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.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Dr. Nicole Price is the Forbes Books author of Spark The Heart: Engineering Empathy In Your Organization.
Nick Encalada-Malinowski is Director of the Civil Rights Union campaign at Vocal-NY.
The climate emergency won't end because of heartfelt pleas to the people and the interests who created the crisis. Ecocide will stop when capitalism ends.
To mark the last days of Black August, we reprint below Freedomways’ 1975 editorial about Joanne Little, a Black woman indicted for killing her white prison guard and would-be rapist.
Somali nationalists claim victory and raise the Somali flag above the city of Las Anod.
