EDITOR’S NOTE: Heather Gray is an Atlanta, Georgia-based human rights and justice advocate.  The following article was recently re-posted by her organization, Justice Initiative.  It offers some of her analysis of one aspect of the Black Farmers’ continuing struggle for justice in the face of land grabs and discriminatory lending practices of the United States Government, specifically the United States Department of Agriculture.  More on this and related issues can be found in our Free The Land Page, as well as the Website of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), http://www.bfaa-us.org.

A Short History of Black-Owned Land in America Michelle Bachmann’s Crazy Ideas About Black Farmers

Heather Gray
Counterpunch

Note: This article is revised from one I wrote in 2011 in the midst of the on-going Black farmer lawsuit against the USDA. It provides an overview of the history of the struggles Black farmers and, importantly, their resistance. Heather Gray

A few years ago I was asked to speak at Georgia State University about Black-owned land issues and the plight of Black farmers. This was a presentation, then, before professors and students in urban Atlanta. I realized as I spoke that my audience was not informed about rural issues and ongoing racism in the deep South. Social change is a painstakingly slow process and when you are in the city it’s hard to conceive what happens in rural areas – often isolated rural areas. This is why I was asked to speak, of course, but still it was a revealing experience. They also wanted me to refer to the second phase of the Black farmer lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture. I began the presentation at Georgia State University with a delineation of historical dates of the rather constrained opportunities for Black land ownership in America. Invariably the policies in America resulted in some kind of betrayal followed by Black resistance. I started with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Then Congress creates the Department of Agriculture in 1862. Then also in 1862 was the Homestead Act – here’s a description:

Congress passes the Homestead Act to open western lands to independent farmers rather than slave owners. This land was available also for freed slaves but there were few as slavery was still the law of the land. The parcels were 160 acres. Eventually 1.6 million homesteads were granted and 270,000,000 acres of federal land was privatized. It also dispossessed Native Americans of land and wealth. This was land reform largely for whites the likes of which was never offered to freed slaves after the Civil War or at any time in history. (Wikipedia)

In fact, “American whites received some of the most massive welfare subsidies of any people in the world in the nineteenth century.  How did this happen?   A miracle from Jesus?  Well…. No.  they got these subsidies by means of a brutal campaign of racial imperialism that took vast lands from native Americans”. (World Future Fund)   Clearly, the Homestead Act, as well as the creation of the Department of Agriculture, was partly a response by the federal government to the South and its southern plantation owners. The South had successfully seceded from the Union, was engaged in war, and had wanted to extend the slaveocracy to the western territories. A little known fact is that prior to the south seceding from the Union in the 1860’s, in the May 1844 edition of “The Liberator” the renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called for the north to secede from the government for precisely the opposite reason. The reason being that the Constitution of the United States adopted after the Revolutionary War was “at the expense of the colored population of the country.” With the three-fifths clause allowing the enslaved individuals to be counted as three-fifths of a person – albeit a non-voting person – the South controlled Congress and the nation. Garrison said it was time “to set the captive free by the potency of truth.“ By January 1865 Congress adopted the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery. Also in January1865, while in Savannah after his famous trek through Georgia, General William T. Sherman issues Field Order 15- here’s a description:

After meeting with freed slaves in Savannah, Georgia – in what became known as the Savannah Colloquy – General William T. Sherman responded to their pleas for land. In January, he issued his famous Field Order 15, which set aside a huge swath of abandoned land along the Georgia and South Carolina coast for black families to have forty acres plots. He also said that army mules no longer in use would be offered to Black farmers. This is likely where the “Forty Acres and a Mule” legend began. Sherman never stated whether this was to be a permanent or temporary land acquisition. (African American Registry)

With hopes being raised by many in the Black community, Sherman’s Field Order was ultimately the beginning of betrayal by the federal government on land distribution. Here’s more:

* 1865 (March) Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) providing for the allocation of ‘unoccupied land’ to freedmen (not to exceed 40 acres). Rather than 40 acres as requested, Congress allowed the Freedmen’s Bureau to sell only 5 to 10 acre tracts of land to freed slaves.

* 1865 (April 9) Civil War ends.

* 1865 (April 14 ) Republican President Abraham Lincoln assassinated and succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson (former U.S. Senator from Tennessee).

* 1865 (May) President Johnson announces his Reconstruction Plan. The plan calls for the Southern States to abolish slavery but does not offer a role for Blacks in Reconstruction. The southern states are to determine the role for Blacks without a federal mandate.

* 1865 (June) Some 40,000 freed slaves were settled on what was referred to as “Sherman’s Land” on some 400,000 acres of land in Georgia and South Carolina. Much of this land was for rice cultivation. The Freedmen begin to create their own government; white access to the area was denied; and they begin to cultivate their land.

* 1865 (Summer) President Johnson reverses Sherman’s Field Order 15 by ordering that virtually all plantation lands given to freed slaves be returned to the original plantation owners.

The history, of course, moves into the 20th century with the struggles of Jim Crow in the South. The important point to be made, however, is that there has always been resistance and action by the Black community to the constraints on their achieving freedom and justice. By the early 1900’s, for example, Blacks owned some 15 million acres of land – this was an enormous achievement. Fast forward to 1946 when the USDA’s Farmers Home Administration was created to provide credit to farmers – it was known as the “lending institution of last resort”. But Blacks have rarely been able to access adequate credit from USDA offices across the South. These county offices have invariably been headed by whites that clearly wanted to make sure that the monies were going to the white community and to white farmers. This is the legacy of actions, for example, of white planters in the Mississippi delta who made sure that New Deal agriculture policies of the 1930’s, such as the Agriculture Adjustment Act (AAA), benefited them and not Black farmers. Ultimately, in the 1990’s, Blacks sued the government and settled what is now the Pigford v Vilsack lawsuit. A colleague of mine from Tuskegee University once said that the closer you get to farmers the harder it is for policies to be implemented. This is true. The Secretary of Agriculture might give directives from his office in Washington DC; the directives will then be given to the state directors of the USDA; and then the state directors will send policy information to the various counties in the state and this is where the rubber hits the road as it were. This is where the policies should impact farmers and be offered to farmers but it is also where the entrenched social prejudices and cultural alienation are most keenly felt. Black farmers have always received abysmally poor treatment in these county offices and comparatively relatively little capital in loans for their farm operations or farm ownership opportunities have been provided – thus the lawsuit. Nevertheless, Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has been attempting to change the system starting with civil rights directives in the department when he was first appointed; engaging in a study of civil rights abuses; developing a “strike force” in the South to ensure fair treatment for all in the implementation of farm programs, etc. We are also witnessing some changes at the local level thanks to his initiatives and the result of the Black farmer lawsuit. Regarding the Pigford lawsuit, Blacks led the way yet again in seeking justice. By the time Vilsack became Obama’s Secretary there were lawsuits pending from women, Native American and Latino farmers thanks to the leadership of Black farmers in the rural south who’s lawsuit provided opportunities for others who were also being marginalized by USDA offices. Suffice it to say, Representative Michelle Bachman (R-MN) decried the Black lawsuit against the USDA as reparations. I wish the lawsuit was, in fact, reparations for centuries of abuse of Blacks by white supremacists in America. Alas, it is not. Word has it that Bachman was also enamored about a book by Robert E. Lee that purports the benefits of slavery. Perhaps Bachman should first be a slave and see how she benefits. At the very least, Bachman and her co-hort, Representative Stephen King (R-IA), provided the opportunity for us to share more information about the Pigford lawsuit. (See the October 6, 2010 response “Pigford advocates respond to congressional critics“) For the Georgia State University audience, I realized that it’s difficult to know about or to acknowledge the grindingly slow process of social change in southern rural communities. But I also realized how important it is that these issues are discussed as widely as possible. And for Michelle Bachmann and her comments about reparations? This was a lawsuit about unjust treatment from a federal agency. Further, the meager amount of monies being offered through this lawsuit could in no way compensate the Black community for its struggles against the centuries of entrenched racism and past slavery in America. Reparations in future negotiations? Not a bad idea! Heather Gray is the producer of “Just Peace” on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international news. She has been involved in agriculture advocacy and communications for 20 years in the United States and internationally. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net

Ancestor Frederick Douglass, a man born into slavery who became the greatest abolitionist and orator of his time, often accomplished more with words than most achieve with brawn, brain, technology and all the tools of socio-political manipulation available today.  In this speech, which was delivered on July 5, 1852, at a meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, NY, Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of the nation’s cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation.

More information on Ancestor Frederick Douglass can be found, among other places, at the following web sites:

Frederick Douglass National Historic Site – National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm
A Short Biography of Frederick Douglass: http://www.frederickdouglass.org/douglass_bio.html
The Freeman Institute: http://www.freemaninstitute.com/douglass.htm

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me, quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall, seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable — and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you.

“May [the reformer] not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. … There is consolation in the thought that America is young.”

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your “sovereign people” (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown . Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers. But, to proceed.

Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.

As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.

The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present rulers.

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.

These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.

Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.

On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day, whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it.

“Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”

Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.

The coming into being of a nation, in any circumstances, is an interesting event. But, besides general considerations, there were peculiar circumstances which make the advent of this republic an event of special attractiveness.

The whole scene, as I look back to it, was simple, dignified and sublime.

The population of the country, at the time, stood at the insignificant number of three millions. The country was poor in the munitions of war. The population was weak and scattered, and the country a wilderness unsubdued. There were then no means of concert and combination, such as exist now. Neither steam nor lightning had then been reduced to order and discipline. From the Potomac to the Delaware was a journey of many days. Under these, and innumerable other disadvantages, your fathers declared for liberty and independence and triumphed.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too — great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defence. Mark them!

Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.

Of this fundamental work, this day is the anniversary. Our eyes are met with demonstrations of joyous enthusiasm. Banners and pennants wave exultingly on the breeze. The din of business, too, is hushed. Even Mammon seems to have quitted his grasp on this day. The ear-piercing fife and the stirring drum unite their accents with the ascending peal of a thousand church bells. Prayers are made, hymns are sung, and sermons are preached in honor of this day; while the quick martial tramp of a great and multitudinous nation, echoed back by all the hills, valleys and mountains of a vast continent, bespeak the occasion one of thrilling and universal interests nation’s jubilee.

Friends and citizens, I need not enter further into the causes which led to this anniversary. Many of you understand them better than I do. You could instruct me in regard to them. That is a branch of knowledge in which you feel, perhaps, a much deeper interest than your speaker. The causes which led to the separation of the colonies from the British crown have never lacked for a tongue. They have all been taught in your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits, and thundered from your legislative halls, and are as familiar to you as household words. They form the staple of your national poetry and eloquence.

I remember, also, that, as a people, Americans are remarkably familiar with all facts which make in their own favor. This is esteemed by some as a national trait — perhaps a national weakness. It is a fact, that whatever makes for the wealth or for the reputation of Americans, and can be had cheap! will be found by Americans. I shall not be charged with slandering Americans, if I say I think the American side of any question may be safely left in American hands.

I leave, therefore, the great deeds of your fathers to other gentlemen whose claim to have been regularly descended will be less likely to be disputed than mine!

THE PRESENT.

My business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.

“Trust no future, however pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God overhead.”

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence. Sydney Smith tells us that men seldom eulogize the wisdom and virtues of their fathers, but to excuse some folly or wickedness of their own. This truth is not a doubtful one. There are illustrations of it near and remote, ancient and modern. It was fashionable, hundreds of years ago, for the children of Jacob to boast, we have “Abraham to our father,” when they had long lost Abraham’s faith and spirit. That people contented themselves under the shadow of Abraham’s great name, while they repudiated the deeds which made his name great. Need I remind you that a similar thing is being done all over this country to-day? Need I tell you that the Jews are not the only people who built the tombs of the prophets, and garnished the sepulchres of the righteous? Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves. Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men, shout — “We have Washington to our father.” Alas! that it should be so; yet so it is.

“The evil that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft’ interred with their bones.”

“What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?”

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, there will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and lo offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United   States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE.

Take the American slave-trade, which, we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt   Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Orleans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the antislavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

“Is this the land your Fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?”

But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented.

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your lawmakers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans have, within the past two years, been hunted down and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, not religion. The Fugitive Slave Law makes MERCY TO THEM, A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American JUDGE GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, hear only his accusers!

In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise and cummin” — abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”

THE CHURCH RESPONSIBLE.

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation — a religion, a church, and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain ablations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”

The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, Bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds; and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared — men, honored for their so-called piety, and their real learning. The LORDS of Buffalo, the SPRINGS of New York, the LATHROPS of Auburn, the COXES and SPENCERS of Brooklyn, the GANNETS and SHARPS of Boston, the DEWEYS of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land, have, in utter denial of the authority of Him, by whom they professed to he called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of the Hebrews and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach “that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.”

My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend* on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains. [*Rev. R. R. Raymond]

RELIGION IN ENGLAND AND RELIGION IN AMERICA.

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was a high religious question. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, and Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will cease to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement. Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and bodyguards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful as ever stained the character of a nation — a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustain a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery to throw off a threepenny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard-earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred), all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage which, according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a by word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

THE CONSTITUTION.

But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United   States; that the right to hold and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic.

Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped

“To palter with us in a double sense:
And keep the word of promise to the ear,
But break it to the heart.”

And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape. But I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United   States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe. There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length — nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

“[L]et me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.”

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it. What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a tract of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law. I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of slavery is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tell us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

“Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country.”

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
THAT HOUR WILL, COME, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive-
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

The full text can be found in the following books:
James M. Gregory, Frederick Douglass, the Orator (1893)
Philip Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (1950)
John W. Blassingame, Editor, The Frederick Douglass Papers (1982)

White Terrorism and Black Liberation: Destructive vs. Creative Intellect
Something hit me today (June 26, 2015) as I was reflecting on three critical incidents that have impacted the Pan-Afrikan Community over the last two months.  The incidents in question here were the April 19 killing of Freddy Gray by Baltimore Police and the spontaneous “mini-riot” that followed on April 27; the June 17 massacre/hate crime/terrorist attack at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; and the June 25 burnings of Briar Creek Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia, both of which police investigators are saying were acts of arson and may have also been hate crimes.

The Baltimore “mini-riots”, which were seen as a spontaneous reaction to the Gray killing, sparked some heated debates, as anti-police protests often do, about our supposed tolerance of what is portrayed as “Black-on-Black crime”.  The apparent point is that we fail to give sufficient attention to the crime we do to ourselves (such as gang members) in our zeal to point out the crime done to us by others (such as brutal police and violent racists).  I anticipate that the continued outcry over the terrorist act of Dylann Storm Roof, and now of whoever chose to set the blaze that claimed Briar Creek Baptist Church, a predominantly Afrikan-American house of prayer in Charlotte, will once again spark this shallow and self-serving debate from the country’s increasingly vocal racists and those who mindlessly follow them.

There is a key difference between the acts of violence we do to ourselves and those crimes of oppression and racism that are perpetrated upon us by others, however.  And it introduces an aspect of the crime-and-punishment discussion that not only has not been publicly discussed, it also may speak directly to the differences in the ways that conscious people of Afrikan descent and those descended from our historic oppressors have learned, over the centuries, to think, or to not think.

Let’s start with the favorite false narrative of the White racist (and the occasional unconscious compliant Negro commentator): our supposed tolerance of “Black-on-Black” crime.  Aside from the fact that crime is an act of convenience, not of ethnicity (We commit crimes against ourselves because we are invariably crowded together like sardines in ghettos and inner-city neighborhoods) and the fact that in economically-depressed communities inhabited by White, Red and Brown people, crime is similarly White-on-White, Red-on-Red and Brown-on-Brown, most of the violence seems to result from crimes of personal revenge (such as gang hits), crimes of passion (such as domestic or neighborhood disputes), or crimes of convenience based on physical proximity (purse-snatchings, car-jackings, muggings and stray bullets).  The perpetrator of the crime usually does not invest days, weeks or months in choosing a particular victim, especially not based on any socio-political motive, and wastes no time preparing an explanation for the crime and leaving it to conveniently be found on the Internet.  The victim, quite literally, was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.  The choice of victim was not the result of planning and thinking.  The carnage wrought, in that the perpetrator often cares not who the victim was, could be more accurately thought of as the result of a decision to not think.

Now, let’s look at the Charleston massacre, and the apparent arsons at the churches in Charlotte and Macon.  In the case of what has been called the Charleston Massacre, the apparent mass-murderer, Dylann Storm Roof, 21 years old, was found to have composed a rather extensive, if ill-informed, manifesto based on his regular visits to several White Supremacist websites.  He photographed himself holding a Confederate flag, burning a United States flag, and wearing the insignias of Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa, two White racist regimes that were historic relics by the day of his birth.  He created a website that he named The Last Rhodesian and chose to publicize his twisted, sick philosophy there for all to see.  He calmly participated in a Bible Study meeting with his victims for the better part of an hour before embarking on his killing spree, and as he shot his victims, shouting racial epithets throughout, he reloaded five times.  In other words, this crime was committed after extensive planning (Roof had stated that he knew he could not venture into the “ghetto” to pursue his campaign of wanton destruction, and he even “explained” his motivation to his victims as he was killing them, according to the account of a survivor of the attack: “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go”).  When juxtaposed against the apparent church arsons in Charlotte and in Macon, Georgia, and the series of church burnings that occurred across the South in the late 1990s (for more on this, see “Churches Are Burning Again in America”, at www.theatlantic.com), it becomes increasingly likely that these crimes were committed by homegrown White terrorists as the result of much thinking and planning.

The pattern that emerges here is that of Black people committing acts of violence when we don’t think.  These White terrorists, as with so many terrorists around the world, seem to resort to acts of violence and hatred when they think too much.

We also see patterns when we restrict our observation solely to the thinkers among us.  When conscious Afrikan people think, we become engines of creation, building institutions for economic development or the liberation and uplift of our communities, and for the establishment of the ancient Afrikan moral code of Ma’at.  Indeed, this is part of the practical result of what Honored Afrikan Ancestors Dr. John Chissell and Dr. Kwame SabakhuRa meant by Deep Afrikan Thought.  Clearly, Whites are also capable of creative thought, as is often shown by peace activists, environmentalists, doctors and all manner of true servants to the people.  But for some reason, thinking does not seem to lead to such positive outcomes when the supposed “thinker” is a reactionary, right-wing racist.  More thinking does not seem to help them.  By contrast, when these racist terrorists think, they become dangerous, murderous engines of destruction.

When viewed in this way, it seems strange that so many mayors, governors, legislators and even presidents expend so much energy finding ways to cut spending on schools, libraries and recreation centers, particularly in communities with large numbers of Afrikan-Americans and other people of color, institutions that teach consciousness and help young people learn how to think, while at the same time fighting for the rights of manufacturers to flood the landscape with more and more powerful guns.  At the same time, while focusing on historically-Black civil rights groups such as the SCLC and revolutionary organizations such as the Black Panther Party and American Indian Movement that were dedicated to the education, uplift and defense of Black, Brown and Red people from terrorism (and in the process the creation of a more fair and just society for all), so many of the truly dangerous groups, the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo-Nazis and several of the Skinhead organizations with direct ties to acts of anti-Black, anti-Red, anti-immigrant and anti-Jewish terrorism, managed to escape the same fate as the BPP and AIM.  Thus, the Panthers, AIM and MOVE could be destroyed because they possessed a few weapons with which to defend themselves from racist attacks by criminals, terrorists and police, while the criminals and racists who threaten these organizations and their communities could, and still can, get all the guns they want.

The Powers That Be seem to prefer to keep Afrikan people in a state of unthinking Zombiefication and helplessness, perhaps based on the fear of what fundamental changes a conscious and educated Black community will bring to this sick society.  Meanwhile, White racist terrorists such as Dylann Storm Roof and the Charlotte arsonists can continue to have access to xenophobic pseudo-education, and, oh yes, guns, guns, and more guns.

Perhaps they understood what rapper-turned-actor Ice-T was saying in his song “Lethal Weapon”: My lethal weapon is my mind. In that regard, our enemies want to keep us disarmed, while providing more and more ammunition to those who will ultimately bring even their own way of life to destruction.

The African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) has today (May 5, 2015) released a new report titled “Profiting from the Climate Crisis; Undermining Resilience: Gates and Monsanto’s Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project”. The report condemns the Gates Foundation and Monsanto’s WEMA project as nothing more than corporate “green washing,” designed to ensnare smallholder farmers into adopting hybrid and genetically modified (GM) maize in order to benefit seed and agro-chemical companies.

The WEMA project is being hailed as a ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’ (CSA) success story responding to the climate crises facing Africa.  However, according to the ACB report, the WEMA project under the guise of philanthropy and fighting climate change, rather sits at the apex of efforts to completely transform African agricultural systems by exploiting decades-long public breeding in the public interest, and shifting ownership of maize breeding, seed production and marketing almost exclusively to the private sector.

The ostensible goal of the WEMA project is to produce GM and conventional hybrid drought-tolerant maize varieties for smallholder farmers in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). WEMA is being heavily funded (a whopping US$ 85 million so far) by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and USAID. Its key partners include Monsanto, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) and the national agriculture research institutions (NARS) in each WEMA country, namely, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique and Uganda.

According to Director of ACB, Mariam Mayet, “the fact that the WEMA project is being touted as a CSA case study is a shocking indication of how much ground has been lost to multinational agribusiness in the climate policy space in Africa and internationally.”

Eike Zaumseil, climate-expert of Bread for the World, adds: “The WEMA case justifies the fears of civil society that climate-smart agriculture provides a dangerous platform for corporations to implement industrial agriculture. Yet there is overwhelming evidence that industrial agriculture is destructive to people, biodiversity, seed, water, soils, and the climate. Cynically, farmers are encouraged to adopt unpredictable GM-monocultures, while abandoning their most valuable climate-asset, which is their traditional seed diversity.”

WEMA’s partners have made their best maize germplasm lines available to the project, with Monsanto ‘donating’ the drought-tolerant gene while retaining complicated intellectual property rights on it. Much of the germplasm from CIMMYT is the result of another Gates funded initiative, the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project. WEMA’s implementing partner is the industry backed African Agricultural Technology Agency (AATF).

According to Mayet, “the WEMA model will reach only a select subsidized layer of small-scale farmers.  Further, the costs and technical requirements of both GM and hybrid seed production, currently beyond the reach of small African seed companies, will inevitably lead to industry concentration; enabling multinational agrochemical/quasi seed companies including and especially Monsanto, to dominate.”

The report also argues that Monsanto’s GM drought tolerant maize is likely to spell disaster for smallholder farmers as this will not perform predictably under conditions of environmental stress – ironically – exactly the kind of conditions it is meant to thrive in. According to Gareth Jones, the author of the paper, “The inclusion of Monsanto’s highly compromised and controversial insect resistant GM maize MON810 into the WEMA project is astounding given that this variety has already dismally failed both commercial and smallholder farmers in South Africa. ”

The Gates Foundation is playing a central role in the Green Revolution push in Africa. Aside from the US$85 million given to the WEMA project, it has also put around US$720 million into the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (of which CIMMYT is a member), close to US$ 100 million into the AATF, while many of the seed companies involved in WEMA have received support from the Foundation’s flagship project, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

The report calls on the Gates Foundation and other donors such as USAID, DfID, SIDA, and DANIDA to shift their funding streams away from these catastrophic Green Revolution interventions to genuine solutions that promote diversified and participatory research agendas, reflecting the plurality of agro-ecological conditions found throughout Africa.

Contacts:
Mariam Mayet: Tel: + 27 (0)83 269 4309
e-mail: Mariam@acbio.org.za
Gareth Jones:    Tel: +27 (0) 11 486 2750 / +27 (0) 81 493 4323
e-mail:  gareth@acbio.org.za
Eike Zaumseil: Tel: +49 (0)30 65211-1851
e-mail: eike.zaumseil@brot-fuer-die-welt.de

The City of Baltimore is currently undergoing a serious crisis.  The brutal police killing of Freddie Gray, in which his neck was apparently broken during or immediately after his arrest (for the crime of running away from police, of all things) has ignited first an assertive but peaceful protest on Saturday, April 25, and then a much more confrontational afternoon on Monday, April 27, which resulted in looting, several fires set and a number of assaults, finally leading to the establishment of a state of emergency and a 10pm curfew as the Maryland National Guard was called in.  Meanwhile, the family of Freddie Gray has pleaded for calm as spiritual leaders and community organizers are each working in their own way to try to re-establish an environment of safety and trust for our people, even in the face of an enraged populace, a small but momentarily-active group of looting opportunists and an authoritarian police crackdown.

By now, we have all seen the constant media reports replete with hand-wringing by often-judgmental news anchors and commentators making unwarranted comparisons to the riots that swept the nation in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.  Anyone in the media (and there apparently are many) who claims to be confused as to why things have escalated like this is either oblivious of history, not paying attention or simply dishonest.  From Rodney King to Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown, the people’s anger will erupt into spontaneous violence when they become convinced that “non-violent civil disobedience” and “peaceful protest” will not be heeded.  And the history suggests that when we are civilized the powers that be don’t listen to us until our collective rage erupts.  Something similar is happening here.

The family of Freddie Gray and the people of this city need healing, but most of all we need justice and change, and the lack of that justice and real change, over the decades of school closings, recreation center closings, library closings, cuts to essential services and regular acts of police brutality has contributed to this current crisis in the City that many Pan-Afrikan activists have named after Harriet Tubman.

This Wednesday evening at Fire Station One in Silver Spring, Maryland, Wambara Live will discuss the current situation in Baltimore in an “open-mic” format; we are inviting people to come and share your thoughts.  6pm – 9pm is discussion and networking, with live music from 9pm – 10pm.  Free admission.  The event is at Fire Station One, 8131 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring.  For more info, check out our Community Calendar or send me an email at cliff@kuumbareport.com.

As for making real change, it’s long past time we who like to call ourselves “community organizers and activists” finally realize that none of us are up to that task alone.  Our individual organizations do not have nearly enough man/womanpower to heal this city and restore Justice and Ma’at alone.  It is long past time for us to get serious about establishing a Cooperative Coalition of Pan-Afrikan Organizations, if not a full-blown Pan-Afrikan United Front.  I hope at least some of us will take the opportunity presented by the Ujima Peoples Progress Party (UPP) Conference this Saturday, May 2 at Coppin State College in Baltimore (8:30am to 5:00pm; www.uppmaryland.org; 443-826-9654 for more information) to begin to form such a Cooperative Coalition.  It starts with all of us choosing to leave our silos, our “comfort zones”, and sit at the table together to plan how we will make the Pan-Afrikan Unity we all claim to support a reality at long last.

Bro. Cliff
Editor, KUUMBAReport Online
Maryland State Facilitator, Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (http://www.srdcinternational.org)

Wadiya Jamal, April 5, 2015

Enough is enough!!! Today is my birthday. April 24 is Mumia’s 61st birthday. But today my husband is in critical condition in a cell in the infirmary at SCI Mahanoy. We need Mumia free and home!!!

This rotten ass system has made many attempts on my husband’s life when his only crime is that on December 9, 1981 he survived a cop’s gunshot to the chest through his lungs to the liver, a serious ass whipping by cops on the street of 13th and Locust, then cops surrounding his hospital bed stepping on his urine bag making the poison go back up into his body.

He is innocent in the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner and the cops on the scene all knew that. But Mumia was convicted for a murder he did not commit and sentenced to death.

For over 30 years my husband was on death row in solitary confinement!!! where he was caged 24 hours a day, in his cell and even when outside. In general population these past three years, he has yet to receive his correct diet,!!!  He developed a skin disease that spread over his whole body, treated with wrong medicine that he was allergic to, had pneumonia and last Monday, March 30, he went into diabetic shock with a blood sugar level of a deadly high of 779 and rushed to the hospital and put into the ICU on an insulin drip.

During these years on death row and now slow death row, Mumia has lost his mother, his sister, a brother, our brother Jahlani, my mother, my father, and our baby girl Goldii who was very active in trying to free him ’til the end of her life. Every single one of them expected to see him come home a free man, because like us all they believe in his innocence. May Allah bless and have mercy on their sweet souls!!!!

The prison didn’t even let me know my husband had been rushed to the hospital and put into the ICU.  I was told by Rachel Wolkenstein and then I called to find out what happened and where Mumia was taken. And then the prison blocked my visit at the hospital until the international campaign flooded the prison and PA Department of Corrections with protest calls.  Guards stood outside the hospital room and one was inside the room with Mumia. I was shocked at his condition, he had lost over 40 pounds, was weak, barely able to sit up and keep his head up, handcuffed to his chair, with labored breathing, and dry mouth. I told him about all the love outpouring for him and that the world is watching!!!

News media waited outside the hospital for our report after Mumia’s brother Keith Cook and I visited Mumia. It took all my strength and the memory of our daughter Goldii for me to be able to speak to the press after seeing my very ill, weak husband. The press did report Mumia’s serious medical condition … But the press wouldn’t report my statement that Mumia is innocent, he should never have been arrested or convicted!!! He should never have been in prison. This medical condition should never have happened. Mumia needs to be free!!!

The prison Superintendent promised that Keith and I and other family members would be able to visit Mumia again the next day, Wednesday. But when we arrived for the visit, we were refused, with the new “Mumia rule” that a person could have only one visit a week with a prisoner. After more protests, the prison allowed Mumia’s eldest son, Jamal Hart, who had driven over 400 miles, and his younger brother, Bill Cook to visit. They described Mumia as in worse condition than he was the day before. Jamal came out, saying, “I couldn’t stand there and watch my father in pain. I kissed and hugged him and left.”

Jamal and I had medical consults with the attending doctors and the ICU nurse. They described my husband’s arrival in the ICU with a blood sugar level of 779, an abnormal kidney, and dangerously high sodium levels. They had Mumia on an insulin drip and later tested him for gallstones, which they found he had. When asked, the hospital admitted that they didn’t have a diabetes specialist. That morning (Wednesday) his blood sugar level was still a very high 333. The attending doctor told us they needed his bed in the ICU for other patients. But the kidney doctor said that he would check my husband the next morning as to whether his kidney function was normal.

Yet, just a few hours later, without letting us know, Mumia was sent back to the prison, without an expert medical diagnosis or a treatment plan or his sugar levels under control. He was transferred back to the prison infirmary with a temperature of 102 degrees, to the same people who knew for weeks and didn’t treat his  “new onset diabetes” before he collapsed and went into diabetic shock.

This is execution by medical neglect and mistreatment.

On Thursday, April 2, I spoke with the Chief Health Care Administrator at SCI Mahanoy who gave me a report and said that I could call and get medical updates on Mumia’s health day or night. But from my first call late Thursday night through this weekend, my attempts to reach the infirmary were blocked.

On Friday, April 3, some family and friends were able to visit Mumia. Instead of allowing visits in the infirmary, they had Mumia brought down to the general visiting room in a wheelchair. He had to go through security checks between the infirmary and the visiting area, meaning taking his clothes on and off and a body search.

His brother Keith Cook, who had seen Mumia on Tuesday said Mumia appeared worse. My sister, Rachel Wolkenstein, said Mumia appeared very sick, and was so weak he was barely able to hold a pen to sign a legal document. Mumia told those visiting, also including Mike Africa, Abdul John and Johanna Fernandez, that his morning blood sugar was 186 and spiked again to around 330 after a lunch of spaghetti! Mumia was very tired but alert and asked about the court hearing on the “Silencing Act” went and whether there was a decision yet.

We have no new information on Mumia’s condition. Pam Africa and Johanna Fernandez are attempting to visit him Monday, April 6. I will be visiting on Thursday.

Diabetes is a deadly disease. My mother had diabetes. It requires constant care and healthy food. It can lead to loss of eyesight, nerve damage, amputation and loss of kidney function. Mumia has had problems with his feet and leg for years, also not adequately treated.

Send your letters and cards with love and news to Mumia. His address is: Mumia Abu-Jamal, #AM 8335, SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Dr., Frackville, PA 17932.

To all those people around the world who have stated their love and support for Mumia over the years, please, please, please ACT NOW!!!!

MUMIA MUST LIVE!!!! . HE NEEDS MEDICAL CARE AND ATTENTION. WE NEED TO FIGHT FOR HIM TO GET THAT CARE NOW. BUT WE NEED TO FIGHT TO GET MUMIA OUT OF PRISON, FREE AND HOME, NOW!!!

Wadiya Jamal, with Big Pride

Send your message back to me via my Facebook “in box” at:

www. Facebook.com/WadiyaJamal

Write to me at: Wadiya Jamal, PO Box 19404, Kingsessing Station, Philadelphia, Pa. 19143-9998

WE NEED TO KEEP UP THE PRESSURE.

Let SCI Mahanoy Superintendent John Kerestes and Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel know we insist that Mumia have a diabetes specialist examine and treat him.

SCI Mahanoy
Superintendent John Kerestes
(570) 773-2158

SCI Mahanoy
Chief Health Care Administrator Steinhardt
(570) 773-2158

Christopher Oppman
Director, PA Department of Corrections Health Care Services
(717) 728-5309

John Wetzel
Secretary, PA Department of Corrections
(717) 728-4109

Support and Contribute to the Indiegogo online campaign to raise money to help pay from the legal and medical campaign for Mumia, including costs for Mumia’s family, friends and core organizers to travel to see Mumia.

“My father is still considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear, there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his conviction.

“He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the minds of the people.”

—Samiya (Goldii) Jamal, Mumia’s Daughter

Is there a Plot to Take Over Afrika’s Food Supply?

The following Press Release comes from the Community Alliance for Global Justice in Seattle, Washington.  It was forwarded to us by the Justice Initiative out of Atlanta, Georgia.  This Press Release details a meeting that was reportedly held in London, England on Monday, March 23 between representatives of the Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  If the reports are correct, they indicate that plans are being made to engineer the privatization and corporate takeover of Afrika’s food supply through the privatization of its seeds.  We hope to find out more information about the protests that were held on March 23 in Seattle and London.  For more background on this issue, see our article Seeds of Suspicion on this Website, and the related articles on Black Land Loss (including the BFAA Land Loss Summit) here and also on the Website of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, http://www.bfaa-us.org.  And as we learn more about this and related issues, we will make this information available.

JUSTICE INITIATIVE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – March 23, 2015
For further information and a link to source documents, Contact: Heather Day, Executive Director, Community Alliance for Global Justice, heather@seattleglobaljustice.org

Gates Foundation Plots from Profiting from Africa‘s Seed Systems
Simultaneous Demonstrations in London and Seattle

SEATTLE, WA – Today, Monday, March 23, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are sponsoring a secret meeting in London to promote a recent report detailing in clear terms how to privatize the seed and agricultural markets of Africa–without African stakeholders having a seat at the table.

The meeting is being criticized for including corporations, development bodies, trade bodies and aid donors, yet excluding any African farmers or representatives of affected organizations. Today protesters on both sides of the Atlantic are picketing to protest the corporate capture of seed, and to urge the foundation to support African food sovereignty. Both in London and Seattle protesters will distribute open-pollinated seeds as a symbol of the alternative to the corporate model promoted by USAID and BMGF. (The Seattle protest will take place 8:30 – 10:00am.)

The London meeting will discuss a study produced by Monitor-Deloitte which was commissioned by the Gates Foundation and USAID. BMGF is a major sponsor of the commercialization of agriculture in Africa including through its subsidiary the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Working with USAID, this commercial agenda extends US foreign policy into Africa on behalf of corporate interests, threatening the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers who rely on recycling seed for their livelihoods.

Phil Bereano, food sovereignty campaigner with AGRA Watch and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington said, “This is an extension of what the Gates Foundation has been doing for several years – working with the US government and agribusiness giants like Monsanto to corporatize Africa’s genetic riches for the benefit of outsiders. Don’t Bill and Melinda realize that such colonialism is no longer in fashion? It’s time to support African farmers’ self-determination.”

The goal of the Monitor-Deloitte study is to develop models for commercialization of seed production in Africa, especially “early generation seed”, and to identify ways in which the African governmental sectors could facilitate private involvement in African seed systems. The study was conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia on maize, rice, sorghum, cowpea, common beans, cassava and sweet potato.

The report exposes a typical approach of private sector “cherry picking”, where private companies identify any profitable public activities for their own involvement. While complaining incessantly about “heavy state involvement” they still insist on such involvement for unprofitable activities and permitting the private sector to take the profitable activities.

The Monitor-Deloitte report uses cowpea production in Ghana as an example of where the public sector should carry the extremely expensive improved cowpea breeder seed costs to allow the private sector to profit in seed multiplication and distribution. Breeder seed is prohibitively costly because of low multiplication rates and low demand. But the demand that exists is nonetheless lucrative, so the private sector wants to be involved only in the parts of the production process identified as profitable. Where the whole chain is profitable, such as hybrid maize or in closed value chains where there is strong but limited demand and early production processes are also potentially profitable, for example hybrid sorghum for brewing, Deloitte proposes the public sector be locked out of the production process.

Although historically, in Africa and around the world, farmers have been the traditional developers and distributors of improved seeds, the report does not even consider a potential role for farmers in the production or distribution of seed. Indeed farmers are viewed only as passive consumers of seed produced elsewhere.

The meeting in London and the focus of the report expose the agendas of the BMGF and USAID to enable private interests to profit from essential life processes in African agriculture.

Mariam Mayet, Director of the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) in South Africa said: “ACB insists that an equitable and sustainable solution to seed production and distribution can only come from direct engagement with farmers and their organizations to ensure their active involvement in these activities. We further insist that public-farmer partnerships to improve seed that integrates farmer and scientific knowledge will generate a more accountable process, and produce longer-lasting and more meaningful solutions for African agricultural production, than these profit-driven, exclusive and narrow processes.”

AGRA Watch is a grassroots, Seattle-based program of Community Alliance for Global Justice, challenging the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations’ questionable agricultural programs in Africa, including its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).