ANGELA YVONNE DAVIS JANUARY 26-1944

Today, Friday, January 26, 2018 Dr. Angela Yvonne Davis is 74 years old (born January 26, 1944.)


Murphy Browne © 2013


DR. ANGELA YVONNE DAVIS


On Sunday June 4, 1972 Angela Yvonne Davis a 28 year old (born January 26, 1944) African American woman was found not guilty of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and murder after a 14-week trial. Davis a former professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA,) had been charged with conspiracy for murder and kidnapping in the 1970 death of a judge in Marin County. She had been hounded by the American government through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its sinister offshoot Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) for months before she was captured on October 13, 1970.


Angela Davis first made national news in 1969 when then California Republican governor, Ronald Reagan (later US President) began his campaign to end her professorship at (UCLA.) At the time Reagan claimed that his antagonism and spite towards Davis was because she had identified herself as a communist. On June 19, 1970, Reagan issued this statement: "This memorandum is to inform everyone that, through extensive court cases and rebuttals, Angela Davis, Professor of Philosophy, will no longer be a part of the UCLA staff. As the head of the Board of Regents, I, nor the board, will not tolerate any Communist activities at any state institution. Communists are an endangerment to this wonderful system of government that we all share and are proud of." At that time Davis was also active in several African American organizations including the Black Panther Party which were targets of the American government and under constant surveillance and threats through the FBI. The FBI had harassed and targeted generations of African Americans before the 1970s including the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s. It seems that the American government was determined to destroy any individual or organization which sought to lift African Americans out of the slave mentality to which they had been relegated (brainwashed) since the first African had been taken to America chained in a slave ship.


Davis became an international symbol of African American revolution in the 1970s. During the two months (August 16 – October 13, 1970) that Davis was being hunted as a fugitive she was also placed on the list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI.) She unlike many African American academics of the time was involved in organizations like the Black Panther Party which struggled and sacrificed to bring about economic, social, and political equity. All racialized people and even White people (whether or not they choose to recognize this) in the USA have benefited from the work and sacrifices of revolutionary African American organizations and individuals.

In early 1970, Davis helped organize the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee to free the "Soledad Brothers" from the Soledad Prison in California. Davis eventually became the leader of the movement to free the “Soledad Brothers.” The three African American men who became known as the "Soledad Brothers" (John Clutchette, Fleeta Drumgo and George Jackson) were accused of killing a Soledad Prison guard. It was widely held that Clutchette, Drumgo and Jackson were charged with murder not because there was any substantial evidence of their guilt but because they had been previously identified as African American militants by the prison authorities. Jackson was a member of the Black Panther Party. If convicted the three men would face a mandatory death penalty under the California penal code. The plight of the “Soledad Brothers” received international attention especially from Pan-Africanists including Guyanese historian Walter Rodney who wrote in November 1971 after George Jackson was killed by prison guards in San Quentin Prison (August 21, 1971): “To most readers in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of George Jackson is either unfamiliar or just a name. George Jackson was jailed ostensibly for stealing 70 dollars. He was given a sentence of one year to life because he was black, and he was kept incarcerated for years under the most dehumanizing conditions because he discovered that blackness need not be a badge of servility but rather could be a banner for uncompromising revolutionary struggle. He was murdered because he was doing too much to pass this attitude on to fellow prisoners. George Jackson was a political prisoner and a black freedom fighter. He died at the hands of the enemy.” On August 7, 1970, George Jackson's 17 year-old brother Jonathan Jackson in a bid to secure the freedom of the "Soledad Brothers" freed three San Quentin prisoners and took hostage a Superior Court Judge, a Deputy District Attorney and three jurors in a courtroom at the Marin County Civic Center. During police intervention Jackson, the judge and two of the prisoners were killed. Davis was implicated when it was discovered that guns registered in her name were used by the 17 year old Jackson. Davis did not deny that she owned several guns but shared during her trial that it was a holdover from her childhood growing up on “Dynamite Hill, Birmingham” where as she explained: “My father had to keep guns because he was afraid that he would be the next target of racial violence.”


On March 27, 1972 Davis made her opening defense statement in the Santa Clara County Superior Courthouse, California. Superior court judge Richard E. Arnason presided and the prosecutor was Assistant Attorney General Albert W. Harris Jr. Harris had earlier outlined his case to the all White jury promising them evidence to prove that Davis was involved in a criminal conspiracy and that the weapons used in an alleged courthouse shoot out and attempted kidnapping in Marin County, California two years before (August 7, 1970) had been purchased by Davis. In her one hour and 20 minutes defense statement she argued that the case was based on "a network of false assumptions."
During the months of incarceration and eventual trial Davis became an international symbol of resistance. She was seen as a proud African American woman under political siege in the USA. With the image of Davis’ fist clenched defiantly, raised above her six inch Afro her story captured international attention. By the time she was acquitted of all charges on June 4th 1972 Davis had become a folk hero with the words “Free Angela Davis” a slogan in far flung places during a massive, worldwide movement formed to free Davis from jail.

 In an article entitled “The Campaign to Free Angela Davis and Ruchell Magee” published in The New York Times on June 27, 1971, the writer Sol Stern wrote that there were “Free Angela” demonstrations internationally with reports that 2,500 women in Sri Lanka held a 3 day vigil in front of the American embassy. He also wrote that the committee formed to handle the campaign to free Angela Davis received: “A telegram demanding Angela's freedom signed by the entire cast and crew of the film "Z," including Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, director Costa Gavras and composer Mikis Theodorakis.” He quoted Rob Baker the publicity director of the campaign: "We have received 100,000 pieces of mail from East Germany alone. They're lying around in hundreds of mail bags unopened-- because we don't have a big enough staff to do the work." While watching the documentary “Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners” last year I have to admit that some people in the audience were not amused when I cheered loudly at the sight of a group of women in Guyana demonstrating while holding a “Free Angela Davis” banner.


Forty one years after her acquittal the documentary (“Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners” released 2012) about the work that catapulted Davis to international recognition was seen by many who had never heard of Angela Davis or just knew her as a symbol of Afro-wearing African American women. These were comments I heard from some seemingly “aware” African Canadians. However I do recognize that we are all at different places of being “aware” of our history, our heroes and sheroes. The important thing is that we remain open to learning by listening and reading. Davis continues to advocate on behalf of political prisoners and as recently as May 3, was speaking out against the American government’s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCuj2pvFPY4) $2 million bounty on the head of Assata Shakur.


Murphy Browne © 2013

ELIZABETH "BESSIE" COLEMAN JANUARY 26-1892

One hundred and twenty-six years ago today on January 26, 1892 Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas just 27 years after slavery was abolished in the USA. She became the first African American woman to gain an international pilot's licence by travelling to France to obtain training because no aviation school in the USA was willing to allow her entrance!!

Murphy Browne  © February 2014 

"The air is the only place free from prejudices. I knew we had no aviators, neither men nor women, and I knew the Race needed to be represented along this most important line, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn aviation and to encourage flying among men and women of our Race who are so far behind the White race in this modern study."

Quote from Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 - April 30, 1926)

Long before the Civil Rights Movement which reached its zenith 50 years ago in 1964 with what many considered radical changes, African American men and women like Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman were striving for the betterment of the race.Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas to Susan and George Coleman. Coleman is part of the aviation history of America as the first African American pilot with an international pilot's license. This historic achievement was during a time when most African Americans male and female were relegated to less than second class citizens.

Like many African American families in the southern United States at that time the members of her family were tenant farmers on land owned by a White family. African American tenant farmers did not fare a whole lot better than when they were enslaved by White landowners. Many of them lived and worked on the property of their former enslavers. In 1892 when Coleman was born Africans in American had been freed from chattel slavery a mere 27 years. “Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States and provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/document.html?doc=9&title.raw=13th%20Amendment%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Constitution%3A%20Abolition%20of%20Slavery

Growing up in the shadow of slavery and the reality of the rabid racism, White supremacist culture and laws of Jim Crow it is therefore amazing what Coleman was able to achieve in her 34 years of life. As tenant farmers the Coleman family were forced to pick cotton to make a living. Bessie Coleman was an excellent student whose education was frequently interrupted at cotton picking time when the children of tenant farmers were forced to leave their studies to pick cotton alongside their parents. Coleman also helped her mother with the domestic work she did for White families in order for the family to survive financially.

After completing secondary school and unable to find work other than as a domestic worker serving a White family, or the backbreaking work of picking cotton as a tenant farmer, Coleman eventually moved to Chicago. She moved to Chicago in 1915 during the time when many African Americans were leaving the southern states and moving north. Coleman was one of the estimated 6 million African Americans who moved to Chicago from Southern states in what became known as “The Great Migration.” As the first European tribal conflict (1914-1918) was in full swing, African Americans were needed to feed the war machine in various capacities. In his 1989 published book: “Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, And the Great Migration” White historian James R. Grossman writes: “When asked what they liked about the North, nearly all black newcomers interviewed by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations in 1920 mentioned ‘freedom.’ This freedom cannot be neatly defined. It meant different things to different people as it had fifty years earlier at emancipation. For nearly all who left the South during the Great Migration it embodied some combination of rights, opportunities, dignity and pride. In Chicago black men and women did not have to truckle to whites. They could vote, a right that symbolized their full citizenship and the legitimacy of their participation in the affairs of the broader community. They could work in factories, where they earned high wages, envisioned the possibility of promotion and made meaningful choices on the crucial issue of unionization.” This was a far cry from the life African Americans in the southern states were living. In her 2013 published book “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration” African American Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and historian Isabel Wilkerson writes that African Americans living in the south “had to step off the sidewalk when a white person approached, were banished to jobs nobody else wanted no matter their skill or ambition, couldn’t vote, but could be hanged on suspicion of the pettiest infraction. In everyday interactions, a black person could not contradict a white person or speak unless spoken to first. The consequences for the slightest misstep were swift and brutal.” This was the life that Bessie Coleman and the estimated 6 million African Americans fled when they migrated to Chicago. Of course with the end of World War I the need for the labour of African Americans in Chicago was over and there were brutal attacks by White mobs on African American communities. 

Coleman joined her brothers who had moved to Chicago previously and instead of working as a domestic (one of the jobs many African American women performed in Chicago) she trained as a manicurist and worked at a barbershop. Coleman was enthralled by the stories she heard from African American pilots returning from World War I and her brothers' stories of French women pilots. During that time in America only a few wealthy White women were pilots. That did not stop the young African American woman who worked as a manicurist in a Chicago barber shop from determining to become a pilot. Coleman tried to enroll in aviation schools, but was rejected because she was an African American woman. Finally with the support of Robert Sengstacke Abbott, African American businessman and owner of the popular newspaper “The Chicago Defender” and Jesse Binga an African American real estate mogul and banker (owner of the Binga Bank) Bessie Coleman headed to France to learn how to fly. She had met Abbot when she gave him a manicure. He researched the feasibility of an African American woman being accepted into aviation school in France and found that she stood a better chance of being accepted in a European aviation school. Coleman studied French, saved her money and with financial support from the two African American businessmen travelled to France to learn how to fly.In the 2005 published book “Bessie Coleman” authors Philip S. Hart, Martha Cosgrove write: “In December 1920 Bessie Coleman began taking flying lessons at the Ecole d’Aviation des Freres Caudron. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale issued Bessie’s pilot’s license on June 15, 1921.” In September 1921 Coleman returned to America as the first African American woman with an international pilot’s license. After a second stint of training in Europe (advanced training) as an acrobatic pilot Coleman returned to the USA where she became a stunt pilot performing exhibition flying. 

Touring the country as a barnstorming pilot, where she insisted that she would not perform for segregated audiences. She was an inspiration for many young African Americans, who began to view flying as a possible career. She lectured at schools, churches and recreational facilities in the African American community, encouraging African Americans to enter the aviation field and she planned to open an aviation school for African Americans.

Coleman did not get to realize her dream of opening an aviation school in the USA where African Americans could learn to fly. In the 2004 published book “Hidden History - Profiles of Black Americans” White author Walter Andy Hazen: “On April 30, 1926, she was killed in a bizarre crash in Jacksonville, Florida. A wrench had somehow jammed the controls of her plane, causing to go into a dive and flip over. She had neither buckled her seat belt nor taken a parachute with her. Consequently she was thrown from the plane to her death.” 

Bessie Coleman’s pioneering spirit and her determination not to let American racism limit her ambitions served as an inspiration for African Americans to pursue aviation as a profession. As a tribute to her inspirational life, in 1931, African American pilots from Chicago instituted an annual fly over of her grave. In 1977 a group of African American women pilots established the Bessie Coleman Aviators Club and in 1992 a Chicago City council resolution requested that the U.S. Postal Service issue a Bessie Coleman stamp. The resolution noted that "Bessie Coleman continues to inspire untold thousands even millions of young persons with her sense of adventure, her positive attitude, and her determination to succeed."

Murphy Browne  © February 2014  

JOHN HAROLD JOHNSON JANUARY 19-1918

John Harold Johnson was born 100 years ago today (January 19-2018) in Arkansas on January 19th, 1918. Johnson changed the American publishing industry/landscape on November 1st 1942, when he launched the Negro Digest and Johnson Publishing Company Inc. was established. The Johnson Publishing Company Inc. went from strength to strength with the publishing of Ebony Magazine launched on November 1st 1945, Jet Magazine launched on November 1st 1951 and several other magazines including Ebony Man in 1985 and Tan Magazine, a true confessions type magazine in 1950. Jet, a weekly news magazine has had such an influence on African American life that African Americans would frequently say; “If it wasn’t in Jet, it didn’t happen.” The publications of Johnson Publishing Corporation Inc. told the stories of African Americans when white American media either ignored or distorted the reality of African American life.


October 2007 © Murphy Browne
EBONY MAGAZINE
On November 1st 1945 an enterprising 27 year old African American male changed the history of journalism. African American soldiers were returning from the battlefields of Europe, the scene of the latest European tribal conflict. They had been involved in what was supposedly the fight for democracy, however when they returned home from making life safe for Europeans they were still second class citizens in their own country. They were still living under Jim Crow rule where they could be lynched because a white person did not like the way they walked or talked. Nothing much had changed for African Americans after they returned home from World War 11. The publication of Ebony Magazine on November 1st 1945 would herald a new era for African Americans and eventually all other Africans across the globe.


John Harold Johnson was born in Arkansas on January 19th, 1918. As a descendant of enslaved Africans living in the white supremacist Southern United States it is hardly surprising that his father, Leroy Johnson was killed in a sawmill accident when he was eight years old. Countless numbers of African Americans had been “accidentally” killed at their worksites, safety standards were not important. The Johnson family, now mother and son had to survive without the male adult presence. Like many African women before her, Gertrude Johnson set about surviving and rearing her only child. Determined to give her child opportunities that he would never have in Arkansas, (there were no high schools for African Americans) Gertrude Johnson worked as a washer woman and cook to save the money for their fare north to Chicago. In July 1933, the Johnsons moved to Chicago where John H. Johnson attended Dusable High School, Chicago’s first high school built for African American students, and graduated in 1936. What amazing coincidence that the man who is considered the African American poster person for entrepreneurship in Chicago attended a high school named in honour of Jean Baptiste Pointe Dusable, the Haitian born African man who was the founder of Chicago.


On graduating from high school with honours, Johnson was invited to speak at the Chicago Urban League luncheon for outstanding high school students. He met one of the featured speakers, Harry H. Pace, president of the largest African American owned business in the USA, Supreme Life Insurance Company. Pace offered Johnson a job, encouraging him to work part-time and attend university part-time.


Beginning work as an “office boy” at Supreme Life Insurance Company in 1936, by 1939 Johnson was the editor of Supreme’s monthly newspaper, “The Guardian.” In 1942, Johnson was given the task of compiling a weekly digest of major news items about African Americans gleaned from various magazines and newspapers. Realising that there were no magazines that highlighted African American culture and achievement, Johnson seized the opportunity to publish a commercially viable monthly magazine catering to African Americans.


Johnson planned to use the mailing list of the Supreme Life Insurance Company to solicit subscriptions for his magazine and needed a $500.00 loan. Upon being refused a loan from the First National Bank of Chicago, Johnson approached the Citizens Loan Corporation and secured a $500.00 loan by using his mother’s furniture as collateral. On November 1st 1942, the Negro Digest was published and Johnson Publishing Company Inc. was established. The Johnson Publishing Company Inc. went from strength to strength with the publishing of Ebony Magazine launched on November 1st 1945, Jet Magazine launched on November 1st 1951 and several other magazines including Ebony Man in 1985 and Tan Magazine, a true confessions type magazine in 1950. Jet, a weekly news magazine has had such an influence on African American life that African Americans would frequently say; “If it wasn’t in Jet, it didn’t happen.” The publications of Johnson Publishing Corporation Inc. told the stories of African Americans when white American media either ignored or distorted the reality of African American life.


When Johnson launched Ebony Magazine on November 1st 1945 he could not have dreamt of the success of Johnson Publishing Company Inc. In his autobiography "Succeeding Against The Odds," published in 1989, Johnson wrote, “I never thought I would be rich. Never in my wildest dreams did l believe that Negro Digest would lead to the Johnson Publishing Company of today. If I'd dreamed then of the conglomerate of today, I probably would have been so intimidated, with my meager resources, that I wouldn't have had the courage to take the first step." The legendary Maya Angelou describing John H. Johnson said, “John Johnson had the vision of a William Randolph Hearst and the perseverance of the legendary hero, John Henry. With his gifts, he introduced an entire race to the beauty and the brilliance they already had. Through his magazines, we learned that we were poets and plumbers and preachers and pundits." African American celebrities were featured in the pages of the magazine as well as the lived reality for most African Americans who were being victimized by a white supremacist American culture. Ebony was the chronicler of African American life, the good, the bad and the ugly. Who can forget the image of Coretta Scott King comforting her five year old daughter Bernice at Dr King’s funeral? That image of Coretta dignified even in her grief gained photographer Moneta Sleet of Ebony Magazine a Pulitzer Prize. Ebony magazine was the training ground for many talented photographers and journalists who might otherwise never had an opportunity to practice their craft. Ebony and Jet played key roles in the Civil Rights movement. Johnsons Publications changed the colour and content of American media which had not cared to show positive images of African Americans.


Not only did Johnson influence generations of African Americans with his publications, that influence was felt as far away from Chicago as Stanleytown, Berbice in then British Guiana. Johnson Publications Inc. brought the lives of African Americans to us in the pages of Ebony, Jet and Tan magazines. These publications were part of our family while my mother and her siblings were elementary school students. The next generation, my siblings, cousins and I read about Lena Horne, Billy Eckstein, Nat Cole, Harry Belafonte etc in old Ebony and Jet magazines. We were fascinated with the large, dramatic photographs of glamorous men and women before we could even read the stories. Some of the stories we did read however, were far from glamorous. Reading about the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till, the terrorizing of Elizabeth Eckford and the Little Rock Nine, the imprisonment of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks’ arrest was a puzzle to us as children living in a culture where we did not experience overt racism. We were educated about the history and culture of African Americans as we read Ebony, Jet and Tan magazines. Tan magazine is no longer published but we continue to read Ebony and Jet magazines regularly, sharing information with the younger generation. It speaks volumes about the culture of North America that Ebony and Jet magazines remain relevant.


John H. Johnson transitioned to be with the ancestors on August 8th, 2005 but his legacy which he created and launched on November 1st 1945 lives on in the pages of Ebony magazine which continues to chronicle the lives of Africans and educate the world about the history of Africans.
October 2007 © Murphy Browne

DR. DANIEL HALE WILLIAMS

Daniel Hale Williams was born on January 18, 1856 (162 years ago today January 18, 2018) in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children born to Daniel and Sarah Williams, just nine years before slavery was abolished in the USA. After working as a shoemaker and a barber, he became an apprentice to a doctor for two years before entering Chicago Medical College, now Northwestern University Medical School, in 1880.

Murphy Browne  © Wednesday July 08 2015

DR. DANIEL HALE WILLIAMS


“In 1893 Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open heart surgery. On July 9, 1893 James Cornish was stabbed in a Chicago street fight. Dr. Williams then did the unthinkable. He sliced open the man’s chest and successfully stitched up his heart. With that he ushered in a new age of medical science.”


Excerpt from an advertisement in the March 1989 issue of Ebony magazine.


On Sunday, July 9, 1893, an African-American doctor made history by performing the first successful open heart surgery. The patient, James Cornish, was a young African-American man who lived for 50 years after the surgery.


In her 2010 book, Why Does My Heart Pump?: All about the Human Body, White Australian author, Helen Bethune, wrote: “In 1893 a young African-American man named James Cornish was admitted to the hospital. He had been stabbed in the chest. Williams realized that the only way to save the man’s life was to open his chest and operate. The operation was a success, mainly because of Williams’ sterilization methods. James Cornish lived another 50 years.”


The surgical procedure that Williams performed on July 9, 1893 was considered so revolutionary that several newspapers carried the story in spite of the fact that Williams was African-American. In her 1954 book, Doctor Dan: Pioneer in American Surgery, White American writer, Helen Buckler stated: “The doctors who had watched Dr. Dan make history were not slow in telling other doctors about the daring venture and its great success. For weeks surgical conversation dwelt on little else. Dr. Dan soon found himself a respected man in Chicago\’s topmost medical circles. The hospital staff, the Board, and friends of Provident, passed the exciting news around. Kohlsaat sent a reporter from the Inter Ocean, of which he was part owner, to interview the thirty-seven-year-old surgeon, ten years out of medical college, who had won this laurel.”


At that time (1893), surgery on internal organs was unheard of because any entrance into the chest or abdomen of a patient would almost surely result in infection and subsequently death. The earliest surgeries were crude at best and likely to have been performed out of desperation. According to some sources, it was not until the 1900s that the risk of dying after surgery was less than 50 per cent.
Surgical procedures that are commonplace today, such as appendectomies, were uncommon. Until 1885, a person with appendicitis was expected to die of the infection that occurred once the appendix ruptured. Anesthesia was not routinely used during surgery until the late 1800s and early surgical techniques were rudimentary at best and barbaric at worst.


In the September 1996 newsletter of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Vol. 60, No. 9, surgery before anesthesia is described in part: “Elective surgery was performed very infrequently prior to the advent of effective anesthesia. From 1821 to 1846, the annual reports of the MGH recorded 333 surgeries, representing barely more than one case per month. Surgery was a last and desperate resort. Reminiscing in 1897 about pre-anesthesia surgery, one elderly Boston physician could only compare it to the Spanish Inquisition. He recalled ‘yells and screams, most horrible in my memory now, after an interval of so many years.’ Over the centuries, numerous techniques had been used to dull sensation for surgery. Soporifics (sleep-inducing and awareness-dulling agents) and narcotics were prepared from a wide range of plants, including marijuana, belladonna and jimsonweed. Healers attempted to induce a psychological state of anesthesia by mesmerism or hypnosis. Distraction could be provided by rubbing the patient with counterirritants such as stinging nettles. A direct but crude way of inducing a state of insensitivity was to knock the patient unconscious with a blow to the jaw. But by 1846, ‘opium and alcohol were the only agents which continued to be regarded as of practical value in diminishing the pain of operations.’ Unfortunately, the large doses of alcohol needed to produce stupefaction were likely to cause nausea, vomiting and death instead of sleep. Opium, while a strong analgesic, had significant side effects itself and was typically not powerful enough to completely blunt a surgical stimulus. The accounts and recollections of surgery before the days of effective anesthesia are gruesome.”


It was during this time when surgery was routinely risky and internal surgery almost unheard of that Williams risked his reputation to perform the heart surgery that eventually earned him fame. Today, the story of the African-American doctor who performed the first successful open-heart surgery can be found in a few books and on websites like www.encyclopedia.com: “A young Black man named James Cornish had been stabbed in a neighborhood scuffle. He was rushed to Provident Hospital with a one-inch knife wound in his chest near his heart. By the time Williams could administer aid, Cornish had collapsed from loss of blood and shock. Risking his surgical reputation, Williams decided to operate – at that time without benefit of x-rays, blood transfusions, or antibiotics to fight infections.”


The surgery on July 9, 1893 was not the first time that Williams made history. In 1891, he was the founder of the first African-American owned hospital, which welcomed patients of any race. In Why Does My Heart Pump?: All about the Human Body, Helen Bethune acknowledges that: “The first open-heart surgery was performed by the African-American physician Dr. Daniel Hale Williams (1856-1931) in 1893. He founded and worked at the Provident Hospital and Training School, in Chicago, the first hospital to be run by African Americans in America. It became famous for its advanced sterilization and antiseptic methods.”


Williams was born on January 18, 1856 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of seven children born to Daniel and Sarah Williams, just nine years before slavery was abolished in the USA. After working as a shoemaker and a barber, he became an apprentice to a doctor for two years before entering Chicago Medical College, now Northwestern University Medical School, in 1880.
Graduating from medical school in 1883, he opened his medical practice in Chicago, Illinois. At that time, African-American doctors were not allowed to work in Chicago hospitals, neither were African-American patients admitted to the hospitals. Williams established the first integrated hospital, the Provident Hospital and Training School Association, on January 23, 1891. Housed in a three-story building, Provident Hospital provided a place for African-American doctors to practice and a training school for student nurses.


Following the successful open-heart surgery, from 1894 to 1898 Williams was the Surgeon-in-Chief at Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. He also founded the National Medical Association in 1895 because African-American doctors were denied membership in the American Medical Association. As a charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913, he was the first and only African-American member for many years.


Today, Provident Hospital, located at 550 E. 51st Street, Chicago, Illinois, is a public hospital and a member of the Cook County Health & Hospitals System (CCHHS.) The hospital earned “The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval for Hospital Accreditation by demonstrating continuous compliance with its health care performance.”


Provident is a Joint Commission-accredited hospital of 25 acute medical/surgical beds, 21 private and two semi-private rooms, and a “regional healthcare centre” offering same-day surgery, comprehensive diagnostic imaging services, cardiac diagnostics, laboratory services, and rehabilitative services/physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech pathology. Primary and specialty ambulatory clinic sessions in over 16 medical specialties are also provided.
Provident Hospital is a teaching hospital associated with Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine. The Provident Foundation, located at 1525 East 53rd Street, Chicago, Illinois, is dedicated to preserving the Provident Hospital and Training School’s legacy. The mission of the Provident Foundation is to “preserve the living legacy of Provident Hospital and the contributions of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, by promoting education for and providing scholarship opportunities to urban youth pursuing careers as doctors, nurses and health care professionals.”

Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who transitioned on August 4, 1931, would be very proud of his enduring legacy.

Murphy Browne  © 2015

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. JANUARY 15-1929

Murphy Browne © 2014

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CALLED FOR REPARATIONS

“It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis? What will it profit him to be able to send his children to an integrated school if the family income is insufficient to buy them school clothes? What will he gain by being permitted to move into an integrated neighborhood if he cannot afford to do so because he is unemployed or has a low-paying job with no future? In asking for something special, the Negro is not seeking charity. He does not want to languish on welfare rolls any more than the next man. He does not want to be given a job he cannot handle. Neither, however, does he want to be told that there is no place where he can be trained to handle it. Few people consider the fact that, in addition to being enslaved for two centuries, the Negro was, during all those years, robbed of the wages of his toil. No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages.”

From "Why We Can't Wait" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., published 1964

Dr. King's birthday will be recognized with a National Holiday on Monday, January 20, 2014. On Monday, January 20, 1986 the first Martin Luther King Jr., day was officially recognized as a National Holiday. Dr. King is the only person who was never an American President to have a National Holiday named in his honour. It is an honour which he richly deserves since he put his life (and the lives of his family) on the line to fight for change to the brutal oppression of living in a White supremacist society. At that time African Americans (the descendants of the enslaved Africans whose unpaid labour built America) were relegated to living on the periphery of American society. They were third class citizens in the country of their birth.

Dr. King was the face and body of the Civil Rights Movement, an easy target of the White supremacist American government and society. Dr. King was the target of a relentless campaign organized by the government carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the leadership of John Edgar Hoover. Hoover had a long history of tormenting African American leaders beginning with his targeting of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey who he hounded for five years (1919 to 1924) until he railroaded Garvey into jail. Hoover described Garvey (one of our most recognized freedom fighters) as a "notorious negro agitator" who he was determined to destroy. Decades later, Hoover would use the same methods of harassment he practiced on Garvey against other African American leaders including Dr. King, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz and members of the Black Panther Party. The Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture has a list of many of the African Americans who were targeted by Hoover: (http://schomburgcenter.tumblr.com/post/12293288481/j-edgar-from-garvey-to-gaye)

As the recognized leader of the Civil Rights Movement and the target of the FBI, Dr. King was arrested 30 times. On one of those occasions when he was incarcerated Dr. King wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He wrote the letter in response to an open letter written by a group of White (8 Christian and Jewish) religious leaders (published April 12, 1963) who expressed concern that the “Negroes” wanted too much too quickly. In his reply to the good White religious leaders Dr. King wrote in part: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied. We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society …. when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

The book "Why We Cant' Wait" began as "Letter from Birmingham Jail" written April 16, 1963 as Dr. King responded to the open letter written by 8 White religious leaders. The letter (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html) was written on scraps of paper while Dr. King was in jail for demonstrating without a permit (which the court refused to grant.) Dr. King and 50 others were arrested as they peacefully demonstrated on Good Friday, April 12, 1963. In his book “Why We Can’t Wait” Dr. King described the writing of the letter: “Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly black trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me.” The letter was reprinted several times including the August 1963 edition of “Ebony Magazine on pages 23 to 32 entitled “A Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Dr. King was born on January 15, 1929 and assassinated on April 4, 1968. In his 39 years he achieved more than many people who lived twice as long as he did. He was just 25 years old in 1954 when he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and at 26 accepted the leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association eventually becoming the recognized leader of the Civil Rights Movement. As leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association Dr. King spearheaded the Montgomery bus boycott which lasted from December 1, 1955 to December 21, 1956. During the boycott Dr. King was arrested, his home was bombed and he was subjected to the wrath of the White supremacist system. In 1963 Dr. King was named Man of the Year by “Time” magazine and in 1964 became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

The recognition of Martin Luther King Jr., Day came after a long struggle beginning in 1968 the year in which he was assassinated when Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after King was assassinated. The bill was stalled until petitions endorsing the holiday containing six million names was submitted to Congress. Conyers and Representative Shirley Chisholm, Democrat from New York, resubmitted King Holiday legislation each subsequent legislative session. Public pressure for the holiday mounted during the 1982 and 1983 Civil Rights marches in Washington. Congress passed the holiday legislation in 1983 and Martin Luther King Jr., Day has been a National Holiday in the USA since then. The holiday is recognized on the third Monday in January and this year on Monday, January 20 Dr. King will be remembered across the USA with a National Holiday.

Dr. King supported Affirmative Action and Reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans. Reparations have been on the minds of Africans since slavery was abolished. In America there was the idea of 40 acres and a mule for African Americans which was never realised. Africans in the Caribbean have also sought Reparations. In 2013, a National Reparations Committee was established by the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) with the intent of pursuing the issue of Reparations from the former slave owning European nations that benefited from the unpaid labour of enslaved Africans. Dr. King (as we remember him on what would have been his 85th birthday) would have supported his Caribbean brothers and sisters (14 Caribbean countries including Haiti and Suriname) as they seek Reparations from Britain, France and the Netherlands.

Murphy Browne © January 2014

FROM RECY TAYLOR TO NAFISSATOU DIALLO

Recy Taylor transitioned on December 28, 2017 and on January 7-2018 at the Golden Globes Award ceremony Oprah Winfrey acknowledged Recy Taylor. Recy Taylor was one of the countless African American women who suffered sexual assault by white men since the first African woman was enslaved in the USA. Recy Taylor's name is known because she was one of the few victims brave enough to seek a nonexistent justice. After tonight January 7-2018 because of Oprah Winfrey, people will know the name Recy Taylor and her story.


Murphy Browne © Tuesday, September 20, 2011


FROM RECY TAYLOR TO NAFISSATOU DIALLO

Nafissatou Diallo will not get the opportunity to confront Dominique Strauss-Kahn former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief and billionaire in a court of law and officially tell the story of the traumatic sexual attack she suffered. This, in the 21st century, when some African women sexually brutalized by white men in the 19th and 20th century had that opportunity even if the men were never found guilty. At least there are court records where researchers from later generations could glean information and write books about that reality. The District Attorney of New York County in his infinite wisdom has decided not to bring the case to trial. African women have been the victims of white men’s brutality since these men made their appearance on the African continent seeking free labour. This happened whether the white men were British, German, French, Portuguese, Spanish or any other European tribe. The Jezebel myth was eventually created to rationalize these often brutal attacks. Enslaved African females (including children) were portrayed as corrupters of good Christian white men.

 

In his 1859 published book "The Roving Editor, or Talks With Slaves in Southern States" abolitionist James Redpath wrote: “I am a white man and I know that mulatto women almost always refuse to cohabit with the blacks; are often averse to a sexual connection with persons of their own shade; but are gratified by the criminal advances of Saxons.” An amazing piece of self delusion coming from an abolitionist but at least he recognized that the sexual advances were criminal. The evidence does not bear out what this white abolitionist wrote because there are stories of enslaved African women resisting those criminal advances even though they knew they were endangering their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

 

In the book Celia A Slave: A True Story published in 1999 (author Melton Alonzo McLaurin used information from Celia’s trial) the 19 year old enslaved woman is hanged after she is found guilty of killing her owner who had raped her on a regular basis for the five years he owned her. The fact that she was defending herself from a brutal beating and eventual rape for the umpteenth time (all this while she was pregnant with the owner’s third child) was not considered. Her lawyer put forward a case for self defence but Celia was property and her owner by law could do whatever he wanted with her including killing her if he had a mind to do so and she legally had no right to resist. This was no surprise in 1855 Missouri or most states in the USA. That may not have been the law in some of the Northern states but as can be deduced from the words of Redpath even those whites who thought that the enslavement of Africans was illegal also thought that enslaved African women welcomed the criminal sexual advances of white men. Given this mindset it is hardly surprising that the rape of African women continued even after the abolition of slavery.

 

African American professor Deborah Gray White notes in Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (published 1999): "From emancipation through more than two-thirds of the twentieth century, no Southern white male was convicted of raping or attempting to rape a black woman. Yet the crime was widespread." Case in point is the brutal gang rape on September 3, 1944 of then 24 year old Recy Taylor, married mother of a two year old daughter. Taylor left church accompanied by two other church members (60 year old woman and her 18 year old son) when they were confronted by a group of 7 white men who kidnapped Taylor. The men drove out of town where they raped then blindfolded Taylor and after threatening to kill her if she told anyone about the rape, abandoned her on the highway next morning leaving her barely alive to walk home or die trying. She made her way home where her father, her husband and friends had been searching for her throughout the night. Unlike previous cases where the rape of African American women by white men had been “hushed up” this case did not die a “natural” death. Rosa Parks, then a 32 year old activist with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took up the cause and ensured that there was widespread publicity to force the authorities to arrest the rapists. Meanwhile the Taylor family was under siege. Death threats and an attempt on their lives when their home was fire bombed forced Taylor and her husband to move in with her father and six siblings. The threats continued and each night Taylor’s father would climb a tree in his backyard and as reported by Earl Conrad in an article entitled “Death Threat made against rape victim” published March 17, 1945: “Cradling a double-barreled shotgun and a sack of shells, he guarded the cabin until the sun broke on the horizon and then went inside to sleep.”

 

The men who raped Taylor claimed that she was a prostitute and even offered her husband $600.00 as compensation. Marvin White the lawyer representing the accused asked Willie Taylor, "N***er- ain't $600 enough for raping your wife?" Not surprisingly the grand jury returned no indictments and there was no trial. The Taylors were forced to move away from their family and community, settling in Florida where 91 year old Recy Taylor received the news in March 2011 that the Alabama House unanimously passed a resolution to express its 'deepest sympathies and solemn regrets.' Taylor ’s 74 year old brother who was a child of nine years old at the time said he still vividly remembers his father desperately searching for his daughter on the night of the rape. 'He came back by the house about three times, and each time, his shirt was wringing with sweat. Nobody slept that night.' Recy Taylor’s story is the first in Danielle L McGuire’s 2010 published book "At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance -- a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power" and Joan Little’s story is the last.

 

On September 7, 1974 Little was arrested for 1st degree murder in the killing of 62 year old Clarence Alligood, a white prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina. The guard’s body had been found in the cell where the 21 year old Little had been incarcerated for two months. He was naked from the waist down. His yellow and white plaid shirt was caked with blood and a thin line of semen stretched down his leg. His right hand loosely held an ice pick and his left arm, dangling toward the floor clutched his pants. Little was declared an armed and dangerous outlaw with police ordered to shoot her on sight. With service dogs and high-powered rifles the police went door to door in the African American community of Washington, North Carolina. After hiding out for one week Little surrendered. At the trial the prosecution claimed that Little seduced Alligood and murdered him to enable her escape. Little testified that Alligood had forced her at the point of an ice pick to perform oral sex before she seized the ice pick, stabbed him repeatedly and escaped. Little was supported by many activists including feminist organizations: http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/davis.asp and was acquitted.

 

Since Diallo’s accusation against Straus-Kahn some white newspapers have hounded the woman, preventing her from returning to work. Her past should have no bearing on whether or not she has the right to face her attacker in a court of law. She has been accused of being a prostitute and her life scrutinized as if she was the perpetrator instead of the victim. With the unfortunate decision to dismiss, the District Attorney seems to be sending a message to racialized women who suffer sexual violence at the hands of rich white men that they have to live perfect lives if they want to see justice done.

 

Murphy Browne © Tuesday, September 20, 2011

ROSEWOOD FLORIDA JANUARY 1923

Wednesday January 06 2016

By MURPHY BROWNE

On January 1, 1923, the African-American town of Rosewood in Florida was attacked by a White mob and by January 7, 1923, Rosewood no longer existed.

Rosewood was not the first African-American town that was destroyed by covetous and envious White people. The town of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as the “Black Wall Street”, was destroyed between May 31 and June 1, 1921 by a White mob envious of the prosperity of African-Americans. The mob was aided by the government in the destruction of Greenwood.

On January 7, 1923, the White mob that attacked Rosewood burned to the ground three churches, a train station, a large Masonic Hall, a school and several two-storey houses and smaller two-room houses. The businesses included a general store, sugar mill and turpentine mill. There was even a baseball team, the “Rosewood Stars”.

On January 1, 1923, a White woman (living in Sumner, a White neighbouring town to Rosewood) had a quarrel with her White lover. When her husband arrived home unexpectedly, she had to explain the marks of violence on her face and her dishevelled appearance. The White woman told her husband that she had been attacked by an African-American man.

The documentation submitted to an investigative team in 1993 includes this quote: “Some African-Americans in the area contended privately at the time, even as Black descendants contend publicly today, that the man who visited Fannie Taylor was her White lover. For some reason they quarrelled, and after physically abusing her, the man left. Then the White woman protected herself by fabricating the story of being attacked by a Black man.”

Since the African-American community was aware of these extramarital shenanigans, the White community would most likely be aware also. However, it would not be the first or last time that a White community would use the excuse of “Negro attacked White woman” to destroy African-American individuals, families or communities. A “posse” of White men was organized and on Monday, January 1, 1923, they lynched an African-American man who was an easy target.

However, the bloodlust was not satisfied with the hanging of one African-American man which, combined with envy of some prosperous African-American families in Rosewood, led to another mob attack. On Thursday, January 4, 1923, rumours began to circulate in the White community that one of the more prosperous African-American men had gathered a group of relatives at his home for protection. Using that as an excuse a White mob gathered to “investigate” this “uppity” behaviour. It was considered very disrespectful for African-Americans to think they could resist “White might!”

When the White men approached the house and opened fire, the African-Americans in the house defended themselves, killing two White men and wounding four. As the news of the battle spread in the White community, hundreds of White men began to pour into Rosewood, armed to the teeth.

According to reports in the Jacksonville Times-Union on January 8, 1923 and the Miami Herald on January 8, 1923: “At some point one of the attackers, armed with a flashlight, worked his way across the open space between the crowd and the house. He climbed through a darkened window, switched on his flashlight, cast its beam on the crouching Blacks, and shouted to his White comrades to fire. One of the Blacks quickly shot him. The bullet struck the intruder’s head, inflicting a serious wound. The injured man fell through the window to the ground and was rescued.”

The White posse, which included many members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) realized that the moonlight made them easy targets of the African-Americans defending the house. An excerpt from the “DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF THE INCIDENT WHICH OCCURRED AT ROSEWOOD, FLORIDA, IN JANUARY 1923 SUBMITTED TO THE FLORIDA BOARD OF REGENTS DECEMBER 22, 1993” states: “There were no other attempts to enter the house. The Blacks seemed well supplied with arms and ammunition, and the bright moonlight made the attackers such easy targets that they contented themselves with a siege. Desultory firing from a safe distance ceased around 4 a.m. when the Whites’ ammunition ran low. More shells and bullets were ordered from Gainesville, as they waited for daylight before making another move.”

Newspapers reported the massacre as it happened yet (not surprisingly) no government intervention was reported to protect the African-Americans under siege by the White mob. Reports of the Rosewood Massacre appeared in several White newspapers, including the Jacksonville Times-Union on January 3, 1923, the Tampa Morning Tribune on January 2 and 3, 1923 and in the Gainesville Daily Sun on January 4, 1923.

African-American newspapers like the Afro-American based in Baltimore praised the courage of African-Americans who defended their homes against the White mob with comments such as this published on January 6, 1923: “The ‘Uncle Toms,’ the South loved are gone forever, and in their place have grown up heroes like Uncle Jim Carrier who died true to his friends and true to his home.”

On January 10, 1923, this comment was published in The Baltimore Herald, an African-American newspaper: “Negroes throughout the country, are in the fullest sympathy and cherish the highest admiration for the men of the race in Florida who fired into the mob and killed two of their number. We regard the twenty, or whatever the number killed as martyrs. They died defending their own lives and in defence of law and order. Every shot fired into a mob and every member of a mob killed is in defence of law and order.”

African-American reporter, Eugene Brown, writing for the African-American newspaper, Chicago Defender, interviewed one of the survivors of the Rosewood Massacre. In an article entitled “Nineteen Slain in Florida Race War”, published on January 13, 1923, Brown wrote about Ted Cole, an ex-soldier from Chicago who had recently arrived in Rosewood and rallied the African-Americans to resist the attack on the Carrier house. According to Brown, Cole, an army veteran, used combat skills acquired in World War I to good effect, managing the stand-off exchange between the African-Americans and the White mob.

In the 2010 book, Lynchings of Women in the United States: The Recorded Cases, 1851-1946, White American author Kerry Segrave writes: “Toward morning the mob was just about out of ammunition. Sensing that, Cole led his band of 20 (according to this account, four people inside the house had been shot to death by the mob, two women and two men) out of the house and in a charge on the Whites, Reportedly, the members of the mob broke ranks and scattered.”

There were reports of African-Americans trying to flee the carnage who were slaughtered as they ran out of their houses that were set on fire by the mob. African-American girls and women were raped and then murdered by the White mob. Many African-Americans who fled into the woods were hunted and killed. Some (mostly women and children) managed to flee to safety by reaching the railway tracks and were taken aboard trains and rushed to safety in Gainesville.

One of the survivors (who was a child in 1923) during a deposition in 1993 said: “You know, everybody was hollering and crying and praying, and they put us all on the train.”

Her family eventually moved to South Miami and tried to live a normal life after the trauma of being burnt out of their homes. Some survivors changed their names and tried to forget the horror and terror of January 1923.

In the aftermath, the White newspaper the Gainesville Daily Sun reported on January 8, 1923: “Masses of twisted steel were all that remained of furniture formerly in the negro homes, (and) several charred bodies of dogs, and firearms left in the hasty retreat, bore evidence to the mob’s fury which set fire to the negro section of Rosewood.”

During an interview, Jason McElveen, one of the White men who “participated in the affair” said: “they went up there and buried seventeen niggers out of the house. And I don’t know how many more that they picked out of the woods and the fields about the area”. McElveen also said: “they just took \’em and laid out in the road [and] plowed the furrows, with a big field-plow, extra big field-plow, fire plow. [They] plowed two big furrows there and put them niggers in there in the trench and plowed it over”.

As for identification, “there is no markings or anything; don’t know who they was, why they was, and they said there was twenty-six of them there”.

As a final grisly note, McElveen remembered, “and after that for the next four or five years they picked up skulls and things all over Gulf Hammock – all around Gulf Hammock”.

On Monday April 4, 1994, the Florida House of Representatives voted in favour of a $2.1 million reparations bill in compensation for the Rosewood Massacre. The package included $1.5 million to be divided among the 11 or so survivors of the massacre, $500,000 to compensate Rosewood families for the property they lost and $100,000 in college scholarships for Rosewood descendants and other minorities. Democratic Senator Charles Williams, representing Tallahassee, whose district includes the area that used to be Rosewood, disagreed with compensating the Rosewood survivors.

“How long do we have to pay for the sins of our forefathers?” he asked.

This is the second year of the United Nations (UN) designated “International Decade for People of African Descent”, which has mostly been ignored by the members of the UN, including the USA and Canada. Every country where Africans were enslaved needs to work on “Reparations” compensation for the descendants of enslaved Africans.

Murphy Browne © January 2016