FRANK'S ARCHIVE - an archive of resistance.

Frank’s Archive is an ongoing project that explores resistance in various ways.

[franksarchive]

From the personal archives! Me and my daddy in Portugal. Grateful for the radical, funny and loving person he was! Couldn't have wished for more inspiration in life! ✊

[franksarchive]

Time is short and we do not have much time and it is time we stop mincing words. Caution is fine, but no oppressed people ever gained their revolution until they were ready to fight, to use whatever means necessary, including the use of force and power of the gun to bring down the colonizer.

J. Forman. Black Manifesto. In W. King and E. Anthony (Eds), Black Poets and Prophets (1972: 88).

[franksarchive]

Resistance, and then the offensive, will be organized, first of all, in the cultural field. Colonized man must first recollect himself, critically analyze the results of the influences to which he was subjected by the invader, which are reflected in his behavior, way of thinking and acting, his way of assessing the values created by his own people.

S. Touré. A Dialectical Approach to Culture. In W. King and E. Anthony (Eds), Black Poets and Prophets (1972: 62).

[franksarchive]

Black Poets And Prophets: A Bold, Uncompromisingly Clear Blueprint for Black Liberation. Edited by Woodie King and Earl Anthony (1972).

[franksarchive]

The presence of whites among the demonstrations emboldened the Negro leaders and allowed them to use tactics they never would have been able to employ with all-black troops. The racist conscience of America is such that murder does not register as murder, really, unless the victim is white. And it was only when the newspapers and magazines started carrying pictures and stories of white demonstrators being beaten and maimed by mobs and police that the public began to protest. Negroes have become so used to this double standard that they, too, react differently to the death of a white. When white freedom riders were brutalized along with blacks, a sigh of relief went up from the black masses, because the blacks knew that white blood is the coin of freedom in a land where for four hundred years black blood has been shed unremarked and with impunity.

E. Cleaver. Soul on Ice. (1970:74).

[franksarchive]

I made a slow, comforting start. And what I told them about my awakening interest and steady involvement in politics seemed to be normal behaviour, the only thing to do in South Africa! We whites who embarked on protest politics side by side with the Africans, Indians and Coloureds, led a vigorously provocative life. Our consciences were healthy in a society riddled with guilts. Yet as the years went by our small band led a more and more schizophrenic existence. There was a good living that white privilege brought, but simultaneously complete absorpotion in revolutionary politics and defiance of all the values of our own racial group. As the struggle grew sharper the privileges of membership in the white group were overwhelmed by the penalties of political participation.

R. First. 117 Days (1965:116).

[franksarchive]

[franksarchive]

Louis Moholo (Cape Town, South Africa) formed The Blue Notes with Chris McGregor, Johnny Dyani, Nikele Moyake, Mongezi Feza and Dudu Pukwana, and emigrated to Europe with them in 1964, eventually settling in London, where he formed part of a South African exile community that made an important contribution to British jazz. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Breath, a big band comprising several South African exiles and leading musicians of the British free jazz scene in the seventies and is the founder of Viva la Black and The Dedication Orchestra. His first album under his own name, Spirits Rejoice on Ogun Records, is considered a classic example of the combination of British and South African players. In the early 1970s, Moholo was also a member of the afro-rock band Assagai.

[artcomesfirst]

[franksarchive]

But to revolutionise a culture, one needs first to make a radical assessment of it. That assessment, that revolutionairy perspective, by virtue of his historical situation, is provided by the black man. For it is with the cultural manifestations of racism in his daily life that he must contend. Racial prejudice and discrimination, he recognises, are not a matter of individual attitudes, but the sickness of a whole society carried in its culture. And his survival as a black men in a white society requires that he constantly questions and challenges every aspect of white life as he meets it. White speech, white schooling, white law, white work, white religion, white love, even white lies - they are all measured on the touchstone of his experience.

A. Sivanandan. A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance. (1982:95).

[lostinurbanism]

Satchmo by Steven Brower

[culturite]

"I don’t sing about politics; I sing the truth."                                                                            - Miriam Makeba

I saw the wonderful documentary Mama Africa last night, on the life and work of the late Miriam Makeba. What an inspiring, radiant and beautiful human being. She was a towering presence in music, politics and history—and I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so universally loved and honoured. 

And she was married to Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture).

Legendary.

[franksarchive]

W. Wood & J. Downing, Vicious Circle. 1968.

[franksarchive]

It is essential to be clear about this; any oppressive group deserves to have its oppression opposed by any means necessary. But there is a fundamental distinction drawn by many leading exponents of "Black Power" between fighting institutional, and fighting individual, racism. In a sense, an approach to the understanding of this distinction might be partly by way of the old Christian saying, " Hate the sin and love the sinner"; although this is not exactly what is meant by this distinction. "Destroy the root cause and tolerate the people who are products of that cause unless they are actively involved in promoting it" might be more apt. But it is possible for the clarity of this distinction to be confused.

W. Wood & J. Downing, Vicious Cirle (1978:38).

[radicalarchive]

'With Freedom in Their Eyes…  The Legacy of Malcolm X and Steven Biko: Revolutionary Black Nationalism in the U.S. and South Africa', sponsored by the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Freedom Rising Africa Solidarity Committee,  featuring Chokwe Lumumba (New Afrikan People's Organization) and Mosibundi Mangena (Black Consciousness Movement), San Francisco, [mid-1980's].

[franksarchive]

Revolution builds in stages; it isn't cool or romantic; it's bold and vicious; it's stalking and being stalked- the opposition rising above our level of violence to repress us, and our focus learning how to counter this repression and again pulling ourselves above their level of violence. That process repeats itself again and again until finally the level is reached where the real power of the people is felt and the ruling class is suppressed.

G. Jackson, Blood in my Eye (1972:50).

[radicalarchive]

'The African Communist', South African Communist Party,  Inkululeko Publications, London, 1986.  Published in exile.