Not even torrential downpour in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area could snuff out the drumbeat that connects people of African descent across the globe. Nor could it deter a small, but powerful, group of artists and activists from fulfilling their vision of enlightening others about the power of said drumbeat in uniting the African Diaspora.
Check out this video and get a great look at what community and self-determination, as it relates to food production, looks like in the District of Columbia.
It’s my hope that Black liberals, and any other group of Black people that has disdain for proponents of African-centered culture, get to embrace their African heritage. Knowledge of Self is a personal process that opens the door to more spiritually fulfilling professional opportunities and connectedness to African people that every Black person should have, even if they don’t feel like attending every study circle or healing circle in the world. In many cases, it also makes one more independently minded.
This begs the question of whether, by overtly celebrating and protecting my Blackness, I’m becoming a prisoner of the very box that I’m trying to escape. By solely organizing with Black people, am I participating in the race war that the Elites are creating from afar? By echoing my warrior ancestors’ call for a united African nation, am I just as evil as the white people who want to exterminate my race? These are real questions that often come from friends, colleagues, strangers, and whoever else asks about what some would consider my obsession with living Black.
As a member of the Staples Singers, led by her father Roebuck “Pops” Staples, and a solo artist, Mavis Staples contributed to the soundtrack of the Civil Rights era, bringing contemporary pop hits that had a positive message such as “Long Walk to D.C.,” “When Will We Be Paid?,” and “I’ll Take You There.”
The Black young urban professional class must connect with the grassroots actors in their community and use their expertise, brain power, and resources to make our Nation more self-determined and economically independent.
While few ever get the chance to visit Brazil, many will soon come to know Elisete de Jesus Silva, one of its rising stars and the subject of an upcoming documentary about her life, music, and community work in one of its roughest neighborhoods.
The reverence for black triumph against oppressive forces continued last week when nearly 100 community members kicked off citywide Black History Month festivities at the African American Civil War Museum in Northwest.
The study of people of African descent as many know it has long focused on the ethnic group’s oppression and the atrocities committed against them. Since the 1970s, Professor William Cross and Dr. Amos M.D. Sirleaf have countered such thinking, looking at the story of African people as that of justice and redemption.
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