Please make time to read Craig Wilder's book "Ebony and Ivy
Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities" for a little enlightenment.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Now read what ... read full comment
Dear Doubtful Thomas,
Please make time to read Craig Wilder's book "Ebony and Ivy
Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities" for a little enlightenment.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Now read what Martin Luther King, Jr. before he came into contact with Gandhian nonviolent protest:
"During my early college days, I read Thoreau's essay on 'Civil Disobedience' for the first time...I became convinced then that non-corporation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is corporation with good."
Here too is what the scholar Brent Powell has to say:
"King best articulated his convictions in his 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'
"The 1963 letter supported and expanded the concepts first presented in Thoreau's essay, injecting nonviolent direct action into the American tradition of protest...
"The American tradition of protest, strongly influenced by Thoreau's writing on civil disobedience, includes the notion of non-violent, direct action.
"Martin Luther King, 'fascinated' and 'deeply moved' by Thoreau, built upon the work of both Thoreau and Gandhi.
"Likewise, Gandhi also admitted that, 'Thoreau's ideas greatly influenced [his] movement in India..."
Before Gandhi came into Martin Luther King, Jr's intellectual life, there was already Henry David Thoreau who greatly influenced both men!
Brent Powell. "Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., and The American Tradition of Protest."
Source: "The Organization of American Historians Magazine of History" (The OAH Magazine of History). Publisher: Oxford University Press!
Volume 9, #2, 1999 (winter), pages 26-29 ("Taking a Stand in History").
There is more but let me stop it right here!
francis kwarteng 7 years ago
"Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past"
WASHINGTON — Nearly two centuries after Georgetown University profited from the sale of 272 slaves, it will embark on a series of steps to atone for the past, i ... read full comment
"Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past"
WASHINGTON — Nearly two centuries after Georgetown University profited from the sale of 272 slaves, it will embark on a series of steps to atone for the past, including awarding preferential status in the admissions process to descendants of the enslaved, university officials said Thursday.
Georgetown’s president, John J. DeGioia, who announced the measures in a speech on Thursday afternoon, said he would offer a formal apology, create an institute for the study of slavery and erect a public memorial to the slaves whose labor benefited the institution, including those who were sold in 1838 to help keep the university afloat.
In addition, two campus buildings will be renamed — one for an enslaved African-American man and the other for an African-American educator who belonged to a Catholic religious order.
So far, Dr. DeGioia’s plan does not include a provision for offering scholarships to descendants, a possibility that was raised by a university committee whose recommendations were released on Thursday morning. The committee, however, stopped short of calling on the university to provide such financial assistance, as well as admissions preference.
Dr. DeGioia’s decision to offer an advantage in admissions to descendants, similar to that offered to the children and grandchildren of alumni, is unprecedented, historians say. The preference will be offered to the descendants of all the slaves whose labor benefited Georgetown, not just the men, women and children sold in 1838.
More than a dozen universities — including Brown, Harvard and the University of Virginia — have publicly recognized their ties to slavery and the slave trade. But Craig Steven Wilder and Alfred L. Brophy, two historians who have studied universities and slavery, said they knew of none that had offered preferential status in admissions to the descendants of slaves.
Professor Wilder, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Dr. DeGioia’s plans to address Georgetown’s history go beyond any initiatives enacted by a university in the past 10 years.
“It goes farther than just about any institution,” he said. “I think it’s to Georgetown’s credit. It’s taking steps that a lot of universities have been reluctant to take.”
Continue reading the main story
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Georgetown University, Learning From Its Sins AUG. 31, 2016
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272 Slaves Were Sold to Save Georgetown. What Does It Owe Their Descendants? APRIL 16, 2016
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But whether the initiatives result in meaningful change remains to be seen, he said. Professor Wilder cautioned that the significance of the preferential status in admissions would rest heavily on the degree to which Georgetown invested in outreach to descendants, including identifying them, making sure they are aware of the benefit’s existence and actively recruiting them to the university.
“The question of how effective or meaningful this is going to be will only be answered over time,” Professor Wilder said.
Dr. DeGioia’s plan, which builds on the recommendations of the committee that he convened last year, represents the university’s first systematic effort to address its roots in slavery. Georgetown, which was founded and run by Jesuit priests in 1789, relied on the Jesuit plantations in Maryland — and the sale of produce and slaves — to finance its operations.
The 1838 sale, worth about $3.3 million in today’s dollars, was organized by two of Georgetown’s early presidents, both Jesuits. A portion of the profit, about $500,000, was used to help pay off Georgetown’s debts at a time when the college was struggling financially. The slaves were uprooted from the Maryland plantations and shipped to estates in Louisiana.
Dr. DeGioia said he planned to apologize for the wrongs of the past “within the framework of the Catholic tradition,” by offering what he described as a Mass of reconciliation in partnership with the Jesuit leadership in the United States and the Archdiocese of Washington.
“This community participated in the institution of slavery,’’ Dr. DeGioia said, addressing a crowd of hundreds of students, faculty members and descendants at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall. “This original evil that shaped the early years of the Republic was present here. We have been able to hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore and deny this truth.”
“As a community and as individuals, we cannot do our best work if we refuse to take ownership of such a critical part of our history,’’ he said. “We must acknowledge it.”
When Dr. DeGioia invited questions from the audience, a man in a gray suit took the microphone. “My name is Joe Stewart,’’ he said, “and I am a descendant of the 272.”
Mr. Stewart, a retired corporate executive and an organizer of a group of more than 300 descendants, expressed gratitude to the university’s working group on slavery and to Dr. DeGioia for their efforts. But he said that descendants, who had not been included as members of the committee, must be involved in decision making on these initiatives moving forward.
“Our attitude is nothing about us, without us,’’ said Mr. Stewart, who was flanked by five other descendants.
The two buildings being renamed by university officials originally paid tribute to the Rev. Thomas F. Mulledy and the Rev. William McSherry, the college presidents involved in the 1838 sale. Now one will be called Isaac Hall to commemorate the life of Isaac Hawkins, one of the slaves shipped to Louisiana in 1838, and the other Anne Marie Becraft Hall, in honor of a 19th-century educator who founded a school for black girls in Washington.
Dr. DeGioia assembled his working group of scholars, administrators, students and alumni last September, asking them to consider how the university should address its history. Their work took on greater urgency in November in the wake of student demonstrations. In April, The New York Times published an article tracing the life of one of the slaves, Cornelius Hawkins, and his modern-day descendants. Cornelius was the grandson of Isaac Hawkins.
In its 102-page report, the committee said that the university’s dependence on slavery was deeper and broader than originally believed.
Slave labor and slave sales were envisioned as part of the financing model of the college even before the doors opened in 1789. And slaves were not only forced to work on the Jesuit plantations. Some also toiled on campus, hired from students and other wealthy people.
The committee said that it was likely that all of the earliest buildings on campus — including the ones named for the university leaders who orchestrated the 1838 sale — were built with slave labor.
More historical research needs to be done, the committee said, and that will be coordinated by the new research center, the Institute for the Study of Slavery and its Legacies. The university has already selected the program director for the institute, which will also support Dr. DeGioia’s plans to deepen engagement with descendants of the enslaved.
Dr. DeGioia, who met with dozens of descendants this summer, plans to establish a new committee for the creation of the public memorial that will include descendants. He also plans, among other efforts, to provide descendants with access to genealogical information housed in the university’s archives.
“All of these will have a substantial financial impact,” said Dr. DeGioia, who believes that Georgetown’s philanthropic community will support his initiatives. “I’m very confident that will not be a constraint.”
But some descendants on Thursday expressed disappointment, saying that the university’s measures were inadequate, given the suffering that their ancestors endured.
Karran Harper Royal, a descendant of slaves sold in 1838, said that Georgetown, which has an endowment of $1.45 billion, should have offered scholarships to descendants. And she said that she and others “felt the sting” of not being formally invited to Dr. DeGioia’s speech.
“It has to go much farther,” said Ms. Harper Royal, who is also an organizer of the group of descendants. “They’re calling us family. Well, I’m from New Orleans and when we have a gathering, family’s invited.”
kkbelle 7 years ago
Great article. Well done.
Great article. Well done.
Nii Teiko 7 years ago
Please, just forward a copy of this brilliant article to Kwarteng. I know he will be forced to read it if he sight it in his private mail.
Please, just forward a copy of this brilliant article to Kwarteng. I know he will be forced to read it if he sight it in his private mail.
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francis kwarteng 7 years ago
Dear Brother Alesu-Dordzi,
Thanks for this article. First, have you wondered why Jews will ignore the sort of faulty arguments you make in yot book and why they are powerful today?
Unfortunately, it is also clear from t ... read full comment
Dear Brother Alesu-Dordzi,
Thanks for this article. First, have you wondered why Jews will ignore the sort of faulty arguments you make in yot book and why they are powerful today?
Unfortunately, it is also clear from the article that you are not widely read, well informed or do not know what is actually going on in the world in terms of the academic side of the debate.
I decided to ignore your rants but chose not to any longer as I could not so given some of the falsehoods/misinformation in the article. Let me just dwell on a couple:
Alfred Nobel (and his engineer-construction father before him Immanuel Nobel) did not invent the "dynamite" to be used in wars and conflicts, that is, to kill and destroy lives.
The original idea for the "dynamite" was to blast rocks and make physical construction of bridges, roads, and building easier.
Others chose to use it in wars, conflicts, etc., that, is to destroy human lives.
Other than than, there are just too many conflicting reasons why Alfred Nobel set up the Nobel Prize. The idea that he wanted to set up the prestigious Prize to right the wrongs to which his "dynamnite" was subjected, was and is just one of a million reasons why he set up the Prize (as well as a millions reasons why he did not set up a prestigious Prize for mathematics,hence the Field Medal and others).
One hint is to read about his brother Ludvig and the French obituary titled "The Merchant of Death." I will not go into these other reasons as there are enough books/papers on the subject.
Next, your view that black South Africans began protesting for the removal of statues of colonialists, such as the Cecil Rhodes statue, because Americans were doing it "first" is neither here nor there. It is Eurocentric at best ad is not rooted in sound scholarhsip!
Have you any idea how lon, in fact many hundreds of years, black South Africans have been resisting colonialists?
By saying hundreds of years however, I am even going too far back in time. Just take the relatively recent Anglo-Zulu Wars of the 19th century! What this "single" incident in South Africa's hsitory should tell how far back in time black South Africans have been resisting colonial symbols, which includes real human beings and foreign institutions.
Thus, the recent removal of the Cecil Rhodes statu is just an incident in a long line of resistnce going back in time.
In fact, black South Africans continued to resist Apartheid when it was officially instituted in 1948 (?) and would have called for the removal of these colonialist statues if not for the vigilance of the Apartheid government.
Have you any idea how many black South Africans killed white South Africans since 1948(?). This ignorance I see everyday is because African history is not well taught in our schools across Africa.
The situation is even worse in South Africa where students are calling for African history/Afrocentric scholarship to be taught across South African universities. Black South African students and university/college professors are now saying that white South Africans, for instance, complete medical schools without knowing anything about African/South African pharmacopoie, etc!
Then again, have you any idea how long ago and how many whites and "apartheid, buildings, etc., Nelson Mandela and his Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed branch of the ANC, destroyed?
Have you any idea how many hundreds of years since Africans began resisting and even killed some Europeans during slavery and the colonial period?
I hope you have heard or read about King Badu Bonsu (the Second), a king of the Ahanta who ended up killing some European officials because he detsted their slavery activities and their forced encroachment into his territory,some 200 years ago?
This (and those like the Anlgo-Zulu War) happened so many years before your the timeline of your American examples, which you cite in your grossly uninformed article!
Thus, your historical timeline is questionable and Eurocentric at best! It is grossly ill-informed and uninformed! Your kind of revisionist misinformation is not unique to Africa, South Africa I mean. It is the problem in America here too. Just take a look at the following scholarly books by Prof. James W. Loewen:
1) "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong"
2) "Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong"
3)"Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History"
4) "Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong"
5) "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause" (with co-editor Edward Sebesta)
Yor are doing something similar in your article.
Also Martin Luther King, Jr. never knew Gandhi was a racist. Again, I will not explore this further.
I can only assure you that American scholars are beginning to wonder why King did not know this, and what he would have done if he knew it.
In fact as of this writing, American scholars and researchers are currently reevaluating King's relationship with Gandhi in the light of this research revelations.
This relationship will not be as it has always been once these revelations get to the public at large.
Even the Dalits, the so-called "blacks" of India, and international movements made up of Indian and non-Indian scholars and researchers and civil rights' activists, are reevaluating this relationships and rewriting the scholarships on them.
One such rigorous research scholarship is the book "The South African Gandhi:Stretcher-Bearer of Empire" (Ashwin Desai/Goolam Valem)is just one influential publication that is changing how the world has always viewed Gandhi around the world.
Even the so-called Cecil Rhodes scholarship that some claim are benefiting some balck South Africans is not an excuse to ignore the heinous crimes of colonialists.
Whatever wealth Cecil Rhodes made came directly from African sweat (hard labor) and resources (land, minerals, etc) and the enlsavement of blacks. In effect the scholarships come from African money and labor and resources! It is just African money clothed in the name of Cecil Rhodes!
But this is not to say we should ignore the historical and contemporary crimes of the Idi Amins, the Joseph Konys, the Omar Bashirs, the Boko Harams, the Al-Shababs, the Lord Resistance Armys, the Emperor Bokassas, the Charles Taylors, the Mobuto Sese Sekos,the Foday Sankohs...
I have mentioned these names in my articles on Gandhi and the role Gandhi and South African Indians played in the British killings of four thousand Zulus and Gandhi lying about it in his autobiogry (read his own autobiography "The Story Of My Experiments With Truth" and "Satyagraha In South Africa" and his "The Collected Works of Gandhi").
Now read this and tell me what you think (LET ME JUST END IT HERE BEFORE I END UP WRITING ANOTHER SERIES OF ARTICLES TO DEBUNK THE OTHER ASPECTS OF YOUR DEEPLY FLAWED ARTICLE):
"David Cameron Defends Lack of Apology For British Massacre At Amritsar"
Indians want social justice for what the British did to them but the British are not prepared to apologize.
Ask the Indians if they ever apologized for Gandhi's and South African Indians' role in the Bambatha Rebellion/Uprising that killed nearly four thousand Zulus?
Ask the Indians if they are prepared to apologize for Gandhi's racist remarks about black Africans, the same way they are asking of the British?
Do you have any idea how many Indians died to the Zulu four thousand? Barely 400 souls!
Please, tell the Indians to stop forcing the British to return all jewelries they stole from the Indians during the colonial period. The British have made it categorically clear that will never return those stolen items.
Should the British build the statue of Colonel Reginald Dyer, the man behind the heinous Amritsar Massacre, because they, the British, used to give foreign aid/grant and technical assistance to India (and because the British trade with Indians)?
Go and read Gandhi's account of his own role in "The Collected Works of Gandhi" and how he later lied about it in his autobiography, "The Story Of My Experiments With Truth" and then "The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire" (Aswin Desai/Goolam Vahed)!
........................................................................................................................................................
"David Cameron defends lack of apology for British massacre at Amritsar"
David Cameron has defended his decision to stop short of delivering a formal British apology for the Amritsar massacre in 1919, in which at least 379 innocent Indians were killed.
As relatives of the victims expressed disappointment, the prime minister said it would be wrong to "reach back into history" and apologise for the wrongs of British colonialism.
He was speaking shortly after becoming the first serving British prime minister to visit the scene of the massacre, which emboldened the Indian independence movement. He bowed his head at the memorial, in the Jallianwala Bagh public gardens. In a handwritten note in the book of condolence for victims of the massacre, Cameron quoted Winston Churchill's remarks from 1920. He described the shootings, in his own words, as a "deeply shameful event".
As he prepared to leave Amritsar, Cameron explained why he had decided against issuing an apology. "In my view," he said, "we are dealing with something here that happened a good 40 years before I was even born, and which Winston Churchill described as 'monstrous' at the time and the British government rightly condemned at the time. So I don't think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things you can apologise for.
"I think the right thing is to acknowledge what happened, to recall what happened, to show respect and understanding for what happened.
"That is why the words I used are right: to pay respect to those who lost their lives, to remember what happened, to learn the lessons, to reflect on the fact that those who were responsible were rightly criticised at the time, to learn from the bad and to cherish the good."
Among the relatives of the victims who were disappointed that the prime minister had not apologised was Sunil Kapoor, whose great grandfather Waso Mal Kapoor died in the shootings. He said: "If he said it is shameful, why did he not apologise?"
Kapoor, president of the Jallianwala Bagh Freedom Fighters' Foundation, said: "I am not satisfied that he did not meet the families. We have waited 94 years for justice."
Cameron said Britain could still be proud of its former empire – while acknowledging the mistakes – as he rejected demands to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India from the British crown jewels.
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He said: "I think there is an enormous amount to be proud of in what the British empire did and was responsible for. But of course there were bad events as well as good events. The bad events we should learn from and the good events we should celebrate.
"In terms of our relationship with India is our past a help or a handicap? I would say, net-net, it is a help, because of the shared history, culture, and the things we share and the contributions that Indians talk about that we have made."
Asked whether Britain should return the diamond, he said:
"I don't think that is the right approach. It is the same question with the Elgin marbles," he said. "It is for the British Museum and other cultural centres to do exactly what they do do, which is link up with museums all over the world to make sure that the things we have, and are looked after so well, are properly shared with people around the world. No, I certainly don't believe in returnism."
The Indians were shot dead in Amritsar by riflemen acting on the orders of Brigadier General Reginald Dyer. No 10 believes there is no need to apologise because the British state condemned Dyer's actions at the time. As war secretary in 1920, Churchill described the shootings as "a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation".
Sukumar Mukhajee, secretary of the memorial committee, whose grandfather survived the shootings, welcomed Cameron's remarks. Mukhajee, who met the prime minister, said: "He has come here. He has paid his tribute. It is more than an apology."
Anita Anand, the BBC presenter, tweeted during Cameron's visit: "My grandfather was one of the lucky few who survived."
The prime minister hopes his strong condemnation of the shootings will help Britain and India to move on from what the Queen has described as the sadness of the past. He believes he is on firm ground in declining to apologise because of Churchill's strong language a few months after Dyer was forced to retire.
Churchill told the House of Commons on 8 July 1920: "That is an episode which appears to me to be without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British empire. It is an event of an entirely different order from any of those tragical occurrences which take place when troops are brought into collision with the civil population."
The prime minister, who has an eye on the Sikh vote in Britain, paid an hour-long visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Out of respect to Sikhs as he visited their holiest site, he wore a dark blue bandana on his head.
The prime minister said he had been moved by his visit to the Golden Temple. "Today was fascinating and illuminating – to go to the place that is so central to the Sikh religion. I am proud to be the first British prime minister to go and visit the Golden Temple and see what an extraordinary place it is – very moving, very serene, very spiritual. It was a huge honour and a great thing to be able to do. I learnt a lot.
"In coming here, to Amritsar, we should also celebrate the immense contribution that people from the Punjab play in Britain – the role they play, what they give to our country. What they contribute to our country is outstanding.
"It is important to understand that, to pay respect to that, and to seek a greater understanding of the Sikh religion. And that is why the visit to the holy temple, the Golden Temple, was so important."
francis kwarteng 7 years ago
And also remember Alesu-Dordzi, that some African-American (and Euro-American) leaders were using civil disobedience in America before Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived on the scene.
As a matter of fact King, Jr. came under ... read full comment
And also remember Alesu-Dordzi, that some African-American (and Euro-American) leaders were using civil disobedience in America before Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived on the scene.
As a matter of fact King, Jr. came under the tutelage and influence of these leaders before coming into contact with Gandhian civil disobedience. The scholarship is there for all to see but I will not go there.
And civil disobedience/Gandhian nonviolent resistance predates Gandhi. It goes all the way back to Christ, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and Indian/Gujarat traditions and history as well as Jainism/Hinduism.
This is not to say Gandhi did not influence King,Jr. and Nkrumah. He did ad quite significantly. And this is also not to say we should not question history or historical figures.
But then again, are you aware that more than 300 wars were fought by Africans against the institution of slavery alone?
How many wars took place in across Africa against colonialism? How many colonial symbols were destroyed suting these wars before your questionable Princeton/Harvard timelines?
How true
Dear Doubtful Thomas,
Please make time to read Craig Wilder's book "Ebony and Ivy
Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities" for a little enlightenment.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Now read what ...
read full comment
"Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past"
WASHINGTON — Nearly two centuries after Georgetown University profited from the sale of 272 slaves, it will embark on a series of steps to atone for the past, i ...
read full comment
Great article. Well done.
Please, just forward a copy of this brilliant article to Kwarteng. I know he will be forced to read it if he sight it in his private mail.
LOOSE WEIGHT NATURALLY JUST
Do you want to lose weight faster?
Do you want to flush out and eliminate toxins?0572174551
Do you want to have a nice shape?
Do you want to do more physical exercise without fatigue?
Wonderi ...
read full comment
Dear Brother Alesu-Dordzi,
Thanks for this article. First, have you wondered why Jews will ignore the sort of faulty arguments you make in yot book and why they are powerful today?
Unfortunately, it is also clear from t ...
read full comment
And also remember Alesu-Dordzi, that some African-American (and Euro-American) leaders were using civil disobedience in America before Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived on the scene.
As a matter of fact King, Jr. came under ...
read full comment