La révolte des noirs musulmans à Salvador de Bahia en 1835

 

Révolte des Zanj d'Irak au IIIe/IXe siécl

 

Un CALENDRIER DES REBELLIONS DES ESCLAVES NOIRS EN AMERIQUE LATINE ET DANS LES CARAÏBES entre le 16 ème et le 19ième siècle

 

Les inventions des Africains de la diaspora

 

While we joined back then in celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Haitian revolution, we must now fight for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president of the first African Republic. We must also stand with the people of Zimbabwe against British prime minister Tony Blair and Australian prime minister John Howard's vicious attacks on President Robert Mugabe. The people of Zimbabwe should be allowed to resolve the contradictions among themselves. "Hands off Mugabe!" should become the cry of Africans at home and abroad, and all progressive people.

During February – and every month – we should also call on boards of education in North America to put C.L.R. James' classic book about the Haitian revolution, The Black Jacobins, in classrooms; demand the U.S. government return Grenada's archives, stolen during the 1983 U.S. invasion; that boards of education in North America teach in the public schools about the global African presence and demand that reparations be paid to Africans at home and aboard for the enslavement and the colonization of the land and the people.

Because of African people's colonization, enslavement and dislocation, our people suffer what Harold Cruse, the author of The Crisis of The Negro Intellectual, calls historical discontinuity. We as a people still allow others to define our reality. I am concerned how others are attempting to define the month of February for their own purposes.

McDonald's calls it Black History Month; Harbourfront Centre refers to it as African Heritage Month. A growing minority prefers the term African Liberation Month.

Richard B. Moore, the great Barbadian revolutionary and author of the book, The Name Negro: Its Origin and Evil Use, was clear on the issue of naming people and historical events. Moore always maintained that dogs and slaves are named by their masters; free people name themselves.

Where did the idea of Black History Month come from? Did it drop from the skies? No. Was it conceived in the lab of a mad African scientist? Wrong again. Personally, I'm tired of hearing uninformed people remark: "They give us the coldest and shortest month of the year to celebrate Black History Month."

First of all, they didn't give us anything. The great African American historian Carter G. Woodson, his organization – the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which was formed in 1915 – and the masses of African people in the United States and Canada forced the system to recognize the contribution of Africans to the world. Woodson's organization came into existence only 30 years after the Berlin Conference, where European colonial powers carved up Africa like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Why did Woodson pick February as the time to commemorate Africa's many gifts to humanity? Says John Henrik Clarke, in his book, Africans At the Crossroads: Notes For An African World Revolution: "Black History Week comes each year about the second Sunday in February, the objective being to select the week that will include both February 12, the birth of Abraham Lincoln, and February 14, the date Frederick Douglass calculated to have been his natal day. Sometimes the celebrations can include one day, in which case Douglass' date gets preference."

February never was meant to be the only month African people reflected on their past. Clarke states: "The aim is not to enter upon one week's study of (B)lack people's place in history. Rather, the celebration should represent the culmination of a systematic study of Black people throughout the year. Initially, the observance consisted of public exercises emphasizing the salient facts brought to light by researchers and publications of the association during the first 11 years of its existence. The observance was widely supported among (B)lack Americans in schools, churches and clubs. Gradually, the movement found support among other ethnic groups and institutions in America and abroad."

We've come a long way since Woodson created Negro History Week in 1926. His classic book, The Mis-Education of the Negro (the inspiration for the title of singer Lauryn Hill's The Mis-Education of Lauryn Hill), is a must read for anyone who wants to be on the right side of history.

The time has come to update Woodson's idea. As activist/scholar Abdul Akalimat, author of The African American Experience and Cyberspace, has pointed out: "Some of us have been promoting the notion that it was important to move from Negro to Black, from Week to Month and now it is time to move from general notion of history to the specific theme of Black history which is liberation."

The question is history for what? The answer is for liberation. Huge hamburger chains have appropriated images of the great kings and queens of Africa while holding up those who support the status quo in North America like "colon" and "condosleezie." African people, like all people, have a right to determine who their friends are and who their enemies are.

Norman (Otis) Richmond is based in Toronto, Canada. Richmond can be reached at

 

In an interview with Afrobras News, Public Relations and Project Director of the band, lived Caroline, talks about the carnival, the band and fight to keep the black culture alive.
AfrobrasNews Do you believe that today the carnival is still a form of expression that represents the Brazilian black or it has lost its essence?

They lived, I feel that there is a very great duel between the two. There are initiatives like the community itself Dida, for example, that sells costumes, we traded for food, working year round and is hard as lack sponsorship. And we have other groups, with a super structure, which sell carnival and whose focus is to make money. Every cultural expression is an expression of culture, but unfortunately these groups bill too, not always invest in the carnival and want to make something private carnival, where there is a very strong structure, the pimp takes some popcorn and can not reach these groups.
But I believe that if groups of African origin did not participate in the carnival will lose the sense, as we who continue to bring the essence when it comes to street afoxés is what the people come to the streets. Unfortunately, there is an economically powerful group, which dictates the rules, times and unfortunately the media is on top of these people in Salvador there is only one station that is concerned about the African roots in the carnival, but it is unique, there are others that record but do nothing about it.

AfrobrasNews Do you believe that the people of Bahia ends up being excluded from the carnival?
Lived-Violence in the carnival of Salvador inhibits the participation of people who are not within a block. People do not have the courage to go out like popcorn and who usually play the carnival in the family ends up crowding in some areas of the city, in public or private cabins. There is a decline of popular participation in the city center, which is where the history of the carnival, because people go down to the bar circuit Ondina, to see the artists, they're scared, do not have money even to pay an expensive and prefer to block travel not to have to expose themselves.
Afrobras News-You have a project to rescue the culture of carnival?

Lived - A Dida is watching all this and created a demonstration. We have a block that is for women and families who participate. They come from poor communities, can not afford to buy fancy, so we do not sell, stimulates productive thinking, through a program dubbed caravan cultural and productive partnership, which collects food, cleaning materials and aluminum cans and women who participate, gain the fantasies, to worship the indigenous culture of the carnival. They know that these donations go to shelters in the city.

Furthermore it contains all the talk, the music, the themes that we address the issue of women's strength, this year is atypical for the death of the samba nigga who died in October, we will pay tribute to all that he created and led, but the issue is the wife of Senegal. This however, does not invalidate our entire speech, the costumes, which has a concern about putting a woman in another place, not the place of submission. If we stop to consider is not only an influence on what happens here in the pillory but it is something that will influence the place where they live, as they take this to their communities. Carnival is a culmination, a special time of celebration, in which our consciousness is something sacred, but for us what matters is that living together