Marian's Blog

"What About the People Who Can't Eat?"- The Injustice Index, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

"With all due respect to gay rights or abortion - What about the people who can't eat??!" - Kristina Borjesson, Feb 3rd, 2006, speaking to a small, live audience at New York Open Center, broadcast on CSPAN2 Book TV. Editor of Feet to the Fire - The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out.

Injustice Index US domestic stats from Drum Major Institute for Public Policy:

*pounds lost by George W. Bush in first 7 months of 2005: 8

*growth in number of hungry US households since 1999: 43%

*income at which a US family of 3 qualifies for food stamps: $20,376

*average yearly wage of "sales associates" at Wal-Mart: $14,787

*number of Wal-Mart employees in USA: 1.2 million

*net worth of five (5) Walton family heirs to Wal-Mart fortune: $77.9 billion

Liverpool, Slavery and The Beatles: Modern Black Atlantic History

"As we write the 20th century what is the role of the Beatles - four white guys from Liverpool UK - in modern Black Atlantic history?" I feel a sense of betrayal when I recall that in the 1960s and later American kids made quite wealthy a group of young men from a city called Liverpool. And in recent years scholars of American popular music and culture have discovered the high cost of the "Liverpool music" phenomenon to the careers and livelihoods of U.S. musicians - especially Black American R&B groups of the 1960s. More than that, I freely admit I was one of these 'ahistorical' youth, though in most respects I wasn't really ahistorical. We simply hadn't a clue about Liverpool's earlier role in deporting, shipping, trading and enslaving our ancestors and those of millions more African descendants in the Americas. I loved the Beatles' music. I bought their records. I saw A Hard Day's Night. My friend Angeline and I even took Paul and John (Angeline and myself, respectively) as alter egos. Don't ask why exactly, but we really were into it and in a way our respective choices were on target. I think very few people in America "put two and two together" back then. I would be intensely curious to know whether any historian or social critic in any country ever attempted to put into the broader Black Atlantic context various interpretations of the meaning of the arrival in the Americas of a group of young Liverpudlian men. In America, apparently, we young Black, Native American, White, Latino and Asian American youth had no idea we were part of a longstanding socio-historical process between the US and UK - a system which without doubt was postcolonial contrary to opinions of some current observers [see my note below on Deepika Bahri's exclusion of postcolonial experience in the US]. Point of history: Among other settlements, in 1607 English settlers founded the Jamestown colony (Virginia). Over in the UK did the Beatles or anyone else reflect upon all this? It seems that even in the late 20th century and on both sides of the pond we still were part of the uninterrupted Atlantic relationship that conspired to silence and 'not remembering'. In the US there had to be those who knew this history and yet they said nothing, let alone jog public memory and foster discourse. More than a few Black American youth - including myself - were buying Beatles' records, singing their songs, we watched them on Ed Sullivan and stood in long lines to pay them to get into their concerts. We never asked - nor did we have means to do so - what Ringo, Paul, George or John thought of Black people - Black Americans, Africans, African Caribbeans, African Canadians or Black British - and of our post-slave-trade societies. We never asked what The Beatles thought of our history or of their own or of their intersections. Nor did we ask what they knew or thought of Liverpool's wildly lucrative links to Africa and the slave trade. Fast forward to 2006. Like the October 2005 STAMP project on the docks of Lancaster near the Millenium Bridge, does Liverpool have a public memorial to the way this city constructed and equipped itself from wealth acquired through catching, shipping and selling captive Blacks? Do Paul McCartney, George Harrison or Ringo Starr, or Sean Lennon or Yoko Ono Lennon or the John Lennon estate for that matter even care that these roots formed the cornerstone of Liverpool history? It's been almost a half century since four young musicians from Liverpool arrived on the shores of America and received an unbiased and unprecedented welcome. In turn that welcome afforded them the means, if not the responsibility, to contribute and to help make our common future different and better than our common past.

A Black History Month 2006 Plan of Action

"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development" - Aristotle. I have three priorities for BHM 2006 - BHM being Black (or African American) history month. One is preparing for next year's 2007 quadricentennial (400th) anniversary of the founding of Virginia - or more precisely, founding of the Jamestown colony by subjects of the King of England, and eventual founding of the English Virginia colony, predecessor of what became the US state (including what today is Kentucky). Priority #2 is May 10th - le 10 mai 2006 - France's new national day to publicly, officially remember France's involvement in African slavery. Internationally it's fairly obvious that when it comes to modern world history's long era of slavery many or most of our societies long ago chose amnesia rather than historical accuracy and responsibility. (Read Alan Rice - "British Selective Amnesia and the Political Imperative to Conserve Black Atlantic Memory" in Revisiting slave narratives , ed. Judith Misrahi-Barak.) Yet even as Americans go on dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 10 May is central to France's other former territory, la Louisiane, and to the history and evolution of its people and descendants. As children in Baton Rouge, Louisiana we studied Longfellow's 1847 epic poem, Evangeline, about the Acadians' migration to Louisiana from what is now Canada. But no one ever mentioned a massive migration to New Orleans around 1803 to about 1812 from the French part of the island Saint Domingue in the Caribbean - the part of the island that now is Haiti. Somewhere someone must have written a story or poem about this. New Orleans' native Anne Rice's book, The Feast of All Saints, for example. Decades after reading Evangeline in Louisiana I want to know how Louisiane and Nouvelle France (New France) relate to each other. This leads me to my third priority, an affirmation of events 2 and 1 which are related to each other in the context of European expansion: the need for other European nations besides France to 'come out of the closet' about their own roles in the interconnected international slave trade. These nations will do well to follow France's example: Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Norway - the old amalgamated Denmark-Norway. The annual May 10th commemoration would not be happening were it not for member of French Parliament Christiane Taubira (Guyane francaise), as well as the French parliament which in 2001 passed her Taubira Law, and president Chirac and others who now have formally acknowledged France's slavery and slave trade role. We also thank France for its eventual role in the abolition of same, as well as for its contribution as the first country to declare slavery a crime against humanity. "... On one of these sale days, I saw a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The children were sold to a slave-trader, and their mother was bought by a man in her own town..." - continued below, Chapter 3, The Slaves' New Year's Day, Harriet Jacobs' 1860 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

"Captured Africans," Kevin Dalton Johnson's quayside work, Lancaster UK

'SWIM WITH SHARKS', originally uploaded by MarianDouglas.

Alasdair Pettinger's image of Johnson's sculpture somewhere near Lancaster's Millenium Bridge. The saying "to swim with sharks" began in the slave trade when sharks changed course to follow ships loaded with captured Africans, waiting for humans to jump or be thrown overboard. The permanent installation "Captured Africans" was conceived by Jamaican British artist Kevin Dalton Johnson who himself is a descendant of these kidnapped Africans. The section of his sculpture in this photo illustrates how in 17 years from 1745 to 1762 alone thirteen "slavers" (ships) sailing from Lancaster delivered almost 2,200 Africans into slavery and oblivion. We must add these numbers of people to all those trafficked through other UK ports and add those to the parallel Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish-Norwegian slave trades. Also the Arab slavers in the Indian Ocean trade in Africans.

C-Span TV: Woman Badly Outnumbered on Tavis Smiley & Tom Joyner's "Think Tank"

I don't know if anyone at C-Span [U.S. commercial cable satellite television industry's public affairs arm] has noticed their programme "Think Tank" has 6 men and only 1 woman. This annual show focusing on Black American views on politics and public affairs is hosted by two media personalities - Tavis Smiley and Tom Joyner - well-known within the Black American community. They're both male. The lone woman participant is Jocelyn Elders, M.D., who served as first Black woman U.S. Surgeon-General, the head of the federal government's Health and Human Services department.

The show's other participants include Cornel West, Joseph Lowery, Louis Farrakhan, and Al Sharpton. Veteran actor Ossie Davis also was to have been on the show but died before the programme was done. Producers were planning to honour his missing presence with an empty chair on the set. Had Mr. Davis done the show the ratio would have widened to seven (7) men and one (1) woman. I wonder what message people will get - and especially children and teens, as well as the non-Black public - watching a gender dynamic of 6 men discussing and debating with each other and 1 woman. Will any aspect of gender -within the Black community and more broadly - even come up in the discussion? Will it be raised by any of the guys?? If so, the likely candidate probably would be college prof & writer Cornel West who co-authored the book breaking bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life with womanist/feminist scholar & academician bell hooks. (Why didn't show producers also get bell hooks or other Black feminists??) Or will gender be raised by/dumped on the sole woman? I think things will be worse if neither Joyner nor Smiley nor anyone else on the show even mentions the glaring gender gap in their panel. Black Americans and some other populations usually would call a 6/7-to-1 representation ratio "tokenism." Think Tank could make things 'less bad' by putting another woman in that ceremonial vacant seat... and I don't think Ossie Davis would mind.

It's Haiti Solidarity Week -- Call-In to U.S. Congress

It's Haiti Solidarity Week. The network and friends are coordinating activities from Washington to Ireland to Paris. Last Sunday was a faith communities' day of reflection on Haiti's current situation. And today -Wednesday- is National Call-in to Congress Day. You can call Congress toll free on 1-888-355-3588.

Tonight in the suburbs near Washington DC there's a Liturgy for Haiti and a Potluck at the Quixote Center in Brentwood, Maryland. Contact Dan at danb at quixote.org.

28 Feb. is an International Vigil on the eve of the first anniversary of President JB Aristide being forced from office and out of Haiti on Feb 29, 2004. Next Monday, 4:30pm in New York will be a RALLY at U.N. Plaza. Allegations are that last year's coup in Haiti was led by the United States and "culminated last February 29, 2004 when a contingent of U.S. Marines kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from his residence, put him on a plane and expelled him from the country..." More events are scheduled for the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal region of Canada. And outside Brazil's embassy in Dublin, Ireland Saturday March 5th there will be a rally protesting the occupation of Haiti - organised by Latin America Solidarity Centre. They'll give letters of protest to the ambassadors of Brazil, Chile and Argentina. To help with this you can call 6760435 or e-mail haiti at lasc.ie. And in Paris (France) 6pm Saturday Feb 26th is an evening of remembrance -une Soirée Mémoire: Haïti existe! [Haiti Exists!] at Amphithéâtre A.S.I.E.M. - rue Albert de Lapparent - Métro Ségur.

National Slavery Museums & Global History of Enslavement of Black People

I just saw news that the United States' National Slavery Museum is scheduled to open in 2007 and will be located near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

So now, quite logically, we are going to need a global movement of scholars, the public, and policymakers who have historical integrity, for the same type of museums in other places that were part of this history... the 500 or more years of forced global trafficking of Africans. We need slavery museums in every other country in the Americas, as well as in the Arab world, Portugal, Spain, Britain, and France.

What about the African descendants in India, Pakistan, and elsewhere?

And is there any part of Africa not touched by this history? Senegal's infamous Goree Island and the Door of No Return are far from the only places of their kind.

Frankly probably the majority of countries in Africa need a museum dedicated to the history of the slave trade and enslavement - including all those stories (which local Africans still know and feel) of how people were collected and which people, and their mass deportations to the rest of the world. Any other regions I missed?

Do You HBCU, Too? America's Historically Black colleges & universities

But first... a Happy Birthday shout-out to "Joey"!! Happy birthday, Joe and many happy returns of the day. Don't forget to make a wish.

Today's BHM term (Black History Month) is HBCU. For the uninitiated that's historically Black colleges & universities. I was born at an HBCU (Howard, where my uncle and later my cousins graduated), grew up at an HBCU (Southern), and attended a third HBCU (Lincoln, in Pa, where my great Grandfather Reverend Brabham graduated in 1894).

Anybody else remember "vespers"? Vespers was the religious service everyone on campus attended every Sunday evening in the campus chapel. It was quiet, beautiful and gracious. Actually I miss it. I attended with my parents, brother and sisters at Southern University (the blue & gold) where my father taught. If you HBCU or want to learn how to, visit HBCU Network and find out what's going on.

Help free "Eyes On the Prize" - Sign the online Petition

Visit downhillbattle.org's website & sign the online petition to free Eyes On the Prize from its current copyright stranglehold.

The petition's Statement of Support was drafted by Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. To sign the petition it doesn't matter where in the world you are; outside the U.S. pick "Other" where it asks for the state.

In part the Civil Rights Veterans' statement reads:

"To us, knowledge is a human right every bit as important as the right to vote and the right be treated with courtesy and respect. Therefore, we do not believe that reading, or viewing, or listening is, or should ever become, a crime. Nor should access to information become a luxury sold only to the wealthy.

The events, images, narratives, and songs of "Eyes on the Prize" were not written, created, or performed by the corporations who now have the copyrights under their lock and key. It was those who gave their lives in the struggle, the heroic children of Birmingham, the courageous citizens of Mississippi, the Selma marchers, the school integrators, the sit-ins and Freedom Riders, and the people of a thousand colleges, towns, and hamlets across the South who created the Civil Rights Movement and we have a right to have our stories told."

Due to a copyright problem the world's most important documentary film on the Civil Rights Movement has not been publicly broadcast for 10 years. Does that make any sense? Please sign this petition and ask others to do so also.

British North America: what can our British heritage mean to U.S. Blacks?

A researcher in the UK writes to tell me he's doing a survey on how Black British people feel about their heritage.

(I have no other survey info right now. When I do I'll try to post it.)

And I thought -- what about the rest of us whose cultural and family roots in significant measure also trace to the UK? Our history and presence as Africans/Blacks in the Americas precedes establishment of the United States, stretching back to the region called British North America.

So what of this history for those of us whose ancestors were part of it yet whose connection with Britain is almost never acknowledged and even ignored? We are millions whose historical occidental cultural & physical roots are English, Scottish, Irish Protestant and/or Welsh - i.e., British. We have a British heritage that certainly exists and yet is not acknowledged. What does this mean? Doesn't (real? feigned?) ignorance by others about us reflect negative historical revisionism?

I'm not saying British is the only European heritage many Black Americans have - because it certainly is not [i.e., Irish, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, German] - however I am saying many or perhaps most Black Americans do have British ancestry and cultural influence. (We're still waiting patiently for someone to do the actual research.)

One of my paternal family names is Lowndes, as in Lowndes Square, London UK. Last October 2004 I spent the better part of a Sunday morning walking Lowndes Square, SW 1, and mulling over my family's Lowndes history. Sometime in the 18th Century some of the Lowndes left England and sailed to St. Kitts & Nevis in the Caribbean, and later on to Charleston, in South Carolina where my African American ancestors (transported from Africa) created more wealth for the white Lowndes by cultivating their cash crop - rice.

[St. Kitts was Britain's first colony in the West Indies... settlement founded 1623; didn't become independent until 1983.]

My Black Lowndes ancestors had the rice-growing knowledge & tradition they brought within themselves from West Africa - I'm guessing from Sierra Leone [because of what I know about my family in So. Carolina] and from other places in Africa I don't yet know, since most professional researchers of slavery in the Americas who do know have not bothered to share with us who are the descendants.

A couple of my Lowndes Square visit photos are here in my blog photo album with my notes. I hope folks will understand what I'm saying about an enormous chunk of British Americas history that I hope to reclaim. But for a broad yet neglected era of British history, Marian wouldn't even be my name.