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Tennessee Student is Centennial Scholar Recipient of Ossie Davis Scholarship
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Tennessee Student is Centennial Scholar Recipient of Ossie Davis Scholarship

Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior CorrespondentNovember 28, 2019

Earlier this month, after a rigorous selection process, the family of the late actors and activists, together with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), announced that Lane College senior, Jade Allen, is the recipient of the Ossie Davis Legacy Scholarship. “We are always motivated by mom and dad’s love of education and what a struggle it was for each of them to get higher education and the sacrifices that their parents made,” Davis Day told NNPA Newswire.

Uplifting the Liberator, Harriet Tubman: Unmasking the Imposter, Harriet of Hollywood
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Uplifting the Liberator, Harriet Tubman: Unmasking the Imposter, Harriet of Hollywood

Dr. Maulana KarengaNovember 21, 2019

Part 1.  The conversations and controversy surrounding the movie “Harriet” of Hollywood seems, at first sight, to be simply about Harriet Tubman, the liberator, the Harriet Tubman of history. But in a larger sense, it is about Black people, about: how we see ourselves; how we see our heroes and heroines; how we understand and honor our history, especially the history of the Holocaust of our enslavement; how we think and feel about male/female relations; and how we relate and respond to our oppression and our oppressor. And it’s about our willingness and ability to rightfully uplift Harriet Tubman, the Liberator, and unmask Harriet of Hollywood, the imposter, regardless of the seductive propaganda by the illusion-making, myth and money-producing enterprise we call Hollywood.

Remembering Times of Revolution and Revolt: Recapturing the Spirit, Pursing the Practice
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Remembering Times of Revolution and Revolt: Recapturing the Spirit, Pursing the Practice

Dr. Maulana KarengaNovember 7, 2019

It was a fundamental teaching and central source of battlefield talk, derived and discussed in the Sixties about the motion and meaning of history. There are, we assumed and argued with no small amount of certainty, two tendencies in history, that which is rising, grounding itself and growing stronger and that which is dying, decaying and passing away. And we defiantly declared that we and other oppressed and struggling peoples of this country and of the world belong to that rising tide of history. Likewise, we asserted with equal surety that oppressors of all kinds—racists, colonialists, capitalists, imperialists—and their lackeys, collaborators, hirelings, henchmen and handmaidens, belong to the declining side of history. And they would eventually be defeated, and freedom and justice for all would emerge and triumph in the world.

Righteous and Relentless Struggle: Reflections on the Principle and Practice
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Righteous and Relentless Struggle: Reflections on the Principle and Practice

Dr. Maulana KarengaOctober 24, 2019

(Remembering, reflecting and recommitting.) We cannot say it too often, stress it too much and certainly must never downplay in any way the definitive, determining and decisive role the principle and practice of righteous and relentless struggle have played in the self-conception, self-construction and self-assertion of our people and our organization Us, and the persons called into being and cultivated by both. For among the most defining features of our people is that we are a culture of righteous and relentless struggle, earnest and ongoing struggle to free ourselves and be ourselves, secure justice, expand the realm of human freedom,

Us, Culture and Struggle: Ultimately Engaged and Achieved on the Ground
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Us, Culture and Struggle: Ultimately Engaged and Achieved on the Ground

Dr. Maulana KarengaSeptember 19, 2019

This is a sankofa retrieval of thoughts on an anniversary past that still reveals positions and principles as relevant and real as rain in monsoon season. And it is reflective of the deep and enduring commitment we of Us have to the priority of our people, opposition to our oppressor and oppression, and to a communitarian African way of life and thus to the unfinished and ongoing liberation struggle we must continue to wage to achieve this.

Africa, Our Moral Ideal: Radical Reasoning About Ourselves and Our Culture
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Africa, Our Moral Ideal: Radical Reasoning About Ourselves and Our Culture

Dr. Maulana KarengaSeptember 12, 2019

For it is on their tall shoulders we stand and look back into our past and forward into our future, extracting and applying the instructive lessons of their legacy. And it is in their long and sheltering shadows that we continue the legacy they left in the life-affirming and liberating ways we live our lives, do our work, and wage our struggle for liberation and good in the world. Indeed, as Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune taught us, our obligation is and must be a “ceaseless striving” and struggle for the Good for ourselves, others and the world.

Us Reminiscing at Half Century and 4: The Architecture of Our Work and Will
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Us Reminiscing at Half Century and 4: The Architecture of Our Work and Will

Dr. Maulana KarengaSeptember 5, 2019

On this our 54th anniversary, I remember and raise up the momentous marking of our 50th anniversary. I said then and reaffirm now with four added years this. September 7 will mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of our organization Us, the introduction of the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles of Kwanzaa and Kawaida philosophy), and the establishment of the African American Cultural Center. These signature events and initiatives in our history as an organization also have a unique history in the intellectual and political culture and history of our people. In fact, we would argue, with due modesty, that no other organization of the Black Power period of similar size, with no real budget and no hidden or exposed European hand, influencing or directing it, has had more impact on the political and intellectual culture of our people since the 60s.

‘Keeping Faith with Fanon Reaffirming the Cultural Revolution’
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

‘Keeping Faith with Fanon Reaffirming the Cultural Revolution’

Dr. Maulana KarengaJuly 11, 2019

Indeed, Fanon’s proposal to set afoot a new African person, who is neither a conception nor reflection of Europe or its offspring, finds its ultimate and unavoidable solution on the subjective and objective level, i.e., in the hearts and minds of our people, and in what we do in our daily lives. This mutually reinforcing practice and project which he, Sekou Toure, Malcolm X, and Amilcar Cabral taught and which we of Us have advocated since the 1960s, is no­where more clear than in the process of cultural revolution. For cultural revolution, as they all taught, is a broad, profound and thorough-going social process which leads not only to the transformation of society, but also and simultaneously to the trans­formation of the people involved.

Bethune, Democracy and July 4th: Courageous Questioning and Constant Struggle
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Bethune, Democracy and July 4th: Courageous Questioning and Constant Struggle

Dr. Maulana KarengaJuly 4, 2019

Usually when we want to confront and discount America’s founding myth of creating a democracy of free and equal persons, its hypocritical and high-hype claims of justice for all and its self-congratulatory celebration of this myth on the 4thof July, we call Frederick Douglass to the dais. Or we hear Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer and others knocking at the door, coming to insist on a courageous questioning of the self-deluding lies this society routinely tells itself.

Maintaining the Meaning of Juneteenth: Staying Focused on Freedom
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Maintaining the Meaning of Juneteenth: Staying Focused on Freedom

Dr. Maulana KarengaJune 20, 2019

It is this ethical insight and emphasis on the priority of human freedom as the condition and context for justice, equality and human flourishing that leads Min. Malcolm to argue the right to pursue and achieve “freedom by any means necessary.” This phrase is not a claim to do even the unethical but is a cornerstone in his ethics of self-defense against oppression, his reaffirmation of the right of resistance and his call for a courageous commitment to give all that’s necessary to be free men and women, and stand upright and worthy among persons, peoples and nations of the world.

Rightfully Linking Reparations and Liberation: Righteously Repairing Ourselves and the World
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Rightfully Linking Reparations and Liberation: Righteously Repairing Ourselves and the World

Dr. Maulana KarengaJune 6, 2019

As a new and expanded round of reparations discussions and discourse take place in the public square and in the current political campaigns, seeking promised votes and progressive validation, it is vital for us to maintain control of how we define and pursue this world historical project. Indeed, it is important to look back, remember and reflect and not rush forward thinking it’s all over but the shouting. For ours is the most ancient of human histories with an endless library of lessons in life, work and struggle. And we know from this history, there is no easy walk or way to the victory in struggle we seek, not only to achieve reparations, but also a liberated life in which reparation is truly realized.

Not Yet Uhuru, Freedom Interrupted: African Liberation Delayed But Not Defeated
Dr. Maulana KarengaOpinion

Not Yet Uhuru, Freedom Interrupted: African Liberation Delayed But Not Defeated

Dr. Maulana KarengaMay 30, 2019

And on this day of memory and marking, May 25th, set aside in 1963 at Addis Ababa by the Organization of African Unity as African Liberation Day, we remember first and pay rightful homage to our ancestors. For they are the way-openers, the path-finders, the original freedom fighters, the layers of the foundations on which we strive to build in good and righteous ways. It is they who lifted up the light that lasts, the spiritual and moral visions and values by which we understand and assert ourselves at our best in the world. And in rightful homage to them, we in the Maatian ethical tradition, as written in the Husia, humbly ask of them every day “Ancestors, give us your hand, for we are bearers of dignity and divinity who came into being through you.”