The Danger of Excluding Kwame Ture From The History Of The Black Panther Party
An Open Letter concerning the Black Seeds/Black Historical and Educational Calendar
By
Obi Egbuna, Jr.
I hope this letter finds you at the peak of your African fighting spirit and in the very best of health. Before I get to the purpose of this letter, it is only proper to congratulate each and every organization, network and individual that plays a role in the development of this marvelous calendar. When the immeasurable value of your calendar is put into context, those conversations cannot be restricted to its role in shaping the minds and hearts of our youth, but also has to include the proven track record of raising necessary funds for institutions that are part and parcel of African people’s struggle for liberation and human dignity. This ensures we stand alone and never succumb to political bribery or prostitution.
Because your 2016 calendar has chosen to pay tribute to the Black Panther Party for Self- Defense (BPP) on the numerical year that marks 50 years since its initial formation, I feel historically obligated to raise an issue concerning the front page collage, which featured several well- known members of the BPP, including Huey P. Newton, Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, to name a few. What became glaringly obvious was the absence of the late Pan African warrior and distinguished BPP alum Kwame Ture.
What must be duly noted for historical record without hesitation or apology is that any attempt to record, share and chronicle the history of the BPP that ignores Brother Kwame, would be the equivalent of focusing on the anti-colonial movement in Mother Africa and forgetting about Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and Ahmed Seku Ture and the Democratic Party of Guinee(PDG), or excluding Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk from a discussion about the evolution of the jazz piano.
It is an absolute honor and privilege to invoke the spirit of Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Seku Ture as 2016 marks not only the 50th anniversary of the coup orchestrated by US and British intelligence that ousted the Osagyefo and the CPP from power, but additionally the 70th anniversary of the PDG the first political party organized to liberate Africans at home from settler colonial rule.
One of Brother Kwame’s best characteristics and attributes was his undying commitment to establishing and maintaining political parties, which are clear illustrations of his commitment to Africans waging organized resistance on the highest level possible. During his tenure in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Brother Kwame helped establish both the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Loundes County Freedom Organization, which he argued, without question, should be recognized as the first Black Panther Party.
After his resignation from the BPP of Self-Defense, Brother Kwame accepted the invitation from Osagyefo Nkrumah and Ahmed Seku Ture to build the All African People’s Revolutionary Party(AAPRP). This resulted in Brother Kwame’s repatriation to Conakry, Guinee, and being elected to the AAPRP’s Central Committee. Another honor bestowed on Brother Kwame rarely discussed by so-called African-Americans, is at the time of his death he was the head adviser of the PDG in Conakry, Guinee, and was involved in an effort to merge the PDG with the party of the Independence of Guinee and Cape Verde(PAIGC), formed in 1956 by the Pan African and Revolutionary giant Amilcar Cabral.
This sends a message to every former member of SNCC and the BPP for self- defense who either accused Brother Kwame of running to Africa or mockingly asked questions concerning his activities on the ground in Guinee. Nott only was he genuinely consumed with fighting for Mother Africa’s liberation, but Brother Kwame gave an additional dimension to the concept of freedom riding and the last line of Lift Every Voice and Sing “True to our God True to our Native Land”. When ex-BPP members make these type of reckless comments, this validates the assertion of Brother Kwame and our Sister warrior Assata Shakur, who both agreed that the lack of political education helped lead to the ultimate demise of the BPP for Self- Defense.
Another crucial point that Brother Kwame’s party building efforts at home and abroad clearly illustrate is that at no point in his political life did he ever feel that blind loyalty to the agenda of the Democratic Party, would lead to the salvation of so-called African-Americans.
These experiences explain why Kwame when politically educating and organizing Africans the world over would religiously pay homage to the Osagyefo, Ahmed Seku Ture and Amilcar Cabral, not only for their revolutionary fervor, but for possessing the vision and fortitude to build parties even before they ascended to power. Brother Kwame expressed that in African nations that built fronts, movements and unions to fight the colonialists and imperialists became problematic because everyone was opposed to settler colonial rule but for a multitude of reasons, where on the other hand in a party each member involved has embraced the aims and objectives, we also witnessed this take place in Zambia when saw the country’s 1st President Kenneth Kaunda formed the United National Independence Party . The Mother of the Pan African musician and freedom fighter Fela Kuti, Fumilayo Kuti founded the Commoner’s People’s Party during Nigeria’s struggle against British Colonialism.
A rather troubling area concerning the history of the BPP for self-defense is the unwillingness to acknowledge Brother Kwame’s role in not only solidifying the 42 chapters established inside US borders, but his ability to generate interest in the organization’s expansion in other countries, where African youth were starting to embrace a more militant approach to our liberation struggle.
In the book about the Black Panther Party and Black Power movement in Britain entitled Destroy This Temple, author Obi Egbuna Sr., made two rather compelling remarks concerning Brother Kwame’s role. The first was “Stokely’s arrival was like manna from heaven,” and the second was “It was not until Stokely Carmichael’s historic visit in the summer of 1967, when he came to participate in the Dialectics of Liberation seminar at the Round House, that Black Power got a foothold in Britain.”
While speaking at New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington D.C., in 1999 then pastored by the SCLC alum and former US Congressman Reverend Walter Fauntroy, the US representative of the Dalit movement, Dr. Laximi Berwa said the words of Kwame Ture inspired Africans in India and Australia to embrace Black Power and the symbol of the Black Panther Party. The event was commemorating Brother Kwame’s alma mater Howard University awarding him a posthumous honorary Doctoral Degree. This effort was spearheaded by the student representative to HU’s board of trustees at the time, Jonathan Hutto, who prior to this post served as HUSA President. He also organized Brother Kwame’s last visit to Howard University at the legendary Rankin Chapel.
During the early 1990’s our Comrades in the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania/Azanian Peoples Organization (BCMA/AZAPO) would tell us that when the Pan African freedom fighter Steve Biko formed the South African Student Organization in 1968, which espoused Black Consciousness, they loved the manner in which Black Power as a concept and the Black Panther symbol captured African people’s imagination everywhere and offered an alternative to organizations who were outrageously moderate and embraced gradualism. Our sister and ally of the American Indian Movement/Grand Governing Council, the late Barbara Owl, would always tell Africans, that hearing about Black Power and the BPP had them screaming Red Power and recognizing their warrior spirit and that reclaiming their land was the order of the day.
A very important book entitled None But Ourselves: Masses vs. Media in the making of Zimbabwe, by J Fredericke reveals that the Rhodesian Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Ian Smith, banned the book Black Power written by Brother Kwame and Charles Hamilton that was published around the same time that the Zimbabwe African National Union launched the Second Chiumrenga.
If the decision to exclude Brother Kwame from the collage was deliberate, you have knowingly or unknowingly chosen to align yourselves with entities who are seeking to devalue the time period Kwame chaired SNCC, and also restrict the mere mention of his name to his involvement in SNCC and the BPP.
The irrefutable evidence at our disposal is both the book Stokely: A Life written by Peniel Joseph and the play Power: Stokely Carmichael written by the playwright Meshaun Lebron. Those title selections by Dr. Joseph and Mr. Lebron instinctively conjure up two images: The first being the Roots episode when Kunta Kinte is captured after trying to escape and beaten unmercifully until he utters out of his mouth the name Toby that was forced on him by the slave master. The second is Muhammad Ali who in the middle of pummeling Ernie Terrell and Floyd Patterson mockingly asks them, ‘What’s my name?’ Both Patterson and Terrell were subjected to devastating beatings by Ali because due to mental enslavement they continue to refer to him as Cassius Clay instead of the name given to him by the most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
The fact that two young brothers, who based on their age- bracket could have been Brother Kwame’s biological children feel completely comfortable calling him by his slave name sends a message that embracing Africa culturally or repatriating to Mother Africa physically is fool’s gold, because plantation life has so much to offer those who choose to capitulate the demands of US Homeland Security.
Both Dr. Joseph and Mr. Lebron are ideological bi-products, along with the generational space they represent of having been force-fed a narrative of so-called African-American history, that portrays the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the grisly murder of Emmitt Till and what is often described as the turbulent 60’s, as the beginning and ending of grass roots front line resistance in Babylon. This resembles the approach the King James version of the holy bible portrays The Garden of Eden.
We have the challenge of smashing completely smashing this narrative once and for all, while at the same time not putting too much focus on those amongst our ranks, who are displaying the residuals of academic terrorism thanks to our former colonial and slave masters. It is not realistic to expect someone raised on a pig farm out of nowhere to declare themselves a vegan.
In 2010, Mr. Taylor Branch the caucasian author of the book America In The King Years appeared in the PBS documentary MLK: A Call To Conscience/A Tavis Smiley Report is on record discussing why Dr. King decided to condemn the Vietnam War at Riverside Baptist Church on April 4th 1967. Mr. Branch stated that the “whole purpose of Dr. King’s Riverside address was to cushion what could be perceived as negative politics because Brother Kwame would be speaking along with other radicals at a demonstration at the UN 10 days later carrying Viet Cong Flags.” According to Mr. Branch, Dr. King’s advisors who felt he should not condemn the war at all, felt if he was going to march and speak at the UN the Riverside speech would help frame his argument.
This was followed up by Dr. Michael Eric Dyson who casually mentioned that Dr. King was part of a cavalry because his wife Coretta Scott King had been involved in the peace movement and that Brother Kwame was also pressuring him. The acclaimed historian and organizer Dr. Vincent Harding, who is credited with writing Dr. King’s Riverside speech, along with the academician and critic Dr. Cornel West, also reflected on this moment in history. What Dr. Harding, Dr. West and Dr. Dyson were all reluctant to do was challenge Mr. Branch’s assertion that Dr. King wanted to distance himself from Kwame and SNCC. The truth is Dr. King’s first speech against the Vietnam War was at Ebenezer Baptist Church, not Riverside Church, which is of paramount importance to mention because he called Brother Kwame personally the night before to ensure he was physically present. This gesture was by Dr. King was not only extremely principled, but a testament to his honest, especially since in January of 1966 SNCC became the very first Civil/Human rights organization to come out again the Vietnam War. This happened after our fallen young comrade Sammye Younge, Jr., a discharged member of the US military , was gunned down in Tuskegee, Alabama, at the Standard Oil gas station for using a white only bathroom.
All the participants in the documentary, especially Dr. Harding, know that it was none other than Brother Kwame representing SNCC, who appeared before a who’s who in the peace movement, for the sole purpose of informing them that SNCC was out to smash the mandatory draft. This courageous move taken by SNCC occurred at a moment when Africans made up 33% of the frontline soldiers even though we were only 18% of the population. Another SNCC alum, the late Julian Bond, was expelled from the Georgia State Legislature for condemning the Vietnam War.
During this time span, in what Brother Kwame called one of the greatest honors of his life, he got the opportunity to meet the iconic revolutionary figure and leader of the Vietnamese Revolution Ho Chi Minh, who told him that the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s patriotism for Mother Africa inspired his patriotism for Vietnam. After the encounter with Uncle Ho under Kwame’s leadership, SNCC followed up their first slogan, “Hell No We Won’t Go, “with “Victory to Ho Chi Minh.,”
This approach was an extension of the revolutionary dictum of Brother Malcolm when he said “Whoever the enemy is for you must be against whoever the enemy is against you must be for”.
What is immensely difficult to stomach is that Mr. Smiley, Dr. West, Dr. Dyson and the late Dr. Harding, gave Mr. Branch the latitude to not only engage in all his liberal and revisionist gibberish, but their involvement in the documentary gives the impression they stand firmly behind these shameful lies. One of our political weaknesses that has become glaringly obvious is a tendency to grant and permit outsiders like Mr. Branch the free will to inject their personal biases without any restrictions or parameters whatsoever when it comes to writing our history.
When we study the writings of SCLC leadership and MLK’s inner circle, it appears as time goes on some of them are relatively comfortable in treating SNCC, especially during the tenure of Brother Kwame’s leadership, as if they were similar to musicians in an orchestra where Dr. King is the one and only conductor. If we are not careful we will be force fed and accept a SCLC interpretation in the same exact manner we are fed an ANC interpretation of the liberation struggle of the entire region of Southern Africa.
The disturbing example of generational chauvinism on the part of SCLC completely goes against the strategic brilliance of one of the most important members of SCLC, Ella Baker. She was the one who organized the meeting Easter weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1960 at Shaw University that produced SNCC in the first place.
If Brother Kwame’s exclusion from the calendar wasn’t accidental another prominent figure in our community who would applaud your efforts is none other than artist/movement sympathizer Harry Belafonte, who in his recent book My Song: A Memoir Of Art, Race and Defiance, let it be known that Brother Kwame is not his cup of tea.
Mr. Belafonte begins by expressing his displeasure with the Loundes County Freedom Organization carrying guns and not allowing caucasians to join, which he followed by stating, “To me Stokely was tearing apart SNCC for his own personal aggrandizement.” Mr. Belafonte goes on to say SNCC made fundraising harder for SCLC by electing Brother Kwame as its National Chairman. We have to give SNCC the ultimate credit for organizing around people like Mr. Belafonte who suffered from a paternalistic disposition that did not permit him to accept SNCC as an independent organization, not SCLC foot soldiers or extended support system.
Mr. Belafonte was just getting warmed up when he then goes on to say, “A strange story captured for me a sense of the hope in both America and Africa as the sixties began and disillusionment in both continents as the decade came to an end. It was a story of three characters I’d known well: Stokely Carmichael, Miriam Makeba, and Ahmed Seku Ture.”
Mr. Belafonte’s tirade aimed at settling the score with three people whom he came to utterly dislike, begins with his opinions of Sister Makeba, referring to her as “a rebellious daughter who flaunted her brand of radical politics in his face, doing more than her share of drugs and going from one rocky romance to the next.” Mr. Belafonte took the time to give us the chronological order of those relations, starting with Hugh Masekela, Huey P. Newton, and then Brother Kwame. Mr. Belafonte fails to mention that Sister Makeba was married to both Brother Masekela and Brother Kwame; therefore, those relationships not be dismissed as romantic flings. Those in our community who consider Mr. Belafonte a five star general in our cultural army who walks in Paul Robeson’s footsteps, had to be in utter shock when they learned that he referred to Sister Makeba as Ahmed Seku Ture’s, “not so secret mistress.”
Mr. Belafonte goes on to mention how he observed an upgrade in Brother Kwame’s wardrobe and how he knows for a fact he was booted out of SNCC for hogging the limelight without the approval of SNCC collectively. By the time Mr. Belafonte gets to Ahmed Seku Ture the engine of hatred is burning. He describes the leader of the Guinean revolution as a “vengeful tyrant,” who was once a utopian socialist. This description of Ahmed Seku Ture parroted the CIA rumor that he had syphilis of the brain. He goes to accuse him of paranoia and keeping his people in constant mortal fear, as well as abject poverty.
The decision to call Sister Makeba a mistress, which in African tradition is equivalent to a whore, was surprising. Mr. Belafonte’s publicists should have warned him that those comments would incur the wrath of the Daughters of Africa everywhere, who are very sensitive when a Sister of Miriam Makeba’s caliber, has her moral character called into question by someone who married two caucasian women in his lifetime.
Mr. Belafonte met Ahmed Seku Ture when he was working for the Peace Corps, which is the brainchild of his good friend John F. Kennedy. Mr. Belafonte was attempting to persuade Ahmed Seku Ture to develop a cultural exchange with the US Government for the purpose of helping the Imperialists establish a stronger presence in Africa. It appears that Ahmed Seku Ture and the PDG arming the entire nation and starting a People’s militia reminded Mr. Belafonte too much of the panthers arming themselves in Loundes County. Perhaps Mr. Belafonte mistakenly functioned from the understanding that because the PDG used Positive Action , i.e., strikes, demonstrations and boycotts, to liberate Guinee from French colonialism, automatically meant that Ahmed Seku Ture saw non-violence as a cardinal principle like he and Dr. King.
Brother Kwame’s leadership of SNCC was hard for Mr. Belafonte to swallow because his predecessor John Lewis patterned his political profile to tailor the views and sentiments of Dr. King, which made Belafonte as comfortable as he would be in front of his fireplace. Where, on the other hand, Brother Kwame was strongly influenced by Malcolm X after he saw him, to use his words, “devour “ Bayard Rustin in a debate when he was a student at Howard University.
The real reason Mr. Belafonte singles out the three special African freedom fighters is his life- long love affair with the Zionist State of Israel. Mr. Belafonte regurgitates the propaganda of the CIA and French intelligence and talks about Camp Boiro in Guinee, where thousands of Ahmed Seku Ture’s opposition were allegedly murdered. However, in these same memoirs Mr. Belafonte and his second wife Julie have a picture with the Israeli Defense Minister and war criminal Moshe Dayan, who masterminded the bombing of Egypt during the six-day war. We challenge Mr. Belafonte to stand before Africans and Palestinians anywhere he chooses and tell us that the Zionist Warmonger Moshe Dayan was a better human being than that great son of Africa, Ahmed Seku Ture. When Ahmed Seku Ture and the government of Guinee made world history for being one of the 25 countries to co-sponsor the UN Resolution 3379, Zionism is Racism must have made Mr. Belafonte’s blood boil like a hot bowl of soup.
It must not be forgotten that one of the blemishes on Dr. King’s record was supporting Israel during the six day war. We admonish Mr. Belafonte to reveal whether he used the Isreali war song he made popular HAVA NAGILA to trick Dr. King into believing that aligning himself with the Zionists and watching Egypt be bombed unmercifully was politically the correct thing to do . This song was performed by Mr. Belafonte on a regular basis, almost identical to the way Ray Charles sang America the Beautiful and Sammy Davis sang Mr. Bojangles. Mr. Belafonte can then tell the African world what brought him more pleasure, defending the Zionist State of Israel, or campaigning for the release of the Madiba Nelson Mandela.
At the height of her popularity Sister Makeba was Africa’s unofficial cultural ambassador, according to her autobiography. Sisiter Makeba politely informed Mr. Belafonte that OAU delegates had a problem with the Israeli song Erev Shel Shosana, because, after all, the bombing of Egypt and Syria was motivated by genocide not love.
When SNCC supported Egypt under the revolutionary leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who saved Malcolm X’s life when the CIA attempted to poison him to death, this was the beginning of the end due to their sources of funding at the time.
Brother Kwame always gave acknowledgement and praise to the fearless and brilliant organizer, Sister Ethel Minor, for helping him understand that the Zionist State of Israel was the enemy of all humanity. Her paper The Palestinian Problem served as the ideological bedrock for SNCC when they made their petition on the Six Day War known to the public.
Some groupings in the nationalist community who are Brother Kwame’s detractors are guilty of peddling a rather peculiar falsehood – that one of Brother Kwame’s closest comrades and friends Mukasa Dada, once known as Willie Ricks, is the one who coined the phrase “Black Power.” While Brother Kwame and Brother Mukasa certainly popularized the concept of Black Power in the 1960’s, neither one of them have ever taken credit as the architect of the concept. In 1954, Black Power is the title of Richard Wright’s book dedicated to Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, this clearly demonstrates that if Dr. DuBois is the father of Modern Day Pan Africanism and the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey is the Father of modern day African Nationalism, than the Osagyefo is clearly the father of modern day Black Power.
Their motivation to propel Brother Mukasa over Brother Kwame attempts to make a political statement that Brother Mukasa’s role in history is downplayed because he comes from the ranks of everyday Africans languishing on street corners throughout Africa and the Diaspora where in contrast students like Brother Kwame are used to represent the petit bourgeois element who discover struggle while attending institutions of higher learning. This reveals that many who attempt to pass themselves off as pillars of ideological wisdom have a limited understanding of the African intelligentsia, especially in the final analysis, if our job is to find fighters who are developing critical thinking skills whether they are in University, prison, homeless shelters, places of religious/spiritual worship or sitting at a bar stool during happy hour. What is most important is that Brother Kwame, who was born in Trinidad while it was a colony of Britain, and Brother Mukasa who was born in the southern part of the United States, not only found their way to the frontline of the African Liberation Struggle, but developed a relationship similar to the one that existed between Osagyefo Nkrumah and the Pan African icon George Padmore or Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the late Vice President and national hero Simon Muzenda.
Another significant contribution Brother Kwame made to our struggle ideologically was making Africans felt that Marx and Lenin did not have a monopoly on Scientific Socialism, feel comfortable stressing the urgency of class struggle, without compromising Nationalism and Pan Africanism one single inch. The Osagyefo taught us “Socialism and African Unity are organically complementary. “
My final point is while many ex-Panthers service to the people on the frontline ended when the BPP for Self Defense ceased to exist as an organization, Brother Kwame organized African people until his dying breath.
When we look at the direction of our political activity at home or abroad, Brother Kwame’s footprints are undeniable. For those who are engaged in this work but have no idea what he contributed, here are a few examples:
1. Africans, who since the 2001 UN Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and other related intolerances in Durban, South Africa, have increased their involvement in Palestinian Solidarity work, should know 21 years before Brother Kwame was the Chairman of the Worldwide African Anti- Zionist Front founded in Tripoli, Libya in 1990. Brother Kwame wanted Africans to learn and accept that solidarity with the Palestinians was only scratching the surface, because Zionism was a direct enemy of African people.
2. Africans who since the Obama administration have jumped head first into the pool of activities surrounding normalized relations with Cuba, should know at the one year anniversary of the Million Man March, Brother Kwame used the three minutes afforded to him to call for Africans worldwide to fight to lift the US blockade on Cuba. Brother Kwame’s ties to Cuba go back to 1967 when he represented SNCC at the Latin American Solidarity Conference, where a young Fidel Castro let it be known that Cuba will retaliate if US Imperialism touches one grain on his head.
3. Africans who are involved in activity resisting the Military Industrial Intelligence Police Complex, whether they protest police terrorism in the streets, in the US or are fighting against AFRICOM installations on the continent, should know that Brother Kwame called for a smash the FBI-CIA coalition as early as 1976. Today this includes formations like USAID (United States Agency for International Development), NDI (National Democratic Institute) and the NED (National Endowment for Democracy).We have gone from COINTELPRO to OINTELPRO, covert to overt intelligence.
4. Africans who are frustrated by the division that stems from opportunist elements who are more interested in building their reputations at the expense of our movement, as opposed to building a movement, clearly understand that this can only be first neutralized and eventually eliminated when we have an African United Front amongst the organized formations that represent our genuine resistance. As a tribute to Brother Kwame we must push for more Unity in Action and Thought.
5. As Africans remain handcuffed to the agenda of the Democratic Party and mobilized efforts that cannot be sustained, we must increase our efforts to recruit Africans into the ranks of our organized formations. We must also encourage the creation of new organized formations in areas where organized resistance is lacking. No organizer from the 60’s generation pushed the need for organization harder than Kwame Ture
If the collective who created this calendar forgot the role Brother Kwame played in building not only the BPP, but countless other organized formations in his nearly 40 years of consistent and genuine service, we hope this letter served as a reminder.
Those who felt it was safe to attempt to tarnish Brother Kwame’s character or deliberately distort or downplay his role in our people’s struggle had better think again.
Keep up the good work, your Brother in Service and Struggle
Obi Egbuna Jr
Obi Egbuna, Jr., is the US Correspondent to the Herald (Zimbabwe’s National Newspaper)
the external relations officer of ZICUFA (Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association) and the Executive Director of Mass Emphasis Children’s History and Theater Company.
His email address is obiegbuna15@gmail.com.
