Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[IllmaticDelta]

Polynesians

.









How the Polynesian Panthers changed our world

“We were only young. We had no examples, but we knew we had a right to be here.”

To clarify, in keeping with the views of the Polynesian Panthers themselves, Maori are included under the term ‘Pacific Islanders’. Unless stated otherwise, all references to Pacific Islanders in this text includes Maori. In the words of Tigi Ness, “We are living on the biggest Pacific Island.”

While many of you may not have heard of the Polynesian Panthers, hopefully you will have heard of the Black Panthers, a now (arguably) disbanded African American revolutionary left-wing organisation that worked for the self-defence of black people. Over time, the Black Panthers’ initial stand against police brutality in black neighbourhoods became a call for staunch black nationalism for all African Americans. The strength of the movement spawned generations of strong African Americans, to whom the Panthers provided basic human rights—such as their free breakfasts and education for children programmes—and, importantly, personal strength and pride in their heritage.

The Polynesian Panthers group was founded on 16 June 1971, borne from a large mix of Pacific Islanders, including Samoans, Tongans, Niueans and Maori. Tigi Ness, a New Zealand-born Niuean, describes the founders as “former gang members and students”, mere “teenagers in response to the racism we were experiencing in Auckland”. The majority of the founders were high school students, not university students or adults; most were from working class families and inspired by Black Panther founder Huey Newton’s concept of black unity.

The Panthers were mostly first generation New Zealanders. Their parents reaped some of the benefits of New Zealand’s economic boom in the 1960s, when they were encouraged to migrate to New Zealand to provide cheap labour. The government turned a blind eye to expired working visas and illegal migrant workers until the production boom dwindled in the mid-1970s. Although wages were higher, living conditions were often poor and Pacific Islanders were often subject to racism and police harrassment. The fortunes of many Pacific Islanders, who had uprooted their families and lives to work for wages less than the average New Zealander, took a turn for the worse as the economy started on a downward spiral. The government aggressively targeted overstayers—that is, people who illegally remained in the country past their work visa, or failed to get one in the first place—and these first generation New Zealanders were at risk of being sent back to a country, and society, they never knew. The problems many Pacific Islanders already faced in New Zealand were only compounded by this episode in New Zealand history.

On top of fears for their families, many Pacific Islanders lived in dangerous neighbourhoods, with many young people feeling their only options for survival were to join a gang or simply hide at home. The Panthers formed to provide the young with another option. They were searching for something positive—the life their families moved to New Zealand to create, as opposed to the oppressive policies and poverty keeping their cultures and communities downtrodden.

The reasons for joining the Panthers were relatively diverse. Some, like Will Ilolahia, were looking for a better way. Will remembers being a member of the gang ‘Nigs’ (because they were often called ‘******s’), but he was trying to find something more meaningful in life. He began reading American books about the Black Panthers and soon “woke up”. Some chose the Panthers initially for its more aesthetic appeal—as Tigi Ness did—with “black leather, berets, Island shoes, raising their fist”. Once initially formed, the Panthers knocked on doors of people they felt had the same ideals.

The Polynesian Panthers challenged discriminatory practices in areas such as unequal pay, unsatisfactory working and housing conditions, education, police harassment, legal rights and prison visits for families. The extent to which the Pacific Island communities felt these injustices is shocking. Before the Panthers, it was often the norm for Pacific Islander houses to have only cold water. In addition to minimal pay, they were expected to work through all breaks, including unpaid lunch breaks, to keep their jobs.

Police harassment of Pacific Islanders was common from 1974 to the late 1980s. Some were picked up by police and those who weren’t holding papers showing their legal status in New Zealand were arrested. The extent of police harassment was such that Pacific Islanders made up 86 per cent of all prosecutions for overstaying. Police began ‘dawn raids’, knocking down Pacific Islanders’ doors in the early hours of the morning, demanding passports from all occupants. In response, the Polynesian Panthers began “dawn raids” of politicians’ houses by banging on the door with floodlights, demanding to see passports, and running away as politicians came to the door. It only took a few weeks before the Polynesian Panthers effectively stopped all dawn raids on Pacific Islander communities.

Much of the Polynesian Panthers’ work was in empowering the Polynesian community to raise their quality of life. The Panthers organised strikes in factories with substandard working conditions, and the Tenants Aid Brigade (TAB) boycotted and protested outside sub-standard housing. To combat failing grades at school, the Panthers organised homework centres—locations simply with tables, chairs and a quiet space so students could do their homework. Many Pacific Islander families simply did not know their rights or entitlements, and the Panthers ensured that knowledge was passed on and utilised.

The Panthers provided much needed assistance to Polynesians caught up in legal wrangles. Pamphlets were distributed advising individuals of their rights, such as being able to ask police whether they were being arrested, and what for. Legal aid was often provided to individuals needing court representation. One of the most successful initiatives was organising buses to prisons, so families could visit, and further support was provided to prisoners who had no family on the outside. While this was a free service, prisoners gifted the Panthers substantial amounts of the money earned in prison to show their gratitude.

The Panthers, along with many Pacific Island youth, also supported Maori causes and political events, such as the 1975 Land March and Bastion Point occupation. The Panthers became adept at political lobbying, which became apparent during the dawn raids in the 1970s, and the Springbok Tour of 1981. Tigi Ness was jailed for his actions during the tour, but was eventually released without charge. Will Ilolahia, along with Hone Harawira and others, was on trial for two years, only getting off the charge after Bishop Desmond Tutu flew in to be a character witness.

Many of the Panthers voiced concern that the government’s way of control was to divide and conquer the minorities, and as a result they banded together to fight the threat to their cultures and communities. Miriama Rauhihi-Ness remembers a time when being Maori and embracing Maori culture was “literally… cut out of you at school, all of it”. She cites the 1975 Land March as a turning point, where New Zealand society began to be more accepting of Maori culture, both within Maoridom and in Pakeha society. Nowadays, all Panthers encourage Maori and Pacific Islanders to remain strongly banded together as whanau, with pride in their heritage.

How the Polynesian Panthers changed our world — Salient

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Australian Aboriginal Panthers

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Dalit Panthers

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Israeli Panthers

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Amerindian Movement/Red Power

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[Elle Driver]

I love my people. I love yall

I keep hearing "we are all immigrants".

I'm just like

 

[Poitier]

I keep hearing "we are all immigrants".

I'm just like

 

[Remo]

Talking about current events.


Its a long video btw

 

[Elle Driver]

Anotha one:
"Immigrants built this country"

 

[Black Lightning]

Despite advances in the fight for racial equality (including the landmark 1954 Supreme Court verdict in Brown v. Board of Education and the Montgomery Bus Boycott), segregation was still the norm across the southern United States in 1960. Early that year, a non-violent protest by young African-American students at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparked a sit-in movement that soon spread to college towns throughout the region. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth’s and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.


Start of a Movement

The four young black men who staged the first sit-in in Greensboro–Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil–were all students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. They were influenced by the non-violent protest techniques practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, as well as an early “Freedom Ride” organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in 1947, in which interracial activists rode across the upper South in a bus to test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate bus travel. The “Greensboro Four”–as they became known–had also been spurred to action by the brutal murder in 1955 of a young black boy, Emmett Till, who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi store.

Blair, Richmond, McCain and McNeil planned their protest carefully, and enlisted the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action. On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats. Police arrived on the scene, but were unable to take action due to the lack of provocation. By that time, Johns had already alerted the local media, who had arrived in full force to cover the events on television. The “Greensboro Four” stayed put until the store closed, then returned the next day with more students from local colleges.


Immediate Results

By February 5, some 300 students had joined the protest at Woolworth’s, paralyzing the lunch counter and other local businesses. Heavy television coverage of the Greensboro sit-ins sparked a sit-in movement that spread quickly to college towns throughout the South and into the North, as young blacks and whites joined in various forms of peaceful protest against segregation in libraries, beaches, hotels and other establishments. By the end of March the movement had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Though many were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, national media coverage of the sit-ins brought increasing attention to the struggle for civil rights for African Americans.

In response to the success of the sit-in movement, dining facilities across the South were being integrated by the summer of 1960. At the end of July, when many local college students were on summer vacation, the Greensboro Woolworth’s quietly integrated its lunch counter. Four black Woolworth’s employees–Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones and Charles Best–were the first to be served.


Founding of SNCC

To capitalize on the momentum of the sit-in movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960. Over the next few years, SNCC served as one of the leading forces in the civil rights movement, organizing so-called “Freedom Rides” through the South in 1961 and the historic March on Washington in 1963, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his seminal “I Have a Dream” speech.

SNCC worked alongside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to push passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and would later mount an organized resistance to the Vietnam War. As its members faced increased violence, however, SNCC became more militant, and by the late 1960s it was advocating the “Black Power” philosophy of Stokely Carmichael (SNCC’s chairman from 1966-67) and his successor, H. Rap Brown. By the early 1970s, SNCC had lost much of its mainstream support, and was effectively disbanded.

 

[Black Lightning]

Think of the greatest American sports stars of all time and names like Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali and Serena Williams will likely spring to mind.


But long before these champions smashed the record books — and blazed a trail in the public’s imagination — the first generation of African American U.S. athletes dominated an unlikely sport.


The godfathers of Owens, Ali and Williams weren’t stereotypical towering, musclebound men found on basketball courts or in boxing rings.


Instead, they were the jockeys of the race track and their dizzying success — and dramatic fall — is one of the most remarkable buried chapters in U.S. sporting history.


When the country’s most prestigious horse race, the Kentucky Derby, launched in 1875, 13 of the 15 jockeys were African-American.


Much like the NBA today, black athletes dominated horse racing for the next three decades, winning 15 of the first 28 Derbies.


“They were the premier horsemen in the world,” says Joe Drape, author of “Black Maestro,” which tells the story of champion jockey Jimmy Winkfield.


“It was the first professional sport for African-American athletes in America. They were at the forefront of horse racing and it was a place where they could earn a good living.”


Decades before Jackie Robinson made history in 1947 as the first African-American major league baseball player, African American jockeys forged a name as the first sports heroes of post-Civil War America.


The son of a former slave, Isaac Murphy was the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbies — in 1884, 1890, 1891. He went on to win an unheard-of 44% of all his competitions, becoming the first rider inducted into the National Racing Hall of fame.


“Murphy was the first millionaire black athlete,” Drape told CNN. “He even had a white valet.”


Many of these jockeys had been slaves in the South, working as stable hands and becoming skilled horse handlers.


Plantation owners put them on the backs of horses in informal — and dangerous — competitions. When horse racing became an organized sport in the early 19th-Century, African-American jockeys were already leaders in the saddle.


Yet fast forward to today and you’d struggle to find an African-American jockey on a U.S. race track.


Just 30 of the around 750 members of the national Jockey’s Guild are African-American, according to the most recent figures available. That’s less than 5%


Winkfield was the last African American to win the Kentucky Derby — in 1901 and 1902 — and by 1921 they had all but disappeared.


It would be 79 years before another black rider, Marlon St. Julien, competed in 2000.


The introduction of the Jim Crow laws in the late 1880s — segregating African-American and whites — spelled an end to the golden era of jockeys like Winkfield and Murphy.


Increasing violence against African-American jockeys forced many to abandon racing and move to northern urban areas, says Drape.


“It became too dangerous to put African-American riders on horses,” he added. “An influx of Irish immigrants were now slugging it out on the track, riding African-American jockeys into railings and making them fall.”


Other riders, such as Winkfield, fled to Russia — which had a thriving horse racing industry.


“The Russians were colorblind, you had jazz players and heavyweight boxers like Jack Johnson — it was basically the last place African-American sportsmen could go,” Drape said.


He was treated like a celebrity, socializing with aristocrats in Tzar Nicholas II’s court and marrying two white European countesses.


Decades later, segregation still ruled America, and when Sports Illustrated invited Winkfield to a reception at the Brown Hotel in Louisville in 1961, he was told he couldn’t enter by the front door.


Today, Deshawn Parker is perhaps the most successful of the few African-American jockeys competing in the states, boasting more than 4,000 career victories.


The 42-year-old, who won the most U.S. events in 2010 and 2011, entered the sport after his father worked as a racing official.


“African-American aren’t on the track like they used to be,” he said. “If you don’t have someone in your family who’s in the business, you don’t have a reason to start racing.”


Parker, the 54th-ranked jockey of all time, says racing is now dominated by Latinos.


Terry Meyock, national manager of the Jockey’s Guild, agreed, estimating that 60% of jockeys in the U.S. are Latinos.


Of the current top-10 highest earning jockeys, nine are from South America.


“From African-American to Irish to Latino, jockeys in America tend to mirror immigration,” Drape said.


“The conditions are the same as 200 years ago — the best jockeys tend to be from rural countries, they grow up around horses, it’s tradition and it’s a family business.”


For Parker, jockeys like Murphy and Winkfield didn’t just change the face of racing — they paved the way for generations of African-American sports stars.


“They got African-American athletes in the door,” he said. “It’s an honor to be ranked among them.”

 

[Poitier]

Anotha one:
"Immigrants built this country"

They want to erase us so bad.

We all we got, sis.

 

[Thebadguy]

.
Mound Bayou traces its origin to people from the community of Davis Bend, Mississippi. The latter was started in the 1820s by the planter Joseph E. Davis (brother of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis), who intended to create a model slave community on his plantation. Davis was influenced by the utopian ideas of Robert Owen. He encouraged self-leadership in the slave community, provided a higher standard of nutrition and health and dental care, and allowed slaves to become merchants. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Davis Bend became an autonomous free community when Davis sold his property to former slave Benjamin Montgomery, who had run a store and been a prominent leader at Davis Bend. The prolonged agricultural depression, falling cotton prices and white hostility in the region contributed to the economic failure of Davis Bend.

Isaiah T. Montgomery led the founding of Mound Bayou in 1887 in wilderness in northwest Mississippi. The bottomlands of the Delta were a relatively undeveloped frontier, and blacks had a chance to clear land and acquire ownership in such frontier areas. By 1900 two-thirds of the owners of land in the bottomlands were black farmers. With high debt and continuing agricultural problems, most of them lost their land and by 1920 were sharecroppers. As cotton prices fell, the town suffered a severe economic decline in the 1920s and 1930s.

Shortly after a fire destroyed much of the business district, Mound Bayou began to revive in 1942 after the opening of the Taborian Hospital by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, a fraternal organization. For more than two decades, under its Chief Grand Mentor Perry M. Smith, the hospital provided low-cost health care to thousands of blacks in the Mississippi Delta. The chief surgeon was Dr. T.R.M. Howard who eventually became one of the wealthiest black men in the state. Howard owned a plantation of more than 1,000 acres (4.0 km2), a home-construction firm, a small zoo, and built the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi. In 1952, Medgar Evers moved to Mound Bayou to sell insurance for Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company. Howard introduced Evers to civil rights activism through the Regional Council of Negro Leadership which organized a boycott against service stations which refused to provide restrooms for blacks. The RCNL's annual rallies in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1955 drew crowds of ten thousand or more. During the trial of Emmett Till's alleged killers, black reporters and witnesses stayed in Howard's Mound Bayou home, and Howard gave them an armed escort to the courthouse in Sumner.

Author Michael Premo wrote:

Mound Bayou was an oasis in turbulent times. While the rest of Mississippi was violently segregated, inside the city there were no racial codes... At a time when blacks faced repercussions as severe as death for registering to vote, Mound Bayou residents were casting ballots in every election. The city has a proud history of credit unions, insurance companies, a hospital, five newspapers, and a variety of businesses owned, operated, and patronized by black residents. Mound Bayou is a crowning achievement in the struggle for self-determination and economic empowerment."

From 1890 to 1915, Mound Bayou was a land of promise for African Americans. Encapsulated in this “promise” were self-help, race pride, economic opportunity, and social justice, in a self-segregated community designed for blacks to have minimum contact with whites until integration was a viable option to black freedom.

Mound Bayou had a U.S. Post Office, six churches, banks, stores, and several public and private schools. Its economy depended on the production of cotton, timber, and corn, and being an agent for the L, NO & T Railroad. Politically, Mound Bayou’s mayor Isaiah Montgomery protected it from white violence through political accommodation. Montgomery also ensured Mound Bayou’s growth by working closely with Booker T. Washington after 1900, through his “lieutenant” Charles Banks. Socially, Mound Bayou had an exceptionally low crime rate, high morals (i.e., no gambling or sale of alcohol), and everyone had to be a useful member of the community. Through outlets like the town’s newspaper, The Demonstrator (1900), Mound Bayou promoted education as an essential path to community survival, in particular vocational education in scientific agriculture through the Mound Bayou Normal and Industrial Institute. From 1907 to 1915, this infrastructure, along with Mound Bayou’s function as a railroad center, allowed it to flourish and grow to 8,000 people by 1911. Its noticeable decline occurred during the Great Migration period (1915-1930), in which cotton prices fell, Booker T. Washington passed away, and the black path towards freedom was redirected from independent towns towards the major cities of the United States.

Despite its sharp population decline throughout the century, Mound Bayou still exists today as a predominatly black town in Mississippi with a 98.6 percent total black population.

Mound Bayou, Mississippi - Wikipedia

Mound Bayou (1887- ) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

 

[Black Lightning]

First African-American Pilot a War Hero During WWI

After watching his father narrowly escape a lynching in early 20th century Georgia, Eugene Bullard would escape the confines of racial tensions and a segregated country to become the first African-American combat pilot and one of the first African-American heroes of World War I.

Bullard, who grew up in Columbus, Ga., as one of 10 children of a former slave, left his hometown as a teenager, stowing away on a ship bound for Scotland and moved to London to fulfill his dreams.

Before the war began, Bullard moved to Paris where he made a reputation for himself as a professional boxer. At the start of the war in 1914, Bullard enlisted in the French Foreign Legion where he was assigned to the 170th Infantry Regiment. Nicknamed the “Swallows of Death,” he and his unit would see heavy action, and during the battle of Verdun, Bullard was wounded twice. He was then sent to a Parisian hospital to recuperate for the next six months.

Bullard was promoted to the rank of corporal and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and other war-time medals, for his bravery during combat. While still in the hospital, Bullard accepted a bet that he couldn’t get into the flying corps and in October of 1916 arrived at French gunnery school. A month later he talked his way into pilot training and earned his pilot’s license to become the first African-American aviator.

He reached the front lines as a pilot in August of 1917 flying more than 20 sorties in a Spad VII fighter biplane, with two unconfirmed kills to his credit. After a disagreement with a French officer he was eventually removed from the French air force and spent the remainder of the war back with his infantry regiment.
After the war, Bullard remained in France, got married, had two daughters, and purchased a bar on the north side of Paris. He was still living in Paris at the outbreak of World War II, and worked with French Resistance forces to spy on German troops who would patronize his bar. Considered too old to join the French army, Bullard found a way to escape from occupied France, and returned to the U.S. aboard a Red Cross ship in 1940.

In 1954, Bullard, along with two other French veterans, were invited by then French President Charles De Gaulle to light the flame of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In 1959, he was honored with the Knight of the Legion of Honor.

When he returned to the U.S., he was never recognized as a war hero, and died in relative obscurity and poverty in Flushing, Queens, New York in 1961. While he never realized his dream of becoming a pilot in the U.S. military, he was finally recognized posthumously as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force in 1994.