Historical Facts Zone

Did you know?💡

In 1939, Adolf Hi**er was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Did you know?💡

In 1912, 26th US president Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest prior to giving a speech. Noticing that the bullet missed his lungs, he carried on, with blood seeping from his shirt. He delivered the full 90-minute speech before accepting medical attention.

Did you know?💡

Of the current 200 nations in the world, Britain has invaded all but 22.

In July 1969, Emperor Haile Selassie🇪🇹 visited Atlanta,
and visited Morehouse and paid his respects to the final resting place of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..

Source: 1970 Morehouse Torch Yearbook

As I recount in my book, A Promised Land, my mother, Ann Dunham, was strong, smart, and marched to her own beat. For her, the world offered endless opportunities for moral instruction. My sister Maya and I got early lessons about the struggle for civil rights, the impact of poverty on people around the world, and the importance of respecting other cultures and considering other points of view. My mother believed that power came not from putting people down but rather through lifting them up. And she was always certain that in the face of injustice and humanity’s more primal impulses, logic and progress would always prevail. “The world is complicated, Bar,” she used to say. “That’s why it’s interesting.”

How Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali Were a Headache to White People.

The United States of America has never been a land of the free for a black man. The existence of the black in America is treated as an unwanted thing, and from all angles of life, the black man still finds himself in shackles.

But in contemporary society, a lot has significantly changed for the blacks, even though total freedom remains a pipe dream. In the 1950s and 60s, at the height of racial segregation in America, there emerged a militant approach to fighting white oppression.

Malcolm X had grown to resent Christianity for it was an embodiment of white oppression; it was a religion used to disguise the callousness of the Caucasians. Religion had been employed by the white man to pacify black people so that they would not question the deplorable conditions in which their existence was thrust in. The life of Malcolm X had metamorphosed to that of vehemently and spiritedly fighting the vile racial segregation policies that prevailed at the time. The black man, through these policies, was effectively barred from having any access to social mobility and many had been accustomed to resigning to their miserable fate. But this was something that Malcolm X did not tolerate, and he gave the white man problems time and again.

A man who had renounced his name because of its direct link to the slave trade, Malcolm X had turned to Islam to free his mind and thus take on the white establishment head-on. He joined the black separatist movement, the Nation of Islam when he was still in prison and that was an important turning point in the fight for black rights. He was militant in his approach, believing that for there to be order there needed to be a separation of the blacks and whites. For him, white people had proved to be extremely obstinate as regards co-existence with other races and there was no other way to assert one’s existence in such a terrible world but to fight back. Christianity had implanted the notion that one had to turn the other cheek when slapped, but for Malcolm X the black man had to fight back. He was completely revolutionary in how he tackled the white establishment, saying that the mind of the black man had been taught wrongly and had been induced to accept squalid conditions as a way of life, which was wrong.

His influence had grown so strong that a young Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali in denouncing the white establishment, had been drawn to the Islam way of fighting white oppression. Malcolm X was the one who recruited Muhammad Ali into the Nation of Islam and the two had developed a friendship that was a solid threat to the interests of the white community in America. At the time the two had developed a friendship, Malcolm X was growing disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad, the prophet leader of the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad had lost the true Islamic values, Malcolm X asserted, and he did not want Malcolm X to fully implement his revolutionary thinking in fighting white oppression. He did not want Malcolm to talk publicly about politics and civil rights. Malcolm X had become a beacon of intellectual superiority and Elijah resented this.

Ali had been strongly inclined to Malcolm’s teachings, he was now an ardent follower of the Nation of Islam, armed with unbridled revolutionary enthusiasm. So profound was this development that Muhammad Ali flatly refused to be conscripted into the U.S Army to go fight in the Vietnam War. His brazen actions resulted in stripped off of his heavyweight title and his passport and was banned from fighting in the U.S.

"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform,” Ali said, "and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?… I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years."

"It is in the light of my consciousness as a Muslim minister and my convictions that I take my stand in rejecting the call to be inducted. I do so with the full realization of its implications. I have searched my conscience." Ali also said, "no Vietcong ever called me ni**er." That alone was powerful and it rattled the system. His conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971, but the message that Ali had sent to the world was loud and clear.

When Malcolm was assassinated in 1965 while delivering a speech because of his friction with the Nation of Islam, his friendship with Muhammad Ali had deteriorated. Ali did not agree with Malcolm’s decision of being disobedient to Elijah Muhammad. “Brother Malcolm, you shouldn’t have crossed the honorable Elijah Muhammad,” Ali had remarked this to Malcolm.

Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith, the authors of the book “Blood Brothers,” said, “The relationship between Cassius Clay and Malcolm X signaled a new direction in American culture, one shaped by the forces of sports and entertainment, race and politics. Under Malcolm’s tutelage, [Ali] embraced the world stage, emerging as an international symbol of black pride and black independence. Without Malcolm, Muhammad Ali would have never become the ‘king of the world.” The book details their friendship, how it shaped the world at the time and its subsequent breakdown.

Malcolm’s ex-communication from the Nation provided the ground for his friendship with Ali to break down. He fought for Ali’s loyalty, attempting to use him as a bargaining chip with Elijah Muhammad. Ali was no longer amenable to Malcolm’s moves at the time. He referred to Malcolm as “a jailbird, a hoodlum ... that chief hypocrite,” and he declared that “Mr. [Elijah] Muhammad will destroy him through Allah.”

Ali later expressed this as one of the biggest regrets in his life. Years after Malcolm had been assassinated, he began to view him “a visionary, ahead of us all.” In 2004, Ali wrote, “Malcolm was the first to discover the truth, that color doesn’t make a man a devil. It is the heart, soul, and mind that define a person.”

“Malcolm X was a great thinker and an even greater friend,” wrote Ali. “I might never have become a Muslim if it hadn’t been for Malcolm. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would never have turned my back on him.”

Although their friendship had died, their conduct and ideas inspired millions of black people all over the world. Ali was loved in Africa for his famous fight in 1974 in the Democratic Republic of Congo dubbed “Rumble in the Jungle” when he defeated George Foreman. Ali supported the fight for freedom in African countries and he visited Ghana, Nigeria, DRC, Kenya, and Egypt. Together with Malcolm X, they presented a tough time for the oppressors.

Blog: sokunhamidonline.wordpess.com

The World Remembers: The Most Infamous Social Injustice that Shook the World in the 20th Century.

Today, June 16, 2020, marks exactly 76 years since the one most infamous social injustice and cruelty took place in the said "most liberal" country in the world, the United States.

On June 16, 1944, in Columbia, South Carolina, George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person to be sentenced to death in the 20th century in the United States. He was only 14 years old when he was executed by electric chair.

In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren’t at home. His little sister was hiding in the family’s chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.

Two young white girls, ages 7 and 11, had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George.

“[The police] were looking for someone to blame it on, so they used my brother as a scapegoat,” his sister Amie Ruffner said in 2014.

During his trial, even on the day of his ex*****on, he always carried a Bible in his hands, as a signature of innocence.

All members of the jury were White. The trial lasted only 2 hours, and the sentence was dictated 10 minutes later.

On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. He was electrocuted with 5,380 volts in his head.

Before the ex*****on, George spent 80 days in prison alone and was denied access to his parents or a lawyer. He was held in solitary, 80 miles from his city.

On December 17, 2014, Seventy years later, he was exonerated by a judge in South Carolina. Stinney’s case has tormented civil rights advocates for years.

We remember, the world remembers!

***
Read more stories on: sokunhamidonline.wordpress.com

What if...the Atlantic Slavery Never Happened?

In the midst of the current happenings of civil unrest in the United States as a result of persistent institutionalized and systematic racism and injustice especially among African-Americans, the following thoughts (hypothetises) keeps resonating on my mind; What would the past few centuries look like if African slaves were never brought to the American shores? What If all African-Americans had come to America as free willing immigrants, just as the other Europeans descendants?... It keeps resonating "What if?...What if?" These are complex but simple possible scenarios. Well, how am I even going to tackle such a controversial and dark moment in history, well lets think through.

The Atlantic Slavery as we learnt, involved the shipping of about 10 to 12 million African slaves across the Atlantic ocean to the shores of America, beginning in the 15th century and was later abrogated in the 19th century. This inhumane act as assessed by scholars and historians, has left nothing but devastating impact on the African people. Slavery introduced Africans into the social caste of the White society, but one may ask, were(are) Africans accepted in the White society?... Well no! In the 19th century, after the abolishment, as Africans were in the US they were still considered foreigners of a kind. And even Abraham Lincoln(the 16th president of the United States), before the American Civil War believed that former African slaves would need to leave America for Africa as they would always be foreigners. As America is populated by mostly immigrants of European descendants (i.e Germans, British, French, Russians, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Poles, Dutch, Scandinavians, among others), the one immigrant that America would never accept is Africans. And this brings us to the genesis of institutionalized racism among African-Americans in America. One may say slavery is or wasn't the genesis of racial tension, but it is a byproduct of it!

In an alternate world, were slavery never existed and African descendants came to America as free willing immigrants just like the other European descendants; the relationship between Whites and Blacks would have been much more better without contempt. The whole racial makeup would have been different. May be, White Supremism would have lessen or never have existed. Institutionalized racism among African-Americans would have lessen or may not have existed. Injustice among African-Americans would have lessen or may not have existed. Culturally, politically, philosophically, the United States would have been different as it now stands.

Otherwise speaking, had there never been slavery in America, there would still have been economic and social disparities. To counter balance this disparities, we would have to combat the global phenomenon of "white supremacy" rather than the involving of the hypothesis "what if the Atlantic slavery never happened?"

Racism is built into the DNA of America. And as long as we continue to turn a blind eye to the pain of those suffering under its oppression, we would never escape those origins. I bet you, "Jim Crow is still alive and kicking!"

Blog: sokunhamidonline.wordpress.com

“If slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln, 1864

THE FORGOTTEN EAST AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE [THE ARAB/TRANS-SAHARAN SLAVE TRADE] “If slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong.”Abraham Lincoln, 1864 INTRODUCTION Slavery is an ancient institution, as stated earlier in my previous article. Slavery, the anti-thesis of freedom, is a …