Black Power to Hip Hop Conference at Howard U.

National Black United Front - From Black Power to Hip Hop Conference

Public Event · By National Black United Front (NBUF)

• • November 2 at 4:30pm until November 4 at 10:00pm in EDT

• From Black Power to Hip Hop- Who's Going to Take the Weight? A National Intergenerational Dialogue on Black Power & Hip Hop Howard University November 2nd – 4th, 2012 The objective is to have an intergenerational dialogue between elders that made the Black Power movement and the hip hop generation. With the hip hop generation, taking this primary source information, applying it to their daily lives and continuing on the struggle for self-determination, self-respect and self-defense. This will be a three day event that will take place at Howard University, with the collective participation of area students and community organizers committed to practicing Sankofa, in spirit and in truth. Over the course of three days, the youth organizers will spend extensive time sitting at the feet of the elders listening, absorbing, and receiving information, advice, and strategy. Strengthening the weakened relationship between our elders and our youth is the responsibility of any organization committed to the uplift and empowerment of Black people in the United States. Through structured dialogue, workshops, and communal discussion, the youth will have the opportunity to learn what no textbook, no university course, nor museum exhibit could convey about the Black Power Movement. In turn, the elders will have the opportunity to call upon the energy of the youth to revive the Black Power Movement and once again instill a collective fight towards Black empowerment and self-determination. Conference Agenda Friday November 2, 2012 Taking Our Movement to the Streets 4:30 pm - Black Power Hip Hop Rally & Parade on Building Political Power Location - African American Civil War Memorial (1000 U St. North West) 6:30 pm - Black Political Power Town Hall Meeting Location – Howard University Blackburn Center - Digital Auditorium Saturday November 3, 2012 Sitting at the Feet of the Elders: Intergenerational Dialogue on Black Power (Panel Discussions) Location Howard University Blackburn Center – Forum 9 am – Opening Ceremony • Drum Call • Libation • Pledge to the Red, Black & Green • National Anthem – Lift Every Voice & Sing 10:00 am -Transition of a Movement: From Civil Rights to Black Power 11:30 am - Contributions of Women During the Black Power Movement 1:00 pm - Black Power Era’s Influence on Hip Hop 2:30 pm Success and Failures of the Black Power Movement 4:00 pm - From the Campus to the Community: The Role of Black Studies in Developing Community Power 5:30 pm Networking/Community Building 7:30 pm Shades of Blackness Visual & Performing Art Show - Dedicated to the Ancestors of the Black Power Movement $10 Location Emergence Community Art Collective (733 Euclid Ave North West) Sunday November 4, 2012 Black Power Strategy Sessions Location – Howard University Blackburn Center – Hill Top Lounge 10:00 am – Opening Ceremony • Drum Call • Libation • Pledge to the Red, Black & Green • National Anthem – Lift Every Voice & Sing 10:30 am Creating a Black United Front – Building a Movement from the Ground Up 12:30 pm Political Prisoners Teach In 2:00 pm Internationalizing Our Movement – Organizing with Continental Organizations 3:30 pm Middle School Student Presentation on Black Nationalism 4:30 pm Spirituality, Hip Hop & Black Power 7:00 pm - Sounds of Sankofa – Black Power Hip Hop Show $10 Location Sankofa Bookstore & Café (2714 Georgia Ave North West) ******All events are located at Howard University Blackburn Center and free unless noted****** Participants include Kofi Taharka NBUF Salim Adofo – NBUF Mirimba Ani – SNCC Baba Zulu – SNCC, Ujamaa Shule Nkechi Taifa RNA Chokwe Lumumba RNA Dr. Jared Ball MXGM, WPFW Muhammad Ahmed RAM Akinyele Umoja RNA Khadir Muhammad -NOI Ras Baraka Newark City Councilman Charles Barron NBUF, BPP Kolanji Changa FTP Movement Fayemi Shakur Hycide Magazine Autumn Marie Taalam Acey – International Spoken Word Artist Bomani Armah Cornel West Theory Malcolm X Drummers & Dancers NSAA Dance Ensemble Kuumba Kids Darryl Moch Natasha Danielle Iresha Picot Mjiba Frehiwot - AAPRP Kymone Freeman We Act Radio Zarinah Shakir - WPFW Naji Mujahid - WPFW Divine Allah NBPP DJ Honey B Fuse Box Radio Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle Ubiquity Inc Epiphany Enoch 7th Prophet DJ 360 Degreez DJ Wise

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Archiving Black History

Dr. Ben supposedly gave his 30,000 volume library to the Nation of Islam. He said there were no Black institutions that deserved his books. Harlem's Shumberg Library is owned by the City of New York. The HBCU institutions are white controlled, he felt. For sure, no black institutions were seriously interested in my archives, so they were acquired by the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.

What is of greater importance to me are the archives of common people. At the transition of our elders, most of their archives find their way into the trash bin while relatives take the gold, silver, diamonds and any cash found. But the real gold are the letters, notebooks, photos, diaries and other items our elders acquired during their sojourn on earth. 

I am trying to organize an Archive Project to educate our community on the importance of archives. In Oakland the West Oakland Renaissance Committee/Elders Council has been made aware of the importance of saving the history of not only intellectuals and social activists but the common people as well. Everyone has a story, a history, every family and we must stop throwing our family history into the trash!

While in Houston, TX on my book tour, I addressed the Elders Council Institute of Wisdom. They immediately recognized the urgent need to secure the archives of members.

Below Rudy Lewis comments on his experience as an archiver.

--Marvin X

My Archival Experience

Or the State of HBCU Archives

By Rudolph Lewis

Note: Charles E. Siler, an artist and a museum curator, suggested that maybe we should create a forum for the discussion of the State of HBCU Archives. We came to this necessity partially as a result of two recent articles. One, an article on Alice Walker  in which it was reported that Alice Walker to Place her Archive at Emory University and two Fisk U struggles to sell art. Miriam DeCosta-Willis raised the question whether Walker had considered Spelman, an HBCU institution from which Walker had graduated. My immediate response was Walker probably thought that Emory had greater resources and thus Emory could make her papers quickly available to the public and probably in more creative formats than Spelman was able to do. There was a round of other responses. Then on the heel of that story came the crisis at Fisk in which administrators were trying to sell off their art collection in order to pay bills. That set off another round of exchanges about the State of HBCU archives. Some of these exchanges you will find below.

So I've decided to kick off this forum with a rendition of my experience with HBCU archives and other archival experience. After that I will post some of the exchanges and other items pertinent to the conversation. We hope that there are others who will respond with their own presentation or comments on the problems and solutions of the crises now existing for HBCU archives. We welcome of course comparative studies.

*   *   *   *   *

I spent one year working in an archive, The George Meany Memorial Archives, as a fellow during my last year in library school. So I've processed only two collections: the papers of the Department of Organization of the AFL-CIO and that of Vanni Montana, a member of the largest Garment Workers local (NY) in the nation, during the period of the 1930s to the 1950s.

I am intellectually curious about an odd number of things, even boorish union men and political ideologues. Montana was Italian, and early on a socialist in Sicily. Of course, his politics changed gradually as he became more and more an American. He wrote a political biography (unpublished), which I read and found interesting; a copy of one of the manuscripts being discarded was given to me by the former GMM director, Stuart Kaufman, I have been carrying it around for a decade. I have meant to read it a again and post excerpts online to kindle an interest in its publication.

There was of course very little of a personal nature in Montana's papers, mostly politics and organizational conflicts and an indication of his progression toward the conservatism of Nixon's Republican Party. What there was that was personal was contained in the manuscript of his political biography. It represented a curious history of Italian immigrants and their involvement in political and union movements back home and in America. Some of the correspondence was in Italian, so in some cases I had to use a dictionary.

The emphasis at George Meany however was on preservation and not promoting and programming and making connections with other such papers in the Archives and making those evident in finding aids or online. All that requires time and energy and money. Of course, some of this could be done by students given fellowships. But the old paradigm of preservation is first and last, primarily. The fellows I encountered had little interest in politics or union history. I think I was the only one of the fellows that year who had a union background. But few of us, in the late 90s, were up sufficiently on the web and the new digital technology, which has advanced in leaps and bounds in the last decade.

There were some letters of a personal nature from organizers in the Department of Organization papers, of old organizers being discarded like they were yesterday’s trash. Heartbreaking stories of the poverty of old CIO organizers who fought the hard fight and were abandoned because they couldn’t document their years to qualify for a pension or couldn’t qualify for the personnel cuts when the AFL and the CIO became one organization.

I made copies of some news clippings and letters and statements of union men, especially concerning organizing efforts in the South among agricultural workers and Negroes. I tried to get some black union people interested in the documents, for educating their organizers, giving them a sense of the early CIO organizers and the new AFL-CIO of the 1950s. None of the union people I knew was interested in possibly printing the documents as part of their organizers training program.

I eventually decided to digitize some of those documents and include them as part of ChickenBones: A Journal:  Blacks and Labor in Print. These documents  became part of the foundation of the site. The niece of one of the former union organizing directors thanked me for keeping alive the memory of her uncle, William Kircher. Often what to include or exclude in a person's papers also depend  on the person who is processing the papers—their background, their emphasis, their knowledge of what might be important to researchers, especially when writing bio-sketches and finding aids.

As a researcher in the mid-80s, I also became familiar with the papers of Marcus Bruce Christian while teaching at the University of New Orleans and wrote as a result a seminal essay on his poetry and how it represents aspects of his personal life. Not even Tom Dent who knew Christian personally and wrote a published paper on him made use of the diary and letters of Christian to explicate Christian's poetry. I also did a focused research in the unprocessed papers of Sterling Brown at Howard.  The archivist was kind in bringing those papers from the warehouse where they were stored. That came after a Marcus Christian research  was done at the National Archives and the Library of Congress, looking for letters and materials Christian had sent Sterling Brown, when Brown was the Negro Director of the Black section of the Federal Writers’ Project. Brown was collecting material from the black state projects for his proposed book, “The Portrait of the Negro as American.”

I expected the Federal Writers’ Project material would be at the National Archives— in that the productions of the Federal Writers Project were government documents. Some administrative papers were indeed at the National Archives. But a decision was made to transfer the bulk of the requested material from the states to the Library of Congress so that there would be a greater accessibility. So I went to the Library of Congress in search of the materials Christian had sent Brown. They were not in the Louisiana folders. In the late 30s and possibly the early 40s the Library of Congress had a lending policy. I assumed then that Brown had borrowed the materials and never returned them.

So I went in search of Brown’s papers, which I discovered were at  Moorland-Spingarn.  Among these unprocessed papers (of the mid-30s) I did not find what I was looking for but I found papers of a congressional controversy regarding an entry in the Washington, DC Guide Book, produced by the Federal Writers' Project. It included material on Blacks in Washington. There were charges from a Wisconsin congressmen of communists in the FWP trying to embarrass/slander the family of George Washington, the nation's hero and first President. Brown was thus viewed as an enemy of the State. These unprocessed papers I discovered constituted Brown's defense. I made copies and later pulled them together, digitized them and published them  as the Maria Syphax Case.

I have also had an opportunity to check out the collection at Morgan State University and Virginia Union. Neither had the expected archival controls for heat, humidity, or pests. I’ve heard stories that some of the papers given to Morgan were sitting in hallways. Morgan is building a new library but  they have not made provisions for a state of the arts archives. I have also heard horrid stories about the Bowie State University collections. The papers of Marcus Christian were at Dillard University. After his death, Christian’s nephew (I believe) turned them over to the University of New Orleans, which he thought had greater resources to deal with Christian's great volume of documents, some from the Dillard Federal Writers’ Project. From my research use of the UNO Archives they have done Christian and researchers a great service. But UNO has not gone that far beyond the preservation stage. Digitizing the Christian Collection more in depth would provide greater access to the general public and a greater appreciation of Marcus Christian, the poet and historian.

So the above is a short version of my limited experience which forms my attitude towards the importance and the possibilities of archives as educational institutions with an enlarged audience and clientele.—Rudy

posted 4 January 2008

Chickenbones.com

Black Bird Press News & Review: Nafertari of Houston's Secret Word Cafe will hold a conversation with Marvin X

Black Bird Press News & Review: Nafertari of Houston's Secret Word Cafe will hold a conversation with Marvin X

After Friday Prayers

Dedicated to Prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah, pbuh

After Friday Prayers 

After Friday Prayers
After salat
salaam-alaikum
al humdulilah
we shall meet in the streets
to shout no more pharaoh
no more presidents for life
no more American aide for guns and tear gas
no more uncle abdullah
no more
no more reactionary theology
no honor killings
suppression of women's dignity
no more
after Friday prayers
in Tunisia
Cairo
Yemen
Sudan
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
no more
after Fatihah/Ikhlas
we shall meet the guns of Pharaoh Mubarak
we shall meet the tear gas
even death even
we shall meet
and go to paradise
for freedom
we have no fear of Pharaoh's guns/tear gas
no fear no more
we are mostly young and invincible
we have the model
we shall meet in the streets
to live again
to breathe
to love
to take control of our lives
to feed our families
to fly in the sun of freedom and liberty.
--Marvin X
1/27/11

Dr. Mohja Kahf considers Marvin X the father of Muslim American literature,
along with many of the Black Arts Movement poets who were influenced by Islam,
regardless of the sect. Bob Holman calls him the USA's Rumi "The wisdom of Saadi,
the ecstasy of Hafiz!"

Black Bird Press News & Review: Going Too Far: Essays About American's Nervous Breakdown

Black Bird Press News & Review: Going Too Far: Essays About American's Nervous Breakdown

Happy B Day, Honorable Elijah Muhammad

Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X's TSU Lecture: The Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life

Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X's TSU Lecture: The Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life

Black Bird Press News & Review: Angela Davis and Michelle Alexander on Neo Slavery

Black Bird Press News & Review: Angela Davis and Michelle Alexander on Neo Slavery

Live from the American Gulag: Mumia Abu Jamal

Return of the Clinton

[col. writ. 9/7/12] © ’12 Mumia Abu-Jamal

I’ve not wasted a lot of time watching the conventions, for conventions are essentially – well – conventional.

Politicians make promises that they have no intention of keeping, and do so with earnest smiles; even tears, if need be.

Today’s conventions are the creation less of political parties than of corporate paymasters (called “sponsors” in news speak)

The sites, provisions, transportation and hotel accommodations are often corporate gifts; the ‘better to bribe you with, my dears!’

With the possible exception of Massachusetts senatorial candidate, Elizabeth Warren (who made her name criticizing the bank bailouts), few speakers held my interest, even if Michelle was a beautiful sight to see.

What I found most remarkable was the presentation of ex-President, Bill Clinton, and his oratory about jobs and the economy.

Clinton, easily the most masterful politician of his generation, is so distinguished precisely because he’s also probably the smartest.

What Clinton knows is that no matter who gets the nod in November, jobs – good-paying, manufacturing gigs – are gone for good, thanks in large part to his gift to the business and financial bigwigs in 1994: NAFTA.

NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) opened the doors abroad for business flight to countries with lower labor costs, dooming millions of American jobs, forever.

I bet, even if you watched every moment of every convention – you didn’t hear the acronym NAFTA once.

I betcha.

For NAFTA, which also affected tariffs, textiles, and loosened controls on banks and high finance, it too put a barrier on high, working-class manufacturing wages – by giving businesses a way out – abroad.

Clinton not only signed it, he campaigned for it.

He represents the party politics of betrayal that is at the very heart of the corporatist electoral machinery.

To have Bill Clinton talk about jobs is a lot like Dracula giving advice on blood banks (he knows a lot about it, but from the wrong end)

That’s today’s political system, and why so many are so turned off.

--© ’12 maj

Marvin X's TSU Lecture: The Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life

As Marvin X concludes the Houston leg of his national book tour, on Friday he lectures at Texas Southern University on the Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life. Actually, this is the title of Volume II, the Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables. Volume II is unpublished, but the author who teaches at his Academy of da Corner, downtown Oakland, will discuss entrepreneurship or how to do for self in the era of declining jobs for American workers, let alone North American African workers.

The American corporate bandits and bloodsuckers of the poor shall not pay American MBAs $140,000 per year when they can pay Indian MBAs $14,000 per year. In the mind of filthy capitalist swine, it just doesn't make sense, no matter that Obama has promised if he is reelected their shall be hefty tax brakes for corporations who bring jobs back to America.

Marvin X at the University of Houston on Tuesday after speaking with students in Dr. Malachi Crawford's Introduction to Africana Studies class

photo Michael Demaris

Marvin X contends if US military veterans returning from the global battlefields with post traumatic stress syndrome are being ushered into college and university programs that teach entrepreneurship, the same must be done for brothers and sisters in the hoods and colleges. Degree or no degree, brothers and sisters need work. Many of them, especially the brothers, possess criminal records, suffer a dual diagnose of drug and mental health issues, thus they are not suited for the workplace, perhaps, only if they operate their own businesses. This is what the government has decided many veterans must do, so we maintain those North American Africans who are victims of America's domestic war against the poor can only be salvaged by doing for self economically.

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Going Too Far: Essays About American's Nervous Breakdown

Going Too Far: Essays About America's Nervous Breakdown

Challenging a prevailing attitude, this account disputes the idea that racism is no longer a factor in American life. Based on cultural and literary evidence—including Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—it argues that, in some ways, the United States very much resembles the country of the 1850s. Not only are the representations of blacks in popular culture throwbacks to the days of minstrelsy, but politicians are also raising stereotypes reminiscent of those which fugitive slaves found it necessary to combat: that African Americans are lazy, dependent, and in need of management. Bold and direct, this book brings an important debate to the surface.

"In the past 40 years, Reed has published more than 20 books and has also made his mark as an editor, publisher, critic, journalist, songwriter, librettist, and fearsome letter-to-the-editor writer. . . . Reed is among the most American of American writers, if by 'American' we mean a quality defined by its indefinability and its perpetual transformations as new ideas, influences and traditions enter our cultural conversation."  —New York Times

"Just when you think that Reed is exaggerating or being one-dimensional in his analysis of racial issues, he'll open another page of American history and show you something new."  —David Homel, Rover Arts

"There is brutal candor in Reed's argument, which often feels refreshing in light of the euphemisms and platitudes typically expressed in both polite discourse and the media's self-scrutiny. . . . Whether or not one agrees with Reed, one can only be entertained by his gleeful barbs and edgy turns-of-phrase. He names names and shames with derision."  —Caroline Brown, English professor, Université de Montréal for Montreal Review of Books

"Reed's writing is incisive and astute, impassioned and amusing. He fully researches his topics and makes a decisive stand based on the facts, as he sees it. Whether you agree with him or not, you at least get to explore a different viewpoint."  —Gabrielle David, Phati'tude Literary Magazine

Manhood training for young black boys?

100 Black Men of the Bay Area, Inc.  Opens New School To Help Black Boys   By Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle   In the first hour of the first day of school Tuesday, the sixth-grade Oakland boy was sure he was in trouble for goofing off. His teacher, Peter Wilson, had stopped his lesson in mid-sentence and turned his attention to the African American preteen, who now wore an uh-oh expression as he braced for a rebuke.   "Did you eat breakfast this morning?" Wilson asked quietly as the confused boy shook his head no. "Your actions are telling me you're hungry." The teacher, also African American, then promised to bring fruit and granola bars the next day and returned to teaching. The boy's behavior immediately improved. That might not have been the result at other Oakland middle schools, where a third of black males were suspended at least once last year. But at the 100 Black Men Community School, a new all-male public charter school, educators and organizers say they refuse to accept those odds - or any of the other statistics associated with black boys that include higher dropout rates, lower test scores and disproportionate placement in specialeducation programs.  The school, started and financially supported by the Bay Area chapter of the 100 Black Men nonprofit organization, is open to all male students, but it was created specifically for issues facing black boys - including difficult family lives, street culture, community violence and lack of male role models outside professional sports and the music industry. "We know our children can perform as well as any other children," said Dr. Mark Alexander, an epidemiologist and chairman of the board for the local 100 Black Men. "We're going to create a culture that hopefully will be stronger than the streets." Not About Segregation While the idea of a black boys school might sound counterintuitive given the efforts of past generations to desegregate public schools, it's not about racial segregation, school organizers said.  Derrick Bulles, of the Bay Area 100 Black Men. It's about recognizing that the status quo isn't working and identifying the specific needs of African American young men. Not all teachers are prepared to deal with those needs, said too often, African American boys get marginalized; teachers don't understand them or fear them, Bulles said. It's about recognizing that the status quo isn't working and identify