What I have been up to since I last posted here, a brutal genocidal war rages

April 30, 2024….It’s about 8:25 am in Jerusalem. I have just finished a very hard to put together Zoom discussion with people we would consider “the left” in Palestine/Israel…it has become harder and harder to do this because people talking to the press or activists or scholars and journalists outside of Israel have come under close scrutiny and repression, whether they are Jewish, Arab or for some reason particularly Jewish and Arab clergy. A Jewish nurse who has served with the Red Cross in Gaza and came home for Passover was detained for almost a week because she would not tell where her cell phone was. An original member of our group, she pretty much lead tonight’s talk. We had two Rabbis, one of whom I know from her days in Rabbinical school in Philly and another who is the son of one of the people who got me out of that Israeli prison in the early seventies. We could not get the Christian clergy…he is under “detention”..we have four Arab activists, one of whom is new to our group, all of whom have been detained,,including the woman who was “sexually abused” while in detention. And three very vocal male Israeli activists..Tonight as usual I mostly listened…They all found it disturbing that they read about so many Americans who say that the IDF attacks and killing should continue until the “hostages” are all free. Many have a hard time believing that so many Americans can say such a thing when the people being killed had nothing to do with the Hamas attack. When it was all over I was kind of given an “assignment”..they consider such a position “irrational” and that what is happening now will make the Israeli population the “villains” to future historians. There has always been concern in this group about how Israel will be remembered for this . The pressure there is on to get rid of Netanyahu while there are still a surviving population of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to even make peace with is an ongoing concern…this has caused many different groups in Israel to form coalitions with other groups. They want me to find a group of Americans who are saying the attacks on Palestinian civilians should continue until the hostages are all free…and assess whether they are “Delusional Trump folks” or represent a larger American grouping. I don’t think the Americans positions on this are that simple…I don’t think I can do this…I know a lot of people who say this..some do indeed sound like fanatics …people I don’t talk to much anymore….but these people in Israel sat down and talked to me at great risk to themselves and then thanked me for bringing people who didn’t talk to each other much in Israel/Palestine, to the same table to find common ground…I think I owe them….we shall see if I can do this.

Close Up of a Merged Israeli-Palestinian Flag

Thoughts on Jewish Heritage Month 2024

Yesterday I had a visit from a French journalist and a historian who set up a camera in my house and interviewed me for hours about my life in activism from the mid 1960s until now. This has happened a few times in the last few years. Mainly since I started talking about one period during my later days in the Black Panther Party when I was “detained” in an Israeli prison. But these folks dug deep. We began with my living in a housing project as a child in Atlanta Georgia and having Nazi “death camp” survivors for neighbors. You see, this camp was in Poland …called “Treblinka” I got to hear many stories of life and death in that place as a youngster. But most memorable for me was the stories of two revolts…One was in Warsaw …in a place historians simply refer to as the “Warsaw Ghetto”…..a huge “open air prison”…. 19 April – 16 May 1943 saw the largest resistance to Nazi Germany by a Jewish insurgency during WW II..”13,000 Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising (some 6,000 among them were burnt alive or died from smoke inhalation). Of the remaining 50,000 residents, almost all were captured and shipped to the death camps of Majdanek and Treblinka.” I never met anyone who survived “Majdanek” but I knew several people while I was a child who survived both the Warsaw rebellion and “Treblinka”….You see Treblinka is remembered as the most “efficient” of the death camps. Why was this so important to my story? Well the first time I learned about an actual “movement” to end “Jim Crow” as a youngster was when I saw my Jewish friend Jacob’s mother crying about the murder of Emmet Till. I was very young and my friend Jacob…who went to Treblinka as a teenager ..only reconnected with what was left of his family when they all ended up in NYC in 1950. Jacob’s father in 1961 ran a little store and gave me 25 cents everyday to sweep the store and empty the trash. he told me to come look at a news broadcast on the TV in the rear of the store…I saw film of a burning bus…It was the “Freedom Riders”….more on this later but it’s worth it to note that what I remember most about Jacob’s dad ….whose name I can’t seemed to recall. was that one day years later when I was deep in the movement and went to his wife’s funeral in 1966. He told me about a forgotten event in history…There was actually a real rebellion among the Jews in death camp Treblinka in August of 1943 or 44 I can’t remember..but I’m sure you can look it up. Officially only 67 people survived that rebellion….I think there were more….or at least people who claimed to be…It’s estimated that just over one million “Roma” and Jewish people were exterminated at Treblinka…Why Do I talk about this as a part of “my” story ?. Well it’s because Jacob …who died in Warm Springs Georgia just a few years ago and his parents were always making comparisons to my life under Jim Crow and what happened to them in the years leading up to the “final solution”….and more “uncanny” Jacob in his later years began along with other death camp survivors to see that what happened to them and what relatives told them was happening to Palestinians….just as they had seen in “Jim Crow” and South African Apartheid were close to the same thing, de-humanizing …devaluing people ….I don’t think I would be the person I am and have been in the civil rights movement or the Black Panther Party …or what happened to me in Africa and the Middle East. If I had not had “historical guides” like the people I knew who had survived great evil…..and lived to tell the tale to a little Black kid in a housing project in the 1950s…May is Jewish American Heritage Month…..Just my little two cents.

THANK YOU SOUTH AFRICA

GDkkRAcaAAAi7nVThe caption reads “Thank you South Africa”…..There is a lot of pain going around in many parts of the world today. But I think this is a powerful moment in the history of oppressed people, in the record of a twisted racial colonialism. And in asserting the fact that oppressed people have a right …no ..a duty to resist. South Africa using the “sham” International Court of Justice to actually suing Israel for of all charges that “buzz word” genocide. Here in the U.S. every time that charge is made against Israel ….what Americans PRETEND to hear is that people are threatening Israel with genocide….covering their ears so they don’t hear what is really happening is Israel is being charge with genocide itself. The word itself has become a weaponized way of shutting down criticism of Israel. Gaza is not the only place in the world where people are facing removal, and denied the right to return to their lands…And as awful as the apparent attempt to exterminate the Arab population of Gaza is…it’s not the only place in the world where this is happening. Other than older African Americans who lived through the horror of “Jim Crow” ..no people on earth know the deadly cruelty and mass humiliation of Apartheid more than the people of South Africa…the only people in this moment who have the historical gravitas to call what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank…and what’s been happening in all of Palestine for most the last 70 odd years exactly what it is. Because Imperialism , and colonialism and capitalism are still powerful forces in the world. Thus we know the “law suit” does not stand a chance..I mean look at how the world agonized over the cruelty of the Hamas attack but …after almost thirty times that number of innocent people who had NOTHING to do with the Hamas attack are dead..we are asked to just let the slaughter continue because the lives of one people are important but the dead of the “others” are just numbers…This says more about us than it says about how evil this Israeli slaughter fest is….YES Thank you South Africa ..a country that knows cruelty better than most….for reminding the world how much Justice and Equality still scare the shit out of the powerful

When Chickens REALLY came home to roost

I laugh sometimes when I read some folks on a facebook posts trying to be “clever” and they use the phrase “the chickens came home to roost”..I laugh because usually they have no idea what that means. Today Sept. 11th brings back the memory of a horror that happened in the United States when without warning thousands of innocent people went to their death. The real horror was because this kind of thing was not supposed to happen to “us”. Well for some of us this meant something else. Most Americans don’t like to think about the fact that for most of the last 150 years or more. The United States has been the enemy, raining horror and death down on more innocents than I can name. Take time out for the Nazi horrors of WW II. But then the USA came right back as the number one source of death and horror for the world. Particularly the people of color of the world. The “zeal” with which America went about trying to wipe out it’s “Native” population. The way they looked the other way when thousands of people descended from slaves were lynched as whole families watched for a different kind of “Saturday Night Live” entertainment. The seemingly endless bombing of thousands of innocent people by airstrike and drones during the Obama and Bush “jr” administrations bullshit “war on Terror” ..The useless killing of people who had done us no harm and were in their own country in the senseless war in Vietnam. I can actually go on and on for pages here. I actually had American bombs dropped on me while working in a children’s hospital in West Africa. What the term “the chickens came home to roost” really means is when horror or evil happens to YOU that has it’s origins in the evil you have done. I weep for the people who died on 9/11. They were innocents too …But in truth it was the most fitting example of “the chickens came home to roost”….it was sad. People who our country had abused and bombed and starved at will …who we thought could not touch us, found a way. But on the scales of morality we had it coming.306478920_10224751255160237_9219517639568154157_n306480322_10224751255600248_512764017248621693_n306529631_10224751257200288_1956686814267002018_n

A Favorite September Memory

One of my best childhood “September memories” is back in 1958. In Atlanta the “Southeastern Fair” was a BIG event. We waited all year for it. In that year there were appearances by two big “cowboy” movie stars. At each actors station there was a line of kids trying to get close , and for a dollar fifty you could get your picture taken. One line told all the little “colored” kids to get out of line or move to the back. In the other actors line after a while he saw that the Black kids were getting pushed back and he came down from the stage and walked past all the white kids to the back of the line and shook hands with all the Black kids..then he went to lunch..if you understand history and “jim crow” behavior …this was unheard of. 65 years later I still remember that…..a hint ..it was not the actor with the white horse and the mask.375215420_807906698004003_5283854951113712951_nlarue5

Explaining the meaning of “Jim Crow” to a White American

Okay, In an earlier post where I talk about my origins as a civil rights activist. A White person a woman my age who actually grew up in the south with Black servants in her home service-pnp-cph-3a10000-3a16000-3a16200-3a16219rasked me where the term “Jim Crow” came from ….As most of you know I’m a historian…..so I took the bait….this is what I told her. …..”The Name Jim Crow comes from a song made popular by a white “minstrel” performer …the words went like this “”Come listen all you galls and boys,
I’m going to sing a little song,
My name is Jim Crow.
Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.”………..”These words are from the song, “Jim Crow,” as it appeared in sheet music written by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice. Rice, a struggling “actor” (he did short solo skits between play scenes) at the Park Theater in New York, happened upon a black person singing the above song — some accounts say it was an old black slave who walked with difficulty, others say it was a ragged black stable boy. Whether modeled on an old man or a young boy we will never know, but we know that in 1828 Rice appeared on stage as “Jim Crow” — an exaggerated, highly stereotypical black character.
Rice, a white man, was one of the first performers to wear blackface makeup — his skin was darkened with burnt cork. His Jim Crow song-and-dance routine was an astounding success that took him from Louisville to Cincinnati to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and finally to New York in 1832. He also performed to great acclaim in London and Dublin. By then “Jim Crow” was a stock character in minstrel shows, along with counterparts Jim Dandy and Zip Coon. Rice’s subsequent blackface characters were Sambos, Coons, and Dandies. White audiences were receptive to the portrayals of blacks as singing, dancing, grinning fools.
By 1838, the term “Jim Crow” was being used as a collective racial epithet for blacks, not as offensive as nigger, but similar to coon or darkie. The popularity of minstrel shows clearly aided the spread of Jim Crow as a racial slur. This use of the term only lasted half a century. By the end of the 19th century, the words Jim Crow were less likely to be used to derisively describe blacks; instead, the phrase Jim Crow was being used to describe laws and customs which oppressed blacks.”…”Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-black racism. Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that whites were the Chosen people, blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial segregation. Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, at every educational level, buttressed the belief that blacks were innately intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. Pro-segregation politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of integration: the mongrelization of the white race. Newspaper and magazine writers routinely referred to blacks as niggers, coons, and darkies; and worse, their articles reinforced anti-black stereotypes. Even children’s games portrayed blacks as inferior beings ” EXAMPLES OF “JIM CROW” CUSTOMS AND LAWS…”
A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially equal. Obviously, a black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a white woman, because he risked being accused of rape.
Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.
Under no circumstance was a black male to offer to light the cigarette of a white female — that gesture implied intimacy.
Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended whites.
Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that blacks were introduced to whites, never whites to blacks. For example: “Mr. Peters (the white person), this is Charlie (the black person), that I spoke to you about.”
Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma’am. Instead, blacks were called by their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.
If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the back seat, or the back of a truck.
White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.”….Stetson Kennedy, the author of Jim Crow Guide (1990), offered these simple rules that blacks were supposed to observe in conversing with whites:
Never assert or even intimate that a white person is lying.
Never impute dishonorable intentions to a white person.
Never suggest that a white person is from an inferior class.
Never lay claim to, or overly demonstrate, superior knowledge or intelligence.
Never curse a white person.
Never laugh derisively at a white person.
Never comment upon the appearance of a white female…..below a picture of the poster used to promote the theater act “Jump Jim Crow”

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Another memory for Martin Luther King Day 2023

Martin L. King in jail in Birmingham Ala. April 16, 1963. ….Although growing up in Atlanta I knew very well who Martin was. But the first time I ever actually met him was at about this time. It was a Sunday. My mother used to drive us to the S.W. Atlanta church that we belonged to and it was about the the third or fourth time that when church was over she looked around and asked “Where is Timothy ?” I had met C. T Vivian and the Rev. Hosea Williams and I would sneak out of Mom’s church and go to meetings of various civil rights groups in Atlanta. C.T. Vivian often picked me up and made sure I got back home. One time when Rev. Vivian talked about the history of “Jim Crow” and had most of us stand up and talk about the first time our parents or some one else explained to us about segregation and why we had to take “colored” or “whites only” signs seriously. Or we could be in grave danger. I had just had my turn and MLK walked in …they paused for a minute while MLK told Rev, Vivian what seemed like a joke from his sermon that day. Martin sat down and actually listened to what the other kids had to say. He shook hands with all of us and repeated a phase I had actually first heard from Rev. Vivian. And heard it many times afterward. “What we are trying to do is make sure you are the last generation of Negro children who ever have to learn this”….I heard that many times after that. We said it in SNCC the organization I would become a part of a couple of years later a lot. What people today have to understand is that ending “jim crow” was a deadly …dangerous task. It had nothing to do with wanting to “go to school with white folks” or sit down on the toilet next to them. It was about the fact that just about every kid I knew had a parent who fought in WW II. Yet those veteran’s kids went to second class schools. Did not have the benefit of city services that they paid taxes for or in many places even though by Federal law we had the right to vote, that right was denied. They had to teach children to “not look white men in the face” and expect being treated like furniture was normal. And to expect nothing more of life. All this had to end. I don’t remember all of it. But these would become repeating themes. I was around Martin often as I moved through my teens. None of that is to say that I was his ”friend” but we saw the same people on a daily basis. These people were brave , resourceful and dedicated…not to themselves or to a degree not to each other…but to us. The people who came next. I’m in my seventies now. And on what we now call “MLK Day” and people like to spend that day doing things in the community . I remember not just Martin but ALL the people who put their own future aside so that you would have one where you could walk with pride and not have to hold your head down when any body walked up to you. Many died …many that were of Martin’s generation as well as people my age who served right along side me. Few of us are rich or famous today, and like me ..most of us don’t care much about those things, but we look at what our children can do and pass on the notion of making it even better for the next generation…Serve your community everyday, not just today….make a difference325362911_1139247396772744_2536400109550134607_n

Where the hell does the recent notion of Black antisemitism come from

Yesterday a person who sent me a “friend request “a long time ago. One that I accepted ( something I don’t do much anymore) A “brother” who I had come to respect. Who seemed to share our “mission” of trying to stop the plague of gun violence in the Black community and in the country, Posted this : “Every time a rapper is Slayed a so called Jew gets paid”…A profoundly stupid thing to say. I tried to explain to him that this position is simply an extension of a narrative that has it’s origins among white supremacists. And we don’t need to do their work for them. Simple enough right ?, and something you don’t have to explain to long time veterans of “the movement” ….we have seen this type of backwards attempt at division before. “Well who owns the companies then” was his next response. I said ” capitalists do, and it has nothing to do with anyone’s religion.” Now I am not naive enough to think that there are no racists who are Jewish. Cause I see them everyday. But I have been around long enough to know that kind racism has nothing to do with being Jewish. It mostly has to do with conditioning…getting along with other white people and class. And for the most part people who just happened to be Jewish have over time been our most dependable partners in the struggle for freedom and equality in America, but then my father was actually the Chef in a large Jewish restaurant that did not even allow Black people in the door. But you want to know something funny. I know a LOT of republicans who happen to be Jewish, almost as many as I have known Blacks and Latinos who vote GOP. People cheat and exploit other people for profit, not because of their religion. In the 1930s during a time when “jim crow” was rampant in the southern United States. And even though the “Harlem Renaissance” was in full bloom. For the most part there was no such thing as “Black History” being taught in schools anywhere. Black people had no models of historical excellence to call there own. In many ways people looked for anything to be but “black” or negro. That lack of perceived esteem gave birth to several cult like figures claiming that indeed we were not really black, but something else. Some claimed we were the children of the “Moors” who once took over western Europe although in many ways that was true it was the use of the word “Moorish” that made those cults catch on. There was the birth of the myth of “The original Asiatic Black Man”..you see, anything but Black African. There were several figures during that time who claimed we were the “Lost tribe of Israel” there were three or four who preached one version or another of the “we are the real Israelites of the bible and the people we know as Jews were pretenders”. I mean white people had been forcing Christianity on us for centuries, there were generations of us for whom the “Bible” was the only book we knew. It was sort of natural for us to identify with the people we were told for four hundred years had suffered a fate not unlike ours.. But you see ….we know better now. We know that we were founders of great empires in Africa..we know of The Oyo Empire,  , The Kingdom of Dagbon, and the Benin Empire ,the Ashanti_Empire, the Wanga Kingdom, home of the Wanga (AbaWanga) tribe of the Luhya people. The largest empire in precolonial Kenya ..I can name several more the would shame the histories of much of Europe . Creating myths to feel better about ourselves is an old crutch with it’s roots in low historical self esteem WE ARE A MIGHTY PEOPLE We don’t need to do that anymore …WE KNOW WHO WE ARE and should be proud. We are in a place where we need to get closer to our allies …not help the enemy by spreading stupid conspiracies about each other. I can’t say this enough. But you see it’s part of the nature of Black people who have no experience in the “struggle” to try to seem like they have some “special knowledge” that makes them feel important. That’s also the very “stuff” that bullshit conspiracy stories come from313431253_10225178185793236_1963189152964342365_n

A good night for Revolutionaries and a historic event

249985319_10223228394089662_1850285769376453990_n249629507_10223228480411820_7621927706862643470_nIn October1970, undefeated heavyweight, Muhammad Ali defeated Jerry Quarry, number one contender, in three rounds by Technical Knockout in Atlanta, Georgia. I was standing outside the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium selling copies of the Black Panther newspaper. When the fight was over the doors flew open. I sold a paper to Jessie Jackson, one to Coretta King, Arthur Ashe and Bill Cosby who also donated 50 dollars to the breakfast program ..Diana Ross wouldn’t buy one..she asked if I would give her one…I did. Then we all ran over to the boxing Ring. There on the corner was a bloody towel. When the fight was stopped Jerry Quarry had been bleeding horribly, I grabbed the towel . A white dude asked if I would sell it to him ..I said “how much” ..he produced two 100 dollar bills. I took them, and gave him the towel. One thing about being in the Black Panther Party in those days is that it was a 24/7 job. Sometimes we hardly ever had anything to eat. I took the money and six other people in the party to “Hunter Street” ( Now MLK dr.) which was where the BPP office was and where we lived …took everybody to D&Ws all night cafe. and we ate like kings and queens. By morning we still had 98 dollars….of course it went to the free breakfast program. Anyway this was Ali’s first fight after a three year layoff…An exciting time