Slavery and the Making of America
This year has been remarkable and certainly one none of us will ever forget. In some ways it is a throwback to antebellum policies; before lynching laws made chasing Black men down streets without due cause or choking a Black man to death, illegal–
At the end of the Civil War and Black people were freed, their value fell in the stocks literally. False floors. No longer commodities, insurance policies lapsed and the presence of Black humanity scattered across landscapes African people cultivated and planted were visibly unwelcome. Their tangible wealth a bounty without equity or interest.
It was as if, the newly “united” nation could erase the past 400 years of servitude if the Black bodies were gone. So the American Colonization Society–white folks, rounded up and shipped some of our people (12,000) to Liberia (some before slavery ended) and others left on their own, hiring ships and sailing away (1868 from San Francisco to Nova Scotia); however, most of our ancestors stayed and no matter how many slain then and now, Black people survived. We survived the environmental pollution– toxic systemic racism that sought payment for the very air we breathed and the space, however, small, we occupied. These people just didn’t know we were not going anywhere. We were here before America and we will certainly be here when it burns to the ground.
At the March on Washington Friday, August 28, one of the speakers who’d walked across the country to Washington DC stated that it didn’t make sense to be marching, 57 years later for the same goals. What I liked about the 2020 March was the everyday people aspect of those who spoke– leaders but more community centered rather than nationally known. There were a group of women bikers from Southern Cal who rode to DC, a college student who shared how she felt as she lay beneath a dead classmate as the shooter continued to fire. There were union organizers and a white supporter. Sponsored by Rev. Al Sharpton, the National Action Network and Martin Luther King III, entitled the Commitment March: “Get Off Our Necks.” Speaker after speaker urged those present virtually or in the flesh to join an organization and do something to further the agenda for civil and human rights.
Jim Jones Peoples Temple examined in new play, “White Nights, Black Paradise,” by Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D.
I attended a remarkable and enlightening play reading and discussion at MoAD, August 29, 2020. Dr. James L. Taylor is such an erudite man and was so in his element, an expert on the history of San Francisco– with notes in hand he and playwright, Sikivu Hutchinson, Ph.D. unpacked along with audience and cast members, the phenomena, Peoples Temple. The play, “White Nights, Black Paradise,” looks at the perils of displacement and how when one feels as if she has nowhere to go and does not belong anywhere– kindness can be her undoing.
Jim Jones and his agents handpicked vulnerable people, took their wealth with the promise of care, which the church did. Later when funding ceased and the church lost its property, the vision was a new colony Jonestown in Guyana. The massive out-migration into the jungles of Guyana was celebrated by some members, while others looked on with suspicion. Some families and friends tried to discourage the move. Once in Guyana, people starved to death. It was not the utopia promised. A few people got away, however, most participated in the mass genocide where over 900 people were forced to drink the literal kool-aid at gun point.
What circumstances or conditions led to the massive homelessness and psychic almost psychotic instability? How did Jones get almost 1,000 Black people, majority women and children and elders to leave without protest? What was going on in San Francisco, urban America, the West Coast that would make this Anti-Christ get religious and political leaders to give him their blessing?
My friend, Sister Maryom Ana Al Wadi, a leading pioneer in the black student movement at San Francisco State University which established the first Black Student Union on an American campus and led to the resultant broader student movement that established Black Studies courses then Black Studies Programs at American institutions of higher education, told me at that time people were looking for answers and a place of refuge and they found such at Peoples Temple.
Some people found answers in the Nation of Islam, located just next door to Peoples Temple where Sister Maryom and I were members; while others found political agency in the Black Power Movement which was winding down, yet now fast enough for municipalities that wanted to silence its Black populations.
During this period in the Bay Area and in the country, Black folks were standing up, similar to now in the Movement for Black Lives. Black people were sick and tired of legislated violence. Watts (8/11/65-8/16/65) in LA kicked off the revolt in California followed by an uprising in Bayview Hunters Point the night of Sept. 27, 1966 when a policeman, Alvin Johnson killed Matthew Peanut” Johnson, a teenager as he ran away from a stolen car. 51 people were injured (https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/11399). However, the country was burning from coast to coast– Kerner Report not withstanding. Everyone with the power to stop the unrest, did nothing except move up the bulldozing.
This retaliation headed by officials in the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency started pushing Black folks out of the Fillmore, among the casualties Peoples Temple property where members lived communally, all their physical and psycho-social needs taken care of. When the church lost its real estate, one would see people outside the building on Geary Blvd. begging. Sister Maryom said it was so sad, she’d walk around the block and come up Fillmore to attend the meetings at Mosque 26 on the corner.
For African Diaspora people then in the Fillmore, kicked out of their housing, the majority population unhoused and incarcerated, hungry, unemployed, Peoples Temple was a refuge. It was a place where people belonged. Almost too good to be true, and sadly many learned too later–it was. Urban renewal or Black removal complete, Jones took his people to Guyana, a situation worse than anything people could imagine in San Francisco, worse than what they’d left but the exit or stamped ticket read “one way.” Once in Guyana people were stuck.
There are not many books that look at Peoples Temple through the lens of Black women. Not only does Hutchinson’s work spend the majority of time in the heads of Black women characters, she also makes these characters complex and adds a layer of sexual violence to the discourse as reason for much of the irrational belief in this man even when his sanity is called into question. Thoroughly researched, the parallels between Jonestown and Hurricane Katrina, now Laura in Lake Charles where people are not able to leave — according to Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., President & Founder of Hip Hop Caucus, in an interview with Davey D on Hard Knock Radio.
What is it about Black bodies moving that generates so much fear? Is this fear a projection? If I had as horrific a reputation as white America has toward Black Americans, I’d be nervous too.
These Black women members of Peoples Temple whom we come to care about are also vulnerable. They swim into deeper waters unaware that the temperature is getting hotter until they are cooked. Is Black America cooked? Is the current state one where ovens are preheated and we just tolerate the heat until we can turn it off or become consumed?
We have a similar situation now, except African nations are telling African Americans to come home– so far there is no economic investment tied to this invitation as it was when after the devastating earthquake ten years ago President Abdoulaye Wade welcomed 163 Haitian students to Senegal to finish school there, an invitation that covered tuition fees, room and board paid for by the government. We have options, if we can get there. I’d like something a bit more concrete.
If Africa is for Africans, after the numbers stop peeking in California, now might be a good time to make a move, especially if these African nations provide a bit of support. With the coronavirus numbers rising and the economic situation worsening for many people, a fresh start in the land of our ancestors might be just the thing to heal the ever present persistent trauma that keeps Black people from realizing their full human potential.
We say no more Jonestown, but with the massive internal displacement normalized today, who’s to say?
Everything changed in the ’60s Black Fire. Then and now, there is a race war. We have to pay attention and think for ourselves, Sister Maryom told me. “Fear conditioning is really powerful. Free labor allows us to belong wherever we choose to be.” In other words, Don’t believe the lie(s).
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Get counted. Complete the 2020 Census. The numbers gathered impact community resources. If the numbers aren’t there, we get less tax dollars. The final date is Sept. 30.
This is the centennial for the 19th Amendment granting white women the right to vote (1920-2020). Black women didn’t get the right to vote until 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. However, Black women such as Sojourner Truth; Ida B. Wells Barnett; Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary Church Terrell, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and others worked for women’s right to vote.
On the 100 Year Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, little is mentioned of the Black suffragets who worked hard to get the Amendment passed. I am sure they were under no illusions that the work served a larger good.
Mary Church Terrell, (Sept. 23, 1864-July 24, 1954) was one of these key suffragettes left out. An Oberlin graduate with undergraduate and graduate degrees, daughter of former enslaved parents, her dad the first African American millionaire, mom a business owner, Terrell founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 and served as its director until 1901. She like her friend Ida B. Wells, well known for her anti-lynching work, was a founding member of the NAACP.
Ms. Terrell says: “A white woman has only one handicap to overcome – that of sex. I have two – both sex and race. … Colored men have only one – that of race. Colored women are the only group in this country who have two heavy handicaps to overcome, that of race as well as that of sex.”
Her elder, Sojourner Truth asked the clarifying question at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, “Ain’t I a Woman?” “You have been having our rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”
A womanist, long before Alice Walker coined the term, Truth said, “If it is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.”
“We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we’d ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.”
“Now, if you want me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin’ soon. I shan’t go till I can do that.”
Fannie Lou Hamer (10/06/1917-3/14/1977) was beaten almost to death, lost her home and her husband
because she believed in freedom and later went to the Democratic Convention, Aug. 22, 1964, where she demanded seats for her delegation, members of the MS Freedom Democratic Party, a party she founded, then gave a speech Lyndon B. Johnson tried to block from the airwaves. She told the truth about the absence of civility for African Americans in the South, of her own torture just because she wanted to exercise her citizenship rights. A member of SNCC, she was a key organizer of Freedom Summer, where college students from across the country traveled to Southern states to register Black citizens to vote.
Hamer said: “You can pray until you faint, but if you don’t get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap . . . at a mass meeting in Indianola, Miss., in September 1964. Hamer’s bold message—that each of us has the responsibility to work toward the just and equal society we envision —left a lasting impression on those in attendance that evening at Indianola’s Negro Baptist Church. The fact that Hamer would tell a room filled with religious people that prayer only went so far revealed the depth of her fearless activism.
Shirley Chisholm (11/30/1924-1/1/2005), the first African American elected to the United States Congress, representing New York’s 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983 said: Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men. (https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/shirley-chisholm-quotes)
Vote for all the Black women who worked and then died waiting for citizenship rights which did not come for 45 more years.
Webinars. . . Zoom meetings . . .
I was online Friday, August 28 all day and the same was true on Saturday, August 29. I had a great conversation with Baba Malik Rahim, co-founder to Common Ground Collective, founding member of the New Orleans Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Former Political Prisoner and an Environmental Justice Advocate. He was keynote speaker at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy on Saturday was one of compassion and love for those who are hit by disaster in East Louisiana, Lake Charles and Houma. They were without water and electricity and the forecast was that they would be without such for perhaps a month. A woman who was 15 15 years ago, now 30 and a mother shared what was going on when the program started. She gave organization names to send funds too so the people in need would get the resources.
Hurricane Katrina@15 Reportback on Wanda’s Picks
Listen to Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Friday, Aug. 28
Show Guests:
Malik Rahim, Human Rights Activist, co-founder, Common Ground Collective and Parnell Herbert, veteran, poet, playwright, prison abolition activist, are our first guests
We close in the second hour with Nana Sula Spirit, Baba Luther Gray and Sess 4-5
Visit the following link for Street Dance Activism for Black Liberation which sponsored the Aug.1-28-Day Meditation which is connected to the Virtual March on Washington (11 a.m. ET) and program this evening; and the M4BL National Convention 8/28.
Barbara Lee and Elihu Harris Lecture Series hosts a Tribute to Rep. John Lewis, 7 p.m. PT, 8/28
Film
There is a film, just released Friday, August 28, MR. SOUL! about the iconic Mr. Ellis Haizlip. Directed by his niece, Melissa Haizlip, the film survey’s America’s first Black nighttime talk show host during the Civil Rights Movement/Black Power Movement from 1968 – 1973. It is a rich story that will resonate with audiences across the nation and across generations. With Black Lives Matter now louder than ever together with the current state of our country, and while our communities are addressing racism in a meaningful manner – Haizlip’s story of endurance, inspiration and excellence is more important than ever.
Ellis was Black, political and openly gay even before Stonewall. In his personal fight for social equality, this man ensured “the revolution 
would be televised.” That revolution was SOUL! – an incredible weekly television show that aired on public television from 1968 – 1973 celebrating Black American culture, art, life, love and community, and he shared it with the entire nation every week in their homes.
This inspiring film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival, and went on to screen in over 30+ film festivals around the world wowing audiences and taking home over 17 Best Documentary/Audience Award prizes and was awarded the International Documentary Association Best Music Documentary Award and the Finalist Award for the Inaugural Library of Congress Lavine-Ken Burns Film Award.
It is currently available at these cinemas:
–Roxie Theater in San Francisco
–Balboa/Vogue Theatres in San Francisco
–BAMPFA in Berkeley
–Rafael@Home in San Rafael
On Tuesday, September 1st at 6PM PST, BAMPFA hosted a special Live Stream Q&A director Melissa Haizlip and co-curator of BAMPFA’s Black Life series, Ryanaustin Dennis. It was excellent. Complete details here.
Trending:
Michigan Mobilization Sister to Sister Action Roundtable, Aug. 30, featured, Senator Kamala Harris in a virtual event to mobilize Black female voters in Detroit; Friday, August 28, Black National Conference featured panelists and performances who discussed important issues we should consider in crafting the Black community’s agenda for the first 100 days of the new administration. It was East Coast-centered with appearances by I think someone in LA, Midwest and south, NOLA. Since the folks most impacted by climate change look like you and me, Black folks need to get on board with protecting the planet so we can continue to eat and get a free ride around the sun.
Virtual 57th Anniversary of the March on Washington
CA Senate considers Reparations Bill
Read the Bill: AB-3121 Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans
Documentary Film Festival
19th Annual SF Documentary Film Festival, Thursday, Sept. 3-20. Listen to an interview on Wanda’s Picks, Sept. 1, 2020, with Chris Metzler, Associate Director of Programming for DocFest. He joins us to talk about the 19th Season for the now Virtual SF Doc Film Festival, Sept. 3-20, 2020
105th Annual Association of African American Life and History (ASALH) Conference this Sept. Thursdays-Saturdays beginning 9/3 & 9/5 through 9/24 & 9/26. The theme this year is “African Americans and the Vote.”
A conversation with Martha Jones on her new book, VANGUARD by AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on PBS with Marcia Chatelain
Join American Experience for a book discussion on “Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All”
There will be a discussion with internationally acclaimed historian and author Martha Jones on her new book, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, on September 8th from 2-3pm ET.
VANGUARD offers a sweeping history of African American women’s political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot—fighting against both racism and sexism.
The event is produced in conjunction with the encore broadcast of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s The Vote, on PBS. The event will include an excerpt from the film and a discussion between Martha Jones and fellow historian Marcia Chatelain around the savvy political maneuvering of Black women from the fight for women’s suffrage to the present. They will explore Black women’s stunning political gains in the face of overwhelming obstacles throughout the 20th century, and their continued efforts to ensure everyone has a seat at the table and a voice in shaping the country.
Both Martha Jones and Marcia Chatelain are featured historians interviewed in The Vote. The event will be streamed live on American Experience’s YouTube page. RSVP on this page to join us.
Featuring:
Martha S. Jones – The Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. Martha is a past co-president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the oldest and largest association of women historians in the United States, and she sits on the executive board of the Society of American Historians. Author of Vanguard, Birthright Citizens and All Bound up Together, she has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, USA Today, and more. For more, visit www.MarthaSJones.com, and follow Martha on Twitter @MarthaSJones
Marcia Chatelain – A Professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University. Author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America and South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration. Following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, she organized a social media response in the form of the crowdsourced #FergusonSyllabus. For more information, visit www.marciachatelain.com.
25th Anniversary Virtual MAAFA San Francisco Bay Area
Save the dates: Friday-Saturday, October 9-10: Pre-Maafa; Sunday, October 11. We will broadcast through Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/maafabayarea/ and YouTube.
The entire month of October will have a variety of virtual programming: ancestor meditation, films, artist discussions, author events, forums and with community partners. Visit Maafa San Francisco Bay Area
Congratulations!
Dr. Michael Drake, MD, is the first Black President of the University of California system in its 152-year history. My mother sent me the LA Watts Times, July 16. Dr. Drake is on the cover of the paper and in a story written by Dr. Drake’s colleague and friend, Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D., President of CA State University, Dominguez Hills, we come to appreciate the life of a man who has a legacy of making tangible institutional change.
MAAFA FILM SCREENING, Friday, Oct. 2, 6-9 PM PT:
Virtual Film Screening & Discussion with Peres Owino, dir., Friday, Oct. 2, 6-9 PM
Join MAAFA Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area in collaboration with the Oakland International Film Festival in a Free Film Screening of “Bound: Africans vs. African Americans,” dir. Peres Owino, starring Isaiah Washington & Joy DeGruy, Ph.D., (12 years-up).
Sign-up in advance: Here. The discussion will be streamed through Facebook.com/maafabayarea, but not the film.
MAAFA (Black Holocaust) is Kiswahili for disaster, calamity or terrible occurrence. This term has been used to describe the Transatlantic Slave Trade or the Middle Passage. Peres Owino’s film is a conversation between siblings who have been separated by time, location, history and language. Though we may look familiar, much has happened in the 500 years we’ve been apart. In the film, a cohort of African and African Americans share on camera its biases, hurt, prejudices and misconceptions about each other. These discussions are juxtaposed with scenes of Dr. Joy DeGruy’s critical analysis of whiteness, hierarchy of power and historic trauma. Her social science tapestry gives Isaiah Washington, actor, humanitarian, a backdrop wherewith to house his elation when he learns where he comes from—his African ancestry. He leaves almost immediately for Sierra Leone and sees how Europe’s underdevelopment of Africa robs her people of hope, a hope Washington in a small way repairs. The director’s expectation when she arrives from Kenya, a student, excited to meet Diaspora cousins, is answered with Bound. The film project which includes Washington’s memoir, is the bridge she creates on her loom. It is a beautiful coat of many colors.
Concert for Hugh Masekela & Willie Kgositsile
Time:
6:00 PM – 9 PM SAST (South Africa)
9:00 AM – 12 PM PDT Pacific Time (US and Canada)
11:00 AM – 1 PM CDT Central Time (US and Canada)
12:00 PM – 3 PM EDT Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Please feel to share the link below with like minded intellectuals. We’re looking forward to seeing everyone for this special event and will start promptly at 12 noon.
Note: If anyone wants to attend, send an email to this website and we will send you the Zoom meeting ID and Passcode. We will respond to requests up to 8:00 AM PT
On the Fly:
Happy Birthday John Coltrane (9/23)
Friday, Sept. 25, SFJAZZ will broadcast one of the concerts curated by Ravi Coltrane celebrating his father’s legacy. 5 p.m. Visit sfjazz.org
Art Exhibit: Critical Resistance Presents: Imagine Freedom
http://imaginefreedom.art/
This week CR hosts three major events:
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Tuesday, Sept. 28: Opening Celebration for our Art Action– Imagine Freedom: Art Works for Abolition RSVP here
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Thursday, Oct. 1: Launch of the Abolition & the University Series by our Abolitionist Educators Network, with a webinar on “Anti-Blackness, the University & Policing” Register here
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Thursday, Oct. 1: Launch of CR AbolitionNOW Network‘s series with another webinar on “Black and Indigenous Liberation through Abolition”
Register here.
Book Talk
Through dozens of archival photographs and oral accounts from the neighborhood residents and musicians who experienced it at its height, the Harlem of the West SF Project celebrates this unique and rediscovered chapter in jazz history and the African-American experience on the West Coast. The Project is a platform for the Fillmore’s musicians, nightclub owners and residents of the 1940s and 1950s to tell the neighborhood’s history in their own words, as well as feature rarely seen photographs and memorabilia. The new edition of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era book has been recently republished by Heyday Books. The edition features newly discovered photographs and memorabilia, as well as additional interviews with those who lived and played in the Fillmore at the height of its glory
Elizabeth Pepin Silva is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, photographer, writer and former day manager of the historic Fillmore Auditorium. She holds a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University. Instagram
Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist and professor emeritus of art at UC Santa Cruz with a longstanding interest in the cultural landscape of the African diaspora in the Bay Area and internationally. Instagram
Co-sponsored by Heyday Books and the Museum of the African Diaspora. .
Registration: https://bit.ly/HarlemWest9-25-20
SFPL YouTube Live: https://youtu.be/wIdScOqs20A
Memorial for Kali O’Ray, director,
San Francisco Black Film Festival,
Sat., Sept. 26
From the AAACC website:
“As you may already be aware, Kali O’Ray, our beloved San Francisco Black Film Festival (SFBFF) Director and community member, has passed away. Kali led the SFBFF with a deep commitment to storytelling, featuring films that broke “the mold in which African Americans and the diaspora are many times pigeonholed.”
We hope to share in honoring Kali’s legacy and comfort for his family with you at the memorial, either in person or virtually, on Saturday, September 26. For those who would like to make a donation to the O’Ray family, please visit the GoFundMe page created by Cree O’Ray, Kali’s daughter.”
Theatre Honors Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with Tanya Shafter’s Manatee on Mars
On the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), two theater organizations join forces on Saturday September 26 ( 2PM Pacific, 5PM Eastern) to virtually present award-winning playwright Tanya Shaffer’s MANATEE ON MARS, a dramedy about the struggles that children on the spectrum and their families face in the American school system. Remote Theater, a new theater group born in the pandemic and dedicated to developing new plays, and the nationally renowned Playwrights Foundation, are partnering to present the first public reading of this play under Remote’s new play development series, Remote Studio. The reading is directed by Giovanni Rodriguez, featuring original music by award-winning composer Rinde Eckert. Listen to the playwright and director on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show, Friday, Sept. 25, 2020, 9:00 AM PTFREE REGISTRATION LINK:https://bit.ly/3kaavy8