Austin Clarke, Canada's Greatest Afro-Canadian novelist, mentored Marvin X and Norman Richmond during their exile in Toronto, Canada 1967
Jan Carew, one of the greatest Pan African writers, mentored Marvin X and Norman Richmond during their exile in Toronto, Canada, 1967
Norman and Marvin X enjoyed exile in Toronto, Canada, during the Vietnam War, along with another brother Rahim from San Francisco State University. Norman was from Los Angeles but his refusal to go to Vietnam was news in Muhammad Speaks. Norman, Rahim and Marvin X were among the most prominent young brothers who chose exile rather than joining the US military to be cannon fodder in Vietnam. Marvin X returned underground to the USA and after being caught and found guilty of refusing induction to the US military, went into exile a second time in Mexico City and Belize, Central America. In Belize he associated with the Black Power radicals (Ishmael Shabazz and Evan X. Hyde, et al.) and reported news of their sedition trial in Muhammad Speaks. For his reporting and associating with the radicals, plus his agreeing to teach the masses--at their request, mind you, he was brought before the Ministry of Home Affairs and read his deportation order, stating his presence was not beneficial to the welfare of the British Colony of Honduras and therefore he would be deported back to the USA at the next flight to Miami, Florida. Until then, he was placed under arrest and taken to the police station, at which he was told to sit down in the lobby, Un-handcuffed, he was suddenly surrounded by a circle of police who said to him, "Brother, teach us about Black Power. We don't know why they are deporting you since you are trying to teach us. Brother, teach us about Black Power."
I was astounded. This was surreal. I'm being deported for teaching Black Power and the police tell me to teach them about Black Power. . Thinking to myself, "But since you insist, let me "rap" to you about Black Power." I told them some of the history I'd learned about Afro-Honduras. Brothers, Marcus Garvey came here in 1923 and told you to get the Queen off your walls. It's 1970 and you still got that white bitch on your walls. Get that white bitch off yo walls!" The police cracked up, "You all ite, broder, you all ite." And then they proceeded to point out the police who were not radical. They said, "See that policeman, he white mon wit black heart, black mon wit white heart!"
At the appointed time I was taken to the airport and after resisting, shoved onto the plane and the door slammed. Then the plane went south to Spanish Honduras capital Tegucigalpa, a rest stop where I got off the plane and went into the airport station. As I walked from the plane, I could see the airport looked like a US Army affair, which it was, Honduras was a "state" of the USA and still is today.
After a few minutes, I got the bright idea to ask for political asylum. The soldier said, "Un momento, amigo." He returned with the answer which we translate from Spanish into Negro, "Nigguh, get yo black ass on the plane back to America and don't give us no motherfucking problem or your ass will be grass." I boarded the plane without problem.
I submitted to the Hondurans but when the plane said it was crossing Cuba, I thought about trying a Black Panther style highjacking, recalling that Robert Williams (Negroes With Guns) took refuge in Cuba, and later Eldridge Cleaver. Then I thought how the both were forced to flee Cuba when they discovered the treatment of Afro-Cubans. Williams fled to China and Clever fled to North Africa, especially after they realized the critical role of Afro-Cubans in the revolution and how they were usurped by Castro and the white Cubans.
At this time the Cubans denied their African roots in favor of Communist unity, the line was that all Cubans were Cuban and thus no need to recognize their Africanity. But then came the Pan African struggle of African Liberation. Suddenly, Cuba recognized it's Africanity and sent thousands of Cubans to help end Apartheid and White Supremacy in Southern Africa, including Angola, Congo and elsewhere. Cuba transcended its ideological Communism to support its Africanism, something they adamantly denied prior to joining the Pan African revolution, especially the struggle to end apartheid.
We must forever honor and respect Cuba for sharing her blood in the liberation of Africa, to say nothing of the liberation of Latin America.
As per Canada, we recall our interview with Austin Clarke, Canada's Angriest Negro, who told us Canada may not have had colonies, but women from the Caribbean described their voyage to Canada as the Middle Passage. And we were told, and ultimately discovered, racism is as Canadian as hockey! Little white boys play hockey barefoot in the snow. When I arrived in Hamilton, a suburb of Toronto, to enjoy the refuge of my cousin my marriage, Canadian Pro-football player Ted Watkins, his children had to stop playing outside because the white children enjoyed beating them up.
I noted to Norman that perhaps before he arrived, there was an event at a West Indian club at which I spoke. After which the event was reported in the Toronto Star stating that 10,000 Black Muslims had invaded Toronto and I had called white women snakes which upset children whose mother's were white. The article said that my cousin Ted, pro-football star in the Canadian league, had become a Black Muslim, along with Canada's Angriest Negro, Austin Clarke. Well, this was true that they were inspired by my influence, mainly the idea of do for self economics, especially as per publishing ourselves, which they did indeed support my publishing project. I published an interview I did with Austin Clarke under the title:
Ali Kamal Al Kadir Sudan, subtitle "Black Man in a White Land". Published by Al Kitab Sudan, 1967,
2027 Bluefields Rd. #8, Burlington, Ontario, Canada
--Marvin X
11/3/15
Oakland CA
11/3/15
Oakland CA
-
The Black Panthers were among the groups that influenced the development of Black radical organizations in Canada. | Photo: CIRonline Black Panther demonstration
Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali looks back on the develop of Black radical organizations in Canada.
The Afro American
Progressive Association (AAPA) was one of the first Black Power
organizations in Canada. It was organized by Jose Garcia, Norman (Otis)
Richmond and D. T. in Toronto in 1968. Their first public event was a
commemoration of the assassination of Omowale El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
(Malcolm X). The meeting took place on Bathurst Street (Toronto’s Lenox
Avenue) the Home Service. Guest speakers were Jan Carew, Guyanese-born
scholar/activist who later would write:” Ghosts in Our Blood: With
Malcolm X in Africa, England, and the Caribbean” and Ted Watkins. A year
before ancestors like Austin Clarke, Howard Matthews and others started
the ball rolling in 1966.
This is a direct quote from a Canadian daily: “STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) -Ted Watkins, Negro professional Canadian football player, and a leading Black Power advocate' in Canada, was shot dead in an attempted liquor store holdup Sunday, police said."
The Black Youth Organization (BYO), the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC), the Biko Rodney Malcolm Coalition (BRMC) and Black Live Matters spring from the AAPA. The AAPA’s newsletter was called Harambee (Swahili) for “Let’s pull together”. Harambee preceded Contrast, Share, Pride and the Caribbean Camera.
Chris Harris has been one of the few attempting to keep the untold history of the Black Radical Tradition and the AAPA alive. Harris’ article, “Canadian Black Power, Organic Intellectuals of Position in Toronto, 1967 – 1975” was published quietly. He is quoted extensively in David Austin’s 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize winning book in Caribbean Literature in English or Creole, “Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal.”
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report talks about how a Black mis-leadership is high jacking the African liberation struggle in the United States. Ditto for Canada.
The untold story of the Radical Black Tradition in Canada is beginning to unfold. A new autobiography, “Burnley “Rocky” Jones Revolutionary” by Jones and James W. St. G. Walker gets the ball rolling in this work. Jones gives credit to the AAPA in this volume for keeping the radical Black tradition alive in the Great White North.
Jones discusses how tribalism ruled during the late sixties and early seventies in Toronto’s history. Africans born in Canada organized as Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians or Black Canadians. He talks about a rally that took place at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on Bloor Street in Toronto.
Says Jones: “The chair was José Garcia, of the Afro American Progressive Association, a Marxist, and Black Nationalist organization in Toronto. Although that organization was Canadian, its name reflected the interaction with the States; there was continual movement back and forth across the border with Detroit and Buffalo, with Panthers and CORE and various Black Nationalist associations. Many of these people were also at the conference, in particular a group known as the Detroit Revolutionary Union movement, DRUM, extremely militant and connected to the Panthers.”
Jones was incorrect on the name of DRUM; DRUM is an acronym for the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of Black workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation‘s Dodge Main assembly plant in Detroit. While I was a co-founder of the AAPA I was also a member of DRUM which later would blossom into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
The term Afro-American had nothing to do with Black America. It was inspired by Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). The group was a Pan-Africanist organization founded by (Omowale) Malik Shabazz in 1964. The group was modeled on the Organization of African Unity, which had impressed Malik during his visit to Africa in April 1964. The purpose of the OAAU was to fight for the human rights of Africans in America and in the Western Hemisphere who speak English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Papiamento. One of the co-founders of the AAPA Jose Garcia could speak Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, French and English better than me. We were internationalist from the get-go.
While we were moved by Malik, he was influenced by a person who if
imperialism has anything to do with it will be written out of history –
Carlos A. Cooks.
Cooks was a Caribbean man who used the term African-American to unite Africans in the West. He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His parents were from the nearby island of St. Martin. Robert Acemendeces Harris author of “Carlos Cooks and Black Nationalism” pointed out: “It was Carlos Cooks who first defined the difference between the terms Black and/or African as opposed to "Negro" and fought to have the latter word abrogated as a racial classification." You can even ask Richard Moore a foundation member of the African Blood Brotherhood and (author of The Word Negro And Its Evil Use) about this. Or you can read the documentation of this in "BLACK NATIONALISM: A Search for Identity in America" by Prof. E. U. Essien-Udom of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
I was blessed to have heard Richard B. Moore speak in Montreal in 1967 and to have met and worked with Elombe Brath, a disciple of Cooks. Moore spoke at a Black community meeting that I attended during Expo 67. When I first went to Detroit and met General Gordon Baker Jr. I found a copy of Brath’s comic book “Color Them Colored” where he ridiculed everyone from Harry Belafonte to Malcolm X for not being “Black” enough. Baker explained to me how he had for a brief moment associated with Cooks African Nationalist Pioneer Movement.
There are aspects of Cooks philosophy I united 1000 percent behind. At their convention called in 1959 the ANPM called for the abrogation of the word Negro as the official racial classification of black people and replace the term with African when speaking of land origin, heritage and national identity (irrespective of birthplace ) and the proud usage of black, when dealing with color (in spite of complexion).
There are others aspects of his views that I totally disagree with. I have always united with Huey P. Newton’s statement, "Blackness is necessary, but not sufficient.” I was never down with Cooks anti-communism. When Fidel Castro visited Harlem, Cooks refused to meet him. Malik took the opposite view.
Brath is quoted in Rosemari Mealy’s book, “Fidel & Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting.” Says Brath, “While Malcolm as an individual was developing as an anti-imperialist champion, he boldly met with Premier Fidel Castro when the Cuban leader stayed at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, arguing a class analysis in non-Marxist terms, that is, the field Negro versus the house Negro.
Cooks however, took a completely different position. Essien-Udom, who wrote “Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America” published in the early 1960s, discussed Cooks and Malik and pointed out: “Nearly all of the present-day black nationalist groups are anti-communist. Recently, Mr. Carlos Cooks (African Nationalist Pioneering Movement) in a 4th of July speech in Harlem self-righteously explained how in the thirties they (the nationalist) were having street fights with the communists and they do not welcome 'the regime of Dr. Fidel Castro’s Cuba.'”
For a brief moment I supported Jonas Savimbi‘s The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the Angolan War for Independence (1961 – 1975) and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war1975–2002). UNITA received military aid from the imperialist USA and apartheid South Africa while the MPLA received support from the Soviet Union and other members of the Socialist block at that time. We apologize to Africa for this error in judgment.
In the 21st Century Africa, Africans and the oppressed generally must be anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist and be for socialism-period. As Fred Hampton used to say, “If you are afraid of socialism you are afraid of yourself.”
Norman (Otis) Richmond, aka Jalali, was born in Arcadia, Louisiana, and grew up in Los Angeles. He left Los Angles after refusing to fight in Vietnam because he felt that, like the Vietnamese, Africans in the United States were colonial subjects. Richmond began his career in journalism at the African Canadian weekly Contrast. He went on to be published in the Toronto Star, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the National Post, the Jackson Advocate, Share, the Islander, the Black American, Pan African News Wire, and Black Agenda Report. For more informantion norman.o.richmond@gmail.com
OPINION: Co-opting Caribana: The Ongoing Struggle for Community ControlWatkins (1941-1968) was an African born in America who played Canadian football. Watkins played wide-receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Ottawa Rough Riders. He won the Grey Cup with Hamilton in 1967. He previously played college football at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Watkins was killed in 1968 allegedly robbing a liquor store.
This is a direct quote from a Canadian daily: “STOCKTON, Calif. (AP) -Ted Watkins, Negro professional Canadian football player, and a leading Black Power advocate' in Canada, was shot dead in an attempted liquor store holdup Sunday, police said."
The Black Youth Organization (BYO), the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC), the Biko Rodney Malcolm Coalition (BRMC) and Black Live Matters spring from the AAPA. The AAPA’s newsletter was called Harambee (Swahili) for “Let’s pull together”. Harambee preceded Contrast, Share, Pride and the Caribbean Camera.
Chris Harris has been one of the few attempting to keep the untold history of the Black Radical Tradition and the AAPA alive. Harris’ article, “Canadian Black Power, Organic Intellectuals of Position in Toronto, 1967 – 1975” was published quietly. He is quoted extensively in David Austin’s 2014 Casa de las Americas Prize winning book in Caribbean Literature in English or Creole, “Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal.”
Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report talks about how a Black mis-leadership is high jacking the African liberation struggle in the United States. Ditto for Canada.
The untold story of the Radical Black Tradition in Canada is beginning to unfold. A new autobiography, “Burnley “Rocky” Jones Revolutionary” by Jones and James W. St. G. Walker gets the ball rolling in this work. Jones gives credit to the AAPA in this volume for keeping the radical Black tradition alive in the Great White North.
Jones discusses how tribalism ruled during the late sixties and early seventies in Toronto’s history. Africans born in Canada organized as Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians or Black Canadians. He talks about a rally that took place at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on Bloor Street in Toronto.
Says Jones: “The chair was José Garcia, of the Afro American Progressive Association, a Marxist, and Black Nationalist organization in Toronto. Although that organization was Canadian, its name reflected the interaction with the States; there was continual movement back and forth across the border with Detroit and Buffalo, with Panthers and CORE and various Black Nationalist associations. Many of these people were also at the conference, in particular a group known as the Detroit Revolutionary Union movement, DRUM, extremely militant and connected to the Panthers.”
Jones was incorrect on the name of DRUM; DRUM is an acronym for the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was an organization of Black workers formed in May 1968 in the Chrysler Corporation‘s Dodge Main assembly plant in Detroit. While I was a co-founder of the AAPA I was also a member of DRUM which later would blossom into the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
The term Afro-American had nothing to do with Black America. It was inspired by Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). The group was a Pan-Africanist organization founded by (Omowale) Malik Shabazz in 1964. The group was modeled on the Organization of African Unity, which had impressed Malik during his visit to Africa in April 1964. The purpose of the OAAU was to fight for the human rights of Africans in America and in the Western Hemisphere who speak English, French, Spanish, Dutch and Papiamento. One of the co-founders of the AAPA Jose Garcia could speak Papiamento, Dutch, Spanish, French and English better than me. We were internationalist from the get-go.
Cooks was a Caribbean man who used the term African-American to unite Africans in the West. He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His parents were from the nearby island of St. Martin. Robert Acemendeces Harris author of “Carlos Cooks and Black Nationalism” pointed out: “It was Carlos Cooks who first defined the difference between the terms Black and/or African as opposed to "Negro" and fought to have the latter word abrogated as a racial classification." You can even ask Richard Moore a foundation member of the African Blood Brotherhood and (author of The Word Negro And Its Evil Use) about this. Or you can read the documentation of this in "BLACK NATIONALISM: A Search for Identity in America" by Prof. E. U. Essien-Udom of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
I was blessed to have heard Richard B. Moore speak in Montreal in 1967 and to have met and worked with Elombe Brath, a disciple of Cooks. Moore spoke at a Black community meeting that I attended during Expo 67. When I first went to Detroit and met General Gordon Baker Jr. I found a copy of Brath’s comic book “Color Them Colored” where he ridiculed everyone from Harry Belafonte to Malcolm X for not being “Black” enough. Baker explained to me how he had for a brief moment associated with Cooks African Nationalist Pioneer Movement.
There are aspects of Cooks philosophy I united 1000 percent behind. At their convention called in 1959 the ANPM called for the abrogation of the word Negro as the official racial classification of black people and replace the term with African when speaking of land origin, heritage and national identity (irrespective of birthplace ) and the proud usage of black, when dealing with color (in spite of complexion).
There are others aspects of his views that I totally disagree with. I have always united with Huey P. Newton’s statement, "Blackness is necessary, but not sufficient.” I was never down with Cooks anti-communism. When Fidel Castro visited Harlem, Cooks refused to meet him. Malik took the opposite view.
Brath is quoted in Rosemari Mealy’s book, “Fidel & Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting.” Says Brath, “While Malcolm as an individual was developing as an anti-imperialist champion, he boldly met with Premier Fidel Castro when the Cuban leader stayed at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, arguing a class analysis in non-Marxist terms, that is, the field Negro versus the house Negro.
Cooks however, took a completely different position. Essien-Udom, who wrote “Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America” published in the early 1960s, discussed Cooks and Malik and pointed out: “Nearly all of the present-day black nationalist groups are anti-communist. Recently, Mr. Carlos Cooks (African Nationalist Pioneering Movement) in a 4th of July speech in Harlem self-righteously explained how in the thirties they (the nationalist) were having street fights with the communists and they do not welcome 'the regime of Dr. Fidel Castro’s Cuba.'”
RELATED: Dr. Walter Rodney: Revolutionary Intellectual, Socialist, Pan-Africanist and HistorianInstead, Mr. Cooks expressed some admiration for ex-President Batista. He said that under Batista Negroes had a “fair deal” in Cuba and that Premier Castro’s regime was a returning to “white supremacy.” For a brief moment in my history I did have a problem with Cuba. This was because of the anti- communism propaganda we were taught from the womb to the tomb in the USA where I was born.
For a brief moment I supported Jonas Savimbi‘s The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the Angolan War for Independence (1961 – 1975) and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war1975–2002). UNITA received military aid from the imperialist USA and apartheid South Africa while the MPLA received support from the Soviet Union and other members of the Socialist block at that time. We apologize to Africa for this error in judgment.
In the 21st Century Africa, Africans and the oppressed generally must be anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and anti-sexist and be for socialism-period. As Fred Hampton used to say, “If you are afraid of socialism you are afraid of yourself.”
Norman (Otis) Richmond, aka Jalali, was born in Arcadia, Louisiana, and grew up in Los Angeles. He left Los Angles after refusing to fight in Vietnam because he felt that, like the Vietnamese, Africans in the United States were colonial subjects. Richmond began his career in journalism at the African Canadian weekly Contrast. He went on to be published in the Toronto Star, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the National Post, the Jackson Advocate, Share, the Islander, the Black American, Pan African News Wire, and Black Agenda Report. For more informantion norman.o.richmond@gmail.com
