A Tribute to Haitian Soldiers for Heroism in the American Revolution

A Tribute to Haitian Soldiers for Heroism in the American Revolution

Dedicated to the people of Haiti both in the US and abroad, please except our profound thanks, and know that our thoughts and prayers are with you…

Haitian Monument Statue in Franklin Square, Savannah, GA

After 228 years as largely unsung contributors to American independence, Haitian soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War’s bloody siege ofSavannah had a monument dedicated in their honor. On October 9, 1779, a force of more than 500 Haitian gens de couleur libre (free men of color) joined American colonists and French troops in an
unsuccessful push to drive the British from Savannah in coastal Georgia.

Chairman Daniel Fils-Aime

“We were here in 1779 to help America win independence. “ said Daniel Fils-Aime, chairman of the Miami-based Haitian American Historical Society. “That recognition is overdue.” “To see a monument in downtown Savannah and the commemoration of the involvement of the Haitian Americans, it’s a dream come true.” said Savannah Mayor Floyd Adams Jr. “This will help educate Americans but also Haitian youth about the significant contribution their ancestors made.” “The role of Haitian soldiers in the battle had long been ignored“, said North Miami Mayor Josaphat Celestin.
“It means recognition for our efforts, that we were here all along,

that Haiti was a part of the effort to liberate America and that they

came here as free men, not as slaves,” Celestin said. “We hope this country will recognize this.”

“It’s a huge deal,” said Philippe Armand, vice president of the Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America, who flew to Savannah from the
Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. “All the Haitians who have gone to school know about it from the history books.”

Though not well known in the U.S., Haiti’s role in the American Revolution is a point of national pride for Haitians.

After returning home from the war, Haitian veterans soon led their own rebellion that won Haiti’s independence from France in 1804.

The Siege of Savannah

The Siege of Savannah on October 9th, 1779 presents the Revolutionary War as a world conflict more than does any other engagement of the Revolution. The memory of
this battle also reminds us of the fact that significant foreign

resources of men, money, and material contributed to the eventual

success of the cause of American independence. French, Polish, Native

Americans, African slaves, free men of African descent, Germans,

Hessians, Austrians, Scots, Welsh, Irish, English, Swedish, and American

and West Indian colonials also participated as individuals or whole

units in this most culturally diverse battle of the war. For six weeks

this diverse force was assembled in three armies to contend for the

possession of Savannah. This battle resulted in the largest number of

casualties the allies suffered in a single engagement.

The presence of the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue as the largest unit of soldiers of African descent to fight in this war is worthy of commemoration. The fact that their number was made up of
free men who volunteered for this expedition is startling to most people

and surprising to many historians. Their presence reminds us that men

of African heritage were to be found on most battlefields of the

Revolution in large numbers. As a new and relatively inexperienced unit,

the Chasseurs participated in the siege warfare including the battle of

September 24th and the siege of October 9th.

The Chasseurs Volontaires de Saint-Domingue served as a reserve unit to American and French forces fighting a British contingent. As battered
American and French soldiers fell back, the Haitian troops moved in to

provide a retreat.

Twenty-five of their number has their names recorded as wounded or killed during the campaign. Over 60 were captured in the fall of Charleston eight months later. The British Navy captured three
transports carrying Chasseurs; these soldiers were made prizes of war

and sold into slavery. Other members of this unit were kept on duty away

from their homes for many months as part of French garrison forces. A

subsequent unit of Haitians was a part of the French and Spanish

campaign against Pensacola where they faced some of the same

regiments of British troops that their comrades faced in Savannah.

The efforts of Haiti to secure its independence from colonial rule beginning in 1791 are remarkable for the fact that what began as a slave
revolt was to ultimately succeed in prevailing over the resources of

the French Empire and to form a government of Western Hemisphere

Africans. Haiti, much smaller in population than the United States, was

attacked by armies as large as those sent against America by Britain.

The Haitian victory over the legions of Napoleon was achieved with much

less foreign assistance than the United States enjoyed.

Henri Christophe,

Many key figures in the Haitian War of Independence gained military experience and political insights through their participation in
Savannah — most notably Henri Christophe,

a youth at the time but in his adult years a general of Haitian armies

and king of his nation for fourteen years. Many of the Haitian soldiers

later fought to win their country’s own war of independence, crediting

their military experience in Savannah. Influenced by both the events of

the American Revolution and the rhetoric of the French Revolution, the

people of Haiti began a struggle for self-government and liberty. The

first nation in the Western Hemisphere to form a government led by

people of African descent, it was also the first nation to renounce

slavery.

The History of the Black Church in America

The term black church or African-American church refers to Christian churches that minister to predominantly African-American congregations in the United States. While some black churches, such as African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Churches, belong to predominantly African-American denominations, many black churches are members of predominantly white denominations, such as the United Church of Christ (which developed from the Congregational Church of New England.)




The first black congregations and churches were formed before 1800 by free blacks - for example, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Petersburg, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia. An industrial city which had attracted workers, Petersburg had the largest concentration of free blacks in the South by 1860

After slavery was abolished, freed blacks continued to establish separate congregations and church facilities, creating communities and worship in culturally distinct ways. They had already created a unique and empowering form of Christianity that creolized African spiritual traditions. In addition, segregationist attitudes in both the North and the South discouraged and, especially in the South, prevented African-Americans from worshiping in the same churches as whites.

The tradition of African-Americans worshipping together continued to develop during the late 19th century and continues to this day despite the decline of segregationist attitudes and the general acceptability of integrated worship. African American churches have long been the centers of communities, serving as school sites in the early years after the Civil War, taking up social welfare functions, such as providing for the indigent, and going on to establish schools, orphanages and prison ministries. As a result, black churches have fostered built strong community organizations and provided spiritual and political leadership, especially during the civil rights movement.

Slavery

Evangelical Baptist and Methodist preachers traveled throughout the South in the Great Awakening of the late 18th century. They appealed directly to slaves, and numerous people converted. Blacks found opportunities to have active roles in new congregations, especially in the Baptist Church, where slaves were appointed as leaders and preachers. (They were excluded from such roles in the Anglican or Episcopal Church.) As they listened to readings, slaves developed their own interpretations of the Scriptures and found inspiration in stories of deliverance, such as the Exodus out of Egypt. Nat Turner, a slave and Baptist preacher, was inspired to armed rebellion, in an uprising that killed about 50 white men, women, and children in Virginia.

Both free blacks and the more numerous slaves participated in the earliest black Baptist congregations founded near Petersburg, Virginia and Savannah, Georgia before 1800. Following slave revolts in the early 1800s, including Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, Virginia passed a law requiring black congregations to meet only in the presence of a white minister. Other states similarly restricted exclusively black churches, or the assembly of blacks in large groups unsupervised by whites. Nevertheless, the black Baptist congregations in the cities grew rapidly and their members numbered several hundred each before the Civil War. While led by free blacks, most of their members were slaves.

In plantation areas, slaves organized underground churches and hidden religious meetings, the "invisible church", where slaves were free to mix evangelical Christianity with African beliefs and African rhythms. They turned Wesleyan Methodist hymns into spirituals.[citation needed] The underground churches provided psychological refuge from the white world. The spirituals gave the church members a secret way to communicate and, in some cases, to plan rebellion.

Slaves also learned about Christianity by attending services led by a white preacher or supervised by a white person. Slaveholders often held prayer meetings at their plantations. In the South until the Great Awakening, most slaveholders were Anglican if they practiced any Christianity. Although in the early years of the first Great Awakening, Methodist and Baptist preachers argued for manumission of slaves and abolition, by the early decades of the 19th century, they often had found ways to support the institution. In settings where whites supervised worship and prayer, they used Bible stories that reinforced people's keeping to their places in society, urging slaves to be loyal and to obey their masters. In the 19th century, Methodist and Baptist chapels were founded among many of the smaller communities and common planters. During the early decades of the 19th century, they used stories such as the Curse of Ham to justify slavery to themselves. They promoted the idea that loyal and hard-working slaves would be rewarded in the afterlife. Sometimes slaves established their own Sabbath schools to talk about the Scriptures. Slaves who were literate tried to teach others to read, as Frederick Douglass did while still enslaved as a young man in Maryland.

Free blacks

Free blacks in both northern and southern cities formed their own congregations and churches before the end of the 18th century. They organized independent black congregations and churches to practice religion apart from white oversight. Along with white churches opposed to slavery, free blacks in Philadelphia provided aid and comfort to slaves who escaped and helped all new arrivals adjust to city life.

In 1787 in Philadelphia, the Black church was born out of protest and revolutionary reaction to racism. Resenting being relegated to a segregated gallery at St. George's Methodist Church, Methodist preachers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and other black members, left the church and formed the Free African Society. It was at first non-denominational and provided mutual aid to the free black community. Over time, Jones began to lead Episcopal services there. He finally led most of its members to create the African Church, in the Episcopal tradition. It was accepted as a parish and on July 17, 1794 became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. In 1804 Jones was the first black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866).

Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted to continue with the Methodist tradition. He built a congregation and founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). By July 29, 1794, they also had a building ready for their worship. The church adopted the slogan "To Seek for Ourselves." In recognition of his leadership and preaching, in 1799 Bishop Francis Asbury ordained Allen was ordained as a Methodist minister. Allen and the AME Church were active in antislavery campaigns, fought racism in the North, and promoted education, starting schools for black children. Finding that other black congregations in the region were also seeking independence from white control, in 1816 Allen organized a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first fully independent black denomination. He was elected its first bishop in 1816. While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia.

Petersburg, Virginia had two of the oldest black congregations in the country, both organized before 1800 as a result of the Great Awakening: First Baptist Church (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797). Each congregation moved from rural areas into Petersburg into their own buildings in the early 1800s. Their two black Baptist congregations were the first of that denomination in the city and they grew rapidly.

In Savannah, Georgia, a black Baptist congregation was organized by 1777, by George Liele. A former slave, he had been converted by ordained Baptist minister Matthew Moore. His early preaching was encouraged by his master, Henry Sharp. Sharp, a Baptist deacon and Loyalist, freed Liele before the American Revolutionary War began. Liele had been preaching to slaves on plantations, but made his way to Savannah, where he organized a congregation. After 1782, when Liele left the city with the British, Andrew Bryan led what became known as the First African Baptist Church. By 1800 the church had 700 members, and by 1830 it had grown to more than 2400 members. Soon it generated two new black congregations in the city.

Reconstruction

After emancipation, Northern churches founded by free blacks, as well as those of predominantly white denominations, sent missions to the South to minister to newly freed slaves, including to teach them to read and write. For instance, Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church returned to Charleston, SC, in April 1865 with nine missionaries. He organized committees, associations and teachers to reach freedmen throughout the countryside. In the first year after the war, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church gained 50,000 congregants. By the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations existed from Florida to Texas. Their missioners and preachers had brought more than 250,000 new adherents into the church. While it had a northern base, the church was heavily influenced by this growth in the South and incorporation of many members who had different practices and traditions. Similarly, within the first decade, the independent AME Zion church, founded in New York, also gained tens of thousands of Southern members. These two independent black denominations attracted the most new members in the South.

In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, with support from white colleagues of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, more than 40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded as an independent branch of Methodism. They took their mostly black congregations with them. They adopted the Methodist Doctrine and elected their first two bishops, William H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst of South Carolina. Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000 members, and more than 10 times that many in 50 years.




At the same time, black Baptist churches, well-established before the Civil War, continued to grow and add new congregations. With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches in the South, in 1894 church officials organized a new Baptist association, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.. It is now the largest black religious organization in the United States. These churches blended elements from underground churches with elements from freely established black churches.

The postwar years were marked by a separatist impulse as blacks exercised the right to move and gather beyond white supervision or control. They developed black churches, benevolent societies, fraternal orders and fire companies. In some areas they moved from farms into towns, as in middle Tennessee, or to cities that needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black churches were the focal points of black communities, and their members' quickly seceding from white churches demonstrated their desire to manage their own affairs independently of white supervision. It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible church" hidden from white eyes.

Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the primary link between the black and white communities. The black church established and/or maintained the first black schools and encouraged community members to fund these schools and other public services. For most black leaders, the churches always were connected to political goals of advancing the race. There grew to be a tension between black leaders from the North and people in the South who wanted to run their churches and worship in their own way.

Since the male hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination, middle-class women in the black church asserted themselves in other ways: they organized missionary societies to address social issues. These societies provided job training and reading education, worked for better living conditions, raised money for African missions, wrote religious periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals of womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift.

Civil Rights Movement

Black churches held a leadership role in the American Civil Rights Movement. Their history as a centers of strength for the black community made them natural leaders in this moral struggle. In addition they had often served as links between the black and white worlds. Notable minister-activists of the 1950s and 1960s included Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker and C.T. Vivian


Politics and social issues

The black church continues to be a source of support for members of the African-American community. When compared to American churches as a whole, black churches tend to focus more on social issues such as poverty, gang violence, drug use, prison ministries and racism. A study found that black Christians were more likely to have heard about health care reform from their pastors than were white Christians. Black churches are typically very conservative on sexuality issues, such as homosexuality.

Most surveys indicate that while Blacks tends to vote Democrat in elections Black churches as a whole are more socially conservative than white evangelicals, especially when it comes to issues of Nationalism.

Black liberation theology

One formalization of theology based on themes of black liberation is the Black liberation theology movement. Its origins can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full-page ad in the The New York Times to publish their "Black Power Statement", which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.

Black liberation theology was first systematized by James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. They are considered the leading theologians of this system of belief, although now there are many scholars who have contributed a great deal to the field. In 1969 Cone published the seminal work that laid the basis for black liberation theology, Black Theology and Black Power. In the book, Cone asserted that not only was black power not alien to the Gospel, it was, in fact, the Gospel message for all of 20th century America.

In 2008, approximately one quarter of African-American churches followed a liberation theology. The theology was thrust into the national spotlight after a controversy arose related to preaching by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to then-Senator Barack Obama at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. Wright had built Trinity into a successful megachurch following the theology developed by Cone, who has said that he would "point to [Trinity] first" as an example of a church's embodying his message.

As neighborhood institutions

Although black urban neighborhoods in cities which have deindustrialized may have suffered from civic disinvestment, with lower quality schools, less effective policing and fire protection, there are institutions that help to improve the physical and social capital of black neighborhoods. In black neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion. For some African Americans the kind of spirituality learned through these churches works as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of poverty and racism. Churches may also do work to improve the physical infrastructure of the neighborhood. Churches in Harlem have undertaken real estate ventures and renovated burnt-out and abandoned brownstones to create new housing for residents. Churches have fought for the right to operate their own schools in place of the often inadequate public schools found in many black neighborhoods.

Traditions

Like many Christians, African American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas play. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is a re-telling of the classic Nativity story with gospel music. Productions can be found at black theaters and churches all over the country. The Three Wise Men are typically played by prominent members of the black community.

Historically black denominations

Throughout U.S. history, religious preferences and racial segregation have fostered development of separate black church denominations, as well as black churches within white denominations.

African Methodist Episcopal Church

The first of these churches was the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In the late 18th century, former slave Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, was an influential deacon and elder at the integrated and affluent St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. The charismatic Allen had attracted numerous new black members to St. George's. White members had become so uncomfortable that they relegated black worshippers to a segregated gallery. After white members of St. George's started to treat his people as second-class citizens, in 1787 Allen, Absalom Jones, also a preacher; and other black members left St. George's.

They first established the non-denominational Free African Society, which acted as a mutual aid society. Religious differences caused Jones to take numerous followers to create an Episcopal congregation. They established the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which opened its doors in 1794. Absalom Jones was later ordained by the bishop of the Philadelphia diocese as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church.

Allen continued for some years within the Methodist denomination but organized a black congregation. By 1794 he and his followers opened the doors of the all-black Mother Bethel AME Church.

Over time, Allen and others sought more independence from white supervision within the Methodist Church. In 1816 Allen gathered four other black congregations together in the mid-Atlantic region to establish the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church as an independent denomination, the first fully independent black denomination. The ministers consecrated Allen as their first bishop.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot of the ME Church. Black members of the John Street Methodist Church of New York City left to form their own church after several acts of overt discrimination by white members. In 1796, black Methodists asked the permission of the bishop of the ME Church to meet independently, though still to be part of the ME Church and led by white preachers. This AME Church group built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated in 1801, still subordinate to the ME Church.

In 1820, AME Zion Church members began further separation from the ME Church. By seeking to install black preachers and elders, they created a debate over whether blacks could be ministers. This debate ended in 1822 with the ordination of Abraham Thompson, Leven Smith, and James Varick, the first superintendent (bishop) of the AME Zion church. After the Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries to the South and attracted thousands of new members, who shaped the church.

National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.

The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Its founders, including Elias Camp Morris, stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church. In 1895, Morris moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the Baptist National Education Convention. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., is the largest African-American religious organization.

Church of God in Christ

In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) after his Baptist church expelled him. Mason was a member of the Holiness Movement of the late 19th century. In 1906, he attended the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Upon his return to Tennessee, he began teaching the Pentecostal Holiness message. However, Charles Price Jones and J. A. Jeter of the Holiness movement disagreed with Mason's teachings on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Jones changed the name of his COGIC church to the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA in 1915.

At a conference in Memphis, Tennessee, Mason reorganized the Church of God in Christ as a Holiness Pentecostal body. The headquarters of COGIC is Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the site of Martin Luther King's final sermon, "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered the day before he was assassinated.

Other denominations

* African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection
* Apostolic Faith Mission
* Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
* End Time Age Deliverance Ministries Worldwide, Inc - Toronto, Canada
* National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
* National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
* Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
* Progressive National Baptist Convention
* Spiritual Israel Church and Its Army
* United House of Prayer for All People
* United Holy Church of America, Incorporated

Black Wall Street; Tulsa's Successful History

Greenwood is a neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As one of the most successful and wealthiest African American communities in the United States during the early 20th Century, it was popularly known as America's "Black Wall Street" until the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The riot was one of the most devastating race riots in history and it destroyed the once thriving Greenwood community. Greenwood is still being rebuilt today because of the destruction over 80 years ago.

The Roots

Many African Americans moved to Oklahoma in the years before and after 1907, which is the year when Oklahoma became a state. Oklahoma represented change and provided a chance for African Americans to get away from slavery and the harsh racism of their previous homes. Most of them traveled from the states in the south where racism was very prevalent, and Oklahoma offered hope and provided all people with a chance to start over. They traveled to Oklahoma by wagons, horses, trains, and even on foot.

Many of the African Americans who traveled to Oklahoma had ancestors who could be traced back to Oklahoma. A lot of the settlers were relatives of African American slaves who traveled on foot with the Five Civilized Tribes along the Trail of Tears. Others were the descendants of runaway slaves who had fled to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) in an effort to escape lives of oppression.

When Tulsa became a booming and rather well noted town in the United States, the residents and government attempted to leave out important aspects of the city. Many people considered Tulsa to be two separate cities rather than one city of united communities. The white residents of Tulsa referred to the area north of the Frisco railroad tracks as “Little Africa” and other derogatory names. They were threatened by the success of the African American community and worried that the community might continue to grow. This community later acquired the name Greenwood and in 1921 it was home to about 10,000 African American men, women, and children.

Greenwood was centered on a street known as Greenwood Avenue. This street was important because it ran north for over a mile from the Frisco Railroad yards, and it was one of the few streets that did not cross through both black and white neighborhoods. The citizens of Greenwood took pride in this fact because it was something they had all to themselves and did not have to share with the white community of Tulsa. Greenwood Avenue was home to the African American commercial district with many red brick buildings. These buildings belonged to African Americans and they were thriving businesses, including grocery stores, clothing stores, barber shops, and much more. Greenwood was one of the most affluent communities and became known as “Black Wall Street.”


During the oil boom of the 1910s, the area of northeast Oklahoma around Tulsa flourished—including the Greenwood neighborhood, which came to be known as "the Negro Wall Street" (now commonly referred to as "the Black Wall Street") The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires. Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses that were very successful up until the Tulsa Race Riot. Not only did African Americans want to contribute to the success of their own shops, but also the racial segregation laws prevented them from shopping anywhere else other than Greenwood.

The buildings on Greenwood Avenue housed the offices of almost all of Tulsa’s black lawyers, realtors, doctors, and other professionals. In Tulsa at the time of the riot, there were fifteen well-known African American physicians, one of whom was considered the “most able Negro surgeon in America” by one of the Mayo brothers. Greenwood published two newspapers, the Tulsa Star and the Oklahoma Sun, which covered not only Tulsa, but also state and national news and elections.

Greenwood housed more churches than all of Tulsa’s white community and Greenwood was a very religiously active community. At the time of the riot there were more than a dozen African American churches and many Christian youth organizations and religious societies.

In northeastern Oklahoma, as elsewhere in America, the prosperity of minorities emerged amidst racial and political tension. The Ku Klux Klan made its first major appearance in Oklahoma shortly before the worst race riot in history. It is estimated that there were about 3,200 members of the Klan in Tulsa in 1921.

One of the nation's worst acts of racial violence—the Tulsa Race Riot—occurred there on June 1, 1921, when 35 square blocks of homes and businesses were torched by mobs of angry whites.

The riot began because of an alleged assault of a white woman, Sarah Page, by an African American man, Dick Rowland. This incident produced even more hatred between the whites and the blacks even though there was no proof of the assault. The case was simply a white woman’s word against a black man’s word. The Tulsa Tribune got word of the incident and published the story in the paper on May 31, 1921. Shortly after the newspaper article surfaced, there was news that a white lynch mob was going to take matters into its own hands and kill Dick Rowland.

African American men began to arm themselves and join forces in order to protect Dick Rowland; however, this action prompted white men to arm themselves and confront the group of African American men. There was an argument in which a white man tried to take a gun from a black man, and the gun fired a bullet up into the sky. This incident promoted many others to fire their guns, and the violence erupted on the evening of May 31, 1921. Whites flooded into the Greenwood district and destroyed the businesses and homes of African American residents. No one was exempt to the violence of the white mobs; men, women, and even children were killed by the mobs.

Troops were deployed on the afternoon of June 1st, but by that time there was not much left of the once thriving Greenwood district. Over 600 successful businesses were lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half-dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. Property damage totaled $1.5 million (1921). Although the official death toll claimed that 26 blacks and 13 whites died during the fighting, most estimates are considerably higher. At the time of the riot, the American Red Cross listed 8,624 persons in need of assistance, in excess of 1,000 homes and businesses destroyed, and the delivery of several stillborn infants.


After the riot had ended the Tulsa Tribune published another controversial article, which discussed not allowing the Greenwood district to be rebuilt. It brutally spoke about the once thriving African American community and the article made it clear that the city of Tulsa did not want to recreate the prosperity that Greenwood once possessed. But the citizens of Greenwood refused to allow a newspaper article to prevent them from rebuilding their lives. It was not an easy effort to rebuild the community out of the ashes but the residents of Greenwood were not going to allow anyone to kick them while they were down, and instead they chose to stand up among the wreckage and restore their homes and businesses. The strong religious faith of the African Americans provided support for each person and allowed them to join together in the faith that they could get their lives back.

The community mobilized its resources and rebuilt the Greenwood area within five years of the Tulsa Race Riot and the neighborhood was a hotbed of jazz and blues in the 1920s.[8] However, the neighborhood fell prey to an economic and population drain in the 1960s, and much of the area was leveled during urban renewal in the early 1970s to make way for a highway loop around the downtown district. Several blocks of the old neighborhood around the intersection of Greenwood Ave. and Archer St. were saved from demolition and have been restored, forming part of the Greenwood Historical District.
Improvements

Revitalization and preservation efforts in the 1990s and 2000s resulted in tourism initiatives and memorials. Hope Franklin Greenwood Reconciliation Park and the Greenwood Cultural Center honor the Tulsa Race Riot, although the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce plans a larger museum to be built with involvement from the national parks service.

In 2008, Tulsa announced that it sought to move the city's minor league baseball team, the Tulsa Drillers, to a new stadium to be constructed in the Greenwood District. The proposed development includes a hotel, baseball stadium, and an expanded mixed-use district. Along with the new stadium, there will be extra development for the city blocks that surround the stadium. This project will bring Greenwood Historical District out front and center and attract not only tourists but also Tulsa residents to North Tulsa.
Greenwood Cultural Center

The Greenwood Cultural Center dedicated on October 22, 1995 was created as a tribute to Greenwood’s history and as a symbol of hope for the community’s future. The center has a museum, an African American art gallery, a large banquet hall, and also the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. The total cost of the center was almost $3 million.The cultural center is a very important part of the reconstruction and unity of the Greenwood Historical District.

The Greenwood Cultural Center sponsors and promotes education and cultural events preserving African American heritage. It also provides positive images of North Tulsa to the community attracting a wide variety of visitors not only to the center itself but also to the city of Tulsa as a whole.

The story of the establishment, destruction, resurrection and final decline of America's most prosperous Black communities. Taken from the documentary "Going Back to T Town"

P. B. S. Pinchback

P. B. S. Pinchback

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first non-white and first person of African American descent to become governor of a U.S. state. A Republican, he served as the 24th Governor of Louisiana for 35 days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.


Nicholas Lemann, in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, described Pinchback as "an outsized figure: newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, mountebank – served for a few months as the state's Governor and claimed seats in both houses of Congress following disputed elections but could not persuade the members of either to seat him."



Early life



Pinchback was born in May 1837 in Macon, Bibb County, Georgia, to Eliza Stewart, a biracial former slave, and William Pinchback, her former master, who were living together as husband and wife. The family was on its way to begin a new life in Mississippi, where William Pinchback had purchased a much larger plantation.



Pinchback was brought up in relatively affluent surroundings. He was raised as white and his parents sent him north to Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend school. In 1848, however, Pinchback's father died. William Pinchback's relatives disinherited his mulatto wife and children and claimed his property in Mississippi. Fearful that the northern Pinchbacks might also try to claim her five children as slaves, Pinchback's mother fled with them to Cincinnati.



In 1860 Pinchback married Nina Hawthorne of Memphis, Tennessee. The Civil War began the following year, and Pinchback decided to fight on the side of the Union. In 1862 he furtively made his way into New Orleans, which had just been captured by the Union Army. He raised several companies for the Union's all black 1st Louisiana Native Guards Regiment. Commissioned a captain, he was one of the Union Army's few commissioned officers of African American ancestry.










Passed over twice for promotion and tired of the prejudice he encountered from white officers, Pinchback resigned his commission in 1863. At the war's end, he and his wife moved to Alabama, to test their freedom as full citizens. Racial tensions there during Reconstruction were reaching shocking levels of violence, however, and he brought his family back to New Orleans.



Political career



In 1863, during the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and recruited African-American volunteers for the Union Army. He became captain of Company A, 1st Louisiana Native Guards (later reformed as the 73rd U. S. Colored Infantry Regiment). He resigned his commission because of racial prejudice against black officers.



After the war, Pinchback returned to New Orleans and became active in the Republican Party, participating in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, he organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a State Senator, where he became senate president pro tempore of a Legislature that included 42 representatives of African American descent (half of the chamber, and seven of 36 seats in the Senate). In 1871 he became acting lieutenant governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, the first elected African-American lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.

In 1872, the incumbent Republican governor Henry Clay Warmoth, suffered impeachment charges near the end of his term. State law required that Warmoth step aside until convicted or cleared of the charges. Pinchback, as lieutenant governor, succeeded as governor on December 9 and served for 35 days until the end of Warmoth's term. Warmoth was not convicted and the charges were eventually dropped.



Pinchback became the recipient of vicious hate mail from across the country as well as more local threats on his own life.



Also in 1872, at a national convention of African-American politicians, Pinchback had a public disagreement with Jeremiah Haralson of Alabama. James T. Rapier (also of Alabama) submitted a motion that the convention condemn all Republicans who had opposed President Grant in that year's election. Haralson supported the motion, but Pinchback opposed it because it would include Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a lifelong anti-slavery fighter whom Pinchback believed African-Americans should laud.



Later life



After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. In the elections of 1874 and 1876, Pinchback was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate respectively, another pioneering accomplishment as the state's first African American representative to Washington. Both elections were contested, and his Democratic opponents were seated instead. It was the beginning of a reversal of the political gains African Americans had achieved since the war's end.



Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in establishing Southern University, a historically black college, in New Orleans in 1880. It relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914.[4] He was a member of Southern University's Board of Trustees (later redesignated the Board of Supervisors).



In 1882, Republican President Chester Arthur appointed Pinchback as Surveyor of Customs in New Orleans. In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, which later became Dillard University, in New Orleans. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1886. He was part of the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens' Committee) which in 1892 staged the New Orleans civil-rights actions of Homer Plessy which led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (legalizing racial segregation). Later Pinchback moved to New York City and worked as a Marshal. Finally he moved to Washington, D.C., where he practiced law.



Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and is interred in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. His service as governor helped him to be interred there although the cemetery was segregated and reserved for whites.



Legacy



Pinchback is the maternal grandfather of Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer.



It was not until 1990 that another African American became governor of any U.S. state. In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the second African-American state governor (and the first to be elected to office). Deval Patrick of Massachusetts was elected governor and took office in January 2007. David Paterson of New York became the fourth African-American governor on March 17, 2008 when he succeeded to office following the resignation of Eliot Spitzer. Wilder, Patrick and Paterson are all Democrats.

Military-Industrial Complex

Military-industrial complex; IT IS WHAT IT IS!!!!!

Military-industrial complex (MIC) is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationships between governments, national armed forces, and industrial support they obtain from the commercial sector in political approval for research, development, production, use, and support for military training, weapons, equipment, and facilities within the national defense and security policy. It is a type of iron triangle.


The term is most often played in reference to the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address speech of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure.



Dwight D. Eisenhower exit speech on Jan.17,1961. Warning us of the military industrial complex.







It is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, and the Congress and executive branch. This sector is intrinsically prone to principal-agent problem, moral hazard, and rent seeking. Cases of political corruption have also surfaced with regularity.

THE PATTERN OF THE SYSTEM


A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guérin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, “an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs

History



Technology has always been a part of warfare. Neolithic tools were used as weapons before recorded history. The bronze age and iron age saw the rise of complex industries geared towards the manufacture of weaponry. These industries also had practical peacetime applications, as well; industries making swords in times of war could make plowshares in times of peace, for example. However, it was not until the 19th or 20th century that military weaponry became sufficiently complicated as to require a large subset of industrial effort solely dedicated to warfare. Firearms, artillery, steamships, and later aircraft and nuclear weapons were markedly different from ancient or medieval swords -- these new weapons required years of specialized labor, as opposed to part-time effort.

The first modern MICs arose in Britain, France and Germany in the 1880s and 1890s as part of the need to defend their respective empires either on the ground or at sea.








The naval rivalry between Britain and Germany and France and their revenge sentiment against German Empire that followed the Franco-Prussian war was of utmost significance in the inception, growth and development of these MICs



Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney grills Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the Pentagon's missing trillions, DynCorp's slave trade, and the 9/11 wargames.House Hearing on FY06 Dept. of Defense Budget






Conversely, the existence of these three nations' respective MICs may have been the source of these military tensions. Officers like Admiral Jackie Fisher influenced the shift toward faster technological integration (which meant closer relationships with private, innovative companies). Similar MICs soon followed in nations like Japan and the United States.



Industrialists who played a part in the arms industry of this era included Alfred Krupp, Samuel Colt, William G. Armstrong, Alfred Nobel, and Joseph Whitworth.



Furthermore, the length of time necessary to build weapons systems of high complexity and massive integration required pre-planning and construction even during times of peace; thus a portion of the economies of the great powers (and, later, the superpowers), was dedicated and maintained solely for the purpose of defense (and war). This trend of coupling some industries towards military activity gave rise to the concept of a "partnership" between the military and private enterprise.

The term is often used to refer to the "complex" in the context of the United States, where the term came into wide use by the public, following its introduction by President Dwight Eisenhower in his "Farewell Address"; the U.S. has a complex which, on an annual basis, accounts for 47% of the world's total arms expenditures . This also may be due to the historical pattern of the previous ~70 years of military expenditures by the United States; prior to World War I, the U.S. maintained a small military (in comparison to its peers) in times of peace and instead relied on militia or, in later years, reserves, in the event of war; indeed, large-scale spending for arms in times of peace has always been looked upon with suspicion by the people of the United States.



Though the United States never completely demobilized following World War I, and standing forces were maintained to a greater extent in the years that followed it, World War II was the driving force that utterly changed this historical pattern of general neglect of the military. During the Second World War, the United States underwent total mobilization of all available national resources to fight and win, alongside her allies, a total war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, a mobilization of resources far greater than that which took place during the entire previous history of the United States. At the end of the war, East Asia was gravely damaged, and Europe was devastated; several European states abandoned their colonial empires, faced by a loss of moral legitimacy, national will, and military strength; and the United States and the Soviet Union stood as the two remaining great powers left in the world, from that point, known as superpowers.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower


The United States and the Soviet Union grew suspicious and hostile to one another; faced with a threat immediately following the Second World War, the U.S. only partially demobilized, and left in place a sizable apparatus of military production and large naval, air, and land forces. This period, called the Cold War, represented a 45-year period of low-intensity, unconventional conflict between the superpowers, with the ongoing potential to metastasize into a nuclear conflict that could happen with only minutes of notice, could possibly destroy both superpowers, cause a new Dark Age, and might even result in the extinction of the human species. And in this time overshadowed by acronyms like M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) and N.U.T.S. (Nuclear Utilization Target Selection), the military-industrial complex rose to great prominence, and power, in the United States.



It is difficult to estimate the degree of dependence of the U.S. economy on its military and defense spending, but it is clearly enormous, and legislators fiercely resist defense cuts that affect their districts. In Washington State, an economist estimated in 2002 that in Western Washington 166,000 jobs, or about 15% of the workforce, depended directly or indirectly on military installations alone, not counting defense industries. In Washington State overall in FY2001, about $7.06 billion arrived in U.S. Department of Defense payroll, pensions, and procurement contracts—and Washington State was only seventh among the fifty states in this regard Overall, U.S. spending on defense acquisitions and research is equal to 1.2% of the GDP.



In 1977, after the Vietnam war and the Watergate crisis, President Jimmy Carter began his presidency with what historian Michael Sherry has called "a determination to break from America's militarized past" (In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s [New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995], . However, increased defense spending in the era of President Ronald Reagan is seen by some to have brought the military-industrial complex back into prominence.



Origin of the term



President of the United States (and former General of the Army) Dwight D. Eisenhower used the term in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:



A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...



This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.



In the penultimate draft of the address, Eisenhower initially used the term military-industrial-congressional complex, and thus indicated the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry. But, it is said, that the president chose to strike the word congressional in order to placate members of the legislative branch of the federal government. The actual authors of the term were Eisenhower's speech-writers Ralph E. Williams and Malcolm Moos. Shortly after Eisenhower's address, the issue of military-industrial-congressional influence came to the forefront after Kennedy canceled the B-70 bomber on March 28, 1961. After appropriations bills had been passed and signed with B-70 funding that Kennedy would not use, the House Armed Services Committee (with 21 members having B-70 work in their districts) subsequently attempted to "direct" — by law — the Executive Branch to use "the full amount" appropriated for the B-70. However, a March 19, 1962 eleventh hour White House Rose Garden agreement by chairman Carl Vinson retracted the language from the appropriations bill, and the B-70 cancellation remained permanent.



Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern "military-industrial complex" existed before Eisenhower's address. In 1956, sociologist C. Wright Mills had claimed in his book The Power Elite that a class of military, business, and political leaders, driven by mutual interests, were the real leaders of the state, and were effectively beyond democratic control.

NUMBERS DON'T LIE... PEOPLE DO!!!!!


Also F. A. Hayek mentions in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom the danger of a support of monopolistic organisation of industry from WWII political remnants:



Another element which after this war is likely to strengthen the tendencies in this direction will be some of the men who during the war have tasted the powers if coercive control and will find it difficult to reconcile themselves with the humbler roles they will then have to play in peaceful times."



Vietnam War-era activists, such as Seymour Melman, referred frequently to the concept. In the late 1990s James Kurth asserted, "by the mid-1980s the term had largely fallen out of public discussion... whatever the power of arguments about the influence of the military-industrial complex on weapons procurement during the Cold War, they are much less relevant to the current era."

Contemporary students and critics of American militarism continue to refer to and employ the term, however. For example, historian Chalmers Johnson uses words from the second, third, and fourth paragraphs quoted above from Eisenhower's address as an epigraph to Chapter Two ("The Roots of American Militarism") of a recent volume on this subject. Peter W. Singer's book concerning private military companies illustrates contemporary ways in which industry, particularly an information-based one, still interacts with the U.S. Government and the Pentagon.



The expressions permanent war economy and war corporatism are related concepts that have also been used in association with this term.



The term is also used to describe comparable collusion in other political entities such as the German Empire (prior to and through the first world war), Britain, France and (post-Soviet) Russia.



Noam Chomsky has suggested that "military-industrial complex" is a misnomer because (as he considers it) the phenomenon in question "is not specifically military." He claims, "There is no military-industrial complex: it's just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext (defense was a pretext for a long time)."

Current applications




Total world spending on military expenses in 2006 was $1.158 trillion US dollars. Nearly half of this total, 528.7 billion US dollars, was spent by the United States.The privatization of the production and invention of military technology also leads to a complicated relationship with significant research and development of many technologies.



The Military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget. Overall the United States government is spending about $1 trillion annually on defense-related purposes.

KNOWLEDGE IS KING: Africans During The Early Stages of Islam Posted by Make'da F. Na'eem

KNOWLEDGE IS KING: Africans During The Early Stages of Islam Posted by Make'da F. Na'eem

Africans During The Early Stages of Islam Posted by Make'da F. Na'eem

Buster Douglas and Make'da F. Na'eem

D. S. Margoliouth, in his Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, and Al-Jahiz say of the sons of Abd Al-Muttalib, Prophet Muhammad's grandfather, that All ten sons were of massive build and dark colour.The earliest converts and disciples of Prophet Muhammad were Africans, including Zayd bin Harith, the Prophet's adopted son and one of his generals. Another pioneer noted in Islamic history was Abu Talib, uncle of the Prophet and father of Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph. Al-Jahiz writes the following: The family of Abu Talib were the most noble of men, and they were Black with Black skins.Dr. Akbar Muhammad, noted Islamic scholar, and son of the late leader of the Nation of Islam, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, informs us that not only were the Prophet's ancestors (members of the Quraish tribe as well) of African descent, but many Africans were among his earliest followers, among them Barakah Um Ayman, the wetnurse of the Prophet, whom he called my mother after my mother, and Mitjar the first martyr at the Battle of Badr. Two of the Prophet's wives were Africans, Umm Habiba and Maryam, an Egyptian Copt. A number of Africans who were companions of the Prophet and participated notably in the earliest advancement of Islam were slaves freed Prophet Muhammad and Abu Bakr, the first Caliph. Examples are Umm Ayman, Zinnira, and Abu Anjashah al-Habashi, a former slave who became the trusting caretaker of the Prophet's family.In the year 615 C. E., the Muslims were experiencing such severe persecution that the Prophet commanded a small group to flee from Mecca. He advised them to seek refuge in Abyssinia ( Ethiopia ), with the Christian king, al-Najashi; this migration is known as the first Hijra, or flight. This is a strong testament to the respect Africans had for Islam and the admiration and respect the Muslims had for Africans



The African king protected the Muslims and eventually accepted Islam; he later sent a delegation, which included his son, to study under the Prophet in Medina.Another African was Wahshi, the assassin of Hamzah, paternal uncle of the Prophet. Very few studies mention the fact that after Wahshi was freed and received numerous rewards for his dastardly deed, including Hind's hand in marriage, she commissioned Wahshi to assassinate Hamzah, he continued to reside in Mecca . Most importantly, years later he embraced Islam, and the Prophet pardoned him for his crime.After the death of Prophet Muhammad, a large number of Muslims perished in a war with an enemy of Islam, Musaylimah of Najd. Wahshi succeeded in killing Musaylimah, and felt vindicated. He is reported to have said: I had killed one of the best Muslims, Hamzah; now for killing one of the worst enemies of God, God will perhaps pardon me for my former crime. Later, Wahshi participated in the wars against the Byzantine empire; he settled in Syria, where he died at an advanced age.The most celebrated African in Islamic history was/is Bilal Ibn Rabah, the first caller to prayer (Mu'adhdhin) and treasurer of the early Islamic State. He was an Abyssinian slave in bondage to a cruel master who mistreated him for accepting Islam. He became an early follower of Prophet Muhammad in Mecca . Abu Bakr, saw Bilal being mistreated and freed him.When the Muslims entered Mecca in triumph, in the year 9 A. H./630 C. E., Bilal made the call to prayer from the top of the Ka'bah. Bilal remained a trusted companion of the Prophet and of the caliphs. He eventually traveled to Syria where became governor, he is said to be buried there.Early Africans were known narrators and teachers of Hadith. Even non-Muslim Africans contributed to the culture of Islam. For example, there was the poet Antar, who was an Ethiopic Arabian, so dark that his nickname was Gharab (the crow).J. A. Rogers, in his World's Great Men of Color, Volume One and Dr. Carter G. Woodson's African Heroes and Heroines, point out that Antar accomplished great feats as a warrior and poet in pre-Islamic Arabia.



One of Antar's poems was accorded the highest honor possible for an African-Arabian writer. Antar's works hangs among the seven poems at the entrance of the Mosque at Mecca . This collection of seven poems, known as the Muallakat, is cherished by Muslims around the world.Dhul Nun was a great ninth century C. E. philosopher/mystic. A Nubian who was born a slave, he nevertheless became one of the finest scholars of his day, noted throughout the Islamic world for his wisdom and accomplishments in such diverse fields as law, alchemy, and Egyptian history and hieroglyphics. Among Sufis, he is considered one of the greater mystics. Dr. Muhammad argues quite persuasively that religious scripture has not eradicated ethnocentrism; therefore, after the death of the Prophet, scripes and scriptural translators infused their biases into their translations. Thus racism and the willful neglect of other people's contributions to the broad multicultural significance of Islam are still quite prevalent. These biases hold firm insofar as African Muslims and their contributions to Islam are concerned. According to Dr. Muhammad, the root words denoting Blackness occur ten times in the Qu'ran; three times they have the meaning of Lordship (Al-Siyadah). Blackness, referring to darkness or cloudiness, occurs five times as a description of a spiritual condition or state rather than an inherent characteristic or color of countenance. The two remaining words refer to the landscape and nightfall. Hence, there is no negative connotation to Black as a color, or to Africans as a people, in the Holy Qu'ran (or the Bible for that matter).



A similar view is stated by Idris Shah:The Kaaba (cubic temple, Holy of Holiest) in Mecca is draped in Black, esoterically interpreted as a play on words of the FHM sound in Arabic, alternatively meaning Black or Wise, understanding. The word sayed (prince) is connected with another root for Black, the SWD root. The original banner of the Prophet Mohammed was Black, collectively standing for wisdom, lordship.By 690,the Muslims were firmly established in Egypt and Tunisia , ready to advance onto the Iberian Peninsula . The so-called Berbers, who initially offered considerable resistance to the advancing Muslim armies, eventually became great advocates and propagators of Islam. They successfully crossed into Europe in 713,under Berber/Moorish general Tariq Ibn Ziyad, from whose name the word Gibraltar is derived (Jabil Tariq, the mountain of Tariq ). The advance into Europe did not stop until 732,when Charles Martel defeated the Muslim forces at the battle of Poitiers ( Tours ), in France.Most of us are not aware that the peoples whom the classical Greek and Roman historians called Berber were Black and affiliated with the then contemporary peoples of East African areas. The word Berber in fact was used to refer to peoples of the Red Sea area in Africa as well as North Africa...It was such populations that in large measure comprised the Moorish people, but because of the attribute of Blackness which sharply distinguished them from the bulk of the European people, the word came to be generally used by Europeans to describe persons of Black complexion in general.The word Moor was used for people basically Berber in origin but then came to include, during the Islamic period, the early Arabians. Both of these populations belonged to a physical type or types of men commonly referred to by early scholars as Hamitic, brown or brown Mediterranean .



Throughout the Middle Ages and previous to the Atlantic slave trade other men of Black or nearly Black pigmentation, particularly Muslim, came to be commonly referred to as Moors.(See Ivan Van Sertima's The Golden Age of the Moors, p. 143)The Moorish contributions to European civilization have been documented by numerous historians and is not disputed. The Moors were considered the light of Europe during the Dark Ages which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire . Moorish Spain became the academic source and foundation for the rise and success of Western European universities in the Middle Ages. Stanley Lane Pool provides the following description:Cordova was the wonderful city of the tenth century; the streets were well paved and there were raised sidewalks for pedestrians. At night one could walk for ten miles by light of lamps, flanked by uninterrupted extent of buildings. All this was hundreds of years before there was a paved street in Paris or a street lamp in London . Its public baths numbered into the hundreds, when bathing in the rest of Europe was frowned upon as a diabolical custom, avoided by all good Christians. Moorish monarchs dwelt in sumptuous palaces, while the crowned heads in England , France and Germany lived in big barns, lacking both windows and chimneys and with only a hole in the roof for the exit of smoke. Education was universal in Moslem Spain, being given to the most humble, while in Christian Europe 99 percent of the populace was illiterate, and even kings could neither read nor write. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, public libraries in Christian Europe were conspicuous by their absence, while Moslem Spain could boast of more than seventy, of which the one in Cordova housed 600,000 manuscripts.



Christian Europe contained only two universities of any consequence, while in Spain there were seventeen outstanding universities. The finest were those located in Almeria , Cordova, Granada , Jaen , Malaga , Serville, and Toledo . Scientific progress in astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geography, and philology in Moslem Spain reached a high level of development. Scholars and artists formed associations to promote their particular studies, and scientific congresses were organized to promote research and facilitate the spread of knowledge.As mentioned earlier, the Berbers/Moors of North Africa initially resisted Islam and fought the Muslim armies before they accepted the religion and became its most ardent caliphs, generals and scholars. By contrast, the flow of Islam into Sub-Sahara Africa took a completely different form.Inner Africa experienced no Arab conquests and Islam was to spread through the peaceful work of African itinerant traders and peripatetic local Ulama (teachers and scholars). Islam filtered across the Sahara into West Africa through the agency of Islamized Berber/Moorish traders who frequented Bilad Ed-Sudan (Lands of the Blacks). Their first converts were their West African counterparts, the Mande traders known as the Djula, and court officials. A class of local Ulama (also known as Marabouts) emerged and towns such as Timbuktu , Jenne and Walata became renowned centers of Islamic studies. In the eighteenth century, the Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood became one of the most important agents of Islamization in the area... On the other hand, the seeds of Islam were sown in the Horn of Africa and the East African Coast by Arab migrants and traders from Southern Arabia (many of these Arabs were dark in complexion). In time, a cadre of Ulama of local origin also emerged in these areas.



These Ulama opened schools that produced scores of teachers who in turn opened Quranic schools in their localities.Ghana was the first great kingdoms to emerge in western Africa after the spread of Islam. This kingdom reached its height about 1000 C. E., when it covered parts of what are now Mali and Mauritania.By the beginning of the tenth century the Muslim influence from the East was present. Kumbi Saleh (the city) had a native and an Arab section, and the people were gradually adopting the religion of Islam. The prosperity that came in the wake of Arabian infiltration increased the power of Ghana , and its influence was extended in all directions. In the eleventh century, when the king had become a Muslim, Ghana could boast of a large army and a lucrative trade across the desert. From Muslim countries came wheat, fruit, and sugar. From across the desert came caravans laden with textiles, brass, pearls, and salt. Ghana exchanged ivory, slaves, and gold from Bambuhu for these commodities.Among fourteenth century Africans, none is more renowned than Mansa Musa (1312-37), the great leader of the Mali Empire. In 1324 C. E., he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca in such a fashion that his fame was proclaimed from Andalusia to Khurasan, and the names of Mansa Musa and Mali made their appearance on fourteenth century maps.



During the fifteenth century, the Songhai Empire, founded by Sunni Ali Ber, spread forth from the capital city of Goa, on the Niger River, 200 miles south of Timbuktu. This Muslim civilization is acknowledged by historians as one of the greatest in history.During the fifteenth century, in East Africa , the majority of Sudanese Muslims became linked through their religious leaders (Imams), with either the Qadiriyya or Tijaniyya Sufi order. The propagation of Islam in Africa cannot be understood without considering this attachment of the leaders to one or another of these orders. The Tariqas (another Sufi order) in the Sudan operated on two different levels: among Muslims, they sought converts to Sufism, while among non-Muslims, they sought converts to Islam. Despite their spiritual roots, they had a profound impact on the social, political, and economic life in the area.During the late 1440s and 1500s, Europeans began to establish trading posts in Africa . While the spread of Christianity motivated sincere Christians to establish numerous missions, gold and slaves eventually became the primary interest of the Europeans interlopers.Ironically, the more that non-Muslim Africans saw of Europeans, the more they gravitated to Islam. In the early days of European control there were few Muslims in the coastal towns. Today none are without their Muslim quarter.

The population of Lagos , for instance, is about 50 percent Muslim; in Dakar the proportion of Muslims is steadily increasing. In Sierra Leone Colony in 1891 Muslims formed 10 percent, in 1931 they numbered 25,350 out of 95,558 or 26.2 percent....During the eighteenth century, Islamic militancy increased as the European presence became more pervasive.Unjust rule, heavy uncanonical taxation, bida or innovations foreign to Islam, immoral practices, mixing Islam with traditional customs and subordination of Muslims to non-Islamic rule prevailed throughout the region. Above all, European invaders, the infidels, identified as the terrible Gog and Magog, were thrusting dagger deep in the heart of Muslim Africa. The Dajjals were everywhere in the area in the form of despotic and corrupt rulers.The conditions were ripe for revolution. The West African Jihadists capitalized on them. Usman Dan Fodio founded a theocratic state in Northern Nigeria; Seku Ahmadu established the Hamadullah Calphate in Masina (republic of Mali); and Al-Hajj Umar Tall carved out an Islamic Empire in the Senegambia.During the nineteenth century, resistance by African Muslims to European occupation was relentless. The Mahdi of Sudan, Muhammad Ahmad (1848-85) led a remarkable holy war against the British; his forces defeated General Gordon and took over Khartoum in 1885. Muhammad Abdullah Hasan, the Mahdi of Somalia, fought the forces of occupation from 1889 until he died of influenza in 1920. Mahdist uprisings against European encroachment were so frequent in other parts of Africa that, writing on Nigeria in 1906,Lord Lugard stated, I do not think a year has passed since 1900 without one or more Mahdist movement.Ahmadu Bamba (1850-1927) founded the Murid brotherhood in 1886.



It was/is a branch of the Qadiriyya Sufi Order and it attracted oppressed Africans that were uprooted by the French occupation of Senegal . Bamba's followers make their Hajj not to Mecca , but in Touba, where Bamba is buried.*=====Adib Rashad (RashadM@aol.com) is an education consultant, educationprogram director, author, and historian. He has lived and taught in West Africa and South East Asia.*