Mary McLeod Bethune

Educator, politician, and social visionary, Mary McLeod Bethune was one of the most prominent African American women of the first half of the twentieth century--and one of the most powerful. 

When Mary McLeod Bethune switched her party registration from Republican to Democrat, she led thousands of other black Americans to do the same. She is one of the people who helped make the solid black Democratic voting bloc we have today.
This was a woman who never bit her tongue, but who knew the inner workings of Washington politics, and moved with ease between the classroom and four presidential administrations.

by Denise Oliver Velez   On Daily Kos

"We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force." My Last Will and Testament

These words were spoken by a woman who advised four presidents, who spearheaded a women’s movement, fought for health care for the poor, and who was totally committed to education, especially the education of young black women.

That woman was Mary McLeod Bethune.

In her last will and testament she wrote, "We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends."

We are all very familiar with larger than life portraits of black leaders—primarily male, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and most of us can at least quote from his "I have a dream" speech. We often cite powerful black male leaders like Frederick Douglass,  Paul Robeson or Malcolm X.

Too often, one of the most powerful women in our nation’s history is overlooked. This is the woman who was the mentor to Dorothy Height.

This was a woman who trail-blazed a path to become the founder of, and only woman in, FDR's "black cabinet"

One of the most well-known members and only woman among the young, ambitious men was Ms. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune. "Ms. Bethune was a Republican who changed her party allegiance because of Franklin Roosevelt.". Ms. Bethune was very closely tied to the community and believed she knew what the African Americans really wanted. She was looked upon very highly by other members of the cabinet, and the younger men called her "Ma Bethune." Ms. Bethune was a personal friend of Mrs. Roosevelt and, uniquely among the cabinet, had access to the White House.

Bethune played a dual role as close and loyal friend of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt respected Bethune to the extent that the segregation rules at the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in 1938, being held in Birmingham, Alabama, were changed on Roosevelt's request so she could sit next to Bethune. Roosevelt frequently referred to Bethune as "her closest friend in her age group." Bethune, in her turn took it upon herself to disperse the message of the Democratic Party to black voters, and make the concerns of black people known to the Roosevelts at the same time. She had unprecedented access to the White House through her relationship with the First Lady. She used it to form a coalition of leaders from black organizations called the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, but which came to be known as the Black Cabinet. The role of the Black Cabinet was to serve as an advisory board to the Roosevelt administration on issues facing black people in America. It gathered talented blacks in positions within federal agencies, creating the first collective of black people enjoying higher positions in government than ever before. It also served to show to voters that the Roosevelt administration cared about black concerns. The group gathered in Bethune's office or apartment and met informally, rarely keeping minutes. Although as advisers they had little role in creating public policy, they were a respected leadership among black voters and were able to influence political appointments and disbursement of funds to organizations that would benefit black people.

Bethune's relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt greatly enhanced Bethune's status and gave her greater access to political leaders than other black advisers in the Roosevelt administration. More important, as a government administrator, Bethune learned about the inner workings of the American political process firsthand and gained knowledge she would use to bring African American men and women into the process and to keep issues of concern to African Americans on the national political agenda.

Bethune expanded her political connections by serving as well on various nonpartisan committees dealing with black children and education between 1928 and 1933. In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge named her as a delegate to a child welfare conference held in Washington, D.C. President Herbert Hoover later named her as a member of his National Committee on Child Welfare, an extension of the American Child Health Association (ACHA). As a member of the ACHA committee, Bethune worked with other members to design national surveys on health conditions, infant mortality, and public health programs. The dismal results of these surveys led to the establishment of Child Health Day, a campaign to improve America's milk supply, institute training programs for midwives, and lobby for legislation to regulate child labor.

Bethune understood the importance of political participation. In the early 1900s, the battle for women's suffrage was underway, but there was little role for African-American women, especially in the South. In 1912 Bethune joined the Equal Suffrage League, an offshoot of the National Association of Colored Women. In an era when even African-American men couldn't vote, a frustrated Mary had to sit back and watch as white-dominated organizations marched and protested nationwide. But in 1920, after passage of the 19th amendment, the time for action had come. Bethune believed that if African-American women were to vote, they could bring about change. Riding a bicycle she had used when she was raising money for her school, she went door to door raising money to pay the poll tax. Her night classes provided a means for African-Americans to learn to read well enough to pass the literacy test. Soon one hundred potential voters had qualified. The night before the election, eighty members of the KKK confronted Bethune, warning her against preparing African-Americans to vote. Bethune did not back down, and the men left without causing any harm. The following day, Bethune led a procession of one hundred African-Americans to the polls, all voting for the first time.

The story of her defiance of the Klan spread, and soon she was in demand as a speaker for the rights of African-Americans. Meeting many prominent people was in some ways an eye-opener for her. She met the African-American leader and scholar W.E.B. Dubois, and after hearing him comment that because of his race he couldn't even check out one of his own books from a southern library, she made her own school library available to the general public. This was the only free source of reading material for African-Americans in Florida at that time.

Mary McLeod Bethune (right) inspired young women such as her protégé Dorothy Irene Height (left) to pursue civil rights activism.

In 1935 Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in New York City, bringing together representatives of 28 different organizations to work to improve the lives of black women and their communities. Bethune said of the council:

"It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy."

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune was born on July 10, 1875, 10 years after the end of the civil war, in Mayesville, SC. Born into a large family she was the daughter of Samuel McLeod and Patsy McIntosh, former slaves.
Her parents were owned by different masters. Before their marriage her father Samuel had to work to "buy" his bride. Samuel and his wife Patsy had 17 children in all. Sadly, while they were slaves the children were sold to other masters when they became old enough to work.

Her parents could not read or write, but after emancipation, worked hard to re-assemble their children on a small farm that Samuel was able to purchase.
And Mary got the opportunity to learn to read.

When Mary was about eleven, the Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church opened a school for African-American children. It was about four miles from her home, and the children had to walk back and forth to school, but Mary wanted to go. Her mother commented that some of the children had to be forced to attend, but not Mary, who was well aware of her family's relative poverty. Mary saw education as the key to improving the lives of African-Americans. An incident that occurred when she was quite young may explain this. Mary picked up a book while she was playing with a white child whose parents employed Mary's mother. The white child grabbed the book and told Mary she couldn't have it because African-Americans couldn't read. For Mary, education became the answer to the question, how can African-Americans move up the ladder in American society?

Bethune later received a scholarship to the Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College), a school for girls in Concord, North Carolina. After graduating from the seminary in 1893, she went to the Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions (also known as Moody Bible Institute) in Chicago. Bethune complete her studies there two years later. Returning to the South, she began her career as a teacher.

For nearly a decade, Bethune worked as an educator. She married fellow teacher Albertus Bethune in 1898. The couple had one son together—Albert Mcleod Bethune—before ending their marriage in 1907. She believed that education provided the key to racial advancement. To that end, Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona, Florida, in 1904. Starting out with only five students, she helped grow the school to more than 250 students over the next years.Eventually the school blossomed to include a farm, high school, and nursing school.

In 1923, the school merged with the all-male Cookman Institute of Jacksonville and eventually became Bethune-Cookman College, a four-year, coeducational institution. Bethune served as the college's president until 1942 and again from 1946-47. At the same time, Bethune also cemented her position as a leader in African American education and the African American women's club movement by serving as president of state, regional, and national organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women.
       
                    Mary McLeod Bethune History



                      Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial

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Martin Luther King Jr.

       
         The music of  Dr. King Playlist

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Although Dr. King's name was mistakenly recorded as "Michael King" on his birth certificate, this was not discovered until 1934, when his father applied for a passport. He had an older sister, Willie Christine (September 11, 1927) and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel (July 30, 1930 – July 1, 1969). King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. He entered Morehouse College at age fifteen, skipping his ninth and twelfth high school grades without formally graduating. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.) degree in 1951. In September 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) on June 5, 1955 .

In 1953, at age 24, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with the Jim Crow laws that required her to give up her seat to a white man. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by E. D. Nixon (head of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and led by King, soon followed. In March 1955, a 15 year old school girl, Claudette Colvin, suffered the same fate, but King did not become involved. The boycott lasted for 381 days, the situation becoming so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on all public transport.

King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King continued to dominate the organization. King was an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent civil disobedience used successfully in India by Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, and he applied this philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrote The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived.

Attributing his inspiration for non-violent activism to the example of Mahatma Gandhi, he visited the Gandhi family in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America’s struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.”

The FBI began wiretapping King in 1961, fearing that Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over six years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.

King correctly recognized that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that made the Civil Rights Movement the single most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out in often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and 1962, where divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts; in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963; and in the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964. King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.

On several occasions Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a view that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. Speaking to Alex Haley in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of US$50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups. He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils." His 1964 book Why We Can't Wait elaborated this idea further, presenting it as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor.

Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church — exactly one year before his death — King delivered Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. In the speech he spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." But he also argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes:“ A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just.

King was long hated by many white southern segregationists, but this speech turned the more mainstream media against him. Time called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi", and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

With regard to Vietnam, King often claimed that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands." King also praised North Vietnam's land reform. He accused the United States of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children."


The speech was a reflection of King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, sparked in part by his affiliation with and training at the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center. King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation. Toward the end of his life, King more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. Though his public language was guarded, so as to avoid being linked to communism by his political enemies, in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism:“ You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry… Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong… with capitalism… There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.

King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism," he also rejected Communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism," and its "political totalitarianism."

King also stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech: "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. However, according to the article "Coalition Building and Mobilization Against Poverty", King and SCLC's Poor People's Campaign was not supported by the other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Bayard Rustin. Their opposition incorporated arguments that the goals of Poor People Campaign was too broad, the demands unrealizable, and thought these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black.

The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington—engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be—until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."


King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor"—appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness." His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of racism, poverty, militarism and materialism, and that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."

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2014 KWANZAA CELEBRATIONS - NC

                                2014 KWANZAA CELEBRATIONS - NC

        20th annual Kwanzaa Celebration
Tuesday, December 30, 2014, 11 a.m.

Cary Arts Center
Free & open to the public

Don't miss the 20th Annual Cary Kwanzaa Celebration! Cary Kwanzaa is a communal, cultural celebration that honors African-American people and their heritage. This year’s celebration will feature a Vendor Market and Children's Village from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.  The Kwanzaa Ceremony with performance by Chuck Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble will be at 3 p.m.

Kwanzaa is a celebration for all people, focusing on family, friends and the fruits of the earth. During Kwanzaa, people are invited to ponder the Nguzo Saba, seven powerful principles derived from African heritage, as a means of taking stock, celebrating achievements and entering the future refreshed and renewed.

The Ujima Group, Inc. in partnership with the Town of Cary will host its 20th Kwanzaa Celebration at the Cary Arts Center, 101 Dry Avenue located in downtown Cary, NC. 2014.
The theme for this year’s celebration is “African Legacies Revealed” and will feature a performance by Chuck Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble. In the tradition of every Kwanzaa celebration there will be a procession of the elders and the Harambee Circle.
Kwanzaa is a community cultural celebration that pays tribute to the African- American heritage by calling into practice seven values – unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
There will be fun and activities for the entire family -- young and old. Doors open at 11:00 am for the vendor marketplace and Children’s Village. The program and performance begins promptly at 3:00 p.m.
http://www.wral.com/entertainment/out_and_about/event/14119764/#OQp4CxzlO6FfSXSe.99

Contact Robbie Stone
robbie.stone@townofcary.org
Cary Arts Center
(919) 460-4969

                         Kwanzaa Celebration

                                                                                                         Tuesday, December30, 2014

                                                                                                       
                                       6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
                                       Holton Career  Resource Center
                                       401 N. Driver St.
                                               Free Admission

 Kwanzaa is a celebration of family, community and culture centered on seven basic principles that serve as building blocks for peace and progress within neighborhoods.

Durham Parks and Recreation will honor members in our community that represent each of the seven Kwanzaa principles.  The celebration will be held on the fifth day of Kwanzaa in recognition of the principle of Nia meaning (purpose).

The event will be hosted by Zayd Malik Shakur and there will be a host of family friendly activities. There will be performances by The Magic of African Rhythms and the Al Strong Trio (Jazz).

For details, contact Alberto Carrasquillo by email or call (919) 354-2750.

                  Kwanzaa Charlotte, NC

                Kwanzaa Greensboro, High Point, Winston Salem

                Kwanzaa Celebration
Tuesday, December 30   Nia (Purpose)
6:00 pm  -  Grace Presbyterian Church
3901 Carver School Road, Winston-Salem
Speaker and Honoree: Attorney S. Wayne Patterson
Sponsor: Grace Presbyterian Church
Contact: 336-722-4399, 767-7530
 Experience African dance and drumming with the Otesha Creative Arts Ensemble and a pot luck supper!

                         Kwanzaa Celebration
Wednesday, December 31   Kuumba (Creativity)
1:00 pm  -  Arts Council Theatre,
610 Coliseum Drive, Winston-Salem
Honoree: Sam Art Williams, Playwright,
Screen Writer, Stage/Film and TV actor
Sponsors: NC Black Repertory Theatre Company
& Forsyth County Public Library
Contact: 336-703-2953 

 Enjoy performances by the NCBR Teen Theatre and taste the delicious foods of the Karamu Feast!

 12/26/2014 - 1/1/2015 See details for times, at Bethel AME Church 200 N. Regan Street, Greensboro
The Greensboro Kwanzaa Collec 12/26/2014 - 1/1/2015 See details for times, at Bethel AME Church 200 N. Regan Street, Greensboro
The Greensboro Kwanzaa Collective has planned a great lineup of inspiring, family-friendly, and culturally-rich events for the entire Seven-Day Celebration Season! There will be the customary libation and candle-lighting ceremony, storytelling, drumming and dancing along with opportunities for community building and sharing, an African Marketplace, arts and crafts for the children, face painting, delicious food tasting, and much more! Whether you are a veteran of the holiday or a novice who is eager to learn, the Greensboro Kwanzaa Collective cordially invites you to celebrate Kwanzaa with us. Please join us for what promises to be an enjoyable and enriching experience for the entire family. You do not want to miss it!!!

  Cost: Free and Open to the Public
  Need more information?  336-215-1140    info@gsokwanzaacollective.org
  www.indigoscac.org/gsokc/

African American Dance Ensemble's Kwanzaafest 2015
Thursday, Jan 1, 2015 12:00p Durham ArmoryDurham, NC

Dr. Chuck Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble will be celebrating Kwanzaafest 2015 at the Durham Armory on January 1, 2015. The doors will open at 12 noon, the program to begin at 2:00pm.
All donated toietry items will be giving to The Caring House of Durham and all donated canned foods will be giving to CAARE, Inc.

This FREE performing arts extravaganza will take place on the last day of Kwanzaa which means Imani (ee-MAH-nee) or Faith. In celebration of this principle, we will have

health screening (provided by Dr. Sharron Elliott-Bynum and CAARE, Inc of Durham), a “Marketplace” featuring businesses, artist and community groups, kids activities, face painting, food and plenty of dance.
Additionally, we will have a raffle to benefit the Davis-Williams scholarship fund, The scholarship is awarded to a high school senior that is interested in the Performing ARTS and desire to learn their craft and pursue the Art of dance and or teaching.
Performances by: The African American Dance Ensemble, Ezibu Muntu of Richmond, VA, Pat Taborn's Modeling Agency, Evin Gibson, Fred DesperateForChrist Jones, Lynnette Barber, Langston Ruze, and Milagros Napoli-Belly Dancer

 

Happy Kwanzaa

        Happy Kwanzaa - Teddy Pendergrass


The Seven Principles
Kwanzaa is an African-American and Pan-African cultural holiday that is centered around seven principles (called Nguzo Saba in Swahili). They are:

Umoja (Unity)
Umoja (OO-MO-JAH) Unity stresses the importance of togetherness for the family and the community, which is reflected in the African saying, "I am We," or "I am because We are."

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
Kujichagulia (KOO-GEE-CHA-GOO-LEE-YAH) Self-Determination requires that we define our common interests and make decisions that are in the best interest of our family and community.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
Ujima (OO-GEE-MAH) Collective Work and Responsibility reminds us of our obligation to the past, present and future, and that we have a role to play in the community, society, and world. Seven Candles for Kwanzaa by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)
Ujamaa (OO-JAH-MAH) Cooperative economics emphasizes our collective economic strength and encourages us to meet common needs through mutual support.

Nia (Purpose)
Nia (NEE-YAH) Purpose encourages us to look within ourselves and to set personal goals that are beneficial to the community.

Kuumba (Creativity)
Kuumba (KOO-OOM-BAH) Creativity makes use of our creative energies to build and maintain a strong and vibrant community.

Imani (Faith)
Imani (EE-MAH-NEE) Faith focuses on honoring the best of our traditions, draws upon the best in ourselves, and helps us strive for a higher level of life for humankind, by affirming our self-worth and confidence in our ability to succeed and triumph in righteous struggle.

As an African American and Pan-African holiday celebrated by millions throughout the world African community, Kwanzaa brings a cultural message which speaks to the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense. Given the profound significance Kwanzaa has for African Americans and indeed, the world African community, it is important to know all the points and customs.



    How to Celebrate Kwanzaa (part 1 of 2) by United Black Community (UBC)


    How to Celebrate Kwanzaa (part 2 of 2) by United Black Community (UBC)


         Celebrating Kwanzaa


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Protect Mumia Abu-Jamal's Right to Speak

Protect Mumia Abu-Jamal's Right to Speak from Prison Radio on Vimeo.

They keep trying to suppress Mumia Abu Jamal.  Society and history will not let them!  This is the day and time for change!  Can't you feel it coming on -- with the overwhelming diverse outcry from Ferguson, Missouri to Staten Island, New York, and also in Ohio, as well as all across the country  It is time for the masses to stand up and demand that real justice be brought to bear upon humanity.  It is time for the prison complex system be brought into the light for the fraudulent, oppressive, slavery system it really is today and has been for time immemorial.

 A change is in the offing, beginning with the broad revisions that must be made in the policing system of this country, and going on to the In-Justice system which unfairly suppresses those who get caught up against the law, as well as counteracts the foibles of the evil FOP in this country, which exonerates the criminal cops and destroys normal humanity in this country with racist, totalitarian, vicious zeal.  This system must stop dehumanizing mankind and making a scapegoat for the police who have no intention of becoming public servants of the people of this country.  May God's Judgment open the eyes of the world to this truth.  FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS.  True Justice's Time Is On the Way.  Feel it Coming!  Work to bring it to reality!

Robert F. Williams - Important African American

From:Encyclopedia.com and Wikipedia and research

Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 – October 15, 1996) was a civil rights leader and author, best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and early 1960s. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in promoting armed black self-defense in the United States.

Almost ten years before the formation of the Black Panther Party  , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch president Robert F. Williams’s 1959 press statement advocating “meeting [racist] violence with violence” sent a wave of reaction through white and conservative black circles. As an ex-serviceman disillusioned by legalist and pacifist civil rights tactics, Williams launched a local campaign of armed self-defense in his hometown of Monroe, North Carolina.

Williams helped gain gubernatorial pardons for two African-American boys convicted for molestation in the controversial Kissing Case of 1958. He also succeeded in integrating the public library and the public swimming pool in Monroe. He obtained a charter from the National Rifle Association and set up a rifle club, which became active defending blacks from Ku Klux Klan nightriders.

 He used the NAACP to support Freedom Riders who came to Monroe in the summer of 1961. That year he and his wife were forced to leave the United States to avoid prosecution for kidnapping, on charges trumped up during violence related to white opposition to the Freedom Ride. The kidnapping charges came after a white couple sought shelter in Williams' home when they were confronted by black protesters while driving through Monroe's black community.

he was awakened to the brutal aspects of racism at age ten, when a policeman dragged a black woman down Monroe’s main street. Williams was haunted by the laughter of white onlookers and the victim’s screams. He recalled in his autobiography Negroes With Guns how “the cop was grinning as he pulled her by the heels, her dress up over her hips and her back being scraped by the concrete pavement.” A self-professed Black Nationalist, Williams lived in both Cuba and The People's Republic of China during his exile.
Williams' book Negroes with Guns  (1962) details his experience with violent racism and his disagreement with the pacifist wing of the Civil Rights Movement. The text was widely influential; Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton cited it as a major inspiration. Rosa Parks gave the eulogy at Williams’ funeral in 1996, praising him for “his courage and for his commitment to freedom,” and concluding that “The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten.”

Williams was born in Monroe, North Carolina, in 1925 to Emma Carter and John L. Williams, a railroad boiler washer. His grandmother, a former slave, gave Williams the rifle with which his grandfather, a Republican campaigner and publisher of the newspaper The People's Voice, had defended himself in the hard years after Reconstruction in North Carolina. At the age of 11, Williams witnessed the beating and dragging of a black woman by the police officer Jesse Helms, Sr.  (Later chief of police, he was the father of future US Senator Jesse Helms.) He was awakened to the brutal aspects of racism  . Williams was haunted by the laughter of white onlookers and the victim’s screams. He recalled in his autobiography Negroes With Guns how “the cop was grinning as he pulled her by the heels, her dress up over her hips and her back being scraped by the concrete pavement.”

In 1942, at age 17 Williams left high school to receive vocational training as a machinist with the National Youth Administration (NYA). After his education at an NYA camp near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he continued his studies at Elizabeth City State Teachers College (now Elizabeth City State University), an all-black, teachers college in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. One year later, he arrived in Detroit to gain employment in the city’s thriving war industry. Living with his oldest brother, Edward, he worked at Ford Motor.

He witnessed race riots in Detroit in 1943, prompted by labor competition between European Americans and Blacks. Drafted into the army, Williams was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After earning high scores on a radio aptitude test, he was transferred to a Signal Corps battalion at Camp Crowder, Missouri, to be trained as a radio operator. To his disappointment, however, he was assigned to a school for telephone linesmen. Before completing his telephone line training, he became ill and was re-assigned as a clerical typist.

In the months following World War II, Williams experienced the effects of low morale that spread among Camp Crowder’s segregated black troops. Defiant of the harsh treatment by white officers, Williams was confined in the camp stockade for insubordination. As Robert Carl Cohen pointed out in Black Crusader, “Williams was proud of being in the stockade because he felt he was there for resisting an unjust system-not for committing a crime.” In 1946, after a six-month stay at Fort Lewis Washington, Williams received an honorable discharge without a good conduct medal.   After attending Elizabeth City State Teachers College in 1942 , he also attended West Virginia State College, 1949; North Carolina State College, 1951; Johnson C Smith University, 1953.

In 1947, Williams married Mabel Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist. They had two children together, Robert F. (deceased), John Chalmers Williams.

 Not long after his return to Monroe in October of 1955, Williams, joined the predominately white local Unitarian Fellowship and the Human Relations Group--a coalition of Unitarians, Catholics, and Protestants. Williams’s increasing civil rights activity prompted him to join the Monroe NAACP as well. One year later, the organization’s dwindling membership fell to six. Rather than dissolve the branch and risk the appearance of submitting to local racist pressure, members held an election and voted Williams in as president and Dr. Albert Perry as vice president.

To build up the strength of the branch, Williams recruited members among black domestics, laborers in pool halls, and from the ranks of the unemployed. As opposed to the NAACP’s traditional membership of middle and upper-class professionals and intellectuals, Williams provided Monroe’s branch with a distinct working-class composition. Members ranged from white pacifists to African American war veterans who, as Williams described in Negroes With Guns, “were very militant and did not scare easy.”   Williams, elected president, and Dr. Albert E. Perry, physician and vice-president, began to turn it around. They worked on goals to change the segregated town.

First they worked to integrate the public library. After that success, in 1957 Williams also led efforts to integrate the public swimming pools. He had followers form picket lines around the pool. The NAACP members organized peaceful demonstrations, but some drew gunfire. No one was arrested or punished, although law enforcement officers were present.
Monroe had a large Ku Klux Klan chapter at the end of the 1950s, estimated by the press to have 7500 members, when the city had 12,000 residents.  Their influence was pervasive.

      Negroes With Guns: Robert F. Williams on Self-Defense


Alarmed at the violence that civil rights activities aroused, Williams had applied to the National Rifle Association for a charter for a local rifle club. He called the Monroe Chapter of the NRA the Black Armed Guard, made up of about 50-60 men, some veterans like Williams. They were determined to defend the local black community from racist attacks. Newtown was the black residential area.
In the summer of 1957 there were rumors that the KKK was going to attack the house of Dr. Albert Perry, a practicing physician and vice-president of the Monroe NAACP. Williams and his men of the Armed Guard went to Perry's house to defend it, fortifying it with sandbags. When numerous KKK members appeared and shot from their cars, Williams and his followers returned the fire, driving them away.
"After this clash the same city officials who said the Klan had a constitutional right to organize met in an emergency session and passed a city ordinance banning the Klan from Monroe without a special permit from the police chief."

In Negroes with Guns, Williams writes:
   "Racist consider themselves superior beings and are not willing to exchange their superior lives for our inferior ones. They are most vicious and violent when they can practice violence with impunity." He also wrote, "It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence." 

Followers attested to Williams' advocating the use of advanced powerful weaponry rather than more traditional firearms. Williams insisted his position was defensive, as opposed to a declaration of war. He relied on large numbers of black military veterans from the local area, as well as financial support from across the country. In Harlem, particularly, fundraisers were frequently held and proceeds devoted to purchasing arms for Williams and his followers. He called it "armed self-reliance" in the face of white terrorism. Threats against Williams' life and his family became more frequent.

Decades later, Mary E. King argued that "The patriarchal metaphors of William’s appeals for violence in response to violence in the name of protecting women curiously echoed the paternalistic rubric that was hypocritically used to justify white violence." However, Timothy Tyson observed that both pacifism and armed militancy were heavily gendered in the civil rights era: "Contestations of a notion of manhood that excluded black men did not start or stop with black nationalists…foot soldiers in Martin Luther King’s nonviolent armies frequently carried placards reading, 'I am a MAN'” King also wrote of Williams that he worked within the law to achieve justice; he appealed to federal authorities to combat the racism of Monroe.

Williams first entered the national civil rights struggle working with the NAACP as a community organizer in Monroe. When in 1958 he defended two young black boys, ages nine and seven, who were jailed after a white girl kissed one of them, he became famous around the world. His publicity campaign, inviting a barrage of embarrassing headlines in the global press, was instrumental in shaming the officials involved into eventually releasing the boys. The governor of North Carolina pardoned the boys but the state never apologized for its treatment of them. The controversy was known as the "Kissing Case".

On 12 May 1958, the Raleigh Eagle (North Carolina) reported that Nationwide Insurance Company was canceling Williams' collision and comprehensive coverage, effective that day. They first canceled all of his automobile insurance, but decided to reinstate his liability and medical payments coverage, enough for Williams to retain his car license. The company said that Williams' affiliation with the NAACP was not a factor; they noted "that rocks had been thrown at his car and home several times by people driving by his home at night. These incidents just forced us to get off the comprehensive and collision portions of his policy." The newspaper article reported that Williams had said that six months before, a 50-car Ku Klux Klan caravan had swapped gunfire with a group of blacks outside the home of Dr. A. E. Perry, vice president of the local NAACP chapter. The article quotes police chief A. A. Maurey as denying part of that story.

He said, "I know there was no shooting."  He said that he had had several police  cars accompanying the KKK caravan to watch for possible law violations.
The article quoted Williams: "These things have happened," Williams insisted. "Police try to make it appear that I have been exaggerating and trying to stir up trouble. If police tell me I am in no danger and that they can't confirm these events, why then has my insurance been cancelled?"

In 1959, Williams debated the merits of nonviolence with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr at the NAACP convention. The national NAACP office suspended his local chapter presidency for six months because of his outspoken disagreements on this issue with the national leadership.

         Robert F. Williams 1959 press conference


When CORE dispatched "Freedom Riders" to Monroe to campaign in 1961 for integrated interstate bus travel, the local NAACP chapter served as their base. They were housed in Newtown, the black section of Monroe. Pickets marched daily at the courthouse, put under a variety of restraints by the Monroe police, such as having to stand 15 feet apart. Many had been beaten by violent crowds.
Around this time, a white couple from a nearby town drove into the black section of Monroe when other streets were closed by mobs because of protests at the

county courthouse. They were stopped in the street by an angry crowd. For their safety, they were taken to Williams' home.  Williams initially told them that they were free to go, but he soon realized that the crowd would not grant safe passage. He kept the white couple in a house nearby until they were able to safely leave the neighborhood. North Carolina law enforcement admonished Williams and accused him of having kidnapped the couple. He and his family fled the state with local law enforcement in pursuit.

The FBI's wanted poster alerted people to an armed kidnapper.
His eventual interstate flight triggered prosecution by the FBI. On August 28, 1961, the FBI issued a warrant in Charlotte, North Carolina, charging Williams with unlawful interstate flight to avoid prosecution for kidnapping. The FBI document lists Williams as a "freelance writer and janitor." It said that

(Williams)"...has previously been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and has advocated and threatened violence... considered armed and extremely dangerous." After a Wanted poster, signed by the director J. Edgar Hoover, was distributed announcing he was wanted, Williams decided to leave the country.

Williams went to Cuba in 1961 by way of Canada and then Mexico. He regularly broadcast addresses to Southern blacks on "Radio Free Dixie." He established the station with assistance from Cuban President Fidel Castro and operated from 1962 to 1965.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Williams used Radio Free Dixie to urge black soldiers in the U.S. armed forces, who were then preparing for a possible invasion of Cuba, to engage in insurrection against the United States.
"While you are armed, remember this is your only chance to be free. ... This is your only chance to stop your people from being treated worse than dogs. We'll take care of the front, Joe, but from the back, he'll never know what hit him. You dig?"

During this stay, Mabel and Robert Williams published the newspaper, The Crusader. Williams wrote his book, Negroes With Guns, while in Cuba. It had a significant influence on Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panthers. Despite his absence from the United States, in 1964 Williams was elected president of the US-based Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM).  In 1965 Williams traveled to Hanoi, then the capital of North Vietnam. In a public speech, he advocated armed violence against the United States invasion during the Vietnam War, congratulated China on obtaining its own nuclear weapons (which Williams referred to as "The Freedom Bomb"), and showed his solidarity to the North Vietnamese against the United States military onslaught of the country.

Some Communist Party USA members opposed Williams' positions, suggesting they would divide the working class in the U.S. along racial lines. In a May 18, 1964, letter from Havana to his U.S. lawyer, civil rights attorney Conrad Lynn, Williams wrote:
...the U.S.C.P. has openly come out against my position on the Negro struggle. In fact, the party has sent special representatives here to sabotage my work on behalf of U.S. Negro liberation. They are pestering the Cubans to remove me from the radio, ban THE CRUSADER and to take a number of other steps in what they call `cutting Williams down to size.'...

The whole thing is due to the fact that I absolutely refuse to take direction from Gus Hall's idiots...I hope to depart from here, if possible, soon. I am writing you to stand by in case I am turned over to the FBI...
Sincerely, Rob.

In 1965, Williams and his wife left Cuba to settle in China, where he was well received. They lived comfortably there and he associated with higher functionaries of the Chinese government. In January 1968, Conrad Lynn wrote to encourage Williams to return to the US. Williams responded:
The only thing that prevents my acceptance and willingness to make an immediate return is the present lack of adequate financial assurance for a fight against my being railroaded to jail and an effective organization to arouse the people.

I don't think it will be wise to announce my nomination and immediate return unless the kind of money is positively available...

Lynn wrote Williams in a letter on January 24, 1968: "You are wise in not making a decision to come back until the financial situation is assured." Because no financial backing could be found, no 1968 "Williams for President" campaign was ever launched by Williams' supporters in the United States. By November 1969, Williams apparently had become disillusioned with the U.S. left. As his lawyer, Conrad Lynn, noted in a November 7, 1969, letter to Haywood Burns of the Legal Defense Foundation:

Williams now clearly takes the position that he has been deserted by the left. How and whether he fits black militant organizations into that category I don't know. Radio Free Europe offered him pay to broadcast for them. So far he has refused. But he has not foreclosed making a deal with the government or the far right. He takes the position that he is entitled to make any maneuver to keep from going to jail for kidnapping...

Williams was suspected by the Justice Department of wanting to fill the vacuum of influence left after the assassinations of his friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Hoover received reports that blacks looked to Williams as a figure similar to John Brown, the militant abolitionist who attacked a US facility at Harper's Ferry. Attempts to contact the U.S. government in order to return were rebuffed consistently.

His wife Mabel Williams returned first, entering the United States in September 1969.  He returned via London, England to Detroit, Michigan in 1969 and was immediately arrested for extradition to North Carolina for trial on the kidnapping charge. Shortly after he returned, the approaching period of détente augured a warming of relations with the People's Republic of China.
Williams was tried in Monroe, North Carolina in December 1975. The historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall chaired his defense committee and a broad range of leftists arrived in town. Attorney William Kunstler represented Williams in court. The state of North Carolina dropped all charges against him almost immediately.

Williams was given a grant by the Ford Foundation to work at the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies. He wrote While God Lay Sleeping: The Autobiography of Robert F. Williams.
He died from Hodgkin's disease in 1996. At his funeral, Rosa Parks, who started the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, recounted the high regard for Robert F. Williams by those who marched peacefully with King in Alabama.

 

Robert F Williams-Powerful Overview Of The On Coming Destruction of Amerika (Let it Burn)


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Robert Franklin Williams, advocate of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement, hunted by the FBI since fleeing Monroe, North Carolina in 1961, after years in exile in Cuba and China, is interviewed by Robert Carl Cohen in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1968. BLACK CRUSADER - 2008 Illustrated Edition, (498 Pages, B&W Photos, is now available from www.radfilms.com

       Self-Defense, Self-Respect, & Self-Determination by Mabel Williams and Robert F. Williams