Black Connections (Bconx): upspirit

Showing posts with label upspirit. Show all posts

listening...

“Sometimes you’ve got to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with no one else understanding.”

- Christopher Barzak

“How should tears come? What would I be regretting then? In the decline of my life I have found it hard to take out anything that has found its way into my spirit and to say of it that it has brought with it peace and the good stillness which understanding brings.”

~Ayi Kwei Armah, Fragments

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

Til Death OR DISTANCE Do You Part

"Lewis Hayden remained the property of the Warner family throughout the 1830s. During this period he was allowed to marry Esther Harvey, a slave owned by a Lexington merchant, Joseph Harvey. While Lewis and Esther considered themselves married, slave owners only recognized their relationship as a union of convenience. If slave owners allowed a wedding ceremony, they often used the phrase "till death or distance do you part." In other words, the couple were married until the owner decided to sell one or the other to a new owner who did not live in the area. As with many slave couples, Esther and Lewis also had to overcome the barrier of being owned by separate masters. Whether the slave husband and the slave wife lived together, or whether they even got to see one another, was entirely a decision of their owners."

…Lewis and Esther had a son who was added to Harvey's property. When Harvey's business failed, his slaves and his other property were sold at auction to pay his creditors. Esther and her child were purchased by Henry Clay. …While Clay's slave, Esther gave birth to a second child, but the baby died soon thereafter. About a month after this, Esther ran crying to her husband. Clay had sold her and their surviving son to one of the hated slave traders. Hayden was powerless to stop the sale and could only watch as his wife and child were dragged away, never to be seen again.

When Hayden asked Clay for a reason for selling Esther and the boy, Clay replied haughtily that "he had bought them and had sold them." Hayden was devastated. Slave sales had separated him from his mother, his brothers and sisters, and now from his wife and child. Years later he wrote, "I have one child who is buried in Kentucky and that grave is pleasant to think of. I've got another that is sold nobody knows where, and that I can never bear to think of."

~Joel Strangis, Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery

Fought As Well As They Could

"In 1730, for instance, newspaper accounts and a letter written by a Royal African Company agent at Cape Coast Castle all reported that the Africans rose and killed all but three of the sailors on board the Boston ship William. No mention was made of the fate of the Africans, and although the vessel was later reported to have run aground at Anomabu, there is no reason to believe the victorious Africans did not either jump overboard or take the William's boats, ultimately getting ashore and reclaiming their freedom. In January of 1747, a Rhode Island ship underwent a revolt off of Cape Coast Castle, and the entire crew was killed except for two mates who jumped overboard and swam ashore. Taking its information about this revolt from a letter, one Boston newspaper wrote that "what became of the Vessel and Negroes afterwards the Letter does not mention." Even though this incident occurred in a busy slaving shore, and it is not at all unreasonable to presume that at least some of the Africans succeeded in escaping inland.

…the possibility of revolt also helped earn Africans a grudging respect from those whose business it was to enslave them. As one sailor was compelled to write of a revolt in 1790, after more than one hundred slaves had taken possession of a French slaver as it was at anchor off the African coast, "I could not but admire the courage of a fine young black, who, though his partner in irons lay dead at his feet, would not surrender, but fought with his billet of wood until a ball finished his existence. The others fought as well as they could, but what could they do against firearms?"

~Eric Robert Taylor, If We Must Die (p. 135-6).

What could they do? ...they could fly away home & knew it. Awo.

The Mistake: Open Gods of Afrikan Leaders

"The mistake our ancestors made, and which African leaders continue to make unto this day is that: non- European people, especially Africans and the Indigenous Americans in the Caribbean Islands referred to as 'Indians' initially attributed to the Europeans a humanity and spirituality that they did not have, and still do not have in their relationship with most of non-European people of the world. This brings us to a conclusion that might be difficult for a lot of people to accept. Maybe the world outside of Europe didn't need the Europeans in the first place. Maybe in this fakery about spreading civilization he destroyed more civilizations than he ever built and did the world more harm than good."
~Dr. John Henrik Clarke

See especially minute 1:03 "Sacrifices which have been of no use." AWO.

Can ANYONE name a single leader of one of Africa's 54 recognized nation states who publicly has given thanks (or even mentioned/recognized) to an Afrikan deity (with an Afrikan name)? AWO.

Written in 1837 (Awo) by a black wampanoag narragansett N8V Afrikan

"I have no language wherewith to give slavery, and its auxil- 
iaries, an adequate description, as an efficient cause of the mis- 
eries it is capable of producing. It seems to possess a kind of 
omnipresence. It follows its victims in every avenue of life. 

The principle assumes still another feature equally destruc- 
tive. It makes the colored people subserve almost every foul 
purpose imaginable. Negro or nigger, is an approbrious term, 
employed to impose contempt upon them as an inferior race, 
and also to express their deformity of person. Nigger lips, 
nigger shins, and nigger heels, are phrases universally common 
among the juvenile class of society, and full well understood by 
them ; they are early learned to think of these expressions, as 
they are intended to apply to colored people, and as being ex- 
pressive or descriptive of the odious qualities of their mind and 
body. These impressions received by the young, grow with 
their growth, and strengthen with their strength. The term in 
itself, would be perfectly harmless, were it used only to distin- 
guish one class of society from another ; but it is not used with 
that intent ; the practical definition is quite different in England 
to what it is here, for here, it flows from the fountain of purpose 
to injure. It is this baneful seed which is sown in the tender soil of

youthful minds, and there cultivated by the hand of a corrupt immoral policy."

~Hosea Easton, A TREATISE ON THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER, AND CIVIL AND

POLITICAL CONDITION of the COLORED PEOPLE OF THE U. STATES; AND THE

PREJUDICE EXERCISED TOWARDS THEM, 1837

http://www.archive.org/stream/treatiseonintell00east/treatiseonintell00east_djvu.txt

Idren: Be Careful With Each Other

But Our Education is Deficient...

"We may be able to tell the story of departed nations and conquering chieftains who have added pages of tears and blood to the world's history; but our education is deficient if we are perfectly ignorant how to guide the little feet that are springing up so gladly in our path, and to see in undeveloped possibilities gold more fine than the pavements of heaven and gems more precious than the foundations of the holy city."
~Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911)

RIPP Ankobia 69

the day king walked

from selma to montgomery,

the tops of trees shook

as in a forest, and shivered

for this man who had crossed a line

of centuries in the south, but

even more south, we worried for our lot,

resolved as we were to break you,

but you to put us with our ancestors.

of course there have never been questions:

why shoot them in the back? why shoot them?

why shoot? why? but our name got its shrine

where the children now gather,

for sixty-nine of us lay on the street

on that day in march sixty. as others

filled hospitals and covered cell-floors

with clenched bodies, dachau

was completed, stowe published her book,

alcatraz was shut down for good, and

we moved from non-whites

to non-carriers of passbooks.

~fistbump, blacklooks

"Hail, sister, may you live in God".

Archaeologists have revealed the remains of what they say was a "high status" woman of African origin who lived in York during Roman times. ...Her grave dates back to the second half of the 4th Century. She was buried with items including jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, beads and a blue glass jug. She also had a rectangular piece of bone, which is thought to have originally been mounted in a wooden box, which was carved to read, "Hail, sister, may you live in God'. (more).

Idren have been to 'old' York, a city in northern England. Actually really beautiful countryside; a little younger than London (1ad), it was a roman provincial capital (slave-based civiliesashun) with lots of church history too (humpty-dumpty-style). Sisters carried the Word despite bby back then too.

Fistbump Sis. Sokori blacklooks

Ch art er Whey?

"The entire senior class at Chicago's only public all-male, all-African-American high school has been accepted to four-year colleges. At last count, the 107 seniors had earned spots at 72 schools across the nation." (more).

...positivity image, good intention... whey design? Dem a be molded fi fit. ..become a better him pon dem matrickulation whey Their colleges? Jaah know.

Happy Black Love Day

ini heart pa'da Black Womanmanfamilyracecommunityspirit&Uself (smile).
_

Yuta Sing Dem Pledge

(kiotd-download )

i pledge allegiance

to the u.s. of concious uprising

and the republic for which it stands

to the instruction of sterilized mendacity

recorded for our children

to the anals of memory

in your body

to the structure of justice

to the rythm of love

i pledge allegiance

to making love

creativity's invitation to celebrate

i pledge allegiance to uprising

rise up

rise up.

(uuh).

Fresher Stronger Wings (172k)

I wish for you fresher stronger wings
to battle the ever blowing winds
we encounter with each new year.
_
I know you have it in you to soar
beyond every single wall and roar
I know you won't let me down.
Soar, my friend, where eagles dare.
~Nana Kofi Acquah