The end and beginning of the years always find us in a critical period of transition in which, responding to the mandates of our moral tradition and the human urgencies of our history as African people, we are compelled to continue forward and turn our best New Year wishes into our most committed work.
There is a period during the holiday season dedicated to African Americans; Kwanzaa—defined as “first” in Swahili— is known among all ethnicities. Highlighting African heritage, Kwanzaa carries the salt of a culture unearthed and conditioned, allowing new thoughts of deep reflection on the origins of the collective community.
As we move once again into the month of December and the season of celebration of the good at the year’s end, Kwanzaa will again assume its rightful role as a distinct, definitive and defining African cultural presence at the table of these times.
It is said that the defeat of Donald Trump signals that the country is ready for a change, but we have not been given on the nightly news, on social media or by mail, anything that resembles a comprehensive view of what the change might look like. Nor have we heard from the academy, Congress, or the corporate world anything beyond convenient confessions that Black lives do indeed matter.
Regardless of the outcome of these current midterm elections, favorable results for us and others will not redeem or radically change this country or save and secure the world, though it might be said it will save the day, i.e., give us better conditions to continue and expand our struggle.
In the wake of the revelation of the scathing and scandalous racist sentiments and proposals harbored and hawked by three Latino city council members and a labor leader, there has been a virtually unanimous call and demand for them to do the right thing and resign.
In 1987, Tiamoyo and I traveled to London where on October 1st , I gave the inaugural lecture at County Hall for the establishment of Black History Month in England. My inaugural lecture and others I gave at the West Indian Center, Haringcy; the Hackney Black Peoples Organization; and the London Strategic Policy Unit were published in the book, “Our Story: A Handbook of African History and Contemporary Issues.” Below, I share these edited excerpts from this inaugural lecture in remembrance, celebration and Pan-African solidarity with the African people of England in this, their month of celebration of
This column, on this our 57th anniversary and in this the 228th exacting season of our organization Us’ righteous and relentless struggle, is dedicated to Ngao (Shield of the Nation) Damu, our first commander of the Simba Wachanga and all the other constant soldiers of Us, men and women, who would not walk away from the battlefield until the struggle is won. Below is an excerpt from an unpublished edited transcript of a lecture I gave in 1967. I had prepared it for publication, but the crisis years of 1969-1975 interrupted this intention. In this time of the
This September 7th and the whole month, I am honored and uplifted in beautiful and sustaining ways to celebrate in praise and thanks with all our advocates (members), those present and those no longer with us, and with all our sustainers, supporters and well-wishers, this the 57th anniversary of our organization Us and the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles, this Black value system embraced throughout the world African community.
Certainly, practicing the morality of remembrance, we cannot pass the month of July without paying rightful homage to our foremother, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, born July 10, 1875, laying down in peace and rising up in radiance May 18, 1955.
It is good to sing and celebrate ourselves, to dance in honor of the divine spark and specialness within each of us, and to rejoice in the midst of the sacred music we together make in the many ways we love and struggle to do and share good in the world. But our celebrations must always be rooted in and reflective of our own agency, our own image and own interests.
This is a Father’s Day message for Black fathers, African fathers, made more urgent and needed by the constantly changing and ever challenging times in which we strive to live good lives, do our work well, and wage victorious struggles of smaller and larger kinds.
In these tragic, troubled and troubling times, it is still important for all of us, soldiers, civilians and supporters, to constantly pause, reflect and renew ourselves. So, I share again some thoughts on grounding and centering ourselves in our ongoing striving and struggling to bring and sustain good in the world.
America is in crisis, having become a society against itself, moving from massacre to massacre seemingly with a mad hatter’s moral compass and a woefully insufficient moral commitment to clear a path to put the gun down as solution and salvation and stop the disabling and deadly violence against those different and vulnerable and even its chosen children.
In this month and historical moment of remembering and raising up Nana Malcolm X as a mirror and model for us and the world, we must make sure it is righteous and rightful remembrance. Indeed, it must be a critical remembering that reaches back in the practice of sankofa, retrieving the best of his moral sensitivities, thought and practice and using them to ground our lives, inform our work and guide our ongoing struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves.