Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

Cultural Workers...in the world the slavers made.

Cultural workers intent on laying the groundwork for an African future need only start by stating the historical truth: the history we have shared with Europe has been a tale of pillage, massacres, dehumanization.  That Europeans want to interpret it as a civilizing mission and an aid expedition to rescue us from barbarism is natural.  What is unnatural is that we should want to repeat their take on our history.  There was a time when African intellectuals who knew our history were too beaten down to speak up, and when those trained to speak in the world the slavers made knew only how to repeat their teachers' words.
   Now some of us have finished our mimetic training, made contact with the silenced voices uttering our history, and are ready to tell our story on the basis of our historical truth.  A politician speaking truth in the present dispensation will quickly be helped to a premature rendezvous with our ancestors.  Europeans will plan the murder, and since we are poor and do not know how to make money from creative work, they will find many of us willing to execute it for a few thousand dollars, francs, marks or pounds.  Cultural workers do not pose a clear and present danger to our oppressors.  If our work is any good, we will suffer only the milder kinds of murder: character assassination, financial destruction.  It's a price cultural workers throughout history have paid for real work.  If we wish to do the necessary work, we would be foolish to want to avoid the consequence.  The best we might do is to create networks guaranteeing improved chances of our survival.  That is what all living beings do.
   What, with this focus on historical truth, might cultural workers contribute to the construction of an African identity?  Our contribution to the future might begin with a hard-eyed look at the shaping structures we inhabit.  It is possible to date these structures.  It is necessary that they be acknowledged as dated.  Beyond that, we need to think of the nature of human movement on this continent before it was divided up into the slave pens Europeans called colonies then, and unimaginative Africans are urged to call nations now, to our constant detriment.
~p240, The Eloquence of the Scribes, Ayi Kwei Armah

Everything YOU Want.

While George Bush took the oil from the soil/ I was in front of counter buying some milk from Arabs/ in the land of honey I order fries from Chinese surviving off of what's in the foil/ gallon of gas & 2% is the same price/ so its seems to villain goes the spoil/ cheap fuel, fried rice to brother man/ cheap fuel pipelines from the motherland/ it's all the same right, on the other hand/ supply & demand fills the corners on the late night/ the suffering bestowed upon us by the great white/ not Columbus but Colombians/ ain't no cocoa leaves growing in the district/ of Columbia, so the rut we're in/ got to be the best example of some pimp shit/ hit the strip nigga, get the money and/ bring it back to daddy/ are forefathers been giving shaft/ back lash of a whip, to the whip like the back of caddy's/ but we don't give a fuck because we getting cash, exactly/

This is everything you want, it's everything you need/ This is good old fashion American greed/ see we get it how we get it & we spend it how we spend/ Cause it's good old fashion American greed/

I want that dollar, but when I get got, it's not enough/ fucking forget I, you think I'm quitting, you're out of luck/ cause I'm addicted to picket fences & getting profit/ fuck penny pinching & pissy pensions amount to what/ I'm never stopping, killing myself to make a living/ I make it, I spend it/ they lend it I take it/ they print it I fake it/ the laws invented by those who break them/ I bend them I'm painted as heinous by hypocrites that feel offended/ blue collar due to stains from blood of royals/ can't complain, freedom rang but it didn't holler/ I'm hard knocking at opportunities door for life/ cause you can only reach the buzzer if you are a scholar/ higher learning higher earning at the same time/ fire's burning in the ghetto it's about to boil/ the tipping point in the celebrated plot/ of I have everything I need but I want everything you got/

credits

from People Hear What They See, released 05 June 2012

Flying vs. Walking

“I will give you an example of how race affects my life. I live in a place called Alpine, New Jersey. Live in Alpine, New Jersey, right? My house costs millions of dollars. In my neighborhood, there are four black people. Hundreds of houses, four black people. Who are these black people? Well, there’s me, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z and Eddie Murphy. Only black people in the whole neighborhood. So let’s break it down, let’s break it down: me, I’m a decent comedian. I’m a’ight. Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest R&B singers to ever walk the Earth. Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers to ever live. Eddie Murphy, one of the funniest actors to ever, ever do it. Do you know what the white man who lives next door to me does for a living? He’s a fucking dentist! He ain’t the best dentist in the world…he ain’t going to the dental hall of fame…he don’t get plaques for getting rid of plaque. He’s just a yank-your-tooth-out dentist. See, the black man gotta fly to get to somethin’ the white man can walk to.”
~Chris Rock

HIV Resistant People Found in Uganda

(New Vision) A small fraction of Ugandans have been able to naturally knock off HIV from their body, a development that could lead to an HIV vaccine, scientists have said.

Dr. Pontiano Kaleebu, an immunologist heading the Basic Sciences Programme of the MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), told Saturday Vision that an ongoing study and a previous one at the institute had unearthed signs that some Ugandans may be resistant to HIV.

They have special white blood cells that can only be produced when the virus attacks the body. However, even with the most sophisticated tests, HIV could not be found in these individuals, implying that the virus had tried to infect them but the immune system kicked it out.

"We are seeing some immune responses but it is still too early to see if there is a lot of meaning to these responses," said Kaleebu.

"Such people are of interest to many researchers worldwide."

At the AIDS Information Centre in Kampala, the UVRI scientists are studying 70 discordant couples to see if some of them are indeed resistant to HIV. These are couples that have had unprotected sex for more than a year, one partner has had HIV for long while the other has not become infected. "We have set up a clinic in Kampala where doctors and counsellors do a lot of counselling and give them condoms to reduce risky sexual behaviour," Kaleebu said.

Despite early signs of resistance to HIV, Kaleebu said meaningful results can only be released at the end of the study. The five-year research, expected to be completed in 2010, is sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health through the British Medical Research Council (MRC). It is part of a multi-country study coordinated by the US-based Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) and involving Oxford University of UK.

Prof. Heiner Grosskurth, the Director of the MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit on AIDS, said: "A lack of ability to becoming HIV infected is extremely rare, but there is evidence meanwhile that people who have this characteristic exist worldwide, although in very small numbers."

Although they are so few, he said, studying them could generate new knowledge that would enable scientists to develop a vaccine. "Such work is going on with a lot of speed and effort in many countries, but there is no breakthrough yet! I think it will still take years until we have good vaccine candidates."

Earlier in 2002, Prof. Andrew Mc Michael of the University of Oxford and the late Dr. Anthony Kebba of UVRI announced that they had identified some eight Ugandans in Kampala and Entebbe, who were exposed to HIV but remained uninfected. One fifth of the discordant couples they studied showed some signs of resistance to HIV, but this required further confirmation. Mc Michael is involved with Kaleebu in the new study. Similar studies are going on in Kenya and the Gambia.

Kaleebu cautioned that nearly all people are vulnerable to HIV and Ugandans should not relax simply because a few individuals seem to be resistant to the virus. "It has to be clear that this apparent resistance is not a common thing. If you are HIV negative and your partner is HIV positive we cannot say you are resistant and you cannot become infected. If you continue to have unprotected sex you might become infected in the long run," said Kaleebu.

Indeed, in the late 1990s some people in Rakai were reported to have become infected with HIV after being discordant for many years. On discovering that they were discordant, scientists had advised them to begin using condoms. Later, some of those who declined to use condoms became infected. (more).

Carving Up the Congo

Stop Doses fi yuts dem dey POWd

Behind the image: Poverty and 'development pornography'

Jah made enough for everyone. Mama Africa is the richest 12mn square miles in the world. People and nations contiue to take from it without giving back, but keep the people on top of the land eating dirt and fleeing it at very great risk (cayucos) for (other) ways of illivity (western economies).

1994 Pulitzer prize picture shows a nile valley child watched over by nrt - sacred to Mut, mother goddess (bantu attributes, seen?).

In a world where graphic pictures of starving children are used by development agencies to raise funds from the public in the rich world, ROTIMI SANKORE critiques the phenomenon of ‘development pornograpy’ and argues that it has contributed towards deeper prejudice. New ways must be found to reach the public and more clearly explain the real reasons behind poverty in Africa, he states. (more)

Bconx: vulture watching over below. What is the true measure of our fall?