Archive for the 'History' Category

29
Feb

Black Wall Street

The Greenwood neighbourhood, located near Tulsa, Oklahoma, stood out among black neighbourhoods in that it flourished during the oil boom of the 1910’s. Its economic success led to the nickname “Negro Wall Street” (later to be known as black wall street) and was home to several black millionaires. Black Wall Street was also home to one of America’s worst race riots in 1921, causing roughly 300 deaths (mostly black) and nearly $1.5 million in property damage.

Below are excerpts from various sources about the life and death of Black Wall Street.

Origins of Black Wall Street

Oklahoma’s first African-American settlers were Indian slaves of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”: Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles. These tribes were forced to leave the Southeastern United States and resettle in Oklahoma in mid-winter over the infamous “Trail of Tears.” After the Civil War, U.S.-Indian treaties provided for slave liberation and land allotments ranging from 40-100 acres, which helps explain why over 6000 African-Americans lived in the Oklahoma territory by 1870. Oklahoma boasted of more All-Black towns and communities than any other state in the land, and these communities opened their arms to freed slaves from all across the country. Remarkably, at one time, there were over 30 African-American newspapers in Oklahoma.

Tulsa began as an outpost of the Creek Indians and as late as 1910, Walter White of the NAACP, described Tulsa as “the dead and hopeless home of 18,182 souls.” Suddenly, oil was discovered and Tulsa rapidly grew into a thriving, bustling, enormously wealthy town of 73,000 by 1920 with bank deposits totaling over $65 million. However, Tulsa was a “tale of two cities isolated and insular”, one Black and one White. Tulsa was so racist and segregated that it was the only city in America that boasted of segregated telephone booths.

-Vaughan, Leroy. Black People and Their Place in World History. 2002.

Success through Self-Reliance

Tulsa’s saga promotes the best in self-reliance and talent that black Americans have to offer. These were universal and successful themes that would apply later in all businesses, including the securities industry. Ironically, what drew the best out of these individuals was the harsh reality of segregation. Restricted form hair salons, supermarkets, restaurants and other white-owned business establishments, the black residents of Tulsa built their own. Other black communities spent their dollars at white businesses, despite being viewed as inferior. In contrast, the people of Tulsa realized the power of ownership. Because black shop-owners provided all the needed services to cater to the black community, all monies and investment stayed within the community and it blossomed. In that 35-block span, there were 1500 black-owned businesses and houses, including 10 millionaires and many families with substantial savings.

-Bell, Gregory S. In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street. John Wiley and Sons, 2002.

The Riot

[The] Riot began on May, 31,1921 because of an incident the day before. A black man named Dick Rowland, stepped into an elevator in the Drexel Building operated by a woman named Sarah Page. Suddenly, a scream was heard and Rowland got nervous and ran out. Rowland was accused of a sexual attack against Page. One version of the incident holds that Rowland stepped on Page’s foot, throwing her off balance. When Rowland reached out to keep her from falling, she screamed. The next day, Rowland was arrested and held in the courthouse lockup. Headlines in the local newspapers inflamed public opinion and there was talk in the white community of lynch justice.

On June 1,1921, a big cloud of smoke covered The northern region of Tulsa. Later that morning, the last stand of the conflict occurred at foot of Standpipe Hill. According to the Tulsa Tribune, the National Guard mounted two machine guns and fired into the area. The black groups surrendered and were disarmed. They were taken in columns to Convention hall, the McNulty Baseball Park, the Fairgrounds and to a flying field. Some survivors later alleged that planes were involved in the destruction of Greenwood City.

The African Americans, being outnumbered, begin to retreat back to their section of town. Mobs of whites began to drive around the streets, shooting any African American person they saw. Sometime near 1am, the mayor and the chief of police sent a message to the governor, informing him that the riot was out of control and requested assistance. The governor activated the Oklahoma National Guard and requested two companies of soldiers from Fort Sill. The first group of guardsmen arrived before 2:30am. By 5am, a mob of 10,000-15,000 whites gathered near First St. and Elgin then marched on Greenwood, setting fire to every building standing.

-NorthTulsa.com, “Little Africa 1921 Aftermath”

Final Comments

Black Wall Street did rebuild after the riots and flourished a few more decades before fizzling out - due to both a mass exodus after integration during the 1960’s and to urban renewal projects during the 1970’s. The most important lesson from Black Wall Street is that a cohesive community can be self-sufficient (if not prosperous) even under severe discrimination. However, that cohesiveness must come from within – it cannot be granted by a government or made efficient by outside charity. Too often it seems that the community leaders who should be building Black Wall Streets (or at least building a black presence in local economies) are too concerned with being on the 6:00 news or shaking down the government for another handout disguised as a program. One does not learn by having everything done for him. There is more than enough opportunity to acquire capital within the black community to transform a “disadvantaged” community like Rexdale or Flemingdon Park into a mini Black Wall Street – someone just needs to convince the local community that the cheap credit and social incentives available today would be better utilized for businesses and schools than bling and protests. It’s almost literally mind over matter.

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17
Feb

The African Kingdoms of Nubia

The land of Nubia was located in what is now Sudan and lower Egypt. Home to what is considered to be the earliest black culture, Nubia’s waves of Central African and Asiatic inhabitants managed to transform a land notorious for its high temperatures and infrequent rainfall into a series of kingdoms that influenced, occasionally conquered and inevitably outlasted their more famous Egyptian neighbours. Nubian achievements include the world’s first Archaeoastronomy devices, conceived approximately a millennium before Stonehenge.

Below are excerpts from various historical and archeological sources that describe the progression of the Nubians from the initial organization of the “A-Group” settlers to the end of Christian domination around 1400AD. The reader is encouraged to follow the embedded links to find more information.

A-Group

A-Group is the designation for a distinct culture that arose between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile in Nubia between the Egyptian 1st dynasty and the 3rd millennium BC. The A-Group settled on very poor land with scarce natural resources, yet they became the first Nubians to develop agriculture. This culture was one of the two important “kingdoms” in Lower Nubia. Artifacts from this culture were discovered in 1907 by Egyptologist George A. Reisner.

A-Group royal tombs were found to be two centuries older than those of the Egyptians. It is believed that the Egyptians developed their grave site customs for honoring pharaohs from Central Africa. The A-Group had strong beliefs in the afterlife. A great deal of time was put into their cemeteries and funerals.

-“A Group”. Wikipedia

C-Group

The so-called C-Group appeared in Lower Nubia about 400 years later and persisted from about 2500 to 1500BC. They likely like their cultural origins in Upper Nubia, and many of the artifacts that they left are quite different from those of their A-Group predecessors in the area. The C-Groupers traded with the Egyptians, but the Egyptians themselves wanted to exert more control over their southern neighbours. During the Middle Kingdon, they built forts near the second cataract of the Nile. During Dynasty 13, Egypt lost control of Nubia, and Nubians occupied the Egyptian formts. And toward the end of Dynasty 17, the rulers of Nubia and Hyksos rulers were treating each other as equals.

-Ryan, Donald P. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Egypt. Penguin Group (USA), 2002. ISBN 0028642775

Kerma Culture

The Kerma culture, called Kush or Kushite by the Egyptians, was the first Nubian state, situated between the fourth and fifth cataracts of the Nile River in what is now the Sudan, between 2500 and 1500 BC. Early Kerma society was agricultural in nature and had round hut dwellings with distinctive circular tombs; later Kerma developed into a foreign trade-based society with mud-brick architecture, dealing in ivory, diorate, and gold.

-Hirst, Kris K. “Kerma Culture”. About.com: Archeology

Known as the “Land of the Yam” to the Egyptians, Kerma lay in a well-watered basin where Ethiopian nutrients desposited by the Nile supported the agricultural resources of the kingdom. They were rich in cattle for domestic use, sacrifice, and exported large numbers to Egypt. Prosperous and powerful, the kings of Kerma built a sprawling city with a white temple (deffufa) fortified by mud-brick walls and rectangular towers astride the ancient routes of trade from south to north and east to west. Their craftsmen produced exquisite black-topped pottery. The indigenous burials of their kings pre-date any Egyptian influence and were accompanied by ritual human and animal sacrifice. One Kerma royal turmulus records the slaughter of 4,00 cattle for the deceased.

-Burns, James McDonald. Africa, Sub-Saharan History. Cambridge University Press (United Kingdom), 2007. ISBN 0521867460.

At one point, Kerma came very close to conquering Egypt, with Egypt suffering a “humiliating defeat” by the hands of the Kushites. According to [the] head of the joint British Museum and Egyptian archaeological team, the attack was so devastating that, had the Kerma forces chosen to stay and occupy Egypt, they might have eliminated it for good and brought the great nation to extinction.

-“Nubia”. Wikipedia

Egyptian Domination

Egypt dominated parts of Nubia from about 1950 to 1000 BC. Forts, trading posts and Egyptian style temples were built in Kush, and the Nubian elite adopted the worship of Egyptian gods and even the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system. The gold, ebony and ivory of Nubia contributed to the material wealth of Egypt, and many of the famed treasures of the Egyptian kings were made of products from Nubia.

The one factor that chiefly characterized Egypt’s relationship with Nubia through most of their history was exploitation. Nubia’s most important resource for Egypt was precious metal, including gold and electrum.

Nubia was also an important source of manpower and labor for the Egyptians. The Palermo Stone records that early in the 4th Dynasty, King Snefru led a military campaign into Nubia reputedly to crush a “revolt” there (the Egyptians considered all enemies, whether foreign or domestic, as “rebels” against the natural order). According to that text, he captured 200,000 head of cattle and 7,000 prisoners, all of whom were deported to Egypt as laborers on royal building projects.

-“Nubia History”. TourEgypt.net.

Napatan, Meroitic and Ballana Periods

The Napatan Period (about 700 - 300 BC) is named after the town Napata, where an Amun temple was built and where the kings were buried in small pyramids (the cemeteries are located not far at Nuri and el Kurru). Napata was the religious centre of the country.

In the visible record Napatan culture seems heavily influenced by the Egyptians. The kings were buried in small pyramids, with an Egyptian style funerary equipment (shabtis, sarcophagi with religious texts, canopic jars, funerary stelae). The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was used. The exact order of most kings of the Napatan period is still under discussion. There is a group of well attested rulers dating shortly after the the end of Napatan control of Egypt (for example: Senkamanisken and Aspelta). Some kings dating to about the 4th century BC are again well-known from long monumental inscriptions (Arikamaninote, Harsiotef).

-“Nubia: The Napatan Period”. Digital Egypt for Universities.

By 200 BC the capital had shifted yet farther south to Meroe, where the kings continued to be buried in pyramid tombs and to build temples to Nubian and Egyptian gods in a hybrid Egyptian Roman-African style. Roman historians record the skirmishes and treaties which marked the relation ship of Roman Egypt and Nubia.

By AD 250 the culture of Nubia changed radically, perhaps due to the immigration of new peoples into the Nile Valley. Pyramid tombs were replaced by the great tumulus burials of the kings of Ballana.

-“Nubia History”. TourEgypt.net.

Christian Period

Nubian Christianity developed in great isolation. Between 639 and 641, the Arabs conquered Egypt, and, from then on, Coptic Christians there were a diminishing minority in a country under Muslim rule. Despite this isolation, Nubian Christianity was to survive and, indeed, flourish for centuries.

Culturally, its Christianity was greatly influenced by Byzantium. The Nubians used the liturgy of St. Mark, and decorated the walls of their churches with murals that showed their royals dressed in Byzantine style. In 1961, Polish archaeologists excavated what appeared to be a mound of sand, and, within it, found Faras Cathedral, its walls decorated with 169 magnificent paintings of dark-skinned Nubian kings, queens and bishops, and biblical figures and saints.

The decline of Christianity in Nubia seems to have been mainly cased by a gradual process of Arab Muslim immigration. As time went on, the Nubian population became increasingly dominated by Arabs or Arabized Nubians. In 1315, the Muslim government of Egypt imposed a Nubian Muslim as the king of Makouria, and, in 1317, Dongola Cathedral officially became a mosque. However, the tiny Christian splinter kingdom of Dotawo survived in lower Nubia until the late 15th century.

-Isichei, Elizabath. A History of Christianity in Africa. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995. ISBN 0802808433.

The Black Pharaohs

The February 2008 edition of National Geographic has an interesting article on the Black Pharaohs of Egypt. Author Robert Draper describes the invasion and control of Egypt by the Nubians under Piye, who considered himself the true ruler of Egypt. It is recommended for reading by all (as are most National Geographic articles).

National Geographic - February 2008.

Read: “The Black Pharaohs”

 

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12
Feb

Africville

Africville is Canada’s most famous black settlement, representing both the initial attempts by free blacks at creating a regular society and Canada’s attitudes toward non-white settlers before the entrenchment of Multiculturalism.

Origins

Nova Scotia was at one time a “slave society” Although lack of agricultural potential in the uneven an rocky terrain of Nova Scotia prevented slavery from developing on a plantation scale, the number of slaves in Nova Scotia was substantial.

Free Loyalist Blacks Most of the blacks migrating to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution were free, for the most part having been freed by the British as an inducement to encourage them to leave their revolutionary masters. Free Blacks were promised equal treatment with their white peers, but promises were not fulfilled. In order to survive, a number of blacks were forced to sell themselves or their children into slavery or long-term indenture. In 1792 an agent of the Sierra Leone Company recruited blacks in the province to migrate to Africa. Additional migrations took place, in 1800 to Sierra Leone and in 1821 to Trinidad

Refugee Blacks Following the War of 1812, Nova Scotia became home to Black refugees. Several hundred Blacks had sought protection with the British during the war after the commander of the British fleet issued a proclamation which said that all British subjects who came to a British ship or a British military post would be granted free transportation to another British possession in North America or the West Indies. There they were to be treated as free settlers. In this way between 2000 and 3000 blacks streamed into the province by 1815.

-Brown, Angela. “Africville: Urban Removal in Canada”. December 1996.

Life in Africville

The church was always a focal part of the settlement. In 1885, the Baptist church changed its name from Campbell Road to Africville, and later to the Seaview African United Baptist Church. Social life revolved around the church and the Sunrise Service on Easter Sunday in particular was known to continue from 5:00 AM until at least 3:00 PM.

Land in Africville was not suitable for farming, but some people kept pigs and grew vegetables. People were generally not financially prosperous due to scarce jobs and societal racism. The population remained small as many residents moved in an attempt to better their position.

Although the residents of Africville paid taxes, the city of Halifax did not provide basic services such as running water, sewage, or paved roads. Still, the community survived with its own school, church, and post office. For generations, children had a place to play, families were close-knit, and there was music.

-Multicultural Trails of Nova Scotia - “Africville”

The Dismantling

Due to an informal system of handing down properties and housing within families and between in–laws over the years, many residents were unable to prove legal title to their land; thus, they had little recourse when faced wi th the proposition to sell or be evicted due to historical, social, and economic conditions, residents had no formal community leadership that would be seen as legitimate political representation and little access to legal and bureaucratic bargaining tools of the municipality. Most were forced to accept the city’s small compensation, or settle for low prices offered for homes they had not been permitted to maintain and improve, located in what was defined as “the slum by the garbage dump.” In a seeming mockery, when moving companies refused to be hired, city garbage trucks, which had never serviced Africvlle, were sent to carry away the residents belongings.

-Alternative Canadian Heritage Moments – “Africville”

Aftermath

When dump trucks roared in to ship Africville residents out, it seemed like a good idea. By the 1960s, years of neglect and racism had made Halifax’s oldest and largest black neighbourhood one of the worst slums in the country. But the relocation of Africville also meant the end of a vibrant community. As one former resident put it, they lost more than a roof over their heads, they lost their happiness.

-CBC Archives: “Africville: Expropriating Nova Scotia’s Blacks”

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08
Feb

Roy Campanella

Roy CampanellaOne of the more famous figures of American sports history was Roy Campanella. “Campy,” as he was known, served as catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1948 to 1957. He also boasted an impressive batting average. But his spectacular career as a baseball player was cut short in 1958 when a car accident left him permanently paralyzed. However, Campanella later returned to the Dodgers - who had since relocated to Los Angeles - as a coach. A picture of him in 1980 shows him seated in a wheelchair instructing the team’s rookie catchers. Roy Campanella died in 1993 at the age of seventy-one.
During the lifetime Roy Campanella wore many hats: as a baseball player, liquor store owner, coach, and disabled person who succeeded despite the odds. My interest in Campanella, however, lies in another aspect of the man: his biracial heritage and specifically his Italian ancestry. While Campanella’s mother was black, his father, a fruit vendor in Philadelphia, hailed from Sicily, an island off the south of Italy. I remember when I saw a picture of Roy Campanella my first thought was “He looks so Italian!” He had tightly curled hair and dark skin, but his facial features were, in my opinion, very Italian. He would not have looked out of place in Palermo (my father’s birthplace) or Rome.

Before I go on, I want to dispel any suspicion that I am trying to “steal” Roy Campanella from the black community the way some white supremacists have sought to attribute Martin Luther King’s success to his partial Caucasian ancestry (one such supremacist called King an “intelligent mulatto”). For example, Campanella began his baseball career in what were then known as the Negro Leagues; at the time, blacks and whites could not play on the same team. Given the so-called “one-drop rule,” American society undoubtedly considered Campanella black.

Another thing that placed Campanella in the black rather than Italian world may have been the fact his mother, not father, was black. In the book The Color Complex, authors Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson and Ronald Hall state that ethnic culture is generally transmitted through mothers rather than fathers. As a child, Campanella attended a black Baptist church with his mother, even though his father was a Roman Catholic.
Nonetheless, Campanella did not deny his Italian heritage, and he often acknowledged it with his characteristic quick wit. When spectators at a game once called him a “nigger,” he replied, “Hey, you know I’m a dago too.” I admit a certain pride in knowing that “Campy,” one of the greatest baseball players of all time, was in a way “one of my own.”

On the Internet there is a site dedicated to famous Sicilians (www.sicilianculture.com). Among the celebrities profiled is singer Lou Bega (best known for the 1999 hit “Mambo No. Five”), who like Campanella is of mixed black and Italian descent. It pleased me to see that at least some Sicilians are welcoming their mixed-race compatriots into the fold, so to speak. I am more comfortable in claiming Bega - who was raised in Europe by his Sicilian mother (and Ugandan father) - as Italian than I am in defining Campanella by his Italian heritage. Campanella, given the social environment of his time, was clearly a part of black society. Yet I think that just as the Sicilian community is now counting Lou Bega as a member, perhaps too we can remember Roy Campanella in some sense as one of our own.

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06
Feb

Traces of Africa: My Visit to Cartagena

In early 2003 I took a trip to the city of Cartagena, Colombia. During my stay there a friend wanted me to meet one of her former professors, but our plan was foiled by a strike going on at the university. I had to laugh at the incident; it reminded me of the many strikes I’d encountered on visits to Italy. (Strikes, soccer, beauty contests and tacky religious statues are among the things for which Italians and Colombians seem to share a passion.)

Cartagena, Colombia

I mentioned this to an Italian-Canadian friend at work. He however insisted the people of Colombia were “Indians.” I explained in response that while most Colombians have some Amerindian ancestry, native traditions have largely disappeared from that country. (In contrast, Indian culture is very much alive in other South American nations like Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.) Furthermore, if there is any non-European influence at all in Cartagena, it is African, not Indian.

Cartagena lies on Colombia’s northern coast along the Caribbean Sea. A beautiful city with colonial architecture and lovely beaches, it draws thousands of tourists every year. When Spain ruled Colombia, Cartagena served as a gateway to the rest of South America.

In his autobiography Stranger in Their Midst, Belgian sociologist Pierre van den Berghe described Cartagena as “perhaps the most African city in the Spanish Americas.” The African presence was evident to me in the appearance of the city’s people, even though according to the Latin American color scheme most seemed to be mulatto rather than Black. This was quite different from Colombia’s capital Bogotá, where many people had Amerindian features. (A personal observation on the people of Cartagena: just as van den Berghe said in his autobiography that the Peruvian Andes were probably the only place on earth where he could reconcile himself with celibacy, my visit to Cartagena was the first time in a long while that I was tempted to alter my then-celibate status; the men there were almost uniformly handsome and charming.)

But Africa’s presence in Cartagena went far beyond the physical. It was apparent in the culture as well: the music, the dancing, and other things. For example, many women wore their hair in cornrows, a style of braiding that originated in Africa and is also common in some of the Caribbean islands. (By the way, you don’t have to be Black to wear cornrows; during my stay in Cartagena a very nice young girl put cornrows in my hair for a mere $20.) I also had the pleasure of listening to some very African-sounding music — with emphasis on the drums — and watching a dance, performed very skillfully by two little girls and a boy, that could have come straight out of Africa.

Though the African contribution to Latin American history and culture has often been overlooked, Blacks were present from the very beginning of Spain and Portugal’s conquest of the region. Several Blacks are believed to have accompanied Christopher Columbus on his voyages. Others played a role in helping the Spaniards establish settlements in the New World. In many cases, the first Blacks who went to the Americas had been born or had lived in Iberia (Spain and Portugal) and were more or less Westernized in terms of religion, language and culture. However, the vast majority of Blacks who came to Latin America did so as slaves transported directly from Africa. There in the New World they interbred with Whites: as in North America and the Caribbean, White male-Black female unions were a frequent combination, especially on slave plantations. Africans also formed relationships with Indians, producing a mixed group of people known as zambos. Many Black men were motivated to pair off with Indian women because the resulting children, unlike those of pure African descent, would not be born into slavery.

Given this history, it’s not surprising to find large groups of African-descended people (and by “African-descended” I mean anyone with Black ancestry, mulattoes and zambos as well) in various parts of Latin America. These include the northern coasts of Colombia and Venezuela; the western parts of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador; northeastern Brazil; Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic; and the Caribbean coast of Central America. In addition, individuals of African origin formed a large percentage of the populations of Uruguay and southern Brazil until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when they were displaced by massive waves of immigrants from Europe.

Of course people of African descent also make up a considerable portion of the United States’ population. But the histories of Blacks in the US and Latin America diverge substantially in one respect. As Pierre van den Berghe explains in his book Race and Racism, while Blacks in the former basically lost their original culture, African customs still persist in the latter region. For instance, rituals from Africa play an important role in the Santeria and macumba sects of Cuba and Brazil, respectively. And I definitely saw traces of Africa on my visit to Cartagena.

All this being said, I still consider Cartagena (and Latin America in general) to be Western first and foremost. In going to Cartagena I had no feeling of entering non-Western territory as I did to some extent when I visited Cape Dorset in the Canadian Arctic. Cartagena in fact reminded me in many ways of Palermo, Sicily, also a port city. Still, if you want to enjoy the African experience in Latin America, Cartagena may be the place to go.

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05
Feb

Bessie Coleman - Aviatrix

Bessie ColemanIt’s black history month so why not share some (instead of arguing about who should impart some, when, and for what cost)? This knowledge comes free, culled from newspapers and the internet, for all to use.

Our first topic is Bessie Coleman, the first licensed black pilot in America. As a direct descendant of Ms. Coleman, I am especially proud of her accomplishments and am pleased to see her fighting spirit pass through the generations.

Life

Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926), popularly known as “Queen Bess,” was the first African American woman to become an airplane pilot, and the first American woman to hold an international pilot license.
…
In 1915, at the age of twenty-three, Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and where she worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist. There she heard tales of the world from pilots who were returning home from World War …
At the barbershop, Coleman met many influential men from the black community, including Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, a real estate promoter. Coleman received financial backing from Binga, and from the Chicago Defender, who capitalized on her flamboyant personality and her beauty to promote his newspaper, and to promote her cause. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert Abbott encouraged her to study abroad.
…
Coleman took French language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with “a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot’s feet.” On June 15, 1921 Bessie Coleman became the first African-American woman to earn an aviation pilot’s license in the world — and the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Continue reading ‘Bessie Coleman - Aviatrix’

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31
Jan

Suharto

Monday’s front page of the Toronto Star featured a black-and-white photograph of a man in a military cap. Underneath were the words “Suharto: 1921-2008.” The former Indonesian president died on Sunday at the age of 86 from multiple organ failure. As his health had been deteriorating for some time, there was talk of discontinuing his life support – a kidney dialysis machine and a ventilator – before he fell into a coma from which he never awoke. The “pull or not to pull” debate, however, paled in comparison to the controversies during his more than three decade-long rule of Indonesia and the following ten-year period.

SuhartoA general in the Indonesian army, Suharto (like many Indonesians he used only one name) took power in 1965 after conducting an anti-Communist purge and deposing then-president Sukarno. During his thirty-two-year leadership Suharto greatly industrialized the country and reduced its poverty. He gained the support of the United States, who saw his “New Order” administration as a bulwark against the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, his regime was known for its corruption and brutality. Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly real or suspected Communists, were tortured by the police, kept in prison for long periods without trial, made to “disappear,” or killed outright. The Suharto administration’s invasion and annexation of West Papua (Irian Jaya) and East Timor (now an independent nation) and repression of the independence movement in the province of Aceh drew condemnation from international human rights organizations. Though Indonesia was the recipient of aid from the US and other Western countries, much of it went into the pockets of Suharto himself and his family members. There were discussions after his resignation in 1998 about prosecuting him for embezzlement, but he was never formally charged in a court of law.

Suharto was sometimes compared to a leader in a neighbouring country: Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Both were backed by the US government as anti-Communist fighters. The two men were famous as well for siphoning off foreign money destined for the public purse to their own personal coffers - even if Suharto’s wife lacked Imelda’s extensive footwear collection. Yet Suharto and Marcos differed in their ethnic policies. Both Indonesia and the Philippines have Chinese populations who are wealthier than average and who frequently raise the resentment of the native majority as a result. But whereas Marcos favoured the Philippine Chinese minority, Suharto launched an aggressive anti-Chinese program, even forbidding print material with Chinese characters (in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, anthropologist Jared Diamond tells of going to a Chinese-run store in West Papua and seeing the owner quickly put away a Chinese newspaper at the sight of an Indonesian government agent entering the shop).

SuhartoSuharto’s treatment of different ethnic groups challenges the simplistic notion of a world made up of Whites on one hand and “people of colour” on the other. Ironically, this vision is shared by two factions who otherwise appear to have nothing in common: White Supremacists and leftists of all racial backgrounds. The latter tend to see non-Whites as victims of European colonialism - or American imperialism - and expect them to band together against the White oppressor. But this was hardly the case in East Timor, even if both that country and Indonesia at one time fell under European powers (Portugal and the Netherlands respectively). Though the West was rightly accused of turning a blind eye to Indonesia’s persecution of the Timorese people, the fact is that most of the human rights violations in Timor were committed not by Europeans or Americans but by Indonesians. East Timorese freedom fighter Constancio Pinto writes in his book East Timor’s Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance that while not perfect, Timor’s former Portuguese overlords were far more humane than the Indonesians who came after them. And contrary to White racists’ idea of a vast anti-White conspiracy by “hordes of colour,” Timorese activist Xanana Gusmao has actually expressed solidarity with the people of Poland and the Baltics – at whose struggles for independence White “progressives” have often scoffed. Nor within Indonesia itself did Suharto love his Chinese subjects as fellow Asians.

Suharto remains a controversial figure in death as in life. At his funeral humble farmers and housekeepers sang his praises. East Timorese president Jose Ramos-Horta urged his countrymen to let bygones be bygones. Yet one of Suharto’s own daughters asked God to forgive her father for any mistakes he had made. Searching under “Suharto” on the Internet one can find articles calling him a brutal dictator and others describing him as the man who revolutionized Indonesia. Perhaps there is truth to both.

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