelled; in 1968, from 400 members to 5,000 members and 45 chapters and branches.... Our newspaper swells to over 100,000 circulation. By mid-1969, we had a 250,000 circulation.
Why did the FBI come down on us? We started those working coalitions with other organizations at the beginning of 1968. Those coalitions solidified themselves. We had the Peace and Freedom Party working in coalition with the Black Panther Party; SDS: Students for a Democratic Society, all the anti-war movement people; numerous other organizations. In late 1968, we had a working coalition with the Poor People's March through Rev. Ralph Abernathy, with SCLC; we had a coalition with the Brown Berets, the Chicano organization, Cesar Chavez and others in the farm labor movement; AIM: American and Indian Movement; Young Puerto Rican Brothers, the Young Lords - we coalesced with everybody, you see. Because remember, we were dealing with "all power to all the people," not just black power....
So, with the Breakfast for Children Program spreading across the country, getting a lot of media play, the Preventative Medical Health Care Clinics, the doctors, the medics - I mean, this is authentic medicine, preventative medical health care clinics, the people donating their time. We got 5,000 full-time working members in the Black Panther Party, mostly college students; these were college students: I would say 60 percent of them were college students from after Martin Luther King was killed, because they were so upset and so mad that they killed Martin Luther King, they postponed their college education and said, "I'm joining the Black Panther Party."

(3) Bobby Seale, interviewed by CNN in August 1996.
Marxism didn't even come into play with our organization until we picked up a red book one day. But the Black Panther Party had nothing to do with it; it didn't evolve out of Marxism.... From 1962-1965, the Black Panther Party was based on a complete study and research of African and African-American people's history of struggle. That's truly what it came out of. If you notice, in our 10-point platform and program we make no Marxist statements.
In terms of the concept of economics at that time, what I developed best was a concept of community-controlled cooperatives in the black community, which largely I picked up from W.E.B. Dubois. So I mean, I sort of got there from W.E.B. Dubois and a few other reads. But Marxist-Leninism per se was really a latter development: not until 1968 that we really considered the Red Book required reading.



                             Bobby Seale (Documentary)
                           Staggerle: A Conversation with Black Panther Bobby Seale
                                 Detroit Black Journal - Bobby Seal
    Co founder of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale - From The Sixties To The Future.
                          Black Panther Co Founder, Bobby Seale

Black In Latin America'

Between 1502 and 1866, 11.2 million Africans disembarked from slave ships in the New World during the Middle Passage. Of those 11.2 million people, only 450,000 came to the United States. The rest of the African slaves who survived the journey were taken to the Caribbean, Latin America and South America.

"Brazil got 4.8 million slaves alone," says historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. "When I was growing up, I thought to talk about the slave trade was to talk about the experiences of our ancestors here in the United States. But it turns out that the real 'African-American experience' — judging by numbers alone — unfolded south of our borders."

That world, says Gates, is the one he wanted to explore in Black in Latin America, a book and four-part documentary series airing on PBS, which traces the cultural history and the lasting impact of the millions of slaves who arrived in Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico and Peru.

"The average American — and even the average academic and the average journalist — has no idea of the huge number of black people who landed south of the United States over the course of the slave trade," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

             A Spectrum Of Race

The descendents of slaves brought to Latin and South America, says Gates, don't identify as white or black the way many Americans do. In Brazil, there are 134 categories of blackness to describe someone of African descent.

"[They say], 'I'm not black. I'm murano [or] I'm kubuku,' he says. "You could say that these societies have refused to be locked into this ridiculous binary opposition between black and white the way we are here in America, and they've socially constructed race or ethnicity in a more subtle way than we could ever imagine."

In each of the countries Gates examined, there were also policies enacted to "whiten" the complexion of the country soon after receiving an influx of slaves. In Brazil for instance, 4 million white Europeans and 185,000 Japanese immigrants were allowed into the country between 1884 and 1939. Cuba and Mexico also had similar policies in place.

"They were trying to do two things," says Gates. "They wanted to bring in white families so that the white population would increase. But they also assumed, because so many of these indentured immigrants would be men, that interracial sexual liaisons would ensue — and indeed they did. So whitening was to be achieved in two ways — through white people marrying white people — and a browning movement, when a series of racial gradations would be created through interracial sexuality."

In many countries in Latin America, says Gates, race is no longer recorded as part of the census.

"But there's a slight problem with that," he says. "If because of historical reasons, the people who are disproportionately discriminated against happen to be that group of people with dark skin, kinky hair and thick lips, how do you count them if you don't have a census category?"

In both Mexico and Peru, political activists are fighting for the right to have race reintroduced in the federal census.

"Until that's done, political activists can't argue for affirmative action or more equal opportunity because they have no statistics," says Gates. "A great academic told me that he went to the government to complain about the lack of blacks in higher education, and he was told, 'We don't have racism because we don't have races.' And if you can't count the race, then you can't have racism. And that is the pernicious argument that they're trying to fight with this movement to expand the categories on the federal census."


       Black in Latin America E03, Mexico and Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet


             Black in Latin America - Episode 1 - Haiti & the Dominican Republic - An Isl


             Black in Latin America - Episode 2 - Cuba The Next Revolution


             Black in Latin America - Episode 3 - Brazil - A Racial Paradise


             Black in Latin America - Episode 4 - Mexico & Peru - A Hidden Race

A wonderful story for you

                 A wonderful story for you

 A woman came out of her house and saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard. She did not recognize them. She said "I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat." “Is the man of the house home?” they asked. “No," she replied. "He's out." "Then we cannot come in," they replied.

 In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. "Go tell them I am home and invite them in!" The woman went out and invited the men in" "We do not go into a House together," they replied. "Why is that?" she asked. One of the old men explained: "His name is Wealth," he > said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, "He is Success, and I am Love." Then he added, “Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you > want in your home." The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. "How nice!” he said. "Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!" His wife disagreed. "My dear, why don't we invite Success?" Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: "Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!" "Let us heed our daughter-in-law's advice," said the husband to his wife. "Go out and invite Love to be our guest."

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, "Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest." Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: "I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?" The old men replied together: "If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would've stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!!!!!!" MY WISH FOR YOU... Where there is pain, I wish you peace and mercy. Where there is self-doubting, I wish you a renewed confidence in your ability to work through it. Where there is tiredness, or exhaustion, I wish you understanding, patience, and renewed strength. Where there is fear, I wish you love, and courage.

Harry Belafonte - NAACP Spingarn Medal Recipient

Harry Belafonte has continued his consistent activism over the decades following in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for so long. He is to be commended and applauded for his longevity and integrity. He used his celebrity for the good of humanity. May he light the way for many others to follow in his footsteps. God bless him mightily.

NAACP IMAGE AWARDS HONORS HARRY BELAFONTE

Esperanza Spalding - Black Gold (OFFICIAL)

Are You Listening

Stevie Wonder with Take 6 - Love's in Need of Love Today (from "America:...

Dr. Keith L. Black

Keith L. Black Chairman and Professor, Department of Neurosurgery Director, Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute

Keith L. Black, MD serves as Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He also holds the title of Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery. An internationally renowned neurosurgeon and scientist, Dr. Black joined Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in July 1997 and was awarded the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience in November of that year. Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Black served on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) faculty for 10 years where he was a Professor of Neurosurgery. In 1992 he was awarded the Ruth and Raymond Stotter Chair in the Department of Surgery and was Head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program.

Dr. Black pioneered research on designing ways to open the blood-brain barrier, enabling chemotherapeutic drugs to be delivered directly into the tumor. His work in this field received the Jacob Javits award from the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health in June 2000. Dr. Black, along with patients undergoing the first clinical trials of the drug RMP-7, was profiled in 1996 on the PBS program, The New Explorers, in an episode called "Outsmarting the Brain". Dr. Black's other groundbreaking research has focused on developing a vaccine to enhance the body's immune response to brain tumors, use of gene arrays to develop molecular profiles of tumors, the use of optical technology for brain mapping, and the use of focused microwave energy to noninvasively destroy brain tumors. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in the Fall 1997 special edition "Heroes of Medicine".

Dr. Black serves on the editorial boards of the Neurological Research, Gene Therapy and Molecular Biology, Neurosurgery Quarterly and Frontiers In Bioscience. He was on the National Institutes of Health's Board of Scientific Counselors for Neurological Disorders and Stroke and was appointed to the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health from 2000 to 2004. He was also selected as a committee member of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Independent Citizens Oversight Committee from 2004-2006. He is also a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Neurosurgical Society of America and the Academy of Neurological Surgery. He also is a Founding Member of the North American Skull Base Society.


 Dr. Black has a unique ability to combine cutting-edge research and an extremely busy surgical practice. Since 1987, he has performed more than 5,000 operations for resection of brain tumors. Dr. Black has had a keen interest in science since childhood. At age 17, he published his first scientific paper, which earned a Westinghouse Science Award. He completed an accelerated college program at the University of Michigan and earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees in six years. He completed his internship in general surgery and residency in neurological surgery at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. Keith Black was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. Shortly thereafter his family moved to Auburn, Alabama, where his mother Lillian was a schoolteacher, and his father Robert was the principal of Boykin Street Elementary School. Though the Supreme Court had declared school segregation unconstitutional years before Keith Black was born, the state government of Alabama continued to mandate separate schools for black and white children. Robert did his best to circumvent the enforced segregation by employing an integrated faculty in his school, and encouraged his sons to swim in the "whites only" swimming pool. From an early age, Keith Black was fascinated by biology, and taught himself to dissect frogs. Encouraging his son's interest, Robert bought a cow's heart for his son to dissect. When Keith was ten, Robert Black moved his family to Cleveland, Ohio, seeking superior educational opportunities for his two sons. As a teenager, Keith joined an apprentice program at Case Western Reserve University to learn basic laboratory skills. While still in high school, he took a part-time job at Cleveland's St. Luke's Hospital. As an assistant to Frederick Cross and Richard Jones, inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve, he learned to perform transplant surgeries and heart valve replacements on laboratory dogs. In the course of his work in the Cross-Jones laboratory, he observed damaged red blood cells in patients with heart valve replacements. These observations formed the basis of Black's first scientific paper, published at age 17. The paper also won him the national Westinghouse Science Talent Search competition. After graduating from Shaker Heights High School, he was admitted to the University of Michigan Medical School's accelerated program, allowing him to complete an undergraduate degree and medical school in only six years.

At the beginning of his medical studies, he became fascinated by the workings of the brain. In addition to studying the anatomy of the brain, he pursued studies in chemistry, physiology, psychology, philosophy, religion and mysticism, in an attempt to grasp the mechanism of human consciousness. In the end, this multidisciplinary exploration led him back to an intensified study of the physical structure of the brain. For his medical specialty, he chose to pursue one of the most notoriously difficult areas of medicine, neurosurgery.

A newly minted doctor at age 24, Black remained at the University of Michigan to complete an arduous internship and neurosurgical residency. In 1987, he joined the medical school of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as an assistant professor of neurosurgery. Of all the challenges facing the neurosurgeon, the most difficult involve the removal of tumors from the brain: cut too much and the brain is permanently damaged; cut too little and the cancer will probably recur. Over the next decade, Keith Black attacked the problem from every possible angle, perfecting his dexterity as a surgeon while exploring breakthroughs in basic science to devise new strategies for combating brain cancer. Chemotherapies that proved successful in treating other cancers were largely ineffective in cases of brain cancer. The brain is protected by a dense mesh of capillaries, the so-called "blood-brain barrier" -- that diverts and dilutes most medications before they can enter the brain. Since medical school, Black had been fascinated by leukotrienes, naturally occurring compounds that enable swelling around traumatic injuries. Among other properties, leukotrienes cause the capillaries to leak. Black conjectured that similar substances, applied to the blood-brain barrier, could permit therapeutic chemicals to enter the brain. Unfortunately, leukotrienes affect the capillaries of healthy brain tissue as well as those of tumors, exposing the brain to the toxic effects of the chemicals. Undaunted, Dr. Black continued his search for a compound that would facilitate effective chemotherapy for brain cancer.

At last, Black identified a naturally occurring peptide called bradykinin. Unlike the leukotrienes, bradykinin only affects the blood vessels of cancerous tissue, allowing therapeutic chemicals to attack brain tumors without affecting the healthy tissue of the brain. In 1994, Dr. Black patented a novel therapy, employing RMP-7, a synthetic version of bradykinin. That same year, Dr. Black was appointed to an endowed professorship at UCLA, and named to head the school's Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program, where he expanded his search for new cancer therapies. After ten years at UCLA, Dr. Black moved to the neighboring Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to lead the newly formed Maxine Dunitz Neurological Institute. While running the Neurological Institute at Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Black also served for five years on the faculty of the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. By this time, his work had drawn national attention. He was profiled on the public television series The New Explorers, the magazine Esquire included him on its list of "The 21 Most Important People of the 21st Century," and TIME magazine featured him on the cover of a 1997 special edition, "Heroes of Medicine." At Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Black's search for new therapies produced a second major discovery. Previous research had revealed that many cancers are effectively blocked by the human immune system, but that certain brain cancers produce a substance that renders them invisible to the body's natural defenses. This substance, known as transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta), became the next target of Dr. Black's attention. He devised a novel therapeutic approach in which cancer cells are harvested from the individual patient, cultured, and genetically altered to remove their capacity for producing TGF-beta. Reintroduced into the patient's system, they stimulate the body's natural immune defenses. The immune system responds immediately to the re-engineered cancer cells, and continues attacking whatever cancer cells surgery or other therapies may have missed. Dr. Black has continued his exploration of the body's natural capacity to defend itself against cancer, extracting a patient's white blood cells and training them in the test tube to search out and destroy cancer cells. In laboratory rats, this process successfully eliminated glioblastomas, among the most pernicious brain tumors. Of the handful of surgeons who specialize in brain tumor surgery in the United States, few perform more than 100 surgeries over the course of a year; Keith Black typically performs more than twice that number in a given year. In the first two decades of his career he performed well over 5,000 such operations. In many cases, Dr. Black has saved the lives of patients with brain tumors that other surgeons believed were inoperable. He has pioneered a new surgical approach to clial chordoma, a deadly cancer that occurs at the base of the skull. Previously, surgeons could only reach these tumors by slicing though the brain, causing irreversible damage. Black pioneered a method of reaching the skull base through the nasal passage, extracting the cancerous tissue without touching the brain at all. In 2007, Dr. Black opened a new brain tumor research center at Cedars-Sinai, named for the late Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. The renowned defense attorney was a former patient of Dr. Black's and a longtime supporter of the center's fundraising efforts. At the Cochran Center, he continues to develop new approaches to the treatment of brain cancer. He has explored new uses of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, including three-dimensional and real-time imaging processes that enable the surgeon to identify and protect "eloquent" brain tissue -- responsible for thought, movement or speech -- during surgery. He has also made use of precisely targeted microwave radiation to kill cancer cells, a computer-driven technology that may someday be performed remotely, without requiring the physical presence of the surgeon in the operating room. Keith Black makes his home in Los Angeles, with his wife, Carol, who is also a distinguished physician. They have two children. Away from the laboratory and the operating room, Dr. Black shows a pronounced taste for outdoor adventure. He enjoys mountain climbing, whitewater rafting and skydiving. He has trekked through the Himalayas, rafted Africa's Zambezi River and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. His autobiography, Brain Surgeon, was published in 2009. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center - Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Mumia Abu-Jamal & Stephen Vittoria on the Smiley & West Show

Daniel Ellsberg: NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision is Part of "Systematic Assault on Constitution"

Daniel Ellsberg: NDAA Indefinite Detention Provision is Part of "Systematic Assault on Constitution"

BLACK HOLOCAUST

             THE BLACK HOLOCAUST PT.1


             THE BLACK HOLOCAUST PT. 2
              http://youtu.be/FtLn3hyOxIo

              THE BLACK HOLOCAUST PT.3


              THE BLACK HOLOCAUST PT.4 Forced Sterilization            


               THE BLACK HOLOCAUST PT. 5
                http://youtu.be/cBOk4I23x9c

               THE BLACK HOLOCAUST pt.6


                THE BLACK HOLOCAUST Pt.7
                 http://youtu.be/ceBw9l15jUY                

             

Black Holocaust Survivors?

                       Black Holocaust Survivors?
By Mary Mitchell on October 17, 2006 8:09 PM
Written by A. Tolbert, III

So much of our history is lost to us because we often don't write the
history books, don't film the documentaries, or don't pass the accounts
down from generation to generation.

One documentary now touring the film festival circuit, telling us to
"Always Remember" is "Black Survivors of the Holocaust" (1997). Outside the
U.S., the film is entitled "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" (Afro-Wisdom
Productions) . It codifies another dimension to the "Never Forget "
Holocaust story--our dimension.

Did you know that in the 1920's, there were 24,000 Blacks living in
Germany?

Neither did I.

Here's how it happened, and how many of them were
eventually caught unawares by the events of the Holocaust.

Like most West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in
the la te 1800's in what later became Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and
Tanzania. German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving
prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans
dead, following a 4-year revolt against German
colonization. After the shellacking Germany received in World War I, it was
stripped of its African colonies in 1918.

As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the
Rhineland--a bitter piece of real estate that has gone back and, forth
between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their
own colonized African soldiers as the occupying
force. Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon
thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.

Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German
women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler
wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards". When he came to
power, one of his first directives was aimed at
these mixed-race children. Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial
purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had
been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent
further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it.

Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory
sterilization program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims"
that, when he was forced to undergo sterilization as a teenager, he was
given no anesthetic. Once he received his
sterilization certificate, he was "free to go", so long as he agreed to
have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.

Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading
for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and
supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems
elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones.

Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign of
terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in
their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in
Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Lutwaffe pilots)!
Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and
shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so
packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food),
that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the
dead and dying.

Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs
conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held as
prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced
into dangerous labor (violating the Geneva
Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration
camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable-man the crematoriums
and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted. As a final
sacrifice, these Blacks were killed
every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner
workings of the "Final Solution".

In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved,
shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others.
As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who
was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and
then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates.
Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp
detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and
ill--conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was
"No, you can't have my life; I will fight for it."

According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine- Simms, there were Black
Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the
Northwest Rann--an organization of entertainers that fought the Nazis in
his home town of Dusseldorf--and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the
year that Hitler came into power.

Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in the
camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi
sterilization project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive
and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the Nazi
Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.

Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war
reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they
were German-born) . The only pension they get is from those of us who are
willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for
recognition and compensation.

After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi
regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final
insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle
trade, to slavery in America, to the gas
ovens in Germany.

We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of
it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights,
dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries.
We need to always remember so that we can take steps
to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.

For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in
Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.

The Olmec Untold American History

The African Holocaust - Dr John Henrik Clarke

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