We Who Like It Hot Call It
‘Black August’
By
‘bro. zayid’
It is the month when our
oppressors have nothing to celebrate.
It is the month where the nature of our oppression and the boldest
expressions of our resistance to that oppression have been made most plain.
We who like it hot call it ‘Black August’…
As a concept of resistance, Black August has its beginnings in the mid
70’s with the prison justice movement. It was inspired by the courageous
legacy of Black Panther prison organizer George Jackson, who was assassinated on
August 21, 1971, one of the hallmark dates for the concept.
Originally, the concept concerned itself with and confined itself to
those hallmark dates repression and resistance for this month within the
confines of these bloodsucking united states exclusively.
We revisit this concept here in a more comprehensive Pan-Afrikan manner
to explore and to propose it having a broader Pan-Afrikan application.
Beginning on the matter of our national oppression, the first buying and
selling of our ancestors, the first time we were “put on the open market” in
what is now the united states, using the language of those of
you who strangely want to bed down with capitalism, knowing full well
that your ancestors were capitalism’s first prime capital, took place on
August 20, 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia.
In most recent times, and for the first time in decades since the bombing
of the Congo in 1964 under the so-called liberal rule of Lyndon Baines Johnson,
u.s. forces, demonstrating unchallenged New World Order military supremacy,
bombed our Afrika when they the Sudan,
the land of the earth’s oldest civilizations,
under the most bogus of pretenses on August 20, 1998.
Ironic coincidence you think? This beast was trying to bomb us outta our
land, outta our minds and outta our hearts!…
Self-critically we should also acknowledge the recent betrayal of
Pan-Afrikan potential in Central Afrika too. Just as were gearing up here for
the heroic Million Youth March, The u.s. covertly sponsored an attack on the
recently liberated Congo on August 2, 1998, using Rwanda and Uganda as proxy
forces. To the honor of our ancestors, however, that betrayal has been checked
and contained in a Pan-Afrikan manner by a courageous union of forces from
Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia…
An important recently declassified FBI memo detailing the scope and the
national coordination of a sinister covert operation, which would ultimately
destroy the Black Liberation Movement known as COINTELPRO, or ‘the
CounterIntelligence Program,’ was set in motion against the Black nation on
August 25, 1967.
Many conscious of our history know that COINTELPRO was not only illegal,
immoral and absolutely off da hook in its making a mockery of democratic rights.
But have we truly assessed ‘how’ successful it was in not disabling the
Black Liberation Movement?
Have
we truly assessed how that crippling of our movement left our community wide
open for the unprecedented violent social disintegration we currently face, set
off most insidiously by a heroin epidemic in the early 70’s and the
hoodsplitting crack explosion blowing up in our faces in the awful 80s and the
nasty 90s?
The
epic Million Man March was the beginning of an answer, but it wasn’t enough.
And with Black Panther/BLA political prisoners Albert ‘Nuh’ Washington and
Teddy ‘Jah’ Heath recently dying in captivity after being locked down for
nearly 30 years virtually unknown to the community they sacrificed their lives
trying to defend and with that same community in more disarray now than it was
when they were captured in the early 70’s, we think not.
By the way, the first of two vicious attacks against those defiant,
dredlock-wearing pioneers of environmentalism, known to the world simply as
MOVE, also took place in Black August. It was on August 9, 1978 that 500 of
Philly’s finest laid siege to the MOVE home compound in Powelton Village in an
attempted massacre. When it was over, the world saw Delbert Afrika being
brutally beaten on national television while peaceably surrendering. He was
beaten with a savagery that anticipated the videotaped beating of Rodney King.
James Rapp, a Philadelphia police officer was killed from what we now call
‘friendly fire.’ Bro. Delbert and his surviving comrades are now in their 23rd
year of prison facing sentences that go up 100 years for Rapp’s death!…One
of their comrades, Merle Afrika, died in prison in 1999.
Lest we forget, it was on August 9, 1997 that Abner Louima was sodomized
with a plunger up his rectum in a supreme expression of police brutality by New
York City police.
But be very clear here…Black August is also a time of the most heroic
resistance to the hottest hell we’ve faced!
On August 14, 1791, a fearless queen-sized Afrikan warrior woman named
Cecille called together all the field slaves of the French sugar plantation
island of Haiti ( originally spelled ‘Ayiti ), to convene the launching of the
most successful of all slave revolts…The Haitian Revolution!
On August 21, 1831, Rev. Nat Turner launched his own prophetic answer to
the Haitian Revolution when he led a force of armed field slaves in
amerikkka’s most famous slave insurrection in Southampton, Virginia. Before
his capture, dozens of the overseer and slave owner class were vanquished by
those willing to pay the ultimate price for freedom!
On this same day in 1965, another time marking insurrection took place.
This time it was the Watts section of Los Angeles that exploded. Black youth,
tired of police brutality, boldly stepped off from their perceived limits of
nonviolence and went off!… Out of the blood and ashes of this rebellion
emerged the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense!
This is not at all to diss nonviolent direct action; For on August 9,
1956, 20,000 Afrikan women fearlessly took to the streets of Pretoria,
South Afrika and defied the vicious ‘Passbook Act of 1956, which made
aliens of Afrikans in their own land during the obscene racist reign of
Apartheid. It is from this defiant act that we get the phrase “You have struck
a rock.”
“Now you have attacked the women!
You have struck a rock! You have dislodged a boulder! You will be crushed!” rings
the phrase from this heroic expression of Afrikan women the bloody teeth of
Apartheid.
The March On Washington of August 28, 1963 must also be acknowledged for
Black August in spite of its obvious co-opted limitations. Not because it was a
high point for the legacy of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement;
We must acknowledge it here because we understand that the state saw that it was
too successful for their interests and
marked ‘The Drum Major For Justice’ for death! Declassified government
documents are very clear. COINTELPRO operations escalated against our movement
after that march and escalated against him in particular! Let the ‘Dreamers’
and the ‘Dream Redeemers’ speak to that!…
On
the eve of that march, the sun set on one of the immortal pioneers of
PanAfrikanism. WEB DuBois died in Ghana at age 97 in service to Ghanaian
independence and PanAfrikanism in Black August on August 27, 1963.
Back to our legacy of resisting our oppression by any means necessary. On
August 13, 1906, Black soldiers in Brownsville, Texas, tired of being violated
by the lynch mobs for ‘wearing the uniform,’ decided to use their arms to
“stop them.”
On that same day twenty years later, a man was born who would lead the
most enduring revolution against u.s. imperialism to date. That man is Fidel
Castro. That revolution of course is the heroic Cuban Revolution.
On August 26, 1966, one of the most underappreciated recent peoples
victories on the Afrikan continent was launched in earnest when SWAPO launched
the armed struggle to rid Namibia of the dual scourge of Apartheid and
colonialism!
Most central to the conceiving of Black August as a time to salute
resistance were the incredible expressions of valor of Jonathan and George
Jackson. Jonathan carved out an incredible place in our legacy of armed
resistance when on August 7, 1970, at the tender age of 17, he stormed into a
southern california courthouse and sought to liberate by force of arms some of
his Soledad comrades who were on trial. Although he was killed in action, he
went out in a blaze that would cost the other side lives as well…
We already mentioned George Jackson’s legacy and assassination. We must
also acknowledge that he was also an original revolutionary thinker who also
penned two classic seminal revolutionary works, The
Soledad Brothers and Blood In
My Eye.
The ceremonial and ideological center of Black August is, of course, the
birth of Marcus Garvey on August 17, 1887 in Jamaica. On that same date in 1920,
in a packed Madison Square Garden, Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement
Association gave us our own flag!…A flag for all of us no matter where we be
on this earth!…The Universal Afrikan Liberation Flag!…The Red,
the Black, the Green!…
And you wonder why the state of Pennsylvania sought to execute Mumia
Abu-Jamal on August 17, 1995?…Is it a coincidence that they used the birth
date of the Black nation’s first modern political prisoner to attempt to stage
this freedom fighter’s lynching?…We think not.
On August 16, 1959, underappreciated Garveyite Carlos Cooks convened a
special Afrikan Peoples Conference in Harlem, which formally called on our
people to drop the term ‘negro’ and to instead use either ‘Black’ or
‘Afrikan’ to refer to the race. How so many of at this late date are unable
to see ourselves as being nothing more than ‘niggaz’ is a serious expression
of how far we’ve been setback.
Several
nations of the PanAfrikan world stepped forward in this month. Trinidad, Burkino
Faso, Chad, Gabon and Cote ‘d’Voir, each stepped out on their own in Black
August.
Edward
Wilmot Blyden, an important forerunner of critical Black nationalist thought who
literally was the bridge between 19th and 20th century
Afrikan nationalism, was born in Black August on August 3, 1832 in Virgin
Islands. 148 years after Gabriel Prosser was going to scorch plantations before
being betrayed, Black Panther organizing legend and martyr Fred Hampton was born
on August 30, 1948.
Black
Belt swingers Charlie Parker, Count Basie and Lester Young, giants of a music
which brought us international respect, were all born in Black August.
May
all of our Augusts be fiery hot and holy with resistance!
Keep
marching!
Black
Power and Free The Land!
©2000
all rights reserved
‘bro.
zayid’ kazi angaza kikongo muhammad
‘bro.zayid’ is the nat’l min. of culture of the new black panther party and an associate editor of nation time newspaper, the voice of the new afrikan liberation front…
’ Bro. Zayid’ Kazi Angaza Kikongo Muhammad
01/31/04