Mariam Makeba, one of the greatest African entertainers to ever grace this earth, spoke before the UN in 1963. Here are her remarks. . . .
Liberation Archives
Apartheid and Patriarchy
The following text was reprinted from “Ideas and Action” Bulletin 126, published in 1978 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It is a very colorful look into a little slice of life under apartheid, touching lightly on how those material conditions interact with patriarchy. Migrant workers are employed in jobs which pay low wages – in public works, railways, mining, refuse collecting, brick yards, docks, steelworks and even grave digging. In 1974, of the men I knew, those who were employed by some city council as cleaners or park hands earned between 30 and 35 rand . . .
Fannie Lou Hamer- “We’re On Our Way”
Fannie Lou Hammer speech before a mass meeting held at the Negro Baptist School in Indianola, Mississippi (September 1964). Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am very glad to be here for the first time in Indianola, Mississippi, to speak in a mass meeting. And you just don’t have a idea what a pleasure this is to me. Because we been working across—for the past two years—and Mr. Charles McLaurin worked very hard trying to get a place here during the time that I was campaigning and he failed to get a place. But it’s good . . .
Equality Through Equal Participation: Eritrean Women
The participation of women in the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) was not only significant but central to the movement’s success. Women made up one-third of the armed struggle and played vital roles, from combat to nursing and mechanics, teaching, driving, and radio and clandestine operations. The EPLF was highly progressive in organizing women at the grassroots level and encouraging them to join the national liberation movement.Despite facing cultural, religious, and patriarchal obstacles, Eritrean women fought for their rights and shattered oppressive barriers through equal participation. Their contributions to the struggle challenged traditional gender roles and redefined the capabilities of . . .
The Life of Winnie Mandela
The following text was reprinted from Black Women in South Africa and the Case of Winnie Mandela, by the Winnie Mandela Solidarity Coalition, c/o BCLSA, box 8791, Boston, MA. 02114. The Winnie Mandela Solidarity Coalition (WMSC) was formed in Boston, Massachusetts in response to the interest generated by a forum on repression in South Africa held by the Third World Women’s Organization. The goals of the WMSC were to build a campaign to free Winnie Mandela and other women political prisoners in South Africa and to educate, organize, and involve individual women and women’s organizations in support of South African . . .
Ella Baker: Making The Struggle Everyday
Life-long human rights activist and movement organizer, Ella Baker, addresses a 1974 Puerto Rico solidarity rally. TRANSCRIPT: Friends, brothers, and sisters in the struggle for human dignity and freedom. I am here to represent the struggle that has gone on for three-hundred or more years — a struggle to be recognized as citizens in a country in which we were born. I have had about forty or fifty years of struggle, ever since a little boy on the streets of Norfolk called me a nigger. I struck him back. And then I had to learn that hitting back with my . . .
How Guinea and the PDG Helped Shape Modern Pan-Africanism
Today, the European left has embraced African revolutionaries like Amilcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau. If you follow their writings on his contributions, you would believe he was a Marxist-Leninist who was seeking to build a Marxist-Leninist party in Guinea-Bissau. In Ghana, the truth and actual legacy of Kwame Nkrumah is finally being brought to the surface and as a result, those same white left forces are moving to position Nkrumah in their analysis as an African leader they endorse. Cabral and Nkrumah are being embraced by these forces as a result of their continuing popularity among the African masses. They have engaged . . .
Social Democracy Will Not Save Us
The Black Liberation Movement in the United States has reached an almost unprecedented level of ideological confusion. Unlike in the 20th century, significant sections of the contemporary Black Left openly embrace an understanding of ‘identity politics’[i] that is based in philosophical idealism.[ii] A somewhat resurgent US Left has, correctly, begun to critique these perceived political errors. Unfortunately, social democrats such as DSA, Jacobin and Cedric Johnson in his award-winning article[iii] add to the ideological confusion. This essay asserts that contrary to the claims of advancing democracy and freedom, social democracy has consistently undermined the struggle for national liberation and socialism. In 1896, Eduard Bernstein, the . . .