Harriet Tubman descendants convene in Atlanta, receive Proclamation By: Arit Essien

Harriet Tubman descendants convene in Atlanta, receive Proclamation  By: Arit Essien

Descendants of the abolitionist and women’ssuffragist, Harriet Tubman convened in Atlanta over the weekend for a proclamationpresentation by Atlanta City Council, and week-long events reuniting familymembers from across the nation.


Echoing the words of Tubman’s enduringcommand to passengers aboard the Underground Railroad: “Keep Goin!” familymembers accepted the proclamation honoring the legacy of their great ancestor fromauthor/attorney Harold Michael Harvey; and performed skits depicting Tubman’s life,during the opening reception of the Sights and Sounds Black Cultural MuseumExhibit, Friday, at Greenbriar Mall. 
With supportfrom media advocate Sharon Hill and “Sights and Sounds” curator James Horton,Friday, July 6, 2012 was declared Harriet RossTubman Day in the city of Atlanta.  The Tubman Museum, locatedan hour away in Macon, Ga., joined in the celebration offering free tours to thepublic for the Harriet RossTubman Day. 
Tubman’s family, ranging in age from 10-monthsto 79-years old; and from various states including Auburn, N.Y. –the final homeof Tubman-- reflected during the occasion with vivid stories of how they “keptgoing” the family going through many trials including divorce, unemployment andillness. Several members also shared stories of academic accomplishments and ofmany projects and papers done collectively between them on Tubman, all whichreceived A’s. 


“Keep going means many things to us,”said Geraldine Copes Daniels, the great grand-niece and oldest survivingrelative of Tubman. “It means get educated, go to college, get a career.”


Her daughter Rita Daniels, a domesticviolence survivor added:  “We’ve all gonethrough a lot. I’ve been beat down and left for dead, but setback is not in ourDNA.”


So far, New York and Atlanta are theonly two states to have officially recognized Tubman, otherwise known as“Moses” and “General Tubman.”  It is thefamilies dream to have a federal holiday adopted for her heroism, similar to thenationally recognized Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and to establish afoundation to preserve her legacy.


“Even Martin Luther King would nothave been in place if it was not for Tubman who broke away,” said Rita Daniels.


Tubman endured a number of hardshipsthroughout her life as a slave, Civil-War spy, and while defiantly leading 300men, women, and children to freedom along the covert and dangerous, water andland routes of the Underground Railroad. She used the master's horse and buggy, packed a sedative drug for babieswho might cry, and carried a shotgun for both pursuers --and for scaredfugitives who considering turning back. She also suffered from seizures and sleepingspells –the result of being struck in the head with a two pound weight by anangry oversee, at the age of 12. Her most harrowing mission was rescuing herparents, who were manumitted slaves, forced into continued laborby masters who disregarded their legally granted free status.  Aided by compassionate Quakers, NativeAmericans, and an unyielding faith in God, Tubman never lost a passenger. 


Carrying out 19 missions, Tubman eventuallyretired to Auburn, where she purchased a home from New York SenatorWilliamH. Seward, continued to aid destitute children, helped tocreate freedmen's schools, and founded the Home for Aged and Indigent ColoredPeople.


She died in 1913, and receivingseveral honors following her death: a bronze memorial by the city of Auburnat  the Cayuga County Courthouse,dedication by Eleanor Roosevelt of the Liberty Ship in 1944, a U.S. Postal commemorativestamp, and opening of the Freedom Park in Auburn.


Legislative bills currently in theHouse and Senate will consider the creation of a Harriet Tubman NationalHistorical Park in Auburn and a similar park in Maryland, where she was bornand delivered most slaves from. U.S.Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's says that passage of the two bills may be difficult,but it is the family’s hopes that they will pass.


Sassafras Ridge Mountain Developmentwill also host Geraldine Daniels in the North Georgia, Tennessee and NorthCarolina Triangle, where the noted Underground Railroad “trail of tears” ischartered through.


“She was a fearless soldier. There wasno Harriet Tubman in books when I was in school. The nation needs to know andremember who she was. That is one of the reasons why we have all come togetherand will keep goin,” said Geraldine Daniels.

8th Annual Reenactment of the Lynchings at Moore’s Ford Bridge, Monroe, Georgia

Adriane Harden

www.adrianeharden.com

 On July 28, 2012, Georgia State Representative and President of GABEO (Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials) Tyrone Brooks and activist from around the country will participate in the 8^th Annual Reenactment of the Lynchings at the Moore’s Ford Bridge.  The event commemorates the murders of black sharecroppers George and Mae Murray Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Malcom, who were murdered on July 25, 1946, at the Moore's Ford Bridge at the Walton-Oconee county line.   The case has never been solved. GABEO has held the reenactment — which dramatizes the event at the bridge, with a group of white men pulling the two couples out of a car at the bridge, taking them down an embankment and then firing over a hundred bullets at them at close range.  One of the victims was 7 months pregnant and the infant was cut from the mother’s stomach and killed.  Each year since 2005, Elected officials with the group say they will continue to do so until the crime is solved.   In 2001, former Governor Roy Barnes commissioned the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to re-open the case. In 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved, and in 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Emmett Till Act allocating funding to help solve crimes such as the Emmett Till murder in Mississippi in 1955 and the Moore's Ford Bridge Lynchings.

Robert Howard, of Social Circle, who has devoted much of his life to getting the case solved, and has narrated the reenactment each year. 

It is believed that those that participated in the murders are still alive and living in Walton County.  The case remains open, and there is a $35,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of anyone found guilty of these murders. Anyone with information is asked to contact the GBI at 404-244-2600 or the FBI at 404-679-9000.

Below is information on the event:

Remembering Victims of Lynchings Throughout the USA
Saturday, July 28, 2012, 12 Noon
First African Baptist Church, 130 Tyler Street, Monroe, GA 30655
(at Highway 11, Across from Church’s Chicken)

Schedule

12 Noon - Church opens for meditation and prayers for justice.

1 p.m. - Pre-Reenactment rally. Invited guest speakers will include national and local Civil/Human Rights activists, clergy and political peaders.

Narrator, Mr. Robert Howard, Walton County Director, Min. Cassandra Greene, Director Ms. Hattie Lawson, Chair, Athens Area Human Relations Council

Reenactment Timeline

3:00 p.m. - Leave First African Baptist Church for visitation of the Malcom and Dorsey gravesites.

4:45 p.m. - Arrive at the farm house of Barney Hester, 2932 Hester Town Road. (This is where the altercation occurred leading to the arrest of Roger Malcom, Sunday, July 14, 1946.)

5 p.m. - Leave Barney Hester’s House

5:15 p.m. - Arrive at the Old County Jail, 203 Milledge Avenue, Downtown Monroe. (This is where Roger Malcom was held for 11 days.)

5:30 p.m. - Leave the jail en route to the Moore’s Ford Bridge. (This is the exact time that Loy Harrison, a white farmer, took the Malcoms and the Dorseys from the jail and delivered them to the KKK lynch mob waiting at the Moore’s Ford Bridge.)

6 p.m. - Arrive at the Moore’s Ford Bridge for the Reenactment Ceremony and Call for Justice: Arrest and Prosecution Now!!

7 p.m. - Benediction at the historic memorial marker dedicated to the legacy of Roger and Dorothy Malcom (and Justice, unborn infant) and George and Mae Murray Dorsey.
Here’s a Challenge to Us All to Continue Our Quest and Pursuit of Justice.

Information

Moore’s Ford Bridge Lynching is the last unsolved mass lynching in U.S. History!

$35,000 Reward for info that leads to the arrest and prosecution of the killers.

If you have information of the lynchings, please contact: The GBI – 404-244-2600 or the FBI – 404-679-9000. For more information contact: Rep. Tyrone Brooks, President, Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, 404-656-6372 or 404-372-1894, Cassandra Greene, Director 770-899-7424, or visit our Web site: www.ga-gabeo.org.

Judge Hill's rendition of My Country tis of Thee

Judge Jaribu Hill of The Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights in Greenville, Mississippi

For more information please visit the website and join the movement

www.msworkers.org

Black German Holocaust Victims

I received this from someone else and felt it was very interesting and wanted to share.



I would highly recommend  Destined To Witness  by Hans J. Massaquoi, who grew up in Nazi Germany as the product of a German mother & African father.  He later in life became an editor at Ebony magazine. It is one of the most interesting biographies.  Imagine, a young Black boy wondering why he couldn't be accepted in Hitler's Youth movement. This bio reveals some of the historical accuracies  of racism in Nazi Germany.  I promise that you will find it to be fast reading as well as extremely enlightening.  If  you or anyone reads this bio, I would like to know your opinion.  

 
The Black Germans
Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust,"
Black Historical Information .....
BLACK GERMAN HOLOCAUST VICTIMS...
So much of our history is lost to us because we often don't write the
history books, don't film the documentaries, or don't pass the accounts
down from generation to generation.

One documentary now touring the film festival circuit, telling us to
"Always Remember" is "Black Survivors of the Holocaust" (1997). Outside
the U.S.., the film is entitled "Hitler's Forgotten Victims"
(Afro-Wisdom Productions) . It codifies another dimension to the "Never
Forget" Holocaust story--our imension.

Did you know that in the 1920's, there were 24,000 Blacks living in
Germany? Neither did I. Here's how it happened, and how many of them
were eventually caught unawares by the events of the Holocaust.

Like most West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa
in the late 1800's in what later became Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and
Tanzania. German genetic experiments began there, most notably
involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left
60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German
colonization. After the shellacking Germany received in World War I, it
was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.

As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the
Rhineland--a bitter piece of real estate that has gone back and forth
between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed
their own colonized African soldiers as the occupying force. Germans
viewed this as the final insult of world War I, and soon thereafter,
92% of them voted the Nazi party into power.

Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with
German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf,
Hitler wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards." When he
came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these
mixed-race children. Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial
purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had
been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further 'race polluting,'
as Hitler termed it.

Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's
mandatory sterilization program, explained in the film "Hitler's
Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo sterilization as
a teenager, he was given no anesthetic. Once he received his
sterilization certificate, he was "free to go" so long as he agreed to
have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.

Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland,
heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily
aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered
problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the
Black ones.

Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign
of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast
in their belief that they were German first and Black second, opted to
remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became
Luftwaffe pilots). Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested,
charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration
camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with
no bathroom facilities or food) that, after the four-day journey, box
car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying.

Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs
conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held
as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and
forced into dangerous labor (violating the Geneva Convention), they
were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees,
who were forced to do the unthinkable- -man the crematoriums and work
in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted. As a final
sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they
would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final
Solution."

In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved,
shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue
others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance
fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped
to Dachau.

One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he
distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the
lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill--conditions exacerbated
by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was "No, you can't have my
life; I will fight for it."

According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine- Simms, there were
Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who
founded the Northwest Rann--an organization of entertainers that fought
the Nazis in his home town of Dusseldorf-- and who was murdered by the
SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.

Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in
the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi
sterilization project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still
alive and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the
Nazi Holocaust," but they must also speak out for justice, not just
history.

Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans, although
German-born, have received no war reparations because their German
citizenship was revoked. The only pension they get is from those of us
who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their
battle for recognition and compensation.

After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the
Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the
final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the
triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas oven s in Germany.

We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so
much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for
rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through
the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to
ensure that these atrocities never happen again.

For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in
Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.