Afro, sometimes shortened to 'fro and also known as a "natural", is a hairstyle worn naturally by people with lengthy kinky hair texture or specifically styled in such a fashion by individuals with naturally curly or straight hair.[1][2] The hairstyle is created by combing the hair away from the scalp, allowing the hair to extend out from the head in a large, rounded shape, much like a halo, cloud or ball.[1][2][3][4][5]

In persons with naturally curly or straight hair, the hairstyle is typically created with the help of creams, gels or other solidifying liquids to hold the hair in place. Particularly popular in the African-American community of the late 1960s,[3][5] the hairstyle is often shaped and maintained with the assistance of a wide-toothed comb colloquially known as an afro pick.[2][3][4]

In the 1860s, a style similar to the Afro was worn by the Circassian beauties, sometimes known as "Moss-haired girls", a group of women exhibited in sideshow attractions in the United States by P. T. Barnum and others. These women were claimed to be from the Circassian people in the Northern Caucasus region, and were marketed to White audiences captivated by the "exotic East" as pure examples of the Caucasian race who were kept as sexual slaves in Turkish harems.[6][7] It has been argued that this portrayal of a Caucasian woman as a rescued slave during the American Civil War played on the racial connotations of slavery at the time so that the distinctive hairstyle affiliates the side-show white Circassian with black African-American identity, and thus:[6]

resonates oddly yet resoundingly with the rest of her identifying significations: her racial purity, her sexual enslavement, her position as colonial subject; her beauty. The Circassian blended elements of white Victorian True Womanhood with traits of the enslaved African American woman in one curiosity.

African-American hairstyles prior to the 1960s[edit]

During the history of slavery in the United States, most black African-Americans styled their hair in an attempt to mimic the styles of the predominantly white society in which they lived.[2][8] Afro-textured hair, characterized by its tight kinks, has been described as being kinky, coarse, cottony, nappy, or woolly.[8][9] These characteristics represented the antithesis of the European American standard of beauty, and led to a negative view of kinky hair. As a result, the practice of straightening gained popularity among black African-Americans.[8]

The process of straightening the hair often involved applying caustic substances, such as relaxers containing lye, which needed to be applied by an experienced hairstylist so as to avoid burning the scalp and ears.[3] In the late 1890s/early 1900s, Madam C. J. Walker also popularized the use of the hot comb in the United States.[8][9] Those who chose not to artificially treat their hair would often opt to style it into tight braids or cornrows.[8] With all of these hairstyling methods, if done improperly, one ran the risk of damaging the hair shaft, sometimes resulting in hair loss.[10]

1960s and '70s[edit]

An Ashanti Comb, an example of an Afro pick.

Angela Davis (center, no glasses) enters Royce Hall at UCLA for her first philosophy lecture in October 1969.

The effect of the African-American Civil Rights Movement brought a renewed sense of identity to the black African-American community which also resulted in a redefinition of personal style that included an appreciation of black beauty and aesthetics, as embodied by the "Black is beautiful" movement.[9][11] This cultural movement marked a return to more natural, untreated hairstyles. The Afro became a powerful political symbol which reflected black pride and a rejection of notions of assimilation and integration—not unlike the long and untreated hair sported by the mainly White hippies.[2][8][9]

To some black African-Americans, the Afro also represented a reconstitutive link to West Africa and Central Africa.[3] However, some critics have suggested that the Afro hairstyle is not particularly African:[3][12] In his book Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, cultural critic Kobena Mercer argued that the contemporary African society of the mid-20th century did not consider either hairstyle to denote any particular "Africanness"; conversely, some Africans felt that these styles signified "First-worldness".[3]

Similarly, Brackette F. Williams stated in her book Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle that African nationalists were irritated by the Afro's adoption by African Americans as a symbol of their African heritage; they saw this trend as an example of Western arrogance.[13]

The Afro was adopted by both men and women and was a hairstyle that was easier to maintain by oneself, without requiring frequent and sometimes costly visits to the hairstylist as was often experienced by people who chose to braid, straighten or relax their hair. Due to the kinky pattern prominent in Afro-textured hair, as it grows longer it has a tendency to extend outward from the head, resulting in a domelike hairstyle which is easily molded and sculpted into the desired shape.[2][9] While the Afro was a much less invasive and time consuming hairstyle choice for many black African-Americans, some chose to achieve a bushier version of the Afro by backcombing or teasing the hair, a practice which can result in damage to the hair and scalp.[1][5]

In the mid-1960s, the Afro hairstyle began in a fairly tightly coiffed form, such as the hairstyle that became popular among members of the Black Panther Party. As the 1960s progressed towards the 1970s, popular hairstyles, both within and outside of the black African-American community, became longer and longer.[1] As a result, the late 60s/early 70s saw an expansion in the overall size of Afros.[1] Some of the entertainers and sociopolitical figures of the time known for wearing larger afros include political activist Angela Davis, actress Pam Grier, rock musician Jimi Hendrix, and the members of the musical groups The Jackson 5 and The Supremes.[4]

A little girl wearing a hairstyle of several sections of hair bound with elastics, a style called afro puffs

In contrast, the Afro's popularity among black African-Americans had already started to wane by the early 1970s;[1][5] the introduction of the Afro to the mainstream and its adoption by people of non-African descent caused the Afro to lose its radical, political edge.[2] The 1970s saw an increase in the popularity of braided hairstyles such as cornrows among both sexes of African-Americans.

1990s and 2000s[edit]

The Afro saw popular resurgences in both the 1990s and 2000s.[4][11] These Afros would take varied forms—some incorporating elements such as braids, beads or twists—as well as various sizes—from close-cropped natural hairstyles all the way to expansive Afro wigs.[11]

Some African-Americans who have been known for wearing Afros or Afro wigs during these two decades include NBA basketball players Ben Wallace, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Beasley, as well as musicians Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Macy Gray, Ludacris, Questlove, Cindy Blackman, Wiz Khalifa, and Lenny Kravitz. Beyoncé Knowles also donned a large Afro wig for her role as Foxxy Cleopatra in the 2002 film Austin Powers in Goldmember

What happened to Black Wall Street on June 1, 1921?

February 9, 2011

3.1K

A child rescuer on June 1, 1921 – with Whites out to kill them, Blacks could rely on no one but each other.

Black Wall Street, the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious Whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving Black business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering – a model community destroyed and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.

The night’s carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected, the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials and many other sympathizers.

Black America’s most prosperous community, Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, went up in flames June 1, 1921, in the KKK-led Tulsa Race Riot. According to Wikipedia, “During the 16 hours of the assault, over 800 people were admitted to local hospitals with injuries, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire caused by bombing.”

The best description of Black Wall Street, or Little Africa as it was also known, would be to compare it to a mini Beverly Hills. It was the golden door of the Black community during the early 1900s, and it proved that African Americans could create a successful infrastructure. That’s what Black Wall Street was all about.

The dollar circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the community. Now a dollar leaves the Black community in 15 minutes. As for resources, there were Ph.D.s residing in Little Africa, Black attorneys and doctors. One doctor was Dr. Berry, who owned the bus system. His average income was $500 a day, hefty pocket change in 1910.

These are Black-built, Black-owned buildings that were occupied by bustling Black businesses before envious whites rioted and destroyed them.

It was a time when the entire state of Oklahoma had only two airports, yet six Blacks owned their own planes. It was a very fascinating community.

The mainstay of the community was to educate every child. Nepotism was the one word they believed in. And that’s what we need to get back to. The main thoroughfare was Greenwood Avenue, and it was intersected by Archer and Pine Streets. From the first letters in each of those three names you get G.A.P. And that’s where the renowned R&B music group the GAP Band got its name. They’re from Tulsa.

At the end of the day, June 1, 1921, this is what remained of Black Wall Street. Lost forever were over 600 successful businesses, including 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, two movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and a bus system.

Black Wall Street was a prime example of the typical Black community in America that did business, but it was in an unusual location. You see, at the time, Oklahoma was set aside to be a Black and Indian state. There were over 28 Black townships there. One third of the people who traveled in the terrifying “Trail of Tears” alongside the Indians between 1830 and 1842 were Black people. The citizens of this proposed Indian and Black state chose a Black governor, a treasurer from Kansas named McDade. But the Ku Klux Klan said that if he assumed office that they would kill him within 48 hours.

Here, the businesses that had been the economic engine of this most prosperous Black community in the U.S. are identified.

A lot of Blacks owned farmland, and many of them had gone into the oil business.

The community was so tight and wealthy because they traded dollars hand to hand and because they were dependent upon one another as a result of the Jim Crow laws. It was not unusual that if a resident’s home accidentally burned down, it could be rebuilt within a few weeks by neighbors. This was the type of scenario that was going on day to day on Black Wall Street.

When Blacks intermarried into the Indian culture, some of them received their promised “40 acres and a mule” and with that came whatever oil was later found on the properties. On Black Wall Street, a lot of global business was conducted.

The community flourished from the early 1900s until June 1, 1921. That’s when the largest massacre of nonmilitary Americans in the history of this country took place, and it was led by the Ku Klux Klan. Imagine walking out of your front door and seeing 1,500 homes being burned. It must have been amazing.

Survivors we interviewed think that the whole thing was planned, because during the time that all of this was going on, White families with their children stood around the borders of their community and watched the massacre – the looting and everything – much in the same manner they would watch a lynching. The riots weren’t caused by anything Black or White. They were caused by jealousy.

Almost 1,500 homes were also destroyed in the 35 blocks that went up in flames and over 3,000 Black residents murdered by the Ku Klux Klan-led Tulsa Race Riot.

A lot of White folks had come back from World War I and they were poor. When they looked over into the Black communities and realized that Black men who fought in the war had come home heroes, that helped trigger the destruction. It cost the Black community everything, and not a single dime of restitution – no insurance claims – has been awarded the victims to this day. Nonetheless, they rebuilt.

We estimate 1,500 to 3,000 people were killed, and we know that a lot of them were buried in mass graves all around the city. Some were thrown into the river. As a matter of fact, at 21st Street and Yale Avenue, where there now stands a Sears parking lot, that corner used to be a coal mine. They threw a lot of the bodies into the shafts.

‘The gun went off, the riot was on’

[excerpts from a CNN report]

On the night of May 31,1921, mobs called for the lynching of Dick Rowland, a Black man who shined shoes, after hearing reports that on the previous day he had assaulted Sarah Page, a White woman, in the elevator she operated in a downtown building.

So determined were whites in Tulsa to wipe out all evidence of Blacks’ prosperity and achievement despite impossible odds, they used airplanes to firebomb Black Wall Street from the air.

A local newspaper had printed a fabricated story that Rowland tried to rape Page. In an editorial, the same newspaper said a hanging was planned for that night. As groups of both Blacks and Whites converged on the Tulsa Courthouse, a White man in the crowd confronted an armed Black man, a war veteran, who had joined with other Blacks to protect Rowland.

Eddie Faye Gates, a member of the Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed several years ago to determine exactly what happened, told CNN what happened next.

“This White man,” she said, asked the Black man, “What are you doing with this gun?” “I’m going to use it if I have to,” the Black man said, according to Gates, “and (the White man) said, ‘No, you’re not. Give it to me,’ and he tried to take it. The gun went off, the White man was dead, the riot was on.”

Truckloads of Whites set fires and shot Blacks on sight. When the smoke lifted the next day, more than 1,400 homes and businesses in Tulsa’s Greenwood District, a prosperous area known as the “Black Wall Street,” lay in ruins. Today, only a single block of the original buildings remains standing in the area. Experts now estimate that at least 3,000 died.

‘We’re in a heck of a lot of trouble’

Beulah Smith was 14 years old the night of the riot. A neighbor named Frenchie came pounding on her family’s door in a Tulsa neighborhood known as “Little Africa” that also went up in flames.

As fires set by white rioters raged, claiming all they held dear, Black men who fought back to protect their families, homes and businesses were arrested and killed. There were outnumbered 10 to one. Here, a white man with a shotgun guards the body of a Black man and several prisoners outside Tulsa’s Convention Hall.

“Get your families out of here because they’re killing Niggers uptown,” she remembers Frenchie saying. “We hid in the weeds in the hog pen,” Smith told CNN.

People in a mob that came to Kenny Booker’s house asked, “Nigger, do you have a gun?” he told CNN. Booker, then a teenager, hid with his family in their attic until the home was torched. “When we got downstairs, things were burning. My sister asked me, ‘Kenny, is the world on fire?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, but we’re in a heck of a lot of trouble, baby.’”

Another riot survivor, Ruth Avery, who was 7 at the time, gives an account matched by others who told of bombs dropped from small airplanes passing overhead.

The explosive devices may have been dynamite or Molotov cocktails – gasoline-filled bottles set afire and thrown as grenades. “They’d throw it down and when it’d hit, it would burst into flames,” Avery said.

Only a single block remains of the 1,400 homes and businesses that made up the area known as Black Wall Street.

Unmarked graves

Many of the survivors mentioned bodies were stacked like cord wood, says Richard Warner of the Tulsa Historical Society.

Survivors search the ruins of their homes for anything they can salvage. To this day, no insurance claims nor any restitution has been paid.

In its search for the facts, the commission has literally been trying to dig up the truth.

Two headstones at Tulsa’s Oaklawn Cemetery indicate that riot victims are buried there. In an effort to determine how many, archeological experts used ground-piercing radar and other equipment to test the soil in a search for unmarked graves.

The test picked up indications that hundreds of people have been buried in an area just outside the cemetery.

Editor’s note: The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed in 1997 to determine exactly what happened and what should be done now, delivered its final report in 2001, calling for substantial restitution. “In June 2001,” according to Wikipedia, “the Oklahoma state legislature passed the ‘1921 Tulsa Race Riot Reconciliation Act.’ While falling short of the commission’s recommendations, it provided for more than 300 college scholarships for descendants of Greenwood residents, mandated the creation of a memorial to those who died in the riot, and called for new efforts to promote economic development in Greenwood. A documentary, “Before They Die!” has been made about the survivors and their quest for justice. It chronicles efforts in Oklahoma to gain reparations for the survivors. And watch the video “One Day in May!” at www.BeforeTheyDieMovie.com.

This story comes from the Ujamaa Network, which can be reached at [email protected] They add these words of wisdom: “We must buy from ourselves in order to re-circulate Black dollars. If we want our dollars to return, we must spend them within our own community. 2011 will be our year if we decide it will be. Make a commitment to yourself to do as much of your spending within our community as possible.”

More about the electromagnetic spectrum!!!

The Electromagnetic Spectrum: All Sorts of Light!

So, melanin recessive people (yurugu) can only interact with a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the visual light section. However, melanin dominant people, can interact with more sections. Afrikans or eumelinated persons in particular can interact with the ENTIRE electromagnetic spectrum!! So, what does that mean?

It means that we are DIVINE and can do more and be more than who and what we are now. Also, yurugu knows this information very well!

Anthony Browder: The Mysteries of Melanin 

Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 03:37AM

 From the book, "From the Browder File. 22 Essays on the African American Experience" by Anthony T. Browder. Published by the Institute of Karmic Guidance in 2000. Available [HERE] 

The first people to inhabit the Earth were Africans, with blue-black skin, who lived on the equator. These Africans had high concentrations of melanin in their skin which served to screen out the harmful ultraviolet light from the sun. In the African brain, a melanin hormone is secreted which is the essence of what we now call soul.

The more melanin there is in the skin, the darker it is and the less it ages from sunlight exposure. Scientifically speaking, black skin is 100 percent more efficient in screening out harmful ultraviolet light than white skin.

It is because of a lack of melanin and the deterioration of the ozone that whites are now warned to avoid exposure to sunlight. It has also been shown that both herpes and the AIDS virus are activated by ultraviolet light.

Think about it; the sun is the life giver; but for people who lack melanin, the sun means death. This black, light-absorbing molecule called melanin is recognized as one of the primary keys of life. Melanin is what makes people human. Melanin connects people to the creative forces of the universe.

Melanin has been found in the oceans, the soil and our food, particularly bananas, eggplants and greens. Melanin is present in clouds and stars, and it has even been discovered on the outer surface of Haley's comet. Melanin has been found to be active in unearthed bones which were over a million years old.

As ever-present as melanin is, it still remains a mystery to scientists. It cannot be analyzed. lt cannot be broken apart. It cannot be fingerprinted.

Melanin is influenced by the electromagnetic field of the Earth, by light waves and sound vibrations. Because of its magnetic properties, people with higher concentrations of melanin in their bodies are more in tune with nature.

We witness the power of melanin whenever we see African Americans performing on the football field, basketball court, at city hall, on television or in the theater. It’s been said that blacks have to be twice as good as whites in order to compete with them. For blacks, melanin is the equalizer.

Melanin has been found to be a primary component in the creation and maintenance of the human race. In addition to the numerous physiological influences melanin has on the body research now shows a definite relationship between melanin and spiritual awareness.

Historians Chancellor Williams and John Henrik Clarke have both stated that the African had a belief in the universality of God in all people. This allowed them to embrace the European as their brother, and grant him access to African soil, thereby setting up the conditions for the "Destruction of Black Civilizations. ”

Africans today are still suffering from this fatal error in judgment. However, two serious questions must be asked. "Why did the African see the European as a child of God?" and, "Why did the European see the African as a soulless savage?"

The answers can be found in an examination of the differences between these two races of people and the presence, in the Africans, of a melanin derived chemical substance called melatonin. Melatonin can be described as a mentally or morally stimulating hormone produced by the pineal gland. It allows an individual to experience higher levels of spiritual awareness.

Scientific research has shown that some 85 percent of people with high concentrations of melanin in their skin (i.e., Africans, Hispanics, Indians and other “people of color") produce melatonin, while only 15 percent of people lacking melanin (principally Europeans) produce this spiritually-inducing substance. The reason for this dramatic difference in melatonin production is that the pineal gland (which regulates the activities of other glands in the body) is found to be calcified and non functioning in people lacking substantial amounts of melanin. Could this be the reason why African Americans refer to each other as so brother and soul sister, eat soul food and listen to soul music? Soul certainly has a spiritual connotation.

Historically, most people of color possess this quality called soul. Most have developed a system of salvation (religion) which is based on ancestral worship. The essence of ancestral worship is necrornancy, communication with the dead.

How does one communicate with the dead? lt occurs naturally when you sleep. Every person alive has had a dream, at some time or another, in which they’ve spoken with a deceased relative or friend who offered them guidance or direction on problems they were facing. 

How is it possible to see in your dreams? How is it possible to with your two eyes closed? It is possible because when you sleep, you see with your "inner eye." In some traditions this "inner eye” is called the "third eye," the eye of clairvoyance. Other traditions refer to this eye as the pineal gland.

lt is when you are asleep that the pineal gland secretes the hormone melatonin (primarily during the hours of 2AM and 6AM) which literally bathes the brain, thus creating the chemical condition necessary for "inner vision" to take place.

The relationship between melatonin and spirituality is certainly nothing new. The revelations of the Bible, Torah, Koran and of the Buddha were all inspired by melanin-induced visions of people of color.

We cannot expect non-melaninated people to explain to us, or even understand something which they themselves do not possess. This is all the more reason why the annual melanin conferences are of the utmost importance to people of color.

As our knowledge of melanin increases, we will gain more insight into ourselves, both spiritually and physically. But the key is that the knowledge must come from us. We must develop the scientists, sociologists and institutions necessary to carry out the research to expand our understanding of melanin...the key to life.

        Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin, in February, 1818, near the town of Easton, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Separated from his mother when only a few weeks old he was raised by his grandparents. At about the age of six, his grandmother took him to the plantation of his master and left him there. Not being told by her that she was going to leave him, Douglass never recovered from the betrayal of the abandonment. When he was about eight he was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with Hugh and Sophia Auld, relatives of his master. It was shortly after his arrival that his new mistress taught him the alphabet. When her husband forbade her to continue her instruction, because it was unlawful to teach slaves how to read, Frederick took it upon himself to learn. He made the neighborhood boys his teachers, by giving away his food in exchange for lessons in reading and writing. At about the age of twelve or thirteen Douglass purchased a copy of The Columbian Orator, a popular schoolbook of the time, which helped him to gain an understanding and appreciation of the power of the spoken and the written word, as two of the most effective means by which to bring about permanent, positive change.
        Returning to the Eastern Shore, at approximately the age of fifteen, Douglass became a field hand, and experienced most of the horrifying conditions that plagued slaves during the 270 years of legalized slavery in America. But it was during this time that he had an encounter with the slavebreaker Edward Covey. Their fight ended in a draw, but the victory was Douglass', as his challenge to the slavebreaker restored his sense of self-worth. After an aborted escape attempt when he was about eighteen, he was sent back to Baltimore to live with the Auld family, and in early September, 1838, at the age of twenty, Douglass succeeded in escaping from slavery by impersonating a sailor.
        He went first to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he and his new wife Anna Murray began to raise a family. Whenever he could he attended abolitionist meetings, and, in October, 1841, after attending an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, Douglass became a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and a colleague of William Lloyd Garrison. This work led him into public speaking and writing. He published his own newspaper, The North Star, participated in the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, in 1848, and wrote three autobiographies. He was internationally recognized as an uncompromising abolitionist, indefatigable worker for justice and equal opportunity, and an unyielding defender of women's rights. He became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln, United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, Recorder of Deeds for Washington, D.C., and Minister-General to the Republic of Haiti. Frederick Douglass died late in the afternoon or early evening, of Tuesday, 20 February 1895, at his home in Anacostia, Washington, DC."


        Frederick Douglass sought to embody three keys for success in life:

• Believe in yourself.
• Take advantage of every opportunity.
• Use the power of spoken and written language to effect positive change for yourself and society.

        Douglass said, "What is possible for me is possible for you." By taking these keys and making them his own, Frederick Douglass created a life of honor, respect and success that he could never have dreamed of when still a boy on Colonel Lloyd's plantation on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Harriet Tubman

Image donated by Corbis - Bettmann.

© Jupiterimages Corporation

BIRTH DATE: c.1820. Because she was a slave, and owners did not record their slaves' birthdates, the exact date of Harriet's birth is unknown -- different accounts list 1820 or 1821.

BIRTH PLACE: Edward Brodas plantation near Bucktown, Dorchester County, Maryland.

EDUCATION: Because of her indentured status, Harriet was denied the opportunity for education -- leaving her illiterate her entire life. Slaveowners did not want their slaves to know how to read or write.

FAMILY BACKGROUND: Born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Harriet's ancestors had been brought to America in shackles from Africa during the first half of the 18th Century. Harriet was the 11th child born to Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene (slaves of Edward Brodas), her given name was Araminta and she was often called "Minty" as a child. But by the time she was an adult, she was calling herself Harriet.

As was the custom for many slaves, Harriet began working at an early age. When five years old, she was first sent away from home, "loaned out" to another plantation, checking muskrat traps in icy cold rivers. She quickly became too sick to work and was returned, malnourished and suffering from the cold exposure. Once she recovered, she was loaned out to another plantation, working as a nurse to the planter's infant child. By the age of 12, she was working as a field hand, plowing and hauling wood. At 13, while defending a fellow slave who tried to run away, her overseer struck her in the head with a two-pound weight. This resulted in recurring narcoleptic seizures, or sleeping spells, that plagued her the rest of her life.

In 1844, at about the age of 25, Harriet married John Tubman, a freeman. She gained permission to marry him from her owners and lived with him in his cabin, but she was required to continue working for her master. When Harriet told John of her dreams of one day gaining her freedom, he told her that she would never be free and, if she tried running away, he would turn her in. On one of her first return visits to Maryland, Harriet went to John's cabin in hopes of getting him to go north with her. She found that he had taken another wife. Later in 1869, she married Nelson Davis. She never had any children.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: The Biblical story of Exodus in which Moses freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom in Israel, saw repetition in the years before the Civil War when Harriet Tubman freed over 300 blacks from slavery in the South to freedom in the North. For her commendable work she herself was nicknamed "Moses."

Despite the hardships inflicted upon her and the unfairness of them, Harriet used her labors for self discipline and set for herself the goal of escaping to the North. She accomplished this goal in 1849, when alone and on foot she ran away from the plantation in the middle of the night and followed the north star to free land in Pennsylvania. It came about after her master died and she heard rumors that she and two of her brothers were to be sold to a chain gang. Her brothers left with her, but became scared, deciding not to take the risk, and so returned to the plantation. She traveled only at night, until she knew she had crossed the border between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states. She later said:

"I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything ... and I felt like I was in heaven."

Harriet had bravely won her freedom, but realizing how alone she was, she made a vow that she would help her family and friends win their freedom as well. She went to Philadelphia, found work cooking, laundering and scrubbing, and saved money to finance rescue trips. She became involved with the city's large and active abolitionist (anti-slavery) organizations and with organizers of the Underground Railroad, a secret network through which slaves were helped in escaping from bondage in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.

Using the Wilmington, Delaware, home of Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett (1789-1871) as a checkpoint, Harriet Tubman undertook some 20 hazardous missions in which she covertly journeyed down south, pinpointed slaves, and led them to freedom up north, at times going as far as Canada. In leading these flights, with a long rifle in hand, she warned her escapees that, if any of them even considered surrendering or returning, the penalty would be death. Her persuasiveness was evident in that never on any of her missions did she lose a "passenger" on the Underground Railroad.  In addition to her nickname "Moses," for her bravery Harriet was dubbed "General" Tubman by the militant abolitionist John Brown, with whom she worked in Canada.  William Still (who recorded activities of the Underground Railroad) described her as:

"a woman of no pretensions, indeed, a more ordinary specimen of humanity could hardly be found among the most unfortunate-looking farm hands of the South. Yet, in point of courage, shrewdness and disinterested exertions to rescue her fellow-men ... she was without her equal."

Her name quickly spread throughout the slave quarters and abolitionist societies. All this angered the Southern slaveholders, who offered $40,000 for her capture. But Harriet always evaded slavecatchers and would not quit, even when her illiteracy nearly got her caught when she fell asleep under her own wanted poster.  As for her family, Harriet successfully rescued her sister in 1850, her brother in 1851, her other three brothers in 1854, and her parents in 1857.  For her parents, she purchased a home in Auburn, New York, from Senator William H. Seward of New York, an advocate of hers.  In the 12 years from her escape in 1849 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad became the most dominant force of abolitionism.

Around 1858, Harriet teamed up with John Brown as he plotted a raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to raid the armory there, distribute weapons among slaves and instigate a rebellion. She helped him with fund-raising, and most likely would have participated in the raid had she not been ill. Even in one of her last interviews, in 1912, she referred to him as "my dearest friend."

During the Civil War (1861-1865), Harriet Tubman served with the Union Army as a cook, laundress, nurse, scout, and spy behind Confederate lines. In 1862, she moved to Beaufort, South Carolina (when it was occupied by the Union Army), and with several missionary teachers, helped hundreds of Sea Islander slaves transition from bondage to freedom. She also undertook scouting and spying missions, identifying potential targets for the Army, such as cotton stores and ammunition storage areas. The Boston Commonweath described her efforts in July 1863:

"Col. Montgomery and his gallant band of 800 black soldiers, under the guidance of a black woman, dashed in to the enemies' country ... destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton and lordly dwellings, and striking terror to the heart of rebeldom, brought off near 800 slaves and thousands of dollars worth of property."

In 1865, Harriet began caring for wounded black soldiers as the matron of the Colored Hospital at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. She continued helping others after the war. She raised money for freedmen's schools, helped destitute children and continued caring for her parents. In 1868, she transformed her family's home into the Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People. She also lobbied for educational opportunities for freedmen. She believed she had been called by God to help her people, and once told an interviewer:

"Now do you suppose he wanted me to do this just for a day, or a week? No! the Lord who told me to take care of my people meant me to do it just so long as I live, and so I do what he told me to do."

Also in 1868, Harriet began working on her autobiography with Sarah Hopkins Bradford, a white schoolteacher in Auburn, New York. It was published in 1868, then later under a revised title in 1886 (see below). In 1869, Harriet married Nelson Davis, a Union veteran half her age who had been a boarder at her house. He died of tuberculosis in 1888.

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Still not finished, Harriet took up the suffragist cause. In 1896, she was a delegate to the National Association of Colored Women's first annual convention. She believed the right to vote was vital to preserving their freedom. Around the turn of the century, she bought 25 acres of land near her home with money raised through benefactors and speaking engagements, and made arrangements for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to take over the Home. She had worked closely with this church since the 1850s. Through it, she had come to befriend Frederick Douglass, who had briefly published his abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, there.

In 1911, Harriet herself was welcomed into the Home. Upon hearing of her destitute condition, many women with whom she had worked in the NACW voted to provide her a lifelong monthly pension of $25. Living past ninety, Harriet Tubman died in Auburn on March 10, 1913. She was given a full military funeral and was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery. The women of the NACW also paid the funeral costs and purchased a marble headstone. One year later, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a memorial tablet at the front of the Cayuga County Courthouse. In 1944, Eleanor Roosevelt christened the Liberty Ship Harriet Tubman, and in 1995 the U.S. Postal Service honored her life with a postage stamp.

DATE OF DEATH: March 10, 1913.

PLACE OF DEATH: Auburn, New York.

Michelle Obama

Born in Chicago, Illinois on January 17, 1964, Michelle Robinson spent her childhood growing up in the city’s South Side. A product of humble beginnings (she identifies her parents as ‘working class’)1, her father, Fraser Robinson, worked as a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department, and her mother, Marian, stayed at home to care for her and her older brother Craig.  Education, in the Robinson household, was of the utmost importance and her parents encouraged her and her brother at every turn to improve themselves. She actively embraced her parent’s encouragements, and excelled at Princeton University, where she graduated Cum Laude in 1985, with a B.A. in Sociology.  Three years later, she earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1988.  Throughout her years in college, she was able to balance an exceptional career, in which she participated in political activities and advocated for minority rights on campus. She is the third First Lady to have received a post graduate degree, preceded only by Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush.

In 1988, she began work at Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin, where she would eventually meet Barack Obama, a year later in 1989. He worked as a summer associate, and she was assigned to be his advisor. Prior to their first date,he asked her out a few times, but she declined, finding the prospect too inappropriate. "I went to Harvard and he went to Harvard, and the firm thought, 'Oh, we'll hook these two people up,'" she said. "So, you know, there was a little intrigue, but I must say after about a month, Barack…asked me out, and I thought no way. This is completely tacky."2 It was only after a game of basketball with her brother that she finally agreed to go out on a date with him. In 1992 the couple married. Their first daughter, Malia, was born in 1998 and their second, Natasha (Sasha), in 2001.

Though she enjoyed much success at Sidley & Austin, Mrs. Obama discovered within herself, a great passion for both community building and community service, and in 1991, left the law firm to take a job with Chicago’s City Hall as the assistant commissioner of planning and development. Later, in 1993, she became the founding executive director of Chicago’s Chapter of Public Allies; an Americorps program that encourages volunteerism and service among youth. In 1996 she joined the University of Chicago community as the associate dean of student services where she developed social outreach programs.

Following her success in developing the University’s first community service program, she began work, in 2002, as its executive director of community relations and external affairs.  Three years later, she assumed the Vice Presidential position at the University’s Medical Center.  While there, she managed the business diversity program and was a member of six boards, including the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.3  Mrs. Obama continued her professional work at the University until 2007, when she redirected her focus to support her family and her husband’s bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination.4   

As first lady, Michelle Obama has followed closely in her predecessor’s footsteps and has taken special projects that reflect her core values, but above all she considers herself to be a mother to her daughters Sasha and Malia. Not losing sight of her role as a mother, she has focused a lot of her first lady energy on military families and women’s issues, particularly as they struggle to balance the notion of being a working mother.

Her outreach to military families has made her a powerful advocate inside the White House for the interests of millions of Americans who have fought for our country.  She realized that military spouses not only balance a career life and a home life, but they are also left anxious and struggling because their husbands or wives are overseas fighting and are often unsure of when or if they will return. By listening to the struggles of these families, Mrs. Obama not only relays the heart wrenching experiences back to the White House, but she also has the ability to impact a positive change for these families.

Piggybacking on the “Organic” movement, Mrs. Obama has also gone to great lengths to follow the benefits of eating organic. Her predecessors, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, made the first efforts to bring organic food into the White House by instructing their kitchen staff to only buy organic, but Mrs. Obama has taken these efforts to greater heights. Shortly after President Obama took office, she commissioned plans for an all organic garden to be planted on the South Lawn. Together with the students from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, DC, she planted a 1,100-square-foot all organic garden. As a means of pollination, she brought in long time White House carpenter Charlie Brandts to be the First Beekeeper.

As an advocate for some of her husband’s policies, Mrs. Obama is a frequent visitor to Cabinet and legislative events. Following the gender Pay Equity law that passed on Capitol Hill on January 29, 2009, she hosted a White House reception for women’s rights advocates in celebration of the event.

The facts of his life are well known. Haile Selassie's influence on the world is his most enduring legacy. Born Tafari Makonnen in 1891, Haile Selassie came to be identified inextricably with Ethiopia. Only rarely in the modern world does the story of a man become so closely linked to the story of a nation. It is said that great events beget great men, but they beget failures as well, and the boundary between the two is often defined by singular acts of courage. These the Ethiopian Emperor did not lack.

Not surprisingly, the fortitude of the man sometimes referred to as "The Lion" inspired Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and even Malcom X, each of whom corresponded with Haile Selassie --who advocated civil disobedience when it was necessary to remedy fundamental social injustice or restore freedom to the oppressed. The Emperor's presence at President Kennedy's funeral is still remembered. It seems somehow appropriate that the motion picture Born Free was filmed in Ethiopia during Haile Selassie's reign.

One speaks of leaders of men as though their public lives were completely divorced from their private ones. For a hereditary monarch, this should not be the case. What his children think of him is as important as what everybody else thinks. Haile Selassie was a devoted husband and father. His wife, Empress Menen, died in 1962. His sons, Sahle Selassie, Makonnen, and Asfa Wossen, had a great sense of duty to their father and to their people. Of his daughters, Princess Tenagne, in particular, excercised various official duties.

Haile Selassie ascended the throne in the era of polar exploration and slow communication. Africa's oldest nation was little more than a footnote to the great stories of the day --something that Americans and Brits read about in the pages of the National Geographic. Some people still called the country Abyssinia. In certain countries far beyond Ethiopia's borders, segregation and apartheid were long established and little questioned. Most other African "nations" were colonies. Even at home, slavery was technically still legal.

In such an era, words like "pan-Africanism" and "civil rights" were little more than esoteric philosophical notions entertained by an enlightened few. That a country as backward as Italy, whose widespread poverty prompted the emigration of millions, would seek to devour a nation like Ethiopia, was an irony too subtle to raise eyebrows outside the most sophisticated intellectual circles. With British backing, Haile Selassie returned to defeat the Italian army which, in the event, the Allies never viewed as much more than a nuisance. The British themselves considered the Ethiopian campaign in its strategic context --as a way to free the Red Sea from possible Axis control-- as much as the liberation of a sovereign nation. To the Ethiopians, it was as much a moral victory as a military one.

The Emperor's speech to the League of Nations denouncing the Italian invasion is remembered more than the aggression itself. It prompted essentially ineffectual international trade sanctions against a European nation but, like the Battle of Adwa four decades earlier, represented in a tangible way one of the few occasions in the modern era that an African nation defied the arrogance of a European one.

There were very few world leaders of the post-war era who had actually led troops in combat. Haile Selassie and Dwight Eisenhower were exceptional in this respect, which partially accounts for their close friendship.

Even when the foe is truly formidable, courage has a psychological side that has little to do with combat or physical victory. One may seem defeated materially without being defeated morally. Perhaps it's a question of confidence, values or knowledge. Haile Selassie's greatest strength was as a builder of bridges --across rivers but also between cultures. His travels took him to many countries, and he became one of the most popular heads of state, and one of the most decorated men in the world.

It was during one such voyage, in 1960, that he had to rush home to confront an attempted overthrow of the existing order. This perhaps served as a reminder that the most dangerous revolutions are found in one's own house. The sovereign who was once known as a reformer now found himself resented by many members of the very social class his economic and educational policies had helped to create. Internationally, however, his prestige did not suffer. The Emperor established the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, with a headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The revolution of 1974 was supported by outside forces, and while its roots were domestic, its covert objectives cannot be said to have been supported by more than a small fraction of Ethiopians. Truth be told, administrative practices which worked well in 1950 were terribly inefficient by the 1970s, and a series of problems were cited as a pretext for a full scale coup d'etat. Ethiopia's pre-industrial economy was no better prepared for Marxism than Russia's had been in 1917. Communism's ultimate social and economic failure, in Ethiopia as well as in Russia, certainly indicates democracy's superiority, whether that democracy is embodied by a republic or a constitutional monarchy. The Derg's alliance with the Soviet Union made Ethiopia the instrument of a foreign power, precisely the thing Haile Selassie resisted.

He had a Solomonic pedigree, but Haile Selassie was a man of the people. Perhaps that's how he should be remembered.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January, 1929. Both his father and grandfather were Baptist preachers who had been actively involved in the civil rights movement.

King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948. After considering careers in medicine and law, he entered the ministry. While studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King heard a lecture on Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India.

Over the next few months King read several books on the ideas of Gandhi, and eventually became convinced that the same methods could be employed by blacks to obtain civil rights in America. He was particularly struck by Gandhi's words: "Through our pain we will make them see their injustice". King was also influenced by Henry David Thoreau and his theories on how to use nonviolent resistance to achieve social change.

After his marriage to Coretta Scott, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In Montgomery, like most towns in the Deep South, buses were segregated. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks, King and his friends, Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar Nixon, and Bayard Rustin helped organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued.

For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. and the boycott came to an end on 20th December, 1956.

Harris Wofford was an early supporter of the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South in the late 1950s and became a friend and unofficial advisor to Martin Luther King. In 1957 Wofford arranged for King to visit India. According to Coretta King, after this trip her husband "constantly pondered how to apply Gandhian principles in America." In 1957 King joined with the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and Bayard Rustin to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The new organisation was committed to using nonviolence in the struggle for civil rights, and SCLC adopted the motto: "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed."

There had been a long tradition of nonviolent resistance to racism in the United States. Frederick Douglass had advocated these methods during the fight against slavery. Other black leaders such as Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin had successfully used nonviolence against racism in the 1940s. The importance of the SCLC was that now the black church, a powerful organisation in the South, was to become fully involved in the struggle for civil rights.

After the successful outcome of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King wrote Stride Toward Freedom (1958). The book described what happened at Montgomery and explained King's views on non-violence and direct action. The book was to have a considerable influence on the civil rights movement.

In Greensboro, North Carolina, a small group of black students read the book and decided to take action themselves. They started a student sit-in at the restaurant of their local Woolworth's store which had a policy of not serving black people. In the days that followed they were joined by other black students until they occupied all the seats in the restaurant. The students were often physically assaulted, but following the teachings of King they did not hit back.

Harris Wofford was involved in negotiations with John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon during the 1960 Presidential Campaign. He later recalled: "He (King) was impressed and encouraged by the far-reaching Democratic civil rights platform, and preferred to use the campaign period to negotiate civil rights commitments from both candidates, but particularly from Kennedy." After his election victory Kennedy appointed Wofford as his Special Assistant for Civil Rights. Wofford also served as chairman of the Subcabinet Group on Civil Rights.

King's non-violent strategy was adopted by black students all over the Deep South. This included the activities of the Freedom Riders in their campaign against segregated transport. Within six months these sit-ins had ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities. Student sit-ins were also successful against segregation in public parks, swimming pools, theaters, churches, libraries, museums and beaches.

King travelled the country making speeches and inspiring people to become involved in the civil rights movement. As well as advocating non-violent student sit-ins, King also urged economic boycotts similar to the one that took place at Montgomery. He argued that as African Americans made up 10% of the population they had considerable economic power. By selective buying, they could reward companies that were sympathetic to the civil rights movement while punishing those who still segregated their workforce.

The campaign to end segregation at lunch counters in Birmingham, Alabama, was less successful. In the spring of 1963 police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. King and large number of his supporters, including schoolchildren, were arrested and jailed.

King always stressed the importance of the ballot. He argued that once all African Americans had the vote they would become an important political force. Although they were a minority, once the vote was organized, they could determine the result of presidential and state elections. This was illustrated by the African American support for John F. Kennedy that helped give him a narrow victory in the 1960 election.

In the Deep South considerable pressure was put on blacks not to vote by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. An example of this was the state of Mississippi. By 1960, 42% of the population were black but only 2% were registered to vote. Lynching was still employed as a method of terrorizing the local black population. Emmett Till, a fourteen year old schoolboy was lynched for whistling at a white woman, while others were murdered for encouraging black people to register to vote. King helped organize voting registration campaigns in states such as Mississippi but progress was slow.

During the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act. After the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy failed to put forward his promised legislation.

During the Freedom Riders campaign Robert F. Kennedy issued a statement as Attorney General criticizing the activities of the protesters. Kennedy admitted to Anthony Lewis that he had come to the conclusion that Martin Luther King was closely associated with members of the American Communist Party and he asked J. Edgar Hoover “to make an intensive investigation of him, to see who his companions were and also to see what other activities he was involved in… They mad that intensive investigation, and I gave them also permission to put a tap on his phone.”

Hoover reported to Kennedy that was a “Marxist” and that he was very close to Stanley Levison, who was a “secret member of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party”. Hoover informed King that Levison, who was a legal adviser to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was a member of Communist Party. However, when King refused to dismiss Levison, the Kennedys became convinced that King was himself a communist.

John F. Kennedy agreed to move Harris Wofford in April 1962. Robert Kennedy told Anthony Lewis: “Harris Wofford was very emotionally involved in all these matters and was rather in some areas a slight madman. I didn’t want to have someone in the Civil Rights Division who was dealing not from fact but was dealing from emotion… I wanted advice and ideas from somebody who had the same interests and motivation that I did.” Wofford became the Peace Corps Special Representative for Africa. Later he was appointed as Associate Director of the Peace Corps.

The Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much."

In an attempt to persuade Congress to pass Kennedy's proposed legislation, King and other civil rights leaders organized the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Bayard Rustin was given overall control of the march and he managed to persuade the leaders of all the various civil rights groups to participate in the planned protest meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.

The decision to appoint Bayard Rustin as chief organizer was controversial. Roy Wilkins of the NAACP was one of those who was against the appointment. He argued that being a former member of the American Communist Party made him an easy target for the right-wing press. Although Rustin had left the party in 1941, he still retained his contacts with its leaders such as Benjamin Davis.

Wilkins also feared that the fact that Rustin had been imprisoned several times for both refusing to fight in the armed forces and for acts of homosexuality, would be used against him in the days leading up to the march. However, King and Philip Randolph insisted that he was the best person for the job.

Wilkins was right to be concerned about a possible smear campaign against Rustin. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, had been keeping a file on Bayard Rustin for many years. An FBI undercover agent managed to take a photograph of Rustin talking to King while he was having a bath. This photograph was then used to support false stories being circulated that Rustin was having a homosexual relationship with King.

This information was now passed on to white politicians in the Deep South who feared that a successful march on Washington would persuade President Lyndon B. Johnson to sponsor a proposed new civil rights act. Strom Thurmond led the campaign against Rustin making several speeches where he described him as a "communist, draft dodger and homosexual".

Most newspapers condemned the idea of a mass march on Washington. An editorial in the New York Herald Tribune warned that: "If Negro leaders persist in their announced plans to march 100,000-strong on the capital they will be jeopardizing their cause. The ugly part of this particular mass protest is its implication of unconstrained violence if Congress doesn't deliver."

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28th August, 1963, was a great success. Estimates on the size of the crowd varied from between 250,000 to 400,000. Speakers included Philip Randolph (AFL-CIO), Floyd McKissick (CORE), John Lewis (SNCC), Roy Wilkins (NAACP), Witney Young (National Urban League), Dorothy Height (NCNW) and Walter Reuther (AFL-CIO). King was the final speaker and made his famous I Have a Dream speech.

Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was still being debated by Congress when he was assassinated in November, 1963. The new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a poor record on civil rights issues, took up the cause. Using his considerable influence in Congress, Johnson was able to get the legislation passed.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on colour, race or national origin.

King now concentrated on achieving a federal voting-rights law. In March 1965 he organized a protest march from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. King was not with the marchers when they were attacked by state troopers with nightsticks and tear gas. He did lead the second march but upset some of his younger followers when he turned back at the Pettus Bridge when faced by a barricade of state troopers.

After the attacks on King's supporters at Selma, Lyndon Baines Johnson attempted to persuade Congress to pass his Voting Rights Act. This legislation proposed to remove the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. Johnson explained how: "Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes."

Although opposed by politicians from the Deep South, the Voting Rights Act was passed by large majorities in the House of Representatives (333 to 48) and the Senate (77 to 19). The legislation empowered the national government to register those whom the states refused to put on the voting list.

After the passing of these two important pieces of legislation, King concentrated on helping those suffering from poverty. King realised that race and economic issues were closely connected and he began talking about the need to redistribute wealth. In Why We Can't Wait (1964) and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community (1967), King argued that African Americans and poor whites were natural allies and if they worked together they could help change society. King's growing radicalism was illustrated in a speech he made in Selma, Alabama: "For the last twelve years we have been in the reform movement (but now) we have moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution."

On 3rd April, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. made a speech where he outlined the reasons why he was opposed to the Vietnam War. After he made this speech, the editor of The Nation, Carey McWilliams and the Socialist Party leader, Norman Thomas, urged King to run as a third-party presidential candidate in 1968.

William F. Pepper suggested that King should challenge Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. King rejected this idea but instead joined with Pepper to establish the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP). “From this platform, Dr King planned to move into mainstream politics as a potential candidate on a presidential ticket with Dr Benjamin Spock in order to highlight the anti-poverty, anti-war agenda.”

In his autobiography, William C. Sullivan, Deputy Director of the FBI, admitted that this decision created a great deal of concern to the ruling elite. “The Civil Rights Movement which began in the late 1950s gave organization and impetus to the antiwar movement of the late 1960s. The tactics of direct action against authority that proved successful in the earlier struggle were used as a model for the students of the New Left.”

Pepper was later to discover that the wiretaps of the conversations that took place about King becoming a third-party candidate “were relayed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and, through him, to Lyndon Johnson.” According to Anthony Summers, Hoover suggested to Johnson that the best way of dealing with King and Malcolm X would be to “get those two guys fighting”. He added the problem could be solved “if we could get them to kill one another off.”

Hoover told William C. Sullivan when he became head of the Intelligence Division in 1961 that “King was an instrument of the Communist Party” and posed “a serious threat to the security of the country.” Hoover instructed Sullivan to get evidence that “King had a relationship with the Soviet bloc”. Despite an intensive surveillance campaign, Sullivan was unable to find a clear link between King and the American Communist Party. When told this by Sullivan, Hoover replied: “I kept saying that Castro was a Communist and you people wouldn’t believe me. Now they are saying that King is not a Communist and you’re just as wrong this time as you were with Castro.”

Sullivan continued in his campaign to discredit King. In a memo to Hoover in December, 1963, Sullivan wrote: “When the true facts concerning his (King’s) activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal… When that is done… the Negroes will be left without a national leader of sufficiently compelling personality to steer them in the proper direction.”

In June, 1967, Hoover had a meeting with fellow gambler, close friend, and Texas oil billionaire, H. L. Hunt in Chicago. Hunt was very concerned that the activities of King might unseat Lyndon B. Johnson. This could be an expensive defeat as Johnson doing a good job protecting the oil depletion allowance. According to William F. Pepper: “ Hoover said he thought a final solution was necessary. Only that action would stop King.”

It was King’s opposition to the Vietnam War that really upset Hoover. According to Richard N. Goodwin, Hoover told Johnson that “Bobby Kennedy was hiring or paying King off to stir up trouble over the Vietnam War.” It is true that Robert Kennedy, like King, was growing increasingly concerned about the situation in Vietnam. Johnson became convinced that Kennedy was leaking information to the press about his feelings on the war. At a meeting on 6 th February, 1967, Johnson told Robert F. Kennedy: “I’ll destroy you and everyone one of your dove friends. You’ll be dead politically in six months.”

Martin Luther King continued his campaign against the Vietnam War. This upset the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In October, 1961, McNamara established the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This took over the U.S. Army’s Strategic Intelligence Unit. However, following the racial riots at Oxford, Mississippi, the on-scene commander, Major General Creighton V. Abrahams, wrote a report on the performance of army intelligence at Oxford. It included the following: “We in the Army should launch a major intelligence project, without delay, to identify personalities, both black and white, and develop analyses of the various civil rights situations in which they became involved.” Abrahams’ advice was accepted and in 1967 the Military Intelligence Branch (MIB) was formed as part of the U.S. Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC) based at Fort Holabird, Maryland. It was the MIB that now began to take a close look at the activities of Martin Luther King.

On 19th February, 1968, Cesar Chavez, the trade union leader, began a hunger strike in protest against the violence being used against his members in California. Robert F. Kennedy went to the San Joaquin Valley to give Chavez his support and told waiting reporters: “I am here out of respect for one of the heroic figures of our time – Cesar Chavez. I congratulate all of you who are locked with Cesar in the struggle for justice for the farm worker and in the struggle for justice for Spanish-speaking Americans.”

Chavez was also a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. Kennedy had begun to link the campaign against the war with the plight of the disadvantaged. Martin Luther King was following a similar path with his involvement in the Poor People’s Campaign. As William F. Pepper has pointed out: “If the wealthy, powerful interests across the nation would find Dr King’s escalating activity against the war intolerable, his planned mobilization of half a million poor people with the intention of laying siege to Congress could only engender outrage – and fear.”

In February, 1968, Memphis clergyman James Lawson, informed Martin Luther King about the sanitation workers’ dispute in the city. Over 90% of the 13,000 sanitation workers in Memphis were black. Men were often sent home by management during working hours and this resulted in them losing pay. Much of the equipment they used was old and in a bad state of repair. The dispute began when two sanitation workers, Echole Cole and Robert Walker were killed by a malfunctioning “garbage packer” truck. There was no company insurance scheme and the men’s families did not receive any compensation except for a month’s pay and a contribution towards funeral expenses.

The local branch of the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) threatened strike action unless working conditions improved in Memphis. When negotiations failed to achieve an acceptable solution to this problem, the sanitation workers went on strike. A protest march on 23 rd February, ended in violence when the local police used Mace on the marchers. At this point, Rev. James Lawson, one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), became chairman of the strike strategy committee. The Community on the Move for Equality (COME), a coalition of labour and civil rights groups, also gave its support to the sanitation workers. Roy Wilkins of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Bayard Rustin of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), agreed to speak at a strike meeting on 14 th March. Martin Luther King also agreed to help and it was announced he would speak at a public meeting in Memphis on 18 th March.

At the meeting King expressed his solidarity with the sanitation workers and called for a general strike to take place in Memphis. This caused create concern amongst the ruling elite. Many people interpreted the idea of a general strike as a tactic that had been employed by revolutionaries in several European countries. The strategy of King seemed to be an attempt to link the campaign against poverty with the civil rights struggle and the protests against the war in Vietnam. In his speeches King argued that the money being spent on the war was making it more difficult for Lyndon B. Johnson to fulfil the promises he had made about improving America’s welfare system.

James Lawson later claimed that King “saw the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike as the beginning of a non-violent revolution that would redistribute income.” He argued his long term plan was to “shut down the nation’s capital in the spring of 1968 through massive civil disobedience until the government agreed to abolish poverty.” He added that the government became especially upset after he began making speeches against the Vietnam War.

King’s strategy of linking poverty, civil rights and the Vietnam War seemed to be mirroring the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. Both men appeared to be seriously threatening the status quo and in that sense were acting as revolutionaries. Recently released FBI files show that during this period J. Edgar Hoover reported to Johnson that Kennedy and King were working together in order to undermine his presidency.

On 28th March, 1968, King led a march from Clayborn Temple to the Memphis City Hall. Although the organizers had ordered the marchers to refrain from any acts of violence, groups of young people ignored the marshals’ instructions and created a great deal of damage to shops on the way to the city hall. A sixteen-year-old boy, Larry Payne, was shot dead by the police who claimed he was a looter. An eyewitness said that Payne had his hands up when shot.

King was convinced that the violence on the march had been caused by government provocateurs. According to Coretta Scott King, her husband returned to Memphis on 3rd April to prepare for a truly non-violent march and to prove SCLC could still carry out a pacifist campaign in Washington. That night King made a speech at the Mason Temple. The I've Been to the Mountaintop speech It ended with the following words: "Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life - longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight , that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

After the meeting King and his party were taken to the Lorraine Motel. The following day King was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of the motel. His death was followed by rioting in 125 cities and resulted in forty-six people being killed. Two months later, James Earl Ray was arrested in London and extradited to the United States. He pleaded guilty to King’s murder and was sent to jail for ninety-nine years.

People close to King were convinced that the government was behind the assassination. Ralph Abernathy, who replaced King as head of the SCLC, claimed that he had been killed “by someone trained or hired by the FBI and acting under the orders from J. Edgar Hoover”. Whereas James Lawson, the leader of the strike in Memphis remarked that: “I have no doubt that the government viewed all this (the Poor People’s Campaign and the anti-Vietnam War speeches) seriously enough to plan his assassination.”

William F. Pepper, who was to spend the next forty years investigating the death of Martin Luther King, discovered evidence that Military Intelligence was involved in the assassination. In his book, Orders to Kill, Pepper names members of the 20th Special Forces Group (SFG) as being part of the conspiracy.

Even the Deputy Director of the FBI, William C. Sullivan, who led the investigation into the assassination, believed that there was a conspiracy to kill King. In his autobiography published after his death, Sullivan wrote: “I was convinced that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, but I doubt if he acted alone… Someone, I feel sure, taught Ray how to get a false Canadian passport, how to get out of the country, and how to travel to Europe because he would never have managed it alone. And how did Ray pay for the passport and the airline tickets?” Sullivan also admits that it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and not the FBI who successfully tracked Ray down to London.

In a television interview from prison that took place in 1988, James Earl Ray claimed the FBI agents threatened to jail his father and one of his brothers if he did not confess to King’s murder. Ray added that he had been framed to cover up an FBI plot to kill King.

However, there is evidence that it was another organization that was involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King. According to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, military intelligence became very interested in the activities of King after he began making speeches against the Vietnam War. In a report published in 1972, the committee claimed that in the spring of 1968 King’s organization was “infiltrated by the 109 th, 111 th and 116 th Military Intelligence Groups.” In his book, An Act of State, the lawyer, William F. Pepper points out that the committee was surprised when it discovered that military intelligence appeared to be very interested in where King was “staying in various cities, as well as details concerning housing facilities, offices, bases of operations, churches and private homes.” The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee commented: “Why such information was sought has never been explained.”

Martin Luther King Jr. - Biographical

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro* institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.