Black History Month: Amilcar Cabral

September 12, 1924 - January 20, 1973

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories...”

Amílcar Cabral was born in 1921 in Bafatá, Portuguese Guinea. Cabral later moved to Cabo Verde where he got his early schooling. He was an agronomist and nationalist leader. In September 1956 he and five associates—including a brother, Luís, and Aristides Pereira—formed the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, PAIGC, and in December of that year he co-founded a liberation movement in Angola with Neto.

Cabral’s efforts in the guerrilla war against the Portuguese military was found to be overpowering and caused the military to retreat from the region giving power to PAIGC. Moreover his military expertise was matched by his contributions to the literature of national liberation. He was a great speaker and many of his speeches were transcribed into literary works. Cabral’s main contribution was his study of colonized identity and leadership in the context of national liberation, class consciousness, and Marxian theory. For Cabral, culture was key to national liberation. On Jan. 20, 1973, Cabral was assassinated outside his home in Conakry, where his party had established its headquarters. Through the weakening and subsequent withdrawal of Portuguese rule in Guinea-Bissau they were able to claim their independence on September 24, 1973. Likewise, the influence of  PAIGC in Cabo Verde led to their independence on July 5, 1975.

"One of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa, Comrade Amílcar Cabral, who instilled in us tremendous confidence in the future and the success of his struggle for liberation." -Fidel Castro

Written by: E. Rey
Follow @DaHaitianProfet
 
Sources:

http://www.biography.com/people/am%C3%ADlcar-cabral-39512

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/87703/Amilcar-Lopes-Cabral

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/lumumba-50th-anniversary-african-leaders-assassinations

Black History Month: Fred Hampton

Source

“You have to understand that people have to pay the price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then you don’t deserve to win. Let me say ‘Peace’ to you, if you’re willing to fight for it.”

~ Fred Hampton, The Revolutionary Love of Fred Hampton, Sr.

“I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died / Real ni**as just multiply.”

~ Jay Z, Murder to Excellence, Watch the Throne

The fiery, passionate and energetic Black Panther Party (BPP) leader, Fred Hampton, was born on August 30, 1948 in Summit, Illinois, and raised in Maywood suburbs. Hampton was, by all accounts, a fine student in the classroom, graduating from high school in 1966, at 16. Continuing his education at Triton Junior College, Hampton studied law in an effort to arm himself, and those in his community, with legal knowledge to employ against abusive policing tactics. Very early on in his life he was involved in organizing and activism, working at one time with a local NAACP Youth Council, proving himself an effective leader and galvanizer of like-minded youth to effect progressive social change in their community.

Hampton later came to national prominence, however, after joining the Black Panther Party. In November 1968, he joined the Panther’s fledgling Illinois chapter—instituted by SNCC coordinator Bob Brown in 1967—and moved to Chicago, its basis of operations for the state. Among the feats Hampton, with his comrades, were able to accomplish, was a pact of non-aggression in Chicago between rival street gangs, emphasizing the deleterious affects of internecine crime, which menaced all those involved with poverty, poor life prospects and utter self-annihilation. Bringing to bear on the issues that affected the community at large a Marxist social analysis—focusing on class-consciousness and class-struggle—Hampton was able to broker such progressive, “Rainbow” coalitions, which struggled for progressive change on behalf of the oppressed.

A charismatic and passionate leader, Hampton would attract the attention of the Federal government, chiefly the FBI, and while the BPP’s activities and agitation generally elicited the Bureau’s ire and suspicion (and surveillance), Hampton’s powerfully effective leadership especially concerned its highest officers. This constant surveillance and attempted disruption of the BPP (and other organizations struggling for African-American rights) would culminate in Hampton’s assassination—at the young age of 21—in the early hours of December 4, 1969. Though Hampton was summarily and unjustly killed, his legacy as a driven, committed community leader lives on and the spirit of his revolutionary fire does too.

Further reading/viewing:

Democracy Now's "The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther"

Fred Hampton's Bio

The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971)

Black History Month: Harriet Ann Jacobs

Image source: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harriet_Ann_Jacobs1894.png

Why does the slave ever love? Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away by the hand of violence? When separations come by the hand of death, the pious soul can bow in resignation, and say, "Not my will, but thine be done, O Lord!" But when the ruthless hand of man strikes the blow, regardless of the misery he causes, it is hard to be submissive. I did not reason thus when I was a young girl. Youth will be youth. I loved, and I indulged the hope that the dark clouds around me would turn out a bright lining. I forgot that in the land of my birth the shadows are too dense for light to penetrate.

~ Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Ann Jacobs was born February 11, 1813, in Edenton, North Carolina to parents Elijah Knox and Delilah Horniblow. Jacobs’ father, the putative product of a white father and black mother--though still a slave--worked as a house carpenter, and her mother lived as chattel property of John Horniblow, a tavern owner. Harriet had one brother, John, and owing to the legal principle of partus sequitur ventrem, both Harriet and John were born in bondage.

Jacobs is most known for her work as an abolitionist and the 1861 publication the biographical slave narrative--under the pseudonym Linda Brent--of her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Incidents described, in shocking detail, the travails of being a slave, and more, the intersection of gender and motherhood, which played a significant role in the slave woman’s predicament. Jacobs was the repeated victim of unsolicited sexual advances and abuse, and though she wanted to be free, she could not countenance leaving behind her two children. She was, however, eventually able to escape the stronghold of her cruel master, and finally take up “residence” in “a tiny crawlspace above a porch.”

The space was nine feet long and seven feet wide. Its sloping ceiling, only three feet high at one end, didn't allow her to turn while laying down without hitting her shoulder. Rats and mice crawled over her; there was no light and no ventilation. But her children had been bought by the lawyer (the children’s father) and were now living in the same house. Harriet could even see them while they played outside through a peephole she had drilled. She lived in the crawlspace for seven years, coming out only for brief periods at night for exercise.

Jacobs would eventually go on to secure her freedom, and that of her children, following the abovementioned, and other, harrowing and traumatic events. She would dedicate her freedom to the abolition of the slave system and publish her powerful narrative--one of the very first to chronicle the incredible suffering and oppression that was visited upon women slaves all over the South. Jacobs died, after a long and courageous life, on March 7, 1897 at 84 years old.




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