Monterey Bay Aquarium
tannertan36
oozey mess
art blog(derogatory)
🪼
Kiana Khansmith
#extradirty
todays bird
h
hello vonnie
Not today Justin
𓃗
taylor price
Phantogram Three
occasionally subtle
izzy's playlists!
Noah Kahan
Love Begins
roma★
d e v o n
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Philippines
seen from Ukraine
seen from Lebanon
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Argentina
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Georgia
seen from Indonesia
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
@diasporicroots
“Beneath the Surface is nothing short of a tour de force. Lynn M. Thomas’s ‘layered history’ does justice to the immensely difficult subject of skin lighteners. Carefully attending to the complex politics of race and color that are grounded in skin, Thomas at once provides a vibrant history of South Africa and a global history of commodity, beauty, and the body. This landmark study sets a new standard in the field.”
History Mini-Lesson of the Moment Vol. 6: Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael)
Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation’s out of breath. We ain’t running no more.
Everybody knows Martin Luther King Jr. - he is the guy responsible for you getting that Monday off from school or work each January. Most people are familiar with Malcolm X also. He’s the guy with the hipster glasses who kind of looks like Denzel Washington.
Unfortunately, one of the important leaders of the Civil Rights Movement remains largely unknown among the general population (large in part because he’s left out of high school history textbooks), despite being one of the most influential: Stokely Carmichael.
Born in 1941 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Carmichael moved to Harlem (and later the Bronx) in the early 50s. After graduating from the Bronx School of Science, he attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1960 - and it was here where he joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) after being inspired by the increasingly prevalent sit-ins that would go on to define the Civil Rights Movement.
“When I first heard about the Negroes sitting in at lunch counters down South,” Carmichael told Life magazine in 1967, “I thought they were just a bunch of publicity hounds. But one night when I saw those young kids on TV, getting back up on the lunch counter stools after being knocked off them, sugar in their eyes, ketchup in their hair - well, something happened to me. Suddenly I was burning.”
He began participating in the Freedom Rides and other protests, often getting arrested (in 1998, shortly before his death, he said he lost count of his arrests, but estimated that it had been somewhere around 30 times). Despite being busy with this activism, he was able to graduate from Howard in 1964 with a degree in philosophy and was offered a full graduate scholarship to Harvard, which he would decline in order to focus on his activism.
Carmichael was young, energetic, motivated, and handsome - a natural leader. Some described him as being both likable and cocky. One friend wrote that he believed Stokely was so fearless and confident that he could “stroll through Dixie in broad daylight using the Confederate flag for a handkerchief.”
By 1965, he was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in which he focused on getting black citizens in Alabama registered to vote. In one Alabama county, he helped increase the number of registered black voters from under 100 to over 2,500. A year later, Carmichael became to chairman of the SNCC at the age of 25.
It was here that Carmichael’s philosophies would begin to shift away from King, a friend of his at this point. Later in life, he attributed his shifting philosophy to a night when he watched from his hotel window as black protesters where beaten and shocked with cattle prods by police. Soon, he began to promote the ideas of self-determination and he would popularize the term “Black Power” in a speech during the March Against Fear after the shooting of James Meredith (who, fortunately, survived and is still alive and well at the age of 79).
The conservative media immediately began to distort the meaning of “Black Power” and worked to vilify Carmichael in an attempt to put a decisive wedge between the philosophies of his self-determination and King’s nonviolent protests. In a continuing effort to weaken the movement, the term “reverse racism” was popularized by southern white supremacists. When protests ended in violence, the media often pointed a finger at Carmichael’s philosophies for inciting it and conservatives worked diligently to associate Carmichael’s activism with the ideas of militancy, guns, and anti-Americanism.
Carmichael described the term and his intentions: “‘Black Power’ means black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak their needs.” He would further clarify his ideas in his 1967 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. Many in the movement rejected the term, with King calling it an “unfortunate choice of words” and the NAACP condemning it as “the raging of race against race.”
Still, Carmichael persisted and soon also helped coin the term “institutional racism,” which he defined as “the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin.”
Despite their philosophical differences - which Carmichael always stressed were not as significant as the media led people to believe - he and King would remain close and often worked together before King’s assassination, particularly in their opposition to the Vietnam War. Both would become targets of J. Edgar Hoover’s illegal COINTELPRO program, which aimed to ”expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” civil rights organizations and leaders with tactics that included “psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.”
While often associated with the Black Panther Party, he distanced himself from the organization in the late-60s as he believed their philosophies were not separatist enough. He began traveling the world, exploring and writing and speaking. While living in Guinea, he changed his name to Kwame Ture in honor of two African leaders whom he had met and befriended.
He would continue his activism throughout the world - breaking most ties with America and using Guinea mostly as his home base, the CIA always keeping a close eye on him - until his death from prostate cancer in 1998. He always remained a controversial figure.
While largely left out of high school textbooks, Stokely Carmichael’s legacy lives on - least of all in the form of his son Bokar Ture, a University of Virginia and London School of Economics graduate who writes, travels, and has worked at the African Development Bank in Tunis, Tunisia.
“He was just a father,” Bokar said of Carmichael. “He never told me what he did, really. He just told me what was good to do: ‘Work for your people.’”
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
————————
Vol. 1: The Emerald Gem: Bare-Knuckle Boxing in 19th Century England
Vol. 2: Roosevelt’s List: The Japanese-American Concentration Camps
Vol. 3: Two if by Sealand
Vol. 4: Robert Owen: Social Reformer
Vol. 5: Martin Luther was a Dick
Given the current climate it very important that people know who this is.
Thomas Sankara
Click here for more.
Contos Dos Orixas by Hugo Canuto
Click here for more information
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Berlin Conference and the Scramble for Africa.
In the 1880s, as colonial powers attempted to increase their spheres of influence in Africa, tensions began to grow between European nations including Britain, Belgium and France. In 1884 the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, brought together many of Europe’s leading statesmen to discuss trade and colonial activities in Africa. Although the original purpose of the summit was to settle the question of territorial rights in West Africa, negotiations eventually dealt with the entire continent. The conference was part of the process known as the Scramble for Africa, and the decisions reached at it had effects which have lasted to the present day. The conference is commonly seen as one of the most significant events of the so-called Scramble for Africa; in the following decades, European nations laid claim to most of the continent.
The breaking apart of indigenous Africa.
“Land of Tears is a brilliant and beautifully written book on a crucial moment in the colonial history of Central Africa. Robert Harms reveals the global and local contexts of the complex transformations of African societies in the last decades of the nineteenth century, with a special focus on the rainforest ecosystem and the strong local African resistance. An erudite, balanced, and timely book, and an engaging read.”
Officials say the 18th century artifact disappeared in 1993. Then it turned up at Sirak Asfaw's place in the Netherlands in 1998. Not knowing what to do, he stayed quiet about it ... for two decades.
More than two decades after it went missing, a ceremonial crown dating back to the 18th century has found its way home to Ethiopia. The country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, received the glistening artifact at a ceremony Thursday in Addis Ababa, in a triumphant end to a twisty saga that transcends national borders.
Abiy expressed his gratitude to the Dutch officials who facilitated its return — and to the man who found it, Sirak Asfaw, who was there for the handoff.
Sirak, a political refugee who fled to the Netherlands in the 1970s, played a big role in the curious journey of the ornate bronze crown, which Ethiopian authorities say had been missing since 1993.
Angelica
“Purposely challenging the Eurocentric beauty standards that blatantly plague Latin America on and off screen, Puerto Rican director Marisol Gómez-Mouakad set out to tell the story of an empowered Afro-Latina fighting colorism at home in her debut feature Angélica.” via full article about the film on Remezcla
Image 1. 17th century wall painting in the Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome showing the ambassador Antonio Emanuele Ne Vunda from the Kingdom of Kongo visiting the Pope Paul V in 1608.
Image 2. Statue of ambassador Antonio Emanuele Ne Vunda from the Kingdom of Kongo. At the Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore) Rome. If you go to Rome, you must absolutely plan to go visit the Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore). And ask to visit the grave and the statue of Nigrita.
400 years ago, the first ambassador sent to the Vatican from the Kingdom of Kongo died in Rome. Why was A ambassador from the kingdom of Kongo in the Vatican?
Click here for more.
Women’s liberation and African freedom struggle Thomas Sankara Below is an excerpt from Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle by Thomas Sankara, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January. Sankara was the central leader of the popular democratic revolution in the West African country of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) from 1983 to 1987. This excerpt is from a talk he gave to several thousand women commemorating International Women’s Day on March 8, 1987, in Ouagadougou, the country’s capital.
BY THOMAS SANKARA ‘The question of women’s equality must be in the minds of all decision-makers, at all times, and in all the different phases of conceiving and executing plans for development. Conceiving a development project without the participation of women is like using only four fingers when you have ten. It’s an invitation to failure. In the ministries responsible for education, we should take special care to assure that women’s access to education is a reality, for this reality constitutes a qualitative step toward emancipation. It is an obvious fact that wherever women have had access to education, their march to equality has been accelerated. Emerging from the darkness of ignorance allows women to take up and use the tools of knowledge in order to place themselves at the disposal of society. All ridiculous and backward concepts that hold that only education for males is important and profitable, and that educating women is an extravagance, must disappear in Burkina Faso. Parents should accord the same attention to the progress of their daughters at school as they do to their sons, their pride and joy. Girls have proven they are the equals of boys at school, if not simply better. But above all they have the right to education in order to learn and know—to be free. In future literacy campaigns, the rate of participation by women must be raised to correspond with their numerical weight in the population. It would be too great an injustice to maintain such an important part of the population—half of it—in ignorance. In the ministries responsible for labor and justice, texts should constantly be adapted to the transformation our society has been going through since August 4, 1983, so that equality between men and women is a tangible reality. The new labor code, now being drawn up and debated, should express how profoundly our people aspire to social justice. It should mark an important stage in the work of destroying the neocolonial state apparatus—a class apparatus fashioned and shaped by reactionary regimes to perpetuate the system that oppressed the popular masses, especially women. How can we continue to accept that a woman doing the same job as a man should earn less? Can we accept the levirate* and dowries, which reduce our sisters and mothers to common commodities to be bartered for? There are so many things that medieval laws continue to impose on our people, on women. It is only just that, finally, justice be done…. As we go forward, our society should break from all those feudal conceptions that lead to ostracizing the unmarried woman, without realizing that this is merely another form of appropriation, which decrees each woman to be the property of a man. This is why young mothers are looked down upon as if they were the only ones responsible for their situation, whereas there is always a guilty man involved. This is how childless women are oppressed due to antiquated beliefs, when there is a scientific explanation for their infertility, which science can overcome. In addition, society has imposed on women norms of beauty that violate the integrity of their bodies, such as female circumcision, scarring, the filing of teeth, and the piercing of lips and noses. Practicing these norms of beauty is of dubious value. In the case of female circumcision, it can even endanger a woman’s ability to have children and her love life. Other types of bodily mutilation, though less dangerous, such as the piercing of ears and tattoos, are no less an expression of women’s conditioning, imposed by society if a woman wants to find a husband. Comrade militants, you look after yourselves in order to win a husband. You pierce your ears and do violence to your body in order to be acceptable to men. You hurt yourselves so that men can hurt you even more! … Comrades, no revolution—starting with our own—will triumph as long as women are not free. Our struggle, our revolution will be incomplete as long as we understand liberation to mean essentially that of men. After the liberation of the proletariat, there remains the liberation of women. Comrades, every woman is the mother of a man. I would not presume, as a man and as a son, to give advice to a woman or to indicate which road she should take. This would be like giving advice to one’s own mother. But we know, too, that out of indulgence and affection, a mother listens to her son, despite his whims, his dreams, and his vanity. And this is what consoles me and makes it possible for me to address you here. This is why, comrades, we need you in order to achieve the genuine liberation of us all. I know you will always find the strength and the time to help us save our society. Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt. I await and hope for the fertile eruption of the revolution through which they will transmit the strength and the rigorous justice issued from their oppressed wombs. Comrades, forward to conquer the future. The future is revolutionary. The future belongs to those who struggle. Homeland or death, we will win!’
Click here for more on the writer
Happy world women's Day.
Abdias Nascimento (March 14, 1914 — May 23, 2011)
An activist since the 1930s, Nascimento founded the Experimental Theater of the Negro (TEN) in 1944 and created the Institute for Research and Studies Afro Brazilian (Ipeafro) in 1981 to continue his fight for the rights of black people, especially in the areas of education and the culture. Nascimento was also a congressman, senator and secretary of defense and promotion of Afro-Brazilian populations of the state of Rio de Janeiro, 1991-1994.
He performed in Orfeu da Conceiçao, a play by Vinicius de Moraes that was later adapted into the motion picture Black Orpheus. He became a leader in Brazil’s black movement and was forced into exile by the military regime in 1968 when he moved to Buffalo, N.Y. Nascimento held positions as a visiting professor at several universities in the United States, including the Yale School of Drama (1969–1971) and the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, where he founded the chair in African Cultures in the New World, Puerto Rican Studies Program, in 1971.
Nascimento returned to Brazil in 1983 and was elected to the federal Chamber of Deputies. There his focus was on supporting legislation to address racial problems. In 1994 he was elected to the Senate and served until 1999. In 2004 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for peace.
Nascimento recently appeared in Chapter 5 of the Brazil segment in PBS’ Black in Latin America Series. The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was the last person to interview Nascimento. Nascimento is survived by his wife, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, and three sons, two of them with his ex-wife, Brazilian actress Lea Garcia, who was his co-star in Black Orpheus.
Orixas/ Orishas:
OS Deuses Vivos Da Africa,
The Living Gods of Africa in Brazil (Abdias do Nascimento)
Abdias do Nascimento’s unique painting and poetry deeply immerse the reader and spectator in the religious culture of African origin in Brazil. Orishas and symbols of Yoruba and Central African origin, in their unique Brazilian context, join the deities of Egyptian, Asante, Ewe religions, and the voduns of Haiti. Together with African liberation heroes from all over the world, they interact in a living and dynamic imagery. Outstanding for its unique and unprecedented use of color, Abdias do Nascimento’s art enriches and deepens our comprehension of the multiple dimensions of African culture in the world.
This bilingual publication (English and Portuguese) is a tribute to the third centennial of Brazil’s Pan-African liberation hero, Zumbi dos Palmares, who died fighting for his people’s freedom in 1695. Zumbi symbolizes Afro-Brazilians and their culture, a heritage not only of the African world but of all humanity.
The volume brings together scores of color reproductions of Nascimento’s paintings, along with three epic poems and a major essay, all on themes of the Afro-Brazilian people, their religion, and its African origins.
Brooklyn to Benin: A Vodou Pilgrimage (trailer)
“Brooklyn to Benin: A Vodou Pilgrimage is my personal pilgrimage into Vodou and its artistic and cultural survival throughout the Diaspora. Vodou, also spelled Vodun, is a spiritual and religious practice that originates with the Fon and Ewe of Benin, West Africa. Translated, Vodou means - the power, the source, the force, the creator of all things and the mystery. Brooklyn to Benin is a nomadic experimental mixed media project, exploring the empowering elements and rituals found within traditional and syncretic African religions practiced in the basement temples of Brooklyn, NY to the magnificent Vodou festival annually held in Ouidah, Benin.” via the director’s website ReginaRomain.com
The Man Who Made Black Panther Cool
Christopher Priest broke the color barrier at Marvel and reinvented a classic character. Why was he nearly written out of comics history?
By Abraham Riesman
“I’m an asshole. I’m abrasive. I am so sure that I’m right about virtually everything. I can sing you an aria of reasons to not like me,” says comics writer Christopher Priest, his bass voice rising to the brink of anger but never quite tipping over. “Not liking me because I’m black is so juvenile and immature, because there’s many reasons to not like me.” He’s speaking, as he often does, about the racism — both overt and structural — that he’s faced in the comics industry over his 40-year career. But that set of attributes, seen from another angle, can apply to the reasons to like him, or at least admire him — he’s unwaveringly outspoken, endearingly opinionated, as well as a pioneer in the comics industry. He’s also likely the only comics writer to have taken breaks from his career at various times to toil as a musician, pastor, and bus driver.
Priest, who’s 56, is about to see some of his most influential work go wide in a major way. His turn-of-the-millennium run at Marvel Comics, when he was writing the character Black Panther, has served as an inspiration for this year’s feverishly anticipated Marvel Studios film Black Panther. Given the comics world’s self-image of liberal inclusivity, and the fact that Priest is the first black writer to work full time at either Marvel or DC, starting with his first regular writing gig back in 1983, you might think he is long established as an elder statesman of the industry.
But until recently, Priest had bounced from job to job (including the aforementioned bus driving) and was largely denied the recognition he deserves. Indeed, talk to comics historians and they’ll have to pause for a minute and think before they conclude that, yes, he probably was the first African-American writer to truly break that barrier in superhero comics. Even among fervent fans, his milestones are far from common knowledge. He’d worked in quasi-obscurity for three decades before angrily retiring in 2005, opting to pursue work as a man of God in Colorado.
During that period of self-imposed exile, though, something happened, something Priest himself finds curious: He not only became recognized; he became a kind of icon. His run on Black Panther now merits its own multivolume reprint, Black Panther by Christopher Priest: The Complete Collection. He has reentered the spotlight, returning to Marvel — a place with which he has had a contentious relationship, to say the least — to write a new title, as well as taking on DC’s flagship team-up series, Justice League. To his surprise, he finds that crowds now pack convention halls to see him speak.
At a moment when Marvel Studios is making a self-consciously bold statement on inclusivity with Black Panther, Priest’s breaking of a color line deserves to finally be acknowledged. While Priest did not invent the Black Panther character — a superhero and king of a fictional African nation who had been kicking around Marvel for decades — in many ways he revolutionized it.
“He had the classic run on Black Panther, period, and that’s gonna be true for a long time,” says Ta-Nehisi Coates, who currently writes Black Panther for Marvel. “People had not put as much thought into who and what Black Panther was before Christopher started writing the book.” While previously the Panther had been written as a superhero, Coates notes, “[Priest] thought that Black Panther was a king.” It seems doubtful there’d even be a movie about him today if not for Priest’s refurbishing. Yet Priest himself has been chronically underappreciated…
Continue reading over Vulture.com
The Dahomey Amazons
The Dahomey Amazons were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey. They were so named by Western observers and historians due to their similarity to the legendary Amazons described by the Ancient Greeks.
King Houegbadja (who ruled from 1645 to 1685), the third King of Dahomey, is said to have originally started the group which would become the Amazons as a corps of elephant hunters called the gbeto. During the 18th century, the king had some of his wives trained as royal bodyguards. Houegbadja’s son King Agadja (ruling from 1708 to 1732) developed the female bodyguard into a militia and successfully used them in Dahomey’s defeat of the neighbouring kingdom of Savi in 1727. European merchants recorded their presence, as well as similar female warriors amongst the Ashanti. For the next hundred years or so, they gained reputation as fearless warriors. Though they fought rarely, they usually acquitted themselves well in battle. The group of female warriors was referred to as Mino, meaning “Our Mothers” in the Fon language by the male army of Dahomey. From the time of King Ghezo (ruling from 1818 to 1858), Dahomey became increasingly militaristic. Ghezo placed great importance on the army and increased its budget and formalized its structures. The Mino were rigorously trained, given uniforms, and equipped with Danish guns (obtained via the slave trade). By this time the Mino consisted of between 4000 and 6000 women, about a third of the entire Dahomey army. The Mino were recruited from among the ahosi (“king’s wives”) of which there were often hundreds. Some women in Fon society became ahosi voluntarily, while others were involuntarily enrolled if their husbands or fathers complained to the King about their behaviour. Membership among the Mino was supposed to hone any aggressive character traits for the purpose of war. During their membership they were not allowed to have children or be part of married life. Many of them were virgins. The regiment had a semi-sacred status, which was intertwined with the Fon belief in Vodun. The Mino trained with intense physical exercise. Discipline was emphasised. In the latter period, they were armed with Winchester rifles, clubs and knives. Units were under female command. Captives who fell into the hands of the Amazons were often decapitated. Conflict with France European encroachment into west Africa gained pace during the latter half of the 19th century, and in 1890 King Behanzin started fighting French forces in the course of the First Franco-Dahomean War. According to Holmes, many of the French soldiers fighting in Dahomey hesitated before shooting or bayoneting the Mino. The resulting delay led to many of the French casualties. Ultimately, bolstered by the Foreign Legion, and armed with superior weaponry, including machine guns, the French inflicted casualties that were ten times worse on the Dahomey side. After several battles, the French prevailed. The Legionnaires later wrote about the “incredible courage and audacity” of the Amazons. The last surviving Amazon of Dahomey died in 1979.
Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923 - 7 February 1986)
Senegalese anthropologist and radiocarbon physicist Cheikh Anta Diop is hailed as one of the greatest African historians. Diop was studying physics for a doctorate in Paris in 1951 when he caused quite a stir at the university because of his Ph.D. thesis on the black African origins of ancient Egypt was rejected as unsuitable by his assessors. Not being easily discouraged, Diop boldly labored for nine more years to make the evidence in his thesis so airtight that, when he resubmitted the thesis again, this time it was grudgingly accepted.
Hardened by those struggles and the bias he encountered against the African origin idea, Diop went further and published his thesis under the title Nations Ne'gres et culture , and very soon he became a national defender of the African origins theory. In his native country of Senegal, Diop founded the radiocarbon laboratory at the university of Dakar, became it’s first director, and used this cutting edge technology to continue his research on the ethnic origins of the Egyptian civilization. Diops argument was simple and straightforward: it was possible to know the skin color of an ancient corpse by microscopic analysis of the melanin content in the body. His critics countered by saying it was not fullproof and that possible contamination of the embalming unguents and the deterioration of the corpse over the centuries made the result dubious, but these objections were in turn addressed by Diop.
His crowning moment was In 1974 Diop and college Obenga carefully presented their findings to a large number of professional Egyptologist and anthropologists at the people of ancient Egypt symposium in Cairo organized by UNESCO World Heritage. They were ignored, the attending Egyptologists had not even bothered to prepare for a proper balanced debate. There biased conviction was so entrenched that they merely listened politely and then ignored the issue at hand. The UNESCO organizers, however were clearly impressed by Diop and commissioned him to write the entry on the origins of the pharaohs in their general history of Africa published in 1981.
Lesson to be learned
Never give up, Cheikh never gave up, his unflinching resolve and determination led to a rethink of ancient history. He was one of the first Africans to properly challenge traditional history.
references:
Bauval, R. Brophy, T. (2011) Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt. Bear & Company
