RBG It All Started with Slave Ships: Feat.,Voices of Slavery & Photo-Story Mini-Lectures "Strange Fruit"
(Link back to our blogger version of this asset for the videos )
(Click the "ongoing holocaust"poster for the companion to this learning object)
We offer RBG Street Scholars Think Tank in the spirit of Sankofa
The MAAFA is a Kiswahili term for "Disaster" or "Terrible Occurrence".
This is the word that best describe the more than 500 hundred years of suffering of people of African descent through Slavery, Imperialism, Colonialism, Invasions and Exploitation. In this lesson you see pictures, here audio and watch videos that tell some of the story of our suffering.
For further study and research on reparations link out to: Reparations Central
A Video: African Slavery: Dr Mulana Karenga
It All Started with the Euorpean Holocaust of Afrikan Enslavement (The Maafa).
The story of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the "New World" is a story of European cruelty and African suffering. The barbarity of the slave trade is attested by the slavers themselves. For example, a Dutch slave trader on the West African cost in the 18th century wrote: “’The Invalides and the Maimed being thrown out . . . the remainder are numbred. . . . In the mean while a burning Iron, with the Arms or Name of the Companies, lyes in the Fire; with which ours are marked on the Breast. . . . I doubt not but this Trade seems very barbarous to you, but since it is followed by meer necessity it must go on; but we yet take all possible care that they are not burned too hard, especially the Women’" (qtd. in MacPherson).
Students new to the study of the Black Diaspora may be surprised to learn that "[w]hen slavery ended in the United States in 1865, this country contained 30
percent of the Western Hemisphere's population of African descent. Yet fewer than 5 percent of the Africans who reached the New World came to the region that became
the United States. The 10 million brought to the West Indies and Latin America did not even reproduce themselves under slavery, while the 427,000 brought to North America became 4,500,000 by 1865. The principal reason for this startling contrast was not the greater humanity of North American slaveholders. The causes included the healthier climate of North America, the lesser physical demands of cotton and tobacco cultivation compared with sugar and coffee, and the legal abolition of the African slave trade by the United States in 1808, at the beginning of the cotton boom, which led Old South planters to increase their labor force by the reproduction of slaves rather than by their importation. In Brazil and the Caribbean, by contrast, the slave trade remained open during the heyday of sugar and coffee, and it was cheaper to import slaves from Africa than to raise them from birth" (Segal qtd. in MacPherson).
Segal believes the "soul" of the Black Diaspora is "freedom. . . . It was in slavery that the diaspora was born, together with the longing and struggle for freedom"; this past is "one of victimization and suffering, but also one of courage and resilience and creativity" (qtd. in MacPherson). "While abroad, individuals maintain their social identity by living in communities which trace their origins to the homeland": "Diaspora" has meaning only so long as the "idea of an ancestral home" is kept alive (Lovejoy). African slaves and their descendants carried skills and communitarian values, rich cultural traditions, resiliency, and an ethos of resistance that transformed and enriched the cultures they entered around the world. Thus, as African peoples were globally dispersed, they carried their traditions of cultural creativity and oral arts with them, such as "common musical rhythms, exploration of multicolors…and diverse textures, play on repetition, and call-and-response modes of verbal activity" (Asante and Abarry 111). African folktales, often featuring the tortoise, hare, and spider, widespread on the African continent, were carried from Africa to the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. Though enslaved and uprooted, Diasporic blacks of African descent used their lives and experiences to preserve and reshape their cultures and institutions in new lands, forging new sources of strength, resistance, and hope.
Text from: The African Holocaust & African Diaspora/Central Oregon Community College
Reference Resource Link Out for Further Study: African Timelines : African Slave Trade & European Imperialism
VOICES OF SLAVERY: OUR ANCESTORS TELL THEIR STORIES
link to blogger
Strange Fruit
Lyrics by Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol (1937)/ Sung in the photo-story above by Cassanda WilsonSouthern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.
When chattel slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation & Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution southern white world terror domination continued unabated under the de facto rule of "Lynching Laws"
“The United States has a brutal history of domestic violence. It is the most ugly episode in United States history; and its relevance and relationship to current day police brutality is dutifully neglected in our public school system. Of the several varieties of American violence against people of Afrikan descent, one type stands out as one of the most inhuman chapters in the history of the world—lynching.
"In 1919, the NAACP reported 3,386 incidents of lynching between 1882-1918.
In a controversial 1992 revision, sociologists Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck, argue that duplication of reporting produced an over count.
They claim only 2,805 lynchings (nearly 2500 of which were Blacks) can be documented between 1882 and 1930, in ten southern states."
From: NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889-1918 (New York: Arno Press, 1919), p. 29 and Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck, Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynching, 1882-1930 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois)..
Companion learning object to the above:
WHO WE ARE AND WHO WE WERE
A RBG Youths Favorite: Gullah History
Gullah (or Geechee in northern Georgia) is a word used for both the native islanders and the language they speak. These islanders, former slaves from the West African coastal countries of Senegal and Sierra Leone, have been here for generations, and their unique culture remains largely intact. Learn More
WE COME FROM GREAT KINGS AND QUEENS BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Ancient Civilization did not begin in what we think of as the West. It did not start in Europe, Rome, India, or Asia. Homo Sapiens migrated from Africa to inhabit all the continents except Antarctica, some 200,000 to 100,000 years ago.
(Click On This Photo And Get Into The Full Story Of Our Ancient Greatness)
From the introduction of this book, you get the idea that Anthony Browder is very influence by the work done by John G. Jackson, John Henrik Clarke, and Yosef ben-Jochannan. These three men have done some of the most profound research and writing on early African history and the Nile Valley contribution to civilization. The writings of these men contain a lot of scholarship, which to many people may be very difficult to read and understand. This is why this book is so important. Anthony took what Jackson, Clarke, and Jochannan wrote about in their books and translated it so that the average person could read and understand. The theme of this book is centered on early Africa, early Africa's stolen legacy and early Africa's contributions to civilization. It also puts an emphasis on how those early contributions was translated into today's American society. In chapters 1-3, Mr. Browder talks about the people of early African civilization. He tells where they came from, who they were, what they did, and when they existed. He puts a special emphasis on the many accomplishments of the early African people. In chapters 4-7, Mr. Browder talks about the stolen legacy of early African civilization. He shows how other civilization took what the early African contributed and made it its own. He goes to great links to show and prove that what the Europeans claim as theirs was actually African in origin and rightfully belong to the African. In addition, he explains how American society has adopted early African symbols into its government structure. The finally chapters 8-10 are designed to assist the African/African-American mind to cope with the information given in chapters 1-7. The last chapters all have to do with building pride and understanding where we still must go and what we still must be. The period of this book stretches from about 4000BC into the present. The book is structured as to give a chronological development of early African history.
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