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THE RITES of ANCESTRAL RETURN

Editor, Our Time Press
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September – October 2003

By Sherrill D. Wilson, Ph.D.

Earth and Fire: International outreach efforts for The African Burial Ground, under the leadership of scholar Howard Dodson, then director of the Schomburg Center, and entrepreneur Byron Lewis of UniWorld Group (neither is pictured here), achieved major global interest. This Queen from South Africa brought soil from her nativeland to mix with the soil of the burial ground. She also conducted a burial rite, as seen here, to clear the air of evil spirits.

More than 10,000 people came together in eight cities over a period of five days to pay final tribute to the ancestral remains of 419 African men, women and children en route to reburial at the landmark 18th century NY African Burial Ground. The “Rites of Ancestral Return” ceremony began at Howard University’s Rankin Hall at 6:00 pm on September 30,2003.

The ceremonies were facilitated by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, under the leadership of Dr. Howard Dodson. The ancestral remains of four representatives–a man, woman, girl and boy– traveled from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Md., to Wilmington, Del., to Philadelphia, Pa., and to Camden, Newark and Jersey City, N.J. for a series of commemorative tributes. In Baltimore, a noon tribute ceremony was held at Willard A. Allen Masonic Temple on Wednesday, October 1, 2003, followed by a 6:00 pm ceremonial procession. In Wilmington, a 7:15 pm tribute ceremony was held at Mother African Union Church. On Thursday, October 2, 2003, an 11:00 am tribute ceremony was held at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia followed by a libation and prayer ceremony in Congo Square. At 6:00 pm, a tribute ceremony began at Bethel Baptist Church in Newark.

On the morning of Friday, October 3, 2003, the flotilla carrying the ancestral remains departed Jersey City after a brief prayer tribute.

The remains arrived in N.Y. on Friday, October 3, at the foot of Wall Street, the former location of the 18th century “Slave Market.” The arrival ceremony, held at the Wall Street Pier, was attended by approximately 400 people along with libation, drumming, song, prayers and greetings from spiritual, community and political leaders and celebrities. The program co-hosts for the historic occasion were actors Phylicia Rashad and Delroy Lindo.

Speakers included: Dr. Kofi Asare Opoku, Rev. James Forbes, Rev. Herbert Daughtry, N.J. Secretary of State Regena Thomas, N.Y. Secretary of State Randy Daniels, Hon. David Dinkins, GSA Administrator Stephen A. Perry, N.Y.C Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Congressman Charles Rangel, State Senator David Paterson, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, Councilman Charles Barron, Council Speaker Gifford Miller, The Descendants of the Afrikan Burial Ground, Drs. Jackson Cole, Michael Blakey, Howard Dodson, Sherrill D. Wilson (OPEl) and others.

Musical tributes were offered by the Eli Fountain and International Percussion, The Boys Choir of Harlem, The Girls Choir of Harlem and The Ebony Brass Ensemble.

Following the N.Y. Wall Street Tribute ceremony, the four ancestral remains embarked on an African Burial Ground five-borough tour. At the landmark African Burial Ground site an overnight, commemorative vigil was held featuring the Medgar Evers College Imani Dance and
Drum Ensemble and many others.

On Saturday, October 4, the pre-tribute ceremony for the reburial was held at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan beginning at 10:00 am. This pre-tribute ceremony began with song and dance. The performing artists included: the Total Praise Ensemble, Emmanuel Baptist Church, the Olive Pointer-Noel Pointer Foundation, violinist Sa-Idah, dancer Derick K. Grant and the Ebony Ecumenical Ensemble.

The final tribute ceremony began at 11 :00 am and included a host of celebrities and clerical and spiritual leaders. A libation was poured by Dr. Kofi Asare Opoku followed by a Call to Celebration of Life by Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Sr. of the Riverside  Church. Interfaith Prayers were offered by Heru Ankh’Ra Semahj Se Ptah, Iman Bin- Yousef, Dr. Ephraim Isaac and Rev. Wendell Foster. Celebrity participants included Avery Brooks, Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Delroy Lindo and Phylicia Rashad. Musical tributes were offered by The Girls Choir of Harlem, The Boys Choir of Harlem and the NY- based Tribute Mass Choir, which included choirs of Bethany Baptist Church, Christ United Church, Concord Baptist Church in Christ, Convent Avenue Baptist Church, Emanuel Baptist, The Crusaders, Evening Star Baptist Church, The Riverside Church- Inspirational Choir, the Ebony Ecumenical Ensemble and the Broadway Inspirational Voices.

Dance tributes included performances by the Marie Brooks Pan-Caribbean Children’s Dance Company and the Alvin Ailey/Fordham BFA Program in Dance students. Other noted speakers included Dr. Adelaide Sanford, Rev. Herbert Daughtry, Rev. Carolyn Holloway, Marta Vega and Cannon Frederick Williams. A poetic tribute was offered by 5-year-old Autum. The program concluded with a song from the Tribute Mass Choir and closing prayers.

Shortly after 2:30 pm, the first of seven crypts containing the coffins of 419 ancestral remains was descended into the earth. Chief Alagba Egunfemi Adegbolola offered final prayers and
sacred offerings as the crypts descended, amidst the tears, prayers, song and drumming of the throngs of living descendants who sought to reach out and touch for the last time the coffins of the African men, women and children who lived and died helping to build New York.

Between 3:00 and 5:00 pm, the final farewell was made to those African ancestors whose remains were excavated in 1991-92. Their lives and untimely deaths serve as a painful reminder to all of us of the sacrifices and hardships endured by Africans in Colonial-era New York.

(by Dr. Sherrill D. Wilson, Ph.D)

The African Burial Ground represents a unique opportunity

Editor, Our Time Press
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and responsibility for all of us  to tell Our Story to the world…

... and to specifically honor the memories of the ancestral Africans who  have passed.

It’s a story and history of both extreme sacrifice and profound  contributions that Africans have made to the creation of the United  States of America.

The African Burial Ground Memorial serves not only as a memorial to  educate the descendant community but also to educate the world community  at large.

No longer should one be able to walk past this site or through lower  Manhattan and not know, understand, acknowledge and respect the important contributions ancestral Africans have made to this district and the nation.

 

Our generation has been entrusted with this awesome responsibility. We  are honored and we embrace it in honor of the memory of those ancestral  Africans who are buried here so that their sacrifices were not in vain.

We embrace it so that all of us today will begin a new phase in the  process of educating ourselves and the world about the importance of  this site and everything it represents.

We embrace it for our children and all future generations so that they  may come to know, understand, acknowledge, respect and be proud  of their history.

– Rodney Leon, Designer, African Burial Ground Permanent Memorial

 

Assemblyman Walter Mosley Marks First Year in Office

Mary Alice Miller
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Assemblyman Walter Mosley’s first State of the District address was attended by a Who’s Who of the 57th District in Brooklyn. Mosley took the opportunity to outline his accomplishments during his first year in office and to outline his 2014 legislative agenda for the district and New York City. 

During Mosley’s first week in office he helped pass the NY SAFE Act which is  banning military-style assault weapons, ensuring that all gun purchases are subject to a background check and keeping guns away from convicted felons and those who pose a danger due to mental illness. But while highlighting the everyday victims of gun violence and random violence like 22-year-old Taj Patterson, who was assaulted and left blind in one eye while walking home in December, and 11-year-old Tayloni “Tutu” Mazyck, who was hit by a stray bullet outside her home last summer and now remains completely paralyzed, possibly for life, Mosley said the SAFE Act must be expanded to address the rampant use of handguns.

“Getting serious about crime also means reforming outdated criminal justice policies that don’t do anything to stop violence but merely continues a cycle of poverty and criminalization in our communities,” said Mosley. He called for the state to discontinue annually processing 40,000 16- and 17-year-olds as adults in NYS courts. “We can take meaningful steps to help these young people,” Mosley said, because “young people who commit crimes are still in their formative years, and public money is more efficiently and effectively spent providing rehabilitation, job training and social programs that give young people tangible tools and hope for a bright future as a fully participating member of society.”

In response to incidents of shop-and-frisk at Barneys and Macy’s, Mosley pledged to introduce the Retail-Anti-Profiling Act, which would implement two major NYPD reforms. “First, this bill would require the city to annually report on any and all ‘additional services’ provided to private business and to explain what these services cost the NYPD and the recipients. Second, this bill would end the 1994 memorandum of understanding under which NYCHA is charged over $70 million a year for ‘additional police services,’” said Mosley. “Public housing residents should not have to pay double for policing, while luxury businesses apparently have additional NYPD personnel in their stores under secretive policies.”

But discrimination is not confined to race, said Mosley. “Despite overwhelming support in the state Assembly, New York failed to pass Governor Cuomo’s Women’s Equality Act that addresses continuing discrimination against women throughout our state. This ten-point women’s agenda would work to end the widespread discrimination women in NY still face,” Mosley said. “Every woman deserves to be able to have a child and start a family without fearing for losing her job because she needs to take maternity leave. Every woman deserves a professional and harassment-free workplace that has equal pay for equal work. Every woman deserves the right to make her own decisions about her own health care, about her own body and about her own future.”

“When women succeed, we all succeed,” Mosley added. “The governor wants these reforms done and we’re going to fight to get this signed into law this year. We passed it in the Assembly last year, we will pass it again this year and we will send a powerful message to the Senate that this is 2014 and it is an embarrassment to continue treating women like second-class citizens.”

Mosley said that all New York children deserve a “holistic approach of academic and social education that extends far beyond the classroom walls – an approach that pushes our young people to not just master the basics of math, reading and writing, but to think critically about the world and the community they live in”, which starts with Universal Pre-K education supported by the wealthiest New Yorkers.

Noting that rampant bullying keeps too many children afraid to go to school, Mosley said this year the state expanded the Dignity for All Students Act, which requires a mandatory reporting system for all incidents of bullying and cyberbullying and antibullying education classes and Internet instruction for all current staff and students on how to deal with bullying in our schools.

Mosley also supported the development of young people by partnering with the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and other community organizations to sponsor a first annual Youth Job Fair for Brooklyn in which more than 200 young people obtained resume-building skills and opportunities for hands-on job training that they will need to be competitive in the 21st century.

To address the 21% poverty rate in Brooklyn, Mosley said that after “hard-fought budget negotiations”, we succeeded in raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8 starting this year, and it will rise again each year until reaching $9 an hour by 2016. “And we are going to keep fighting until we get a minimum wage that is indexed to inflation and will rise along with cost of living each and every year,” he said.

“The landscape of Brooklyn is changing before our eyes. Each year it seems more developers are moving into our communities,” said Mosley. “And while we welcome economic growth in central Brooklyn, this growth cannot come at the expense of the working families that made Brooklyn what it is today.”

Mosley called for setting a precedent about how business is done in Brooklyn. “We have to speak up and stand together so that big developers and corporate interests know that if they want to move into the 57th District, they will need to provide our community with well-paying jobs that come with good benefits and safe work conditions,” said Mosley. “They will need to tap local minority- and women-owned businesses for construction and post-construction contracts. They will need to create real low- and moderate-income affordable housing that keeps Brooklynites from being pushed out of their homes and neighborhoods.”

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Mosley said he was proud to announce that the New York State Health Exchange has enrolled over 380,000 New Yorkers who now have access to affordable health coverage – making it one of the most successful health exchanges in the nation.

During his address, Mosley recognized two individuals “whose outstanding contributions make a difference every day in the lives of Brooklynites.”  Claudette Theresa Macey was honored for more than 35 years of service with the Fort Greene Council, Inc., an intergenerational community service organization that serves youth and seniors. Job Mashariki – who founded the Black Veterans for Social Justice in 1979 — was honored for his more than three decades of service addressing the sacrifices and hardships of veterans and their families and his broader service to Bedford-Stuyvesant and the city.

“I have seen the resilience of the human spirit, and I have seen what we can accomplish when we come together as neighbors and citizens,” said Mosley. “Let’s aspire to unity in diversity and take the immense opportunity for change we have right now. We are on the brink of a new era for New York City and Brooklyn, and we must keep fighting until we fulfill the promise of leaving the next generation with a better world than when we started.”

In Memory of Travon Martin, Jordan Davis and All Youth Lost to Violence

Aminisha Black
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African-American youth comprise the largest numbers in youth-related stop-and-frisks, arrests, suspension from public schools and victims of gun violence.    Since the future of African-Americans depends on today’s youth, it led me to create the phrase “The transformation of a Nation begins in the homes of its people.”  Today – Black History Month 2014 – acknowledging the plight of our youth    and looking at our daily practices, will you choose a way to make a difference for future generations and share it with PN?  While we pay tribute to Black contributors annually, can each of us search, find and share actions that parents can implement in their homes, on their blocks and communities.  The goal is to transform our homes and communities (one block at a time) into places where youth are appreciated for their unique gifts and contribution to the group and provided opportunities to resurrect the highest-held African, Afro-American, Hispanic, Native American value – the interpersonal relationship between mankind – replacing the European, Euro-American highest-held value which lies in the Object or in the acquisition of the Object (Edwin J. Nichols, Ph.D.).

We owe it to our ancestors and to future generations.   You can make a difference.  Start by observing and truthfully acknowledging your feelings toward youngsters – yours and others; find a way that you can contribute to a young person and share the results with PN so it can be shared with the community.  If you experience frequent upsets, yelling and anger, it suggests the need for some emotional clearing which simply requires a safe, supportive space to communicate.

Beginning the campaign to transform the nation, we ask readers to share practices at home or in the classroom that are useful to the growth of all intelligences, including English and math, while not excluding the others.   We’ll also solicit and share information on developmental tasks leading up to and including adolescence.

Ages 5 -8 – The Time to develop a sense of accomplishment and competence

Leaving the preschool stage, these youngsters are to grow in the ability to think and plan ahead more than one step at a time, to separate from home and family, to separate from home and family to accept other adults as authority figures and to relate to a wider group of people as they enter the world of school.  Erikson labels the crisis at this stage as Industry vs. Inferiority.  Positive resolution results in a sense of duty, accomplishment and competence while negative resolution results in a sense of inadequacy, poor working habits, tendency to avoid competitive situations.

A major adjustment for this age group is attending school and the changes that it requires.  Your child’s sense of accomplishment and competence will, for the most part, be gained from his/her participation in school.  That’s why parents must be involved in their child’s education.  You cannot turn your child over to a bureaucracy and leave them.  While teachers hold various degrees in subject matter, you must verify that their classroom practices protect and enhance your child’s sense of self-worth.  You must also provide your child with family and community activities so that s/he can have opportunities to excel.

These youngsters are so curious and so eager to do what adults do that you can include them in practically any activity.  Praise them often.  Tell them exactly what you liked about what they did, rather than merely saying “you’re a good boy or girl”.

Helping your child win at school requires structure at home.  Regular times for homework, meals and bed need to be established.  Get to know your child’s teachers.  Open the lines of communication because what’s happening at home and school impacts on this child.  Remember, starting school is a major event, placing your child in an extremely structured environment.

School can also cause emotional upsets for the child.  You may notice some changes in the attitude of your six-year-old, stubbornness, wanting to have own way, maybe even tantrums.  Parents really need to find and participate in parent support groups.  So many practices surrounding discipline creates angry and hostile children. We need to change that so that when the turbulence of adolescence comes, it can be a lot less volatile.  Actually, we can literally save lives.

Parents, guardians  of children this age are invited to share experiences with PN at parentsnotebook@yahoo.com.   

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The End of an Era

Eddie Castro
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The New York Yankees have had an interesting off-season to say the least with a little bit of good and bad. The team spent nearly $500 million dollars on acquiring much-needed assets to their ball club to compete with their rival the Boston Red Sox who won the World Series last year. General Manager Brian Cashman made sure this year Yankee fans would have a winning team on the field for 2014. Along came the distractions with the Alex Rodriguez saga and Robinson Cano signing with the Seattle Mariners as it was reported that he felt disrespected by the organization with the teams contract offer. Pitchers and catchers reported to training camp with yet another headline as shortstop and Captain Derek Jeter posted on his Facebook account last week that 2014 will be his last season in baseball.

Jeter has been in the Yankee organization since the age of 19, and  injuries and age are creeping up on the 13-time All-Star.  What hasn’t he done? Jeter is sure to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer when he decides to hang it up. He is a 5-time World Series Champion (1996, 1998,1999, 2000 and 2009), the American League Rookie of the Year in 1996 and a 5-time Golden Glove winner. Jeter also is the franchise’s all-time leader in hits (3,316), games played (2,602), stolen bases (348) and at-bats (10,614). He has been one of the most dangerous postseason hitters of our generation, holding several postseason records such as his .351 batting average in the World Series. For his postseason heroics, he has earned nicknames like “Captain Clutch” and my personal favorite, “Mr. November”.

There are too many words you can use to describe what Derek Jeter has meant to Brooklynites like myself who idolized him growing up. The many highlight plays he had, like the cutoff play he made in Oakland in 2002 where he flipped the ball to longtime teammate Jorge Posada to tag out Jeremy Giambi at home plate thus changing the outcome of that playoff series, or in 2001 when the clock struck midnight and for the first time in nearly 30 years at the time, baseball was being played in November. Jeter stepped up to the plate and hit that huge home run off Arizona’s Byun-Yun Kim, and who can forget that July night at the stadium when Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon hit that fly ball and Jeter sprinted to that ball and dove into the stands coming out with a bloody chin. These are just a few of the moments Jeter has had, and when he does hang it up, there will never be another Derek Jeter in baseball.

Sports Notes: (Basketball) As the NBA trading deadline approaches this coming week, who will the Knicks and Nets add to their teams in hopes of making the playoffs? The Knicks are in need of a point guard and have shown interest in point guards such as the Celtics’ Rajon Rondo, Raptors’ Kyle Lowry and even the Hawks’ Jeff Teague. With Carmelo Anthony set to become a free agent, the Knicks organization may try to attract another big star to keep Anthony put in a Knick uniform. For the Nets it’s quite simple, give Deron Williams some help. The team may be shopping for a backup point guard as Williams tries to get healthy. Jarrett Jack, of the Cleveland Cavaliers, would be a nice fit for the team.

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