Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Goddard College Commencement Address

Posted on by toddpanther

 

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I cut-and-pasted this from Prison Radio.

Click here to listen to this message on Vimeo.

Dear Fellow Goddard-ites, Students, Graduates, Parents, Professors:

I thank you for your kind invitation to join you in voice today.  I’ve been away from Goddard College perhaps longer than most of you have been alive.

I last walked on campus during the late 70’s.  But although it was undoubtedly quite a long time ago, it still sits in memory, and sometimes even visits in dreams of the funky atmosphere that suffused the campus like a cloud of exhaled marijuana smoke.  What really moved me however, was the green life, the abundance of grass, trees standing like ancient sentinels.  The majestic mountains of Vermont which possessed a beauty that was, to a guy from the city, simply breathtaking.  I remember with crystal clarity walking through woods back to our dorms, Third World Studies, and feeling pure rapture in the presence of those trees.  How many centuries had those trees stood on this earth? My mind looked back to Indians who must’ve trod through these very same woods; my steps touching the ground that once crunched under their moccasined feet.  Not only have these surviving remnants of their once great numbers been vanished from the land of their fathers, but the reverence with which they held these lands, their collective embrace of Mother Earth, has been vanished as well.

 

 

That living immensity, more sacred than anything built by man, has never left me and rises up like a phoenix whenever I think of the campus.  But of course what really matters here is not my experience, but yours.  This is your commencement and as such, I will dwell on the world that you are about to enter into – in habit, and true to Goddard’s founding ideals, hopefully transform.

As we all know Goddard is rightfully famous for its non-traditional teaching methods focus.  Here students stand at the center of the educational endeavor and they are urged and expected to follow that vibe in their hearts.  That which gives them passion to determine not just what they will study, but how those studies can have impact and meaning in the larger society – Y’know, this aint a cookie cutter school.  Goddard, deeply influenced by the ideas of John Dewey (1859- 1952), strives to reach that happy and singular medium between the teacher and the taught.  With one exploring with the other how best to achieve a meaningful resolution to questions that arise in the life of the mind.  Quoting Dewey: “Education is not preparation for Life.  It is Life itself.”

Dear graduates, never have words such as these been truer to the hour that is upon us.  For the nation is in deep trouble – largely because old thinking both domestically, and globally, has led us into the morass that the nation now faces.  Which may be encapsulated by references to place names that ring in our minds:  Gaza, Ferguson, and Iraq – again!  These are some of the challenges that abide in the world, which it will be your destiny to try to analyze and resolve.  As students of Goddard you know that these challenges are not easy, but they must be faced and addressed.

The Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire, and his groundbreaking Pedagogy of the Oppressed posits the power of literacy to transform psychology, to deepen and broaden ones place in the world.  Moreover, when one seeks to interrogate ones radical beliefs, it draws one deeper into contact with the meaning of social change and social transformation.  One is changed; the prerequisite to social change.

Goddard, because of its size and orientation, has given students the time and attention to find the focus to answer questions that few other places have even dared to entertain.  In many ways it is issues such as these that make Goddard, Goddard.  Questions of power, of politics, of race, of gender, of place.  Questions about where one stands in the world, and how to move, act, interact in a world awash in complexity.  Essentially how does a young person, or for that matter even an older one, looking at the vast wide world with a quiet sense of terror have a voice amidst that monstrous din?  How does she find that voice that can create space to think? To be? To grow?

We know that it must come from the place within – that which moves you, that which stirs you.  That which is your truest, deepest self.  Goddard, unlike most such institutions of higher learning, quietly asks that you listen to and interrogate that voice, and when appropriate, amplify it. For who knows?  Within that deepest you may dwell the very voice that is resonating within the nation if not the very world itself.  Here social change and social transformation forms the raison d’etre of Goddard.

We need new questions for the world of the 21st century.  But more importantly we need new answers.  We live in a world where massive wars can be launched by rumors and innuendo.  Where the material interests of corporations are superior to the interests of working people, and remember – corporations are people – so sayeth the Supreme Court.  Where the ecological threats to fresh water supplies, clean air, and the environment in American cities, pulls challenges that seem beyond arcane.

Did I not say that we need new thinking?  The present social, political, ecological and global course is, to say the least, unsustainable.  Perhaps some of you, new graduates of Goddard, will think up ways to forestall some of the challenges facing the living and generations unborn.

I noted earlier my reverie in the woods of Goddard that exquisite freshness and the wintery air, the nighttime respiration of hundreds of magnificent evergreen trees has refreshed my mind even when miles and decades away from Goddard’s sweet cool earth. Our cities, built during the heights of the industrial age and now engulfed in post-industrial ennui badly need a greening.  Areas should be set aside where children and mothers can breathe and remember air loaded with freshness delivered by green life, not air conditioned.  Think of the myriad of problems that beset this land and strive to make it better.  That’s Dewey’s vision, and Goddard’s.

Let me say something that I’ve never said before.  When I came to Goddard, I was intimidated.  Although teachers and adults told me that I could do the work, I rarely believed them.  I felt woefully unprepared.  But guess what?  Goddard gave me confidence and I never lost that feeling.  When I returned to Goddard many years later, I was a man on Death Row, with a date to die.  I was able to transfer credits from Continuing Education and my final paper utilized the writings of Franz Fanon and Ignacio Martín Barό, to examine the concepts of both in liberation psychology and liberation theology.  Only at Goddard.  Only at Goddard! 

Goddard reawakened in me my love of learning.  In my mind I left Death Row to travel to France, where Fanon studied psychiatry.  And on to Blida hospital, north of Algiers, where he practiced and later joined the Algerian revolution.  By studying Martín Barό, I traveled to El Salvador, where he worked as a priest and psychologist, teaching literacy to peasants when the nation groaned under military terror, supported by El Norte, the U.S. Empire.  Who were these figures? Well, Fanon was born in the Caribbean Island Martinique, then a colony of France.  When he witnessed the oppression of the Arabs in Algeria he felt compelled to join the revolution on the side of what he called ‘the wretched of the earth.’  Ignacio Martín Barό was among six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her daughter slain by the U.S. trained Atlacatl Battalion, a notorious Salvadoran death squad.

Goddard supported those “trips abroad,” if only in the mind, and I thank the school and many of my friends and alums there immensely for opening a door closed for decades.  Goddard allowed me to really study what interested and moved me – revolutionary movements, and through that doorway – history, psychology, politics, and of course economics.  In one of the most repressive environments on earth, Death Row, Goddard allowed me to study and research human liberation and anti-colonial struggles on two continents: Africa and Latin Central America.  I thank you for that grand opportunity.

For you graduates, your studies – visits to lands beyond your own – were done to give you both insights and confidence to work in the world, to try to create social change.  Your job isn’t how to get a job.  It’s to make a difference.  I thank my friends at Goddard for inviting me back.

If it’s done for you half of what it’s done for me, I assure you, you will have been well served.  Now take what you know and apply it in the real world.  Help be the change you’re seeking to make.

I thank you all.

For the class of 1996, Goddard, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Cornel West On Radical Black Journalists, Intellectuals

Posted on by toddpanther

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Getting REAL tired of Cornel West, but enjoyed this. Part Two is here. The below transcript is from Part One.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We spend the rest of the hour with renowned scholar, author and activist Dr. Cornel West. He’s a professor at Union Theological Seminary and author of numerous books. His latest, out this week, is Black Prophetic Fire. In it, he engages in conversation with the German scholar and thinker Christa Buschendorf about six revolutionary African-American leaders: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Ida B. Wells.

AMY GOODMAN: Even as the United States is led by its first black president, Dr. West says he’s fearful we may be, quote, “witnessing the death of black prophetic fire in our time.”

Dr. Cornel West, welcome back to Democracy Now!

CORNEL WEST: Always a blessing to be here. And I want to salute both of you, what mighty forces of good you are, to use the language of John Coltrane. And I want to acknowledge, too, Sister Christa, who is the most distinguished American scholar, or at least scholar on American studies in not just Germany, but Europe, as not just an interlocutor, but the book would not exist without her. So it’s a wonderful call-and-response, dialogical engagement with this most precious of modern traditions, of black prophetic tradition.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by “black prophetic fire”?

CORNEL WEST: Black prophetic fire is really about a deep love for black people, a love of justice, but it’s connected to the four questions that Du Bois wrestles with. How does integrity face oppression? What does honesty do in the face of deception? What does decency do in the face of insult? And how does virtue meet brute force. So, in the face of terror, in the face of trauma, in the face of stigma, 400 years of black people wrestling with all three, what do we produce? This caravan of love, this love train—love of justice, love of poor people, love of working people.

But it’s weak and feeble these days. It’s week and feeble, trying to bounce back. But Ferguson, among the young people, we’re seeing it. Now, this was written, of course, before Ferguson. But when you look at the Phillip Agnews of Dream Defenders, when you look at the Organization of Black Struggle down there, you look at Tef Poe and Tory and the others in Ferguson, you see this magnificent renaissance. And that brings joy to my heart.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the book, you begin with Frederick Douglass.

CORNEL WEST: Yes, yes, yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And not only as an activist and scholar, but as an incredible writer and his importance in 19th century America.

CORNEL WEST: Yeah, he’s certainly the most eloquent ex-slave in the history of the modern world. And by “eloquence,” I mean what Cicero and Quintilian meant: wisdom speaking—of course, he connects it with courage, unbelievable courage to act, and deep, deep love. And there’s simply nobody like him. And we need his spirit these days, because we live in the age of the sellout. We live in the age of those who are willing to sacrifice integrity for cupidity or integrity for venality, of selling their souls. And Douglass, flawed like all of us, stood tall right in the heat of struggle. No matter what popularity was to be sacrificed, he told the truth about the viciousness of white supremacist slavery.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you just give us a thumbnail sketch of who he was, born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, enslaved as a youth and teenager?

CORNEL WEST: Yes, to, well, actually made his way up, first to New England, you know, underground, with the help of his wife. He’s in camouflage, as it were. And he meets the white abolitionists, of course, towering white brother like William Lloyd Garrison and a host of others. Wendell Phillips would be another. Charles Sumner would be another. They would be vanilla brothers, who, in deep solidarity with the black struggle for freedom—like Father Pfleger in Chicago, like Christopher Hedges, like Noam Chomsky, Eric Foner. You’ve got a number of them, of course, Dorothy Day, and like Sister Amy herself. We’re talking about on the vanilla side of town, look at Americans say, “We’re going to focus on these particular black folk, these particular black folk.” And that’s a beautiful thing. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel would be an example like that. And, of course, the rich tradition of Latinos. My god, Albizu Campos put black folk at the center, the Puerto Rican—Cesar Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Frederick Douglass’s struggles, who he was recognized by.

CORNEL WEST: Well, the first text, of course, he had to be authorized by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who would write the introduction and say he actually wrote this book, because in America the very idea of a black person writing a book was rendered—was under deep suspicion. And so, in his first autobiography, where he told this powerful story—of what? Very much like this recent text by Brother Edward Baptist on slavery and American capitalism. It was not just terror, but torture, to generate high levels of productivity—for what? Profit, profit, profit. So that when we talk about American terrorism—and we live in the age of terrorism. And terrorists, of no matter what stripe, no matter what color, they’re gangsters, and they’re thugs. No doubt about that. But American terrorism, we don’t like to talk about, first toward our precious indigenous peoples, and then the slaves for 240 years, and almost 80 years under the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Constitution being a pro-slavery document, a pro-terrorist document, for over 80 years, in practice. Wonderful words on paper, now, but when it came to black folk, it was still a rationalizer of vicious of slavery. And Douglass was keeping track of the humanity of those precious black folk and saying, “I’m willing to tell the truth”—with a bounty on his head.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Douglass was not only a revolutionary in terms of the struggle for emancipation of African Americans, he was also, in his newspaper, one of the fiercest critics of the U.S. war against Mexico. He was also an advocate for women’s suffrage and the equality of women. Can you—

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely, absolutely. You see, because integrity requires moral consistency, what Jane Austen called constancy, being willing to follow through on your moral convictions regardless of what the cost is, regardless of the risk that you have to take. And most importantly, he was willing to die. You see, anybody in America who tells the truth about the barbarity of white supremacy and its legacy must be willing to die. You’ve got to recognize that you become a target, not just of fellow citizens with character assassination, but with literal assassination in terms of the powers that be. Why? Because the most dangerous thing in America is for black rage to take the form of love and justice among everyday people, among the black masses, that then invite human beings of integrity of all colors. That’s a major threat to the system. That’s one of the reasons why our young black people are being so viciously targeted with the soul murder in the educational system, with the vicious mass incarceration. You know, Brother Carl Dix and I have called for stop mass incarceration today, stop it now. And one of the reasons why you see this massive unemployment, and yet no serious attention to it, the level of almost genocidal attack on our precious young people is really beyond language. We don’t really have a language for it. It’s that vicious. It’s that ugly.

AMY GOODMAN: Some have talked about the killing of Mike Brown as a modern-day lynching. Can you talk about Ida B. Wells?

CORNEL WEST: Yes, yeah, Ida B. Wells.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us who she was.

CORNEL WEST: We end the text with Sister Ida B., because in many ways she’s probably the most courageous of all of them. And that’s hard to say, but it really is true, because she, at a time in which Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois are arguing back and forth over conceptions of education, civil rights struggle versus subservience to the powers that be, in Booker T. Washington’s case, she looks the raw violence in the face and writes the classic, Red Terror. “I want to talk about Jim Crow-Jane Crow lynching that sits at the very center of American life, has been trivialized in so many ways.” And, of course, she’s run out of Tennessee with a bounty on her head. Thank God that T. Thomas Fortune at The New York Age was in place at that time.

AMY GOODMAN: She was born in 1862.

CORNEL WEST: She was born a slave.

AMY GOODMAN: Mississippi.

CORNEL WEST: She was born a slave in Mississippi. Both parents died very quickly. She had to raise her brothers and sisters, and went on to become one of the great intellectuals, one of the great freedom fighters. And, yeah, she—

AMY GOODMAN: Championed the campaign against lynching?

CORNEL WEST: Oh, yes, anti-terrorism. See, a lot of people don’t realize, you see, black freedom movement has always been an anti-terrorist movement. NAACP itself responded to the riots in Springfield, Illinois. It’s in the face of American terrorism. And Ferguson is an extension of it. It’s in the face of American terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, you also write about Ida B. Wells in your book, News for All the People.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, yeah, I mean, just as Cornel mentioned, the fact that she began reporting in her Memphis Free Speech and Headlight about the killing of three of her friends in Memphis and was run out of town, her press destroyed, but then she went all around the country covering—exposing lynchings throughout the country. And really—was really—

AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t they burn her press to the ground?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: She really was one of the original muckrakers, but the muckrakers that are not talked about.

CORNEL WEST: Before Upton Sinclair. Before.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Before Sinclair and Lincoln Steffens and all the others.

CORNEL WEST: That’s exactly right. And this is very important in terms of our present moment, because you remember Carl Rowan. Carl Rowan was the most popular black journalist in the 1960s. He demonized Malcolm X. He trivialized Martin Luther King Jr. when he came out against the empire in Vietnam. And we’re living in a moment now where there’s a kind of Carl Rowanization of black journalism. So you see it on TV, in MSNBC and so forth, of people who act as if they’re saying something critical, but in fact it’s milquetoast, and it’s well adjusted to the status quo. And when we look back at the 1960s, very few people talk about Carl Rowan in any positive way. And you see his vicious attacks on Spike Lee when Spike made the movie on Malcolm X, and especially that Reader’s Digest piece that he wrote in ’67 talking about how Martin Luther King Jr. had lost integrity, lost responsibility. You say, “Carl, what are you talking about?” But same is true for so many of the black journalists today on TV and those who are often in mainstream white newspapers. The black independent press is being lost, just like black independent radio is being lost. And this Black Prophetic Fire is simply a way of saying, well, when it comes to our youth, when it comes to our music, when it comes to the culture, when it comes to politics, we need a renaissance of integrity, courage, vision, willingness to serve and, most importantly, willingness to sacrifice.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of your other subjects in the book is W. E. B. Du Bois. And you call him, along with John Dewey, one of the two towering intellectual figures of the early 20th century.

CORNEL WEST: Yeah, it’s true. I mean, W. E. B. Du Bois, you just say that brother’s name, and you want to be silent for a while. You know, 95 years of struggle. And keep in mind, what did he say when he was on the boat after 95 years? “Cheer up, Negro. You can never win in America. You must cast your struggle on an international stage. I’m going to Ghana. I’m going to Africa. I remain tied to the best of America, but I recognize that it may very well be the case that America needs a revolution. But America but does not have the capacity for revolution, only capacity for counterrevolution at the moment. But we can go other places—Latin America, Asia, Africa.” There’s nobody like W. E. B. Du Bois.

AMY GOODMAN: He was a sociologist, a historian, a civil rights activist, born in 1868, dies in 1963. We want to play a clip of W. E. B. Du Bois speaking in 1951 about African Americans’ and workers’ rights in an audio recording preserved by the Pacifica Radio Archives.

W. E. B. DU BOIS: Because most American Negroes of education and property have long since oversimplified their problem and tried to separate it from all other social problems, they conceive that their fight is simply to have the same rights and privileges as other American citizens. They do not for a moment stop to question how far the organization of work and distribution of wealth in America is perfect, nor do they for a moment conceive that the economic organization of America may have fundamental injustices and shortcomings which seriously affect not only Negroes, but the whole world.

AMY GOODMAN: W. E. B. Du Bois, speaking in 1951—

CORNEL WEST: Wow, that’s incredible.

AMY GOODMAN: —the Pan-Africanist, the sociologist, the civil rights leader. Talk about how he was represented and how he’s remembered and how you feel he was sanitized? What has been whited out of his history?

CORNEL WEST: Well, it’s just amazing to hear his voice. I salute both of you for keeping his voice alive, his presence alive. Keep in mind he’s 83 years old. He’s just emerged from a court case where they’ve had him in handcuffs. He was head of the Peace Information Center, which is simply an organization to ban nuclear weapons. He was viewed as a representative of a foreign government or agent of a foreign government. He was under arrest. He had just married Sister Shirley Graham Du Bois, a towering freedom fighter in her own right, on Valentine’s Day of 1951. And he’s still strong as ever. He’s left-wing. He’s a threat, not just to the system; he’s a threat to the black middle class. They’re attempting to gain access to a mainstream. They’re attempting to become more and more part of a status quo. He is determined to follow through on the love for poor people, oppressed people. But he begins on the chocolate side of town, as so many of us. He starts with black people and loves brown, red, yellow, white, across the board. And when, I think, the history is written of the decline and fall of the American empire, Du Bois’s voice will probably be the major voice, along that of Herman Melville and Toni Morrison and a few others. He was a truth teller.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The importance of his major works, Black Reconstruction, Souls of Black Folk, in terms of shaping how modern scholars deal with the history of African Americans?

CORNEL WEST: Absolutely, because he put capitalism at the center. He put at the center of American capitalism slavery. He put at the center of American slavery black humanity, black agency, with the oppression—what kind of creative responses. When you heard Curtis Mayfield sing “We are a Winner,” where does his hope come from? Where does his joy come from? You’ve got to keep track of the creativity. You’ve got to keep track of the sense of community, the we consciousness. When he always cast it in an international—or didn’t always, he started casting it in an international context in the 19-teens, so he understood empire, as well. His famous essay, “The Damnation of Women,” highly sensitive to patriarchy emerging. Of course, I think he would say similar things about our gay brothers and lesbian sisters.

AMY GOODMAN: His feelings about communism?

CORNEL WEST: Well, he started as a pink socialist; he ended very much as a communist. He joined the Communist Party before he left the United States. But he always recognized a certain kind of free thinking. At a certain moment, he’s critical of Stalinism; another moment, he’s too uncritical of Stalinism. But he’s very improvisational in his concern with oppressed peoples. And he always understood the centrality of music, primarily the spirituals for him. For us, it would be blues and rhythm and blues and hip-hop.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Ella Baker.

CORNEL WEST: Oh, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Born 1903, dies 1986. She played a key role in some of the most influential organizations of her time, including the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC. This is Ella Baker speaking in 1974 in a video produced by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

ELLA BAKER: Brothers and sisters in the struggle for human dignity and freedom, I am here to represent the struggle that has gone on for 300 or more years, a struggle to be recognized as citizens in a country in which we were born.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Ella Baker speaking in 1974. Her importance in the struggle overall?

CORNEL WEST: I think she is the central figure in this text, and, I think, in the American tradition when it comes to democratic theory and practice. And here she’s even more important than Brother Martin, because Martin is still tied to a messianic model of leadership. He’s still tied to that one charismatic figure at the top. Ella Baker understood that leadership is something that comes not just from below, but it comes in the creative capacities of those Sly Stone called everyday people, those James Cleveland called ordinary people. So she’s always highly suspicious of the charismatic messianic figure at the top, the male egos that bounce off against one another in front of the cameras when it comes to various marches. She’s doing the work and understands that leadership comes from among the everyday—interacting with the everyday people and, most importantly, understanding the centrality of we consciousness, as opposed to that isolated ego. And she enacted it. Stokely, Bob Moses, Diane Nash—we can go on and on and on—Occupy, in that sense, is an extension of the best of Ella Baker. And I think anytime we talk about Martin Luther King Jr., we must talk about Malcolm X, we must talk about Ella Baker. All three go hand in hand.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about, as you do, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X—

CORNEL WEST: Oh, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —in this book, Black Prophetic Fire.

CORNEL WEST: Oh, absolutely. Malcolm, I mean, good God, we just don’t have a language for that brother. He’s black music in motion. He’s jazz enacted and embodied, in that sense. And as he grew, he’s John Coltrane’s Love Supreme at the core. He starts not loving white folk enough, but he grows. He matures. But his intensity, his authenticity, his sincerity in telling the truth and exposing lies and bearing witness is, I think, in many ways, unprecedented. In the beginnings as a gangster, he’s Malcolm Little. He’s loved by Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X. And then he takes on the world with his love, with his willingness to live, his willingness to die, for struggle for the people.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Martin Luther King Jr., who—the only one of these figures who’s been adopted by American society as part of the lexicon or the history of our own country?

CORNEL WEST: Yeah, exactly, the deodorized, sanitized Martin. Of course, Martin, in many ways, is the closest to me as a Christian, because we both choose the way of the cross. And the way of the cross is unarmed truth and unapologetic love. And the condition of the truth is always to allow the least of these suffering to be heard. And, of course, that love means that you end up loving not just neighbor, not just stranger, but you even love your enemies, because enemies can change. You don’t trump their sense of possibility. It’s tied to a cross of a Palestinian Jew named Jesus, and it’s something that allows you to look death in the face and say, “Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?” We’re willing to live and die for the everyday people.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds, but where does President Obama fit into this picture? Or does he?

CORNEL WEST: President Obama is a neoliberal centrist. He is a pro-imperial president. He is brilliant, he’s charismatic, but he is the head of the American empire and sits at the center of the U.S. status quo. The black prophetic tradition is a profound critique and indictment of the system that he heads, and of course generates profound disappointment in the priorities of Wall Street, of drones, of mass surveillance that we’ve seen in his administration. But we say it in love. People say, “Oh, Brother West, you’re always putting the president down and then talking about love.” I love the brother. I pray for his safety and his family. He’s wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: Cornel West, Black Prophetic Fire.

Asante Sana, Herman Ferguson

Posted on by toddpanther

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And the Ancestor list continues. Another tree fallen. Ferguson was 93.

The following are two extended, and joined, excerpts from his 2011 memoir/biography, An Unlikely Warrior: Herman Ferguson: The Evolution of a Black Nationalist Revolutionary, written with Iyaluua Ferguson, a freedom fighter who is also Herman’s wife. The first is about his time with the OAAU, the anniversary of which was held this past June, while the second is about his eyewitness account of Malcolm X’s assassination, the 50th anniversary of which will be commemorated on February 21, 2015.

 

Shortly after Malcolm’s expulsion from the Nation of Islam, he announced he was forming a new organization that would be known as the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI). It was to be open to all. I was one of the early people to approach Malcolm and offer my membership. After he expressed some concerns about me losing my job with the NYC Board of Education, we agreed that I would join the MMI without any fuss or fanfare. Shortly after that, Malcolm left the country to go to Africa and the Middle East. He was gone for about five weeks. During that time, I remember attending some of the meetings, but mainly I waited for Malcolm’s return.

I was very active in organizing work out in Queens at that time. One of the brothers who was active with my Queens group was Lez Edmond [SPELLING CORRECTED]. He kept me in touch with what was happening in the MMI. It was Lez who told me that Malcolm had returned from his overseas trip and was meeting with a small group of people who were planning to announce the formation of another organization under Malcolm’s leadership. The MMI was to remain a religious organization where the Muslims could worship. The new organization was to be more secular-oriented and was intended as a political/cultural-type organization.

Lez told me the group was in the early stages of forming their organization, and he told me he would keep me informed. Shortly after that he told me that Malcolm wanted me to start meeting with this group and I should come to the next meeting. Lez picked me up that Sunday and we drove to the Flash Inn, a well-known nightspot in Harlem.

I learned that this new organization would be named the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), and its goal was to bring all the many organizations that were struggling for human and civil rights under the umbrella of the OAAU. The OAAU would be responsible for presenting a united front that would bring the United States before the United Nations charged with the crime of denying the human rights of 22 million Black people. While Malcolm would be at the head, he would not hold any formal office. We would be responsible for staffing the various committees that were to be set up. Malcolm would work with us to develop the organization and he was to serve as our principal speaker at the rallies, which would be the main approach to expanding our membership, and at the same time bringing the thoughts of Malcolm before the public. The Audubon Ballroom was the place where our Sunday rallies would be held.

We were all so young then–ready to take on any tasks Malcolm assigned to us. Many came from the Nation of Islam with Malcolm. Others came from among the radical elements of the civil rights movement, looking for more action than those leaders were offering–SNCC; CORE; SCLC, etc. We were all looking to Malcolm for a new kind of leadership. We were all ready to go wherever he took us.

Some of us were more politicized than others. Some were already Black Nationalists. Some were Pan-Africanists. A few considered themselves political radicals. Some were intellectuals. Others were cultural nationalists. Whatever we proclaimed ourselves to be, we were all believers to some extent or other in Malcolm’s call for self-determination, self-reliance and self-defense for Black people. Malcolm was our new leader and we were going to build a movement based on his leadership. No turning the other cheek for us. No begging, praying, singing or pleading for our civil rights. Malcolm had already made it clear; our struggle was for human rights and not for civil rights. That was as true to me as that the sun rose in the east every day. And I think all who became followers of Malcolm believed the same thing.

We were meeting regularly, getting acquainted with each other and trying to bring some structure to the new organization. Lynne Shifflet [SPELLING CORRECTED] was the Secretary of the Organization while Brother James continued to head the MMI. The OAAU was divided into committees and a Chairman headed each committee. Some that I can remember were the Cultural Committee chaired by Sister Muriel; Communications Committee, chaired by Brother Peter; Education Committee chaired by me; and later on Brother Jim Campbell came on and helped me to develop our Liberation School.

The Education Committee focused its attention on establishing a Liberation School that would cover two sessions on Saturdays. the first session was devoted to school-age youngsters. Sessions began at 9 a.m. and ended at 11 a.m. The second session, which was for adults, started at 11 a.m. and continued until about 1 p.m.

One of my most vivid memories is that the family of Yusef and Dara Iman were all members of the Liberation School and were are most consistent attendees. Yusef was a brilliant revolutionary poet and actor, a member of Amiri Baraka’s Spirit House Movers. Tragically, he made his transition much too young, succumbing to cancer at the age of 52.

A reading list was developed and assignments were given from this list. We used many speakers who were qualified to lecture on African History, the Middle Passage, Slavery and Reconstruction, and many other topics that were relevant to the centuries of suffering of our people here in the U.S. the list of speakers was long, and it included such names as John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Queen Mother Moore, Richard Moore, Mr. Lewis Michaux, Pork Chop Davis, and on and on. All these speeches were taped for the purpose of putting together a spoken-word library.

Those tapes seem to be lost forever. The police seized those that were in my keeping when they invaded my home and arrested me. I suppose the police considered them contraband.

I should mention here that I chose to call our school a Liberation School because there were a number of schools operated by civil rights groups who called them Freedom Schools. I explained to Brother Malcolm that the name Liberation School conveyed the idea that we were educating our students to take their liberation rather than begging someone to give them freedom. Freedom when given can be taken back, but liberation has to be fought for, and once we reach that state, our former masters cannot take it back.

When Jim Campbell joined the Education Committee, he introduced the idea of developing a Leadership Training Course that was based on the thoughts and ideas of Brother Malcolm.

At the end of the course a diploma was signed by Brother Malcolm and given to each individual who completed the course. The student was then supposed to go back to his community with a kit of resource materials to begin to organize and provide leadership.

Our first class was made up of ten students who studied over a period of several weeks. A graduation ceremony was held at one of the Sunday rallies at the Audubon Ballroom. It was a thrilling sight to watch those ten proud students come out on the stage as their names to shake Brother Malcolm’s hand and to receive a specially designed certificate of graduation that had been signed by Brother Malcolm. I particularly recall the phenomenal Yuri Kochiyama being in that first graduating class. Yuri has been a consistent warrior in our liberation struggle for as long as I can remember, and remains so today.

Unfortunately, we did not graduate another class. Malcolm’s assassination ended the OAAU and all of our plans we had for that organization. Somewhere today there are ten certificates, signed by Brother Malcolm, declaring that the bearer completed the OAAU Leadership Training Course.

As I look back at those hectic times I am struck by a multitude of random memories that have stayed with me through these many years. I can see Peter on his hands and knees on the floor of the office, agonizing over pasting up a copy of the OAAU newspaper while Malcolm hovered over him, saying, “Don’t worry, brother. We’ll find some way to get the money for this paper.” And the night when Malcolm had called a meeting to inform the brothers that there was to be no more searching of people who came to our rallies. And that the security brothers were not to be armed because he thought the sight of armed security was turning off people we needed to join the OAAU. That night will always remain with me. Brothers complained loudly about these new restrictions. But Malcolm was firm. No searching. No weapons.

I have often wondered if Malcolm realized the dangerous position he was placing himself in by issuing such an order. I also think back to that night and try to recall the brothers who agreed with Malcolm and those who didn’t. In retrospect, I think that meeting was one of the most intriguing and important meetings that I ever attended as a member of the OAAU.

There are other images that are etched on my mind about those days. Things were moving quickly towards a head. My concerns about the rumors circulating among the OAAU members grew stronger, along with increasing pressures that were being directed toward Malcolm by the press and the NOI. Later we were to learn that this campaign to smear Malcolm was the dirty work of the government’s strategy to confuse the general public, and particularly those in the OAAU. There was a noticeable decline in the work of the organization as a result of attempts to destabilize us. Attempts to sow seeds of distrust and confusion among those of us who were the founders of the organization were made continuously. I recall discussing with Jim Campbell my concerns about what was happening to the organization and my fears about what was happening to Malcolm. Jim agreed with me that the picture looked very gloomy. We decided to contact Malcolm and request a sit-down between the three of us so we could inform him of our concerns and see what he thought.

Malcolm met with us on a Saturday afternoon in Jim’s Harlem apartment. The apartment we were meeting Malcolm in was located on the fifth floor and gave us a clear view of the entire street. We were able to observe Malcolm’s car when he pulled up across the street from the building. I was struck by the fact that Malcolm was traveling alone and by his casual manner as he crossed the street and entered the building.

Throughout the ensuing meeting with us, Malcolm maintained that casual attitude. He flipped a large coin absently through the fingers of one hand as our discussion ranged over a wide spectrum of subjects. Although he listened carefully as we talked, he expressed no concerns about his personal safety, but he did attempt to deal with our concerns about the OAAU and how it seemed to be floundering. Although we had asked Malcolm to meet with us for about an hour, it was many hours later before we ended our discussion and he left.

My last view of him that afternoon was as he descended the stairs, still causally flipping that same coin as he returned to his car.

 

hf

February 21, 1965 was a bright, sunny, cold day. It was a Sunday, and we had scheduled a rally at the Audubon as usual. The situation was far from normal. Some of the committees of the OAAU seemed to have ceased functioning. Malcolm’s home had been torched and he and his family had barely escaped with their lives. Speculation was rife about how had done this cowardly act. It was said the Nation of Islam had done the deed. The press hinted that Malcolm had set the fire himself.

Malcolm said that the circumstances surrounding the fire were outside the things that the NOI could or would do. “They would certainly try to silence me,” he said, “but they don’t wage war on women or children, and my pregnant wife and my young children were in that house at the time.” Malcolm had earlier told some of the brothers that he had mistakenly blamed the NOI for the problems that were happening to him. He did not believe the NOI had the resources to try to poison him in Egypt, and he knew for certain that the NOI had no influence on the French government. They could not persuade France to bar him from entering that country. These things had all happened to Malcolm on his trip abroad.

When asked where those problems were coming from, Malcolm pointed to the south and said, “They are coming from Washington.” Malcolm, for the first time, was shifting the blame for his problems away from the NOI and shifting them to a far more dangerous source–the United States government.

My mind was racing with thoughts of that nature as I drove towards the rally. Which way to turn? What to do?

As I turned off Broadway into W. 166th Street, I noticed something strange. Usually when we held our rallies, the street in front of the Audubon Ballroom was teeming with NYC policemen who were detailed there to cover the event. This day, there wasn’t a cop in sight!

As I drew up in front of the Audubon, I spotted a lone cop standing across the street in the small park that faced the building. “That’s strange,” I muttered to myself. “Where are the police today?” I knew that Malcolm had ordered that no police were to be allowed inside the auditorium, but always there was a large contingent of police outside the building. Their absence today was most unusual and very strange.

I continued to drive down the street, looking for a parking spot for my car. I found a spot a block or two from the Audubon Ballroom, I locked the car and returned on foot to the building. The cop whom I had seen standing across the street in the park  was nowhere in sight. I entered the building and noticed some of our security people manning the entrance door. We greeted each other as they waived me in.

It was obvious that a large crowd of people where assembled to hear Malcolm speak. Not noticing any people from the OAAU in the crowd, I took a seat about midway in the aisle just across from a row of semi-circular booth-like seats. As I glanced around, I noticed that one of the semi-circular booths across from me was almost filled by some members of the OAAU. They beckoned for me to join them and I did. I sat facing the stage where I would have a good view of the podium from which Malcolm would soon be speaking.

The murmuring from the crowd came to a halt as the brother who would address them prior to introducing Malcolm began to speak. Brother Benjamin was a good speaker and he soon had the crowd giving him its full attention. The stage was empty except for Benjamin. A row of empty chairs was placed side-by-side on the stage as though speakers were expected to fill them. (I learned later that Rev. Galamison, Mae Mallory and Ralph Cooper had been invited to speak. None of them were there.) I noticed Brother James peeking out of the door leading from the off-stage holding room, surveying the audience, and then withdrawing. Finally Malcolm walked out. He took a seat in one of the chairs just behind Benjamin.

When Benjamin noticed the appearance of Malcolm, he took that as his cue and began to introduce Malcolm to the crowd. Malcolm stood and began to walk toward the podium. Benjamin turned to yield the podium to him, and as their paths crossed, Malcolm was seen to pause and whisper something in Benjamin’s ear. Benjamin nodded and walked off the stage, heading towards the rear of the auditorium. (Benjamin told me later that Malcolm had ordered him to go to telephone and find out if Rev. Galamison was coming.) Malcolm continued forward until he was standing at the podium, facing the expectant crowd. Every eye in the audience was fixed on Malcolm, and a hush filled the room.

Malcolm began to speak, saying “Salaam Alikum, Brothers and Sisters!” At that moment, at though by some pre- arranged signal, a loud commotion broke out in the audience. There was the sound of loud voices cursing and that was followed by the sound of a chair falling to the floor.

I immediately swung my head to follow the sound of this interruption and saw that the noise was coming from two men who were seated near where I had originally sat when I first entered the room. The two men had flung aside their chairs and one man was crouched over as he moved away from the other man. “Get your hand out of my f—–g pocket, n—-r!,” came out of the mouth of the other man.

At this moment, I realized that something was drastically wrong. Never had I ever seen such a spectacle before. In all the times I had seen Malcolm speaking to all sorts of crowds, there was never any type of interruption. Such a thing was unthinkable. I felt a distinct feeling of unease as I quickly swung my head away from that scene and focused my attention back to Malcolm. Very calmly and without any sign of what was about to happen, Malcolm had stepped aside from the podium and leaned toward the crowd with his hand up-raised as he uttered his last words, “Cool it, brothers and sisters!” He began to lower his arm when a loud noise tore through the air. It was a sound of a sawed-off shotgun being fired into Malcolm’s exposed body.  The blast straightened Malcolm upright, and as he stood there for the next few seconds pistol shots began to be heard as the killers continued their depraved work. Malcolm was held upright as the storm of pistol shots continued. There was a momentary pause in the shooting and Malcolm then toppled backwards, his head making an awful sound as he fell prone on the stage. There was a brief pause in the shooting, and then it continued with the sound of large and small caliber pistol shots filling Malcolm’s fallen body for what seemed like an eternity.

I remember thinking, If they would stop shooting into his body, he could survive. But I knew from experience that nothing could live through such a fusillade of point-blank bullets, fired at such close range. Whoever was responsible for this deed wanted to send a message to the Malcolm followers in the hall, and by extension the entire Black Nationalist community, that a similar fate awaited anyone who desired to take on Malcolm’s role.

When the shooting ended, I found myself under the seat I had been occupying, with my head and shoulders extending into the aisle. The sudden end to the loud noises and the screams of terrified people created a vast and eerie silence throughout the hall. Chairs were flung all over the room. People were still cowering from the recent noise and the confusion. As I looked out on this scene, I noticed three figures standing in the middle of the room. There were three men standing one behind the other as though they were uncertain as to what their next move should be. The man in front wore what looked like a knee-length coat. There was a gun of some sort in his hand. I knew these were some of the men who had taken part in the just-completed killing of Malcolm.

I watched closely for as long as I could. The three men suddenly began to run towards the rear of the hall., towards the exit door. A few seconds passed as the men passed out of my sight. There was the sound of some scattered shots as the men disappeared. By this time I had crawled out from under the chair and the adjoining table and had taken a look at the stage. People were crowded around Malcolm’s fallen body. There was nothing I could do there. I decided to go outside to see what was happening out there. During that time there were still no police to be seen.

As I stood amidst this scene of carnage and terror. I began to sift though what I had just observed over the past few minutes. It began to occur to me that during the entire episode I had remained rooted to my seat and had only taken refuge under my seat after the second series of shots had rung out. I recall that while the firing was going on, there was a series of flashing yellow bulbs like the kind used to focus light on a scene that was being filmed. These flashing yellow lights were flickering off and on, rapidly one after the other, and seemed to be coming directly over the Audubon stage area. It dawned on me that the entire scene of Malcolm’s assassination was being filmed. Sonofabitch, they filmed the whole horrible event! Only governmental intelligence agencies have such a credibility. This certainly lends credence to Malcolm’s claim that Washington was the area from which his problems were coming. Not Chicago.

I went downstairs and out the front door to confront an unforgettable sight. To my right there was a crowd of people who had obviously rushed out of the hall in pursuit of the fleeing assassins. They were holding one man. It was clear that they meant him no good. A couple of policemen were trying to rescue the man from the enraged people who were trying to pull their captive apart. They didn’t seem to need my help and I turned and walked toward Broadway.

On the corner of Broadway and W. 166th St. was a shop that sold prosthetic devices. I stood there pondering the events I had just witnessed and trying to fit all the pieces together. From the entrance on 166th St., Malcolm’s security people emerged carrying Malcolm’s bullet-ridden body on a gurney commandeered from the hospital across the street. A small group of policemen were trailing the brothers, offering no help at all. I looked down at the body of my slain leader. His tie had been ripped loose from his throat, his shirt had been pulled open, and his chest was exposed. I could see the pattern of bullet holes that encircled his left chest around his heart. Rage and sorrow competed for a space in my being as I fought to control my emotions and focus on what I had seen and what might lie ahead.

At that point, a New York City police vehicle pulled up at the corner. There was a police officer driving and seated beside him was an officer wearing the scrambled-eggs cap of an officer of some senior rank. This officer got out of the vehicle and began walking towards the commotion further down the block. Within a few minutes he returned, assisting a civilian who was bent over in pain. The officer helped this civilian to the police car and carefully placed him in the rear seat.

By this time my curiosity had been completely aroused. I thought the civilian was probably one of our people who had been on duty at the door and had been injured as the killers escaped. I walked over to the car and poked my head through the open window and looked directly into this man’s face. I had never seen this person before! He was bent over, clutching his abdomen, seemingly in great pain. The police brass, who by now had gotten back in his seat next to the driver, ordered the driver to get out of there right away. The car sped off, but to my surprise they drove straight down W. 166th Street and sped out of sight. I thought the injured man would be taken immediately just across the street to the large hospital (Manhattan Presbyterian), where Malcolm had been taken by our security people.

Who was this mysterious stranger? Why were the police so anxious to get him off the scene so quickly? What was his role in the killing? Why had nothing been said by the media and the police about this second man?

The first man had been rescued from the enraged crowd and placed under arrest. His name was Thomas Hager. He served 25 years for his involvement in the crime. Two other men were later arrested and convicted of participation in the assassination. But who was the man I saw in the police car, wounded and being shielded by police brass? This and other questions still cast their shadow around the events of February 21, 1965.

Malcolm’s brutal and untimely death spelled the end of both his organizations, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. My short period of time working in those two organizations marked a turning point in my life. Malcolm’s legacy still gives direction and meaning to the Black Liberation Struggle. Our fight to liberate our political prisoners and to give substance to our drive for self-determination is clearly reflected in our call for land and reparations.

It does not seem that we only had Malcolm with us for about thirteen months after he left the Nation of Islam. Yet in that short period of time, Brother Malcolm cast his shadow over our Movement in so many ways. He changed our focus from civil rights to human rights. He influenced the birth of many Black Nationalist organizations (the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika, the Black Liberation Army, to name just a few). People who fight for their freedom from oppression and for national liberation know his name worldwide.

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OCTOBER 9th UPDATE:

herman-ferguson-front-page_1

BABA HERMAN FERGUSON: Lifelong Freedom Fighter: Presente!

[col. writ. 9/29/14] ©’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal

His name was Herman Ferguson, and if you’re not dialed into the Black Nationalist Movement, the name may not ring a bell of recognition.But to those aware of the Black Power Movement of the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, Herman Ferguson’s life, role and commitment rings like a bell in the night.

For Ferguson, often accompanied by his wife and comrade, Iyaluua Nehanda, joined Black groups that supported the fight for freedom. He joined several, but perhaps few had more historical significance than his joining of both the groups formed by Malcolm X after his painful break from the Nation of Islam; the Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) and Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI).

He met Malcolm in the late ‘50s, when he was still in the Nation, and became a staunch supporter thereafter.

In 1967, he and fellow members of the Jamaica Rifle and Pistol Club (in queens, NY), were arrested and charged with the planned assassination of two prominent civil rights leaders. After a conviction a year later, Ferguson fled the U.S., and he and his wife (3 years later) began a life in Guyana, working in the field of education.

They stayed there for 19 years, and lived good lives there. Ferguson could’ve retired with a government pension under his assumed name, “Paul Adams”, for he spent many years as an officer of the Guyanese Defense Force.

But the call of home only got louder with time.

Ferguson said he missed hi “family”, his “childhood friends”, and “the Movement.”

His wife, Iyaluua, said, “I don’t think people really understand the nature of exile.” She explained, “Exile is death.”

So, Herman Ferguson and his wife returned to the U.S., where he knew a jail cell awaited him, but he did so, in part, because the weather had changed, in that the release of top-secret COINTEL-PRO files revealed FBI skullduggery against Black and anti-war activists. Also, several prominent Black Panther figures (like the late BPP Minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver), and Weatherman (a white, anti-imperialist group) had returned to the States.

He did 3 years, got out and hit the ground running, working on behalf of other imprisoned revolutionaries, by organizing, speaking out and building support for such efforts. He and his wife gave deep and broad support for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, headquartered in NY.

For over 50 years he fought for the same ideas and principles that Malcolm supported: Black Nationalism, popular self-defense, and Black self-determination.

Now, after 93 years of life, Baba Herman Ferguson has returned to the Ancestors.

–© ‘14maj