TONI MORRISON FEBRUARY 18-1931

Toni Morrison born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, who is one of my favourite writers turned 87 years old today. Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for Beloved. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name (starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover) in 1998. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. She was honored with the 1996 National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Morrison wrote the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005. On May 29, 2012, President Barack Obama presented Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.


TONI MORRISON FEBRUARY 18-1931


Murphy Browne © Wednesday March 30 2016

“When I began, there was just one thing that I wanted to write about, which was the true devastation of racism on the most vulnerable, the most helpless unit in the society – a Black female and a child. I wanted to write about what it was like to be the subject of racism. It had a specificity that was damaging. And if there was no support system in the community and in the family, it could cause spiritual death, self-loathing, terrible things.”


Chloe Anthony “Toni” Wofford Morrison during an interview published in the New York Times on September 11, 1994.


Chloe Anthony “Toni” Wofford Morrison was awarded the “Pulitzer Prize for Fiction” for her 1987 novel, Beloved on March 31, 1988. Morrison was inspired by the true story of an enslaved African woman, Margaret Garner.


On Sunday, January 27, 1856 the enslaved Margaret Garner escaped from a farm in Kentucky with her four children across the frozen Ohio River to Ohio, a free state. Garner was 22 years old and pregnant with her fifth child. Her four children were the products of years of rape by her owner. She herself was the product of the rape of her enslaved African mother and her mother’s owner. They spent the night in Cincinnati hiding in the home of African-American abolitionist Joseph Kite. On January 28, 1856 while Kite went to get help to move them to a safer location Garner and her family were surrounded by White men determined to return them to slavery in Kentucky.


This enslaved African woman who had been repeatedly raped by her “owner” and had given birth to four of her rapist’s children and was pregnant with a fifth child decided that she would rather see her children dead than live as slaves. In Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground, the legendary White abolitionist Levi Coffin wrote: “Margaret, the mother of the four children, declared that she would kill herself and her children before she would return to bondage.”
A description of the scene from the 2012 book, The Underground Railroad: A Reference Guide, by White philosophy professor Kerry S. Walters reads: “At this moment, Margaret Garner, seeing that their hopes of freedom were vain, seized a butcher knife that lay on the table, and with one stroke cut the throat of her little daughter, whom she probably loved the best. She then attempted to take the life of the other children and to kill herself, but she was overpowered and hampered before she could complete her desperate work. The whole party was then arrested and lodged in jail.”


U.S. Marshals acting under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had accompanied Garner’s “owner” to arrest her. A two week trial followed Garner’s arrest after which the judge deliberated for another two weeks. It was “the longest and most complicated case of its kind” because usually a “fugitive slave” hearing would have lasted less than a day. The central issue was whether Garner would be tried as a “person” and charged with the murder of her daughter or tried as property under the “Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.”


Garner’s defense attorney moved to have her tried for murder in Ohio to be able to get a trial in a free state and to challenge the “Fugitive Slave Law”. One of the people who gave evidence on Garner’s behalf was White abolitionist Lucy Stone who reportedly said: “With my own teeth I would tear open my veins and let the earth drink my blood, rather than to wear the chains of slavery. How then could I blame her for wishing her child to find freedom with God and the angels, where no chains are?” Garner was returned to slavery in Kentucky and disappeared (supposedly sold away to someone in Arkansas) even though the court in Ohio issued an extradition warrant to try her for murder in Ohio. Garner is said to have died of typhoid fever during an epidemic in 1858.


Toni Morrison would probably have heard of stories like Garner’s almost all her life. African-American women and girls were routinely subjected to sexual abuse from White men during slavery and long after slavery was abolished, especially in the southern U.S. Some of the cases made their way to court and many, many more remained family and community secrets except for the complexion of the children that resulted from the rapes.


Morrison’s parents, Ramah (née Willis) and George Wofford, were southerners who moved to Ohio at the beginning of the 20th century. She grew up hearing stories of how her mother’s father, John Solomon Willis, a violinist, often had to leave his wife and family behind on a farm in Greenville, Alabama to go to Birmingham to make money.


Morrison recalled that her grandmother, Ardelia Willis, realized as the months passed that the White boys in the area were “circling” the family’s farm because her daughters were growing up. When Ardelia Willis saw the White boys frequenting the area she realized she had to get her daughters away. During an interview with Morrison published in the New York Times on April 8, 2015, African-American essayist Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah wrote: “This image and her grandmother’s way of speech have stayed with her: I like the way she said ‘circling’, Morrison told me. After sending a message to her husband that they could no longer stay put, Morrison’s grandmother took her children in the dead of the night and got on the first train they could find that would take them away.”


Morrison’s father also left the southern U.S. because of the oppressive White supremacist culture and the risk to his life. When George Wofford was 14 or 15, two African-American businessmen who lived on his street were lynched in succession. He left the south and headed north, eventually settling in Ohio. Morrison said: “He never told us that he’d seen bodies. But he had seen them. And that was too traumatic, I think, for him.” That experience of seeing the bodies of the lynched African-American men traumatized the teenage George Wofford and affected his adult life. In an article published in the New York Times on July 4, 1976 entitled “A Slow Walk of Trees (As Grandmother Would Say), Hopeless (As Grandfather Would Say)” Morrison wrote: “Thus my father, distrusting every word and every gesture of every White man on earth, assumed that the White man who crept up the stairs one afternoon had come to molest his daughters and threw him down the stairs and then our tricycle after him.” Morrison wrote that at the time she thought her father was wrong.


That 1976 essay which was also published in the 2008 book What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction gives a glimpse into the mind and thoughts of the woman who has written and published 11 novels beginning in 1970 with The Bluest Eye. Morrison has written novels with African-Americans at the centre. She has written unapologetically about the lives of African-Americans even though she has been challenged by White critics and even asked when she would write about White people, during an interview. Morrison has said that she has spent her entire writing life trying to make sure that the White gaze was not the dominant one in any of her books (www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4vIGvKpT1c).


Morrison further explained: “I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don’t know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That’s what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for Black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only Black people. When I say ‘people,’ that’s what I mean.”


On March 31, 1988, Toni Morrison, an African-American woman who was born to working class parents in Lorain, Ohio was awarded the “Pulitzer Prize for Fiction”. In 1993, she was awarded the “Nobel Prize in Literature”. Both prizes were awarded for a story inspired by the life of an enslaved African woman. Morrison as a 13-year-old had worked as a domestic in the home of a White family to supplement her family’s income. She attended Howard University (1949-53 B.A.) and Cornell (1953-55 M.A.). After her marriage to African Jamaican architect Harold Morrison ended in divorce (1958-1964) she brought up their two sons as a single mother while working full time (as an editor at Random House in New York) and writing.


For more than 40 years Toni Morrison’s writing has lived up to her words published on September 11, 1994: “When I began, there was just one thing that I wanted to write about, which was the true devastation of racism on the most vulnerable, the most helpless unit in the society – a Black female and a child.”
BLACK LIVES MATTER!


Murphy Browne © Wednesday March 30 2016

JOHN ANDERSON FEBRUARY 16-1861 TORONTO - CANADA

Murphy Browne © February 15-2018


JOHN ANDERSON FEBRUARY 16-1861 TORONTO


Decision in the case of the Fugitive Slave Anderson.; THE PRISONER SET AT LIBERTY
The final decision in the case of ANDERSON, the fugitive slave, was given to-day. The Court sustained the decision of the Court of Queen's Bench on the question of law, and was unanimous in discharging the prisoner on a technicality in the commitment. ANDERSON is, therefore, set at liberty. Great joy is manifested, especially among the colored population.

Excerpt from “The New York Times” February 18, 1861





John Anderson who was set free in Toronto on February 16, 1861 was given the name Jack Burton by the White man Moses Burton of Fayette, Missouri, who enslaved him and his mother. In his 1863 published book “The Story of the Life of John Anderson, the Fugitive Slave” White British author Harper Twelvetrees wrote “While Anderson was yet an infant, his father made his escape from slavery, and, it was believed, went to South America. When seven year of age, his mother, having given offence to her master, was sold to a trader for transportation to the slave market of New Orleans, and he was thus left an orphan.” Enslaved African mothers, fathers and children were often sold away from each other so the fate of this family was not unusual.





On December 25, 1850 Jack Burton “married” Maria Tomlin, an enslaved African woman from a nearby plantation and their child was born in 1851. In August 1853 Jack Burton was sold to a White man named McDonald whose plantation in Glasgow, Missouri was 30 miles away from the plantation where Jack’s wife and child were enslaved. When Jack requested a pass to visit his wife and child McDonald refused telling him that he should forget about his wife and child and instead choose another woman on McDonald’s plantation. McDonald like all slave owners wanted more children born on his plantation “to increase the number of his live human stock.” Jack decided to escape.



On a Sunday in September 1853 Jack fled. He went to visit his wife and infant son before heading for freedom in Canada where slavery had been abolished 19 years before on August 1, 1834. According to Harper Twelvetrees: “About noon on Tuesday (the third day of his departure from McDonald’s plantation) Anderson while pursuing his journey to the North, passed a field belonging to one Seneca T. P. Diggs, who was at the time engaged in superintending the drying of tobacco.” The White plantation owner Diggs demanded that Jack show him a pass because the laws of Missouri at that time demanded that every African American travelling without a White person had to have a pass. Any White person had the “right” to arrest any African American travelling without a pass and was entitled to a substantial reward. Since Jack did not have a pass Diggs tried to arrest him with the assistance of six of the enslaved Africans from his plantation. Although Diggs was better armed Jack managed to defend himself with a knife and escaped.




During the struggle Diggs was killed. Jack went back to visit his wife and child before setting out for Canada. After various adventures and near captures Jack arrived in Windsor, Ontario in September 1853 where he was employed as a labourer for seven weeks. He changed his name from Jack Burton to John Anderson. In October he asked someone to write to his wife advising her that he was safely in Canada. Shortly after a letter arrived for Jack stating that his wife and child were in Detroit waiting for him. The person who read the letter to him advised him to ignore the information because it was likely a trap to get him to return to the USA where he would be captured and re-enslaved. He was also advised to move from Windsor to Chatham which he did at the end of April 1854. In Chatham, Jack Burton changed his name to James Hamilton. In Chatham news quickly spread that White people in Ontario were hunting for the newly freed Burton/Anderson/Hamilton. He was again on the run frequently moving and changing his name.





In October 1860 James A. Gunning, a White detective from Detroit armed with affidavits from witnesses in Missouri was able to secure Burton/Anderson/Hamilton’s imprisonment on a warrant issued by a three-man magistrate’s court in Brantford. At the time Jack lived near Brantford, Ontario using the name William Jones. The charge was that he did “wilfully, maliciously and feloniously stab and kill” McDonald the Missouri plantation owner. He was released, then imprisoned again on November 20, 1860 by Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson from the Court of Queen’s Bench in Toronto. On December 15, 1860 the court ruled by two to one that John Anderson had committed murder by Missouri law, and that he could be extradited under terms of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. Fortunately he was the court decided that it would offer no opposition to an appeal to the Court of Error and Appeal.





There was much toing and froing and legal decisions in Canadian courts while Burton/Anderson/Hamilton’s fate hung in the balance. He received much support from the African Canadian community and White abolitionists. The might of the press was also in his corner with the powerful voice of the “Toronto Globe” supporting calls for his freedom in defending his life. Samuel B. Freeman was the able lawyer whose skills mounted an appeal to the Court of Common Pleas and on February 16, 1861 the man who began life as enslaved African infant Jack Burton was free to live as African Canadian John Anderson.





The book “The Story of the Life of John Anderson, the Fugitive Slave” by Harper Twelvetrees details the life and trials of John Anderson and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1120306 has details of the case.




Murphy Browne © February 15-2018

FEBRUARY 10-1806 TORONTO-ONTARIO

On February 10-1806 an advertisement in an Ontario publication advertising an enslaved African woman and her teenage son is now part of Canadian history. As quiet as it is kept white people in Canada enslaved Africans from at least 1628 until August 1-1834 and brutalized the Africans they enslaved just as their kin in the USA did.


TO BE SOLD A BLACK WOMAN, named Peggy, aged about forty years; and a Black boy her son, named JUPITER aged about fifteen years, both of them the property of the subscriber. The woman is a tolerable cook and washer woman and perfectly understands making soap and candles. The boy is tall and strong of his age, and has been employed in County business, but brought up principally as a House Servant - They are each of them Servants for life. The price for the Woman is one hundred and fifty Dollars - for the Boy two hundred Dollars, payable in three years with interest from the day of Sale and to be properly secured by Bond &c. - But one fourth less will be taken in ready Money. PETER RUSSELL York, Feb. 10th, 1806




Murphy Browne © October 2007


ENSLAVED AFRIKAN WOMYN
Slavery was a brutal institution that dehumanized a race of people. Female slave bondage was different from that of men. It was not less severe, but it was different. Sexual abuse, child bearing, and child care responsibilities affected enslaved females’ pattern of resistance and how they conducted their lives. The enslaved woman's choices of seizing her freedom were limited compared to the males because she had to consider her children. As a mother she had different responsibilities. Harriet Jacobs' book “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” documents the different role of female slaves and the trauma of having to cope with sexual abuse. Jacobs was constantly exposed to sexual abuse from her master. The enslaved woman's choices of seizing her freedom were limited compared to the males because she had to consider her children. As a mother she had different responsibilities.
Women were less able to leave their chains and children behind. Deborah Gray White in her book "Aren't I a Woman?" wrote; "for those fugitive women who left children in slavery, the physical relief which freedom brought was limited compensation for the anguish they suffered."


The routine rape of enslaved African women is well documented by mostly white men who were the perpetrators. Thomas Thistlewood, an Englishman, went to Jamaica in 1750 as manager for a plantation. He eventually bought his own plantation and in a 10,000 page diary documented his systematic abuse of the enslaved Africans on his plantation, especially the sexual abuse of the women, including the sexually transmitted diseases he brought with him. The book: "In Miserable Slavery: Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica 1750-1786" is not for the faint of heart.


Documented court cases also testify to the routine rape of African females, not only adult women but young girls. In the book “Celia a slave” the author uses court documents to tell the story of a 14 year old enslaved African child, bought by a 56 year old white plantation owner who brutally raped her the day he bought her. Here is this 14 year old, traumatized by being separated from all that is familiar to her, family, friends and brutally raped on the same day. Repeatedly raped over the next four years, she gives birth to two children sired by her rapist. In 1855 when the court case is documented she is pregnant with a third child and charged with murder of her owner. She was tried, found guilty and hanged after she gave birth to the child. During the years of rape she had in vain sought help from the children (all older than her) of her owner, especially his daughters who she probably erroneously thought would come to her aid in some way. Not surprisingly there was no help, no sympathy. White people, especially the women blamed the enslaved Afrikan females when they were raped by white men. So it is not surprising that the women of the family that enslaved Celia ignored her pleas for help even though she was very sick during the third pregnancy.




This abuse of enslaved women took place everywhere African women were enslaved regardless of the European nation that perpetrated this criminal activity. In the book “Caetano Says No: Women's Stories from a Brazilian Slave Society”; an eerily similar case is documented of the rape of an enslaved African female child by the much older white owner on the same night he bought her, complete with her beseeching other white people’s in hopes of stopping the abuse.




In recent years where the rape of an enslaved African woman by a prominent white politician, namely the third American president, has become public knowledge, there has been an attempt to make it a romance. How much romance is there when the female is fourteen and owned by the sexual predator who is in his 50s? The man had also owned Hemings’ entire family, when he demanded sex. With that much power in his hands, over her life and the life of her family, that must have been very romantic. The Jefferson family over the past century and more denied that the children Sally Hemings bore were fathered by Jefferson. When modern day science in the form of DNA test results of Sally Hemings descendants proved that Jefferson was the sire, suddenly the story was not about rape or at least coerced sex, instead it became a romance.


Incidentally, Sally Hemings was the result of Jefferson’s father in law’s sexual relationship with an enslaved woman. He gave this woman and the children he had sired on her to his daughter who was married to Jefferson, so Sally Hemings was his wife’s half sister. What moral upstanding people ruled the American nation.




Enslaved women in Canada were also brutalized and sold away from their families. In Dr Afua Cooper’s book “The hanging of Angelique” again court documents are used to tell the story of Marie Joseph Angelique, an enslaved African woman who was tortured and hanged in Montreal in 1734. On June 4, 1734 Judge Pierre Raimbault handed down his sentence, "MARIE-JOSEPH ANGELIQUE, negress, slave woman of Thérèse de Couagne, widow of the late François Poulin de Francheville, you are condemned to die, to make honourable amends, to have your hand cut off, be burned alive, and your ashes cast to the winds."




Other examples of the abuse of enslaved African women in Canada include the story of Chloe Cooley who is responsible for the acclamation that John Graves Simcoe receives on the first weekend of August. When we celebrate Simcoe day we need to also remember Chloe Cooley whose valiant struggle to gain her freedom led to Simcoe’s effort to limit slavery in Upper Canada in 1793. On Wednesday, March 21st, 1793 Peter Martin appeared before members of the Executive Council. Present were Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, Chief Justice William Osgoode and Hon. Peter Russell, a prominent citizen who owned slaves. Martin informed the Council that a violent outrage had occurred to an enslaved African woman named Chloe Cooley. Peter Martin was one of those few free Africans who lived in Ontario. Martin had witnessed a resident of Queenston named William Vrooman, who owned Chloe Cooley trying sell her to someone in New York State. When she resisted leaving the province (and she resisted, she fought, she screamed, it took three white men armed with ropes to get her into that boat) Vrooman forcibly transported her across the Niagara River to her new owner. Martin said he knew of other enslaved Africans who had suffered a similar fate and he reported hearing that several other slave owners in the area intended doing the same thing with their slaves. Simcoe resolved that steps would be taken immediately to prevent further acts of this nature.


Council directed the attorney general to prosecute the man who had sold Chloe Cooley, however, Simcoe and his Attorney General, John White, knew that under the existing law Vrooman was acting within his rights and could not be prosecuted. This is not surprising because Peter Russell who became Lieutenant Governor when Simcoe returned to England has an ad in a Toronto newspaper dated February 10, 1806 where he advertises for sale a woman named Peggy and her son Jupiter. What the ad does not say is that even though Russell and his sister Elizabeth own Peggy, she is married to a free African man Mr. Pompadour and has two young daughters. The law said that even though their father was a free man, Peggy’s three children belonged to the Russells, so they could sell her and her three children. The history of enslaved people in Canada is documented at a free exhibit located at 880 Bay Street, Bay and Grosvener, until December 31st 2007.


Murphy Browne © October 2007

NESTA ROBERT MARLEY FEBRUARY 6-1945

Nesta Robert "Bob" Marley was born on February 6-1945 and would have celebrated his 73rd birthday today Tuesday, February 6-2018. I cannot help wondering what a 73 year old Bob Marley would look and sound like!


Murphy Browne © Thursday, February 6, 2014


BOB MARLEY'S 69TH BIRTHDAY 2014


Africa, Unite 'Cause we're moving right out of Babylon
And we're going to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before God and man
To see the unification of all Africans
As it's been said already let it be done W
e are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
Africa, Unite 'cause the children wanna come home
Africa, Unite 'cause we're moving right out of Babylon
And we're grooving to our father's land
Unite for the Africans abroad, unite for the Africans a yard
Africa, Unite


Excerpt from “Africa Unite” by Bob Marley and the Wailers released in 1979




Africa Unite is Bob Marley’s Pan-African anthem. For those who want to remember Marley as merely the man who sang “One Love” the image of a Pan-Africanist Marley is hard to take as reality. Similar to the whitewashed image of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., there is a movement to strip Marley of his Pan-African reality in spite of the many songs he wrote and sang that clearly shows the man’s philosophy. Listen to the lyrics of any of the songs from his “Survival” album and you will hear his protests against “Babylon System.”




Listening to the lyrics of Marley’s “Babylon System” you are left in no doubt that the man adhered to the philosophies of his fellow Jamaican and Pan-Africanist, the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. “We refuse to be, what you wanted us to be. We are what we are. That's the way it’s going to be (if you don't know) You can't educate I, for no equal opportunity. Talking 'bout my freedom, people freedom and liberty. Yeah, we've been trodding on the winepress. Much too long rebel, rebel. Babylon system is the vampire. Sucking the children day by day. Me say the Babylon system is the vampire Sucking the blood of the sufferers.” The “Babylon System” to which Marley refers is the same system that racially profiles Africans in Canada, the USA, the UK etc., Those people who claim to love Marley’s music yet are part of the system that racially profiles our youth here in Toronto need to listen to Marley’s “Uprising,” “Survival” and “Confrontation” albums. The lyrics of Marley’s “War” where he uses the words of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I will certainly give them something to talk and think about.



 Part of His Majesty’s speech reads: “That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; That until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained” His Majesty made his speech to the United Nations in 1963 and the speech was published in 1972 in the book “Important Utterances of H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie I 1963-1972.” The lyrics of Marley’s song “War” from the album “Rastaman Vibrations” which was released in 1976: “Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned Everywhere is war, me say war. That until there’s no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. Me say war. That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race. Dis a war. That until that day the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained. Now everywhere is war.”



Nesta Robert Marley was born on February 6, 1945 in St Ann Parish, Jamaica which is also the birthplace of Garvey. Marley transitioned on May 11, 1981 when he was 36 years old. During his relatively short life span Marley achieved superstar status internationally performing reggae music world wide. Marley also became an unofficial ambassador of the Rastafari faith. He inspired many Africans on the continent and the Diaspora to proudly wear their natural hair in locs. Even those who do not adhere to the Rastafari faith proudly sport their locs.



Some of Marley’s lyrics also educated about the history of Africans. Marley’s “Buffalo soldiers” tells the story of enslaved Africans throughout the Americas. “Buffalo soldier, dreadlocked Rasta. There was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America. Stolen from Africa, brought to America. Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival. If you know your history then you would know where you're coming from then you wouldn't have to ask me who the heck do I think I am. Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean.” Our ancestors were stolen from Africa, kidnapped and transported in the filthy holds of ships to work their entire lives enriching the White men and women who worked them to death in places like Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Chile, Guyana, Jamaica, Peru and Suriname. The wealth that the coerced, unpaid labour of those enslaved African ancestors generated for the White families is still being enjoyed by the descendants of those families in the 21st century.




Bob Marley would have celebrated his 69th birthday on February 6, 2014. His birthday is celebrated wherever his music is heard. For more than 20 years there has been a Bob Marley Day proclamation from City Hall beginning with former Mayor Art Eggleton. Marley is one of our heroes who contributed to the cause of Africa and Africans worldwide and deserves to be remembered.


Murphy Browne © Thursday, February 6, 2014

TRAYVON MARTIN FEBRUARY 5-1995

Trayvon Martin would have celebrated his 23rd birthday today, Monday, February 5, 2018. He was born on February 5-1995 and because of the manner in which he was killed on February 26, 2012 his name fuelled a movement that revived the Civil Rights movement. "I am Trayvon Martin" became a rallying cry that sparked a movement and inspired Black Lives Matter. The killing of Trayvon Martin and the aftermath is reminiscent of the August 28, 1955 lynching of 14 year old Emmett Till who was wrongfully accused of whistling at a 21 year old white woman. The lynching of Emmett Till inspired Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955 which sparked the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s - 1970s.

Murphy Browne © May 15, 2012


TRAYVON MARTIN FEBRUARY 5-1995


In the 1975 released movie Cornbread, Earl and Me the young basketball player was slain by police who proceeded to ensure a massive cover-up of their crime. The story is about a young African American male killed by police who proceed to engender a massive campaign of intimidation to silence the witnesses to their crime. They even manufacture a criminal record for the murdered African American youth. The aspiring basketball star was leaving a store where he had bought a “soda pop,” it was raining and he was wearing what is now popularly known as a “hoodie” when he was shot and killed by police who assumed he was a criminal. The police attempt to escape justice was almost successful because the entire African American community was cowed/intimidated (with the exception of an African American mother and her teenage son) by the might of white supremacy. The “me” in the title of the movie Cornbread, Earl and Me was teenager Wilford Robinson (brilliantly portrayed by a then 12 year old Laurence Fishburne http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q30iJPz5yOQ&feature=related ) who courageously testified in court shaming all the cowardly adults who were too terrified to speak the truth even under oath afraid of the power of the police force and other White power structure.


Fast forward to February 26, 2012 some 37 years later where life imitates art and a 17 year old African American male is killed by a White man with delusions of being a police officer who is not a member of any police force but seems to fancy himself in that role. In a gated community in Stanford, Florida 17 year old Trayvon Martin was returning from buying candy and a can of iced tea when he was shot and killed by a White man imbued with the White skin privilege bestowed upon him by a White supremacist culture felt entitled to confront, challenge and end the life of an African American.


Racial profiling, the White man’s sense of entitlement and a rush to judgment resulted in the murder of yet another African American. Zimmerman was not arrested after killing the unarmed teenager. In spite of the sense of entitlement exhibited by George Zimmerman and other white Americans the history of African Americans in Florida and most likely Trayvon Martin’s family goes back many generations to at least the 1500s. The recorded history of Africans in Florida begins with the arrival of Estivanico the Black an enslaved African in April, 1528 who was a member of the expedition to North America led by Panfilo de Narvaez and Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. The enslavement of Africans in Florida was sanctioned by the Spanish monarch Philip when he gave permission in 1565 to Pedro Menendez de Aviles to import 500 enslaved Africans to St Augustine in Florida. St Augustine is supposedly the first European colony in North America established by the Spanish in Florida on September 8, 1565.


There has been a history of violence against African Americans by white Americans since the first enslaved Africans were taken by force to America. The ill treatment of African Americans in Florida is just one of many examples of this scourge. One of the earliest examples after slavery was abolished in the USA is the massacre of an entire African American community on January 1, 1923. From January 1st to January 6, 1923 white men roamed the African American town of Rosewood in central Florida raping and murdering African American men, women and children. They destroyed the entire town including the animals that belonged to the African American families who even though some tried to defend their homes were vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the whites. Some African American women and children managed to hide and fled to Gainesville and eventually made their way to Northern states where they were so traumatized they never spoke of that dreadful time for decades.


In 1994 the Florida Legislature passed the Rosewood Bill and the nine survivors of the Rosewood Massacre received $150,000 each which was hardly any kind of compensation for the trauma and horror they experienced. Unlike the majority of adults in the movie Cornbread, Earl and Me who were cowed and intimidated by the white power structure when Cornbread was murdered it is heartening to note that Trayvon Martin’s parents have refused to remain silent about their child’s murder. With the support of the African American community and many allies they have kept the attention of the world on the fact that there was no justice for their slain child. The overwhelming support for this grieving couple has come from as far away as London, England when the parents of Stephen Lawrence (the Black British 18 year old who was murdered by 5 White youth on April 22, 1993) reached out to offer support.


On Thursday April 19 the National Bar Association hosted a town hall meeting where Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton (Trayvon Martin’s parents) were in attendance. The National Bar Association is the largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges. Many supporters at the town hall meeting received posters that read I am Trayvon Martin, arrest the man who murdered me. No Justice no peace which we displayed in support of the family. Even though Zimmerman has now been charged it is not the end of this family’s struggle for justice. Benjamin Crump the attorney representing the family of Trayvon Martin, Clinton Paris of the Tampa Organization of Black Affairs; state Senator Chris Smith from Fort Lauderdale, Carolyn Collins with the NAACP-Hillsborough County, Tanya Clay House, of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law were among the panelists at the town hall meeting who explained the origins of the "stand your ground" law and discussed the status of the case and the likely next steps in the legal proceedings against Zimmerman.


The town hall meeting and a subsequent press conference were held at the Beulah Baptist Church in Tampa , Florida where more than 400 supporters gathered to stand in solidarity with the couple. Beulah Baptist Church is Tampa ’s oldest African American Baptist church founded in 1894 and the members including the relatives of Sybrina Fulton (Trayvon’s mother) were very welcoming. I spoke with several members of the family who are devastated that their young relative was killed but relieved that the killer has been arrested and charged. Although the powers that be have denied it, it is obvious that the outpouring of support internationally has played a part in the decision to charge Zimmerman with a criminal offence. It was the day before their child’s killer would appear for a bond hearing and we were told that Zimmerman had requested a private meeting with Trayvon’s parents. His request was refused because it was felt that the request was self serving. It was after all almost two months since he had killed their child and not once before then had he apologized or even acknowledged the parents of the youth he had shot and killed. It is extremely important that supporters of Trayvon Martin’s family keep informed about the case, if not this case will disappear into nothingness and become yesterday’s news.


If we do not want this to become another case like that of Stephen Lawrence where it took almost 20 years for his parents to see some of his killers sentenced we must stay informed. This is not just a matter of justice for an African American family because it has gained international attention. Zimmerman although charged with second degree murder has been released on $150,000 bail and the world continues to watch as this case unfolds.


Murphy Browne © May 15, 2012

ROSA PARKS FEBRUARY 4-1913

ROSA PARKS FEBRUARY 4-1913






One hundred and five years ago on February 4, 1913 Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. After her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Rosa was two, Rosa’s mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards who had been enslaved Africans before emancipation in 1865. During a time when it was extremely dangerous to do so Rose and Sylvester Edwards were strong advocates for racial equality. Rose and Sylvester Edwards unlike many African Americans were not tenant farmers (sharecroppers) they owned their farm, where Rosa spent her youth. Her family was always prepared for confrontation with white supremacist threats especially from the Ku Klux Klan. Her grandfather would often sit beside the front door at night with a shot gun in his lap, prepared to protect his family. Many African Americans accepted the abuse as a fact of life while others resisted. Rosa's family was one that did not tolerate the injustice, so she grew up never accepting white abuse quietly. In one experience, Rosa's grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street. Not surprisingly Rose and Sylvester Edwards were Garveyites, supporters of the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his Pan-African movement.




With her upbringing it is not surprising that Rosa Parks became an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.) She and her husband Raymond Parks were activelly involved in seeking justice in the case of the "Scottsboro Boys" who were nine African American teenagers, ages 13 to 19, falsely accused in Alabama of raping two White women on a train in 1931. In 1944 Rosa Parks was the NAACP activist and lead investigator after 24 year old African American mother and wife Recy Taylor was kidnapped as she was leaving church and brutally raped by seven white men. In 1931 Rosa Parks was an 18 year old domestic servant working with a white family when she barely escaped being raped by a white man she describes as "Mr. Charley" in an essay she wrote about the horrific and traumatic event http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/rosa-parks-essay-reveals-rape-attempt-1.997925








On December 1, 1955 when she was arrested Rosa Parks was a veteran Civil Rights activist. Although Rosa Parks was not the first African American passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to refuse to give up her seat in 1955 she seemed to be the most "qualified" in the eyes of the community leaders. Two others, 15 year old Claudette Colvin (March 1955) and 18 year old Mary Louise Smith (October 1955) had been arrested in 1955, but the case of Rosa Parks became the one the legal challenge was based on. The case against the City of Montgomery that ended the segregated bus system named four other plaintiffs, including Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith.
On the evening that Rosa Parks was arrested, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson began making plans for a boycott. She would become one of the most prominent leaders of the boycott. In her 1987 book "The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It" she writes about the daily humiliations African Americans encountered as they travelled on the buses.




African Americans accounted for 75 percent to 80 percent of the passengers on the buses. There were many incidents when African American passengers were arrested for "disorderly conduct" when white bus drivers said they had "talked back" or "didn't have the correct change." The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and African American passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African-American passengers in the back. When an African-American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.




On December 1, 1955 as the bus Rosa Parks was riding made its way along its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that a white passenger was standing in the aisle. The driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, demanding that the four African American passengers give up their seats. The Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving the sign back that separated African American and white passengers and demanding that African American passengers give up their seats to white passengers. If any African American passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed. Three of the other African American passengers in the row of seats vacated their seats but Rosa Parks refused and remained seated. The driver called the police and had her arrested. Later, Rosa recalled that her refusal was not because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in. The police arrested Rosa and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail.




African Americans were arrested, harassed--and even shot dead--for refusing to give up their seats on the bus to white passengers. There were other cases when African American women were beaten and even dragged from the doors by racist bus drivers. Beginning on December 1, 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested there were plans to boycott the Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in African American neighbourhoods. Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955—the day of Rosa Parks' trial—in protest of her arrest. African Americans were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus on December 5, 1955 organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. The boycott was successful even though it lasted more than a year. Rosa Parks became known as the mother of the Civil Rights Movement because of her prominent role in the Montgomery bus boycott.

AFRICAN HERITAGE MONTH 2018

Today is February 1-2018 and the beginning of African Heritage Month. In Canada children's rights include "the development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own"


During this month schools should at least ensure that the history of Africans in Canada is part ...of the curriculum. It is not enough to invite a performer into the school to sing/dance. It is not enough to have a one day assembly and invite a speaker.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child


Article 29 states:


(1) States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to:


a. the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential;
b. the development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations;


c. the development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate, and for civilizations different from his or her own;

FEBRUARY IS AFRICAN LIBERATION MONTH IN CANADA

Today is February 1, 2018 and the first day of African Heritage Month in Canada. Although recognizing February as African Heritage Month began in the USA in 1926 as "Negro History Week" African Canadians began celebrating/recognizing the month in the 1950s when it was introduced by the late Stanley Grizzle and the Canadian Negro Women's Association.


Murphy Browne © 2009


AFRICAN HERITAGE MONTH


What's in a name? Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. He could afford to think, write and even say those words. He was a White male who had power and privilege bestowed on him because of the colour of his skin. His parents probably named him; he was not given a name by people from another culture who had stolen his name and language from him. For enslaved Africans who did not have a choice in naming themselves it is a very different matter. Europeans re-named us. Under pain of death we were not permitted to use our own names or speak our mother tongue. Africans in the Diaspora are the only group of people who do not collectively know who they are. There are individuals and groups who will acknowledge that they are African, but as a people we do not yet know and take pride in who we are. Other groups whose ancestors left their places of origin many years ago are proud of who they are. There is a reason for this difference in attitudes. Our ancestors did not choose to leave; they were kidnapped, dragged out of their countries, out of the continent in chains and held captive their entire lives. Were it not for the 400-year enslavement of Africans we would all know that we are Africans and our names would reflect this knowledge.


Deliberate, strategic methods were used to alienate Africans from tradition and from each other, and to teach African inferiority and European superiority. Europeans first attacked African culture; then they denied that African culture ever existed. Stripped of their names and identities, our ancestors were no longer Africans; they were made "Negro" by White slavers. The names many of us carry today reflect the nationality of the Europeans who enslaved our ancestors. Had this not been the case, my great grandfather's name would not have been Kelly Murphy Jonas. His name would probably have been Kofi. Kofi is the Akan name given to a male born on Friday. My name would probably have been Abena, because I was born on Tuesday. My childhood friends Staye and Faye Daniels would probably have been Taiwo and Kehinde because they are twins. Taiwo and Kehinde are the Yoruba names given to twins. Africans in the Diaspora cannot claim one particular country as the country of their ancestors either; our history of enslavement with the accompanying destruction of family units makes it impossible.


Since everyone has two biological parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents and so on, it is possible that one person can have ancestors from more than eight different African groups. European slavers knew that divided we were vulnerable. They designed a system to make us lose the basis of our collective identity. We were separated, and then our names, our language, our stories, our songs, our family structures, even our understanding of God -- the things that bound us together -- were beaten out of us. Then, they had to make us believe in, protect and even demand White supremacy. We had to be taught to love and revere Europe and European culture more than life itself. We were also taught that Africans had contributed nothing to the world.


There has been continued African resistance to this attack on our sense of self since the first Africans were kidnapped and enslaved. There were always people who resisted. Some of these freedom fighters are well known; many others are not. In 1971, Richard B. Moore wrote in an "Open Letter on Our People's Name" to Bayard Rustin, Executive Director of the Asa Phillip Randolph Institute: "This term 'Negro' has long been a synonym for slave, loaded continuously with scorn and hostility, and still linked in the public mind generally with a vile and repulsive image." Born in Barbados on August 9, 1885, Moore moved to New York as a young man. In the 1960s he created the "Committee to present the truth about the Name Negro." He also published the book, "The Name Negro, Its Origin and Evil Use," as part of his campaign to encourage Africans to reclaim their names. He made the connection between the use of the word "Negro" and the beginning of the African slave trade. He proved Europeans used it in their attempt to instill an inferiority complex within Africans. Moore died in Barbados in 1978, but his work and his words live on.


Carter G. Woodson initiated the celebration of Negro History Week in February 1926. Woodson chose February to honour the memory of Frederick Douglass. At the time when Woodson started the recognition of African heritage and history as a public entity, African Americans still used the name they had been given by Europeans. During the 1960s and '70s the "Negroes" and "Coloureds" of the U.S. renamed themselves Black. It was the time of being "Black and Proud."


In 1976, as part of the American bicentennial celebrations, "Negro History Week" became Black History Month. Since then we have been expressing our kujichagulia (self determination) by naming our celebration Black History Month, African Heritage Month or African Liberation Month. In Canada, the Canadian Negro Women's Association pioneered the celebration of Black history in the 1950s. The Ontario Black History Society was instrumental in the recognition of Black History Month as a citywide celebration in 1979. In 1993, the celebration gained province-wide recognition. In 1996, due to the intervention of MP Jean Augustine in December of 1995, Black History Month became a nationally recognized celebration in Canada.

Whatever you are comfortable naming yourself, educate yourself about your history.


Murphy Browne © 2009