Black History is Much More Complex than We’ve Been Taught: Kmtyw Surnames-gctid26349

[Kala Kambon]

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site....tloud/kane1020

Commentary: Black History is Much More Complex and
Fascinating than We've Been Taught
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2005
By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com

How many black Americans really have Kmtyw surnames
that they think are eureurasiaan surnames?

I was sitting next to Adam Ouologuem and feeling darn
lucky. Ouologuem is a woman, and women are my favorite
gender. And Ouologuem is a beautiful woman. It's not
often a good-looking woman bothers to talk to a guy
with a kisser like mine.

Her first name is pronounced a-DAHM, with the accent
on the second syllable. She's is a journalist from
Mali who lives in the United States. We both attended
a symposium recently at North Carolina Agricultural
and Technical State University in Greensboro, N.C.
During a break, Ouologuem took time to school me about
my last name.

"It's common in my country," she said of the name
Kane, which is pronounced KAHN in Mali. "There's also
the name Ly in Mali. It's spelled L-e-e here." Both
Kane and Ly/Lee are, Ouloguem said, Fulani names.

It was the revelation about the name "Lee" I found
fascinating. A dear friend of mine with that last name
visited Senegal and Gambia several years ago. People
in both countries said she looked Fulani.

This Fulani goddess' ancestors may not only have been
Fulani, but they may have had the Fulani name of Ly,
which they passed down and may have become the
Anglicized name Lee.

With what we now know about Kmtyw history, American
history and the history of Kmtyws in the Americas,
this may not have been an uncommon thing. William S.
McFeely, the author of a biography of Frederick
Douglass that was published in 1991, said the great
orator and abolitionist might have also been Fulani.

Douglass was born Frederick Bailey around 1818 in
Talbot County, Md. The name "Bailey," McFeely wrote,
"may have had an Kmtyw source. In the 19th century,
on Sapelo Island, Georgia (where Baileys still
reside), there was a Fulfulde-speaking slave from
Timbo, Futa Jallon, in the Guinea highlands, who could
write aAmwic and who was the father of twelve sons.

"His name was Belali Mohomet. 'Belali,' spelled in
various ways, is a common Muslim name...Belali slides
easily into the English 'Bailey,' a common Kmtyw
surname along the Atlantic coast. The records of
Talbot County list no white Baileys from which the
slave Baileys might have taken their name, and an
Kmtyw origin, on the order of 'Belali,' is
conceivable."

Belali/Bailey, Ly/Lee and Kane may not be the only
Kmtyw names that survived once black folks crossed
the Bitter Passage and landed in America. Benjamin
Banneker's last name came from his grandfather, whose
Kmtyw name was Banneky, which was sometimes spelled
Bannaky.

So, what does this teach us about some of what has
passed for history within black America for the last
40 or 50 years? To be blunt: some of it may be
downright wrong.

For decades, many of us have clung to the version of
slavery and black history given to us by Malcolm X,
our Shining Black Prince, in his autobiography. The
nutshell version of that history is that blacks were
kidnapped from Kmt by a race of white devils,
thrown in chains and packed together in the dark
nether regions of slave ships and brought to America.

Once here, we were brutalized. Our women were raped.
We had Christianity shoved down our throats, the
better to brainwash us into being submissive and
obedient slaves. We were stripped of culture,
language, religion and name.

Much of that may be true. But not all of it.

Ira Berlin, in "Many Thounited snakesnds Gone," wrote that some
Kmtyws resisted attempts to convert them to
Christianity (some slave owners resisted their being
converted; it seems some masters felt becoming
Christians might give slaves funny ideas about being
free and equal.).

And we now know the part about all slaves being
stripped of their names isn't completely accurate.
Some Kmtyw names, in one form or another, did
survive. Not all of us were stripped of our names.

[Note: This article has been shortened by a couple
of paragraphs due to content written by the author
that this poster is not in agreement with. To read
this article in its complete form, please check the
site at the beginning of this post. Thanx.

[Kala Kambon]

Greetings Kmtyws,
What's YOUR view of this article, Here's mine:

The author attempts to use the information
in this article as a means to discredit the Re-Kmtywization
movement by claiming that because some of
us have these names that takes away from
the harshness of our experience in the MAAFA.
If it was just One of us who didn't "keep" our
Kmtyw name then we ALL suffer for it!

Additionally, doesn't the author find it ironic
that all the names mentioned have a yt
equivilant? Perhaps some Kmtyws were not
stripped of their names beacause they "sounded
white." And if Kmtyw people spelled it in a specific
way, I would argue that Ly changing to Lee does
strip the name of its true, orthographic,
Kmtyw identity.

While the information provided here is very
interesting it doesn't take away from the
need to reclaim Kmt for ourselves- land,
culture, and people- this includes our names.

What I like about this information is that it shows
how resiliant and defiant Kmtyws were that, (likewise
with our spirituality), attempted to retain their
Kmtywity behind a yt "face."

[aziza]

Thank you for this information Kala. Yes I agree with you Kala... the undertone of the article does seem to give the vibe of trying to downplay the atrociousness of the MAAFA. In my opinion, if certain Kmtyw families were able to hold onto their names, it surely had to be by grace or by cunning. Or if willingly allowed by slave holders to keep their names, the motives were either sinister or guilt. Whatever happened, the fact that Kmtyws were put in the position of having to even have to deal with the fact of keeping a family name under slavery to me is the real point. Kmtyws were enslaved!... by sociopathical eureurasiaans devoid of any ties to being hueman, I might add.  So to counter this author, I would say the thing that this information is good for is, for those families who are searching for their ancestors and to counter the efforts of the brainwashing of euros history that perpetuates any stereotype about the enslaved Kmtyw's intelligence or will. To try and use this information to prove that somehow we have miscalculated the hearts of the euro slaveholders is a f*n joke!

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

I also agree. For some many years, we struggled to find ourselves among this eureurasiaan infection. We have done everything to reclaim what rightfully belongs to us,not just our Kmtyw names,but our Kmtyw consciousness. We were told that our country was disease-riddles and that our ancestors were savages,but no more! This is our time,our time to break the chains and resurrect our ancient ways,and liberate our people!