MERRY CHRISTMAS 2012

Murphy Browne © December 2012

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2012


Mooma, Mooma would you like to join your sonny?
I am over here, happy in the mother country
Darling, for the Christmas, your son would be really jumping
Listen to the chorus of what we all will be singing…
Drink a rum and a punch a crema, drink a rum
Is Christmas morning!


From “Drink a Rum” by Aldwyn “Lord Kitchener” Roberts (April 18, 1922 – February 11, 2000).
As an adult whenever I hear this song I cannot help wondering if Lord Kitchener was really encouraging his elderly mother to drink alcohol on Christmas morning. The calypso also brings back wonderful memories of spending Christmas with the McLeods (my aunt and her family) at 420 Mora Street in Mackenzie (Guyana.) I was about 8 years old the first time I spent Christmas visiting my mother’s older sister, her husband and daughter in Mackenzie. We travelled up the Demerara River on the steamer (SS) R.H Carr. The journey was too long for an 8 year old to stay awake so my father’s cousin who was staff on the R.H Carr lent us his bunk bed and I was asleep in no time while Papa disappeared with his cousin. When I woke up it was time for us to disembark at Sproston’s Wharf/Mackenzie Stelling. Some of those memories are dim after all this was several decades ago. However I do remember Lord Kitchener’s Drink A Rum blasting from Mr. Anthony’s (my aunt’s next door neighbour) jukebox early on Christmas morning. His neighbours (including the children) welcomed and enjoyed the music which signaled for us the beginning of the most enjoyable day of the year.


Our lives have certainly changed since those days. My mother and her five siblings have all transitioned and so have Mr. and Mrs. Anthony. My father and my Aunty Vilma Liverpool seem to be the only ones of that generation who are still with us. My aunt’s daughters (she eventually had four) have all immigrated to Europe and the USA and my siblings and I all live in Canada. We still try to replicate the Christmas of our childhood but that is impossible. We can cook the food we ate during Christmas but the ambiance of a Guyanese Christmas cannot be transferred to the foreign shores where we now dwell. Christmas in Guyanese households began with pepperpot for breakfast. Pepperpot is a uniquely Guyanese dish from the Native people of Guyana (Amerindians) but it has become the Christmas breakfast dish of choice for all Guyanese. Made with various meats seasoned with casareep (which is made by boiling bitter cassava) Guyanese pepperpot is best eaten with homemade bread. The casareep preserves the meat so pepperpot can be reheated and served over several days and could last through to Old Year’s night (New Year’s Eve.) Cook-up rice is the meal of choice for New Year’s Day so the pepperpot is most likely demolished before the New Year.
Many of us return to Guyana at Christmas time to relive those times and connect with relatives and friends who remained in Guyana and those who left to live elsewhere. There are those Guyanese who return home every year to visit and those who return once or twice after spending decades living outside of the country. The sights, sounds and smells of a Guyanese Christmas are unique. Children would wake up on Christmas morning to a seemingly new house where everything had been miraculously transformed overnight.


The adults worked throughout the night to ensure that the beautiful wooden furniture were sanded and polished, there were new window curtains, the floors were sanded and polished, the walls were painted etc.,. It was almost like there had been elves at work because of all the work our elders put into making Christmas Day so special. We woke up on Christmas morning raring to open the presents that Father Christmas had mysteriously brought to our homes the night before. We really did believe all those gifts were from Father Christmas until we were about 11 or 12 years old. Not surprising since Father Christmas knew exactly what we wanted for Christmas. The presents he brought were mostly gender specific. There were usually water and cap guns, bats and other cricket paraphernalia for the boys. The girls mostly received dolls, dolls’ clothes, tea sets and kitchen gadgets. We all, boys and girls received books, clothes and shoes.


The Christmas cards from near and far (mostly from relatives and friends who lived Britain) were displayed and we had fun reading some of the greetings. We were also fascinated with the images of snow, snowmen and “real” Christmas trees growing in the snow. In Guyana there are no evergreen trees resembling what is considered the traditional Christmas tree but artificial trees were a part of the decoration, complete with fake snow. The food that is an important part of the festivities and on Christmas day all the adults were involved with the food preparation and the amazing smell of Christmas lunch and dinner added to that unique smell of a Guyanese Christmas. The dining table seemed to groan under the weight of the food on Christmas day. Lunch and dinner included roasted and baked chicken, garlic pork,pepperpot, roasted and baked duck, black cake, pickled onions, achar, ginger beer, mauby, sorrel and various types of liquor for the men. Family, friends, neighbours and even strangers were made welcome and invited to eat, drink and take food home when they visited on Christmas day.


During my recent visit to Guyana (December 2011) I realized that I have not lost my childhood fear of Mother Sally and the mad cow which are a traditional part of the Guyanese Christmas entertainment. Special entertainment was provided by the masquerade bands that travelled throughout the towns and villages. The fearsome mad cow and Mother Sally were terrifying figures to many children as they flounced and danced to the sound of the kittle, flute and drum. I was scared witless at the sight of Mother Sally and the mad cow and would hide indoors until they were out of sight. The men and boys who accompanied the masquerade bands would perform amazing acrobatic movements as they flounced and danced to pick up money that was placed on the ground. Some of the members of the masquerade bands would chant: “Christmas comes but once a year and everyman must have his share, except old brother Willy in the jail drinking sour ginger beer.” I could never get a satisfactory answer from any adults when I asked why “old brother Willy” was in jail every year at Christmas time.


In Guyana the celebration of Christmas is embraced by all Guyanese regardless of race, ethnicity and religion although the celebration began in the 1600s with the arrival of the Dutch, the first Europeans who settled in Guyana. The enslaved Africans probably embraced the celebration of Christmas because it was the one day of the year that their enslavers allowed them to have a respite from the backbreaking field work (the house slaves would have had to work as usual) after all the slaveholder families would not cook their own meals on Christmas Day or clean their homes themselves. Later generations of Africans who converted to Christianity celebrated the birth of Christ and attending church on Christmas Day was expected. The indentured labourers who arrived in Guyana from Madeira (May 3, 1835) were Catholics and added their Christmas traditions to those of the Africans who imitated the British. The indentured labourers who arrived from Asia (China – January 17, 1853 and India – May 5, 1838) arrived in then British Guiana with their religious beliefs intact but embraced Christmas and celebrated it as a secular holiday which included recognizing Father Christmas and the giving and receiving of gifts. In Canada Christmas is embraced by people of all religions as a secular holiday. Regardless of people’s religious beliefs they are out shopping and looking for bargains at this time of the year. Christmas as celebrated by Christians gets such short shrift that you will frequently hear people referring to Christmas trees as holiday trees and instead of Merry Christmas wishing Happy Holidays. If you are celebrating Christmas or want to wish someone Merry Christmas don’t be shy say it loud and clear: “Merry Christmas!”

Murphy Browne © December 2012

ON HER OWN GROUND: MADAM C. J. WALKER

One hundred and fifty years ago today on December 23-1867 Sarah Breedlove was born in Delta, Louisiana and eventually became the first African American woman millionaire.


Murphy Browne © February 2014
ON HER OWN GROUND: MADAM C. J. WALKER
"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground."


Quote attributed to Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker (Madam C. J. Walker) from the 2002 published book “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker” written by A’Lelia Bundles


Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 two years after slavery was abolished in the USA. She was born in Delta, Louisiana to Owen and Minerva Breedlove and was the first freeborn person in her family as her parents and older siblings had been enslaved until 1865. Madam C. J. Walker as she came to be known after her third marriage to Charles Joseph Walker on January 4, 1906 is acknowledged as the first African American woman millionaire. Her story is one of “rags to riches” by dint of hard work and entrepreneurship. Her parents who lived and worked on the plantation where they had been enslaved both transitioned before she was 7 years old leaving her and her siblings orphans. The uncertainty of being shuttled between relatives after losing her parents is speculated as the reason Sarah Breedlove married Moses McWilliams in 1881 when she was only 14 years old. Four years later she gave birth to her only child, a daughter A’Lelia McWilliams and two years later at 20 years old Sarah Breedlove McWilliams was a widow and her two year old daughter fatherless.


Several sources claim that Moses McWilliams was lynched by a white mob in 1887. In her 2002 published book “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker” author A’Lelia Bundles who is Walker’s great, great grand daughter writes: “With no death certificate and no dependable oral history from Sarah Breedlove herself, it is unlikely that anyone will ever know whether Moses McWilliams was one of the ninety-five people whose lynchings were documented in 1888.”The fact that Breedlove was never recorded speaking about her husband being lynched is hardly surprising. If she had witnessed the lynching she may have been so traumatized that she could not speak of the horror of witnessing such an event. The absence of a death certificate for an African American lynched by a white mob is hardly likely to have concerned the white supremacist government. In January 1892 the Chicago Tribune published a list of the numbers of African Americans who had been lynched from 1882 to 1891 and 70 African Americans had been lynched in 1887. Whatever tragedy led to Breedlove McWilliams being widowed in 1887 she and her two year old child were left without a husband and father and she had to provide clothing, food and shelter for herself and her child. She moved to St Louis, Missouri where she worked as a washerwoman to support her family of two. Following a second marriage to John Davis (August 11, 1894) where she was subjected to domestic violence she fled and eventually married her third husband Charles Joseph Walker on January 4, 1906 and changed her name to Madam C. J. Walker.

 In 1906 Walker founded the “Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company” in Denver and her first two products were “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower”and a vegetable-based shampoo. She traveled across the USA, the Caribbean and Latin America marketing and promoting “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” eventually establishing Lelia College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which trained women to sell her products door-to-door and provide hair-care for African American women. By 1910 she had more than 1,000 sales agents and had moved to Indianapolis where she established the headquarters of “Madame C. J. Walker Laboratories” to manufacture cosmetics and opened another training school to train her salespeople. As a pioneer of the modern cosmetics industry and an advocate of women's economic independence she provided above average wages for thousands of African American women who otherwise would have been relegated to working as farm labourers and domestic labourers.

 Walker is known as the woman who made a fortune encouraging African American women to straighten their hair. In “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker”: Bundles writes: “It would be years before I would learn that her Walker System was intended to treat the scalp disease that was so rampant in the early 1900s, when many women washed their hair only once a month. "Right here let me correct the erroneous impression held by some that I claim to straighten hair," she told a reporter in 1918 after she had been called the "de-kink queen" by a white newspaper. "I deplore such an impression because I have always held myself out as a hair culturist. I grow hair." Walker was also a philanthropist who gave back to her community including $1,000 in 1911 to build a new YMCA in Indianapolis for African Americans. Shortly after moving to Harlem in 1916 she contributed $5,000 to the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement. As a political activist, in July 1917 when a white mob massacred African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois, Walker joined a group of Harlem leaders who visited the White House to present a petition advocating federal anti-lynching legislation. At her “Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention” in Philadelphia in 1917 considered one of the first national meetings of businesswomen Walker reportedly said to the gathering: “This is the greatest country under the sun, but we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible.” The story of Madam C.J. Walker finding fame and fortune with a business plan encouraging African American women to straighten their hair began more than a hundred years ago when we felt compelled to confirm to a European standard of beauty. Not much about our hair experience has changed since then.


In the 2001 published book “Tenderheaded” bell hooks, one of the contributing writers reminds us: “Despite many changes in racial politics, black women continue to obsess about their hair, and straightening hair continues to be serious business. Individual preferences (whether rooted in self-hate or not) cannot negate the reality that our collective obsession with hair straightening reflects the psychology of oppression and the impact of racist colonization.” Even in 2013 there have been various stories in the media about African American women and girls who have experienced negative reactions when they choose to wear their natural hair. The most recent is the story of Melphine Evans, an African American woman who was reportedly told that she should warn her colleagues whenever she planned to wear her hair in braids because: “You intimidate and make your colleagues uncomfortable by wearing ethnic clothing and ethnic hairstyles” (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Senior-BP-executive-told-braid…) Evans who worked for British Petroleum (BP) in an executive position was fired and has filed a law suit against BP: “According to the suit, filed with the Orange County Superior Court this week, Evans says that her supervisors told her that her dashiki and braided hair made other employees 'uncomfortable.” Celebrate Madam C.J. Walker’s birthday and in recognition of her entrepreneurial spirit and her success in business support African Canadian businesses in the spirit of the Kwanzaa principle Ujamaa (Co-operative economics.)
Murphy Browne © February 2014

MADAM C.J. WALKER DECEMBER 23-1867

Murphy Browne © Thursday, December 22, 2011

MADAM C.J. WALKER


For my 13th birthday I was subjected to what could be considered a rite of passage for African Guyanese females. Most of us looked forward to and welcomed taking part in this tradition. I had been looking forward to this event with great anticipation since some girls younger than I had already been initiated. This initiation could be painful and even traumatic depending on the skill of the person wielding the “pressing” comb. We had heard some of the horror stories and seen the evidence of incompetent “pressing” comb wielders. That evidence included burnt ears, foreheads, necks and scalps. In my case the “pressing” comb wielder was competent and in any case my 13 year old partly colonized mind probably would not have minded a singe or two to achieve the effect of having my naturally curly African hair “fried.” At that time we thought it was the height of fashion and sophistication to have our hair “fried” and lying flat to our scalps. Those who were “lucky” enough would get what was termed a “press and curl” which meant that the “fried” hair was not left to lie flat on the scalp but was curled with another heated contraption similar to today’s curling iron. My “lucky” and ecstatic 13 year old self was in seventh heaven because I was treated to a “press and curl.” There I was, 13 years old with a fabulous hairstyle, allowed to wear high heeled shoes for the first time (never mind I could hardly walk in the two inch heels) and wearing my first “grown up style” dress. To complete this rite of passage, with my new grown up hairstyle, dress and shoes, I sauntered off to the cinema accompanied by my cousin Joy who is 11 months younger than I. These many decades later I cannot remember anything about the movie but I will never forget the “press and curl.”


Almost 15 years ago I stopped straightening my hair. During my “press and curl” days there was always the fear that some dreadful medical calamity could befall if I was caught in the rain after a session. As an adult my friend Claire DeAbreu introduced me to another method of straightening African hair. As a Georgetown born and bred African Guyanese female she had advanced beyond the “pressing” comb and used a chemical solution to straighten her curls. Claire and I met when we both taught at St John’s School in Sparendaam on the East Coast, Demerara and soon became fast friends. She introduced me to Jaffrey’s Hair Straightener and that is when I experienced the first painful episode of straightening hair. In a do-it-yourself moment, probably not following the instructions to the letter I found that at the end of the experience along with dead straight hair there was also pain, pain and more pain! There was one difference from using the “pressing” comb, no more fear of catching pneumonia if I was caught in a downpour of rain.


I thought about those hair-raising experiences of my youth as I realised that Madam C.J. Walker’s 144th birthday was fast approaching. This African American woman who was born on December 23, 1867 just two years after her parents were freed from slavery, grew up to become the first African American woman millionaire. She was born Sarah Breedlove to Owen and Minerva Breedlove who both transitioned before she was 7 years old leaving her and her siblings orphans. The uncertainty of being shuttled between relatives after losing her parents is speculated as the reason Sarah Breedlove married Moses McWilliams in 1881 when she was only 14 years old. Four years later she gave birth to her only child, a daughter A’Lelia McWilliams and two years later at 20 Sarah Breedlove McWilliams was a widow and her two year old daughter fatherless. Many sources claim that Moses McWilliams was lynched by a white mob in 1887; however in the 2009 published book Harlem Renaissance lives from the African American national biography the authors Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham write: “Although some sources say he was lynched, there is no credible documentation to justify such a claim.” In her 2001 published book On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker author A’Lelia Bundles writes: “With no death certificate and no dependable oral history from Sarah Breedlove herself, it is unlikely that anyone will ever know whether Moses McWilliams was one of the ninety-five people whose lynchings were documented in 1888.”


The fact that Breedlove was never recorded speaking about her husband being lynched does not mean he was not lynched. If she had witnessed the lynching she may have been so traumatized that she could not speak of the horror of witnessing such an event. No death certificate for an African American lynched by a white mob is hardly likely to have concerned the white supremacist government. Whatever tragedy led to Breedlove McWilliams being widowed in 1887 she and her two year old child were left without a husband and father and she had to provide clothing, food and shelter for herself and her child. She moved to St Louis, Missouri where she worked as a washerwoman to support her family of two. Following a second marriage (John Davis) where she was subjected to domestic violence she married her third husband Charles Joseph Walker on January 4, 1906 and changed her name to Madam C. J. Walker. She traveled across the USA, the Caribbean and Latin America marketing and promoting Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower eventually establishing Lelia College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which trained women to sell her products door-to-door and provide hair-care for African American women. By 1910 she had more than 1,000 sales agents and had moved to Indianapolis where she established the headquarters of Madame C. J. Walker Laboratories to manufacture cosmetics and opened another training school to train her salespeople. As a pioneer of the modern cosmetics industry and an advocate of women's economic independence she provided above average wages for thousands of African American women who otherwise would have been relegated to working as farm labourers and maids.


Although she is known as the woman who made a fortune encouraging African American women to straighten their hair, Walker was a philanthropist who gave back to her community including $1,000 in 1911 to build a new YMCA in Indianapolis for African Americans. Shortly after moving to Harlem in 1916 she contributed $5,000 to the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement. As a political activist, in July 1917 when a white mob massacred African Americans in East St. Louis, Illinois, Walker joined a group of Harlem leaders who visited the White House to present a petition advocating federal anti-lynching legislation. At her Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention in Philadelphia in 1917 considered one of the first national meetings of businesswomen Walker reportedly said to the gathering: “This is the greatest country under the sun, but we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible.” The story of Madam C.J. Walker finding fame and fortune with a business plan encouraging African American women to straighten their hair began more than a hundred years ago when we felt compelled to confirm to a European standard of beauty. Not much about our hair has changed since then. In the 2001 published book Tenderheaded, bell hooks, one of the contributing writers reminds us: “Despite many changes in racial politics, black women continue to obsess about their hair, and straightening hair continues to be serious business. Individual preferences (whether rooted in self-hate or not) cannot negate the reality that our collective obsession with hair straightening reflects the psychology of oppression and the impact of racist colonization.”
Murphy Browne © Thursday, December 22, 2011

CARTER GODWIN WOODSON DECEMBER 19-1875

Murphy Browne © February 2008

 CARTER GODWIN WOODSON DECEMBER 19-1875

 No systematic effort toward change has been possible, for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature, and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro's mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. The problem of holding the Negro down, therefore, is easily solved. When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.


From “The Mis-education of the Negro” by Carter G. Woodson published 1933


Carter Godwin Woodson is regarded as the Father of Black History because in February 1926 he established “Negro History Week” to educate his community about their history. In 1926 when Woodson began this initiative the popular thought was that the history of Africans began with their enslavement and colonization by Europeans. During the enslavement of Africans their white enslavers made a concerted effort to strip Africans of all memory of their culture, language and history. Using savagely brutal means, the slave holders succeeded in wiping all knowledge of African languages, culture and history from the memory of many enslaved Africans and their descendants. Vestiges of the languages, culture and history survived in fragments in every enslaved community. We managed to salvage remnants of our culture, languages and history in whatever European language we were forced to survive.


Our African culture survived whether we were forced to speak English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German or any other European language. In the lyrics of his song “Survival,” Bob Marley sang, “We're the survivors, like Daniel out of the lions’ den (Black survivors).” Like our culture and history, we survived, fragmented in many cases, disconnected in many cases, traumatized in many cases, but we survived. Woodson choose the second week of February for the reclaiming of our history because he wanted to commemorate the memory of Frederick Douglass. Douglass was an enslaved African who escaped slavery and became one of the most well known abolitionists. Douglass claimed February 14th as his birthday because his mother called him her “little valentine.” As an enslaved African he did not have access to a record of his birth date. Douglass was also one of the few formerly enslaved Africans who wrote an autobiography. Recognizing that African history was being ignored or misrepresented in America, Woodson began his quest to educate America about the accomplishments of Africans. He was opposed by some African Americans but this is not surprising because there are many of us who have been successfully brainwashed. The contributions of African people from ancient times to the present in subjects such as mathematics, science, social studies, language and art has been ignored. Woodson was born December 19th, 1875, ten years after his parents had been emancipated from slavery. Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865 with the passing into law of the 13th amendment to the American constitution.


The virulent anti-African racism of the southern United States prevented Woodson from attending school on a regular basis until he was 17 years old. That was not a deterrent to this young African American who is said to have possessed an unquenchable thirst for learning from an early age. Whenever the opportunity presented itself he attended the local school and eventually went to Berea College in Kentucky. He persevered and received a B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1907. In 1908 he attended the Sorbonne University in Paris where he became fluent in French. He received a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1912, becoming the second African-American to earn such a degree. Woodson taught briefly and held educational administrative posts in the Philippines, at Howard University (where he was Dean of the School of Liberal Arts), and West Virginia State College. He was the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and the Journal of Negro History, in Chicago in 1915, which is still in existence. He wrote more than a hundred articles and 125 book reviews which were published in the Journal of Negro History. Dr. Woodson’s activism was viewed as controversial by some members of the African American community. On January 28, 1915, he wrote a letter to Archibald Grimke the Chairman of the recently organized Washington, D.C. branch of the NAACP expressing his dissatisfaction with the NAACP. Woodson made a few suggestions in this letter that came to be viewed as too controversial for the NAACP. His proposals were that the branch rent an office and there establish a center to which African Americans could report their concerns about racism and from which the Association could extend its operations into every part of the city. His second suggestion was that twenty-five canvassers be appointed to enlist members and obtain subscriptions for the Crisis, the NAACP publication edited by W.E.B. Dubois. Woodson also suggested "diverting patronage from business establishments which do not treat races alike." He offered to support this initiative by working as a canvasser adding that he would pay the rent for the office for one month. It seems Grimke as the NAACP spokesperson did not welcome Dr. Woodson’s ideas. In a letter dated March 18, 1915, in response to a letter from Grimke’ regarding his proposals, Woodson wrote, "I am not afraid of being sued by white businessmen. In fact, I should welcome such a law suit. It would do the cause much good. Let us banish fear. We have been in this mental state for three centuries. I am a radical. I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me."


Needless to say, Dr. Woodson's association with the NAACP and Grimke was short-lived. In contrast, Dr. Woodson was a regular columnist for Marcus Garvey's weekly publication “The Negro World.” Never one to shy away from seemingly “controversial subjects,” Woodson utilized the pages of the Negro World to advocate for the inclusion of African history in the curricula of educational institutions. Woodson’s efforts to include African culture and history into the curricula of institutions were unsuccessful because “highly educated Negroes” subscribed to the idea of white supremacy. They had been mis-educated in European centred institutions, to despise themselves and their people. Woodson wrote in his “Mis-education of the Negro” published in 1933; “The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. For example, the philosophy and ethics resulting from our educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and lynching. The oppressor has the right to exploit, to handicap, and to kill the oppressed. Negroes daily educated in the tenets of such a religion of the strong have accepted the status of the weak as divinely ordained, and during the last three generations of their nominal freedom they have done practically nothing to change it.” It has been suggested that this lack in the education system was Woodson’s reason for leaving his position at Howard University and his dedication to educating North America and eventually the world about the history, achievements and contributions of Africans through the establishment of a week long educational that has been extended to an entire month.


We have recognized and celebrated the history of Africans in Canada since the 1950s when the Canadian Negro Women's Association began the celebration of the community’s history in Canada. This work was continued by the efforts of Stan Grizzle and the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) which led to the recognition province wide in 1979 of February as Black History Month. In December 1995, Canada's federal parliament officially recognized February as Black History Month. The motion, which was initiated by MP Jean Augustine, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, received unanimous approval. Dr. Augustine is the first African Canadian woman elected to the Canadian Federal Parliament in its now 137 year history. The first national observation of February as Black History Month in Canada was in February 1996. In 2008 in Toronto, on the eve of African Heritage Month, our community achieved another historic milestone, the culmination of decades of lobbying, studies and reports. The decision by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to establish an alternative African centred school was greeted with joy and some sense of relief and accomplishment as was expressed by our community in a press conference on Thursday morning, February 7th, 2008. There is much more work to be done before this school becomes a reality but we are up to the task. We have come a long way since the days when Dr. Woodson struggled to have the recognition that we even have a history. During this month whether we name it Black History Month, African History Month or African Liberation Month we need to recognize and commemorate the global history of Africans.


Murphy Browne © February 2008

ELLA JOSEPHINE BAKER DECEMBER 13-1903

Murphy Browne © December 2015

ELLA JOSEPHINE BAKER (DECEMBER 13-1903 - DECEMBER 13-1986) UNSUNG SHERO

“Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a White mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.”

Quote from Ella Josephine Baker in August, 1964 during her speech as the keynote speaker of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Convention

Ella Josephine Baker was born on December 13, 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia the middle child of the 3 children of Blake Baker and Georgiana Ross Baker. Baker made the above statement shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were discovered in a river in Philadelphia, Mississippi on August 4, 1964. Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were civil rights volunteers who had been missing since June 21, 1964. They were murdered by a group of White men who were virulently opposed to African Americans having any rights including the right to vote. During the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey as a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Ella Baker spoke about the search for the missing civil rights workers. Two of the civil rights workers (Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner) were White men from New York while James Chaney was African American from Mississippi. During the search for the bodies of the 3 missing men, several African Americans who had been lynched by White men were discovered in the Mississippi river. The African American lives were not considered valuable enough to warrant a search by the authorities. In the 1998 published book "Black Women Film and Video Artists" African American professor Jacqueline Bobo writes: "Many Black people were aware that as the authorities searched for the missing workers, they found bodies of murdered Black men in the rivers of Mississippi that no one had previously investigated because they had not been killed along with white men." Baker was one of the architects of the Civil Rights Movement working mostly with the youth as a grassroots organizer. She like Fannie Lou Hamer is one of many unsung sheroes who worked tirelessly in the movement. Baker was an outspoken social justice activist and advocate and worked in several organizations that addressed the injustices faced by African Americans. She worked as a field organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) beginning in 1938. As a field organizer with the NAACP Baker traveled to various southern cities and townsestablishing NAACP chapters, recruiting new members and raising money. As one of the contributors to the 1980 book “Moving the Mountain: Women Working for Social Change 1980” Baker expressed her philosophy of organizing: “You start where the people are.” This philosophy helped to make Baker an effective and successful organizer because she could communicate with African Americans living in poverty working as tenant farmers (sharecroppers)as well as middle-class, educated African Americans. In her 2003 published book “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision” African American professor Barbara Ransby wrote about Baker:“her primary base of knowledge came from grassroots communities and from lived experience, not from formal study. She was a partisan intellectual, never feigning a bloodless objectivity, but always insisting that ideas should be employed in the service of oppressed people and toward the goal of justice.”In 1942 Baker became the director of the NAACP responsible for the NAACP branches throughout the USA. She left the NAACP in 1948 to raise her pre-teen niece who she had adopted and returned in 1954 as president of the New York City branch of the NAACP. In 1955 Baker became involved in the effort to integrate New York City’s public schools when she was asked by the mayor of New York City to be a member of the Commission on School Integration. The Commission delivered its report in 1957 and one of the recommendations suggested by Baker was to allow children to attend schools outside of their own neighbourhoods. The Open Enrollment Program which was established in 1961 was the result of that recommendation. The Open Enrollment Program provided free transportation to elementary students on school buses while secondary school students were given special passes to be used on subway and buses.

Baker was also involved in other civil rights activism. On January 5, 1956, one month after Rosa Parks was tried and found guilty of breaking the White supremacist segregation law and African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama began the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Ella Baker and other activists in New York City founded the organization “In Friendship.” During its three years of operation “In Friendship” contributed thousands of dollars to support the work of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and its campaign to desegregate public transportation. With the successful integration of the Montgomery public transportation system African American activists including Baker co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in February 1957. Baker moved to Atlanta in 1958 to help with organizing membership in the SCLC and she also ran Crusade for Citizenship a voter registration campaign.

Baker was instrumental in founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which grew out of the peaceful African American student sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters in department stores. On Monday, February 1, 1960 a group of African American students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University - one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the USA - refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service. This sparked a wave of other sit-ins in college towns across the South. The SNCC was co-founded by Baker in April 1960 on the campus of Shaw University (an HBCU) in Raleigh, North Carolina to coordinate and support the sit-ins. In “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement” Ransby describes the beginnings of Baker’s activism: “nurtured, educated and challenged by a community of strong, hard-working, deeply religious people—most of them women—who celebrated their accomplishments and recognized their class advantage, but who also pledged themselves to serve and uplift those less fortunate.” Ransby also recognizes Baker’s contribution to the movement throughout her years of activism and advocacy: “From her tenure as field secretary and later director of branches for the NAACP during the 1940s through her role as political godmother to young activists in the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Baker insisted that democratic struggles be guided by an internally democratic process of open debate, deliberation and equal participation for all regardless of gender, income, education or status.”

Ella Baker's words from 50 years ago urging that “the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a White mother’s son” are still not a reality today in 2014 with the recent “Grand Jury” refusal to indict the White men who killed Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Those words immortalized in song “Ella’s Song” by the African American group Sweet Honey in the Rock composed in 1998 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Uus--gFrc are almost heart breaking in today’s toxic environment where “Breathing While Black” seems to be a criminal offence. The words of “Ella’s Song” which were spoken by Baker in 1964 are poignant as we witness the almost daily extrajudicial killing of unarmed African Americans as young as 12 years old.

Murphy Browne © December 2015

JAMHURI DAY IN KENYA DECEMBER 12

JAMHURI DAY IN KENYA DECEMBER 12
Murphy Browne © December 2010
"When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible."


Quote attributed to Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first Prime Minister (1963–1964) and President (1964–1978)


Jomo Kenyatta became Kenya’s first Prime Minister when the country gained its political independence from Britain on December 12, 1963. Kenyatta, born Kamau wa Ngengi to parents Muigai and Wambui who were members of the Kikuyu ethnic group in central Kenya changed his name to Jomo Kenyatta as an adult.


The first Europeans entering Kenya in 1844 were German missionaries. These missionaries had more on their minds than converting Africans to Christianity. They made numerous exploratory journeys into the interior of the country where they carefully mapped and wrote about their findings. Their detailed maps and cataloguing of the land, which they published, showed huge inland lakes, speculations about the source of the Nile and their sightings of the snow-covered peaks of Mountains Kilimanjaro and Kenya. The findings of the missionaries published in 1860: Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours During an Eighteen Years' Residence in Eastern Africa led to British adventurers descending on the country. Not surprisingly, the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf dedicated the book to “The Prince Consort Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel etc.,” the German husband of then reigning British monarch, Victoria.


The history of Kenya however began long before the advent of Europeans to the area in the 1840s. In the 1981 published book Kenya’s Past: An Introduction to Historical Method in Africa, Thomas Spear writes “The history of eastern and central Kenya stretches more than two million years from the initial emergence of mankind itself to the present. The archaeological record of mankind in Kenya is the oldest in the world, stretching back some four to five million years to the earliest men and women and their immediate forebears living on the shores of Lake Turkana.”


The communities in the area included, farmers, fishers, hunters and ironworkers who supported the economy with agriculture, fishing, metal production and trade with other countries. Mombasa (Kenya’s capital) was the major port city of Kenya in the Middle Ages from where large and small ships left to trade with other countries. In the 16th century, Duarte Barbosa a Portuguese writer and trader visited several countries bordering the Indian Ocean and documented his findings in The Book of Duarte Barbosa: An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and Their Inhabitants which was published in 1518. Of his visit to Mombasa, Barbosa wrote, “This is a place of great traffic and has a good harbour in which there are always moored small craft of many kinds and also great ships, both of those which come from Sofala and those which go thither, and others which come from the great kingdom Cambaya and from Melinde and others which sail to the island of Zanzibar.”

Kenya’s history was re-written by white colonizers who swiftly followed the German missionaries and British adventurers. The lives of the Africans changed considerably after this large scale occupation of the land by white men and women. The Germans and British were jostling each other for space in East Africa. The covetous Europeans had occupied other areas of Africa and by 1884 felt that they needed to have some rules since they were tripping over each other in their greedy stampede to occupy African land. In 1884 at the request of Portugal, German chancellor Otto von Bismark organized a meeting (Berlin Conference) of the major white controlled nations of the world to negotiate and end the confusion over who would occupy which portion of Africa. Fourteen countries were represented when the conference opened in Berlin on November 15, 1884; Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway (unified from 1814-1905), Turkey and the United States of America. The feeding frenzy lasted three months until February 26, 1885. This group of white men in Europe haggled over haphazardly drawn boundaries on the African continent, disregarding the centuries old established communities, cultures and order of the Africans.


The British moved into Kenya, occupied the most fertile land and forced the Africans off the land. They passed laws that disenfranchised Africans, even forbidding them to own land in certain parts of the country. With the white interlopers occupying what they dubbed the "White Highlands" of Kenya, the Maasai and the Kikuyu were displaced and some were forced unto reserves. With the fertile land in Kenya reserved for white people and Africans forced to subsist on mostly infertile land, the white settlers became increasingly wealthy while the Africans lived in poverty. The large scale farming that enriched the white farmers needed cheap labour but the Africans refused to work on the farms. To ensure that Africans were a cheap source of labour for the white population of Kenya, the British government passed laws which forced the Africans to work for the white people who now occupied their land. The British army was on hand to ensure that white farmers and the stolen African land they occupied was protected. The Masters and Servants Act (1906) ensured that a caste system of all white people as masters and all Africans as servants was firmly in place.


Even after carving up the African continent and exploiting the natural resources and the people, the Europeans continued to fight each other over territory until everything came to a head in 1914 with an all out European armed tribal conflict. Following that armed conflict, Germany lost the African land it had coveted to other Europeans. The second European tribal conflict which lasted from 1939 to 1945 was a turning point for Africans across the continent. Africans from the various colonized nations were forced into both wars as fighting men and when they returned home were not satisfied to continue living as third class citizens. Returning to Kenya after the second war in Europe the African ex-servicemen found that the British colonial government had reneged on its promise to provide them with land and other benefits and instead their taxes had been increased. According to authors Esther and Joseph Oppong (Kenya published 2004) Harry Thuku (co-founder of the Kikuyu Central Association) acting for a group of disgruntled Kenyan ex-servicemen wrote to the government saying: "When we went to do war work we were told by His Excellency the governor that we should be rewarded, but it is our reward to have our tax raised and to have registration papers given to us for our ownership of land to be called into question; to be told today that we are to receive title deeds and tomorrow for it to appear that we are not to receive them.”


The British government ignored the repeated requests to honour the promises made to the men. The continued disrespect and mistreatment of the Africans by the British government and the white occupiers of the land led to the independence movement with Kenyatta as its eventual leader. The British resisted the Kenyan call for independence, imprisoning, torturing and killing the freedom fighters. After decades of fighting the British for their independence during which Kenyatta and other leaders were imprisoned, some tortured and killed, with thousands of African civilians killed by British troops, Kenyans gained their independence on December 12, 1963.
Murphy Browne © December 2010

DECEMBER 5-1955 THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT BEGAN

Sixty two years ago today on December 5, 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began in Montgomery, Alabama. Four days before on December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks a 42 year old African American woman had been arrested and charged when she refused to give up her seat in the “Colored” section of a Montgomery City bus to a white man who could not find a seat in the crowded section of the bus designated for white people. It was the law at the time in Montgomery, Alabama and many other south...ern states of the USA that African Americans sitting in the first few rows of the “Colored” section of the city buses had to give up their seats in the “Colored” section of buses if there were no seats for white passengers in the section designated for them.

When the driver demanded that Rosa Parks and the other three African Americans sitting in the first row of the “Colored” section of the bus relinquish their seats for the white man, she refused. The other three African American passengers vacated their seats and moved to stand at the back of the bus but the driver wanted the row of seats cleared of “Negroes.” Rosa Parks wrote in her autobiography that she as a 42 year old woman was not physically tired. She was tired of the unfair treatment to which African Americans were subjected. She also shared that she was thinking of 15 year old Emmett Till who had been tortured and killed just four months before in August 1955 because he was accused of whistling at a white woman.


Rosa Parks was the third African American woman arrested under the same circumstances in 1955. Claudette Colvin, a 15 year old African American secondary school student had been arrested (9 months before Rosa Parks) on March 2, 1955. When it was discovered that the 15 year old was pregnant some “respectable” members of the African American community deemed her unsuitable for their support. On October 21, 1955 (barely a month before Rosa Parks) Mary Louise Smith an 18 year old African American was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the segregated bus in similar circumstances to Rosa Parks. It has been said that the “respectable” members of the African American community deemed her unsuitable for their support because her father seemed a bit tipsy when they visited the home and he was walking around barefooted in his front yard.


When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 she was the ideal candidate for the “respectable” members of the African American community to support. Rosa Parks was the secretary of the NAACP, she was married, gainfully employed and no apparent skeletons in her closets. The Montgomery Bus Boycott began on Monday December 5, 1955 and lasted until December 20, 1956. The African American community stayed off the buses in spite of the violence they suffered from the white community trying to force them to ride the segregated buses.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOd5ltjj8g

ROSA PARKS DECEMBER 1-1955

Sixty two years ago today on Thursday December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the “Colored” section of a Montgomery City bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white man who could not find a seat in the overcrowded “White” section of the bus. When she refused to get up Rosa Parks joined a long line of African Americans who over the years had refused this unjust segregationist law and she was arrested. Although Rosa Parks was not the first person arrested that year she was chosen as the person who was suitable and deserved support in the fight to desegregate the Montgomery City buses. Parks was the third African American woman arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus. On March 2, 1955 Claudette Colvin a 15 year old African American was dragged out of a Montgomery city bus and arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the "Colored" section of the bus to a White man who could not find a seat in the crowded "White" section of the bus. On October 21, 1955 an 18 year African American woman Louise Smith suffered a similar fate. Some concerns were expressed by some of the religious and respectable members of the African American leadership about supporting the 2 young African American women. It was discovered that the teenage Colvin was pregnant and not married and it was mentioned by one of the fine upstanding religious African American leaders that Smith’s father had been seen in a drunken state in his front yard.

ROSA PARKS DECEMBER 1-1955

Murphy Browne © December 2014

“The Women’s Political Council will not wait for Mrs Parks’s consent to call for a boycott of city buses. On Friday December, 2, 1955, the women of Montgomery will call for a boycott to take place on Monday, December 5.”

From “Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson” by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson published 1987

On Monday, December 5, 1955 Rosa Parks an African American woman who had been arrested on Thursday, December 1, 1955 was put on trial for refusing to give up her seat in the “Colored” section of a Montgomery City bus to a White man. The White supremacist Jim Crow law demanded that African Americans give up their seats in the “Colored” section of buses to White passengers if there were no vacant seats in the “White” section of buses. When a White man could not find a seat in the “White” section of the bus the driver insisted that Parks and the other 3 African American passengers give up their seats for the White man. The other 3 gave up their seats (at that point the White man had his choice of 3 seats) and Parks refused. The police were called and Parks was arrested. The arrest of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) secretary Rosa Parks was the "last straw" and time for African Americans to demand better treatment from bus drivers in Montgomery, Alabama.

Parks was the third African American woman arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus. On March 2, 1955 Claudette Colvin a 15 year old African American was dragged out of a Montgomery city bus and arrested for refusing to give up her seat in the "Colored" section of the bus to a White man who could not find a seat in the crowded "White" section of the bus. On October 21, 1955 an 18 year African American woman Louise Smith suffered a similar fate. Some concerns expressed by some of the religious and respectable members of the African American leadership about supporting the 2 young African American women. It was discovered that the teenage Colvin was pregnant and not married and it was mentioned by one of the fine upstanding religious African American leaders that Smith’s father had been seen in a drunken state in his front yard.

In chapter 3 of the 1999 published “Gender in the Civil Rights Movement” addressing “Respectability, class and gender in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Early Civil Rights Movement” there is this quote about the decision not to support 18 year old Louise Smith: “When E.D. Nixon went to her house he reputedly ‘found her daddy in front of his shack barefoot and drunk.’ Nixon duly rejected Smith, not simply for her actual lower-class background, but because of her links, in Nixon’s view, with all manner of dissolute lower-class black stereotypes - a drunken father, an unkempt house.” E.D. Nixon born Edgar Daniel Nixon on July 12, 1899 was the President of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and Rosa Parks was the secretary. When Parks was arrested the leaders of the African American community thought she was the ideal person to support in their fight to demand better treatment on the Montgomery City buses. Parks was middle aged, employed, educated and married, there were no skeletons in her closet that the White media could use to criticize/denigrate the campaign.

On August 12, 1950 Hilliard Brooks a 23 year old African American who had served in the US army during WWII boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, paid at the front of the bus. Instead of disembarking and entering through the back door Brooks bravely walked through the "whites only" section of the bus to the "colored" section of the bus. The bus driver demanded that Brooks get off the bus for breaking the law which demanded that African Americans enter through the back door. Brooks refused to leave the bus until the bus driver returned his fare. The bus driver refused to return Brooks’ bus fare and instead called the police who kicked Brooks off the bus and when Brooks did not stay down the police M.E. Mills shot him dead on the spot. The police board found that Mills had acted in "self-defence" when he killed the unarmed 23 year old African American veteran. The board in its ruling stated: "We cannot say the police officer acted other than in self defense when he fired his weapon after the unprovoked assault upon him and after his warning to the deceased not to advance further had been ignored." This was the reality for African Americans who used the bus in Montgomery, Alabama and this was the toxic environment which eventually pushed the African American community of Montgomery, Alabama to support the bus boycott after the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955 and her trial on December 5, 1955.

Following Parks’ arrest the Women’s Political Council (WPC) decided that they would organize a one day boycott of the Montgomery city buses. The WPC included African American women who were professors at the African American Alabama State College and some African American public school teachers. The WPC was founded in 1946 and the members had been involved in voter registration and lobbying city officials on issues affecting African Americans. The group had met with city officials to complain about the ill treatment of African Americans on city buses including: “Continuous discourtesies with obscene language, especially name calling in addressing black patrons. Bus drivers’ requirement that Negro passengers pay fares at the front of the bus, then step down off and walk to the back door to board the bus. In many instances the driver drove away before the patrons who had paid at the front could board the bus from the rear.” On Friday, December 2, 1955 Jo Ann Gibson Robinson the President of the WPC drafted a flyer to distribute to the African American community which read: “Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman’s case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don’t ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don’t ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.”

There were 52,500 flyers made by 8:00 a.m. on Friday December 2 to be distributed to African Americans in Montgomery. To ensure that as many people as possible received the information the WPC members had to get the religious leaders on board. In “Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It” Robinson writes: “On Friday morning December 2, 1955, a goodly number of Montgomery’s black clergymen happened to be meeting at the Hilliard Chapel AME Zion Church on Highland Avenue. When the Women’s Political Council officers learned that the ministers were assembled in that meeting, we felt that God was on our side. It was easy for my two students and me to leave a handful of our circulars at the church. Many of the ministers received their notices of the boycott at the same time, in the same place.”

On Sunday, December 4, 1955 African Americans who had not received a flyer on Friday received notice of the planned boycott as they attended church. On Monday, December 5, 1955 the day of Rosa Parks’ trial the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. Rosa Parks was tried, convicted and ordered to pay a fine. African Americans were united in their determination to stay off the city buses in protest. All day the buses were empty of African Americans who made up approximately 75% of the passengers. In “Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It” Robinson writes: “Before Monday was half gone Negroes had made history. Never before had they united in such a manner.” On Monday, December 5, 1955 a meeting was held at Holt Street Baptist Church the largest African American church in Montgomery. Approximately 6,000 African Americans attended that meeting to decide the next step after a very successful one day boycott. “Six thousand black people along with local reporters packed Holt Street Baptist Church that night December 5, 1955 for the first mass meeting of the bus boycott. Before the meeting adjourned the masses organized themselves into a new association.” That night Martin Luther King Jr. the 26 year old African American minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was elected as President of the newly founded Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA.) King successfully led the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted for more than a year. At that time no one could have imagined the impact of that decision on the history of the USA and the Civil Rights Movement. In spite of arrests and many cases of police brutality and physical injuries by White people who were determined to undermine the boycott African Americans stayed off the buses. King as leader of the boycott had his home firebombed but resisted the intimidation tactics.

The boycott ended successfully because the bus company was on the verge of bankruptcy. In his 2007 published book: “Let My People Go!: The Miracle of the Montgomery Bus Boycott” African American professor Robert J. Walker wrote: “The African American community was literally keeping the bus company in business and paying the salaries of bus drivers who were treating them as less than human.” On December 20, 1956, the US Supreme Court ordered an end to segregation on city buses and on December 21, 1956, the buses of Montgomery, Alabama were officially desegregated.

Murphy Browne © December 2014