Black August 2020 Has Come!
by ‘bro. Zayid’
This year’s Black August marks three moving milestones...
The Centennial of the legendary UNIA
Int’l Convention which came to a head packing Madison Square Garden on August 17th, 1920; The
Centennial anniversary of the Universal Flag of Afrikan Liberation...The Red, The
Black, The Green! It was during this very same convention on August 13th, that our
beloved Red Black and Green was adopted!...RBG does not have a damn thing to do
with Ruth Bader Ginsberg all due respect!; and the 50th anniversary
of the incredible extraction mission of Jonathan Jackson! It was on August 7th, 1970, that 17
year old Jonathan Jackson led a squad of insurgents who bursted into a Marin
County Courthouse where several of the ‘Soledad Brothers’ were on trial and not
likely to get justice, and sought to militarily ‘extract’ them from custody to
freedom... “Ladies and Gentlemen, We are now in charge...” as they boldly
announced as they disarmed Court officers, captured the presiding judge, and
paraded their comrades out of the courtroom into an awaiting van...Although the
action would end in the van being ultimately stopped and fired upon by a
phalanx of police killing almost everyone in the vehicle, it served notice to
the world that armed actions in pursuit of our liberty were now on the
table!...
Black
August has its origins with the Black Panther Party!...To honor Jonathan and
his prolific and just as fearless big brother George Jackson, who was
assassinated on August 21, 1971, and
to build support for our Political Prisoners!...In the 90s, PanAfrikanists like
the late Elombe Brath and yours truly began to further insist that we see and
appreciate it through a larger PanAfrikan lense to the great uprisings of the
months, the births of some of our greatest heroes of the month and to remember
some of the representative oppressive abuse that we’ve faced!...
August
1st is Emancipation Day for the Caribbean marking when the
British Empire ended slavery in the islands in 1838.
August
1st, 1943, NY police officers attack a Black soldier in uniform
and a Black woman and all hell breaks loose with what became The Harlem Rebellion of ’43!
Harlem legend James Baldwin, who let
white folks know in no uncertain terms that ‘I am not your Negro’ is born on
August 2, 1924. New Afrikan pioneer, people’s lawyer and former Mayor of
Jackson, Mississippi, Chokwe Lumumba is born on August 2, 1947.
On August 3, 1832, Edward Wilmot Blyden, the bridge of Black
Nationalism from the 19th to 20th century is born. His African
Life and Customs is still a must have. “We did not come here culturally
empty-handed,” Dr. John Henrik Clarke used to say. Blyden’s book was early
proof! Almost 100 years later, a hometown hero, the late Rev.Lucius Walker is
born on August 3rd, 1930.
On August, 6th, 1934, the man who gave us Black Solidarity
Day, Carlos Russell is born in Panama!
Dr. Mutulu Shakur, who gave a whole
new meaning to the adage ‘Wake up! Clean up! Stand up!’ when he brought
Acupuncture to the ‘hood in our war against addiction straight from Chairman
Mao’s China, was born on August 8th,
1950. On that same day in 1978, PhillyPolice would attack the MOVE compound
in Powelton Village with tanks water hoses and live fire.When Philly police
officer James Rapp is killed by ‘friendly fire,’ the courts pin his death on
the MOVE captives! Nine Move captures were hit with 30 to 100 sentences! Merle
and Phil Africa would die in prison. This past year we witnessed the last of
the MOVE prisoners come home! Delbert Africa who took that spectacle savage
beating upon his capture just passed away a few weeks ago and will be
remembered for his legendary valor on August 8th in Philadelphia!
August
9th, 1997 Abner Louima, arrested while breaking up a fight, is
savagely sodomized with a plunger by NY police officers while in handcuffs! He
required multiple surgery restore digestive tract after that vicious torture!
On this same date, in 2014, Michael
Brown is shot down in the streets of Ferguson Missouri by a police officer and
left on the streets for hours in spectacle fashion. It was Michael’s killing,
with his hands up that spring the powerful pacifist protest mantra Hands Up!Don’t Shoot!...Outrageously,
the officer who killed him Darren Wilson was just cleared of any wrongdoing
just days ago!
From August 11th through the 15th, in 1965, we
witness the epic Watts Uprising in Watts section of Los Angeles! Out of its
blood and ashes would emerge the Black Panther Party!
August
13, 1926, Fidel Castro is born! Long live the Cuban Revolution! Long live
Fidel!...
August
14, 1791, Bois Caimon! The ceremonial beginning of the epic Haitian
Revolution takes place! Colin Kaepernick boldly ‘takes a knee’ against police
brutality on August 14, 2016. My
poetic daughter Breya Blackberry Molasses Knight leaves us at only 29 on that
same day!
August
16, 1959 marks the key highlight of the African People’s Convention
organized by Dominican born Garveyite Carlos Cooks in Harlem where the word ‘Negro’
was dropped for the Black and African!
August
16th, 2018, Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, leaves us for
the Land of the Ancestors!
August
17th, 1887, our greatest organizer of the modern era and
tragically our first political prisoner, Marcus Garvey is born!
George! On August 21st, 1971, George Jackson, one of the most
prolific prison writers for the Black working class, the field marshal for the
Black Panther Party at San Quentin Prison, is assassinated in prison leaving
all of us with Blood In Our Eye! It just happened take place on the anniversary
of arguably the most awe-inspiring of American Slave Uprisings, the Nat Turner
Rebellion of 1831!
On August 22nd, 1964, after bringing a busload of field
slaves from Mississippi to Atlantic City NJ to bumrush the Democratic Party’s
National Convention for its legitimizing of the lynchfilthy segregationist
Mississippi delegation, Fannie Lou Hamer ‘Questions America’ on its hypocrisy
on national television!
On August 23rd, 1943, the true Maroon, Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz, one of
our most feared political prisoners, is born! Maroon, now in prison for 45
years is also fighting stage four colon cancer on top of fighting for his
freedom!
We lose the incredible Lioness of
Liberation, Safiya Bukhari Alston of the Black Panther Party, the Black
Liberation Army and cofounder of the Jericho Movement on that same day in 2003! I am a proud cub of Safiya
Bukhari!
August
25th, 1967 sees the expansion of this sinister little matter called COINTELPRO!
August
27th, 1963, our bold, incisive and prolific scholar activist and
PanAfricanist legend WEB DuBois dies in Ghana, on the eve of the March on
Washington, years after denouncing Mr. Garvey’s call for all us to go ‘Back
ToAfrica’...
August
28th, 1955, Emmitt Till, a 14 year old boy from Chicago, is
savagely lynched in Mississippi!
It is for this reason that August 28th was used to host
the March On Washington of 1963!....
On August 30th, 1948, on what would have been the anniversary
of one of the largest slave uprisings in North Amerrica, had it not been betrayed, the Gabriel Prosser Uprising of 1800, Fred Hampton, one of the baddest
of Panthers, is born!
We who like it hot, call it Black
August!
*bro.
Zayid Muhammad, is a proud cub of
the Black Panther Party’s NY Chapter and the founding press officer of the Malcolm
X Commemoration Committee in NYC. He is a Jazz Poet in the tradtion of Amiri
Baraka and Jayne Cortez and a stage actor...He can be reached at
babazayid@gmail.com...
© 2020
