Why Don't Your Children Know About Me? Please Put Me Back in Your Memory Bank!!!

[Kamau_Kambon]

Spreading Pan-African Ideas in America
Posted: 12/15
From: Zimbabwe Sunday Mirror

THE work of Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), that man of black consciousness advancement is universal, covering the entire race and the entire race problem. While Booker T. Washington seeks to promote the material advancement of the black man in the United States, and W.E. Burghart Du Bois his social enfranchisement amid surroundings and in an atmosphere uncongenial to racial development, Edward Wilmot Blyden sought for more than a quarter of a century to reveal everywhere the African unto himself; to fix attention upon original ideas and conceptions as to his place in the economy of the world; to point out to him his work as a race among the races of men; lastly and most important of all, to lead back unto self-respect.
He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness all these years, calling upon all thinking Africans to go back to the rock from whence they were hewn by the common Father of the nations – to drop a metaphor, “to learn to unlearn all that foreign sophistry has encrusted upon the intelligence of the African”.

Edward Blyden’s life is a constant source of new perspectives even long after his death. An important lesson in his life is that it reveals both a vision of Africa and the personal struggle by which that vision came about. Few men of his era were able to “learn to unlearn” the complex of European constructions and misconstructions of the meaning of Africa. The same challenges that motivated Blyden to champion the African contribution to humanity are still with us today. Many of his observations are surprisingly fresh and painfully relevant.

Blyden was a prolific writer of letters, and published many articles, sermons, poems and books that make up an extensive legacy to the human race. We hope this small offering encourages you to “explore” his legacy which can be found in dozens of libraries and museums around the world - you will also find it in the oral history of the people of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, the Virgin Islands and the United States. We hope that you will respond with comments and information about what you find – it will help us in the further development of this Virtual Museum of the Life and Work of Edward Wilmot Blyden.

Edward Blyden believed that African-Americans had a very important role to play in developing the African continent. He dedicated a considerable amount of his time and energy into encouraging African Americans to abandon the prejudice and discrimination of 19th century America in favour of a more spiritually satisfying role in Africa. As Commissioner to Britain and the United States, he travelled to the US from Liberia several times in the 1860s giving sermons, speeches and addresses in Churches, Colonisation Societies and other black organisations, championing a return to Africa on behalf of the Liberian government. In one such address entitled The Call of Providence to the Descendants of Africa in America, Blyden stressed the importance of Black Africans in America linking themselves to Africa. He believed that African Americans were the key to integrating Africa into the modern world due to the integral part they had already (unwillingly) played in the construction of America. He criticised Blacks of the time who dissociated themselves from Africa but hopeful that the situation would change and that Black Americans would realise the importance of Africa:

“I venture to predict that, within a very brief period, that down-trodden land instead of being regarded with prejudice and distaste, will largely attract the attention and engage the warmest interest of every man of colour.”

He believed American Blacks were wasting their energy on the North American continent. The work to be done by Blacks, he believed, was not in America:

“It is theirs to betake themselves to injured Africa, and bless those outraged shores,”

The Black African in the US had some advantages, but he argued that on the whole: “It has been at the expense of his manhood”.

To those blacks who believed that their life in America would get better with attainment of equality he had this to say:

“It ought to be clear to every thinking and important mind, that there can never occur in this country an equality, social or political, between whites and blacks.”

White America, he argued, held all the cards economic, political, etc and also shaped public opinion. He urged unification among blacks and criticised those blacks who “passed”. (A term used to describe the many people of mixed race who by virtue of a small percentage of African blood were officially “negro” but who were biologically indistinguishable from whites and lived as though they were white.) The energy of blacks in America should be directed towards Africa, he said:

“We need some African power, some great centre of the race where our physical, pecuniary and intellectual strength may be collected.”

He argued that because Africans were so scattered around the world they could do little or nothing.

“Among the free portion of the descendants of Africa, numbering about four or five millions, there is enough talent, wealth, and enterprise, to form a respectable nationality on the continent of Africa.”

Europe and America have been “sustained and enriched” by Africans. Europeans were looking to Africa for enrichment, so should black Americans.

“We need to collect the scattered forces of race, and there is no rallying ground more favourable than Africa.”

To those Blacks who claimed they had a purpose and work to do in America, he argued that it was already easy to see the work of Blacks in the US but pointed to a limiting factor:

“……… there is an extreme likelihood that such are forever to be the exploits which he destined to achieve in this country until he merges his African peculiarities in the Caucasian.”

In an address to the Maine State Colonisation Society, he emphasises the need for Blacks in America to consider immigration. He again reiterates the fact that prejudice in the US was on the rise rather than decreasing, pervading “the whole national mind”, that is, the institutions. He argued that prejudice was perpetuated by the degraded position of Blacks. The occupations Blacks were allowed, he said, served to keep them in a morally degraded condition above which they would only rise by aligning themselves with a global cause:

“For, supposing that, it was possible for Black men to rise to the greatest eminence in this country, in wealth and political distinction, so long as the resources and capabilities of Africa remained undeveloped – so long as there was no negro power of respectability in Africa, and that continent remained in her present degradation – she would reflect unfavourably upon them. Africa is the appropriate home of the Black man, and he cannot rise above her.”

This idea of Pan-Africanism, all-embracing with respect to the Black race and its geo-politics was neatly summarised in the title of one of his articles: Africa for the Africans.

Blyden Museum

Courtesy of the Sunday Mirror of the 3 October, 2004

[konjahman]

Another person who we need to put back in our memory banks

IN ALL HER GLORY: The Honorable Henrietta Vinton Davis, Lady Commander Order of the Nile

"WE MU ST CANONIZE OUR OWN SAINTS, CREATE OUR OWN MARTYRS AND ELEVATE TO POSITIONS OF FAME AND GLORY BLACK WOMEN AND MEN WHO HAVE MADE THEIR DISTINCT CONTRIBUTION TO OUR HISTORY." AFRICAN FUNDAMENTALISM BY MARCUS GARVEY

The Honorable Lady Henrietta Vinton Davis was a Shakespearean actor, elocutionist, dramatic reader, and public speaker. She was proclaimed by Marcus Garvey to be “the greatest woman of the [African] race”. She is currently lying in an unmarked grave in National Harmony Memorial Park in Largo, Maryland. The Henrietta Vinton Davis Memorial Foundation is committed to increasing the general public’s awareness and erecting a memorial to the life and legacy of the Honorable Henrietta Vinton Davis, Lady Commander Order of the Nile. In addition to raising funds for a fitting memorial to her life, we also intend to sponsor performances of a play entitled “Shero: The Livication of Henrietta Vinton Davis” written by Actor Clayton Lebouef, produce a biopic on her life and publish her biography. Hopefully, after reading this brief synopsis of her life you too will be inspired to add your name to the list of those who consolidated their resources in order to bestow a fitting memorial upon her. Nothing less is due a woman of her stature. You may make donations via our website at WWW.LadyDavis.org --The Henrietta Vinton Davis Memorial Foundation.

On August 15, 1860, Henrietta Vinton Davis was freeborn in Baltimore, Maryland to Mansfield Vinton and Mary Ann (Johnson) Davis. Her father, who was a pianist, died shortly thereafter. Six months later in 1861, her mother married George A. Hackett. A coal yard operator and former livery stable owner, Hackett is one of the most prominent Africans in Baltimore at that time. His lobbying efforts are credited with swaying public opinion among the citizens of Maryland to defeat the 1859 Jacobs Bill. The intention of that bill was to deport from Maryland all adults of African ancestry and enslave all free African children. It was considered a response to the raid on Harper’s Ferry by John Brown. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of The Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company of Baltimore City, the only African American Shipbuilding company in the United States which was co founded by Hackett's friend Isaac Myers. Captain Hackett died in April of 1870 after voting despite warnings to the African community in Baltimore against doing so. He was given an elaborate funeral at Bethel AME Church with Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi among the distinguished list of attendees and an eulogy conducted by Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne. The ceremony was followed by a mile long procession of carriages and marchers across the city of Baltimore from west to east. Hackett was interred in what was then Laurel Cemetery (bulldozed in the 1950s for a shopping mall, some graves including Hackett's were moved to Johnsville, Maryland).

A year later Henrietta moved with her mother south to Washington, DC. In 1875, at the early age of fifteen, Miss Davis passed the necessary examination and was awarded the position of a teacher in the public schools of Maryland. Subsequently, she went to teach in the state of Louisiana. Upon returning to Maryland to care for her ailing mother Miss Davis bore the certificate of the Board of Education. In 1878, she became the first African woman employed by the Office of the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, DC under General George A. Sheridan as a copyist. Within a year of Frederick Douglass’ 1881 appointment as Recorder of Deeds, Henrietta began her dramatic education under the tutelage of Miss Marguerite E. Saxton of Washington. The Honorable Frederick Douglass introduced Miss Davis in her first appearance as an actress April 25, 1883, before a distinguished integrated audience at Marini’s Hall 714 E Street, NW in Washington, DC (ironically, a site now occupied by the FBI Building). In September of 1883 she traveled to Louisville with Frederick Douglass and others to appear at the National Negro Convention. She performed “The Battle” by Schiller and responded to encores with a selection from the Merchant of Venice. That year she appeared in New London, Connecticut, New York State, Boston and “more than a dozen of the larger cities of the Eastern and Middle States.” During the summer of 1883 Miss Davis, under the management of James Monroe Trotter (Father of William Monroe Trotter the first black member of Phi Beta Kappa) and William H. Dupree, made a tour of Boston, Worcester, and New Bedford, Massachusetts; Providence and Newport, Rhode Island; Hartford and New Haven Connecticut; and New York City, Albany and Saratoga, New York. On January 17th, 1884 she appeared before a crowded house in Melodeon Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio. During this time she married T. Thomas Symmons, who became her manager. During 1885 Henrietta formed the Davis Miller Concert and Dramatic company. In 1893, African Americans were prevented from taking part in the Chicago World's Fair. Undaunted, she started her own company in Chicago and produced William Edgar Easton’s play “Dessalines”. She subsequently traveled to the Caribbean on a tour of that region. During that same time she collaborated on writing a play entitled “Our Old Kentucky Home” with distinguished journalist and future Garveyite John Edward Bruce. She and Symmons divorced sometime in 1899.

The early part of the 1900s was the beginning of a change in the career of Henrietta Vinton Davis. Although still in demand after over twenty years as a performer, she had to contend with younger competition. Additionally, audiences were willing to accept less "distinguished" entertainment in the form of minstrel shows. As a result, she was no longer as unique a drawing card as in her early career. She came to involve herself more with community service work in the form of performing in fundraisers for churches and schools, as well as, returning to teaching. During 1912-13 she toured the Caribbean with singer Nonie Bailey Hardy and managed the Covent Garden Theater in Kingston, Jamaica. She learned of the work of Marcus Garvey during that time.

In 1919 she accepted Garvey’s invitation to speak at the Palace Casino in Harlem, NYC. At first it may seem that she was boldly giving up her career to work with Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. But closer analysis reveals that she may actually have stepped into the role for which she had been preparing her whole life. Her stepfather George Hackett was a member of every African American fraternal organization in Baltimore. Furthermore, she headed her own fraternal organization in the early 1900s, The Knights and Ladies of Malachite with influential African American attorney Laudros Melendez King of Washington. In time Davis became the UNIA-ACL’s first International Organizer, a director of the Black Star Line and the corporation's Vice-President. On the 1920 maiden voyage of BSL flagship, S.S. Yarmouth (later renamed the S.S. Frederick Douglas) she was the ranking member of the UNIA and member of the board of the Black Star Line. As such she was essentially in command of the vessel carrying a cargo valued in excess of $5,000,000. At stops in Cuba, Jamaica, Panama and other ports throughout the Caribbean and Central America they were greeted with cheers and fanfare. On April 20, 1920 a meeting of the Black Star Line was held in New York anticipating the return of the SS Frederick Douglas. Garvey invoked the crowd to cheer rapturously when he proclaimed Davis to be "the greatest woman of the Negro race today" in his remarks. At the UNIA ACL August 1920 convention she was a signatory of the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Among its 54 declarations are resolutions designating Red, Black and Green the symbolic colors of African people, condemnng the word “nigger” to henceforth cease being used and insisting the word “Negro” be thereafter written with a capital “N”. Davis rose in rank to become Fourth Assistant President-General of the UNIA-ACL in 1921. On August 27, 1921, during that year's UNIA convention, the Potentate Honorable Gabriel Johnson bestowed upon her a Knighthood with the title "Lady Commander Order of the Nile" for her distinguished success as leader and organizer of the UNIA. Lady Davis established UNIA divisions in Cuba; Guadeloupe; Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands; Port au Prince, Haiti; Trinidad, Jamaica and throughout the United States. Although in June 1923 she was unseated by Garvey in an attempt to quell dissent in the UNIA’s New York Headquarters, she was reelected during the August 1924 convention. As the only woman in the UNIA delegation seeking consent to establish a UNIA colony, Lady Davis traveled to Liberia, West Africa in December of 1923. In 1924 she was part of a committee which delivered petitions to U.S. President Calvin Coolidge seeking commutation of Marcus Garvey’s sentence for mail fraud. She chaired the August 25th, 1924 convention meeting as Fourth-Assistant President-General of the UNIA. When the Holy Piby was published that year, she, Robert Lincoln Poston and Garvey are cited as the "Apostles" working as a delegation for the redemption of Africa. At the 1929 International Convention of the UNIA she was elected UNIA Secretary General. By 1932 she broke with the UNIA-ACL and became first Assistant President-General of the rival UNIA, Inc. Under Lionel Francis. In the 1934 convention Lady Davis was elected President of the rival organization.

On November 23, 1941 Henrietta Vinton Davis ascended to join the ancestors in Saint Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, DC at eighty-one years of age. She was buried on November 26 in Columbia Harmony Cemetery after a service at the A.S. Pope Funeral Home.

Unmarried, childless and at an advanced age for the time, no marker was placed at her grave site. The cemetery was subsequently relocated to Landover, Maryland and renamed National Harmony Memorial Park. She remained relatively unrecognized until July 1983 when an article entitled "Henrietta Vinton Davis and the Garvey Movement" by Professor William Seraile was published in the journal Afro-Americans in New York Life and History. Nearly a year later, acknowledgment of her contributions increased with the publication of the book "Shakespeare in Sable" written by Professor Errol Hill. In 1994, actor Clayton LeBouef received a commission to write a play on her life entitled "Shero: The Liviciation of Henrietta Vinton Davis." Initial planning for the UNIA website in 1998 included a "Hall of Heroes" recognizing unsung UNIA Heroes and Sheroes. Reserach resulted in the realization Lady Davis lay in an unmarked grave. Initial thoughts of placing a marker there were supplanted by the query "if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?" What point would there have been in marking a grave when few people know the significance thereof?

We know at least 100 people with 100 dollars each will read this article. Among them, who will have the force of will to consolidate their energy and place a plaque marking the grave of "the greatest woman of the African race?" This is a chance to make history. Accomplish what you will!!!

Donations can be made via paypal at Marcus Garvey proclaimed her the "greatest woman of the (African) race today."

[konjahman]

Its so good and pleasant to read confirmation of the most deep spiritual urgings...that instinctive urging for a homegoing...driven by the homing instinct...