The year 1965 began on an ominous and unsettling note — the assassination and martyrdom of Nana Malcolm X, the Fire Prophet. Even in the white and winter cold of February, it was a sign of the coming fire. Indeed, it pointed toward the fiery fulfillment of prophecy, which Nana Malcolm, himself, had predicted.
My interest in and embrace of Kiswahili as a pan-African language of choice raised questions of how best to communicate this choice and initiative to the African American community as well as the larger world African community. Important for me was, not only our learning of the language as a skill, but also and especially learning and embracing its communitarian views, values and practices. The task, then, was not only to provide language classes, but to create a cultural context and process by which there was an ongoing and expansive dialog with African culture, using Swahili as a
Nana Frantz Fanon (July 20,1925–December 6, 1961), noble ancestor and teacher of the righteous, radical and transformative word, believed in Africa’s capacity to repair, raise and renew itself, and in the African people’s will to unite and liberate themselves, bring into being a new world, woman and man, and start a new history of Africa and humankind.
In our long, difficult, dangerous and demanding struggles to liberate ourselves as African peoples, to regain our freedom we had at birth and enjoyed for thousands of years before Europe, colonialism, imperialism, racism and the resultant rot and retardation of human relations, there are countless men and women whose lives and deaths offer libraries of lessons, models and mirrors of living and dying in rightful and righteous ways.
On behalf of the African American Cultural Center (Us), we send greetings of solidarity and increased and continuing struggle to all African peoples throughout the world African community, and all oppressed, struggling and freedom-seeking peoples in the world on this African Liberation Day, May 25, in its 59th year of founding in Addis Abba 1963 by the Organization of African Unity.
Yet again, we are confronted with another radically evil act of mass murder of our people, this time in Buffalo, New York, nine out of 10 killed, two out of three wounded, and again in this war zone we call America.
If we are to rightfully remember Min. Malcolm, we must seriously grasp and practice what he so meticulously taught us about valuing our lives, our work and our struggle. Here I use grasp to mean take in hand and heart his legacy, study and understand it, and hold it firmly as a valuable heritage and framework for continuing forward.
Even in the midst of the rising tide of struggle in which we are now engaged against racism in its openly violent and hideous forms, as well as its disguised and hidden aggressions, it is good to sit down and meditate on meaningful things, i.e., things that matter—things like life, love, truth, justice and struggle.
Celebrating Black Women’s History: Achievements, Strengths and Struggles
In the historical narrative of his return to Kemet to end isfet, political anarchy and injustice, and to re-establish Maat, a just and rightful order, the Nubian Pharaoh Piankhi speaks of this choice of life or death.
And it will and must be a future forged in struggle, and self-consciously committed to human freedom, racial and social justice, world peace and ultimately the well-being and flourishing of the world and all in it.
The Mission Statement concludes with a challenge and call to us, ourselves, to sustain and institutionalize this moment and Movement.
And no need to say, “I’m not going to get in the mess, because if you were born in America with a Black face, you were born in the mess”.