News — african america

A very wise man by the name of Danjuma Bihari tells the truth about North-African genetics and the Berber/Amazigh people during a heated argument. (Via Content Over Everything Youtube)

 'Year of return': Hundreds of African-Americans resettle in Ghana

(shared via France 24)

Testimonies of African Americans Who returned to Africa & settled | YEAR OF RETURN
(via African Insider)

What is the difference between magic and spirituality? Edison Agbanje goes through the definition of both concepts. He offers educative and powerful insight into the connection between self and what is around us. One of the topics that Edison Agbanje touches is the deep connection between language and spirituality. He emphasizes using the language of your roots rather than the language of their country of origin. This way, one is able to connect better with their spirituality. This offers a relatively unique and different perspective on how we can tap into what is in us to be better beings. What are your thoughts?

Africa is a diverse continent that boasts multiple cultures and languages in its 54 countries. In this clip, Africans are tested for knowledge of their own (extremely diverse) continent to see how much they know and what they really think about each other. The responses are quite hilarious and show varying opinions of African countries by Africans. The diversity of the African continent also becomes evident. How well would you have done in such a test?

Beginning as the Chesters in 1957, Little Anthony and the Imperials are a legendary Doo-Wop rhythm and blues/soul vocal ensemble founded in Brooklyn, New York by tenor Clarence Collins, Countertenor/Falsetto and principal singer Jerome Anthony “Little Anthony” Gourdine, Ernest Wright, bass Glouster “Nate” Rogers, and tenor Tracey Lord. The teenage boys were born in the early 1940s and attended Boys’ High School in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

The group changed its name in 1958 and began producing a string of chart hits, including their first hit, “Tears On My Pillow” (1958) on the End label. It entered Billboard’s Top 100 chart and peaked at #4, spent 19 weeks on the Top 100. It also reached #2 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart selling more than one million copies. The flip side of the record, “Two Kinds of People,” also became a hit as well.

The ensemble briefly separated in 1961 but reunited in 1963. In 1964 they released, “I’m on the Outside Looking In” which was a Billboard Top 20 Pop hit, peaking at # 15. During that same year, “Goin’ Out of My Head” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #75 and peaked #6. Additionally, the song peaked at #8 on Cashbox magazine’s R&B chart.

In 1965, Little Anthony and the Imperials released another hit, “Hurts So Bad.” This single entered Billboard’s Hot Top 100 chart and peaked at #10 for one week before spending eight additional weeks in the Top 100. It also reached #3 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart.

A decade later, in 1975, Little Anthony and the Imperials released the album Hold On on Avco’s label. While the musical composition was appealing, it was not a financial success.

In 1993, Little Anthony and the Imperials were awarded the Rhythm and Blues Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Six years later in 1999 they were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. They were inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. The following year, 2007, they were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. In 2009, Little Anthony and the Imperials were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2008 the ensemble released the album You’ll Never Know and performed on the Late Show with David Letterman. However, Tracey Lord, one of the original members, died on March 19, 2008, at 68. 

As of 2021, all of the still living original members of Little Anthony and the Imperials are in their eighties with plans to perform at the Willwood Convention Center in Willwood, New Jersey, on October 16, 2021.

The Spingarn Medal is the highest honor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Since 1915, it has been awarded annually for the highest achievement of a living African American in the preceding year or years. The twofold purpose of the award, according to the NAACP, is to call the attention of the American people to the existence of distinguished merit and achievement among Americans of African descent and to stimulate the ambition of African American youth.

The award was established in 1914 by Joel Elias Spingarn, chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors and one the organization’s first Jewish leaders, who wished, in his words, “to perpetuate the lifelong interest of my brother, Arthur B. Spingarn, of my wife, Amy E. Spingarn, and of myself in the achievements of the American Negro.” Spingarn joined the NAACP in 1913 after resigning his professorship at Columbia University over free-speech issues. He was instrumental in establishing the NAACP’s New York office, and he sponsored the award in an attempt to counter the negative depiction of Black people as criminals that was common in newspapers of the time.

The committee established to select Spingarn Medal recipients initially consisted of John Hope, president of Morehouse College, and John Hurst, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Spingarn, who was white, insisted the awards committee include prominent white individuals so as to ensure attention would be drawn to awardees in the mainstream press. Former president William H. Taft and Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, were later named to the awards committee.

The first recipient of the Spingarn Medal was Ernest E. Just, professor of biology at Howard University. The list of Spingarn awardees reads as a veritable Who’s Who of African Americans in fields such as politics, the military, medicine, arts, entertainment, and sports. Awardees include W. E. B. DuBois, George Washington Carver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Ralph Bunche, Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Colin Powell, and Sidney Poitier. Eleven women have won the Spingarn Medal. Two awardees received the medal posthumously. No award was made in 1938.

Upon Spingarn’s death in 1939, he left an endowment of $20,000 to enable the NAACP to continue giving the award in perpetuity. Today the awardee is selected by a nine-person committee with the presentation of the medal taking place at the NAACP’s annual convention.

The Shady Rest Golf & Country Club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey is the oldest African American golf club in the United States. It was the mecca of black middle-class society in New Jersey from the 1920s to the 1960s with members traveling from as far as the Carolinas to enjoy its amenities.

The land, previously the Ephraim Tucker Farm, was a 31-acre plot which was sold to the Westfield Golf Club whose members then converted it into a nine-hole golf course, keeping the farmhouse as its new clubhouse. On September 21, 1921, a group of black investors known as the Progressive Realty Company, Inc., including Scotch Plains resident Henry Willis Sr., purchased the club and renamed it the Shady Rest Golf and Country Club.

Designed to provide a recreational facility to its members during a time of intense racial segregation, many African American residents from surrounding New Jersey communities were able to partake in the clubs’ activities such as golfing, croquet, skeet shooting, horseback riding, and tennis. A Place For Us was its motto as many prominent black activists such as W.E.B. DuBois lectured there. And as a result of its location, just thirty miles west of New York City and its inclusion in The Negro Motorist Green Book, the clubhouse became a haven for many prominent black entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstein, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, Chick Webb, and Billie Holiday. They all came to perform there while enjoying the exclusivity that Shady Rest provided. In addition, Ora Washington and Althea Gibson, the first African Americans to win a grand slam title, honed their skills on its tennis pavilion.

The golf course was home to the first National Colored Golf Championship held in 1925 and sponsored by the United States Colored Golfers Association which had been founded earlier that year and led by its president, B.C. Gordon. Gordon was also the president of Shady Rest. Its head professional golfer, John Shippen, served as its groundskeeper. In 1896, Shippen was the first African American professional golfer to play in the U.S. Open. Shippen, an African American of Jamaican descent, played in five U.S. opens before settling in Scotch Plains in 1931 and managing Shady Rest until his retirement in 1960.

In 1964, after a legal battle, the township of Scotch Plains gained ownership of the Club and made the grounds public and racially integrated. It also changed the name to the Scotch Hills Golf and Country Club. The Club House still survives. When under a threat of demolition in 2013, local residents formed The Preserve Shady Rest Committee and raised money to have the clubhouse renovated and restored. It now includes a small museum dedicated to John Shippen and his contribution to golf history. Shady Rest is currently on the list of endangered landmarks in New Jersey in anticipation of being declared a historical landmark.

Composer, guitarist, pianist, storyteller Bukka White was born Booker T. Washington White on November 12, 1906, in Houston, Chickasaw County, Mississippi, to Herman and Sarah Farr White. He got his initial start in music, learning the violin with Cajun and blues tunes, and the guitar from his father. White’s mother and legendary blues guitarist B.B. King’s grandmother were sisters.

In 1919 when White was 13, he left for Chicago, where he played on the streets with a blind guitarist. At the age of 14 he returned to Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he stayed with an uncle. During that time, he contacted Delta blues legend Charley Patton, who taught him the rudimentary music theory for improvisation on the guitar and fiddle, and introduced him to other instruments. In addition to music, White pursued careers in sport, playing in Negro League baseball and, for a time, taking up boxing. He later served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944.

In 1930 White met and impressed Ralph Limbo, a talent scout for the Victor label and traveled to Memphis for his first recordings, singing the blues and gospel material. However, Victor only released four of the 14 songs White recorded that day. In 1937, Bukka recorded “Pinebluff Arkansas'” and “Shake ‘em on down” for the Vocalion label in Chicago. During the music session in Memphis, Tennessee police knocked at the door to arrest him for allegedly shooting a man in self-defense. While awaiting the trial, he jumped bail and headed for Chicago, making two recordings before being apprehended and sent back to Mississippi to serve three years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary called Parchman Farm. While he was serving time, White’s record “Shake ’em on down” became a hit.

In 1939 White, while still at Parchman, recorded for folklorist Alan Lomax’s American Music Project which eventually was housed at the Library of Congress. White’s album recorded for Lomax and called Sky Songs, Vols. 1-3, included more than 60 minutes of Blues. “Parchman Farm Blues” was one of the songs. The improvised songs allowed White to tell stories about the dusty street corners, dirt roads, juke joints, and jails that felt like home to him.

By 1970, White was still performing on the blues festival circuit.  He often experimented with new material but his fans waited to hear him play “Parchman Farm Blues.”  In 1973 White released the album Big Daddy which was a commercial and critical success for the 67-year- old bluesman. It was also his last album.

Bukka White died of cancer on February 26, 1977, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 70. However, he was posthumously celebrated in 1990 by being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. On November 21, 2011, the Recording Academy announced the addition of White’s “Fixin’ to Die Blues” to its 2012 list of Grammy Hall of Fame Award.

Zhou Enlai’s first tour of Africa, popularly known as Zhou’s “Safari,” was a series of state visits to ten independent African countries, undertaken between December 1963 and February 1964 by the Chinese Premier. These visits, which occurred during a period when many countries were gaining independence from colonial power, marked the first time any high-ranking Chinese Communist leader had traveled to Africa.

Zhou’s original plan was to visit every country on the continent that had established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing. He traveled at the head of a delegation of more than fifty people, including China’s foreign minister, Chen Yi. The delegation began its tour in Egypt, which in May 1956 had become the first African country to recognize the Communist government of China. During the journey, the itinerary was amended several times to add Tunisia, whose government planned to recognize Communist China; remove Tanganyika, which was in the midst of the Zanzibar Revolution; and add Ethiopia, despite the fact that it did not recognize the Beijing regime until 1970.

In the end, the ten countries visited were as follows: Egypt (The United Arab Republic: December 14–21, 1963), Algeria (December 21–27), Morocco (December 27–30), Tunisia (January 9–10, 1964), Ghana (January 11–16), Mali (January 16–21), Guinea (January 21–26), Sudan (January 27–30), Ethiopia (January 30–February 1), and Somalia (February 1–4).

Zhou’s primary goal in Africa was to raise China’s profile on the continent at a time when it was beginning to challenge the Soviet Union openly over the direction of the global Communist movement. While Zhou received a warm reception in countries with left-wing governments, such as Algeria and Mali, he faced more hostile encounters with leaders who were adamantly anti-communist, especially in Tunisia and Ethiopia.

In response, Zhou consistently asserted that countries with different “political systems” could maintain friendly relations. Rather than focus on the affairs of postcolonial governments, he largely restricted himself to calling for African countries still under colonial rule to win independence. Zhou did, however, employ potentially inflammatory Marxist rhetoric in several of his speeches in Africa. In a farewell address in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, before returning to China, for example, he pledged that China would support “revolutionary struggles” throughout the continent and oppose both foreign intervention and native “reactionaries.”

Another important goal of Zhou’s trip to Africa was to drum up enthusiasm for holding a second Asian–African Conference in Algiers in 1965, a decade after the first Asian–African Conference had been held in Bandung, Indonesia. Zhou was especially concerned to ensure that the Soviet Union not be invited to send a delegation to the conference, since it would make it more difficult for the Chinese government to present itself as the only truly anti-imperialist Marxist power. Zhou made a second, shorter trip to Africa in June 1965 to lobby several African leaders to support his vision for the second Asian–African Conference, but the conference was canceled soon thereafter in the wake of the overthrow of Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella.

The US Armed Forces were segregated until President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948 which desegregated all the military service branches. That segregation during World War II helped create the Riot of Bamber Bridge in Great Britain in 1943. When US forces were sent to Britain that year black soldiers were met with respect and often open arms by the local population. The village of Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, then home to U.S. Army Air Base 569 was one such place. The 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment, a logistics unit stationed at the base consisted primarily of black soldiers. The all white 234th US Military Police Unit was stationed on the north side of the village and the two units were known to have had several skirmishes over race relations.

The soldiers of the 1511th were welcomed in local establishments, and this did not sit well with white American soldiers who brought their racist ideals with them. When white military police officers insisted that a local pub owner segregate his establishment, the owner replied he would. However, when the MPs returned the next day, they were met with “Blacks Only” signs at three village pubs, sending a clear message to the MPs that their racism was not welcome. British barmaids told white soldiers to wait their turn when they assumed they would be served before black soldiers.

On the night of June 24, two MPs, Corporal Roy A. Windsor and PFC Ralph F. Ridgeway, entered Ye Old Hob Inn, and attempted to arrest Private Eugene Nunn of the 1511th, citing him for being improperly dressed and without a pass. The soldiers and MPs began to argue. Local townsfolk and women from the British Auxiliary Territorial Service sided with the men of the 1511th and demanded that the MPs leave the black soldiers alone. Private Lynn M. Adams of the 1511th advanced on one of the MPs with a bottle, and Corporal Windsor drew his gun. Sergeant William Byrd of the 1511th was able to defuse the situation and finally persuade the MPs to leave. While they were driving away, Private Adams threw a bottle at the jeep, and the MPs drove to their base to pick up reinforcements to return to the pub to arrest the black soldiers.

As the soldiers of the 1511th walked back to base, they were apprehended by the returning MPs. A fight broke out and MP Carson W. Bozman drew his gun and shot Private Adams in the neck. The soldiers of the 1511th returned to their base and at midnight, armed with rifles and a machine gun truck, arrived at the MP camp in retaliation. The soldiers of the 1511th raided the MPs’ gun room and armed themselves as the two sides began shooting at each other in the darkness. By four o’clock in the morning, the violence ceased. Private William Crossland of the 1511th was killed, and five other soldiers were wounded along with two MPs. There were two trials resulting in 27 out of 32 black soldiers being found guilty of various charges. Most of the sentences were reduced or dismissed, however, because of the overwhelming support of the black troops by the British public.

In June 2013, an anniversary symposium was held at the University of Central Lancashire, that included a screening of the 2009 documentary “Choc’late Soldiers from the USA” to commemorate the Bamber Bridge Riot.