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Page 2 • Portland Observer • January 26, 1989
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EDITORIAL
7
O P IN IO N
"Mississippi Burning" Distorts History
bx. Benjamin f. ChaYis. Jr.
The film “ M ississippi Burning" is
currently receiving national media
attention. The movie, about the m ur
der of Chaney, Schw em er and
Goodm an, three civil rights workers
in M ississippi in 1964, recently cap
tured the cover of TIME magazine It
has also been reviewed extensively
in every m ajor daily newspaper w her
ever the film has opened.
Many film reviewers are acclaim
ing the film. These reviewers conven
iently miss the m ovie’s major fault.
“Mississippi Burning" elevates the FBI
to heroic proportions when, in truth,
that agency was more a part of the
problem than the solution. At the same
tim e, the film totally ignores the very
people who were heroic-the civil nghts
activists who built a movement in
Mississippi. In the movie African-
Americans are simply background and
the movement is non-existent.
A recent edition of C BS-TV’s
“ Nightwatch" program aired a dis
cussion by three civil rights workers
from the Student Nonviolent C oordi
nating Committee (SNCC) who worked
in Mississippi in 1964. Their com
ments showed clearly how grossly
the role of the FBI was distorted in the
film.
June Johnson, whose family was
long a bulwark of the m ovement in
Greenwood, Miss., spoke of the FBI's
collusion with the local Mississippi
police. She recalled that when she
was only 14 years old she was bru
tally beaten in Winona, Miss., along
with civil rights activists Fannie Lou
Perspectives:
’
Part One
portla TIU^U erver
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Hamer, Lawrence Buyot and Annelle
Ponder. Local law enforcement offi
cers were responsible for the beat
ing, yet the FBI suggested to the
activists, their faces swollen and
bruised, that they had actually at
tacked each other.
Judy Richardson, veteran SNCC
organizer and associate TV producer
of the second “ Eyes on the Prize,"
stressed the indomitable courage of
the local African-American com m u
nity in Mississippi, who housed civil
rights workers investigating the dis
appearance of their three missing
colleagues.
It is up to all of us to correct the
record. W e must make sure that
wherever the film is shown, the media
is encouraged to report the true story
of Mississippi in 1964 and today.
How To ReadHistory
The two reading lists in Black His that quite often the so called gods’
worshipped by ancient (and frequently
tory I have provided over the past
three weeks have brought an excel illiterate) people represented tribal
lent response. Now, with Black His histories of great leaders or cultural
tory M onth at hand, I thought it appro contributors, handed down through
priate to furnish these 'How to read oral traditions.
history’ tips. My articles will be a little
We have below a very relevant
longer and more comprehensive during statement from the Encyclopedia
this period so that any single one may Britannica, 1958 edition, Vol. I, p.
be used for classroom s or for a dis 131:
cussion group. (I will also be available
“ It was not until the gods of
to classroom teachers. Call the O b
Egypt were accepted by the
server, 288-0033).
Greeks that there appears to be
Historians, archaeologists, anthro
any cerem ony which can truly
pologists and linguists usually must
be called dramatic. The Greek
be white if their w ork is to be pub
dram a arose through the w or
lished by the establishm ent press.
ship of the gods of vegetation,
They use a num ber of standard term s
and later developed into the
in describing their m ethodology for
form s of the plays of the great
uncovering (or covering up) the past.
dram atists. It is difficult, how
I will exam ine som e of the more
ever, to think of the dram a of the
important concepts so that you will
Greeks without thinking of its
see how racist interpretations of his
close connection with the dance.’’
tory are rather easily accom m odated
We are reminded here of my
by the establishment. The Black au December 15 description of the A fri
thors I cited last week can be of great can Moors who brought their street
assistance to your revelations.
corner plays and colorful costum es to
MYTH [Greek, ‘M ythos’]: “Tradi Italy a thousand years la te r-th e
tional story of obstensibly historical beginnings of the O pera.
events that serves to unfold part of
In a Novem ber 22 article I detailed
the world view of a people or race.” If the African research of the renowned
the Greeks spoke on it, it is accepted Isaac Newton (Theory of Universal
a sfa c t- l f the Africans cite a fa ct, then Gravitation) who used the technique
the other definition of Webster is used, of euhemerism to discover and docu-
“ Myth ... having only an imaginary or ment that there was a ‘real’ A tlas.
unverifiable existence.” A case in point King of Mauretania, A frica. Newton
is the folklore view held by the estab established that this Black astrono
lishm ent in respect to the Black In mer and mathematician was first to
ventors of America-U ntil I researched develop the concept of the sphere,
the field and docum ented their exis but was deified as a god by the Greeks
tence at the U.S. Patent O ffice. See who were then primitive tribesm en. A
my book of same title which dispels major mountain range in his kingdom
the myth.
was named after Atlas, but illustra
EUHEMERISM, 'U hem fit ism’: tions always depict him as a white
“ Interpretation of ‘m yth’ as traditional man carrying the world sphere on his
accounts of historic places and shoulders (see Manuel, Isaac New
events." This term is derived from the ton: Historian, pp. 84-87).
nam e of an ancient African historian,
EPONYM, EPQ N Q N Q M Q US: “ It
Euhem eris. but you would have to was common for ancient tribes to call
consult a British biography of philoso them selves after the name of an
phers to determ ine his non-Greek ancestor (‘eponym ’).” For instance,
origins. He was the first to develop a historians refer to the Greeks as
structured technique for examining “ Hellenes” , ‘Hellen’ being the name
myth to establish the actual events of an ancient tribesman. The Africans
responsible for these traditions of a had many epononomus heroes-
tribe o r race. Euhemeris discovered turned g o d s -s u c h as Apollo-w h o
Business Manager
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were carried over to Greek tradition.
Other African concepts, of course,
were adopted into the Greek ‘pan
theon’ as we learned from the Ency
clopedia Britannica: The Egyptian
goddess Hathor (Love and Music)
became Aphrodite in Greece; The
African god Thoth (inventor of letters
and numbers) became Hermes in the
land of the 'Hellenes'. The philoso
phies surrounding Hermes (Hermetic
Corpus) featured “ divine revelation”
as th source of truth, a concept later
to become characteristic of Christian
w riting” (see Claggett, Science in
Antiquity, pp. 149, 150).
The ancient wandering tribes we
com m only refer to as Israelites or
Hebrews had many eponymic Afri
can ancestors-m any from the "Asian’
lands frequently conquered and colo
nized by African rulers like Ganges
and Ramses II who left religions, trea
ties and ‘geographic’ namesakes.
Among these Bibical lands were
Assyria, Babylon, Ur and Mesopota-
m ia-today’s Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and
Iran. Here, there developed particu
lar eponyms like Ham, his son Cush
or Kush (Ethiopia, Genesis 10:6),
Elam, Shem and Mizraim (Egypt).
You will note that many of these
lands were adjacent to that body of
water very pointedly called, The Ethio
pian Sea (Persian Gulf)~frequently
traversed by the Africans. The prophet
Isaiah wrote the well known Appeal to
Ethiopia: “ Ah! land of the buzzing
wings, which lies beyond the rivers of
Ethiopia, That sends ambassadors
bv sea. In papyrus vessels on the
face of the waters ...”
Herodotus, the Greek historian,
described the Easterly Cushites of
Southern India and Sri Lanka as
“ A siatic Ethiop ia n s” . Further, he said,
“there are two great Ethiopian na
tions, one in Sinde (India), and the
other in Ethiopia" (Godfrey Higgins,
Anacalypsis). During their migrations
these ‘Asiatic’ Cushites gave their
eponym (name) to the Kush M oun
tain Range in India. The names of
"C ush’s sons, Seba and Raamah
(Genesis 10:7) have been perpetu
ated in the Hindu god Siva or Shiva,
and in the hero, Ram a, an avator of
the god, Vishnu. And we remember
the Ethiopian King, Ganges, who gave
his eponym to India’s greatest river.
Dr. Raschidi, in Van Sertim a’s,
African Presence in Early Asia (1985,
p. 43) docum ents these African
Cushites even to photographs of the
ancient, giant stone heads of Buddah
still found at the Anghor T em ple-w ith
their " Negroid" nose and lips, and
with b ra ids a nd co m rows- They are
exact replicas of the giant Toltec heads
left in Central America by other Afri
can founders of civilizations. Dr. W.E.B.
Dubois was certainly right about the
many African diasporas which en
compassed the entire Pacific Rim as
well as Europe and the Americas
(see his, The W orld And Africa). Dr.
Ivan Van Sertima has been a consult
ant to the Portland School District for
a number of years.
Black or white, we must indeed
learn " How To Read H istory." Obvi
ously, we cannot depend upon 'Travel
Aaencv Brochures' to tell us who the
people we encounter about the world
really are! And it is equally obvious
that we have had many frightened,
racist wimps masquerading as histo
rians and scholars-w ho live in terror
that Black people may discover who
they really are Later in this series
some of these charlatans will be
named
V antage P oint :
The King Few People Talk About
hïRon Daniels
“ I am convinced that if we are to
get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must un
dergo a radical revolution of values.
We must begin the shift from a ‘think
oriented’ society to a person oriented’
society. W hen machines and com
puters, profit motives and property
rights are considered more important
than people, the grant triplets of ra
cism, materialism, and militarism are
incapable of being conquered. “ This
is Marlin Luther King speaking on
April 4, 1967 in New York, at the
Riverside Church exactly one year
before he was assassinated.
As we celebrate the Martin Luther
King Holiday, what we hear most
prevalently is the “ I Have a Dream ”
speech (or selected passages from
the speech) delivered by King at the
March on W ashington in August 28,
1963. Amid the pomp and circum
stance that has com e to surround the
King Holiday, there is a real danger
that King celebration may be co-opted
and converted into an annual ritual
which is lacking in terms of substance
and action. Hence it becomes im
perative that we constantly seek to
remind ourselves and educate the
people about the real meaning and
significance of the life of Marlin Lu
ther King.
King was above all a person of
extraordinary moral vision and a per
son committed to bold action to change
the wretched condition of the op
pressed. Indeed even in the “ I Have
a Dream " oration, the most telling
part of the speech was King’s chal
lenge to America to pay up on the
"Prom isory note” of freedom and
justice for all; a promisory note which
King declared had been presented,
but had been returned marked “ insuf
ficient funds". Thus while laying out
the “dream " King did it from the per
spective of one who deeply under
stood the nightmare which continued
to plague the lives of millions of A fri
can-Americans, minorities and the
poor.
This is illustrative of the King few
people talk about, or the King that the
rulers of America would like to have
us forget or worse yet, never learn
about at all. To focus on the dream
without the "bounced" check, to fo
cus on 1963 as if there was no evolu
tion and development in King’s
thoughts and deeds after the historic
March on W ashington. This kind of
selective history or selective amnesia
is quite convenient for many who now
mount the podium to praise his dream,
but who either opposed or lacked the
courage then and now to put their
bodies on the line for the ideals for
which King gave his life. It is now safe
to sing his praises, it is still risky to
struggle for the kind of change that
King came to believe was necessary
to end racism, economic exploitation,
and wars and intervention abroad.
By 1967 when King delivered his
“ Beyond Vietnam ” speech at the
Riverside Church, the “ dream " had
yet to be realized, and the check was
still bouncing back marked insuffi
cient funds. King defied his critics and
boldly cam e out in opposition to the
immoral war in Vietnam because be
said “ I could never again raise my
voice against the violence of the
oppressed in the ghettoes without
first having spoken clearly to the
greatest purveyor of violence in the
world to d a y -m y own governm ent."
You are not likely to hear this pene-
trating indictment echoed from any
platform during this year’s celebra
tion. America is still a violent nation
both at home and abroad, and some
body, in King's name out to say it.
King was unrelenting in his criti
cism of his “ beloved” nation. “ A na
tion that continued year after year to
spend more money on military de
fense than on programs of social
uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Martin Luther King knew that Am er
ica’s "thing oriented" and profit moti
vated materialist society was dying,
and he told the nation so. The rich
were getting richer, and the poorer
were getting p o o re r-a trend that
continues to this very day. As he
neared his death King knew that
something more than cosmetic
changes would be required to solve
the problems of racism and poverty in
America and the world.
Retrogressive Journalism...
(Continued From Front Page)
whether public funds w ere diverted
inappropriately to publish the NÉ
Reformer, or if the w riter has access
to a supplementary incom e that has
not been properly reported to those
who distribute the public dole.
In recent months we have observed
increased amounts of hate monger
ing, mud slinging and racism expressed
unabated in the City of Roses. There
has been a strange silence from those
who can do something to quell this
patent dilemma. At the same time,
the super structure of the new C on
vention Center rapidly moves toward
the fruition of significant economic
importance. It would be a pity if the
festering social ills of this city were to
transform that endeavor into just
another white elephant.
Reagan ’s Racial Fantasy
bv Dr. M anning Marable
For eight years, form er President
Ronald Reagan was the chief advo
cate of racial inequality in America.
Reagan never pulled the Klansm an’s
sheets from his political closet. He
never engaged in the obnoxious po
litical dem agoguery of George W al
lace or Lester “ Axhandle” Maddox.
But more than any other white politi
cian of the post civil rights era, he
successfully brought together a con
servative political ideology of limited
federal government, lower taxes and
lassiez faire economics, with a con
servative racial ideology of underm in
ing affirmative action and equal op
portunity legislation.
Reagan was architect of what can
be term ed “ nonracist racism ." Super
ficially, Reagan’s utterances on race
relations don’t seem to be overtly
discriminatory. He never stood defi
antly at the schoolhouse door, chal
lenging federal authorities on the issue
of Black access to public higher
education. He never publicly ap
plauded the racist brutalities of the
apartheid regime, calling instead for a
vague "constructive engagement” with
the criminals at the head of South
Africa. Reagan went so far as to
appoint a Negro to his presidential
cabinet, even though by all accounts
he becam e the least effective and
most ignored official in Reagan’s
administration.
But with a fine instinct for the politi
cal gutter, Reagan sensed that there
was political capital to be made by
cultivating the backlash of low to middle
income whites against the achieve
ments of the civil rights struggle.
Reagan's view of the world, in terms
of race relations, was frozen during
the Great Depression, pre-World War
II period. This was a time in which no
Blacks were permitted to participate
in professional sports; when there
was only one black representative in
Congress, and no elected Black
mayors anywhere in the country; when
the “ Black middle class was virtually
nonexistent; and when Jim Crow,
segregation laws were permanent
barriers to Blacks' socioeconomic
mobility
Consistently, the former President
blamed Blacks for their own oppres
sion. W hen cutting child nutrition
programs, public housing and m edi
cal care, he crudely blamed those
who were on the periphery of despair
and starvation for their social margin-
ality. He assured the white middle
class that the concentration of wealth
in the hands of the rich was the great
est guarantee for protecting the rights
of poor. In brief, Reagan understood
that the ideological glue for his motley
set of reactionary policies was racial
inequality. By keeping the poor di
vided on racial lines, the vast majority
of Americans would continue to be
fooled and manipulated by the Far
Right’s destructive policies.
In the twilight of his administration,
Reagan could not resist twisting the
rhetorical knife in the backs of the
Black com m unity’s leadership. Re
agan insisted in a recent interview
that oppressed Blacks were being
misled by civil rights leaders and
organizations, and that prominent
Black Americans such as NAACP
head Benjamin Hooks and Jesse
Jackson distorted his public record
on race relations. “Sometimes I wonder
if they really want what they say they
w ant,” Reagan declared. “ Because
some of those leaders are doing very
well leading organizations based on
keeping alive the feeling that they’re
victims of prejudice."
Civil rights leaders quickly and
correctly condemned Reagan’s la t- .
est political broadside. Jesse Jackson
responded that Reagan “ never saw a
piece of civil rights legislation that he
would stand up for.” Civil rights law
yer and historian Mary Frances Berry
termed Reagan’s remarks “vacuous."
But the reality behind Reagan’s as- -
sertion is a political effort to turn back
the political clock, to the days of
segregated water foundations, buses
and public schools. Reagan’s racial
fantasy is to blame Black leaders for
the oppression of African-Americans,
while reinforcing racial inequality within
the economy and society. President
Bush’s racial agenda is less crude
perhaps, but is equally repressive.
Dr. Manning Marable la Chairperson of the
Department of Black Studies, Ohio State
University. "Along the Color Line" appears
In 140 newspapers.