News: Michael Jackson Is Celebrated In African American History Month
Lady Motown
By Chidi Achebe
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
(An African sojourner’s perspective)
The month of February is know as the month for the celebration of the
heroic efforts of African Americans. Dr Achebe in this scholarly essay
looks at the culture, politics and history of the struggles of Africans
in North America.
Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson along with other African Americans and white
scholars of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
developed the idea for a Negro History Week in 1926. By the 1970s, this
celebration of African American heritage had expanded to include the
entire month of February. Known today as Black History Month, it has
become a time set aside to learn about the Black Experience and to
celebrate the many achievements and contributions of African Americans.
The African American Century
The cultural influence of the United States is evident throughout the
world. Its presence is everywhere- on television, in the movies,
emanating from boom boxes, heard in colloquial speech, in fashion and on
your dinner table. This pervasive presence, for good or ill, has often
prompted many sociologists to deem this cultural domination “the genesis
of a universal culture in medicine, life-saving surgeries are possible
as a result of the work of the physician and surgeon, Charles Drew, who
helped develop the modern Blood Bank. Other major contributions came
from Phil Brooks who invented the disposable syringe, and George Edward
Alcorn whose work on the Imaging X-ray spectrometer revolutionized
Radiology.
The kitchen table is often the focal point for meals and social
gatherings. Its modern configuration in most homes all over the world is
the result of the imagination of the African American, Henry A. Jackson,
in the late 1800s. Meals prepared and served on this essential piece of
furniture, are possible because of the wonders of mechanized
agriculture. The work of black scientists such as Francis J. Wood, who
invented the potato digger, Dawn E. Francis’s novel organic fertilizer
production methods, and George Washington Carver, aided this revolution.
Carver’s myriad of inventions involving peanuts (peanut butter etc);
soybeans and potatoes revived the agricultural sector in the South. For
dessert, we have Augustus Jackson to thank for the modern method of
manufacturing, (not discovering) ice cream, and the multiple ice cream
recipes he developed around 1832.
Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent bulb in 1879 brought the
‘miracle of light’ to the world. His earliest bulbs fitted with a
platinum filament were hampered by their ‘short half-life’. Lewis
Latimer, his African American colleague, invented an electric lamp that
utilized a longer lasting, inexpensive carbon filament. This discovery
enhanced the commercial viability of Edison’s invention. Later, Latimer
would oversee installation of carbon filament electric lighting systems
in cities as diverse and large as London, England, Montreal in Canada,
and New York City and Philadelphia in the United States. Lewis Latimer
is also credited with the scientific drawings and design for the patent
submitted by Alexander Graham Bell for his invention - the telephone.
A literature with Moral urgency
The rich, extensive and diverse field known as African American
literature bears what scholars have termed “ the burden of a moral
urgency”. Like all literature, it explores a myriad of universal themes.
As a body of work, it is particularly novel in its treatment and
dissection of the power of oppression and the ramifications for both the
oppressor and the dispossessed. It showcases an intimacy with a history
of struggle, is informed by suffering and morality, celebrates love and
passion, and illuminates with honesty and moral urgency, life in a world
torn by social, racial and political strife.
The field has its ancient roots in Negro Spirituals slave preachers
wrote as early as the 17th century. Encompassing several genres, it
includes the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Countee
Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jayne Cortez, Michael Harper, Rita Dove, Amiri
Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Maya Angelou. The literary canon also contains
the Slave Narratives and Abolitionist work of Frederick Douglas,
autobiography by Booker T. Washington and Maya Angelou, and the
socio-political and historical masterpieces of W.E.B. Dubois. Included
also are the plays of Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shange, and August
Wilson; as well as the glorious prose of James Weldon Johnson, Richard
Wright, Zora Neal Hurston, Alex Haley, James Baldwin, John Edgar
Wideman, Terry McMillan, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.
In 1993 the Swedish academy awarded Toni Morrison the Nobel Prize in
Literature. Gail Caldwell of The Boston Globe at the time reported that
she was recognized for “visionary force and poetic import” of her six
novels, which include “Song of Solomon” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning
“Beloved.” The Academy further praised the then 62-year-old professor of
humanities at Princeton for the “epic power” of her fiction, for its
“unerring ear for dialogue and richly expressive depictions of black
America.”
Music that nourishes the Soul
African Americans have played a prodigious role in crafting the world’s
music since their arrival in the Americas in the 1600s. Virtually every
form of popular music contains elements of African American and hence
African rhythms and melodies.
Like the fictional Pied Piper, the African American has mesmerized,
hypnotized and excited us all with his/her compositions and watched
proudly as feet tap the ground, hips sway sensually and rhythmically at
night, feet dance and voices rise in accompaniment to his/her beat.
Negro spirituals
The earliest forms of African American music were born out of the pain
and anguish of slavery. Know as Negro Spirituals, these songs with
religious underpinnings, were composed by brilliant artists such as
William Dawson and Harry Thacker Burleigh. Exemplified by classics such
as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Deep River,” they would enjoy a
resurgent popularity at the turn of the 20th century, spread to the
world through the vocal talents of great singers like Paul Robeson and
Marian Anderson.
The Blues
Negro Spirituals would later give birth to the Blues, a form of black
music that emanated from the river delta region of the Deep South. As an
artistic form, it would influence Jazz music and its great practitioners
such as Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. By the mid 1920s, Bessie
Smith would emerge as the ‘the Queen of the Blues’ along with other
classic blues singers such as Mamie Smith and Ethel Waters. Bessie Smith
and later, in the thirties, Billie Holiday, would produce recordings
that sold in the millions. The 1930s would also see the egress of the
‘boogie-woogie’, a blues-influenced style of piano music. Today, at the
helm of a blues revival of sorts can be found names such as B.B. King,
John Lee Hooker, Albert Collins as well as white artists such Eric Clapton.
Jazz
Jazz music has often been referred to as America’s classical music. Its
genesis can be traced back to the late 1800’s. Musicologists attest to
the fact that it is the only musical form to have completely originated
in the United States. One of the remarkable distinctive traits of the
genuine jazz musician is his/her ability to improvise- creating new
music on cue, spontaneously or on demand. As an art form, it is a
conglomeration and synthesis of several influences including African
rhythms, the Blues, as well as European and American musical band
traditions and instruments.
The home of the first notable Jazz musicians was New Orleans,
Louisiana. The Trumpeter Louis Armstrong lived there, as did pianist
Jelly Roll Morton and saxophonist Sidney Bechet. Other cities such as
Chicago and New York became Jazz hubs with the evolution of ‘the Jazz
club tradition’. White artists such as Benny Goodman, saxophonists
Frankie Trumbauer and Bud Freeman would become some of the major
practitioners of “Chicago Style jazz”. In New York, African Americans
Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, and Teddy Wilson
would emerge as the most celebrated artists of the art form. Together,
these musicians would be responsible for the “Swing era of jazz’ - a
time when big bands dominated the jazz music arena. Out of this milieu
would emerge iconical vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday,
Nat “King” Cole, Carmen McRae, and Sarah Vaughan.
In the 1940s, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, saxophonist Charlie Parker,
pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and drummers Kenny Clarke and
Max Roach, created ‘bebop or bop’ - a new style of jazz in great
divergence from the music of the big bands.
The modern jazz era has produced several great artists such as
Cannonball Adderly, George Benson, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane,
Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, John A. Lewis, Wynton Marsalis, Charles
Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. Davis is arguably the greatest
and most influential of American jazz trumpeters and bandleaders. His
distinctive, provocative, spacious style coalesces a raspy, almost
melancholic tone that is gloriously interpreted by a lyrical trumpet.
His work continues to inspire jazz devotees and practitioners alike all
over the globe, over a decade after his death.
Rock
The archetypal “rebel music” of youth, Rock music also referred to as
‘Rock and Roll’ in its earlier incarnation, continues to be one of the
most accessible, translatable and transformable of the world’s musical
genres. From its very beginnings, it served as dance and party music
that appealed to the younger demographic alienating the old. Chuck
Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino are widely regarded as the
progenitors of this music. Of this group, Chuck Berry, a St. Louis Blues
artist, who would become a major influence on later rock performers such
as Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, was the first
of the great rock songwriters. In 1955, he stormed the music scene with
the classic “Maybellene”. Ike Turner, Etta James, Wilson Pickett, Muddy
Waters, Booker T. Jones, Otis Reading, Bo Diddly, Buddy Miles, George
Clinton, Jimi Hendrix, Vernon Reid and Living Color, and Lenny Kravitz
are examples of African Americans that continued the Rock tradition.
Soul
This genre grew out of a fusion of several other musical forms such as
Rhythm and Blues, Funk and Gospel. Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James
Brown, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding would
be some of its earliest celebrities. Later, Motown records would become
its most elegiac symbol.
A young African American music executive called Berry Gordy Jr.,
founded the Tamla-Motown label in the early 1960s. Parlaying an
impressive dossier of songwriters and producers such as the legendary
trio Holland-Dozier-Holland, musicians such as the “Funk Brothers”, he
would nurture this independent label into what many consider the most
important and influential label in the history of the music industry.
Some of the recorded music icons that this label produced include the
Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, the Marvelettes, the Supremes, the Temptations,
the Vandellas, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and the
Miracles, Junior Walker and the All-stars, and the Jackson 5.
In the 1970s, songwriters and producers from Philadelphia such as Gene
Mcfadden, John Whitehead, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff developed a unique
soul music sound that would be known as the ‘the Sound of Philadelphia’.
Notable artists from this music family include the O’Jays, the Spinners,
the Stylistics, the Delfonics, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy
Pendergrass, and the 3 degrees. Today, Alicia Keys, Beyonce, and R.
Kelly continue to celebrate their soul music inheritance.
Rap
In the Late 1970s, first in New York City and then later in other urban
areas such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a revolutionary new musical form
surfaced among gifted African American teenagers. Known as Rap music -
talking in rhyme to the rhythm of a beat- it grew out of, and became an
integral component of an urban sub-culture called “Hip-Hop’. Rap experts
define Hip Hop as “a culture - a way of life- for a society of people
who identify, love, and cherish rap, ‘street clothes’, break dancing,
DJing, and graffiti”.
Existing initially below the radar screen of American popular culture,
“Hip Hop” would garner millions of fans and later dominate and redefine
the ‘essence of cool’ throughout the world. Its cultural “crossover’
success was also due in part to the popularity of television shows like
BET’s ‘Rap City’ and ‘Yo! MTV Raps’and several ‘urban’ Hollywood movies
of the 1980s.
The pioneers of this art form include Grand Master Flash, Kurtis Blow,
the Sugarhill Gang, Afrika Bambaataa and Run DMC.The first classic rap
anthem was 1979’s “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang. This was
quickly followed by “The Breaks” by Kurtis Blow in 1980, and a myriad of
other hits by various artists in the mid 1980s. Some of these classics
include Afrika Bambaataa — “Planet Rock,” “Funk You,” “Renegades Of
Funk”; Whodini — “Friends”; UTFO — “Roxanne, Roxanne”; LL Cool J — “Rock
The Bells,” “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” “I Need Love”; Rob Base &
D.J. E-Z Rock — “It Takes Two”, and many others.
Initially preoccupied with enhancing and generating the dance and party
spirit, rap quickly evolved, examining more closely the social, economic
and political aspects of ‘inner city urban blight’. Songs by Grandmaster
Flash and the furious five - “The Message” in 1982 and by Public Enemy -
“Don’t Believe the Hype,” exemplify this trend.
A controversial sub-genre known as ‘gangsta rap’ that forcefully and
confidently revels in the outlaw aspects of urban life replete with
violent, often misogynistic lyrics and gunplay emerged in the 1980s.
This musical form quickly became the fastest selling and profitable
component of the music industry. Popular rappers of this medium include
Tupac Shakur, N.W.A. (Niggas With Attitude), and Snoop Dogg.
The discography of popular Rap and Hip Hop music includes the work of
Hammer, Kool Moe Dee, Dr. Dre, Queen Latifa, Naughty by Nautre, Slick
Rick, Cypress Hill, Arrested Development, Warren G, P. Diddy, Outkast,
Biggie, DMX, Ja Rule, Mos Def, 50 Cent, Foxy Brown, Lil Kim, Ludacris,
K.O.R.E., Chingy, Fat Joe, Ludacris, Redman, Butch Cassidy, Jwells, Eve,
Missy Elliott, Kurupt, Cormega, Cuban Link, Khujo Ghoodie and Killa
Priest among others.
The dance of the ancestors
‘Thanks to Black rhythm, no people today dance the way their
grandparents danced’
Leopold Senghor
On the slave plantations, an extension of the African ethnic dance
aesthetic merged with European dance forms to create a variety of new
dance styles in the Americas. Dance served several purposes for the
early African American. It helped to preserve a connection to the
cultural traditions of Africa, as a form of communication during slave
revolts, and as part of religious ceremonies and entertainment.
A disturbing early trend saw the foisting of these poorly understood
plantation dance traditions onto the stage as Minstrel productions.
These shows displayed for the amusement of its audiences, caricatures of
black talent. Happily, by the 1950s, these shows would become culturally
and politically offensive to the sensibilities of its mainly white
audiences. In the first four decades of the 20th century, African
American tap dancing burst onto the scene weaving elements of African,
English and Irish-influenced shuffle, clogging and jigs into the
repertoire. Later, Tap dancing would be showcased in Hollywood movies
and attain respectability and popularity throughout the world. Black
dancers such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, The Nicholas brothers, Sammy
Davis Jr., Vance Holmes, Gregory Hines and Savion Glover are some of the
best of this art form.
In the early 1900s, the Cakewalk, would become the first dance created
by Blacks to be widely copied by the white population. Other
black-influenced dance trends that would be emulated the world over
include the Charleston, the Lindy Hop, the Jitterbug, the Chicken, the
Watutsi, the Mashed potato, the Twist, the Bump, the Robot, Break
dancing and Popping, Back sliding, the Moonwalk, the Helicopter, the
Electric slide, Headslide, the Shake, and the Worm.
Several African Americans have made immeasurable contributions to
dance over the years. Some of the legends include the
dance-anthropologists Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus, The Lester
Horton Dance Theater, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Donald
McKayle, Debbie Allen, Talley Beatty, Garth Fagan, Bill T. Jones,
Michael Peters, James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Michael Jackson and Joel Hall.
Blacks in Cinema
African Americans first appeared in silent films in the1890s. The
prevalent images of these actors were often derogatory. By the turn of
the century more blacks were found in films as ‘Domestics’. In the
1930s, independent black casts emerged in Holly wood. That decade,
Hattie McDaniel would become the first African American actor to win and
Academy award - Best Supporting Actress- for her performance as a
‘Mammy’ in Gone with the Wind. The 1940s and 1950s saw Lena Horne,
Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis jr., James Earl Jones and Harry Belafonte
regularly on the American sound stage and in more positive roles.
However, it would take the arrival of Sidney Poitier on celluloid in the
1950s, to bring complete dignity and class to the African American male
on film. Considered the finest African American Actor of the 20th
century, Sidney Poitier would be the first black man to win an Academy
Award for Best Actor for ‘Lilies of the Field’ in 1963. After that he
seized the Hollywood spotlight, and by 1967 had starred in the top 3
biggest box-office hits of the year.
In the early 1970s, a new film genre known as ‘Blaxploitation films’-
low-budget action movies aimed at black audiences emerged. The
controversial ghetto epic Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in 1971, Superfly
(1972), Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974) and Friday Foster (1975) have
become the classics of this category.
Over the past 20 years, African American have made steady, albeit slow
gains in Hollywood. Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Wesley
Snipes, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Cuba Gooding Jr., Will Smith,
Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Angela Bassett, Chris
Tucker, Halle Berry, Jada Pinkett Smith, Blair Underwood and Queen
Latifa are the current crop of the black Hollywood elite. Of this group
Denzel Washington would win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for Glory
(1989), and Best Actor nod for Training Day (2002); Goldberg would
receive the Best Supporting Actress Academy award for Ghost and Halle
Berry would garner Oscar gold for Monster’s Ball in 2002.
Black film Directors such as Spike Lee, John Singleton, Robert
Townsend, Keenen Ivory Wayans have been part of the vanguard of cutting
edge movie making in recent years.
SPORTS
Perhaps there is no single area where African Americans have dominated
the world as in the arena of Sports. From Jesse Owens’ four gold medal
sweep during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, through the ‘glory days’ of
Muhammad Ali to the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods today, their
success has often been painful and hard won.
Baseball
In 1951, Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier by
joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1962 he became the first Black man
inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame. African American Baseball players
have been following the path he blazed to greatness ever since. Henry
“Hank” Aaron was the first player to reach the incredible milestone of
3,000 hits and “put away’ 500 home runs. Reggie Jackson, Ken Griffey
Jr., Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa (Hispanic), are blacks
that have continued to dominate the sport in recent years.
Tennis
Althea Gibson is remembered as the first African American player to
visibly succeed in Tennis in the 1950s. In 1956 she became the first
Black person to win the French championships. 1957 would witness even
greater laurels for her as she won two of the world’s most prestigious
tournaments, Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals. A year later she would
repeat this milestone.
A decade after Althea Gibson’s successes, Arthur Ashe became the first
African American man to win the U.S. Open. A quarter century would pass
before a major black presence would be felt in Tennis. The emergence of
the Williams sisters Serena burnings and lynching of African Americans.
The great Northern Migration by blacks began as a consequence of
resurgent discrimination. Despite these shortcomings, African Americans
and their white allies continued to fight for equality and justice with
persistent rigor.
Organized Civil rights Movement
The turn of the Century saw the burgeoning of organized civil rights
organizations. Foremost African American intellectual W.E.B. Dubois,
along with other African American and white scholars formed the NAACP
-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - in
1909.Their overall objective to use the legal system to address civil
rights abuses of African Americans would achieve legendary success.
A watershed legal victory came in the form of the 1954 Supreme Court
ruling on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. The court in a
unanimous vote, agreed with NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall and his
team of lawyers that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
This ruling set the stage for large-scale desegregation of schools
throughout the United States. It is a huge legal victory for Thurgood
Marshall and the NAACP and catapults both him and the organization into
national and international celebrity. In the coming years Marshall would
be appointed by President Johnson to the Supreme court as its first
African American justice.
In 1956, Rosa Parks instigated a yearlong Bus Boycott in Montgomery,
Alabama. Her pivotal civil disobedient action of refusing to give up her
seat for a white bus rider and go to the back of the bus, galvanized the
American Civil Rights Movement. The reverberations of her action would
be felt all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which
ruled, later that year, that segregated seating on buses was
unconstitutional.
The success of the Montgomery bus boycott inspired its young leader,
Martin Luther King, a student of Mahatma Ghandi’s non-violent
philosophy, to write Stride toward Freedom. Published in 1958, the book
is a seminal text on the non-violent strategies that produced monumental
social change. It would later become highly influential, serving as a
template for students of nonviolent resistance through civil
disobedience - marches, protests, boycotts and rallies - across the globe.
Martin Luther King would evolve into perhaps the principal leader of
the American Civil Rights Movement (Some schools of thought believe
Malcolm X to be his political peer and ideological colleague although
both men had differing philosophies). MLK’s persistent organized
challenges to segregation and racial discrimination throughout the 1950s
and 1960s would be instrumental in convincing many a white American to
support and become active in the cause of civil rights. In the following
years, the world would watch him lead the historic march on Washington
D.C. in 1963, and listen to his “I have a dream speech”. It would cheer
as he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and then collectively hold its
breath in horror at the news of his murder at the hands of James Earl
Ray, an escaped convict, on April 4, 1968. It is an ironic tribute and
testament to his importance, that as the word of the death of this man
of non-violence spread, riots erupted in 168 cities across the United
States.
The ultimate sacrifice of King and several other political activists has
yielded innumerable benefits for black America. Their triumph has been
slow in arriving and steep economic hurdles still need to be scaled, as
any drive through the blighted, inner city neighborhoods will attest to.
There is good news to report: According to the World Bank, the annual
income of African Americans is $678 billion, which would make it the 9th
largest economy in the world (in GNP terms). African Americans control
$646 billion in purchasing power, a figure that has increased 81% over
the past 15 years.
From Madam CJ Walker whose hair care products including the ‘hot comb’
made her the first African American millionaire, to Kenneth Chenault,
Chairman and CEO of American Express, and Oprah Winfrey the billionaire
Talk Show Host, African Americans have succeeded handsomely in the
entrepreneurial arena. Other African American Wall Street Titans include
Richard D. Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, John H. Johnson, founder of
Ebony and Jet magazines, Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines and Stan O’Neal,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Merrill Lynch.
Over the past quarter century, the number of African American
households in the United States increased by nearly 50%. According to
the Joint Center for political and economic studies, there are over 9000
black elected officials representing various hamlets, towns, cities,
districts, counties and states all across the country. The third most
powerful man in the world - the secretary of State Colin L. Powell - is
an African American. Now the ancestors would be proud indeed!
The African/African American Trepidation
In 1980, the African Literature Association invited James Baldwin and
Chinua Achebe to open their annual conference in Gainesville, Florida
with a public conversation. The two men had never met despite different
forms of correspondence over the years. In the course of the discussion,
James Baldwin pointed to Achebe in front of a huge audience packed into
an auditorium of the University of Florida and said: “This is a brother
I have not seen in 400 years.”…. And the theatre went wild with
applause. But then his face and manner changed. As the applause died
down, Baldwin then said, ‘Twas not intended that he and I should ever
meet.” It became so quiet-as if cool water had been poured on everyone’s
head.
Through out his life, Baldwin tackled with courage and honesty, the
trepidation he felt about Africa, slavery and its legacy. ‘In his
anguished tribute to Richard Wright, he describes it as the Negro
problem and the fearful conundrum of Africa, and in Stranger in the
village he delves even deeper into this anxiety’. Like Baldwin, several
other African Americans such as W.E.B. Dubois, Chancellor Williams,
Kwame Toure, Louis H. Sullivan etc. have made bold gestures towards
Africa and Africans.
African political, cultural and economic leaders such as Nnamdi Azikiwe,
Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, L. Senghor, Obafemi Awolowo and Jomo
Kenyatta in kind, have also reached over the Atlantic divide to embrace
their African American brethren. The Pan African congresses from
1919-1945 and The Leon H. Sullivan Memorial African Economic Summit for
instance, are splendid examples of this dedicated effort on both sides.
Today, however, deep wounds of ignorance, misunderstanding, distrust and
fear still exist, inflicted on the African peoples by a painful history
of dispossession, struggle and suffering. Africans and their African
American relatives may very well not be aware of the great achievements
of each others people. Some scholars believe that this limitation,
coupled with the aforementioned factors, may perhaps begin to explain
the uneasiness in the relationship between the two groups of blacks. The
lack of confidence that one finds among blacks the world over may also
have similar underpinnings.
By striving to understand each other and heal these wounds, we teach the
rest of the world what it truly means to transcend the shackles of
historical dispossession, resentment and bigotry. This journey will
require the involvement and goodwill of our white allies who also share
with us the burden of this historical albatross. Together, achieving
this lofty goal will set the stage for permanent racial and cultural
healing and will pay the greatest homage to the ancestors, who paid with
their lives, the greatest sacrifice of all to ensure our collective freedom.
Dr Chidi Chike Achebe is a Nigerian Physician. He was educated at
Harvard and Dartmouth and lives in Boston.
To be continued
Dr Chidi Chike Achebe is a Nigerian Physician. He was educated at
Harvard and Dartmouth and lives in Boston
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/politics/p110022004.html
John Lucas
John Lucas
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