» Page 2 • Portland Observer • January 26, 1989 « e W » ■* ______________________________________ _____ 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 OREGON’S OLDEST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PUBLICATION Established in 1970 Alfred L. 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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 • « < • • • « . » ♦ * 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.