When we defiantly declared on the burning battlefields of the Sixties that “liberation is coming from a Black thing”, we meant that it would come from a process and practice that Black people, African peoples, themselves, self-consciously conceived, constructed and carried out. ... read more »

In this month of heightened homage and increased attention to the life and legacy of Min. Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, it is important to do so placing rightful and repeated emphasis on his commitment to the liberation of our people and all the downtrodden and oppressed peoples of the world, especially the dark peoples of the world with whom he felt a special kinship of shared humanity and interrelated struggles. ... read more »

Billed as a victory celebration, the White House huddling and hurrahing resembled a death dance for many who see their lives and futures now hanging in the balance. ... read more »

Each Earth Day (April 22), it provides an important opportunity to focus on critical environmental issues ... read more »

As we gather to remember and mark the 25th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Revolt and to discuss the course of history after it, it is important to place it in the context of the long history of Black resistance in which revolt is a central and defining feature. ... read more »

As we gather to remember and mark the 25th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Revolt and to discuss the course of history after it, it is important to place it in the context of the long history of Black resistance in which revolt is a central and defining feature. Indeed, ours is a history of resistance through which revolts run like a bright red line, stretching from the age of colonialism, imperialism and the Holocaust of enslavement through segregation and the Black Freedom Movement of the 60s to the revolts and other forms of resistance in our time, from Ferguson onward. Such critical remembering is at the heart of the article below, previously published as a 20th anniversary assessment and reveals how history does not exactly repeat itself, but retains features of things and thoughts which remain stubbornly among us and require continuing righteous resistance for their removal and the radical transformation toward which revolts point and push us and history. ... read more »

It has been rightfully remembered and necessarily noted that this month marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s classic anti-war speech, April 4, 1967, a year to the day of his assassination and martyrdom. ... read more »

Among the sacred names of our honored ancestors which we raise and praise this month, let us pay homage and pour libation for Paul Robeson (April 9, 1898—January 23, 1976), a truly Imhotepian man, in the classical African sense of the word, i.e., a master of many disciplines of knowledge and skilled practice directed toward bringing good in the world. Indeed, he was a critically acclaimed actor, singer, scholar, civil and human rights activist, orator and advocate of workers and everyday people everywhere. However, it is important to note that it is not simply his professional excellence and achievement which made him who he was and won for him accolades, honors and reverent respect around the world, but also his profound and steadfast commitment to his principles and his people and to humanity as a whole, especially ordinary, everyday people. ... read more »

In the month of remembering, reading and raising up the work and life of August Wilson (April 27, 1945-October 2, 2005), arguably the most successful and celebrated playwright in U.S. history, one is unavoidably impressed with his unswerving, deep-rooted love and appreciation of his people and culture as the central source of his grounding, his expansive grasp of human life and his impressive creative production. Indeed, he said of Black people and his work, “What I tried to do...in all my works is to reveal the richness of the lives of the people who show that the largest ideas are contained in their lives and that there is a nobility to their lives.” ... read more »

Like all the great men and women who compose and construct this sacred narrative we know as our history, African history, both the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. offer us valuable lessons on not only how we should live our lives, but also those things to which and for which we will give our lives. King’s death for us cannot be simply summed up as an assassination; for that is what the oppressor and his collaborators did. And we do not deny it or play down its evil. But to focus on what they did is to overlook and lessen the importance of what King did. For he gave his life so we could live fuller and freer ones. And it is this self-giving for us and the greater causes of life that we call and honor as martyrdom. ... read more »

Here Kawaida calls on us, as always, to dialog with our culture, to ask it questions and seek from it answers to the fundamental issues facing us, African people and humankind ... read more »

The essential and ongoing conversation with our history is at the same time a continuing conversation with our culture, a constant search for ever more expansive and enriching ways to be African women and men in the world. And so whenever there is a holiday or holy day, we are to turn to our culture to ask what is its essential message and meaning. And how do we use it to uplift the lives of the masses of our people and ourselves, as well as the world? Thus, at this time of Black History Month II, Women Focus, we should think about the sacred teachings of our ancestors concerning women and their meaning to us and the world. We should think about the joy they bring, the hardships they suffer, the hope they have, and the struggle they wage to be free and fulfilled, to find and hold fast to meaning and good in their lives and to create, extract and enjoy good in the world. And we should, as men and women, embrace each other in love and struggle and commit ourselves in persistent practice to a life of dignity and decency, security and peace and to the end of deprivation and domestic, communal and societal violence. ... read more »

It is important, even imperative, that we always remember who we are, for in times especially like these, the obligation placed on us by our memory is awesome and unavoidable. In spite of the duly authorized and official denials, there is a pervasive and persistent moral indifference to the suffering of others, to the destructive harm heaped in heavy loads on their overburdened lives. And there is for us as a people who have suffered so much and struggled so hard for freedom and justice in the world an obligation not to forget, but to remember; not to remain silent, but to bear witness to truth; and not to be tolerant or indifferent to evil, but to relentlessly resist it. Indeed, it is an ethical imperative of our tradition that resounds and rings true through the ages, i.e., that we are to remember and bear witness to truth and set the scales of justice in their proper place, especially among those who have no voice. ... read more »

This is the month and year that marks the 52nd anniversary of the martyrdom and murder of Malcolm X, his assassination and ultimate sacrifice for the love and liberation of his people and the advancement of the cause of human freedom and flourishing in the world. For Us and our people, Africans everywhere, he will always be in the words of the sacred Husia: “a glorious spirit in heaven and a continuing powerful presence on earth. He shall be counted and honored among the ancestors. His name shall endure as a monument and what he has done on earth shall never perish or pass away.” ... read more »

There is an increasing sense among those most thoughtful and active among us that the important issues raised and the struggle rightfully waged against the tragedy and catastrophe we call Trump, marginalizes and misses the major issues that define and drive our own righteous and relentless struggle as a people. ... read more »