The 1963 March on Washington was a pivotal moment for African American people, a day when people joined to fight for jobs, peace and justice. More than 250,000 people traveled to Washington, coming by busses, trains, and occasionally planes.
Like many Americans my sleep was troubled last night, troubled by the ghosts of past injustices, a feeling given fresh currency by a late-hour not guilty verdict from Sanford, Florida that freed George Zimmerman in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.
By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill
My long time friend for over forty years and comrade in the struggle for African Liberation worldwide, Jitu Weusi, made his transition into eternity on Wednesday, May 23, 2013 at his home in Brooklyn, New York on Fulton Street.
April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King stepped to the podium of the Riverside Church in New York to vigorously proclaim his opposition to the War in Vietnam. It was one of the most powerful orations among numerous remarkable speeches delivered during his brief but extraordinary life.
The history of Black people in this country is a complex, engaging and thought-compelling history, a history of Holocaust and enduring hope; of savage enslavement and yet an unsupressable desire and demand for freedom.
When Rodney King was snatched up into the whip and whirl of the winds of racial history in this country thru his savage beating in 1991 and the resultant revolt in 1992, it was an invitation of history he had no idea would come, no interest at first in accepting and ultimately, no way to engage it except as the man he was and tried to be.
When race, equality, and fairness are taken into consideration, there is far too much to be outraged about in these United States of American. Just a few minutes ago I learned that Andrew Bloomberg, the 29 year old police officer whose participation in the brutal beating of Chad Holley was found not guilty of the beating.
There is an unlimited library of lessons in the lives and teachings of our ancestors, those who, as Seba Ptahhotep says in the Husia, “listened to the Divine”, spoke truth, did justice, and worked tirelessly to secure the well-being of our people and the world. So it is with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., awesome preacher, prophet and dream weaver whose martyrdom and sacrifice we commemorate this month.
March 10-12, 1972, an estimated 10,000 Black people converged on a small steel town in Indiana for one of the greatest gatherings in the history of Africans in America – the Gary National Black Political Convention. As I reflect on more than a half century on the frontlines of the Black Freedom Struggle, anyone who is intimately familiar with my work is aware that the Gary Black Political Convention was one of the defining moments for an emerging social/political activist from Youngstown, Ohio.
On April 27th at the Schomburg Center in New York family, longtime allies/friends and the community will gather to share in the celebration of my 70th Birthday. Personally, I’m not much on birthday celebrations, so the event will be a benefit to support the work of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW), the organization which I have devoted my energies building for the past decade. I view IBW as a signature/legacy initiative – the culmination of nearly a half century of advocacy and organizing on the frontlines of the Black Freedom Struggle.
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The Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW21) is committed to enhancing the capacity of Black communities in the U.S. and globally to achieve cultural, social, economic and political equality and an enhanced quality of life for all marginalized people. – Learn more here
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