His Black Consciousness Program
Rocked the Bay Area like no other
black panthers black arts black studies kwanza
Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour
AKA, Attorney Donald Warden
January 1, 1936--December 15, 2016
Comments from the people on Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour
Marvin -Wonderful historic overview of those important times - thanks for continuing to chronicle our history.
Dezie Woods Jones
BWOPA
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Marvin,
My career started with the shooting death of Melvin Black where I concluded that the shooting was wrongful. Like most I listened to Don Warden aka Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour every Sunday evening. The last time I spoke with him which was 5 to 7 years ago, I told him that his words and deeds were an inspiration for my career as a lawyer representing people abused by the police and various radio programs that I have hosted. Long live his memory in our minds and hearts.
John Burris
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Brother Marvin,
Thank you for the thoughtful tribute to Khalid Al Mansour . I had the unique opportunity to be present during the formative time of the Afro-American Association while attending Oakland City College in 1961-1963. Although, I have no pictures or documents to share, there is yet an abiding place in my heart and soul filled with powerful and positive images of this most trans formative period in my life. The AAA discussion meetings, debates and street corner speeches by Khalid Al Man-sour and others awakened me and set my life on a different path toward personal growth and development. I am grateful for the consciousness-raising experiences that helped inform my educational and career decisions which always included the thought of how my actions could benefit my family and my community. My involvement in the Movement expanded my vision beyond the few blocks in West Oakland where I grew up. I give thanks to Khalid Al Mansour, the AAA, and all the sisters and brothers of the SF Bay Area civil rights and Black Nationalist movements who helped raise my social and cultural awareness, stimulated my intellectual curiosity and made me a better person. What we all experienced is worthy to be remembered, valued and shared with the generations of now and those that follow. Peace
--Ann Williams Willis
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I still have the papers of the Association that were written in the 1960s. Some of the Association's philosophy came froleft out the 7th keym several other people besides Khalid, including some from the original 12 members of the "book club", which evolved into the Association.
A few of us are planning to have some sort of gathering to express the legacy of the Association, probably within 6 months. Time is needed to collect as much info as possible and get the word out to as many people as possible.
I am writing a book about the Association because many of us are very old. This book will contain some information; but no one book could contain all information about the Association. Each attendee has his/her perspective and memory about this vital organization. Originally I did not want to write this book because I knew we were still being watched. An example: Loye Cherry introduced Roger Holmes to the Association and Don. Roger and John Anderson at San Jose State College in 1968 presented "Black is Becoming" conference, where Don debated Shockley (who stated that Black people were inferior). Others on the panel included Mr. Forman of CORE, Al Poussaint. However Don stole the audience with his excellent debating skills. Roger went on to attend law school at Santa Clara University. While attending this school, Roger played tennis with a young man who he found out was a Prince in Kuwait. Roger told Don and they shortly thereafter got involved with the Arabs. Roger and Don became law partners. Both changed their names. I could go on and on. Don and Roger left out the 7th key....the dark side. We always used RISEPE; but I added the dark side. OPEC is controlled. The Saudi Family was enhanced by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s, under the condition of controlling the oil in exchange for protection. The darkness continues. Another ex.: Knorvel Cherry was responsible for getting McClymonds to allow the Association to hold the "Mind of the Ghetto" Conferences in 1963 (Malcolm X) and 1964 (Cassius Clay). Knorvel also got Tillman to to produce the Association's newspaper in 1964.
Anyway, my book is being reviewed.
Please, gather whatever information you have, so we can share our information with each other.
Thank you,
Lee O. Cherry
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Very missed. Dr. Al-Mansour took personal interest in my international pursuits back in the 90's. I remember receiving a call from him on a Sunday evening back in 1998 and saying to meet him in the lobby of the Shangrila Hotel in Kuala Lumpur that Wednesday. I scrambled things together and made it. Although many influential people also arrived there from various parts of the world, he was quite attentive to my needs and introduced me to the Chariman of Renong Berhad, Tan Sri Halim Saad. That company was responsible for, what was at that time the tallest building in the world, Petronas Towers. Everything went well and if not for the fact that just 2 months later, the Asia money crisis hit, the project I was developing in China would have become a reality.
His books opened my interest in ancient African history, and his contribution to the Black world was enormous.
--Barry Pierce
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El Muhajir/Marvin X:
Thank you for all of this important history!! Of course I grew up listening to Bro. Khalid (Donald Warden) on Sunday evenings broadcast from his Afro American Historical Society on KDIA. When I entered Berkeley, I frequently saw him and Donald Hopkins in academic and social settings. After he converted to Islam, he came to Sacramento in the early 90s to lecture and offer evidence to the African American Muslim community of the presence of Africans in ancient Arabia. The last time I saw him was in the 2000s at Yoshi’s when Pharoah Sanders was performing. He was walking swiftly past the restaurant and i didn’t get a chance to greet him. May this Giant Rest In Peace and Power.
Marvin X and his Muse, Fahizah Alim
When I graduated from Edison High School, Fresno CA, 1962, I wanted to attend Howard
University. When I came to Oakland and told my father, he suggested I go see his friend, Oakland Post Publisher Tom Berkley. When I told Tom my desire, he told me to forget about Howard, you don't need to go to Howard, we have good schools out here. I forgot about Howard and enrolled at Oakland City College, aka, Merritt College, on Grove Street, now Martin Luther King, Jr. Ave.
By the time I graduated from OCC, I had to admit maybe Tom Berkley was right, especially after I was initiated into revolutionary black nationalism that I would carry with me to San Francisco State College/University and beyond for the remainder of my life. en
But unlike Howard, there were few Black instructors and no Black Studies. My Black consciousness came from listening to brothers and sisters rapping on the steps of OCC. Rapping was not beats and rhymes, but extemporaneous speaking on revolution by a variety of speakers, including Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Maurice Dawson, Richard Thorne, and Attorney Donald Warden, head of the Afro American Association.
I was fascinated at the brothers rapping. I don't recall sisters rapping but sisters were involved. There was Ann Williams, partner of Richard Thorne. Richard Thorne introduced me to Huey Newton. Carol Freeman, Mississippi poet, married to Ken Freeman, aka, Mamadou Lumumba. Sisters Ellendar Barnes, Judy Juanita, and others whose names I can't recall. There were elder sisters like Mother McKenya, Mother Ruth Hagwood, et al.
From the steps of the college, the rap sessions would move to a campus room for an AAA meeting, or across the street to a greasy spoon .cafe for hamburgers, fries, milkshakes and more rapping. From the cafe we might gather in a fellow student's room. From the steps of OCC, AAA meetings, greasy spoon cafe sessions and meetings in our rooms, we had non-credit independent peer group study, discoursing on black nationalism, the black bourgeoisie (Dr. E. Franklin Frazier), Dr. Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, the writings of Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. We discussed Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Congo, assassinated by African neo-colonialists at the behest of the West, Belgium, America, et al. We talked about the Sharpesville Massacre in South Africa, about Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.
In Cultural Anthropology, we studied Jomo Kenyatta's ethnography of his Kikuyu tribe. Outside of class we were enthralled by the Mau Mau fighters in Kenya, guerrilla fighters who attacked the European colonialists and the reactionary colonial elite who resisted the call for independence. "They" say the Mau Mau had to kill more African resisters to independence than Europeans.
In order to extricate North American Africans from this American matrix, quagmire, conundrum of tricknology, lies, fake news, world of make believe Hollywood CIA propaganda films, arresting our development, keeping us on the low information vibration, we must confront our domestic neo-colonial elite, if necessary with the Mau Mau model. See my Parable of Black Man and Block Man.
Imagine the Catholic Church has sexual psychopathic priests abusing children. Aw, we say the Black Culture Police are even worse, Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, et al., moral hypocrites. I was a moral hypocrite once. I spoke at Berkeley High School about Crack addiction. A few days later I was buying Crack in North Oakland. The youth selling me the Crack recognized me from his class at Berkeley High, "Hey teach, wasn't you in my class at Berkeley High talking against Crack? How could I lie? I was busted. I vowed to myself to never be a contradiction. From reading my critics, I know I am my worse critic. I seem to learn best by experience. At OCC we also studied the writings of Ho Chi Minh, leader of the North Vietnam national liberation movement. We saw our struggle and theirs as one international movement for the nation liberation of oppressed peoples. Not only did our peer group independent study sessions include dialouge on the Cuban revolution and the writings of Che Guevara. We especially like Fidel Castro's court speech History Will Absolve Me!
Malcolm X was our hero on the West Coast, not Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, although we connected with student Rights workers in SNCC, Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Toure, John Lewis, H. Rap Brown/Imam Jamil Alamin, Kathleen Neal Cleaver.
The Afro American Association sold sweat shirts with revolutionary fighter Jomo Kenyatfta on the front. Kenya won independence 1963. The AAA rapped on the streets of the Bay Area, from Oakland to San Francisco's Fillmore District, usually on corners, speaking on liberation, cultural consciousness and do for self economics. Aside from students, the AAA had some heavy minds, intellectuals, lawyers: Donald Hopkins, Fred and Mary Lewis, Henry Ramsey and Eleanor Mason, Paul Cobb, Ed Howard, et al. It may have been too many great minds in one space that was the ultimate undoing of the AAA. Khalid was charismatic, for sure, and a great speaker. He was humorous. I recall him saying if you can make the people laugh, you got your audience.
Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour and the Afro American Association was critical to the spread of revolutionary Black and African consciousness in the Bay Area. We must give thanks and praise for the AAA, from which the Black Panther Party leaders were nourished; the West Coast Black Arts Movement evolved from the AAA influence that impressed Marvin X, Judy Juanita, Ellendar Barnes and others who were budding artists and writers. Surely the AAA inspired the call for Black Studies, along with students who were not associated with the AAA, although the AAA's influence was pervasive. Revolutionary students, inspired by the AAA and the explosive world revolution for national liberation from colonialism and neo-colonialism, when the colonial elite take power without decolonizing their Euro-African minds, connected with the national black student revolution, from SNCC in the South to RAM in the North. RAM or Revolutionary Action Movement was founded by Robert F. Williams, North Carolina NAACP leader who believed in arm self defense (see his classic Negroes With Guns). Max Stanford/Muhammad Ahmad was a co-leader from Philadelphia, helped organize RAM at Howard University, connecting RAM with SNCC in the South. At OCC RAM had members and associates who helped publish SoulBook, Edited by Kenny Freeman/Mamadou Lumumba, Donald Freeman (Kenney's brother, although there is another revolutionary brother Donald Freeman of Cleveland, Ohio. Other editors included Isaac Moore, Ernest Allen, Caroll Holmes Freeman, Bob Hamilton. My first published story won a prize in the Merritt Student Magazine, actually I won a prize for Delicate Child, and Soulbook published it. Growing in Marxism and black revolutionary nationalist thought, the AAA was not a place for Soulbook people, so they/we moved on. Donald Warden held us in his tender caring arms until we could walk on and we did. Thank you Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour for your leadership. Thank you for your talks on Black and African consciousness on radio stations KDIA and KPFA. Thank you helping brothers in San Quentin Prison, at the request of Malcolm X. We were among the seven thousand students outside Sproul Hall when Malcolm X addressed seven thousand students.
Maulana Ron Karenga was the Los Angeles representative of the AAA. AAA member Ed Howard says Kwanza came from Oakland. Mother MrcKenya is said to have produced the first Kwanza ceremony in Oakland.
At some point Donald Warden converted to Islam, in fact, became a lawyer for OPEC, the oil cartel, then a lawyer for the Saudi Arabian royal family. At the direction of the Saudi Royal family, Khalid is said to have steered Barack Hassien Obama into Harvard. Khalid wrote many books you can Google.
Our last interaction with Khalid was 1979 at the Oakland Auditorium, a rally to protest the OPD killing of 15 year old, Melvin Black, actually they were killing a Black monthly, until they killed my close friend's Melvin Black. While teaching English, Creative Writing and Technical Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno and Nevada Community College, I read the San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper to keep up on events in the Bay. One morning I looked at the SF Chronicle to see another killing of a Black man by the OPD. I threw the paper down in disgust, but later I turned to the back page to finish the article and their was a picture of my close friend and best Elementary Arabic student, Mustafa/Lawrence McKinney, along with his sister Charla Black, outside Oakland City Hall protesting the OPD murder under the color of law of their 15 year old brother Melvin Black.
We formed a planning committee for the rally. Speakers included Minister Farakhan as featured speaker, along with Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Monsa Nitoto, Paul Cobb, Dezzie Woods Jones, Jo Nina Abram, Oba T'Shaka, et al. The rally was from noon to midnight, five thousand attended. Journalist Edith Austin wrote about the rally in her Sun Reporter column, said it was without incident.
But let me give you the untold story. We were behind schedule and running late, it was ten o'clock when Minister Farakhan sent an FOI with a message to come to the Green Room. 'When I got there, the Minister said, "Marvin, if you don't get Khalid off the mike, I'm leaving for Chicago right now."
"Yes, Sir, Brother Minister," I said. As MC, I went up on stage and gently grabbed the mike from Khalid who had been rambling on and on about a Wakandan style state in South Africa. Minister Farakhan came on stage with his entourage, Minister Khalid Muhammd, Minister Billy X/Rabb Muhammad.Khalid departed the stage. I handed the mike to Minister Farakhan. It was the last time I saw Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour.
Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour speaking at the 1979 Melvin Black Forum on Human Rights at the Oakland Auditorium, attended by 5,000 folks to protest the OPD monthly killing of Black men in Oakland. He went off focus about a Pan African Republic, sounded like the Kingdom of Wakanda, but inside South Africa? No matter, we love you Khalid and may Allah be pleased with you.
--Mavin X/El Muhajir
8/19/18
This essay will appear in the forthcoming Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X, Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Bird Press, Oakland CA., Introduction by Dr. Nathan Hare, PhD., 2018.
Marvin X reading from his play Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, about his last meeting with Huey in a West Oakland Crack House, Odell Johnson Theatre, Laney College, Oakland CA.
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