Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Meets African Liberation
In the political hotbed that was Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1967, US Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael, who had not yet changed his name to Kwame Ture, made both friends and enemies among the continent’s various African liberation groups. “Stokely Carmichael understood the Black Power revolution to be a global movement that centered Africa, but also African descended people” elsewhere in the world, said Toivi Asheeke, a post-doctoral Fellow in sociology at Vassar College. Asheeke authored an article titled, “Black Power and Armed Decolonization in Southern Africa: Stokely Carmichael, the African National Congress of South Africa, and the African Liberation Movement.”
“Colonial Logics” Remained for Black Women in “Liberated” Zimbabwe
Black women “posed a problem” for the Black government that replaced white rule in Zimbabwe, because their bodies were thought to “disturb urban space,” said Rudo Mudiwa, a PhD in Community and Culture and a Research Fellow at Princeton University. Under colonial rule, “women were supposed to stay in the village to produce more laborers,” said Mudiwa, a native of Zimbabwe. But after liberation, “colonial logics were still operating,” resulting in massive arrests and harassment of women on urban streets. Dr Mudiwa wrote an article titled, “Stop the Woman, Save the State: Policing, Order, and the Black Woman’s Body.”
Sex was Central to Dutch West Indies Anti-Colonial Politics
Sexual issues were loudly debated among anti-colonial activists in the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curaçao and Aruba, said Chelsea Shields, a history professor at the City University of New York. Among colonized people of color, the connection between sex and violence “was why it was so urgent to reclaim sexuality as a vital aspect of self-determination,” said Dr Shields, author of a book on the subject and a recent article titled, “Sex, Socialism, and Black Power in the Dutch Atlantic.” However, Curaçao authorities created an economic model reliant on tourism” – including sexual tourism, which remains a drawing card for the island. Shields’ forthcoming book is titled, “Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy after Empire.”
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From the moment the first colonizers arrived in the Caribbean, the West has treated the region as a treasure chest for resource extraction and labor exploitation.
The state uses tactics such as medical neglect, to slowly assassinate political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal.
It is prudent for Black people to join in coalition with the Arab and Muslim people collectively refusing to support President Biden and connect the struggle for Palestinian liberation to the…
From the decline of the triangular trade to the rapacious extraction of mineral resources and labor exploitation, Africans have organized and revolted against western domination.
While revolutionary Black organizations after the Panthers continued to support Palestine vocally, the realities of COINTELPRO and mass incarceration have had a profound impact on the organization…
