Roots African or American, El fin

 Indigenous Garifuna of Guatamala

Being Black in America is an interesting journey enhanced only by our perceptions of ourselves and the stories that accompany our lives as denizens in the western hemisphere. What and who we are is to be determined by us, and how we view ourselves. And our perceptions of ourselves can drive beliefs and actions about how we live our daily lives. In part one I mentioned reading several books and attending lectures on our historical greatness and accomplishments. One commenter noted “Eventually, I grew bored with all of that because it didn't move me any closer toward "doing for self." I and others read the books, attended the lectures, and then went back to our various jobs working for White-controlled entities. As a Nation of Islam minister put it, we WEREN'T learning the science of providing "food, clothing, or shelter" for ourselves, or for our people.”

This is an excellent and well taken point. Unfortunately, the science of providing food, clothing and shelter has been dissected and re-mixed to become “if it don’t make dollars it don’t make sense” thus the science has been removed from the concept. Now, we have a business world that has become devoid of reciprocal living and true social economics that can be expressed in the indigenous American term found in Louisiana, lagniappe, to give a little something extra, or in a sense to give something back. The science of providing food, clothing and shelter is to “want for your brother what you want for yourself“ and create business’s along the lines of this concept as taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. This one element, that’s now missing makes it an incomplete formula, without it, it becomes a tool for destruction.

Part of my thought process in presenting this series is to impart some knowledge that’s being hidden and since being hidden when presented, appears to be “secret origins“ of Black people. See, we only believe these are secret origins of Black people because those that teach and those that accept the standard teachings will continue to view our indigenous origins in places other than Africa as “secret origins.” One commenter wrote “

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Panama in 1513,he came across both indigenous and black skinned people. He was so surprised when he saw tall black people that he asked the indigenous people who the blacks were or where they were from. The indigenous people in Quarequa, did not respond to Balboa's question.”

She notes that Balboa encountered “both indigenous and black skinned people…” drawing a distinction calling one group of people “indigenous” and another “black skinned” alluding that the “black skinned people were not indigenous to Panama. Yet, she goes on to say “when Balboa saw the tall black people he asked the indigenous people who the blacks were or where they came from. The indigenous people in Quarequa, did not respond to Balboa’s question.” I simply say, because the indigenous (lighter skinned people) thought Balboa’s question was ridiculous and not worthy of an answer. The people of Quarequa knew the “black skinned” people were right from the land they were standing, Panama. The belief that the black skinned people were not indigenous to the land is based on the European Balboa’s question and not the response or non response by the so called “indigenous” people.

When we accept the belief that the black skinned people were not indigenous to the land we are accepting the view, and propagating the view of the European and not the people of color, the lighter skinned indigenous people of Panama!

We are a diverse people and not just the descendents of slaves. Dr. Jose Pimienta Bey says, if you only think of yourself as descendents of slaves, you will view yourself as slaves, and act as a slave.  We are actually, the descendents of prisoners of war and are forced into enslavement.  A war that started in Al Andaluz, (Spain) and spread to Africa then to the Americas. If we look at our history as a 500 hundred year history as being showcased by Tavis Smiley and his America I Am exhibit, limited to his concept of American Slavery. This is far from where my history begins and ends, and I can no longer support such a theory.

Dr. Ivan Van Sertima said it best when asked why he presented the Egypt Revisited lectures. Dr. Van Sertima entimated ’…our ancestors thought of themselves in a certain way and had an extraordinary sense of wholeness and incredible sense of spiritual powers, a sense of majesty of spirit.  So they attempted things that seems beyond the imagination…they had a sense of wholeness and an awareness of consciousness…I do this so that we can get a sense of ourselves, so that we can reconstruct on the glorious past, to project ourselves into a new future.’  I concur. As we get a sense of ourselves and our greatness in the western hemisphere before and after the advent of Columbus, war and eventual enslavement we can grow, loosening the shackles placed on the mind. My wish is that we can come to accept ourselves in the various color, hues and tone that the Great Spirit saw fit to decorate us and stop the divisiveness among us.

“I have met many blacks who claim to love the black race but as I listened to their views of other blacks they had a contempt for the diversity of the black race.

The only loved blackness that met their own criteria!

They only loved blackness that was packaged the way they preferred!

They dismissed any categories that didn’t fit into their tiny box of what constitutes black identification. I believe that this is rooted in a contempt for blackness."  Rev. Lisa Vasquez.

I don’t know who she was referring too, but I do know it’s a lessen for us all.

The God of Pop Music has Returned to the Essence!

"I'm starting with the man in the mirror..."  Michael Jackson.

Nuff said Michael.

ROOTS AFRICAN OR AMERICAN? II

For most of my life I had been taught that the reason so many Black people had “Indian blood” or that one family member or the other was full blood Cherokee, was because the Black African slaves ran away from the plantation to live amongst the Indians. I remember a bitter argument I had with my previous wife when she told me her father’s mother (her paternal grandmother) was full blooded Blackfoot Indian. I argued her down that there was no such Indian “tribe” as Blackfoot. I argued that she must have meant Blackfeet, because there was no such people as Blackfoot. I came to learn she was in fact correct in speaking of a Blackfoot nation of people and that I was dead wrong!

Rev. Amen Ra elucidated ,that history documents the primary Trans Atlantic slave trade began when, Columbus, over a short period of years, shipped over 1500 “Indians” from the island of Ayiti to Spain and eventually other parts of Europe before one African was ever shipped as chattel property to the west. She theorized that since, no where on the planet Earth, the aboriginal people were ever non Black, that the same had to hold true for the Americas.

She opened another lane of thought in my mind about the reality of slavery in the Americas and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Upon her suggestions we should all study and not just take her word as the gospel truth on the subject.

Of course the person that I am, I went for it. I studied the slave trade and began to analyze the most often told stories, dissected them , reassembled them to gain an understanding about what was being told to us. I wondered how could people walk for more than 500 miles (as from the Congo to Ghana), be placed in a dungeon, packed onto a slaving ship, to be transported on a 2-3 month voyage across the Atlantic.?

Sacagawea. Photo Michael Haynes

I reasoned that people were dying, vomiting, defecating, menstruating and urinating within these packed compartments on board the heavily loaded ship. This would result in the deaths of many, but for different reasons than we had been taught. But, I also considered the fact that those that did make it would probably be emaciated, ill and I’m sure many died upon arrival or shortly there after. Senseless if one is attempting to sell these humans for a profit.

The huge Trans-Atlantic slave trade became more and more unreal to me. You see ,we still have to consider insurance cost, and transportation cost factored into a slave shipped from Africa, where as there were ample Black people here in the Americas. I do believe there were Africans transported to the Americas to become slaves, but not to the magnitude that has been taught to us. One hundred million, I disagree.

With my new found belief pattern I had to re-arrange how I pictured the so called Indian of the Americas. This was a tough process since television, books, television news shows and movies reinforce the image of the “noble Indian” as someone that looks like Lou Diamond Phillips, or Leonard Peltier rather than Godfather of Soul James Brown or Jimi Hendrix. I had to teach myself that Black people that looked like the latter rather than the former two Americans were the actual Native Americans. For so long I believed that the often portrayed Pochahontas was the real American Indian and not my great grandfather “Papa.”

In the essay All my slaves whether Negroes, Indians, Mustees or Molattoes… Patrick Neal Minges quotes Andrew Bryan, Pioneer Baptist, speaking of Henry Francis in a letter to authorities speaks of Henry Francis, who, according to Minges was often known as the “black pastor” who is reported to have no known African ancestry

“…Henry Francis, lately a slave to the widow of the late Colonel Leroy Hammond, of Augusta, has been purchased by a few humane gentlemen of this place, and liberated to exercise the handsome ministerial gifts he possesses amongst us, and teach our youth to read and write. He is a strong man about forty-nine years of age, whose mother was white and whose father was an Indian.”

I began to read, and I began by reading Black Indians; A hidden heritage William Lorenz Katz. Mr. Katz stayed with the previously held belief of runaway slaves intermarrying with the commonly accepted looking Indian (Pochahontas) making this his reasoning for the Natives with heavier melanin. But, it was a good read and opened my eyes to things I hadn’t studied or read before. Another interesting read is The Only Land They Knew Indians in the Old South by J Leitch Wright and most of all the book On Sex and Race Vol. 3 by Joel Augustus Rogers. Mr. Rogers one of the greatest archeologist and historians of our time. This search has opened my world to much much more. Bob Marley once sang “…half that story has never been told…” I now believe that ¾’s of that story has never been told.

Once I ingested this new thought pattern, let it digest I was then able to manifest visual images of Rosa Parks when I hear the words Native American and not Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.  Learning to accept the fact that the Nez Perce, Crow, Seminole, Tuscarora, Taino or Arawak of today only represents one phenotype of the Americas not all. This is the most crucial point. To begin to imagine “We people who are darker than blue…” when we hear the words Native American. The Dawes Rolls did much to change who was classified as Native American versus Black/Negro. Next time my take on why this is a hidden heritage and how it can be used as a tool for our uplift.

Photo 1-Yuisa Aldea Cacique (chief) of Borinken/Puerto Rico

Photo 2 Sacagawea and son Jean Baptiste a Shoshone woman

Photo 3 A Wampanoag woman of Massachusetts

Links for further reading;

http://www.fiaah.org/content/view/106/91/

http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/washitaw.htm

http://etext.virginia.edu/journals/EH/EH36/poole1.html

http://are.as.wvu.edu/minges.htm

Roots; African or American?

In the 1980’s, during the surge of Black “Afro-centric” authors and books, I became an avid reader of every angle of the history and legacy of Black people across space and time. From reading Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James to African Origin of Biological Psychiatry by Dr. Richard M. King to the Biography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton, and even Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren and Secrets of Voodoo by Milo Rigaud.

My reading addiction has not stopped, nor was it or is it all by Black authors on Black/African history and accomplishments. Eventually things began to become stale for me, as if I was beginning to read things that were being rehashed over and over, but with a little different spice added to the mix thus, in the end it was basically the same.

While listening to my favorite community radio station in Atlanta in December of 2000, there was an advertisement that would be rotated throughout the many hours of the day as I listened while I worked ,saying something to the affect of “Have you ever heard grandmamma or great grand ma was in Indian? Come down to the Auburn Research Library to learn more about this.”

Of course this peaked my curiosity since I had heard this very same thing all my life from my mother concerning her grandfather, my great grandfather “papa” all my life. She would point at his picture on our living room wall and say “look at papa, looking just like and Indian.” So, of course I was at the library’s auditorium promptly at 6 o’clock.

Shortly after 6 pm, the little auditorium was filled with many people, from college professors from the AU center (the center where several HBCU’s are located in Atlanta) and professors from Georgia State and a couple reporters from local Black newspapers, to average people wanting clarity about this “Indian” ancestry we have.

By 6:30, Rev. Radine Amen Ra took the stage and proceeded to layout her argument that the aboriginal people of the Americas , including the Caribbean islands were Black people and how European history books and European artists’ renditions of the aboriginal people of the Americas had been anglicized to fit the imaginations of the people back home in Europe.

She actually based her theory on several books, writings and portraits by George Catlin and county tax records and court documents of various states. She pointed to books by J. leitch Wright that wrote of the plight of Indians of the Southeastern United States. Rev. Amen Ra spoke of the logic and logistics of a huge Atlantic slave trade including cost and expense of transporting so many people from the west coast of Africa.(Ah yaw ne tak oar-A warriror of the Menominee or more specifically the Mamaceqtaw nation)

For years I had heard and read how the enslaved Africans would often runaway and live with the Native Americans, and if any Africans were enslaved by the Indian their slave system was nothing like the system of slavery that was instituted by the Europeans. Thus, the Africans would intermarry with the Indians and would often become great leaders of the “tribes.” This is what I was taught, which made sense to me and of course Alex Haley’s Roots re-enforced these lessons. But is that really the truth?

Next time what I learned.

Bad parenting makes bad children; Aimee Michael and Jonathan Redding

This post was to be about how too many of us continue to see ourselves through eyes of enslaved Africans. We continue to say how the white man stole or bought Black people in Africa and carried them packed like sardines in the holes of slaving vessels. And, how we continue to put ourselves into a bent over posture, because we are not aware we are giving the pale face way too much power. 

This post was to be about how we make the pale face a god by believing he could transport, and sustain millions of living human beings for a three month voyage across the Atlantic without running water, refrigeration, bathroom facilities or medical care. 

This post was to explain how the idea of such an undertaking as to transport hundreds of millions of people across the sea in the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries is an expanded tale and we should stop giving so much power to the pale face, for he has never been that powerful. 

But, this post was interrupted by the evening news as I was writing it caught my attention concerning a murderer that murdered for the sake of murder in the Grant Park area of Atlanta and a letter his mother wrote and sent to the District Attorney. Then, Aimee Michael, her mother, and Aimee’s Easter Day carnival of death on Camp Creek Parkway popped into my brain. 

In January, a white* bartender was killed while closing up for the night. A robbing crew, that the Atlanta Police Department is calling a gang, broke out the glass door of the bar, entered with guns drawn, demanding money and killing Atlanta bartender, 27 year old John Henderson. This month, 17 year old Jonathan Redding was arrested and indicted for the murder of Mr.Henderson. Redding was involved in a home invasion a couple days after the murder of John Henderson, carrying the same pistol used in the murder of Henderson. Redding kicked in the front door of a Southwest Atlanta home, and was immediately met with AK-47 7.62 rounds hitting him in the shoulder, he dropped the 9mm pistol along with his blood. The blood left behind at the scene of the home invasion was taken and used as DNA evidence that lead to the arrest of Redding for the murder of John Henderson. 

Easter 2009, Aimee Michael was to run to the store to pick up some ice cream for her mother and grand mother. Somehow she ended up on Camp Creek Parkway. Camp Creek Parkway is a very long and wide road that runs directly into the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, so speeds can legally reach 55 miles per hour. Ms. Michael’s 740 BMW struck the Mercedes of Robert and Dalisia Carter. Carter lost control, crossed the divide and slammed head on into the VW Beatle of Tracy Johnson and her 6 year old daughter. The crash killed Robert Carter, Dalisia Carter, and their two children. Tracy Johnson survived but, her 6 year old daughter was killed in the Volkswagen.

Aimee Michael fled the scene, leaving all the victims to die. Now, here’s the rub. The parents of these beings are making excuses and covering up their children’s heinous acts.

In the case of Jonathan Redding his mother wrote a ridiculous letter to a local Atlanta news station, stating 17 year old Jonathan “is not the monster that he has been portrayed to be but was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jonathan has strong family values and ties, and we feel he is currently a victim of the judicial system.”  

What the hell??? I could not believe the family had the audacity to produce and release this statement

“…Jonathan is not a monster…in the wrong place at the wrong time…strong family values…currently a victim of the judicial system” are they kidding? This being has a tattoo on his face of the alleged gang he claims, and we are to believe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time? 

He shot a man that contributed to the man’s death and that man has a family that now misses him and will never see him again. So, the Redding family really needs to explain what the definition of family values are for themselves and Jonathan.  Jonathan is a monster Redding family, and you raised him. You created this situation Jonathan now lives in. Jonathan is a victim of your family injustice system.

There is no reason a 17 year old boy should be running around the city at all hours of the night with a gun, with the explicit intent to harm other citizens. The Redding family is a horrible example of the societal decay which is slowly becoming the norm. I don’t know whether or not Jonathan had a dad living or dead, but its apparent he has some sort of family. But, we know Aimee Michael has a full family unit including a dad in the house and in her life, so what will be the statistical data to validate her bloody act?

Aimee Michael, is a 22 year old graduate of the University of Pittsburg, was headed to Wake Forrest to begin a master’s program to further her education. Yet, an Easter Sunday run to the store, careless driving changed her fate and she became the confessed killer of five people including three children. Aimee knows she hit the Mercedes, saw the car cross the center divide and strike the Volkswagen and what does young Ms. Michael do? She puts the pedal to the metal and heads home to Ma and Grandma (dad was away working overseas when the accident occured.) She is said to have told them, upon her return, that she had a headache and immediately went to her room and shut the door. For two weeks the city of Atlanta and all the surrounding counties in Metro Atlanta were in a search for the missing BMW 740 that Aimee later confessed started the chain of events. While the search is on Aimee calls an auto body shop, takes the car in, pays a deposit.  Later, Sheila Michael pays off the balance for repairs to the BMW to cover up her daughter's part in the crime.  Sheila Michael, a 52 year old, second grade teacher in the public school system, the mother of Aimee did not turn here daughter in, did not pay a retainer to an attorney for legal advice about her daughter's crime, no she paid to cover up her daughter's crime. What kind of people are they?  Why would supposedly right thinking people do such a thing?  Ms. Michael would you tell us please?

There is no statistical data to confirm the reason for the acts of these children and the response of their families. The data doesn’t back the actions for the Michael’s actions. We could easily deduce that Jonathan Redding is a victim of the statistics that we often hear of, but actually there's not much information about who comprises Redding’s family to pin the “no father in the home” statistic label as the reason for his action. But, we know this doesn’t fit Aimee Michael’s family profile.  Quite simply these are bad parents that have always excused and covered their bad children's bad actions, even until the deaths of innocent children at the hands of their bad children.  Shameful.

*I mentiion that John Henderson is white, because immediatly after his demise the caucasians in the Grant Park neighborhood organized a candlelight vigil  with the city counselman of their district in response to his brutal murder.  I believe this only occured because Henderson's death was by the hands of a Black boy.  Not often do whites protest the death of one of their own when its by the hands of another white man.