A BITTERSWEET FATHER'S DAY 2017 IN MEMORY OF PAPA

On Father's Day 2017 I feel torn between remembering the joyous days spent with my father and deep grief at remembering the last time I saw him alive followed by the image of his lifeless body as my siblings and I laid him to rest just 8 months ago in October 2016. Last year was one of the most difficult years I have lived through!

I look in the mirror and I look at my siblings and I am comforted as I see my father’s genes living on. Yes he was here and his presence is still here. I inherited my father’s fine hair that did not grey until he was close to 70; unlike my siblings who inherited my mother’s thick hair which went grey when she was in her 30s. I have no grey hair yet and it will be a while before I see any grey hairs. My youngest sibling Ingvar is the image of my father; just a shorter version, my father was a 6 footer. Ingvar also inherited my father’s charming personality. My brothers Mark and Mortimer look like my father and move with the same graceful swagger. Mortimer has my father’s hearty, irrepressible laugh and like my father he can eat the house and not gain weight. My eldest nephew LeAndre also looks like my father (those strong Jonas genes!) tall and graceful. It is comforting to see my father live on in his descendants although sometimes the memories are overwhelmed by grief. We (my siblings and I) all have some part of Papa that lives on in us and sometimes I see glimpses of Papa in a smile, a turn of someone’s head, a laugh even a familiar comment.

It is sometimes heart rending to look at the photographs of my father as he was in old age, after his debilitating stroke in March 2012. It was almost a year of rehabilitation before he could walk again but he never completely recovered his speech or his writing skill. My Papa whose penmanship I always admired and tried to copy could not write after March 2012.

I prefer to look at photographs of my parents’ wedding. They were so young and happy, smiling and surrounded by family. My mother passed away when we were all very young and Papa was our only parent for decades. I find comfort in looking at photographs of Papa when he was a young man as I remember him from my childhood. I have photographs of Papa in his police uniform, not smiling but so handsome that it does not matter. He looks so good! A friend looked at the photograph and commented that he looked like African royalty. I almost burst with pride.

I will never again get to hug, kiss, touch my father, or ask him any questions. He really is gone. The last time I touched him he was lying still and he was so cold. Every time I think of that last touch I just bawl. I hope that one day I can think of that and have a different reaction but it has only been 8 months so the anger and grief are still fresh. I cannot begin to count the number of times grief has overwhelmed me over the past 8 months when I would sob uncontrollably for what seems like hours. I have attended one funeral over the past 8 months and the expressions of grief of the grown children of the deceased had me in tears also remembering my loss.

When I went to Guyana last year October to lay Papa to rest I slept in the bed where he had spent his last few months of life. It was bitter sweet. I had been planning to go to Guyana to spend some time with him in November not knowing that he would be gone before I could get there. I have asked myself innumerable times since October 2016 if there was something I could have done or said that would have encouraged him to hang on a bit longer. Would it have helped if I had travelled to Guyana in August or September? I did not tell him that I was planning to travel to Guyana in November. Maybe if he had known he would have waited, held on a bit longer. Papa was greatly distressed because he had been defrauded of his house and land by a group of unconscionable crooks who targeted my vulnerable elderly father. Papa felt hopeless and helpless even though we told him we were fighting to recover his house. Oh how I hate and despise the people who defrauded him and I hold them responsible for him no longer being here with us. The avaricious, covetous members of the Scipio family; Carlotta Scipio Bowman (Toronto), Compton Scipio (New York) and Tamara Bowman (who now occupies my father's house in Guyana with her brood) I hold responsible for my father's passing. In October 2016 I remember travelling from Berbice to Timheri airport on my return to Canada after the funeral and as we drove past 56/57 Atlantic Ville, East Coast Demerara I was overcome with anger and grief. I was driving past Papa’s house that the thieves have occupied and live with no conscience, no sense of right and wrong.

On Father’s Day 2017; the first Father’s Day of my life where Papa will not be around I comfort myself with memories of my childhood when my father was a young man. Memories of a time when he seemed invincible and I could not imagine life without Papa. Even when Papa was lying in hospital helpless after the stroke I did not imagine he would ever be gone from my life. He was supposed to live to 100 at least. He comes from a family with longevity. His grandfather Kelly Murphy Jonas after whom he was named lived past 100 years old.

My Papa is gone but his memory lives on when I look at members of my family. Father’s Day will never be the same for me because my father is no longer here. Those who still have their fathers will celebrate Father’s Day and those whose fathers have transitioned will hopefully have great memories and reminiscences on Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day!

HERI YA SIKU YA KINA BABA HAPPY FATHERS DAY 2012

My siblings and I travelled to Guyana in October 2016 to lay our father to rest in the village where he was born. The village on the Courentyne in Berbice, Guyana is one of more than 100 villages that were established by formerly enslaved Africans who were free to leave the plantations (from August 1, 1838) on which they had been enslaved.

This was written five years ago for Father's Day 2012 after my father suffered a stroke in March 2012.

HERI YA SIKU YA KINA BABA HAPPY FATHERS DAY 2012
On Sunday, June 17 Fathers Day will be celebrated near and far when children (from infants to adults) spend time with their fathers and father figures in many cases bearing carefully chosen gifts. Some will spend time remembering those men who have transitioned, who fathered them or represented a father figure in their lives. Over the past three months my siblings and I have been spent many hours at our father’s bedside reminiscing with him. My father suffered a stroke which left him incapacitated for weeks. He has shown vast improvement since March 19 when he was rushed to hospital. Thankfully he is regaining his speech and mobility. It was very distressing watching this man, my father (Papa) who was always energetic, walking with that military strut that came from spending decades as a police officer suddenly unable to even move his legs much less stand on them. We could not have a conversation with him because he could not communicate verbally. His bright intelligent eyes would brim with enthusiasm as he tried to communicate but the words would not emerge when he opened his mouth. After a while it became very frustrating for him and those with whom he tried to communicate.

Two of my sisters visited every day ensuring that he was kept clean, fed and comfortable. My two sisters are absolutely amazing women because of the dedication they showed visiting every day and the progress my father has made is definitely due in part to them. Other family members including myself would visit three or four times a week so there were always visitors at my father’s bedside to cheer him up. We kept his memories alive because it seemed the stroke had robbed him of some of his memories. We reminded him of stories he had told us of his childhood and youth. We would sing his favourite songs while he tried valiantly to join in sometimes with very entertaining results. His expressive eyes would light up, that unforgettable uproarious, infectious laugh of his would just bubble up and out enchanting all within hearing. Always the ladies’ man he is a favourite with the nurses who drop by to chat and joke with him.

Some of our memories are funny yet some are sad including remembering my mother who transitioned when we were all very young. She and my father had been married when she was in her late teens and he in his early 20s and they were fortunate enough to celebrate 25 years together. He still misses her and tears would appear in his eyes when she is mentioned.
It has sometimes been surprising the differing memories we have of living with our parents even though we all lived in the same family. However, some memories we all share. All my father’s children can attest to the fact that he was extremely strict and even over protective of his “girl children.” As a police officer who was often confronted with the seamier side of life my father seemed to think we should be wrapped in a bubble for protection. It was very frustrating to think we were being limited and prevented from enjoying the freedom we witnessed other young women enjoying but I have come to realise that my father was a product of his time, his culture, his upbringing. One of my earliest and fondest memories of my father comes from when I was six years old and attended Kitty Methodist School. We had moved from Stanleytown in Berbice because my father was stationed at Eve Leary (police headquarters in Georgetown) and we lived on William Street, Kitty next to the school. There had been a massive amount of rain that day and not surprisingly the school yard was flooded (Guyana’s coastland is 2.4 metres below sea level.) My mother was at home with my three younger siblings and could not leave home to rescue me although I could see her anxiously looking over at the school. Then my father came home from work, came striding over to the school, lifted me up onto his shoulders while several other children looked on enviously (they did not have talL, handsome fathers!) and took me home. This memory always makes me think of Folami Abiade’s poem “In Daddy’s arms I am tall” from the book “In Daddy’s arms I am tall: African Americans celebrating fathers” published in 1997. As a small child I thought my father was the best artist, the best singer, the most handsome man in the world. When I was older I realised that although he had a great voice my father never knew the words of any song and was always adlibbing but I loved him anyway even though I would be embarrassed if other people were listening. I still think that my father is way better looking than Sidney Poitier who was considered the epitome of handsome African American men (that was before the arrival of Denzel Washington.) When Poitier appeared in the movie “To Sir with love” and there were comments about his good looks I would let people know that my Papa was better looking. I think I should have had a t-shirt that read: “If you think Sidney Poitier is handsome you should see my Papa” but alas nobody in Guyana wore such t-shirts at that time.

One of my other wonderful memories come from when I attended secondary school in Lethem, Rupununi in Guyana’s interior many decades ago. I was assigned the exciting project of researching and writing about a prominent family in the area. This family who traced its roots (maternal) to the indigenous people (Wapishana) of the area as well as (paternal) all the way back to Scotland meandering through Jamaica before arriving in Guyana in the late 1800s had members spread across the Rupununi savannah land. The descendants of this man from Scotland and the two Wapishana sisters with whom he sired a total of 10 children were spread across the Rupununi all of them owning ranches, countless cattle and thousands of acres of land. It was fascinating material for a child who loved history, mine and anybody else’s. To access the information I needed for my project I had to travel miles across the Rupununi to speak with the children and grandchildren of the man who began what seemed like an empire. There was no library with research done and books written about this fascinating and seemingly avaricious and cunning man and his family but it was an exciting project that I was determined to complete. My amazingly accommodating father would come home from patrolling miles across the Rupununi savannah sometimes spending days on horseback. He would then take me (we travelled countless miles by land rover) to the various ranches where the children (all of them older than my father by then) of the Scottish/Wapishana liaison lived. The next generation of that family by then counted other Europeans who had married into the family. My father would proudly introduce me to the surviving children and in many cases adult grandchildren of the family and explain why I was there. I interviewed the people learned much about them and their ancestors; toured the ranch houses and wrote an excellent report (it was a few decades ago but I am sure it was excellent for a 14 year old.)

Papa is making progress with therapy and his speech and mobility have improved but his children never imagined when we were all visiting Guyana in December 2011 through to January 2012 that on Fathers Day 2012 we would be visiting our father in hospital. Life is fragile and fleeting so make sure to call if you cannot visit your father (although this should not happen only on Fathers’ Day) on Fathers Day.

My father passed away last year (2016) and this will be the first Father's Day I will spend without a father. The bittersweet memories are all I have today. Memories don't leave like people do, they always stay with you!!

NELSON MANDELA WAS SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON ON JUNE 12-1964

On June 12, 1964, Nelson Mandela received a life sentence for committing sabotage against South Africa’s apartheid government, avoiding a possible death sentence. On May 10, 1994 almost 30 years later Nelson Mandela became South Africa 's first legitimate democratically elected President after more than three centuries of White minority misrule. Born Nkosi Rolihlala Dalibhunga Mandela on July 18, 1918 he was assigned the European name “Nelson” on his first day of school when he was 7 years old. Renaming racialised people is a common practice of European colonizer culture. Mandela was born a member of the royal family of the Thembu in the small village Mvezo in the district of Mthatha which was the capital of the former Transkei (one of the several “homelands” established by a White supremacist settler society) and now part of the Eastern Cape Province. In his autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” published in 1994 Mandela gives a history of the Thembu and his life including his place in the royal household. A dispute with a white official stripped Mandela’s father of his title, status and ability to maintain a reasonably comfortable standard of living and part of the family was forced to relocate to a larger village Qunu where Mandela lived for much of his childhood. That was an early lesson on the power the whites had seized from the Africans on African land. The whites who meandered onto African land after they fled the tribalism (white men in Europe were constantly at each other’s throats fighting like cats and dogs over disputed territory) of Europe. Beginning in the 17th century in short order they stole African land savagely murdering those Africans who resisted. Reading the history of the covetousness and bold face thievery of the white men and women who left Europe to “settle” on African land is fascinating in a horrified “I cannot believe they did that!” manner. Although this bunch of refugees/opportunists sometimes included “religious” personnel who made a show of being concerned about the “immortal souls” of Africans and wanting to convert them to a European version of Christianity somehow that concern never seemed to include the “immortal souls” of their thieving and murdering white kin. Those Africans who converted were afforded some degree of privilege by the whites who really used this tried and true European colonizer method to divide and conquer the Africans. There were many hold outs including Mandela’s father. In “Long Walk to Freedom” Mandela described his father’s strong belief in his traditional African faith: “My father remained aloof from Christianity and instead reserved his own faith for the great spirit of the Xhosas, Qamata, the God of his fathers.” The education system the Europeans forced on the Africans was also a means to ensure that “educated” Africans learned that they and their culture were inferior and the culture of their colonizers was superior. Writing of this perception of education Mandela states: “The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.” For three hundred years white people in the country they seized from Africans and named South Africa (the British wrested control of the country from the Dutch in 1902 and named it the Union of South Africa in 1910) employed a method of violent repression to control the Africans. Mandela who would eventually become President of the nation was one of millions of Africans who struggled (some spent their entire lives in the struggle) to untie the stranglehold of European domination and repression of the rightful owners of the land. Africans resisted White domination in South Africa from the moment they realised that this was not just a group of interesting visitors to their land but instead a group intent on disinheriting Africans and stealing their land. African people consistently resisted their dispossession by the white interlopers. In “Every Step of the Way: The Journey to Freedom in South Africa, Cape Town” commissioned by the South African Ministry of Education, published in 2004, excerpt from the notes of Dutch colonizer Jan Van Riebeeck made during the series of meetings April 5 and 6, 1660 between the Dutch and the Khoisan leaders is reproduced: “They (the Khoekhoe leaders) strongly insisted that we had been appropriating more and more of their land which had been theirs all these centuries... They asked if they would be allowed to do such a thing supposing they went to Holland, and they added: 'It would be of little consequence if you people stayed at the fort, but you come right into the interior and select the best land for yourselves, without even asking whether we mind or whether it will cause us any inconvenience.’ At first we argued against this saying that there was not enough grass for their cattle as well as ours, to which they replied: ‘Have we then no reason to prevent you from getting cattle, since if you have a large number, you will take up all our grazing grounds with them? As for your claim that the land is not big enough for us both, who should rather in justice give way, the rightful owner or the foreign intruder?’” Van Riebeeck very shortly disabused the Khoisan leaders of the idea that the Dutch who had stolen their land had any intention of sharing with the rightful owners. The Africans had been trying to dialogue/negotiate with people who they thought might be reasonable but they unfortunately had no idea who they were dealing with. These were not reasonable people these were covetous thieving parasites who were bent on destroying the host on which they fed. By the time Mandela was born in 1918 the pattern of white repression of Africans as the author of “Every Step of the Way” describes:(The repression was a raw, daily experience, and there was no mistaking it for less than systematic brutality) was well established. Africans were forced to live on “reservations” while the white interlopers commandeered the best land of the Africans for their exclusive use. Describing his childhood in “Long Walk to Freedom” Mandela writes of one of the methods that was employed by Africans to keep their history alive and combat/resist white domination. Storytelling by elders to combat the pervasive miseducation of their children was one such method: “Chief Joyi railed against the white man, who he believed had deliberately sundered the Xhosa tribe, dividing brother from brother. The white man had told the Thembus that their true chief was the great white queen across the oceans and that they were her subjects. But the white queen brought nothing but misery and perfidy to the black people, and if she was a chief she was an evil chief. Once, he said, the Thembu, the Mpondo, the Xhosa, and the Zulu were all children of one father, and lived as brothers. The white man shattered the ‘abantu,’ the fellowship, of the various tribes. The white man was hungry and greedy for land, and the black man shared the land with him as they shared the air and water; land was not for man to possess. But the white man took the land as you might seize another man’s horse.” The young Mandela listening to Chief Joyi’s stories felt: “angry and cheated, as though I had already been robbed of my own birthright.” It is little wonder that the child listening to his elders recount this history understood his role of defender, freedom fighter and eventually leader of his people. On Tuesday, May 10, 1994, (30 years after being sentenced to life imprisonment) when Mandela was sworn in as President of South Africa he had suffered 27 years of imprisonment and had been refused the right to attend the funerals of his mother and his eldest son in 1968. His life story is told in several books including: “I am prepared to die” 1979; “Long Walk to Freedom,” 1994; “The Struggle Is My Life,” 1990; “A Prisoner In The Garden,” 2006 and “Conversations with Myself,” 2010.

Mandela transitioned to be with the ancestors on December 5, 2013 a hero to the end. He survived many of those white supremacists who sought his life on Friday, June 12, 1964. He did not spend his life in prison but was leader of his country and an internationally acclaimed human rights activist to his last moments of life.

MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY AUGUST 17-1887 TO JUNE 10-1940

Old pirates, yes, they rob I.

Sold I to the merchant ships

Minutes after they took I from the bottomless pit. But my hand was made strong by the hand of the Almighty.

We forward in this generation. Triumphantly! Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Have no fear for atomic energy,

'Cause none of them can stop the time.

How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?

Some say it's just a part of it we've got to fullfil the book.

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom? 'Cause all I ever have: Redemption songs!

From “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley released in 1980 on the Bob Marley and the Wailers “Uprising” album.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey born on August 17, 1887 is considered the father of the modern Pan-African movement. Garvey was a man before his time who urged Africans worldwide to be proud of their skin colour, the texture of their hair, the fullness of their lips, the shape of their noses, bodies and everything about their perfectly made selves as Africans. He urged Africans to see themselves through their own “spectacles” made in the image of the God they worshipped. In one of the numerous speeches Garvey made urging Africans to have pride in their Africanness he said: “If Negroes are created in God's image, and Negroes are Black, then God must, in some sense, be Black. If the White man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his God as he desires. We have found a new ideal. Because once our God has no color, and yet it is human to see everything through ones own spectacles, and since the White people have seen their God through their white spectacles, we have only now started to see our God through our own spectacles. But we believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God, God the father, God the son, God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all the ages. That is the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship him through the spectacles of Ethiopia. For two hundred and fifty years we have struggled under the burden and rigors of slavery. We were maimed, we were brutalized, we were ravaged in every way. We are men, we have hopes, we have passions, we have feelings, we have desires just like any other race.”

Garvey recognized the importance of images not only in the worship of a divine being in whose image we are made but also the effect on the psyche of an oppressed people. He urged African Americans to give their children dolls made in their image so they could recognize their worthiness as human beings. In the 1987 published book “Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers” written by Marcus Garvey and edited by Robert A. Hill and Barbara Blair Garvey is quoted: “Never allow your children to play with or to have white dolls. Give them the dolls of their own race to play with and they will grow up with the idea of race love and race purity.” With a scarcity of African American dolls Garvey established a doll making factory in New York City to make those dolls. As part of his vision to make African Americans financially independent he established the Negro Factories Corporation and through that corporation established several businesses including restaurants, grocery stores, laundries, a hat factory, printing press, tailoring establishment, a trucking business and a hotel.

Garvey understood the value of Africans seeing themselves as the equal of all other human beings and not inferior as they had been taught for generations by a White supremacist culture. Many Africans had internalised those lessons and regarded White as superior because of the propaganda which began as a White rationalization for the evil and brutal system of chattel slavery. Quoted in “Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons” Garvey urged his followers to: “Tear from your walls, all pictures that glorify other races. Tear up and burn every bit of propaganda that does not carry your idea of things. Treat them as trash. When you go to the cinema and you see the glorification of others in the pictures don't accept it; don't believe it to be true. Instead, visualize yourself achieving whatever is presented, and if possible, organize your propaganda to that effect. You should always match propaganda with propaganda. Have your own newspapers, your own artists, your own sculptors, your own pulpits, your own platforms, print your own books and show your own motion pictures and sculpture your own subjects. Never accept your subjects as of another race, but glorify all the good in yourselves. Keep your home free and clear of alien objects, on other races of glorification, otherwise your children will grow up to adore and glorify other people. Put in the place of others the heroes and noble characters of your own race.”

Garvey’s words, thoughts and philosophies have influenced generations of Pan-Africanists including leaders like El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X,) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael,) Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, Alhaji Ahmed Sekou Toure and Patrice Lumumba. Garvey also influenced artists including Bob Marley, Burning Spear, Max Romeo, Stevie Wonder, Paul Robeson and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Garvey, Burning Spear (Winston Rodney) and Bob Marley share a connection because of their birthplace, St Ann Parish in Jamaica. Marley and Rodney have both paid tribute to Garvey in their work. The lyrics of Marley’s “Redemption Song” come from a speech Garvey gave in Nova Scotia, Canada on October 1, 1937. The speech was published in Garvey’s “Black Man” magazine, Vol. 3, no. 10 (July 1938.) “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind to good advantage.”

Garvey the first of Jamaica’s seven National Heroes is admired and has been honoured in other countries. A statue of Garvey is located on the Harris Promenade, San Fernando, Trinidad and a bust of Garvey is housed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C. Nkrumah who led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957 named the national shipping line of Ghana the “Black Star Line” in honour of the shipping line Garvey established as part of his plan to make Africans financially independent. The national flag of Kenya sports the colours (black, red and green) chosen by Garvey as the flag of his United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League (UNIA-ACL.) Garvey influenced the Rastafari movement and the establishment of the Kwanzaa celebration. The 1960s Black Power and Civil Rights movements with the rise of groups like the Black Panther Party and African Americans who were “Black and Proud” owe much to the Garvey philosophies and his UNIA-ACL which was established in 1914.

Garvey was a threat to worldwide White supremacist culture and the White supremacist US government was bent on destroying him and his positive international influence on Africans. That coveted job fell to an enthusiastic young John Edgar Hoover whose notoriety was built on the destruction of Garvey’s life. As he would do with successive generations of African American leaders, Hoover hounded Garvey manufacturing “evidence” that eventually led to the waning of the influential UNIA-ACL and the destruction of Garvey’s plans for an economically self-sufficient African American population. In “Redemption Song” Marley asks “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?” It has been 77 years since Garvey transitioned on June 10, 1940 due in no small part to the machinations of Hoover and the US government body that would eventually become the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI.) Hoover began targeting Garvey since at least October 11, 1919 as shown in correspondence that can be read at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/filmmore/ps_fbi.html or in the 1983 published book “The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume II, 27 August 1919 - 31 August 1920.”

Burning Spear (Rodney) released in 1975 “Old Marcus Garvey” with these lyrics reminding us never to forget Garvey: “Children, children, children, children Humble yourself and become one day somehow You will remember him you will”

In 2017 we have to remain vigilant to counter the continued White supremacist propaganda that seeks to kill our prophets and set up their false prophets to lead us astray into the land of self-hate.

MEDGAR EVERS CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST

What then does the Negro want? He wants to get rid of segregation in Mississippi life because he knows it has not been good for him nor for the State. He knows that segregation is unconstitutional and illegal. The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race.

Excerpt from May 20, 1963 “Medgar Evers, Televised Address ‘I Speak as a Native Mississippian’”

Medgar Evers made his “I Speak as a Native Mississippian” speech 54 years ago (May 20, 1963) and he was assassinated approximately three weeks later on June 12, 1963. On June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back of his head by a cowardly White supremacist hiding in the bushes outside his home. Evers was 37 years old. His wife Myrlie Evers was at home with their three young children when they heard the shot. Evers had parked his car on his driveway and got out of the car when the shot rang out from across the street. Their home had been attacked twice before and the 3 children had been taught safety drills. At the sound of the shot the children fled to the bathroom to hide in the bathtub. One of their sons, Darrell Kenyatta Evers who was 9 years old when his father was assassinated would later speak of the night of June 12, 1967: "We were ready to greet him, because every time he came home it was special for us. He was traveling a lot at that time. All of a sudden, we heard a shot. We knew what it was."

Evers was assassinated because as field secretary for the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) he encouraged African Americans to exercise their rights as American citizens and register to vote. In Mississippi and other Southern states that was seen as challenge to White authority and challenging White authority meant a death sentence. Not only did Evers encourage African Americans to register to vote, he called for desegregating of schools and encouraged African Americans to boycott White businesses where they were mistreated. African Americans could not sit down in White restaurants, they were served through back doors of stores, they were pushed out of line in grocery stores, spat on by White patrons of businesses, overcharged by White merchants and brutalized if they protested or even seemed annoyed. When African Americans dared open stores of their own, they were lynched by angry and jealous White people and their business places were burnt.

Following his appointment with the NAACP in 1955 Evers began publicizing the rabid racism to which African Americans were subjected in Mississippi. An interview was published in Ebony Magazine in 1958 where he is quoted: “Now, when a Negro is mistreated, we try to tell the world about it.” White Mississippians probably did not read Ebony Magazine but when Evers gave his 17 minute speech which was broadcast on the television station WLBT in Mississippi he was definitely noticed. Evers had been trying for years to get airtime on the White supremacist WLBT television station with no luck. Succeeding in his quest in May 1963 put him in the crosshairs of the White citizens of Mississippi and he was assassinated on June 12, 1963. In “Changing Channels: The Civil Rights Case that Transformed Television” White American author Kay Mills writes that WLBT was a symbol of dominant White rule because African Americans were historically barred from on-and off-camera positions. The Evers’ success in being seen and heard was historic because he was the first African American allowed to appear on the White supremacist and only television station in Jackson, Mississippi.

According to information in the 2005 published “Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches” Evers “wanted to shame all America with the story of Emmet Till” and “worked exhaustively” on bringing the case to trial. The 14 year African American child Emmett Till was accused of whistling at 21 year old White woman Carolyn Bryant and her husband and his half-brother felt that they were justified in lynching the child even though there was no proof of his “crime.” In February 2017 Carolyn Bryant allegedly admitted (https://www.biography.com/news/emmett-till-accuser-lied) that Till never whistled at her. Till was tortured and brutally murdered by the two White men on August 28, 1955.

Evers’ work may not be as well-known as some Civil Rights activists but his work contributed to whatever rights racialized Americans have today. White supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was charged with Evers’ murder and during two trials in 1964 the juries were deadlocked. Evers’ widow refused to abandon pursuit of justice for her husband’s assassination and in a 1994 trial De La Beckwith was found guilty. He appealed his conviction but the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 1997. De La Beckwith died on January 21, 2001.

Today in 2017 African American and African Canadians continue the fight that Civil Rights activists like Evers began in the 1950s with groups like Black Lives Matter front and centre. The members of Black Lives Matter are the targets of White supremacists and even those who would be horrified at being considered White supremacists. The recent furor over the decision refusing to have uniformed police marching in the Toronto Pride Parade put members of the Black Lives Matter squarely in the crosshairs of many so-called “liberals” but Black Lives Matter, like Medgar Evers are doing their part to make our city, province and nation a “better place for everyone.”

ANGELA YVONNE DAVIS JUNE 4-1972

"When someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what Black people have gone through, what Black people have experienced in this country, since the time the first Black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa."

Quote from Dr. Angela Yvonne Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita University of California, Santa Cruz

On Sunday, June 4, 1972, Dr. Angela Yvonne Davis a 28 year old African American professor was acquitted of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and murder in San Jose, California. She had been implicated in aiding a courtroom shootout on August 7, 1970 in San Raphael, California that left 4 people dead, including Superior Court Judge Haley. Although she was not involved in the shootout Davis was alleged to be the owner of the guns used in the shootout. On August 14, 1970 an arrest warrant was issued for her arrest but the authorities could not find her. An all-points bulletin was then issued charging her with one count of murder in Judge Haley’s death and 5 counts of kidnapping because 5 hostages had been taken from the courthouse in an escape attempt. Davis (25 years old at the time) had been dismissed from her job as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1969 because she was a member of the Communist Party. The Board of Regents, at the urging of then Governor Ronald Reagan had tried to prevent her from teaching at the University before she taught her first class. Reagan wanted the death penalty if she was found guilty of the August 1970 charges.

Failing to arrest Davis in August 1970 the government agency Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) placed her on their list of the 10 most-wanted fugitives. She was the third woman in the history of the FBI to be placed on its list of the 10 most-wanted fugitives. There was widespread speculation that Davis had fled the USA because there was international support for the “Free Angela Davis” campaign. She became an international symbol of the abusive White supremacist power of the American criminal justice system against African Americans.

On October 13, 1970, following an aggressive national search Davis was arrested in New York City and charged with conspiracy, murder and kidnapping. Richard Nixon who was President of the US in 1972 reportedly congratulated the FBI on having captured a “dangerous terrorist." Davis was incarcerated for approximately 17 months before her trial began on March 29, 1972. Davis made the opening statement at the March 29 trial which attracted a horde of international journalists: “The prosecutor has informed you that he will present evidence to prove that I purchased a number of weapons over a period of time. Testimony and exhibits will purport that some of the guns claimed to have been found on the scene at Marion County Civic Center are the same guns that I purchased. Out of this network of facts, he says, evidence will emerge to support his contention that I am guilty of the crimes as charged. We say to you that quite to the contrary, the evidence will prove that while I did purchase the guns, I did nothing to furnish Jonathan Jackson or anyone with the weapons which were utilized during the action on August 7.” According to History.com: “the weakness of the prosecution’s case and obvious political nature of the proceedings” attracted much international interest. Davis explained in her opening statement that her reasons for buying guns related to her childhood experience of living in a White supremacist culture where African Americans were constantly under threat of brutality or death at the hands of White people. She grew up in an African American community where guns were essential for protection against rape, murder etc. She further explained that “You will understand that for a Black person who had grown up in the south and particularly during that period, guns had to be a normal fact of life.” That the guns used in the shootout on August 7, 1970 belonged to Davis was insufficient evidence of her alleged responsibility or involvement and she was acquitted.

In 1972 during an interview with a European reporter Davis was asked if she believed in “violence” as a tactic for protests in social movement. Her reply included the quote at the beginning of this article (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2BIZy0HScM) Today in the 21^st century whenever Africans react to violent provocation whether it is police brutality, murder or other White supremacist ill treatment there is usually a similar question. It is sad and oftentimes frustrating that what Davis said more than 40 years ago remains relevant today.

GUYANA INDEPENDENCE DAY MAY 26-2017 (51 YEARS)

Guyanese will celebrate 51 years of independence from British colonization on Friday May 26, 2017. The former British Guiana (BG) lowered the Union Jack and raised the Golden Arrowhead at midnight on May 25, 1966 as Guyanese gathered to witness the symbol of British colonial rule for 152 years lowered and the symbol of independence raised. The Prime Minister of the newly independent country was the Honourable Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham and Guyana became the 23rd member of the British Commonwealth.

British Guiana was also known as the land of many waters and the land of six people (Africans, Amerindians, Chinese, East Indians, Europeans and Portuguese) with the nine groups of Amerindians being the indigenous people of the land. Petroglyphs found near Kurupukari in the Iwokrama rainforest in Guyana prove that Guyana’s indigenous people (Arawak, Arecuna, Akawaio, Carib, Macushi, Patamona, Wapisiana, Warrau and Wai-Wai) have lived on the South American continent since at least 5000 BCE.

Although historians write that Christopher Columbus and his crew were the first Europeans who sighted the Guianas in 1498 the Dutch were the first Europeans to colonize the country in the 1500s. In his 1976 published “They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America” African Guyanese scholar and historian Ivan Van Sertima asserts that there was an African presence in the Americas before Columbus. Columbus was followed by other Europeans searching for El Dorado the golden city. Europeans never did find El Dorado but became rich on the coerced, unpaid labour of enslaved Africans. Beginning with the Dutch who colonized the Essequibo region when they established their first settlement on the Pomeroon River in 1581 Europeans exploited the Amerindians who they unsuccessfully tried to enslave and the Africans. The Amerindians fled into the interior of the country but the Africans were trapped thousands of miles away from Africa on unfamiliar terrain. In 1814 the Dutch ceded the three colonies of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo to the British after the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1814. In 1831 the British unified the three colonies to become British Guiana and the only English speaking country in South America.

British Guiana was sometimes referred to as Bookers Guiana because of the stranglehold on the economy of “Booker Brothers, McConnell & Company” popularly known as Bookers. The company which had its beginning when Josias Booker arrived in the colony (from Britain) to work as the manager of a cotton plantation in 1815 was formally established in 1834 as Booker Brothers & Company and held a monopoly on the economy of British Guiana by the end of the 1800s. Bookers’ history is inextricably linked to Britain’s slave holding and imperialist past. When the Congress of Vienna divided the northeast coast of South America among Great Britain, the Netherlands and France in 1815, merchants from those countries quickly began to exploit the region's natural resources with unpaid African labour. The Booker brothers - Josias, George, and Richard by 1834 owned several plantations and established merchant trading houses in Liverpool to exploit a flourishing sugar and rum trade. They established Booker Brothers & Co. in British Guiana and bought their first transport ship “Elizabeth” in 1835.

In 1854, Josias Booker Junior and John McConnell (who had worked as a clerk for Bookers since 1846) created a new partnership which they named the Demerara Company. With the deaths of the Booker Brothers (Josias senior in 1865) and George in 1866, Josias Junior and John McConnell assumed control of all the Booker properties, including the sugar plantations and trading companies in Britain and South America. Milton Moskowitz writes in his 1987 published book “The Global Marketplace” that the Bookers Brothers company "became the principal shopkeepers of the colony," building a formidable trade during the late 19th century. Their "Liverpool Line," established in 1887, became one of the top shipping links between South America and Europe. In the 1830s the Booker family had collected thousands of pounds in compensation for losing the labour of the Africans they had enslaved. While the enterprising Booker brothers and other White men from Britain were establishing companies (including Sandbach Parker) and making money hand over fist in British Guiana, racialized people were relegated to the backbreaking and underpaid work that made Britain wealthy.

At the time of Guyana’s independence from Britain the population included the original people (Amerindians) of the land, some of the descendants of the colonizers from Britain, the descendants of enslaved Africans and the descendants of people who had immigrated to British Guiana as indentured labourers beginning in 1834 after slavery was abolished. Although the Portuguese from Madeira were the first group (1834) of indentured labourers to arrive in British Guiana, the largest group of indentured labourers (who at 39.8% are presently the largest ethnic group in Guyana) hailed from the Indian sub-continent, arriving in Guyana beginning May 5, 1838. The population of Guyana 51 years after independence also includes the descendants of the Chinese who immigrated as indentured labourers beginning in 1853 when three ships (the Glentanner, the Lord Elgin and the Samuel Boddington) left Amoy, Fujian Province, China with 1,549 labourers bound for British Guiana.

In spite of growing pains over the past 51 years, there has been progress of which all Guyanese can be proud. Happy 51^st Independence Day to Guyana and Guyanese!!

WHITE SUPREMACIST CULTURE IN NORTH AMERICA 1600S TO 2017

On May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States sanctioned “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on railroad trains. With this decision racial segregation throughout the U.S became legal. That ruling was used to justify segregation laws at state and federal levels of all public facilities including parks, theatres, hotels, churches, cemeteries, railroad cars, restaurants, hospitals and schools. The infamous “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision stood as law for 58 years until May 17, 1954 when in “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka” the law of segregation was struck down with a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of the United States.

In the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, the federal government supposedly sanctioned facilities that were “separate but equal” but that was hardly ever the case. Most “colored” facilities were never equal to “White” facilities. The case of “Plessy v. Ferguson” began on June 7, 1892 when Homer Plessy boarded a train of the East Louisiana Railroad and sat in a car reserved for Whites. Plessy was light enough to “pass” (7/8 White and 1/8 African) but legally he was a “Negro” or “Colored” and was required to travel in a “Colored” car. Plessy identified himself to the conductor as “Colored” but refused to move from the “White” car because he was there to challenge the segregation law. He was arrested and brought before New Orleans’ Judge John Howard Ferguson who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it contradicted the 13th and 14th Amendments. In a 17 to 1 decision the Supreme Court upheld Ferguson’s decision that segregation was legal.

On May 17, 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education the case which had begun with 7 year old African American Linda Carol Brown’s family’s challenge brought an end to legal segregation in the USA. During the “separate but legal” era the schools to which African American children were relegated were little more than neglected tumble down buildings which were bitterly cold during the winter and unbearably hot otherwise. In Topeka, Kansas where the Brown family lived (Leola and Oliver Brown and their daughters Cheryl, Linda and Terry) there was a White school within a 10 minute walk from their house but 7 year old Linda could not attend. The child was forced to walk 6 blocks across train tracks to get on a bus that would take her to the “Colored” school across town. Linda had to leave home at 7:40 a.m. to get to school for 9:00 a.m. if the bus was on time. In Topeka there were 18 neighborhood schools for White children and 4 for African American children. Brown was one of 13 parents in a class action law suit challenging the segregation law of Topeka, Kansas in 1950. The parents were supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.)

Racial segregation was also part of Canadian society in all areas of social life as de facto if not de jure law. Cases like that of the burning of the African Canadian communities of Shelburne, Nova Scotia and Birchtown, Nova Scotia in July 1784 are examples. On July 25, 1784 a mob of White people attacked the homes of African Canadians who lived in Shelburne, Nova Scotia forcing those who survived to flee to the African Canadian town of Birchtown, Nova Scotia. These racist attacks continued for a month as White mobs burned homes in Birchtown and attacked vulnerable and outnumbered African Canadians who were surrounded by Whites. Nova Scotia was a slave owning society; the presence of free African Canadians who had risked their lives during the “American War of Independence” fighting as “Loyalists” and were living in Canada as members of the “United Empire Loyalists” must have caused some anxiety in White people who enslaved Africans in Nova Scotia and Canada as a whole. In 1791, African members of the “United Empire Loyalists” in Birchtown were given the option of relocating to Sierra Leone, West Africa. At least half of the town’s families agreed to leave rather than live in a White Supremacist culture where they were under attack. That is how the British dealt with the loyal Africans who had supported them during the War with the Americans.

Wherever segregation existed whether in America or Canada “separate but equal” was a fallacy. In Canada the Common Schools Act was passed supposedly for the creation of separate schools along religious lines; Protestant and Catholic, but was used to create segregated schools for African Canadian students in certain areas. In Merlin, near Chatham, the last segregated African Canadian school in Ontario was closed in 1965 following advocacy of the African-Canadian community. The last segregated school in Canada was closed in 1983 in Nova Scotia.

Although there may no longer be legally segregated schools in Canada, African Canadian students and their parents are racially mistreated in 2017. In February 2017 the community was outraged and saddened when a 6 year old African Canadian girl was shackled and handcuffed by police in the school she attended. In February 2017 Nancy Elgie a White woman who was public school trustee in York Region was forced to resign because she called an African Canadian parent the “N” word. The behaviour of Elgie who had refused to resign for months after expressing the White supremacist mindset of casting a racist slur at a parent is just the tip of the iceberg of what seems to be a revival of Jim Crow North. A recent report by Professor Carl James “Toward Race Equity in Education” finds that African Canadian students face an achievement and opportunity gap in Toronto schools. We have to strategize and move forward!

ANTI-AFRICAN RACISM IN CANADA (IT TAKES A RIOT: RACE, REBELLION, REFORM)

As racialized people in Toronto we seem to be doing some kind of macabre dance with White supremacy: “one step forward, two steps backwards!” While we are doing this dance any “progress” that we think was made is eliminated or White supremacists have found a way to sidestep and begin the dance again with them in the lead. This has been likened to a hydra where heads that were chopped off grow many more heads.

On Thursday night May 4, 2017 a documentary entitled “It Takes A Riot: Race, Rebellion, Reform” was screened in the theatre at Ryerson University library building. There was a lively audience in the packed space in spite of non-stop rain. The documentary was made in remembrance of the May 4, 1992 Yonge Street Uprising; a protest against police killing of African Canadians and in solidarity with African Americans who were grieving and protesting the acquittal of police who had brutalized Rodney King. The fact that the brutal beating of King had been caught on video and police were not held accountable caused anger and anxiety in African North American communities.

On May 2, 1992 just two days before the Yonge Street Uprising a White police officer had killed 22-year-old African Canadian Raymond Lawrence claiming that Lawrence faced him while holding a knife. Police did produce a knife but Lawrence’s fingerprints were not found on the knife. On April 7, 1992 a month before the Yonge Street Uprising two White police officers had been acquitted of killing unarmed 17-year-old Michael Wade Lawson. They claimed that they killed Lawson because he was trying to run them over (December 8, 1988) but Lawson was shot in the back of his head.

On May 4, 1992 mostly members of the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC) took to Yonge Street for a peaceful protest at 4:00 p.m. The number of protesters grew to an unwieldy number as people of various races joined the BADC protesters. The protest quickly became out of order and no longer a BADC protest. In the documentary of the May 4, 1992 Yonge Street Uprising screened on May 4, 2017 there were images of police provoking then brutalizing protesters. Protesters were surrounded by police on horses terrorizing men and women who were trying to leave; many peaceful protesters were caught up in police barricades.

In the aftermath of May 4, 1992 the NDP provincial government appointed Stephen Lewis to report on the state of race relations in the province. Lewis reported that he had found that there was “anti-Black racism” during his investigation. “What we are dealing with, at root, and fundamentally, is anti-Black racism. It is Blacks who are being shot, it is Black youth that are unemployed in excessive numbers, it is Black students who are being inappropriately streamed in schools, it is Black kids who are disproportionately dropping-out, it is housing communities with large concentrations of Black residents where the sense of vulnerability and disadvantage is most acute, it is Black employees, professional and non-professional, on whom the doors of upward equity slam shut. Just as the soothing balm of ‘multiculturalism` cannot mask racism, so racism cannot mask its primary target.” The report galvanized the provincial government to enact several anti-racist and equity policy initiatives. In October 1992, the “Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System” was given the mandate to “report and make recommendations on systemic racism in the criminal justice system.” There were studies and reports and a few programs put in place in an effort to remedy the situation (anti-Black racism) and then the Conservative government (1995) was elected. The dance was on again “one step forward three steps backwards.”

In May 2017, 25 years after the Yonge Street Uprising the community is dealing with “carding” and the mistreatment of activists who stand up against this scourge. The fact that African Canadians continue to be the “primary target” of a White supremacist system should not be a surprise given our history in this country. We are the only group of people who were brought to these shores in shackles, enslaved for centuries, worked to death, stripped of our names, had our children sold, prevented from speaking our languages, prevented from practicing our culture, “had no rights which the White man was bound to respect” and were treated as mere property during the system of chattel slavery.

The enslavement of Africans in Canada began in 1628 (until August 1, 1834) with the sale of a six year old child who was kidnapped from the African continent and sold in Quebec by English pirate David Kirke. The enslaved African child was given the French name Olivier LeJeune and sold more than once before his short life ended (buried May 10, 1654) 26 years after he was sold in Quebec. Studies have shown that we are seen by White people in authority (police, doctors, teachers, supervisors etc.,) as less competent, troublemakers, our children older than they are, feeling less pain when we are hurt etcetera. When we speak out/speak up we are targeted for punishment. African American author James Baldwin said: “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.” The late Dudley Laws and members of BADC were considered a threat and were always within the sights of the Toronto police. In 2017 the members of Black Lives Matter are seen as the threat and recently African Canadian journalist Desmond Cole was targeted for speaking out against the egregious practice of carding. We need to support those who put their lives and livelihood on the line as we battle the many headed hydra of White supremacy.

IDA BELL WELLS BARNETT

On Sunday May 4, 1884 a young African American teacher Ida Bell Wells boarded a train and had her second run-in with the White supremacist laws of travelling while African American. She was forcibly removed from a carriage designated for women. Of course the designation was for White women while African American women were relegated to a carriage where White men "retired" to drink and smoke and where African American women were subjected to sexual harassment by White men. The May 4, 1884 incident happened while the first incident from September 15, 1883 was still making its way through the courts. While most people know about Rosa Parks and her challenge to the White supremacist system of segregated American transportation there were many protesters before her December 1, 1955 protest. In the century before there was the crusading Ida Bell Wells later (June 27, 1895) Ida Bell Wells Barnett.

Born on July 16, 1862 during slavery she was three years old when slavery was abolished in 1865. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the first child of enslaved Africans James and Elizabeth Wells. Following the end of the Civil War and the beginning of freedom and Reconstruction in the Southern states formerly enslaved Africans made education a priority. During slavery it was illegal for enslaved Africans to be literate; the few who gained the skills of reading and writing did so at the risk of losing their lives. Emancipation saw 90% of African Americans illiterate and “Negro schools” were established throughout the south. On November 24, 1866 when Wells was four years old Rust College was founded to provide basic education for adults and children who had formerly been enslaved. Four years later in 1870, the college was chartered as Shaw University. Located in Holly Springs it is one of 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and is the second-oldest private college in Mississippi. Wells along with her siblings and her mother (who seized the opportunity to learn to read) attended the institution.

In 1878 when Wells was 16 years old tragedy struck in the form of a yellow fever epidemic which claimed the lives of her parents and a younger sibling. Wells was visiting her grandmother's farm when the epidemic hit but returned home despite warnings from doctors. In her autobiography Wells wrote about her reason for making that decision: "I am going home. I am the oldest of seven living children. There's nobody but me to look after them now." Despite the urging of older community members Wells resisted all attempts to split up her family and insisted on keeping her younger siblings together. She applied for a teaching position, passed the qualifying examination and was given a position 6 miles from her home. Relatives and friends kept the Wells children during the week when Wells was at her job. In her autobiography, Wells described managing her role of caretaker and provider: "I came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon."

Her first run-in with staff and White passengers on a train on September 15, 1883 led to her suing the company. An excerpt from the court document reads: "I am 20 years of age and unmarried, my profession is that of School Teacher and during September 1883, I was teaching a public school at Woodstock, a station on defendant’s road, ten miles North of Memphis. My salary was $30.00 a month -- On 15th September, 1883. I was in Memphis, and started to return to Woodstock - took a seat in the rear car of defendant’s passenger train that left Memphis about 4 o’clock that afternoon. When I went in the car, some half hour before leaving time the ticket office was not open - I afterwards went out and bought a ticket which read as follows:
Chesapeake Ohio & Southwestern R.R. one continuous trip Memphis to Woodstock."

The ticket Wells had bought obviously did not specify that she could not ride in the section where she was seated. In practice African Americans were forced to ride in the carriage where White men indulged in behaviour deemed not suitable for the carriage in which White women were seated. The September 15, 1883 incident ended with Wells being dragged off the train by the White conductor and two White passengers after a violent struggle in which Wells was forced to physically defend herself.

The May 4, 1884 debacle was the tipping point and Wells became an activist, writing articles under the penname “Iola.” Writing as the crusading “Iola” cost Wells her teaching job. She then became a full time journalist and was so successful at raising the issues of the day (including the scourge of White people lynching African American men, women and children) that her life was in danger and she had to flee. In 1892 while out of town her newspaper was destroyed by a White mob and she was warned not to return home. Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to Britain and became an internationally known anti-lynching crusader.