THE GREAT AFRICAN SCHOLARS DR. YOSEF BEN JOCHANNAN (“DR. BEN”), SISTER KHEPRA, DR. LEONARD JEFFRIES, DR. RANDY WESTON URGE GLOBAL FAMILIES OF COLOR TO RECONNECT WITH OUR PAST IN ORDER TO “RESURRECT OUR PEOPLE”
World-Class Scholars Gathered to Remember the Life and Legacy of “Pharoah” Cheikh Anta Diop at Le Grand Dakar Restaurant in Brooklyn on 24th Anniversary of His Transition
On Sunday, February 7, 2010, history was made at Pierre Thiam’s Le Grand Dakar Restaurant in Brooklyn. At a gathering of The Wise, hosted by Dr. and Mrs. Randy Weston, and attended by special guests Dr.Yosef Ben-Jochannan (“Dr. Ben”); Sister Khepra, co-founder of New York City’s first CommUniversity (The First World Alliance) in Harlem; Professor Leonard Jeffries, Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi, Mamadou Ndiang and others, Black History Month was210 never mentioned. The perspective was much different. Longer, sharper and through a many-thousand-year-old prism.
Sister Khepra, co-founder of the First World Alliance knowledge-exchange center, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Professor at City College, center, and Dr. Ben, noted historian of the Civilizations of the Nile Valley brought The Knowledge to the people.
The scholars drew together to celebrate the life of one of the greatest thought-leaders of all time — Cheikh Anta Diop who passed at 63 in 1986. Usually, there is a pilgrimage to Senegal for this occasion, but this year, a small cafe-restaurant was the site.
And it felt good being there, being in the valley and the heavens of knowledge, where even the Kora music asked the question: So what are you doing with this history, how are you making it your own? — Far away from the banality of black-history-month trivialities of self-congratulations for corporate “diversity” and discount sales. Bernice Elizabeth Green
See Notes From Dakar
It was Super Bowl Sunday, but that was of no matter to the illustrious group assembled to celebrate the life of the great Senegalese historian, Cheikh Anta Diop on the 24th Anniversary of his death. Revered historian of the Nile Valley civilizations, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan was there with his wife, Sister Khepra, co-founder of the First World Alliance, a “communiversity” as Dr. Leonard Jeffries, also present, had christened it. African-centered musician Randy Weston and his wife and others had the privilege of hearing Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi, the translator of Diop’s masterwork, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology, speak on the importance of Cheikh Anta Diop today.
Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi (right), translator of Cheikh Anto Diop’s Civilization or Barbarism, remembers Cheikh Anta Diop at a celebration hosted by Dr. Randy Weston at Le Grand Dakar Restaurant in Brooklyn. Photo: Mark Stewart
“His life’s work was to free his people. To give back to Africa the legacy that is Africa.” Ngemi said that Civilization or Barbarism was the book where Diop put together his lifetime’s research. “Diop believed there had to be a change in the African mentality on the continent. In the introduction he says that ‘Imperialism, like a prehistoric monster, first kills the being culturally, spiritually and intellectually before killing us physically. In the denial of the intellectual accomplishments of our ancestors was the cultural and mental death that preceded and paved the way for our physical death both on the continent and throughout the Diaspora.” Ngemi says that Diop made it his purpose to rediscover that knowledge of the ancestors. “Because without it we cannot redefine ourselves worldwide.”
After Ngemi finished the translation, he started to teach about Diop and found that most of the people, people of the Diaspora, did not know Diop’s name. “Cheikh Anta Diop is on a different level spiritually, culturally, and he was a man ahead of his time.” Ngemi refers to Diop’s 1960 work, Black Africa the Economic and Cultural basis for an African State, where Diop contended that Africa had the resources the world wanted and Africa could not only develop itself and compete with the rest of the world, “There is room for all of the Diaspora to return.”
“In this little booklet Diop prophesized as to what was the main problem about us as a people,” said Ngemi. “Diop writes, speaking of his own generation, ‘Historical circumstances now commands of our generation, that it solve, in an expeditious manner, the vital problems that face Africa, most especially, the cultural problem. If we do not succeed in this, we will appear in the history of the development of our people as the watershed generation that was unable to ensure the unified cultural survival of the African continent. We will be the generation which out of political and intellectual blindness, committed the error fatal to our national future.’ That’s what Diop wrote in 1960.”
And here we are, some 50 years later and Ngemi says that cultural identity, which Diop identified as what unites an entire people, “is still what is besetting us. On the continent and in the Diaspora.” Speaking of his own country Congo, Zaire, he said that 10 million have been killed since 1996. “10 million. They continue to die as I speak here. Little girls as young as 9 years old being gang-raped by other Black people, Africans, in Africa, on the African continent. 10 million. Why? Lack of cultural identity.”
Ngemi says that reading Diop’s work has an altering effect, and that there is “a birth of a new person after reading Diop’s work,” and learning “what the world owes to your ancestral genius.”
Easter is still two months away, but a Resurrection is what Ngemi says is the responsibility of conscious African people. “We have to resurrect our people. We have to deliver. Because if we’ve been killed, culturally, intellectually, spiritually, we have to be reborn in order to free ourselves.”
And he says until the masses of people can be resurrected and achieve rebirth, then African people on the continent and throughout the Diaspora “will continue to navigate this blankness of mental slavery. Slavery of the spirit, slavery of culture.”
When Ngemi spoke about the problems with the education system in African nations, he could have been speaking of Bedford-Stuyvesant schools as well. “Africans experience problems today because Diop is not being taught in schools in Senegal,” or in the Congo he says. “Go and see the curriculum in Senegal, or all over Africa. It is still a colonial curricula.” A curriculum that does not teach of the time before this time, before the colonial control and influence over the education. It is the contention of Mr. Ngemi, Diop and the others, that it is that knowledge, that will set the African free, at home and throughout the Diaspora, even here in Brooklyn.
“The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks” is the new exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), and the title makes you wonder what will the elephant say? Because it isn’t just what’s called gentrification that is troubling, after all, communities transition from one ethnic group to another for various reasons.
Whether it’s Irish to Italian or Jewish, the group that was being displaced, left because they didn’t want to be around the newcomers, and went on to form new communities at higher economic levels. What is troubling about the gentrification that is taking place now in the African-American community in Brooklyn, is it’s fitting the pattern of the gentrification of Native American neighborhoods some time ago.
Artist: Gabriel (Specter) Reese at MoCADA
“People are not just moving out, going down South or taking off for the suburbs. They are being stopped and frisked by the police at every opportunity, shipped off to prison warehouse facilities for years of ill-training, killed by whoever has a gun and a reason, killed by AIDS and the malevolent “good health living with AIDS” marketing of the pharmaceutical companies, killed by obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, killed by poor judgment born of poor judgment, killed by unemployment double the Great Depression levels, killed by hundreds of years of miseducation and economic disenfranchisement, both enabled by the original crime, the theft of language and nationhood during slavery. Killed by the constant stress on the masses of Black people just to go about day-to-day survival.
African-American residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, confronted by the multiplying and organized Hasidim to the north in Williamsburg and priced out east of Classon Avenue, are faced with seeing their community going the way of Harlem with white folks able to pick off the opportunities as they come up. If ever there was a time to come together and follow the example of Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and our Hasidic brothers, organizing people around common economic goals, it is now.
You can call it gentrification if you’d like, but a slow genocide is what it is, a claiming of territory by victorious people. It’s nothing personal, everyone is quite civil about it, tsk, tsking about the unfortunate, but unchangeable, state of affairs. Just go quietly and don’t make a scene. For further clarification, ask a Native American, if you can find one.
Two weeks ago, the Department of Buildings (DOB)determined that renovation work performed in the cellar of 329 McDonough Street by ANC Construction, a contractor hired by the building owner, undermined the shared party wall between 329 and 331 McDonough Street causing it to partially collapse on Wednesday morning, January 20.
DOB engineers immediately determined that the damage to the party wall compromised the structural stability of both buildings and created a “perilous” public safety hazard. According to DOB spokesperson Ryan Meredith Fitzgibbon, “The contractors dug a ravine next to the party wall causing instability.”
DOB vacated 329 and 331 McDonough Street because they said damage posed a risk to the lives of the tenants and the property owners.
Rumors were rampant that the bookend buildings 327 (with four condo owners) and 333 (vacant and up for sale) might be adversely impacted if 329 and 331 were demolished, as noted in postings.
· Property owners of 327, 329 and 331 joined forces with engineers and lawyers to sue to stop the demolition, and show the properties can be saved. The plaintiffs include: the owner of 329 MacDonough St., Robert Providence; 327 Mac-Donough LLC; and owner of 331, Doreen Prince.
Meanwhile, last week, the plaintiffs’ engineers submitted a plan to pour concrete in the basement for shoring. The DOB reviewed the plan and determined “it was comprehensive and safe,” according to Fitzgibbon. Last Friday 29, DOB allowed the engineers to have the work done.
· On Tuesday, February 2, Supreme Court Justice Bert Bunyan extended a stay on demolition until Monday, February 8 to allow further time for submission for a shoring and bracing plan that would pass DOB approval. Announced Fitzgibbon yesterday, “The buildings are being closely monitored, and there are no signs of movement at this time,” adding, “The owner of 329 McDonough Street is currently working with his engineer to develop a plan to salvage the buildings.”
Joining block residents in the courtroom on February 2 were Borough President Marty Markowitz and City Councilman Al Vann (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights). Both, it was learned, had monitored the MacDonough Street situation and had been in conversations with City Buildings officials – Vann, from out of the country — since reports of the crisis two weeks ago.
The View From There
Krystal Coddett’s window has a view of two of Brooklyn’s loveliest landmarks: the great stained-glass window of St. Philips Church , itself a home to one of the nation’s most precious legacies — a history that embraces the Brownstones, some unchanged in their century of existence, and a section of the village of Bedford Stuyvesant’s ancestral roots.
Exiting historic St. Philips Church on to MacDonough Street, Sunday, January 25, entrepreneur and environmentalist Sherri Hobson-Greene(right sister and her son), a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident, was staggered by the news that two brownstones on the block may be demolished. “If there’s something that can be done to save them, then it should be done – not just because they are brownstones, but because it is a signal to our children that working together, we can own and maintain where we live. This block is a jewel in New York City’s crown.” Photo credit: Barry L. Mason
Before the lofty term gentrification collapsed into a racial pejorative during the late 80’s meaning wealthy people purchasing properties mainly for cheap in poorer areas, there was another wave of gentrification, this involved aristocracies of color from the Caribbean and the South who purchased properties along MacDonough, Macon, Decatur, Bainbridge, Stuyvesant, Lewis and other blocks.
In appreciation and respect for the natural woods, and the artistry and craftsmanship, detailingslargely remained unharmed by most of these property owners.
As Tremaine Wright, owner of Common Ground café on Tompkins Avenue, and heir to a legacy of longtime brownstoners on Jefferson Avenue, “They held on to the real estate, so the next generations would not have to launch from the starting line. They worked hard, maintained and did their business.”
MacDonough Street former resident Mother Singleton, the late Bridge Street Church icon, who owned several properties, created a “museum” in her MacDonough St. home base with artifacts from her lifelong journey. She probably knew the parents of community organizer Sam Pinn who residents, with his wife, Doris, in the same MacDonough brownstone that his ancestors purchased in 1929.
Pinn, in a recent interview with Our Time Press, recalled watching Junior High School 35 going up in stages right across the street from his house, where beautiful brownstones once stood. There’s now a Brownstone School, there, and the nearby Brownstone Books, owned by McDonough resident Crystal Bobb-Semple and her husband Walter, MacDonough Street homeowners.
Before the Pinns, a young Lena Horne walked down MacDonough to get to the Macon Library, one block over. Her father owned a store near there, and she grew up in a house in the Weeksville area, an area coming back to life due to work of the late Joan Maynard and the current executive director of the Weeksville Heritage Center, Pam Greene. The Center, on Bergen, is about to build the first “green” museum devoted exclusively to an African-American village.
Pre-Civil War Weeksville’s ancestral connection to Bedford-Stuyvesant reminds that the community’s roots did not begin with the textbook description of the migration of people of color to the area during the 1920’s or just a few years earlier. In the early 19th century, black stevedore James Weeks purchased land from the Lefferts family, and started a self-contained village from the ground up. In doing so he began the pathway that ambled down a Native American trail into what is now Stuyvesant Heights, where eventually Miles Davis and Max Roach jammed in a forgotten after hours spot; “Native Son” author Richard Wright’s secretary, Mrs. Leach, according to Ms. Maynard, typed his manuscripts; Thomas Russell Jones and Elsie Richardson motivated Robert Kennedy to “restore” the neighborhood; the founder of the first magazine devoted solely to Black business, and Richard D. Parsons, the current CEO of Citigroup, were raised, and so on.
And all who are associated with 329 and 331, and their bookends 327 and 333, are part of the history and the soul of that area. Their stories, too, are about utilizing all of the talents and skills they have to survive, and the strength to prevent two strong village teeth to be yanked from their sockets. If possible.
When the residents of 329 and 331 evacuated their space on Wednesday morning of January 20, they fully expected to soon return home. They were at first told it would be a few hours. Then, later that morning, they were assured it would be a a few days before they would be able to go back. So they went to bed Wednesday night without the benefit of the small luxuries that come from having a place to be and call your own, and the belongings that come with it. There was no reason to believe that they and their things would not be safe and sound, or that the crisis in the cellar discovered by Mrs. Prince early Wednesday morning was over for them. On Thursday morning, they carried on: went to work, shopped for clothes, searched for avenues to access accounts. After all, backpacks, IDs, passports were in “safe places” – at home. Thursday they repeated the routine of Wednesday, with some uncertainty and a great deal of discomfort with their displacement.
By Thursday afternoon, texting, emails and phone calls reached them wherever they were staying, working or trying to make a way. Postings had gone up; 329 and 331 houses would be demolished; rumors flashed that 327 and 333 might be impacted.
Architect Michael McCaw, who has an office in the area, and designed plans for the upper floors — not the cellar — of 329, heard the news, and reacted swiftly placing a call to Henry Butler, chair of Community Board III. CB3 district manager Charlene Phillips dashed off a stunner of an email to various organizations and to Our Time Press; we had just completed the distribution work on the day’s issue. When we arrived on the block people were reeling, as we were, about this life-changing announcement.
329 owner Doreen Prince kept vigil from a van as demolition companies, apparently learning of the news showed up to survey the houses and place bids on the demolition work. One hurt bystander said, “They were like vultures circling a dying corpse!” “It’s all about money,” others opined, after learning later that an out-of-borough contractor erected the wood partition barring the entry to the buildings and protecting pedestrians from any falling debris, earned, “$4,000, more or less” for the job. That partition would be moved closer to the curb, twice over the course of a few days.
“I think if they were in a different neighborhood there’d be a much greater effort (to find an alternative to demolition),” said another. Nobody knew what was really going on, how could they? But all agreed there was an alternative to tearing down, and wondered why they did not have a say in discussing another way. But they said these things in shock, more than anger.
Alan Greaves, Mrs. Prince’s son, who with Krystal Coddett, would lead the effort to find out what was going on and, then, what to do, later said, “We had no time for anger, blaming, criticizing or hysteria. Tearing down the buildings was not an option. But we knew we had very little time to devise a course of action; we had to be clear about what to do.”
But Alan, a fire safety official, also knew something else: while carpenters, contractors, plumbers huddled on MacDonough Street in discussions on how the buildings could be shored, he knew that his and their opinions and solutions didn’t matter unless they could be proved in a courtroom. He silently began to work on a plan and consult with his associates in Downtown Brooklyn at Metro Tech.
By late Thursday night, the shockwave had reached area politicians working in Albany; Councilman Vann who was out of the country; and more community groups. Behind the scenes, they all geared up to have a hand – if not a say – in preserving the buildings. Evelyn Collier, President of the MacDonough Street Block Association, was on the phone with Borough President Marty Markowitz; Vann talked to commissioners and deployed staff members James Crandle, Carl Luciano and other to get on the street; the Brownstoners of Bedford Stuyvesant were mobilizing to have a presence in force at the hearing they were told was to take place the next day, then the day after that; and CB3 was fielding calls and informing its community advocates, who in turn reached to the highest rungs in the city to get the information needed to put wheels in motion carefully and stealthily.
And the people’s movement had only just begun. If Coddett’s home was the nerve center, then area businesses were her satellites, including Brownstone Books, Bread Stuy Café, the CB3 office, Peaches Restaurant. Everyone was aligned – as McDonough Street homeowner Daphne Daniel said, “to work through the system to save legacies.”
In this week’s Community Board 3 meeting, Vann said, “The people on the block should be commended for pulling together and we should recognize, as well, the support from various organizations. And Justice (Bert Bunyan) is being fair; we can never underestimate the total benefit when people come from the community.”
At the hearing on February 2, Vann and Markowitz blended in with the people of McDonough Street and their supporters.
In an e-mail, educator and community leader Brenda Fryson, former chair of the Community Board 3, wrote: “The heart of the story is of a community pulling together around a crisis. Folks took off from work and other things to pack the courtroom to show support; others stood vigil on MacDonough Street, some worked behind the scenes to provide technical assistance. This is the true spirit of Bed-Stuy. The story is not finished.”
With the next hearing set for February 8, Our Time Press, in its February 11 issue, continues this journey.
Community Board 3, Small Businesses, Residents, Block Presidents Take Back Malcolm X Blvd.
A victory took place in Bedford-Stuyvesant this week. Residents, merchants, civic leaders and elected officials joined forces to express their concerns about a rehabilitation center that covertly moved into the area in the beginning of January. Standing in solidarity, the collective succeeded in forcing the Gelzer Foundation, that ran a temporary housing facility for recovering alcohol and drug addicts, at 332 Malcolm X Blvd. out of the neighborhood.
WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS! Reverend Jesse Sumbry of King Emannuel Baptist Church; Henry L. Butler, chairperson, Community Board #3; and Eric Smith, President, Bainbridge St. Block Association (Malcolm X & Patchen) are determined to establish Bedford-Stuyvesant as a safe, vibrant neighborhood for young people like Mr. Smith’s daughter, Erica, a student at P.S. 262 where she studies the violin. Along with numerous residents, local business owners, politicians and agencies, these men wrested control of an illegal shelter from the unscrupulous.
After a weeklong battle, neighbors were thrilled to learn that the beat-up van that dropped off the wayward clan returned to reclaim the bed frames and mattresses it left behind. Earlier in the month, members of the community met with two representatives from the Gelzer Foundation. Unfortunately, the meeting only raised more questions and suspicions about how this organization, which apparently receives some city funding and holds no certificate with the state, was able to enter a neighborhood undetected.
After the request for a second meeting and documentation of the agency’s legitimacy was declined, the collective swung into action. True to the time in which we live in, there were no picket signs or bull horns demanding justice. Instead, the fight played out in cyberspace with e-mail campaigns fired off at jet speed to elected officials and civic leaders; and numerous blog postings and text messages soliciting support. New York Daily News, Our Time Press, the Real Deal Newspaper and News 12 covered the action; phone calls were placed to the agency, forcing elected officials to take action. By Friday, the Gelzer Foundation had enough and permanently closed its doors.
Program housing is a major concern in Bedford-Stuyvesant and other low-income communities throughout the city. Although the city and state has placed a “fair share clause” which monitors the number of program agencies committed to one region, developers and venture capitalists are able to exploit the lucrative market by secretly setting up such agencies in privately owned homes.
Community Board 3, which meets regularly with several city agencies during its closed-session meetings, promises to address the issue in a public forum soon. Chairman Henry Butler commended Bainbridge Street & Malcolm X Blvd. , Block Association and the Malcolm X Merchants Association for their unwavering commitment in tackling the issue noting that it was the community’s acting in the early stages that made the difference.