NYPL Blogs: Posts from Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Música Soul: The Soundtrack of the Black Power Movement in Brazil

Ann-Marie Nicholson, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 12:37:58 -0400

"If we had said 'Negro power' nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. If we said power for colored people, everybody would be for that, but it is the word 'black' that bothers people in this country, and that's their problem, not mine." —Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at UC Berkeley, 1966

James Brown released "I'm Black and I'm Proud" during the height of the Black Power Movement in the United States in 1968. Brown's in-your-face approach to racial pride resonated in the U.S. ghettos as well as the slums abroad. Many black people, all around the world, embraced the Black Power soundtrack and consciousness. Working-class black cariocas (residents of Rio) of Zona Norte began using the English phrases "Black Power," "brother" and "black is beautiful." They played African-American soul records at their bailes (dances) and incorporated the lyrics and sounds into their music.

Tim Maia, the godfather of música soul, spent five years in the United States. He came to know the sounds of black America intimately. When he returned to Brazil in 1964, Maia incorporated the soul and funk influences into his songs. By the 1970s, other Brazilian musicians, such as Banda Black Rio, Cassiano, Gerson King Combo, Jorge Ben Jor and Gilberto Gil, began making soul records. DJs started throwing soul-only parties. This nova (new) music spoke to an experience—both universal and unique at the same time. The time period was known as "Black Rio" instead of the Portuguese equivalents: negro or preto. Organizations, such as Instituto de Pesquisa e Cultura Negra and Associação Cultural do Negro, met regularly to discuss racial politics and inequality. By the end of the '70s, funk and disco would take over where soul left off, but it was the latter that helped to shape a generation of artists around a universal black identity.

This signaled a break from the national Brazilian identity and the adoption of a revolutionary one—albeit via the African-American musical and cultural experience. This shift worried the military government, the secret police, the left and the right, and surprisingly many black journalists. The rejection of samba and the acceptance of a foreign music, style and vernacular were antithetical to the unifying image that Brazil projected. Or as Carlos Palombini, a Professor of Musicology at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and a Fellow of the National Research Council, explains:

The soul-inspired sense of black pride among Brazilian musicians was liberating with respect to the history and the historiography of samba, which had disciplined their lives through the ideology of subaltern integration. By ‘history’ I mean the ways samba has been made permissible, profitable, acceptable, the ways it has been polished to transpose class barriers, to the point of becoming one of the most—if not the most—elaborate figure of national unity.

It didn't matter that the residents of Zona Sul—white—were adapting and mimicking the rock sounds of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Palombini states that: "In the first half of the decade, black musicians who paraded their blackness onstage—unwittingly perhaps, for the benefit of a regime that wished to project images of unbridled creativity—had their careers and lives shattered. [While] well-established white artists, of all stripes, went black without serious consequences."

Brazil was the last nation in the new world to abolish slavery, finally doing so in 1888. It passed the Afonso Arinos law in 1951, making racial discrimination a crime. However, racism didn't disappear. Segregation and discrimination were common in Brazil, but many said it was class instead of race since the symbols of national identity (samba and feijoada) came from Afro-Brazilian culture. Brazil had convinced itself—and its people—that it did not have a race problem.

In her essay, "When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil," Paulina Alberto notes that:

Being black was culturally and politically different from being preto or pardo, the terms historically used to designate darker- or lighter-complexioned Brazilians of color; it was different, too, from negro, the word that many politically active people of color had adopted since the first decades of the century to designate a proudly unified racial group.

To be "black and proud" was both new and liberating. Carmichael took the word black—which the dominant race used as a pejorative—and made it endearing and liberating. It found its way not only to Brazil, but also across the Atlantic into the music and consciousness of young black people who did not speak English and had not witnessed the Civil Rights Movement up close and personal. Although identifying as black has lost the impact it once had here in the United States, it still resonates with those in other countries. Today, the young "noirs" of France refer to themselves as "black"—40 plus years after Stokely Carmichael delivered his groundbreaking speech at Berkeley.

Related Resources From our Catalog

Tim Maia
Rhythms of Resistance by Peter Fryer
The Unified Black Movement in Brazil, 1978-2002 by David Covin

Audio and Video

Brazilian Soul by Afro Pop Worldwide
Brasil Spins by Waxist
Onda by Cassiano
Réu Confesso by Tim Maia
Mr. Funky Samba by Banda Black Rio
África Brasil by Jorge Ben
Ilé Ayê by Gilberto Gil

Articles

Funk Carioca and Música Soul by Carlos Palombini
Soul and Samba-Soul
Racial Discrimination and Miscegenation: The Experience in Brazil by Edward Telles
When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil by Paulina L. Alberto
From Black Pride to Favela Pride by Carlos Palombini

Asia's Africans

Thu, 02 May 2013 07:51:16 -0400

May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. What better time to discover or learn more about Afro-Asians? As our groundbreaking exhibition Africans in India shows, some became navy commanders, army generals, and founders of dynasties. In Ahmedabad, in the Indian state of Gujarat, they left an impressive architectural legacy. Today, some Sidis live there in a small compound where they proudly maintain their culture.

When I entered the courtyard of the Sidis of Patthar Kuwa in the Old City of Ahmedabad, heart pounding excitingly, I found a quiet, welcoming oasis and I instantly felt at home. As I sat in her small living room, the first thing the matriarch, Rumanaben Siddi, said was "We are Muslims and Africans." I told her my father was African and Muslim too. When I added he was Senegalese, she was even more delighted. Some men from the compound had performed in Dakar as part of the Siddi Goma group—from ngoma a word derived from the Swahili meaning drum and dance. She introduced me to everyone as "our daughter from Dakar." WIth my few Hindi words gleaned watching Bollywood movies and the help of an Urdu-speaking friend, I made connections over geography, history, language and culture, and it was an emotional, quite magical moment.

My Sidi hosts, like most Sidis (also called Habshis, from the Arabic for Abyssinia), were proud of their ethnic and religious identity. One Sidi song goes like this: We are Habshis originally from Africa / we came to India to stay / we came with dates to trade / with the help of Bava Gor. The Patthar Kuwa compound's shrine to the 14th-century African Muslim saint and agate trader Bava Gor, who settled in Gujarat, attests to this dual African/Islamic identity: it had big drums in the corner. The Sidis honor their saint with the vigorous devotional dancing and drumming for which they are famous.

The Sidis of Ahmedabad are virtually invisible in a city of 3.5 million. But if their present barely registers, their past is highly visible. The 16th-century graves of several African dignitaries can still be seen. One of the most celebrated mosques, built in 1461, bears the name of the Ethiopian Sidi Bashir. In 1570, Sidi Said, an erudite and pious Ethiopian royal slave who later joined a famous Ethiopian general, built a remarkable mosque. With its amazing stone carvings, Sidi Said Mosque is considered a masterpiece of Gujarati architecture. To touch its walls is a moving experience.

Both mosques are the top tourist destinations in the city. Unfortunately, few visitors know what Sidi refers to. A small washed out plaque mentions that Sidi Said was an Abyssinian but who, today, besides African Americans, is aware of what this obsolete term means?

About 50,000 to 70,000 Sidis (whose ancestors originally came from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Lower Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique) are scattered across a country of 1.2 billion people. No wonder most Indians have never heard of them and sometimes mistake them for foreigners.

Because a large number of Sidis were employed at the royal courts of the independent princely states, when those were integrated into India after independence in 1947, they lost their jobs and their status. Today many are taxi drivers, domestics, pedlers, farmers and laborers while some belong to the middle class. Others, whose ancestors fled slavery in the Portuguese enclave of Goa and settled in remote areas, continued to live in small villages in the forests and mountains of Gujarat and Karnataka. In 2009, a few thousand of them came together to celebrate the first anniversary of Barack Obama's presidency. Beecause of the East African connection they consider him one of their own and wanted to send him a cask of honey made by their bees.

The vast majority of Sidis are Muslims, a few are Christians or Hindus. The latter stand apart because they do not fit into the very strict Hindu caste system. Some Sidi settlements, organized as separate communities, have the status of "scheduled tribes," which offers a modicum of affirmative action programs. Depending on where they live, Sidis speak Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Konkani, or other local languages. Education, the need to maintain their distinctive culture and have a strong leadership are some of the priorities expressed by various Sidi groups.

Just west of Gujarat, neighboring Pakistan is also home to African descendants, generally known there as Sheedis. They live in the south, mostly in Baluchistan and Sindh. With their Iranian counterparts they form the largest group of African descendants in the region, with about 250,000 people along the Makran coast who can claim an African origin. Other Afro-Asian communities can be found in the Maldives (the place that provided all the cowry shells brought to Africa during the slave trade) and Sri Lanka. Their ancestors, free and enslaved, settled on these islands over the last eight centuries.

Touring South Asia on the footsteps of the Sidis of yesterday and today is an extraordinary, grandiose experience and a reminder that the African Diaspora stretches to the four corners of the globe.

More on the Afro-Asians of yesterday and today

Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers, a groundbreaking exhibition on view at the Schomburg Center through July 18.

Online Exhibition

The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

Books

Africans in India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:33:45 -0400

Generals, commanders, admirals, prime ministers, and rulers, East Africans greatly distinguished themselves in India. They wrote a story unparalleled in the rest of the world — that of enslaved Africans attaining the pinnacle of military and political authority not only in a foreign country but also on another continent. Come discover their extraordinary story in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Schomburg Center — on view from February 1 to July 6 — and on March 21, join Dr. Faeeza Jasdanwalla, a descendant of the African dynasty of Janjira for a conversation on this unique history.

Following free traders and artisans who migrated to and traded with India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia in the fist centuries of the common era; from the 1300s onward, East Africans from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and adjacent areas entered the Indian subcontinent, mostly though the slave trade. Others came as soldiers and sailors. From Bengal in the northeast to Gujarat in the west and to the Deccan in Central India, they vigorously asserted themselves in the country of their enslavement. The success was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status. As foreigners and Muslims, some of these Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations.

Besides appearing in written documents, East Africans, known as Habshis (Abyssinians) and Sidis, have been immortalized in the rich paintings of different eras, states, and styles that form an important part of Indian culture. Africans in India features dramatically stunning photographic reproductions of some of these paintings, as well as photographs.

As rulers, city planners, and architects, the Sidis have left an impressive historical and architectural legacy that attest to their determination, skills, and intellectual, cultural, military and political savvy. The imposing forts, mosques, mausoleums, and other edifices they built — some more than 500 years ago — still grace the Indian landscape. They left their mark in the religious realm too. The 14th century African Muslim Sufi saint Bava Gor and his sister, Mai Misra, have devotees of all origins, not only in India, but also in Pakistan. Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Zoroastrians frequent their shrines.

From humble beginnings, some Africans carved out princely states — Janjira and Sachin — complete with their own coats of arms, armies, mints, and stamps. They fiercely defended them from powerful enemies well into the 20th century when, with another 600 princely states, they were integrated into the Indian State.

To curate this exhibition with my friend Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins, renowned collector, expert in the history of the Africans in India and co-editor of Africans Elites in India: Habshi Amarat, was an old dream. It is also the continuation of an exploration of the eastern reaches of the African Diaspora started in 2011. The first leg of this journey was the online exhibition The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World. Today, it has been seen in over 90 countries. The same year the Schomburg Center hosted, for several months, a gorgeous exhibition of quilts made by Sidi women. Curated by Dr. Henry Drewal, Soulful Stitching was an immense success.

Africans in India presents a unique facet of the African experience in India, one that has not received, in the present, the recognition it deserves. By bringing out of obscurity the lives and accomplishments of some of the Sidis of yesterday, this new exhibition inscribes their fascinating story in the richly diverse history of the global African Diaspora.

For more, please visit

The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

Related Free Events

March 21 at 6:30pm: Talks at the Schomburg. Join our special guest Dr. Faaeza Jasdanwalla, a descendant of the African dynasty of Janjira, and Dr. Kenneth Robbins and John McLeod, editors of African Elites in India for a conversation on the history of Africans in India.

April 6 at 6:30: Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America

Django Unchained: Lorraine Hansberry Unbridled

Christopher Paul Moore, Senior Researcher, Schomburg Center — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 06:42:57 -0500

Angelic stranger, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) grants freedom to hapless Texas slave Django (Jamie Foxx). Schultz, a kindly German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, provides Django with employment, trusting friendship and his first handgun. Django is reborn as a slave-turned-bounty hunter, becoming a vengeful black American superman on a dangerous and deadly mission to free his lovely German-educated wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), from a Mississippi cotton plantation.

Django Unchained, directed by Quentin Tarantino, is a fascinating and troubling movie about slavery, freedom and violence in America. With a little extra viewer study, it could become an important film experience.

In 1858, Schultz and Django ride from Texas to Mississippi, collecting bodies and bounty checks, cash and promissory notes along the way.

"This is my world! And my world has gotten dirty," laments Schultz, after another bounty-winning bloodletting day.

Schultz and Django encounter plantation Big Daddy (Don Johnson) a charming slave-owner with added interest in constructing a destructive future Ku Klux Klan. Continuing to Mississippi, Schultz and Django arrive at a much larger plantation, Candie Land, owned by the very wealthy and sophisticated Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), a docile appearing house slave, serves slyly as Candie Land's ultimate overseer — a slave commander plus a decipherer of truth, goodness and evil — an authentic African Obeah (or Obi) transformed to an African-American monster. From 1858 to long beyond slavery, Stephen will live on in many American households, like any favorite uncle: Tom, Remus or Ben.

Django Unchained is irreverently violent, often reproachfully racist and so much like D.W. Griffith's 1915 Birth Of A Nation, the two films should ideally play back-to-back someday. Its lead character comes from the 1960s Italian film series, Django, starring Franco Nero, a gunman drifter who dragged a coffin on his violent journeys. Django replaced Sergio Leone's leading "man with no name" character (Clint Eastwood) as spaghetti Western box office favorite.

Laden more with schnitzel and beer than pasta, Django Unchained is influenced much by Karl May, the 19th century German novelist. May (pronounced My) wrote popular books about Germany's incremental spread into the global colonial world, including Asia, Africa and America, and German encounters with indigenous peoples. As a child, Germany's 20th century emerging artist-turned-Führer, Adolph Hitler, immensely enjoyed May's romantic conquest fantasies, in addition to trusting authentic historian accounts about the American expansion of the West, from sea to shining sea.

German production companies started Spaghetti Westerns in the late 1950s, filming Karl May-derived scripts in Italy as the surrogate American West. One powerfully repugnant scene may reawaken the late Fuhrer's delight and disgust, as a sadistically entertaining mandingo-canine mismatch nauseates the German, but not the more fearless Django, who then becomes Schultz's mentor.

"I am just a little more used to Americans than he (Schultz) is," intones Django, as he edges toward his very possible ancestral namesake, Shango (Xango), traditionally invoked by believers for male potency, fertility and war. More powerful than any handgun or rifle, Foxx's dynamite Django vaporizes Eastwood's charmingly destructive original.

Samuel L. Jackson's superbly delivered Stephen reminded me of a favorite unpublished slavery screenplay, The Drinking Gourd, written by playwright Lorraine Hansberry in 1959. Commissioned by NBC as a teleplay, it was judged "superb" by one network official, but dropped, essentially because of Hansberry's firm storyline opinion that slavery was wrong. The Hansberry play contains a Stephen character, too, whom she named Coffin.

Her surnamed Hansberry grandparents were slaves from Mississippi. In an unpublished letter to the Village Voice, she connected the American slave experience with the Holocaust:

"I have long since learned that it is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald, they just dressed more attractively and their accents are softer," Hansberry wrote, adding, "The slavocracy was neither gentle nor vague; it was a system of absolutism: he who stood up and preached 'discontent' directly had his courageous head chopped off; his militant back flogged to shreds; the four points of his limbs fastened down to saplings, or his eyes gouged out."

Hansberry studied slavery from materials at The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for the television project.

I have not spoken to Tarantino but his interview by The Root's editor-in-chief Henry Louis Gates offers important insights into his cinematic mission.

"I think America is one of the only countries that has not been forced, sometimes by the rest of the world, to look their own past sins completely in the face," Tarantino said.

"And it's only by looking them in the face that you can possibly work past them."

Great Americans named Douglass, DuBois, Wells, Bethune, King, X (Shabazz), Baldwin and Hansberry fundamentally argued that America's ugliest disfiguring was the self-castration of its own humane ideals.

Likely, Dr. King and Malcolm X would be with Spike Lee and Tarantino, in part, on this film. In his autobiography, Malcolm X expressed an unnamed partnership on the root cause and outcome of generations of fanciful national history:

"When the white man came into this country, he certainly wasn't demonstrating any 'non-violence.' In fact, the very man (Dr. King) whose name symbolizes non-violence here today has stated: "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy.

We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.

Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it... It was upon this massive base of racism that the prejudice toward the nonwhite was readily built, and found rapid growth. This long-standing racist ideology has corrupted and diminished our democratic ideals. It is this tangled web of prejudice from which many Americans now seek to liberate themselves, without realizing how deeply it has been woven into their consciousness."

[From Autobiography of Malcolm X, As Told To Alex Haley, by Malcolm X, 1965 / MLK Jr. excerpt from Why We Can't Wait, by Martin Luther King Jr., 1964]

In 1960, American star Henry Fonda agreed to plans for the The Drinking Gourd and negotiations with Claudia McNeal and British star Laurence Olivier were underway when NBC abruptly passed on the script. In 1967, radio station WBAI commemorated the second anniversary of Hansberry's death, broadcasting two scenes from the script, voiced by Cicely Tyson, Will Geer, James Earl Jones and Rip Torn.

When my Moore family arrived at the Manhattan movie theatre, my sixth grade son passed up the opportunity to see Django Unchained with his twelfth grade brother, mother and me. Instead he went with his aunt Imani to see The Hobbit.

"You all look exhausted!" my younger son exclaimed as we walked wearily toward him after the movie. We were tired of all the killing. Make-believe killing is tiring, even in an important and valuable film. My wife, Kim Yancey, who introduced me to Lorraine Hansberry's works, liked the performances but she was just plain tired by the violence. My older son unequivocally enjoyed the movie, but he was weary, too (thankfully!) from the so lengthy killing stretches. He is a video production intern and he is learning that movies are never the last stop in the learning curve, but can be the first step. We have a few books at home and I figured a trip to the library would help translate Django Unchained from a potential waste of family time.

Spielberg's Lincoln cinematically constructs the Thirteenth Amendment. Many viewers may see that Tarantino's Django Unchained deconstructs the Second Amendment. Django Unchained is Historical Literacy 101 (with or without popcorn). Syllabus: Hansberry, Malcolm X, MLK Jr.

For more information:

The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry including Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers, New American Library, 1983.
Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone, by Christopher Frayling
Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture, New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Publication, National Geographic 2005.

Chris Moore is author Fighting For America: Black Soldiers, The Unsung Heroes of World War II and co-author Standing In The Need of Prayer: A Celebration of Black Prayer and Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture.

Manhattan Woman and 20,000 Slaves

Christopher Paul Moore, Senior Researcher, Schomburg Center — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:12:35 -0500

Genealogical Ties That Bind.

We met at the Chambers Street IRT subway station — Lynn Jencks, descendant of an early Dutch family, and me, descendant of Lenape, Dutch and Africans. About 400 years ago, Dutch and enslaved Africans arrived into the ancient Algonquian wilderness that became New York City. Lynn, who lives in Illinois, had never been to the property owned by her ancestors and worked upon by slaves.

"Christopher guided me out of the subway and we emerged into the crisp clear December air," Lynn wrote in an email account of our walk. "We walked a short distance to Duane Park, a tiny triangle of green at the intersection of Hudson and Duane Streets."

The park is part of the Domine (Minister's) Farm, once owned by Protestant Dutch Rev. Everardus Bogardus and his wife, Anneke Jans. Rev. Bogardus is notable among colonial Christian ministers, as he opposed the relentless wars against the natives, supported education of black children and performed marriages and baptisms of free and enslaved blacks. Lynn's ancestors and a few of my own are registered in the Kinderboek, one of our city's oldest documents.

Duane Park is the city's oldest American park, founded in 1797 (Bowling Green is older but it was created during the English reign — 1733) elicited Lynn's biggest smiles of the day.

"It is the last little sliver of my ancestors' farm that remains, somehow escaping 400 years of development," Lynn explained.

From Duane Park we walked east along Chambers Street, where once stood an island-wide slave-constructed wall from the Hudson to the East River, much wider than the more famous Wall constructed by enslaved laborers at Wall Street in 1653.

At Broadway, we reached the 6.6 acre property, once owned by Lynn's 17th century great aunt, Sarah Roloff Kiersted Van Borsum, step-daughter of Rev. Bogardus.

"As an adult, Sarah (some sort of great-aunt to me) befriended the Native Americans, with whom the Dutch colonists were at frequent war and whom the Dutch eventually expelled from the territory," stated Lynn.

In 1669, Sarah received a 2260-acre land grant in New Jersey (Bogata and Teaneck) from Lenape-Hackensack Chief Oratamy. During the brief Dutch return to power (July 1673 – November 1674) Sarah received the burial ground property from Petrus Stuvesant, for her role as an Indian translator. Sometime after that grant, it became used for African burials.

"Sara gave permission to the enslaved Africans to bury their dead on her property. Within a few decades, this area was named on a map as the 'Negro Burial Ground,' eventually containing the graves of an estimated 15,000-20,000 Africans by the time it closed at the end of the 18th century," wrote Lynn.

Unearthed during construction of a 34 story federal office building at 290 Broadway in 1991, the cemetery became a NYC landmark in 1993 and a National Monument in 2007. Four hundred and nineteen burial remains were reburied in individual wooden coffins in seven mounds at the memorial site.

"Christopher brought me here, and as I stood in that place, I had an overwhelming sense of something coming full circle. I was intensely aware of the connection between my ancestors, on whose land this burial ground had begun, and of Christopher's, whose ancestors' community had buried their dead here."

The African Burial Ground National Monument Visitor Center is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and is closed on Christmas Day and Thanksgiving Day. The African Burial Ground National Memorial is open every day from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. except Christmas Day and Thanksgiving.

Lynn Jencks is a Doctoral Candidate in Theology and Religion at Northwestern University.

Chris Moore is Senior Researcher and co-author of The Black New Yorkers: 400 Years of African American History and Standing In The Need Of Prayer: A Celebration of Black Prayer and a member of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

For additional resources, visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Lincoln: The Untold Story

Christopher Paul Moore, Senior Researcher, Schomburg Center — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 04:32:29 -0500

As Hollywood films about the passage of the 13th Amendment go, Lincoln is certainly the best one ever made! There really aren't any others. I saw it with my sons, sixth and 12th graders in Brooklyn public schools. They loved the film and saw it as an exciting movie about American history. Would they recommend it to other kids, I asked. "Yes," they agreed, "Lincoln is a movie that all students should see."

I agree Lincoln is a great film. But it's not perfect.

The 13th Amendment, a law (stronger than the Emancipation Proclamation) with actual legislative power to end slavery in America, is Lincoln's explosive and learned story. Stephen Spielberg's film accurately portrays President Lincoln's vital concern for the passage of the 13th Amendment by February 1865, two months before the expected Confederacy surrender.

In the film, Lincoln strongly believes that if the war ends, without Congress abolishing slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation may collapse and slavery will resume. The whole story of Lincoln is this: The President can win with his white and black soldiers on the battlefield, but can he win in Congress? If he wins, Lincoln vows to add two more protective amendments (14th and 15th) and begin a lasting Reconstruction, for African Americans and the nation.

New York City Congressman Fernando Wood is portrayed as a hateful Democratic Lincoln enemy, insulting the President as "Africanus" Lincoln, despising blacks, and denouncing the 13th Amendment as anti-American business. As NYC Mayor in 1861, Wood supported Wall Street's substantial interests in the South's slave-dependent "free enterprise" economy, and called, unsuccessfully, for NYC to also secede from the Union. President Lincoln believes that without legislatively eliminating slavery, the South would rapidly re-strengthen itself and crush any opportunities for blacks.

Powerful and convincingly played by Daniel Day Lewis as the president, Lincoln is a tour de force exposition of down and dirty American legislative politics. To achieve liberty for all American men, this Honest Abe is as necessarily deceptive, bribing, and untrustworthy as any bigoted Civil War politician. Lincoln delays an early end to the war (allowing thousands more to die) in order to achieve his great American dream.

Throughout Lincoln, Spielberg does his usual splendid job of adventurous and exciting filmmaking. Black soldiers are prominently represented in battle scenes. Yet, a thoroughly whipped and forlorn Confederate General Robert E. Lee gets a huge Spielberg cinematic break.

On April 9, 1865, 3,500 "colored" Union soldiers stood guard along with white soldiers around the Appomattox Court House. In the film, not one black soldier is anywhere near the Lee surrender. By the end of the Civil War, 179,000 black men served as soldiers in the Union Army, another 19,000 served in the Navy. (I am still recovering from those missing 1,800 black soldiers who landed bravely on D-Day beaches in 1944, but were unseen in Saving Private Ryan). Lincoln is much better in its accounting of black soldier heroism.

Historian Eric Foner, author of the The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, told CNN that the film is a good one, but its narrow focus exaggerates the president's role in ending slavery. "The emancipation of the slaves is a long, complicated, historical process. It's not the work of one man, no matter how great he was." Foner said.

An important historic scene — included in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Team of Rivals, on which Lincoln is based, but left out of the film — was the second assassination attempt made against the Lincoln administration that Good Friday evening, April 14, 1865. At the very moment Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater, Secretary of State William Seward lay asleep at home when another assassin (partner to John Wilkes Boothe) plunged a bowie knife at Seward's throat. Seward survived, but his cheek was nearly severed completely off. Vice President Andrew Johnson was said to be a third target that evening, but a last minute decision spared Johnson's life, and likely shaped his post-war legislative anti-black path. Inclusion of the broader assassination plot may help viewers (and citizens) comprehend the aborted Reconstruction, racial hatred and Jim Crow-era, which followed the Civil War.

Some commentators have criticized the film for its absence of black leaders, particularly Frederick Douglass, within the anti-slavery campaign. The film confines President Lincoln to essentially behind-the-scenes deals and clashes with an all-white congress.

For a more comprehensive view of how African Americans participated in their own emancipation, I would recommend the Schomburg Center's exhibition, Visualizing Emancipation, curated by Deborah Willis.

See Lincoln and visit Visualizing Emancipation!

The writer's sons are members of Schomburg Center Junior Scholars. Chris Moore is Senior Researcher and author of Fighting For America: Black Soldiers, The Unsung Heroes of World War II.

Clicks to the Black World

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:20:41 -0400

Digital Schomburg's online exhibitions on various aspects of the black experience have truly become a global phenomenon. They are attracting visitors from all over the world. From Argentina to Zimbabwe and Montenegro and the Maldives in between. What do they know that perhaps you don't?

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience remains the most visited curated exhibition of The New York Public Library. With a few clicks, visitors from 206 countries and territories, including Kazakhstan, Tonga, Suriname, Mongolia and Malawi, continue to explore its 16,000 pages of texts (392 books, book chapters, and articles) 8,300 illustrations, 67 maps and 100 lesson plans. In Motion offers a new interpretation of African-American history that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. In 13 defining movements this exhibition documents 400 years of migration to, within and out of the United States. From the move West to the Return South; from the Great Migration to the contemporary Caribbean and African immigration; from Haitians in Louisiana to African Americans in Liberia, In Motion maps out dynamic journeys of hope.

Africana Age: African & Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century takes an in-depth look at the social, political, economic, and cultural transformations that occurred in the 20th century and paved the way for major positive developments in the post-colonial, post-segregation, post-apartheid first decade of the 21st century.

It has been viewed in 153 countries. Topics such as African Resistance to Colonization, African Americans and World War I, Black Power and Pan-Africanism, have found readers not only throughout the Black World but also in Myanmar, Indonesia, New Zealand, Brunei and Fiji. But it is the essay "The Colonization of Africa" that has been a surprise hit. It is the most visited single page of The New York Public Library’s online exhibitions.

African dynasties in India? 1.5 to 2 million African descendants in Iraq? Afro-Pakistani culture? There is much more to discover in The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World. From Arabia and Iran to India and Sri Lanka, this exhibition maps out a truly unique and fascinating story of struggles and achievements across a variety of societies, cultures, religions, languages and times. It has attracted curious minds in India, Pakistan, Yemen and Oman as could be expected but moreover it has reached 87 countries as diverse as Greece, Finland, Israel, Ukraine, and Argentina.

Informative essays by renowned scholars experts in their fields; unique documents and illustrations from the rich collections of the Center; easy navigation and attractive design have made the Schomburg’s online exhibitions an international success.

What the numbers and the reach tell us is that knowledge about African and African Diasporan history and culture is in great demand the world over and Digital Schomburg's online exhibitions are at the vanguard in its dissemination.

See for yourself! Come and discover these and other exhibitions. Visit Online Exhibitions.

Digital Schomburg is more than exhibitions. It offers access to books, audio-visual resources, back issues of our newsletter, and selected links to high-quality sites, and large databases of books, articles, oral histories, images, maps, interviews, and television programs.

Reclaiming My West Indian Roots, with Poetry

Ann-Marie Nicholson, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:53:14 -0400

As a young girl growing up in Jamaica — and later in Brooklyn, NY — I often heard the poetry of Louise Bennett (Jamaicans affectionately call her "Miss Lou") permeate the air. One of my earliest recollections of Miss Lou’s lyricism was hearing the term mout amassi (big mouth). The term comes from the title of one of her most popular poems about a young lady, Liza, who loves to gossip and chat.

To be called a "mout amassi" was far from a compliment and the nickname could follow one around for a lifetime. Adults used it on adults and children alike. Children used it on each other, often eliciting uncontrollable laughter.

I have more fond memories of how Miss Lou’s poetry reverberated throughout my youth and the many phrases that I—as well as my fellow islanders—eagerly adapted to tease as well as to assert my identity.

Many years removed from my childhood, it would take a long time before I returned to my roots. It wasn’t until I was in grad school getting my master’s in English Literature, with a focus on postcolonial literature, that I ventured beyond the poetry of the Romantics and the Harlem Renaissance. In one of my classes, Caribbean Literature, my professor further exposed me to Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanaphone writers and poets, like: Derek Walcott, Olive Senior, Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, and Reinaldo Arenas. The lyricism of these poets — from varied backgrounds and languages — spoke to me and my cultural identity. I realized, albeit not too late, that the reason these poets resonated with me was because I had never really forgotten my roots — they just needed to be watered and restored.

Below are a few West Indian poets whose works capture and transcend their shared cultural heritage:

Derek Walcott, born in 1930, is from Saint Lucia. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 for his epic poem, Omeros — based on Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. Walcott is currently a professor of poetry at the University of Essex.

Kamau Brathwaite was born in Barbados in 1930. He is currently a Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University.

Martin Carter (d. 1997) was a Guyanese poet, whose work came to symbolize post-colonial nationalism.

Grace Nichols was born in Guyana. Grace Nichols lives in England with the poet John Agard and their daughter Kalera. Watch her talk about one of her poems on bbc.co.uk.

John Agard was born in Guyana and currently resides in England.

Olive Senior was born in Jamaica. She currently resides in Toronto, Canada.

A Poem A Day

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:01:12 -0400

April is National Poetry Month, and I promised myself to read a poem a day. Some poets of the black experience immediately came to mind: Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay, Sonia Sanchez, Audrey Lorde, to name a few. But then I decided to venture unto new territory and immerse myself into recent works.

I selected four great poets — and distinguished scholars training new generations — who published collections in 2010 and 2011. I found history, current events and the future in their works; and grace, beauty, heartache, struggles and joy.

Nikky Finney, a dear friend of the Schomburg Center said it, of course much better, in an interview with the National Book Foundation. "I am incredibly drawn to history; personal history, American history, Southern history, family history, the history of a community, the history of secrets, the history that has gone missing, the history that has been told by the lion hunter but not the lion, the history of pencils, of loss, of tenderness, the history of what the future just might be if we would only... I believe our many beautiful ways of saying and communicating and the telling of our stories has been taken for granted and we can't let that happen. All of us who make something with our hands and hearts must step into every arena that we possibly can and bring with us the most eloquent, charged, radical (radical only means grabbing it by the root), tender, truthful words spilling from our arms. Our children deserve this from us."

Nikky Finney, 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, Provost’s Distinguished Service Professor of English at the University of Kentucky

Finney at the National Book Award Ceremony

Terrance Hayes, 2010 National Book Award for Poetry, Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University

Hayes reading from Lighthead

Thomas Sayers Ellis, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College

Ellis reading "All their Stanzas Look Alike"

Tracy K. Smith, 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University

Smith reads some of her poems

On April 17, come celebrate National Poetry Month at the Schomburg Center with Yusef Komunyakaa, Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.

What else can you do? The Academy of American Poets — which inaugurated the National Poetry Month in 1996 — shares some ideas.

Survivors: Sand Island

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:55:45 -0500

July 31, 1761: The French ship l'Utile, illegally transporting 160 Africans from Madagascar to Ile de France (Mauritius), approaches Sand Island. Because the captain worries about a potential revolt, he orders the hatches to be nailed shut. In the night, the ship runs into a reef and capsizes.

What follows is, arguably, the most extraordinary story of survival ever documented.

More than 70 Africans trapped in the hold died that night, while 123 French crew and passengers (18 had died) escaped. Only when the ship broke down could 88 Madagascans reach shore. Their refuge was the wind-swept, bare, treeless, and deserted Sand Island, less than a mile long and half a mile wide. Within three days, 28 Africans died, most likely because the crew refused to share the water and food salvaged from l'Utile. For the next three weeks, after having dug a well, the survivors built a raft. On September 27, all the French got on board, abandoning 60 stunned Madagascans with three months worth of food and a promise to ask for a rescue mission. Four days later, they safely reached Madagascar, but the governor — perhaps worried that the illegal slave trading operation would be exposed — categorically refused to send help.

Meanwhile, the Madagascans organized their precarious existence. They lived on a diet of turtles, birds, eggs, oysters, fish, and a few roots. They retrieved pots and other items from the ship and kept the same fire burning. To protect themselves, they built sturdy houses with blocks of coral and compacted sand. Their walls were thick — up to five feet. Several rooms, including a workshop, can still be seen. Over the years, these amazingly ingenuous survivors made, repaired, and transformed over 700 objects. The women fashioned clothes out of feathers and decorated hair pins out of pieces of metal.

But life was terribly hard on this desolate piece of arid land, and two years after the shipwreck, half the people had passed away. Determined to get out of this hell, the 31 survivors built a raft and made a sail out of feathers. The 18 men and women who boarded it in search of help never reached land.

Incredibly, another 12 years passed before a ship was sent to rescue the Madagascans. In August 1775, a dingy with two men approached but was wrecked by the wind. One sailor made it back to the ship but the other was stuck on the island. The following year, two expeditions were unable to land. So, once again, the Africans built a raft with feathered sails and the last three men, as well as three women and the sailor departed in July 1776. They too were lost at sea.

By then seven women had lived for 15 years on Sand Island (today Tromelin Island). Finally, on November 28, 1776, they were rescued along with an eight-month-old boy, whose mother, Tsimiavo, and extremely weak grandmother were still alive. Two buried skeletons, possibly of a young woman and an adolescent, will be discovered centuries later.

This shameful story of exploitation and racism is also one of unimaginable resourcefulness, adaptability, and resilience. The courageous survivors used all their skills and acquired and perfected others to organize and keep together a functioning community in these horrendous circumstances. That they endured for so long against such odds is truly astounding. They were all heroes. As we celebrate International Women's Day and Women's History Month, let's have a special thought for the seven extraordinary and creative women who for 15 long years lived, hoped, and persevered, forgotten about but nevertheless determined to survive on Sand Island.

For More About this Story

Tromelin l'ile aux esclaves oublies — an excellent book by a French archeological team that has conducted research in 2006, 2008, and 2010
Les naufrages de l'ile Tromelin — a historical novel that covers only the two months when the French were on the island and has only a few superficial pages devoted to the Africans
Website of the French archeological mission — some parts are in English
Trailer of the documentary Les esclaves oublies de Tromelin
Article from The Independent

Bollywood and Africa: A Love Story

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:30:51 -0500

Few people in the West have heard international superstar Akon's new hit. But tens of millions throughout the rest of the world have been dancing to Chammak Challo for weeks. Why? Because the catchy tune is the musical centerpiece of the latest Bollywood sci-fi blockbuster Ra. One, whose (super) hero is no other than Shahrukh Khan, the most popular actor in the (rest of) the world. That Akon, a Senegalese, sings in Hindi will come as a surprise to many, but not to Africans. They have been singing Bollywood tunes in Hindi for 60 years.

Indian cinema arrived in West Africa in the early 1950s and people instantly related to it. Like them, Indians revered the family and the elders, dressed in long tunics, ate with their fingers, and carried loads on their heads. There were turbans and veils, cows in the streets, vibrant colors, large weddings, multi-generational households, songs, dances, tabla drumming, and romantic love — but no explicit sexuality.

More significantly, arranged marriages, caste barriers, and the importance of morality, honor, family name, and religion were all topics central to Bollywood and to African societies. Life under and the struggle against colonialism; the poor, the exploited and the oppressed as central characters; and mythology — issues European and American cinemas completely ignored — strongly resonated on the continent. Bollywood offered a model of cultural resistance and a path between tradition and modernity.

Although they were neither dubbed nor sub-titled, people flocked to Hindi films. After seeing a movie several times — and because of the recurrent themes — they understood enough Hindi to navigate the plots.

Senegal — arguably the most Indianophile West African country — counts more than 40 Indian clubs: men and women, young and old dress, sing, and dance Indian style; and the Miss Hindu competition was held there for several years. The most watched program on RDV TV is India in Senegal; and Allo Bombay follows Bollywood news. In Dakar, an Indian who owns a video store gives dance and Hindi classes several times a week.

In Northern Nigeria, the Islamic resurgence that followed the Iranian revolution in 1979 has re-framed the immense popularity of Bollywood. Islamic schools' girls choirs, as well as a male Sufi group, Society for the Lovers of India, sing Bollywood soundtracks with Hausa lyrics praising the Prophet Muhammad.

Indian films have inspired Hausa musicians, poets, and writers; and since the 1990s a local film industry on video, influenced by Bollywood, is popular among Hausa in Nigeria and Niger, whereas the southern Nigeria Nollywood films have limited success.

But as a few directors are catering to a wealthy Indian Diaspora, some wonder if the Bollywood/Africa love affair is not inching toward divorce. Still there are enough films on corruption, love, women's struggles, terrorism, and religious issues to satisfy an African audience. Some wish that African cinema could emulate Indian films, which maintain their cultural perspective and still appeal to different cultures. While Bollywood indeed remains rooted, it is also greatly influenced by the culture of the African Diaspora. After song and dance routines met funk, disco, Michael Jackson, and hip-hop, they were never the same.

Pirated Bollywood DVDs continue to sell in Africa, but Indian series are now all the rage and have replaced the Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas from Dakar to Madagascar. When Pallavi Kulkarni, the heroine of the immensely popular series Vaidehi, visited Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire last year, throngs of people lined the streets in a welcome that had not been seen in Dakar since the Senegalese soccer team returned from the quarter final of the World Cup in 2002.

Now with Akon and his perfect Hindi, there is one more reason for Africans to love Bollywood, and for India to expand its cultural and economic reach on the continent.

News: This post has been cited in International Business Times Articles on Bollywood and Africa

Brian Larkin, "Bollywood Comes to Nigeria"
Abdalla Uba Adamu, "Transglobal Media Flows and African Popular Culture: Revolution and Reaction in Muslim Hausa Popular Culture"
Articles accessible from NYPL locations:
- Olivier Barlet, "Bollywood/Africa: A Divorce?"
- Brian Larkin, "Bandiri Music, Globalization, and Urban Experience in Nigeria"
Selected books on Bollywood
My favorite Shahrukh Khan movies
Discover the unique story of The African Diaspora in India

Sannu Niger!

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:58:00 -0500

The capture last week of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi who, disguised as a Tuareg, was trying to flee to Niger — where one of his brothers and some high-ranking officials have found refuge — has turned a spotlight on a country few people have heard of.

“Niger? You mean Nigeria?” No Niger, the largest country in West Africa. “The country of the Nigerians?” No, the country of the Nigeriens.

I have visited Niger several times and always came back with wonderful memories... and exceptional crafts. It is one of the most fascinating places I know.

Sannu (hello) Niger!

With over 490,000 square miles, Niger covers more territory than Nigeria. But the latter’s 167 million inhabitants make it the seventh most populous country in the world while the former is home to just above 15 million people. Not surprising since the Sahara desert occupies more than two-thirds of Niger’s landmass. The landlocked country is surrounded by seven sometimes difficult neighbors: Algeria, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, and Chad.

A Tuareg rebellion that lasted for years; famines in 2005 and 2009 and food insecurity foreseen for 2012; the presence of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; and the reinsertion of 200,000 Nigerien emigrants who fled Libya empty-handed are some of the issues the country has been facing. Moreover, at the UN General Assembly, President Mahamadou Issoufou, a mining engineer, has warned that the circulation, in the desert, of heavy weapons following the Libyan revolution could pose serious threats not only to his country but also to the region and beyond.

But Niger is more than the sum of its problems. I love its arid environment and the desert has some extraordinary sandscapes, however it is the people I find remarkable. Nigerien pageantry is unparalleled. It is colorful yet restrained; mysterious and friendly.

I vividly remember the astonishing sight of thousands of men crossing a bridge over the River Niger, in total silence. Hausa on horseback, their boubous (kaftans) and turbans shining in the sun; Tuareg on camels, with only their eyes visible; and Bororo on foot, sporting long braids and delicately embroidered clothes. It had taken them days and for some, weeks, to reach the capital, Niamey, for a cultural festival.

An otherwise poor country whose main resource is uranium, Niger is rich in culture and diversity. The Tuareg, people of the Sahara whose men wear face veils but women do not, are incomparable silversmiths. Their delicate, abstract jewelry is too hard to resist. The Wodaabe or Bororo, Fulani nomads, are renowned for the gerewol, a distinctive yearly event. Young men, painted and dressed up, dance in front of young women in a male beauty pageant that has no parallel in the world. The Hausa, majestic horsemen whose brightly caparisoned horses are a sight to see, look like medieval knights.

One could imagine that Niger lives in a time warp with camels in the streets and people who look like they have just stepped out of a historical epic; but these same people have a cell phone in their pocket. Young entrepreneurs are opening high-tech companies; students back from universities in Morocco, Great Britain, France, or the US are creating new businesses; and the country will extract its first barrel of oil next week.

On the cultural front, Niger has emerged as a leading force in African hip-hop. Fearless rappers tackle political and social issues. High fashion may not come to mind when talking about Niamey but the city is home to celebrated designer Alphadi, called the Prince of the Desert, whose creations are shown all over the world.

If "land of contrasts" were not a cliche, I would apply it to Niger.

Books

Ousseina Alidou, Engaging Modernity
Alison Behnke, Niger in Pictures
Samuel Decalo, Historical Dictionary of Niger
Zarma Folktales of Niger

Music

Etran Finatawa - Bororo and Tuareg contemporary music

Photos

Nikky Finney Wins National Book Award in Poetry

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:07:09 -0500

On November 16, Nikky Finney received the 2011 National Book Award in Poetry for her book Head Off & Split. Political, sensual, historical, imaginative, Finney’s poems speak of struggle, beauty, love, and race with passion and tenderness. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she has been teaching for several years, congratulates her on her wonderful achievement.

Finney, Provost’s Distinguished Service Chair Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, has been on the faculty of the Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute since 2008. One of the students’ favorites, she brings passion, warmth, and inspiration to her creative writing seminars. As the director of the Institute, I’m always excited when I get her e-mail simply saying, “yes, yes, yes” to my invitation to come back.

I met Finney in New Orleans in 2007. We shared a room at Tulane University during a week-long conference. The city was still reeling from Katrina. As she read her poem Left, about a young woman who had taken refuge on a roof during the hurricane, there was palpable emotion in the room. When she stopped, everyone gave her a standing ovation. I did not. I remained on my chair in the first row, too overcome to move.

The daughter of civil rights activists (her father was a civil rights attorney,) Finney, who grew up in South Carolina, was immersed at a young age in African Americans’ fight for human rights. Asked recently if she is an activist poet, she replied, “Absolutely, absolutely — but I think that I consider myself an activist, and that makes it into my work. I also consider myself a lover of beautiful things and lyrical languages and empathy, as well. I definitely believe that the word 'activism' and the ideals of activism are at the core of what I do.”

Finney is no stranger to applause. Her beautiful book The World Is Round won the 2004 Benjamin Franklin Award for Poetry, and Rice was the winner of a PEN America Open Book Award in 1995. Finney is also the author of Wings Made of Gauze (1985); Heartwood, a collection of stories; and she is the editor of The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South.

And, yes, yes, yes, she will be back at the Schomburg–Mellon Humanities Summer Institute in July 2012, inspiring a new crop of fellows.

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa

Ann-Marie Nicholson, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 05:39:44 -0500

“The writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society’s weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.”

Nigerian environmentalist, author, and television producer Ken Saro-Wiwa lived and died by the words above. Born on October 10, 1941, Kenule “Ken” Beeson Saro Wiwa was an Ogoni (an ethnic minority in Nigeria). Ogoniland, located in the Niger Delta, is rich in oil that has been looted by the petroleum industry — with the explicit consent of the Nigerian government — for decades. As a result, the Niger Delta is listed as one of the most polluted places in the world; its population is poor and powerless.

Saro-Wiwa spent a great deal of his life and resources trying to fight against the environmental destruction of the land and waters of Ogoniland. He founded the non-violent organization Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) as a way to bring international attention to the plight of his people. An outspoken critic of the Nigerian government and the multi-national oil companies, Saro-Wiwa was arrested and detained numerous times on bogus charges. A prolific writer, he authored many books about his imprisonment, such as Before I am Hanged and A Month and a Day.

In 1994, the Nigerian government under General Sani Abacha charged Saro-Wiwa and eight others with inciting the murders of four conservative Ogoni chiefs. Despite numerous evidence of witness tampering, the nine men were convicted and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. In his closing statement, Saro-Wiwa called out both his government and the Royal Dutch Shell Company:

I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated… I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is on trial… On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence.

Despite international outcry and numerous threats of international sanctions, on November 10, 1995, Nigeria summarily executed Saro-Wiwa and his eight co-defendants.

Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Wiwa, along with international human rights groups, sued Shell for human rights violation inthe Niger Delta and a host of other crimes in connection with Saro-Wiwa’s and other civilian deaths. In 2009, Shell settled the case for $15.5 million USD days before the trial was set to begin in New York City.

Although Shell ceased its operations in Ogoniland in 1993, the environmental damage has not been undone and other oil companies continue to exploit the region.

Today, Saro-Wiwa is remembered as an international symbol of environmental causes.

Resources: Books

A list of materials available at NYPL

Websites

Gold, Freedom, Faith, and Baroque in Brazil

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:26:47 -0400

I had not slept for 34 hours. After a bad flight and two long bus trips, I was hiking, ecstatic, in a muddy mine. I touched the walls from top to bottom. Perhaps “he” had put his hands there too. I was walking in the steps of Galanga, renamed Francisco, and known as Chico Rei (King Chico).

Story -or legend-has it that 270 years ago, Chico Rei, believed to have been a ruler in Congo, his family, and others were forced aboard a slave ship. The Middle Passage took his wife and children, but he and one son survived. They landed in Brazil and were sent to Vila Rica (Rich Town, founded in 1711) in the region of Minas Gerais, the center of the gold rush. For a few years, half of the extracted gold in the world came from its hills — the city is at 4,000 feet elevation — and rivers.

Like another 21,000 enslaved people (97 percent of them African-born) Chico Rei, it is said, labored in the mines. Working every Sunday for himself, he bought his son’s freedom, then his own, and later purchased the Encardadeira mine — where he used to work. With its benefits, he freed a large number of Africans who in turn bought the freedom of others. They built a church dedicated to the Nubian princess St. Iphigenia. The church is located on the highest hill so that it could be seen from everywhere. Inside are representations of two other black saints: Benedict and Antônio de Noto. Fact or fiction — and there is a lot of the latter, as Chico Rei has gained mythical status and his very existence is in dispute for lack of evidence— it is said that Africans went to mass with gold powder in their hair and washed it away in the baptismal fonts.

Chico Rei is credited by the brotherhood with being the founder of the Congado — a religious and cultural dance and procession that culminates in the coronation of the king and queen of Congo — in Minas Gerais. Congados continue to be held every year at the end of October, on January 1, and on May 13, which marks the abolition of slavery in 1888.

Getting to St. Iphigenia is not easy; I kept on sliding downhill, and though I am fit, I was out of breath. As I sat down on the steps, I reflected on the horrible toll that the gold “adorning” so many Baroque churches in Brazil and Portugal took on Africans and their descendants. Perhaps this is why there is so little gold in their church.

I visited another black house of worship. In the low part of town, the black brotherhood Our Lady of the Rosary — active since 1715 — erected a quaint, rounded edifice called Our Lady of the Rosary for the Blacks. Started in 1753, it was finished in 1785. Its altars display images of the black saints Iphigenia, Elesbao (Ethiopia), Benedict, and Antônio de Noto.

Vila Rica was a haut-lieu of art, music, poetry, and architecture, as well as the birthplace of the most famous Brazilian Baroque sculptor, Antônio Francisco Lisboa (ca.1730-1814). The son of a Portuguese sculptor and an enslaved African, he became known as Aleijadinho (little cripple), as leprosy ravaged his body and took away his fingers. He worked with his tools strapped to his wrists. Aleijadinho’s masterpiece, as an architect and sculptor, is the church São Francisco de Assis, designed in 1766. He died poor and forgotten, but there is an Aleijadinho Museum in his hometown.

In 1823, after Independence, Vila Rica became Ouro Preto (Black Gold) an apt, if involuntary, description of who made the city so fabulously rich (actually the gold ore, mixed with silver turned black when exposed to the air). It is an extraordinary 18th-century town of red tiled roofs and green hills that looks very much today as it did in Chico Rei and Aleijadinho’s time. Walking up and own its vertiginously steep and slippery cobblestoned streets is demanding but rewarding. Every house, fountain, bridge, and church (there are 23 of them), is a piece of art and will remain so: the city has been on Unesco’s World Heritage List since 1980.

To Find Out More

To learn how many people were deported from West Central Africa to the Americas by the transatlantic slave trade, and how many Africans arrived in Brazil, see The Abolition of the Slave Trade: The Forgotten Story.

Books and CDs

NYPL holds several dozen books in Portuguese about Vila Rica/Ouro Preto, slavery in Minas Gerais, Chico Rei, and Aleijadinho. Here are a few titles in English:

Laird W. Bergad, Slavery and the Demographic and Economic History of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1720-1888
Elizabeth W. Kiddy, Blacks of the Rosary: Memory and History in Minas Gerais, Brazil
Graciela Mann, Twelve Prophets of Aleijadinho
Arthur Ramos, The Negro in Brazil
In 1933, Brazilian classical composer Francisco Mignone created Maracatu de Chico Rei, a ballet for choir and orchestra inspired by Congados.
Videos

2011 Congado in Ouro Preto
Another Congado
Sweet homage to Chico Rei from the children of Ouro Preto, in front of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Blacks

The Autobiography in Arabic of a Senegalese Enslaved in North Carolina

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:02:36 -0400

In 1831, Omar ibn Said, a Senegalese trader and Qur'anic teacher enslaved in North Carolina, wrote his autobiography in Arabic. It is the only known surviving slave narrative written in that language in the Americas. On October 13, at 6pm at the Schomburg Center, Yale Professor Ala Alryyes will present A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said, which features a new translation of the document, a commentary, and contextual essays by five scholars. Omar's original manuscript will be on display.

Like another 92,000 Senegambian victims of the transatlantic slave trade, Omar ibn Said—born in 1770 in a wealthy and erudite family—was transported to the United States. He landed in Charleston in the last months of 1807, just before the official (if not effective) end of the trade. He ran away and was captured in North Carolina where he spent the rest of his life.

Omar produced several documents in Arabic, and some have been preserved. His earliest and latest known manuscripts are dated 1819 and 1857. Omar was photographed and articles were written about him. Still, he died enslaved in 1863.

I feel a special connection to Omar. I have an essay in Alryyes’ book, “'God Does not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People': Islamic Reformists and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” But there is something else, more personal.

Omar was made a prisoner during a war to depose Abdul Kader Kane, the Almamy (Muslim leader) of the northern region of Futa Toro. Like other rulers, scholars—a number of whom were later enslaved in the Americas—and 19th century combatants against French colonization, Kane had studied at Pir.

The first and most reputed school of Islamic higher learning in Senegambia, Pir was founded by Khaly Amar Fall (1555-1638), a prince and scholar who had studied in Futa Toro—Omar's birthplace and the cradle of Islam in Senegambia—and in Mauritania. The school Fall (pronounced Faal) established in 1611 played a major role in the religious, cultural, and political life of the region; so much so that the French burnt it down in 1869.

I am a descendant of Khaly Amar Fall, and I am thus particularly delighted that this year marks not only the publication of A Muslim American Slave, but also the 180th anniversary of Omar’s autobiography, and the fourth centennial of Pir, which was widely commemorated in Senegal where the rebuilt school is still thriving and Fall’s 1611 mosque and simple grave are National Historic Landmarks.

For more on African Muslims in the Americas:

Austin, Allan D. African Muslims in Antebellum America (New York: Routledge 1997)
Diouf, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
Reis, Joao Jose. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)

To see portraits of African Muslims enslaved in the United States, visit In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience.

To read biographies of African Muslims, visit The Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: The Forgotten Story.

Using NYPL resources to enrich your African American History studies

Lynda Kennedy, Teaching & Learning, Literacy and Outreach — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:43:47 -0500

Toussaint Louverture, about 1795
(NYPL Digital Gallery)Use the resources of NYPL to engage your students with the rich and complex history of African Americans. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has several online exhibitions that make NYPL resources easily accessible and usable in your classroom:

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience: http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm

African Americans in American Politics:
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/african-americans-in-politics/

The African Presence in the Americas 1492-1992:
http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Schomburg/

and much more!

Michael Jackson: Icon

Howard Dodson, Former Director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:09:41 -0400

Michael Jackson’s sudden and tragic death has revealed the truly iconic status he had achieved in the world. While some of the news media has chosen to continually harp on what they have labeled as Michael’s eccentricities, especially what they have called his bizarre appearance and behavior over the last few years, his 40 years of unbroken creativity and musical genius have secured his enduring iconic status in the minds of an adoring global public.

No death in the last century, including Elvis’s and Princess Diana’s has generated the kinds of spontaneous and sustained expressions of love, respect, and tribute that Michael’s passing has. His musical genius and his iconic status have earned him a permanent and revered place in the hearts, minds, and memories of people of all races, colors, creeds, cultures, and genders throughout the world. The bigger than life icon that Michael Jackson became did all of that for him. Becoming an icon has its price however. Icons frequently consume, confuse, and destroy their hosts. They compete with and frequently engulf the real self. They rob the person of their identity and privacy, then turn them into objects of prey, subvert normal human relations, and induce aberrant behavior. (Witness icons like Elvis, Anna Nicole Smith, and most recently Heath Ledger.) Such was likely the case with Michael Jackson.

The foundation of his being was an extraordinary god-given musical talent—let’s call it the genius that it was. It was enough to make him a star entertainer by the time he was 12 years old. Though the youngest member of the Jackson Five, he clearly stood head and shoulders above his older brothers as a musician, dancer, and entertainer. And no one questioned the fact that he was their leader. But he was also still himself— Michael Joseph Jackson, a talented, hard working, exuberant child prodigy whose contagious infectious spirit and energy brought joy into the lives of all who saw or heard him.

Still one of the Jackson children, albeit the most talented and attractive one, Michael Jackson still struggled to live as normal a life as a genius child can live. Michael sensed that his public wanted more and the perfectionist in him demanded that he give more, become more, become larger than his human self, become larger than life. On the way from stardom to superstardom, Michael Jackson the child prodigy invented Michael, the larger than life icon. Along the way, he lost track of who he was. Struggling to sustain the larger than life icon image—the public face and persona of superstar icon Michael, Michael Jackson became more and more confused and developed more and more distorted views of himself—of who and what Michael Jackson was. The cherubic persona that was the child prodigy Michael Jackson wasn’t good enough to become the iconic Michael. He needed to be fixed—to be transformed—to be perfected based on some external standards of beauty that were the virtual negation of the bubbly, charismatic black child prodigy Michael Jackson. Numerous plastic surgeries and skin treatments killed the physical Michael Jackson and invented the new Superstar image—the icon.

The same distorted view of himself led him down the road to anorexia. Just as anorexics are unable to make accurate assessments of their weight, Michael Jackson lost his ability to make an accurate assessment of his physical self—of his own physical beauty. So he kept fixing himself until he had literally destroyed/erased the physical essence of himself. Ironically, in the final analysis, his iconic status had little or nothing to do with his physical appearance. Granted, the glove, the unique military-like dress, the penny loafers, the white or sequined socks, the moon walk and other dance moves were all props in the making of his iconic image. But it was his music and his showmanship that endeared him to his global audiences and lifted him head and shoulders above the rest of the entertainment world.

The public image of Michael, the Superstar, left little room for Michael Jackson the human being to live and be. Confused, anxiety-ridden, and depressed, the warring Michael Jackson and Michael, the iconic Superstar both finally called it quits. But the musical legacy lives on.

John Hope Franklin

Howard Dodson, Former Director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:23:49 -0400

The New York Public Library, especially the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, joins millions of Americans in honoring the pioneering, purposeful, immensely productive life of Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915–2009). The preeminent scholar of the African American experience, he was a leading authority on Southern American history, a distinguished educator, and an uncompromising advocate for equality and justice in American society.

A New York Public Library Lion (2007), a co-chair of the Schomburg Center's first private fundraising campaign, member of the Schomburg Center's National Advisory Council, and recipient of the Schomburg Center's Africana Heritage Award (2006), Dr. Franklin was a passionate supporter of the Schomburg Center and The New York Public Library for more than 35 years. He also brought respect and dignity to the study of American history, having devoted his life to rescuing, reconstructing, and reinterpreting African American and American history.

For more than 60 years, Dr. Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom has been the definitive, authoritative text on African American history. First published in 1947, it has sold more than 3 million copies and been translated into several languages. In addition to documenting and interpreting the African American experience, From Slavery to Freedom challenged many of the dominant assumptions and interpretations of American history. Dr. Franklin's autobiography, Mirror to America (2005), received critical acclaim for its unflinching honesty and candor and its transcendent insights into America's national character. His biography, George Washington Williams (1985), rescued one of the pioneer American historians from obscurity and anonymity and reminded the world that his own achievements in the field rested on the shoulders of his ancestors. Williams's 1,000-page History of African Americans from 1619 to 1880 was published in 1882.

Other John Hope Franklin publications include: The Free Negro in North Carolina (1943), The Militant South, 1800–1861 (1956 — also available as a free web text), Reconstruction After the Civil War (1961), Emancipation Proclamation (1963), Color and Race (1968), and The Color Line Legacy for the 21st Century (1993). Altogether, he wrote or edited more than 20 books and published more than 100 articles and essays. His contributions to scholarship, education, and the African American freedom struggle were not limited to his publications, however. In the academy, Dr. Franklin broke down racial barriers on numerous occasions. He was the first African American to serve as chairman of a major American university history department. He was the first African American president of Phi Beta Kappa as well as the first African American president of the leading American history organizations: the American Studies Association (1967), the Southern Historical Association (1970), the Organization of American Historians (1975), and the American Historical Association (1979). The recipient of more than 100 honorary doctorates for his contributions to scholarship and education, Dr. Franklin was also respected for his contributions to the struggle for social justice. Thurgood Marshall called on his expertise to develop his case in Brown vs. Board of Education. He was in the front ranks of the march from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King, Jr., that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And in recognition of his consistent voice advocating racial justice in America, President Bill Clinton tapped Dr. Franklin to lead his national conversation on race in 1997.

In 1989, Dr. Franklin delivered a lecture on race and the U.S. constitution at the Schomburg Center. It was eventually published as a Schomburg Center Occasional Paper. And in October 2005, The New York Public Library hosted a conversation between President Clinton and Dr. Franklin on his autobiography and the enduring challenge of race and racism in American national life.

What do leg warmers, healthy food preparation, wrestling, and Obama’s inauguration have in common?

Brigid Cahalan, Library Sites & Services/Outreach — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:58:51 -0500

They are all topics of programs or workshops for adults coming up at various New York Public Library locations over the next few months!

Leg warmers will be knitted at the Chatham Square Library in Chinatown. Wakefield Library in the north Bronx will host a useful series of free food preparation workshops by Cornell University Cooperative Extension Program. St. George Library Center on Staten Island will be the place to meet 6 wrestling champions, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem will present a live screening of the 2009 Inauguration Ceremony.

And there are over 400 other free programs and classes for adults listed. Flamenco, English Sword Dancing, and Figure Drawing—it’s all there. Take a look: at the New York Public Library website, click on Calendar, then All, then limit to Adults.

And a special event I’d like to invite you to: on Wednesday, January 14, 2009, representatives of The New York Public Library will speak at the Riverdale YM-YWHA (5625 Arlington Avenue, Bronx, New York) to hear about a wide range of services that The Library offers targeting older adults, specifically—but not only—those living in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. This presentation is co-sponsored by the Libraries & Cultural Affairs Committee and the Aging Committee of Bronx Community Board 8.

If you need more information, leave me a comment and respond on the blog.