#Nation Newspaper Barbados | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reddeadreference · 1 year

Text

Blackwater Ledger No. 74

-Click here to return to the index for Newspapers-

This issue is available after completion of the mission: Uncle’s Bad Day

(All article transcripts below the cut)

Articles marked with * are exclusive to this region’s issue.

Articles marked with ** are only there upon completion of the related mission.

Bureau of Investigation Founded

SECRET SERVICE VETERANS JOIN STAFF. PROMISE TO ROOT OUT ORGANIZED CRIME.

The Attorney General has formed an autonomous investigative agency to be headed up by veteran law enforcement officer Edgar Ross in an attempt to track high profile and dangerous criminals. The Bureau will also be tasked with investigating financial fraud and other organized crimes.

Ross served for many years as a senior agent with the Pinkerton Detective Agency under the mentorship of the late Andrew Milton and then went on to work at the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, founded by the National Chiefs of Police Union in 1896, which was tasked to record information on criminals and gangs and work with law enforcement. He has been billed as one of the most humble, innovative and honest law enforcement officers of his class, and colleagues say that Ross produces results where others fail. Upon swearing in, he stated: "I want all criminals to know that here in America, everyone will eventually pay for what they have done."

Unrest in the Tropics

COST OF FOOD, FUEL ANGERS CITIZENS. SUGAR BARONS TO BLAME.

Island residents from Barbados to Cuba are experiencing soaring prices and short supply of food and fuel. They are blaming local politicians and sugar barons for the situation. Shortly after the political unrest in the area, including the assassination of prominent sugar industry advocate and Guarman governor Alberto Fussar in 1899, American banking institutions, including JD McKnight and Co., took control of the sugar industry on several islands, including Barbados, the Virgin Islands, and Guarma.

Fields which once flourished with locally grown foods and were used to feed the island nation suddenly switched to growing sugar cane. As a result of a single crop economy, all foodstuffs are imported, to great expense for local peoples. Foreign investors hire locals to guard and police their massive plantations, subjecting workers to harsh conditions and penalties.

Local groups argue that island residents are suffering the most, while businesses say heavy investments by American financial institutions have allowed for the revitalization of the local economies.

'We Are Helpless'

TOWNS DECRY UNCHECKED VIOLENCE. OUTLAW GANGS RUNNING RAMPANT. LED BY NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL MICAH BELL.

A cacophony of outrage has been building at the lawlessness that prevails in towns across the area. Numerous outlaw gangs seem to operate unchecked or unstoppable by law enforcement, rendering terrified citizens helpless. The reward for the killing or capture of infamous outlaw Micah Bell and his gang was recently increased by government officials in response to the unanimous outcry from citizens that something must be done about this murderous gang of thieves and killers.

Mr. Bell and his associates continue their spree of killing and robbing while running roughshod over law enforcement. His acts of lawlessness rival that of Van der Linde himself. They pay no debts and dynamite banks and buildings as a recreational pastime. Bell has long been a suspect in the Blackwater Bank Robbery and Strawberry massacre back in 1899 and numerous train robberies that have ended in dismemberment or death of passengers in the years since then. Little is known of Mr. Bell's origins.

Reverend Swanson Leads NY Church

DELIVERS POWERFUL MESSAGE

Reverend Orville Swanson was inducted into his official capacity as minister at the First Congregational Church of New York this week, having moved to the city to accept the position. A service was held and then a reception was given to celebrate the appointment. Encouraging reports from attendees indicate that Reverend Swanson delivered an impassioned and heartfelt sermon about acknowledging sin and seeking redemption. He spoke about his own break from faith, a dark period when he could not attend church, falling into sin, depravity and wanton gluttony.

He chronicled the period where he rediscovered his faith and began witnessing on street-corners, to then become assistant pastor at a church in Ohio and now New York. During his recent attendance at the Convention Meeting of First Congregational Churches he delivered a very moving oration, impressing attendees as an eloquent and persuasive speaker, and was almost immediately offered the position.

Tallulah Jetty Gang Killed

BANK RAIDED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. CITIZENS FORM POSSE.

United States Marshal Fulkerton received a dispatch from Silver Springs indicating that after years of evading capture, the Tallulah Jetty Gang was chased down after a brazen bank robbery in broad daylight. After a series of outrages, including the killing of several women and elders, officers placed 200 men in pursuit of the gang, which was overtaken near Anadarko.

A combination force of Cherokee Indians and a militia formed after the bank robbery pursued the gang to a cave in the bluffs south of the area, where a spectacular gun battle took place, killing several officers. After a period of quiet, one man entered the cave where he found a gravely wounded William Bishop bleeding out next to deceased henchmen Harold Sutton and James Shaw.

Liquor Smuggled Into Indian Territory

DEPUTIES PURSUE OUTLAWS, ONE KILLED.

A dispatch received from Comanche Indian territory yesterday says that Deputy United States Marshal Tidwell and another deputy attempted to arrest Cletus Yarnell and Lawrence Branch for introducing intoxicating liquors into Indian Territory. The outlaws resisted arrest and a gun battle ensued, with Marshal Tidwell's horse being shot out from under him. The desperados fled into Indian territory and were pursued. Yarnell was mortally wounded, Branch was arrested.

Bubonic Plague in San Francisco

CITY STILL REELING AFTER EARTHQUAKE THAT KILLED 3,000.

After an earthquake that destroyed 80 percent of the city and killed over 3,000 people, the city of San Francisco now reports that a second epidemic of bubonic plague has broken out. It is believed the outbreak is due to the large number of rats in the area. Fleas from infected rats transmit the disease, resulting in fever symptoms, seizures, gangrene and necrosis of the extremities, along with, in many cases, death.

New Railroad Completed

A GRAND PROJECT OUR MANIFEST DESTINY

The final ties were laid and spikes driven through to complete the Central Union rail line stretching through New Hanover. Passengers will be able to bypass the Grizzlies, Rhodes, and Scarlett Meadows, drastically reducing travel time. Now with a direct line connecting Cornwall Kerosene and Tar and Saint Denis, freight and commuters will flow fast and freely.

The project came with complications, including controversy over missing workers' wages and a land dispute. Representatives from towns such as Van Horn Trading Post and Annesburg say the new line will result in the decline of their towns. Civic planners hail the railroad as a new dawning day in American progress and history.

The Art of Angling by Jeremy Gill

SOCKEYE SALMON.

Last year while fishing in the Alaskan territories, I soon discovered that a family of bears was fishing too, and one particularly angry Kodiak took exception to my overwhelming success of pulling dozens of Sockeye Salmon out of the water. I could not blame him; however, now his head sits sentry above my foyer with a salmon in its mouth, a testament to the hunter becoming the hunted.

In cold streams, and particularly in the Grizzlies, salmon will strike river lures and are possibly the best tasting fish you can bring home for supper. They are so plentiful you may take as many as you like with no consequence. Happy casting.

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 photo mode #rdr2 newspaper

8 notes · View notes

msclaritea · 1 year

Text

https://barbadostoday.bb/2023/01/02/comissiong-responds-to-british-newspaper-articles-about-barbados-reparations-campaign/?s=09

Comissiong responds to British newspaper articles about Barbados’ reparations campaign - by Barbados Today January 2, 2023

David Comissiong, Deputy Chairperson of the National Task Force on Reparations, issued the following statement on Monday in response to British newspaper articles about Barbados’ reparations campaign:

"It is clear to me that Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper has commenced upon a mission to concoct its own narrative about Barbados’ Reparations Campaign

Indeed, the Daily Telegraph’s modus operandi seems to be to interview Barbadian parties associated with the Reparations Campaign and then to quote answers out of context, thereby effectively putting words in one’s mouth.

A good example of the technique is the Daily Telegraph journalist asking me if Barbados intends to pursue a Reparations claim against the family of someone named Benedict Cumberbatch, and when one answers that one does not know who Benedict Cumberbatch is nor anything about his family’s supposed involvement in slavery in Barbados, that answer is reported as my having asserted that Barbados has not ruled out pursuing a Reparations claim against Mr Cumberbatch and his family!

And then suddenly there is a big international news story about Barbados pursuing a Reparations claim against the said Benedict Cumberbatch !

In light of this Campaign of deceptive and misleading British “yellow journalism”, please permit me to set the record clear about Barbados’ and CARICOM’s Reparatory Justice campaign.

In the year 2016, CARICOM, and by extension Barbados, advanced a Reparations claim against six Western European governments — inclusive of the government of the United Kingdom– for Reparations for the damage that Barbados and the other CARICOM nations experienced during the centuries of European orchestrated Native genocide and African enslavement.

And the claim was advanced against the national Government because it constitutes the institutional linkage between the European nation’s present and its past.

In the following years, CARICOM and by extension Barbados, extended the Reparations claim to currently existing European companies and institutions that were either directly implicated in the crimes committed during those centuries of genocide and enslavement or that benefitted financially from the said crimes.

To date, neither CARICOM nor Barbados has officially leveled a Reparations claim against a European family.

And, clearly, the reason is that it is much easier to establish a Reparations claim against a legal entity such as a national Government or a company than it is against a family. A family, after all, may be subject to all types of discontinuities and admixtures over an extensive period of time.

However, where Barbados is concerned, our National Task Force on Reparations has examined the case of the Drax family, and has determined that this particular family presents the unique case of a family that arrived in Barbados in 1627 — at the very beginning of the English settlement of the island– and that has had a near 400 year uninterrupted presence in Barbados as owners and operators of the Drax plantations, inclusive of the famous Drax Hall Plantation.

The Barbados National Task Force on Reparations therefore believes that the historical facts pertaining to the Drax family are more than clear to support a Reparations claim.

It is against this background that the issue of a possible Reparations claim against the current owner of the Drax Hall Plantation and leading representative of the Drax Family has been referred by the Task Force to higher governmental authorities.

This is where the matter currently stands."

IT WAS ALL A LIE! A COVERUP FOR A WEALTHY TOFF. Benedict Cumberbatch has received nonstop hate on social media because of this filthy fucking lie to cover up for a crony. There are still paid off mouthpieces calling him names and it was a lie. Go check out what's spamming now, to try and shield British Media from this embarrassment. And thank you... THANK YOU, Barbados for being honest and stating the obvious. It SHOULD be government, not individuals, except in the case of the 1%er the tabloids used Benedict as a shield for. Fans, take note of EVERY publication that bent over for British tabloids. We've been telling people for months, Ben is not one of them. If he was, they would not have used him like this.

#benedict cumberbatch #Doctor Strange #Sherlock #Disney #Marvel

10 notes · View notes

collymore · 4 days

Text

Charles Grant - not only a genius photographer but a most commendable human being as well!

By Stanley Collymore

It's always quite obviously rather painful even when instinctively one is really, being genuinely adulatory towards someone, who was unquestionably a genius in relation to the work they did and so significantly undeniably, quite passionately loved; as well as were themselves, actually happily and rather crucially involved in literally doing! And Charles Grant: a most brilliant, and also irrefutably evidently impressive, photographer, throughout his actual working, and social life, was simply undoubtedly such a person! However, and most unfortunately, naturally discernibly, obviously no longer with us, in this our earthly life, Charles, who I very personally knew and was crucially essentially both an individual, and a professional mentor to many as the truly phenomenal person, that he normally was, having departed this simply fulfilling, and evidently productive life, he so undoubtedly distinctively and rather effectively lived on Saturday 18 May 2024, in our beloved Barbados, will simply I'm rather absolutely sure, be very missed, and quite enormously so by quite large numbers of people personally as well as collectively; and amongst whose ranks, most unmistakably, will simply, be me!

Author's Remarks: As we say in Barbados: "Farewell my dear friend until we meet again after this life!"

Charles Grant's life's work is chronicled in the Barbados Nation Newspaper that he worked several years for and also in other media there, including Barbados Today! It was in my capacity as a journalist with the Nation Newspaper that I first met Charles Grant and worked closely with him. Clearly his loss has impacted on me considerably.

#Genius.

0 notes

wutbju · 3 months

Photo

BJU Missionary Unit has 38 Workers in Four Continents

Not only is Bob Jones University called the "World's Most Unusual University," but its call-letters also could stand for "Worldwide Ministry Unto Unevangelized." The embodiment of this aspect of the university's international influence is found in Gospel Fellowship Missions, the foreign mission society whose office and headquarters are on the campus.

GFM is one of the more recent ministries begun by the university. This independent faith mission completed its fifth year of organized missionary activity. It has grown yearly and now has 38 workers in 11 fields scattered around the world in four continents.

Including two fields established this summer in Korea and Mexico, GFM missionaries are to be found in the Far East -- Japan and Korea; South America -- Chile and Brazil; North America -- Barbados, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Hawaii; Northern Europe -- Sweden and West Germany; and the Middle East -- Lebanon.

Administratively, the mission operates separately from the university and is a part of the Gospel Fellowship Association, chartered as a nonprofit organization in 1940. Through the years GFA has sponsored many kinds of evangelistic ministries through literature, radio, newspaper evangelism, films and evangelistic crusades.

A faith mission board like Gospel Fellowship Missions operates differently from a nominational mission society. The faith mission does not manipulate or salary its workers from a central board and treasury. However, it provides a source of counsel and finances for the missionary. The co-ordination of the total field program as well as the direction of personal ministries can be administered only through the board.

The missionary on the field needs a representative with the United States government as well as with the government of the country in which he is laboring. The board maintains the tie of fellowship between the missionaries on the field and the supporting churches in the homeland.

BECKER IS HEAD

The mission office, located in the Administration Building at BJU, is staffed by two full-time employees, Rev. Kenneth D. Becker, the executive secretary, and Mrs. Corban Tabler, office secretary. Board policy and decision is executed by a seven-member executive committee, consisting of executives and deans of the university. This is backed up by a board of trustees composed of 35 Christians around the country, among whom are pastors, evangelists, educators and laymen.

The nerve center of the worldwide work is in the home office. Donations from over 1,200 supporting churches and friends in 47 states and several foreign countries are received by the home office for the missionaries and their ministries. Each donation is acknowledged with a personal letter describing the current news of the missionary supported. At the end of the month, all missionary accounts are totaled and checks mailed around the world.

In order to maintain the personal touch and keep up with the load of correspondence, data processing equipment and a high-speed typewriter are leased. Because of this personal touch, donors are not only sup. porters, but also enthusiasts of the mission and missionaries, as they have frequently noted in correspondence. The mission office staff keeps a steady stream of information flowing to those who support the work through gifts and prayers.

The oldest GFM field is in Japan. Six missionaries there are working in tent evangelism, founding churches, training national pastors, Bible correspondence courses, literature and street evangelism, and children's and youth work.

Gospel Fellowship Mission's most recent field is in Mexico. It was founded by a Mexican national, Jose Lara, in his home area in Central Mexico. His father was one of the earliest converts to Christianity in the whole region, and Mr. Lara had the distinction of being reared in an evangelical home.

There are six national evangelists and as many as 75 little churches -- some having only one or two families -- in the mountains who look to Mr. Lara and his ministry. He intends to establish a Christian trade school, along with the evangelistic effort in the villages, to train the Mexican Christians in skills so that they can support their families and the church.

The precarious international situation was impressed upon the mission by the recent Middle East war. Lebanon was one of the mission's early fields, and the missionary family was on furlough when hostilities broke out. There may be a delay before the ministry will be re-established, and even then it may take a long time to overcome anti-American hostilities and the damage which has befallen many friends and converts of the missionary.

#Bob Jones University #1967 #Greenville News #YeahTHATGreenville #Advertisement #Anniversary #Gospel Fellowship Association #Missions #Corban Tabler #Kenneth Becker #Class of 1957

0 notes

nakeddeparture · 6 months

Text

Bridgetown, Barbados. What’s in your news for Saturday, December 2, 2023.

https://youtu.be/rEwF5-K_5Mc

youtube

The Nation newspaper celebrates 50 years. Litigation against the FTC. Blood donors needed. Mia Mottley watching her back. And more. Naked!!

Like. Share. Subscribe. Comment on YouTube.

#barbados #naked departure #what’s in your news #Youtube

0 notes

vblong · 2 years

Text

Queen elizabeth iword search

Recently, the Nation, Barbados’s largest newspaper, questioned in an editorial the government’s handling of the reform, writing: “a referendum should not be off the table.” Mottley has opted to go forward without a public referendum and has been relatively silent on the process after the September 2020 announcement. However, if the destination is clear, the path for getting there is far less so. Since parting with the United Kingdom has historically gotten bipartisan support, she is likely to get the backing she needs. To do so, she’ll need a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. Mottley believes the people of Barbados gave her a clear mandate to break with the monarchy. Mottley, who has campaigned on republicanism, won a landslide victory in 2018 elections when her party won all 30 seats in the House of Assembly. He believes that the island is ready to make the transition but that it also needs more time to think the process through and do it properly. “It was a convenient distraction from COVID and the economic crisis we are in,” Guy Hewitt, a former high commissioner for Barbados in the United Kingdom and a member of the opposition party, said. With recent discussions around race in the royal family and a looming transition of power in the British monarchy, some wonder if Barbados could also start a domino effect and challenge the influence of Britain in all its overseas realms, already weakened by Brexit.īecoming a republic separate from the British monarch, a power left to individual countries, has been a matter of bipartisan consensus for a while in Barbados, but Mottley’s timing did not please everyone. Yet Mia Mottley, the country’s popular and charismatic prime minister, is determined to get it done. With unemployment in 2020 nearing 13%, becoming a republic may not be everyone’s top priority. The economy of Barbados, an eastern Caribbean island of around 280,000 people, depends heavily on the tourism industry-and despite some innovative efforts, such as the creation of a remote working visa, visitors have been scarce during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the timing picked by the government to give the queen a final farewell has raised eyebrows. The announcement was not a surprise for anybody on the tropical island: The debate on republicanism has been alive and well for around 40 years. In doing so, Barbados is going to become a republic. 30, 2021, on the 55th anniversary of the country’s independence, Barbados will break up with Elizabeth and instead swear in a local Barbadian president as head of state. “The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind,” Mason said. 16, 2020, Barbados Governor General Sandra Mason-Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in the country-announced that she would soon be out of a job.

#Queen elizabeth iword search

0 notes

thechasefiles · 2 years

Photo

Prominent attorney, newspaper columnist and constitutional expert Ezra Alleyne has passed away. He was 78 years old. Ezra Alleyne was elected to Parliament in 1976 on a Barbados Labour Party ticket where he was then the youngest person in the House of Assembly at 32 years of age. He served as Deputy Speaker. Ezra Allyene was an old scholar of the Combermere School and studied law at Queen Mary College and the University of London in the UK. He was a lecturer in constitutional and corporate law at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus and wrote a regular column for the Nation Newspaper. #thechasefiles #ezraalleynedead #notabledeaths #ezraalleyne #barbados #politicians #lawyers https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf3RfWJu50jEokP9b2ZSK1-rxdl9QG4eHN2MUI0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#thechasefiles #ezraalleynedead #notabledeaths #ezraalleyne #barbados #politicians #lawyers

0 notes

wwwcaribscribe · 5 years

Text

Harold Hoyte: Heart Of The Nation Barbados, Thank You

Harold Hoyte, Co-founder, Editor Emeritus, Nation newspapers, Barbados (Left) and Nation reporters Maquita Peters (center) and Haydn Gill at the Nation’s 25th anniversary celebrations in 1998. Hoyte died on Sunday, May 12, 2019, at age 78.

This is the only photo I have of Harold Hoyte, co-founder, former editor-in-chief and editor emeritus of The Nation Publishing Ltd, Barbados and me, along with…

View On WordPress

#Barbados #CaribScribe #Harold Hoyte #Harold Hoyte Barbados #Harold Hoyte Nation Barbados #Journalist #Maquita Peters #Nation Newspaper #Nation Newspaper Barbados #Nation Publishing #Relationships #Rest In Peace #Truth

0 notes

ingek73 · 2 years

Text

‘Perfect storm’: royals misjudged Caribbean tour, say critics

Calls for slavery reparations and Jamaica’s PM insisting country was ‘moving on’ signal sea change in relations with royals

Rachel Hall and Amelia Gentleman

Published: 18:14 Friday, 25 March 2022

It was supposed to be a visit to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee – a chance to present the modern face of the British monarchy to a region where republican sentiment is on the rise.

But it really didn’t turn out that way.

When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge end their week-long tour of the Caribbean on Saturday, they will report back that the tour may have accelerated moves to ditch the Queen as the head of state.

Calls for slavery reparations and the enduring fury of the Windrush scandal followed them across Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas – overshadowing a trip aimed at strengthening the Commonwealth and discouraging other countries from following Barbados’s example in becoming a republic.

Upon arrival in Belize, the couple were met with protests from villagers over a land dispute involving a charity William is a patron of. In Jamaica, the prime minister told them in an awkward meeting that the country would be “moving on” to become a republic, and a government committee in the Bahamas urged the royals to issue “a full and formal apology for their crimes against humanity”.

The Duchess of Cambridge shakes hands with children during a visit to Trench Town. Photograph: Reuters

From photos of Will and Kate shaking hands with Jamaican children through wire fences, to the military parade in which the pair stood, dressed in white, in an open-top Land Rover, the optics of the visit has been described by local campaigners as a throwback to colonialism.

“This was another photo opportunity, and rather presumptuous to assume that Jamaican people were suddenly going to welcome William and his wife with open arms,” said Velma McClymont, a writer and former Caribbean studies academic who was born in Jamaica and was five when the country gained independence.

“My grandparents could trace generations back to slavery, but they died believing Jamaica was fully independent. Imagine, 60 years later and it’s still an extension of the British empire. It’s an infant colony, not standing alone.”

Followers of the trip in the UK may have gained a different impression. On Friday, the Sun reserved its front page for the tour, gushing that “Kate dazzles on Jamaica tour” and suggesting that the pair had “touched hearts”. On Wednesday, the Daily Mail splashed a photo of Kate, the “diving duchess”, scuba-diving with nurse sharks in Belize.

The same could not be said of the coverage in the Jamaican media. “It was dubbed in [the UK] media as a charm offensive, but I’m not quite so sure it came off that way. It wasn’t a royal failure, but I wouldn’t quite deem it a regal success either,” said Tyrone Reid, an associate editor at national newspaper the Jamaica Gleaner.

Reid added that local publications had devoted considerable column inches to the views of “a growing number of Jamaicans demanding the British monarch and British state apologise for and accept its role in the abhorrent slave trade of years ago.”

Royals experts, including one former palace PR, said that an enormous amount of planning went in to the visits, often starting years in advance. They are led by government in line with Foreign Office diplomatic, culture and commercial priorities.

Philip Murphy, a professor at the University of London and former director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, said that although the palace had “taken a relaxed view” about countries removing the Queen as head of state, “the British government has been less consistent about that” – ministers are thought to be anxious to preserve the soft power benefits of the Commonwealth after Brexit.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge view a portrait of the Queen during a visit to Sybil Strachan primary school in Nassau, the Bahamas.

“I think the Foreign Office is sometimes a bit naive, and it doesn’t have much institutional memory any more. There are profound sensitivities around the legacies of colonialism and slavery and around the royal presence in the Caribbean, and sometimes you get the feeling that the Foreign Office doesn’t quite get it,” he said.

Murphy pointed to the growing emphasis on the relationship between colonialism and racial oppression after the Black Lives Matter movement, along with damage to the royals’ reputations after Meghan Markle’s accusations of racism and the British government through the Windrush scandal. “All of those things make it politically very difficult to stage this visit at this time. You’ve got the makings of a perfect storm,” he said.

A better approach to the trip, said Prof Trevor Burnard, director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull, would have been for the royals to go prepared to directly acknowledge and apologise for the family’s role in the slave trade, including through memorial visits to sites connected with slavery, such as Kingston harbour, to express sorrow instead of upbeat photo ops.

“They should recognise that members of the royal family from Charles II to William IV were involved with and supported slavery and the slave trade, and that this is part of their past.”

Although a “quiet minority” in Jamaica were supportive of the Queen as head of state, there was “a great deal of antipathy and resentment toward the monarchy”, said Cynthia Barrow-Giles, a professor at the University of West Indies who has researched the British monarchy in the Caribbean. “[The visit] smacks of political opportunism and is disturbingly self-serving,” she said.

Many members of Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean are increasingly questioning its purpose, especially since they have received little support during the pandemic, which has devastated the Jamaican economy and left 120,000 children out of school, and are pointing to unequal access to vaccines, which has resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths in an island of 3 million people.

Jennifer Housen, a lawyer in Jamaica, said the fact the UK revoked visa-free access for Jamaicans in 2003, with applications regularly refused, had led people to feel “the relationship is pointless”.

The Duchess of Cambridge attends a dinner hosted by Patrick Allen, governor general of Jamaica, at King’s House, Kingston, Jamaica. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA

“These are discussions we need to be having with them – not pretty flags and smiling black children pushing their hand through chain fences to say: ‘Oh, you know, I’ve touched the royals’; that’s garbage, that’s fostering something that is completely cringeworthy.”

The reparations movement has been growing considerably over the Caribbean in recent years, led by the 15-country strong intergovernmental Caricom Reparations Commission.

Rosalea Hamilton, one of the campaigners for Advocates Network who organised slavery reparations protests in Jamaica, said there was currently a “heightened consciousness of the history”, including “understanding of the legacies of colonialism today, economic, sociological, psychological”. There was, she said, an increased awareness that this had led to trauma in the population that affected confidence levels, along with swathes of the population living in “unhealthy, unsanitary, unsafe” conditions.

Reid said the reparations movement had been “gathering significant steam” in part because of increased access to information about Jamaica’s history that went beyond the school textbooks that had traditionally taught a British interpretation of history.

“The man on the street is demanding reparations as well, it’s not just at the intellectual level. That’s when you know something is really gathering momentum, when it’s spreading across a broad section of society. More people are recognising the horror of slavery and the atrocities that were committed, and becoming aware of the impact that has on modern day life.”

#royals #brf #prince william #kate middleton #british royal family #duke of cambridge #duchess of cambridge #abolish the monarchy #caribbean #belize #jamaica #bahamas #colonialism

34 notes · View notes

shanisjamaicanlitblog · 2 years

Text

Reflection on a Year of Reading Jamaican Literature

Word count: 715

Everything everything by nicola yoon

Queenie by candice carthy williams

The sun is also a star by nicola yoon

What did i learn about country:

At first i wanted to go with a country that would’ve been easy. for example one of my choices were England. But I decided to go with Jamaica because I wanted to learn about a Caribbean country. My family is from Barbados and Barbados didn’t really have a bunch of books but Jamaica did. It’s known for reggae music, street dances, festivals, carnival and much more. I have never been to Jamaica but hopefully one day I will be able to go. A lot of my family friends are from there so I get to enjoy a little piece of their culture. These books connected me to Jamaica even more. I enjoyed learning more and more about the amazing country. Learning about this country was very interesting and fascinating because Jamaican culture has always consisted of the religion, norms, values, and lifestyle that define people. There was a common theme in all three of the books that I read this year that focused on immigrant families from jamaica. Some are trying to have a better life in a new country but they all go through the same problems. They were all trying to fit into a country that is so different from their own.

My books:

In “The Sun is Also a Star '' by Nicola Yoon, I learned a lot about how people feel during immagration. Natasha and her family came to America for a better life but one day her world turned upside down. She was getting ready for graduation and thinking about college but she got the news that her family was being sent back to Jamaica. She did everything in her power to keep her family in America with the help of a guy she met named Daniel. He was going through a problem with his family too. He came from a Korean family who really wanted him to be a doctor but he had other ideas. They ended up falling in love.

In “Everything Everything” by Nicola Yoon, I learned about a girl named Maddy who was convinced by her mom that she has been diagnosed with a deadly disease. She spent her whole life in her house not being able to talk to anyone or really have any color on her walls or in her clothing. She had white clothes, shoes, bedding, sofas, and more. One day a boy named Olly moved in next door and she finally found a friend. Olly brought her out of her shell. She ended up running away from home with him and finding out she wasn't ever really sick to begin with.

In “Queenie” by Candice Carthy-Williams, I learned about a woman named Queenie that is originally from Jamaica but she moved to england. Queenie is a 25 year old black woman living in London. She is trying to find a balance between Jamaica and British culture. She works at a national newspaper where she has to put herself in a middle class white man's life but she really wants to write about Black Lives Matter. She wanted to be able to express herself in a different way than her publisher wanted her to. She didn't have any control over what she wanted to write about.

What did i learn about myself:

This year I was able to learn more and more about myself through this whole process. In the beginning I didn't really miss a beat. I read everyday and worked really hard on my blogs but as the year went on I found myself drifting away from independent reading. I loved my books but it felt more like a chore when reading them. I wanted to enjoy my last book on my own but I didn't have enough time to find a new one or have one shipped to me. I guess in the future I should try a little harder when it comes to staying on track with my reading. I think senioritis played a huge role in me not reading but I take full responsibility. Next time i'm in this situation i will power through and finish just how i started.

4 notes · View notes

didanawisgi · 3 years

Link

This article was published online on February 10, 2021.

“Massachusetts abolished enslavement before the Treaty of Paris brought an end to the American Revolution, in 1783. The state constitution, adopted in 1780 and drafted by John Adams, follows the Declaration of Independence in proclaiming that all “men are born free and equal.” In this statement Adams followed not only the Declaration but also a 1764 pamphlet by the Boston lawyer James Otis, who theorized about and popularized the familiar idea of “no taxation without representation” and also unequivocally asserted human equality. “The Colonists,” he wrote, “are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.” In 1783, on the basis of the “free and equal” clause in the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, the state’s chief justice, William Cushing, ruled enslavement unconstitutional in a case that one Quock Walker had brought against his enslaver, Nathaniel Jennison.

Many of us who live in Massachusetts know the basic outlines of this story and the early role the state played in standing against enslavement. But told in this traditional way, the story leaves out another transformative figure: Prince Hall, a free African American and a contemporary of John Adams. From his formal acquisition of freedom, in 1770, until his death, in 1807, Hall helped forge an activist Black community in Boston while elevating the cause of abolition to new prominence. Hall was the first American to publicly use the language of the Declaration of Independence for a political purpose other than justifying war against Britain. In January 1777, just six months after the promulgation of the Declaration and nearly three years before Adams drafted the state constitution, Hall submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature (or General Court, as it is styled) requesting emancipation, invoking the resonant phrases and founding truths of the Declaration itself.

Here is what he wrote (I’ve put the echoes of the Declaration of Independence in italics):

The petition of A Great Number of Blackes detained in a State of Slavery in the Bowels of a free & christian Country Humbly shuwith that your Petitioners Apprehend that Thay have in Common with all other men a Natural and Unaliable Right to that freedom which the Grat — Parent of the Unavese hath Bestowed equalley on all menkind and which they have Never forfuted by Any Compact or Agreement whatever — but thay wher Unjustly Dragged by the hand of cruel Power from their Derest frinds and sum of them Even torn from the Embraces of their tender Parents — from A popolous Plasant And plentiful cuntry And in Violation of Laws of Nature and off NationsAnd in defiance of all the tender feelings of humanity Brough hear Either to Be sold Like Beast of Burthen & Like them Condemnd to Slavery for Life.

In this passage, Hall invokes the core concepts of social-contract theory, which grounded the American Revolution, to argue for an extension of the claim to equal rights to those who were enslaved. He acknowledged and adopted the intellectual framework of the new political arrangements, but also pointedly called out the original sin of enslavement itself.

Hall’s memory was vigorously kept alive by members and archivists of the Masonic lodge he founded, and his name can be found in historical references. But his life has attracted fresh attention in recent years from scholars and community leaders, both because he deserves to be widely known and celebrated and because inserting his story into the tale of the country’s founding exemplifies the promise of an integrated way of studying and teaching history. It’s hard enough to shine new light on an African American figure who has been long in the shadows, one who in important ways should be considered an American Founder. It can prove far more difficult to trace an individual’s “relationship tree” and come to understand that person, in a granular and even cinematic way, in the full context of his or her own society: family, school, church, civic organizations, commerce, government. Doing so—especially for figures and communities that have been overlooked—gives us a chance to tell a whole story, to weave together multiple perspectives on the events of our political founding into a single, joined tale. It also provides an opportunity to draw out and emphasize the agency of people who experienced oppression and domination. In the case of Prince Hall, the process of historical reconstruction is still under way.

When I was a girl, I used to ask what there was to know about the experience of being enslaved—and was told by kind and well-meaning teachers that, sadly, the lack of records made the question impossible to answer. In fact, the records were there; we just hadn’t found them yet. Historical evidence often turns up only when one starts to look for it. And history won’t answer questions until one thinks to ask them.

John Adams and Prince Hall would have passed each other on the streets of Boston. They almost certainly were aware of each other. Hall was no minor figure, though his early days and family life are shrouded in some mystery. Probably he was born in Boston in 1735 (not in England or Barbados, as some have suggested). It is possible that he lived for a period as a freeman before he was formally emancipated. He may have been one of the thousands of African Americans who fought in the Continental Army; his son, Primus, certainly was. As a freeman, Hall became for a time a leatherworker, passed through a period of poverty, and then ultimately ran a shop, from which he sold, among other things, his own writings advocating for African American causes. Probably he was not married to every one of the five women in Boston who were married to someone named Prince Hall in the years between 1763 and 1804, but he may have been. Whether he was married to Primus’s mother, a woman named Delia, is also unclear. Between 1780 and 1801, the city’s tax collectors found their way to some 1,184 different Black taxpayers. Prince Hall and his son appear in those tax records for 15 of those 21 years, giving them the longest period of recorded residence in the city of any Black person we know about in that era. The DePaul University historian Chernoh M. Sesay Jr.’s excellent dissertation, completed in 2006, provides the most thorough and rigorously analyzed academic review of Hall’s biography that is currently available. (The dissertation, which I have drawn on here, has not yet been published in full, but I hope it will be.)

Hall was a relentless petitioner, undaunted by setbacks. When Hall submitted his 1777 petition, co-signed by seven other free Black men, to the Massachusetts legislature, he was building on the efforts of other African Americans in the state to abolish enslavement. In 1773 and 1774, African Americans from Bristol and Worcester Counties as well as Boston and its neighboring towns put forward six known petitions and likely more to this end. Hall led the formation of the first Black Masonic lodge in the Americas, and possibly in the world. The purpose of forming the lodge was to provide mutual aid and support and to create an infrastructure for advocacy. Fourteen men joined Hall’s lodge almost surely in 1775, and in the years from then until 1784, records reveal that 51 Black men participated in the lodge. Through the lodge’s history, one can trace a fascinating story of the life of Boston’s free Black community in the final decades of the 18th century.

Why did Hall choose Freemasonry as one of his life’s passions? Alonza Tehuti Evans, a former historian and archivist of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia, took up that question in a 2017 lecture. Hall and his fellow lodge members, he explained, recognized that many of the influential people in Boston—and throughout the colonies—were deeply involved in Freemasonry. George Washington is a prominent example, and symbolism that resonates with Masonic meaning adorns the $1 bill to this day. Hall saw entrance into Freemasonry as a pathway to securing influence and a network of supporters.

Hall submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature requesting emancipation, invoking the resonant phrases and founding truths of the Declaration of Independence.

In a world without stable passports or identification documents, participation in the order could provide proof of status as a free person. It offered both leverage and legitimacy—as when Prince Hall and members of his lodge, in 1786, offered to raise troops to support the commonwealth in putting down Shays’s Rebellion.

In the winter and spring of 1788, Hall was leading a charge in Boston against enslavers who made a practice of using deception or other means to kidnap free Black people, take them shipboard, and remove them to distant locations, where they would be sold into enslavement. He submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature seeking aid—asking legislators to “do us that justice that our present condition requires”—and publicized his petition in newspapers in Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.

In the summer of that year, a newspaper circulated an extract of a letter from a prominent white Bostonian who had assisted Hall on this very matter. The unnamed author of the letter reports that he had been visited by a group of free Black men who had been kidnapped in Boston and had recently been emancipated and returned to the city. They were escorted to his house by Hall, and they told the story of their emancipation. One of the men who had been kidnapped was a member of Hall’s Masonic lodge. Carried off to the Caribbean and put on the auction block, the kidnapped men found that the merchant to whom they were being offered was himself a Mason. Mutual recognition of a shared participation in Freemasonry put an end to the transaction and gave them the chance to recover their freedom.

Prince Hall’s work on abolition and its enforcement was just the beginning of a lifetime of advocacy. Disillusioned by how hard it was to secure equal rights for free Black men and women in Boston, he submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature seeking funds to assist him and other free Blacks in emigrating to Africa. That same year, he also turned his energies to advocating for resources for public education. Through it all, his Masonic membership proved both instrumental and spiritually valuable.

Founding the lodge had not been easy. Although Hall and his fellows were most likely inducted into Freemasonry in 1775, they were never able to secure a formal charter for their lodge from the other lodges in Massachusetts: Prejudice ran strong. Hall and his fellows had in fact probably been inducted by members of an Irish military lodge, planted in Boston with the British army, who had proved willing to introduce them to the mysteries of the order. Hall’s lodge functioned as an unofficial Masonic society—African Lodge No. 1—but received a formal charter only after a request was sent to England for a warrant. The granting of a charter by the Grand Lodge of England finally arrived in 1787.

In seeking this charter, Hall had written to Masons in England, lamenting that lodges in Boston had not permitted him and his fellows a full charter but had granted a permit only to “walk on St John’s Day and Bury our dead in form which we now enjoy.” Hall wanted full privileges, not momentary sufferance. In this small detail, though, we gain a window into just how important even the first steps toward Masonic privileges were. In the years before 1783 and full abolition of enslavement in Massachusetts, Black people in the state were subjected to intensive surveillance and policing, as enslavers sought to keep their human property from slipping away into the world of free Blacks. Membership in the Masons was like a hall pass—an opportunity to have a parade as a community, to come out and step high, without harassment. That’s what it meant to walk on Saint John’s Day—June 24—and to hold funeral parades for the dead.

Whether that stepping-out day remained June 24 is unclear. As Sesay writes, “Boston blacks, including Prince Hall, first applied to use Faneuil Hall in 1789 to hear an ‘African preacher.’ On February 25, 1789, the Selectmen accepted the application of blacks to use Faneuil Hall for ‘public worship.’ ” By 1820, the walk on Saint John’s Day appears to have become African Independence Day and was celebrated on July 14, Bastille Day, much to the displeasure of at least one newspaper. An unattributed column in the New-England Galaxy and Masonic Magazine complained about the annual parade in recognizably racist tones (the mention of “Wilberforce” at the end is a reference to William Wilberforce, the British campaigner against enslavement):

This is the day on which, for unaccountable reasons or for no reasons at all, the Selectmen of Boston, permit the town to be annually disturbed by a mob of negroes … The streets through which this sable procession passes are a scene of noise and confusion, and always will be as long as the thing is tolerated. Quietness and order can hardly be expected, when five or six hundred negroes, with a band of music, pikes, swords, epaulettes, sashes, cocked hats, and standards, are marching through the principal streets. To crown this scene of farce and mummery, a clergyman is mounted in their pulpit to harangue them on the blessings of independence, and to hold up for their admiration the characters of “Masser Wilberforce and Prince Hall.”

Well after Hall’s death, the days for stepping out continued in Boston—an expression of freedom and the claiming of a rightful place in the polity. The lodge that Hall founded continued too. It is the oldest continuously active African American association in the U.S., with chapters now spread around the country. Its work in support of public education has endured. In the 20th century the Prince Hall Freemasons made significant contributions to the NAACP, in many places hosting the first branches of the organization. In the 1950s alone, the group donated more than $400,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (equivalent to millions of dollars today). Thurgood Marshall was a member.

for all of what we now know to be Prince Hall’s importance, I learned of him only recently. In 2015 the National Archives held a conference about the Declaration of Independence, inspired by my own research on the document. At the conference, another colleague presented a paper on how abolitionists had been the first people to make use of the Declaration for political projects other than the Revolution itself. A few months earlier I had come across the passage from Hall’s 1777 petition that I shared above, and that so beautifully resonates with the Declaration; at that conference, I suddenly learned the important political context in which it fit. I had published a book on the Declaration of Independence—Our Declaration—in 2014, but until the spring of 2015, I had never heard of Hall.

Yet I have been studying African American history since childhood. When I was in high school, my school didn’t do anything to celebrate Black History Month. My father encouraged me to take matters into my own hands and propose to the school that I might curate a weekly exhibit on one of the school’s bulletin boards. The school was obliging. It offered me the one available bulletin board—in a dark corner in the farthest remove of the school’s quads. This was not the result of malice, just of a lack of attention to the stakes. But I was glad to have access to that bulletin board, and I dutifully filled it with pictures of people like Carter G. Woodson and Mary McLeod Bethune and Thurgood Marshall, and with excerpts from their writings.

I am deeply aware of how much historical treasure about Black America is hidden, and have been actively trying to seek it out. While I was on the faculty of the University of Chicago, I helped found the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, a network of archival organizations in Chicago dedicated to connecting “all who seek to document, share, understand and preserve Black experiences.” And while I was at Chicago—somewhat in the spirit of that old bulletin board—I curated an exhibit for the special-collections department of the campus library on the 45 African Americans who’d earned a doctorate at the university prior to 1940—the largest number of doctorates awarded to African Americans up to that time by any institution in the world. Even so, I had not known about Prince Hall.

Having discovered Hall at the ridiculous age of 43, I have since made it a mission to teach others about him. At Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, we have undertaken a major initiative to develop civic-education curricula and resources. Among the largest projects is a year-long eighth-grade course called “Civic Engagement in Our Democracy.” One of the units in that course is centered on Hall’s life. Through him and his exploration of the meaning of social contracts and natural rights, and of opportunity and equality, we teach the philosophical foundations of democracy, reaching through Hall to texts that he also drew on, and whose authors are required reading for eighth graders in Massachusetts—for instance, Aristotle, Locke, and Montesquieu. These writers and thinkers were important figures to Freemasons in Hall’s time.

Too much treasure remains buried, living mainly in oral histories, not yet integrated into our full shared history of record. That history can strike home in unexpected ways. Not long ago, I was talking with my father about Prince Hall and the curriculum we were developing. His ears pricked up. Only then did I learn that my grandfather, too, had been a member of the Prince Hall Freemasons.”

This article appears in the March 2021 print edition with the headline “A Forgotten Founder.”

DANIELLE ALLEN is a political philosopher and the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard. She is the author of Talking to Strangers, Our Declaration, and Cuz.

#Danielle Allen #Prince Hall #freemasonry #freemason #freemasons #revolutionary war #founding fathers #history #black history #american soldier #american history #black history month

44 notes · View notes

reddeadreference · 1 year

Text

Saint Denis Times No. 55

-Click here to return to the index for Newspapers-

This issue is available after completion of the mission: Uncle’s Bad Day

(All article transcripts below the cut)

Articles marked with * are exclusive to this region’s issue.

Articles marked with ** are only there upon completion of the related mission.

Bureau of Investigation Founded

SECRET SERVICE VETERANS JOIN STAFF. PROMISE TO ROOT OUT ORGANIZED CRIME.

Unrest in the Tropics

COST OF FOOD, FUEL ANGERS CITIZENS. SUGAR BARONS TO BLAME.

Local groups argue that island residents are suffering the most, while businesses say heavy investments by American financial institutions have allowed for the revitalization of the local economies.

'We Are Helpless'

TOWNS DECRY UNCHECKED VIOLENCE. OUTLAW GANGS RUNNING RAMPANT. LED BY NOTORIOUS CRIMINAL MICAH BELL.

Reverend Swanson Leads NY Church

DELIVERS POWERFUL MESSAGE

Tallulah Jetty Gang Killed

BANK RAIDED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. CITIZENS FORM POSSE.

Liquor Smuggled Into Indian Territory

DEPUTIES PURSUE OUTLAWS, ONE KILLED.

Bubonic Plague in San Francisco

CITY STILL REELING AFTER EARTHQUAKE THAT KILLED 3,000.

New Railroad Completed

A GRAND PROJECT OUR MANIFEST DESTINY

The Art of Angling by Jeremy Gill

SOCKEYE SALMON.

#rdr2 #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 newspaper

0 notes

dalerwalker2 · 2 years

Text

Barbados has proclaimed Rihanna a national hero: 'May you always shine brightly like a diamond.'

Rihanna's whole "work, work, work, work, work" has been recognised by her homeland. Barbados' Prime Minister Mia Mottley called the musician and entrepreneur the country's 11th national hero as the island celebrated becoming a republic for the first time in history. "Ambassador Robyn Rihanna Fenty has shown innovative and pioneering leadership in her service to Barbados," Prime Minister Mia Mottley said during the Monday night event. The 33-year-old "Umbrella" singer collected the award while dressed in an orange Bottega Veneta gown with multiple huge braids. "May you continue to shine like a diamond and bring respect to your country," Prime Minister Mottley said, using the singer's song "Diamonds" from 2012.

Barbados has proclaimed Rihanna a national hero: 'May you always shine brightly like a diamond.' The musician got a huge medal embossed with the shape of Barbados and blew a kiss to the ecstatic throng in a separate ceremony on Tuesday. "This is one of those days that I will never forget." It's also a day I didn't see coming," she remarked in a short address encouraging the young to keep pushing Barbados ahead. "I've toured the globe and gotten several prizes and accolades, but nothing compares to being acknowledged in your own backyard." The event on Monday was attended by a number of politicians and dignitaries, including Prince Charles, whom Rihanna met after being brought on stage alongside Mottley. more about Robyn Rihanna : Rihanna Tops $1 Billion in Net Worth: Report When Mottley introduced Rihanna, she said the pop singer came from modest beginnings and was born less than a mile away from the wedding. In a letter to Barbados on Tuesday, Queen Elizabeth II, who is no longer the country's head of state, expressed her congratulations. "I express my congratulations to you and all Barbadians on this historic occasion and your assumption of office as the first President of Barbados," she wrote. "I first visited your lovely nation on the verge of independence in early 1966, and I'm delighted that my son is still here with you now. Barbados' people have kept a particular place in my heart ever then." Barbados has been independent from the United Kingdom since 1966, but on Tuesday, the country's first president, Sandra Mason, was sworn in as the country's first president to commemorate the country's 55th year of independence.

Rihanna is now officially a billionaire:

She is the 'richest female musician,' according to Forbes. The island's journey to becoming a republic started more than two decades ago, and completed last month with the island's Parliament choosing the first-ever president with a two-thirds majority vote. According to Suleiman Bulbulia, a journalist for the Barbados Today newspaper, the flag, coat of arms, and national song would stay the same, but specific allusions may alter. The titles "royal" and "crown" will be phased out, thus the Royal Barbados Police Force will become the Barbados Police Service, and "crown lands" will become "state lands," he wrote. He remarked, "It is the dawn of a new age." "Any Barbadian may now aspire to be our President."

Barbados has proclaimed Rihanna a national hero: 'May you always shine brightly like a diamond.' It's the first time in more than 20 years that Barbados has honoured a national hero: the last recipient was former cricketer Garfield St. Aubrun Sobers. Rihanna joins a long list of other Barbados national heroes, including public personalities and politicians such as Errol Barrow, Barbados' first prime minister, and slave uprising leader Bussa. Rihanna was named one of the wealthiest female performers in the world by Forbes this year, earning her the status of billionaire. Her net worth is estimated to be $1.7 billion, with the most of it coming from her cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty, according to the outlet. Rihanna Has Been Named a National Hero. That's right, I said it. Barbados deposed Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state and became a republic on Monday, the 55th anniversary of its independence from the United Kingdom. Out with colonialism and a bloody history of imperial legacies, and in with Dame Sandra Mason and, of course, Rihanna. The celebration on Monday was a joyous occasion attended by scores of authorities, including Prince Charles, who spoke in place of his mother to congratulate Barbadians in a speech that recognised the island's "appalling crime" of British slavery. Mason, 72, was formerly governor-general, and Prime Minister Mia Mottley swore him in as the country's new president. As the island transitioned to being a republic, Parliament chose her to be the Barbadian head of state in October. "This distinction is being granted to a lady of this land," Mottley remarked in a speech commemorating Mason's inauguration.

Barbados has proclaimed Rihanna a national hero: 'May you always shine brightly like a diamond.' Is it possible that another Barbadian lady will be honoured? Rihanna, our favourite millionaire and assless-pajama designer, has been named a "national hero for Barbados" by the prime minister. There are few methods to establish a postcolonial republic that I can conceive of. To her impressive collection of titles, add "Right Excellent Robyn Rihanna Fenty." As a wind came through, Rihanna addressed the audience, "This is a day I'll never, ever forget." "It's also a day I didn't see coming." Barbadians are proud people, as you may be aware. We're arguably the most self-assured individuals I've ever met. And I carry that pride with me everywhere I go in the globe. The world will know that we are Bajan to the bone no matter where we travel." She praised the island's residents as "real Barbados heroes" and declared herself "Bajan till the day I die" after receiving her new title. The island is "still the only place I've ever called home," added Rihanna, who owns nearby Beverly Hills estates. Rihanna expressed her gratitude for the honour in her closing remarks, praying for the youth of Barbados to continue pushing the island forward. "I have travelled the world and received several awards and recognitions, but nothing, nothing, compares to being recognised in the soil that you grew in," she said. more from new 24 hour: ‘Encanto’s trailer promises that a paranormal, musical Disney adventure What Is the Season 10 Theme for ‘American Horror Story Double Feature’? Emma Coronel Aispuro: spouse of El Chapo pleads responsible for drugs Sage Steele, an ESPN anchor, has been fired. source: usatoday#instagram #happy #nature #photography #fashion #instadaily #beauty #instalike #fun #friends #me #summer #tbt #cute #beautiful #likeforlike #smile #music #ootd #family #model #follow4follow #lifestyle #design #motivation #beach #sunset #amazing #dog #makeup Read the full article

#actor #Arts #cinemanews #CNN #New24hour #new24hour #New24hours #NEWS #news24 #News24hour #Rihanna

3 notes · View notes

blackkudos · 4 years

Text

Louis Farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan Sr. (; born Louis Eugene Walcott; May 11, 1933), formerly known as Louis X, is an American minister and political activist. He is the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), an organization which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as black nationalist, black supremacist and a hate group. Previously, he served as the minister of mosques in Boston and Harlem and had been appointed National Representative of the Nation of Islam by former NOI leader Elijah Muhammad.

After Warith Deen Muhammad reorganized the original NOI into the orthodox Sunni Islamic group American Society of Muslims, Farrakhan began to rebuild the NOI as "Final Call". In 1981, he officially adopted the name "Nation of Islam", reviving the group and establishing its headquarters at Mosque Maryam.

Farrakhan has been described as antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the SPLC and other monitoring organizations. The NOI promotes an anti-white theology, also according to the SPLC. Some of his remarks have also been considered homophobic. Farrakhan has disputed these characterizations.

In October 1995, he organized and led the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Due to health issues, he reduced his responsibilities with the NOI in 2007. However, Farrakhan has continued to deliver sermons and speak at NOI events. In 2015, he led the 20th Anniversary of the Million Man March: Justice or Else.

Early life and education

Farrakhan was born Louis Eugene Walcott in The Bronx, New York, the younger of two sons of Sarah Mae Manning (January 16, 1900 – November 18, 1988) and Percival Clark, immigrants from the Anglo-Caribbean islands. His mother was born in Saint Kitts, while his father was Jamaican. The couple separated before their second son was born, and Farrakhan says he never knew his biological father. In a 1996 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., he speculated that his father, "Gene", may have been Jewish. After the end of his parents' relationship, his mother moved in with Louis Walcott from Barbados, who became his stepfather. After his stepfather died in 1936, the Walcott family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where they settled in the West Indian neighborhood of Roxbury.

Walcott received his first violin at the age of five and by the time he was 12 years old, he had been on tour with the Boston College Orchestra. A year later, he participated in national competitions and won them. In 1946, he was one of the first black performers to appear on the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour, where he also won an award. Walcott and his family were active members of the Episcopal St. Cyprian's Church in Roxbury.

Walcott attended the Boston Latin School, and later the English High School, from which he graduated. He completed three years at Winston-Salem Teachers College, where he had a track scholarship.

In 1953, Walcott married Betsy Ross (later known as Khadijah Farrakhan) while he was in college. Due to complications from his new wife's first pregnancy, Walcott dropped out after completing his junior year of college to devote time to his wife and their child. Farrakhan has nine children in total.

Career and activities (1953–1995)

In the 1950s, Walcott began his professional music career as a singer billed as "The Charmer". At this point, earning $500 a week, Walcott was touring the northeastern and midwestern United States, sometimes also using the nickname "Calypso Gene".. In 1953–1954, preceding Harry Belafonte's success with his album Calypso (released in 1956), he recorded and released a dozen cheeky, funny tunes as "The Charmer" in a mixed mento/calypso style, including "Ugly Woman", "Stone Cold Me" and calypso standards like "Zombie Jamboree", "Hol 'Em Joe", "Mary Ann" and "Brown Skin Girl". Some were reissued: "Don’t Touch Me Nylon" has mild, explicit sexual lyrics as well as "Female Boxer", which contains some sexist overtones and "Is She Is, Or Is She Ain't" (inspired by Christine Jorgensen's sex change operation).

In February 1955, he was headlining a show in Chicago, Illinois, called Calypso Follies. There he first came in contact with the teachings of the Nation of Islam (NOI) through Rodney Smith, a friend and saxophonist from Boston. Walcott and his wife Betsy were invited to the Nation of Islam's annual Saviours' Day address by Elijah Muhammad. Prior to going to Saviours' Day, due to then-Minister Malcolm X's media presence, Walcott had never heard of Elijah Muhammad, and like many outside of the Nation of Islam, he thought that Malcolm X was the leader of the Nation of Islam.

In 1955, Walcott fulfilled the requirements to be a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer. He memorized and recited verbatim the 10 questions and answers of the NOI's Student Enrollment. He then wrote a Saviour's Letter that must be sent to the NOI's headquarters in Chicago. The Saviour's Letter must be copied verbatim, and have the identical handwriting of the Nation of Islam's founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad. After having the Saviour's Letter reviewed, and approved by the NOI's headquarters in Chicago in July 1955, Walcott received a letter of approval from the Nation of Islam acknowledging his official membership as a registered Muslim/registered believer/registered laborer in the NOI. As a result, he received his "X." The "X" was considered a placeholder, used to indicate that Nation of Islam members' original African family names had been lost. They acknowledged that European surnames were slave names, assigned by the slaveowners to mark their ownership. Members of the NOI used the "X" while waiting for their Islamic names, which some NOI members received later in their conversion. Hence, Louis Walcott became Louis X. Elijah Muhammad then replaced his "X" with the "holy name" Farrakhan, an Arabic name meaning "The Criterion". On a very different tone from his calypso songs, he nevertheless recorded two tunes as Louis X, criticizing racism in A White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell issued on Boston's A Moslem Sings label in 1960..

The summer after Farrakhan's conversion, Elijah Muhammad stated that all musicians in the NOI had to choose between music and the Nation of Islam. Louis X did so only after performing one final event at the Nevele, a Jewish resort in the Catskills.

After nine months of being a registered Muslim in the NOI and a member of Muhammad's Temple of Islam in Boston, where Malcolm X was the minister, the former calypso-singer turned Muslim became his assistant minister. Eventually he became the official minister after Elijah Muhammad transferred Malcolm X to Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 7 on West 116th St. in Harlem, New York City. Louis X continued to be mentored by Malcolm X, until the latter's assassination in 1965. The day that Malcolm X died in Harlem, Farrakhan happened to be in Newark, New Jersey on rotation, 45 minutes away from where Malcolm X was assassinated. After Malcolm X's death, Elijah Muhammad appointed Farrakhan to the two prominent positions that Malcolm held before being dismissed from the NOI. Farrakhan became the national spokesman/national representative of the NOI and was appointed minister of the influential Harlem Mosque (Temple), where he served until 1975.

Farrakhan made numerous incendiary statements about Malcolm X, contributing to what was called a "climate of vilification." Three men from a Newark, NOI mosque—Thomas Hagan, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (aka Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (aka Thomas 15X Johnson)—were convicted of the killing and served prison sentences. Only Hagan ever admitted his role.

Leadership of Nation of Islam

Warith Deen Mohammed, the seventh son of Elijah and Clara Muhammad, was declared the new leader of the Nation of Islam at the annual Saviours' Day Convention in February 1975, a day after his father died. He made substantial changes to the organization in the late 1970s, taking most members into a closer relationship with orthodox Islam, and renaming the group "World Community of Islam in the West", and eventually the American Society of Muslims, to indicate the apparent change. He rejected the deification of the founder Wallace D. Fard as Allah in person, the Mahdi of the Holy Qur'an and the messiah of the Bible, welcomed white worshipers who were once considered devils and enemies in the NOI as equal brothers, sisters, and friends. At the beginning of these changes, Chief Min. Warith Deen Mohammed gave some Euro-Americans X's, and extended efforts at inter-religious cooperation and outreach to Christians and Jews. He changed his position and title from Chief Minister Wallace Muhammad to Imam Warith Huddin Mohammad, and finally Imam Warith Al-Deen Mohammed.

Farrakhan joined and followed Imam Warith Al-Deen Mohammed, and eventually became a Sunni Imam under him for 3 1⁄2 years from 1975–1978. Imam Mohammed gave Imam Farrakhan the name Abdul-Haleem. In 1978, Imam Farrakhan distanced himself from Mohammed's movement. In a 1990 interview with Emerge magazine, Farrakhan said that he had become disillusioned and decided to "quietly walk away" rather than cause a schism among the members. In 1978, Farrakhan and a small number of supporters decided to rebuild what they considered the original Nation of Islam upon the foundations established by Wallace Fard Muhammad, and Elijah Muhammad. This decision was made without public announcement.

In 1979, Farrakhan's group founded a weekly newspaper entitled The Final Call, which was intended to be similar to the original Muhammad Speaks newspaper that Malcolm X claimed to have started, Farrakhan had a weekly column in The Final Call. In 1981, Farrakhan and his supporters held their first Saviours' Day convention in Chicago, Illinois, and took back the name of the Nation of Islam. The event was similar to the earlier Nation's celebrations, last held in Chicago on February 26, 1975. At the convention's keynote address, Farrakhan announced his attempt to restore the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad's teachings.

In 1985, Farrakhan obtained working capital in the amount of $5 million, in the form of an interest-free loan from Libya's Islamic Call Society. Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi had also offered Farrahkan guns to begin a black nation. Farrakhan said that he told Gaddafi that he preferred an economic investment in black America.

On October 24, 1989, at a press conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC, Minister Farrakhan described a vision which he had on September 17, 1985 in Tepoztlán, Mexico. In this 'Vision-like' experience he was carried up to "a Wheel, or what you call an unidentified flying object", as in the Bible's Book of Ezekiel. During this experience, he heard the voice of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. He said in the press conference that Elijah Muhammad "spoke in short cryptic sentences and as he spoke a scroll full of cursive writing rolled down in front of my eyes, but it was a projection of what was being written in my mind. As I attempted to read the cursive writing, which was in English, the scroll disappeared and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad began to speak to me." [Elijah Muhammad said], "President Reagan has met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a war. I want you to hold a press conference in Washington, D.C., and announce their plan and say to the world that you got the information from me, Elijah Muhammad, on the Wheel."

During that same press conference Farrakhan stated that he believed his "experience" was proven: "In 1987, in The New York Times' Sunday magazine and on the front page of The Atlanta Constitution, the truth of my vision was verified, for the headlines of The Atlanta Constitution read, 'President Reagan Planned War Against Libya.'" Farrakhan added "In the article which followed, the exact words that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke to me on the Wheel were found; that the President had met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and planned a war against Libya in the early part of September 1985."

Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, was arrested on January 12, 1995 accused of conspiracy to assassinate Farrakhan in retaliation for the murder of her father, for which she believed he was responsible. According to Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson, "[her family] resented Farrakhan and had good reason to because he was one of those in the Nation responsible for the climate of vilification that resulted in Malcolm X's assassination". Some critics later alleged that the FBI had used paid informant Michael Fitzpatrick to frame Shabazz, who was four years old when her father was killed. Nearly four months later, on May 1, Shabazz accepted a plea agreement under which she maintained her innocence but accepted responsibility for her actions.

Million Man March

That year in October, Farrakhan convened a broad coalition of what he and his supporters claimed was one million men in Washington, D.C., for the Million Man March. The count however fell far below the hoped-for numbers. The National Park Service estimated that approximately 440,000 were in attendance. Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service because of the low estimate from the Park Police.

Farrakhan and other speakers called for black men to renew their commitments to their families and communities. In Farrakhan's 21⁄2 hours he quoted from spirituals as well as the Old and New Testaments and termed himself a prophet sent by God to show America its evil. The event was organized by many civil rights and religious organizations and drew men and their sons from across the United States of America. Many other distinguished African Americans addressed the throng, including: Maya Angelou; Rosa Parks; Martin Luther King III, Cornel West, Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Chavis. In 2005, together with other prominent African Americans such as the New Black Panther Party leader Malik Zulu Shabazz, the activist Al Sharpton, Addis Daniel and others, Farrakhan marked the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March by holding a second gathering, the Millions More Movement, October 14–17 in Washington D.C.

Activities and statements since 2005

Hurricane Katrina

In comments in 2005, Farrakhan stated that there was a 25-foot (7.6 m) hole under one of the key levees that failed in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. He implied that the levee's destruction was a deliberate attempt to wipe out the population of the largely black sections within the city. Farrakhan later said that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told him of the crater during a meeting in Dallas, Texas. Farrakhan further claimed that the fact the levee broke the day after Hurricane Katrina is proof that the destruction of the levee was not a natural occurrence. Farrakhan has raised additional questions and has called for federal investigations into the source of the levee break. He also asserted that the hurricane was "God's way of punishing America for its warmongering and racism".

Experts including the Independent Levee Investigation Team (ILIT) from the University of California, Berkeley have countered his accusations. The report from the ILIT said "The findings of this panel are that the over-topping of the levees by flood waters, the often sub-standard materials used to shore up the levees, and the age of the levees contributed to these scour holes found at many of the sites of levee breaks after the hurricane."

Former support for Barack Obama

In 2008, Farrakhan publicly criticized the United States and supported then-Senator Barack Obama who was campaigning at the time to become the president of the United States of America. Farrakhan and Obama had met at least once before.

The Obama campaign quickly responded to convey his distance from the minister. "Senator Obama has been clear in his objections to Farrakhan's past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister's support," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. Obama "rejected and denounced" Farrakhan's support during an NBC presidential candidate debate.

Following the 2008 presidential election, Farrakhan explained, during a BET television interview, that he was "careful" never to endorse Obama during his campaign. "I talked about him—but, in very beautiful and glowing terms, stopping short of endorsing him. And unfortunately, or fortunately, however we look at it, the media said I 'endorsed' him, so he renounced my so-called endorsement and support. But that didn't stop me from supporting him."

By 2011, Farrakhan was no longer supporting Obama, whom he called the "first Jewish president", due to Obama's support for the 2011 military intervention in Libya, which Farrakhan strongly opposed due to his own support for Muammar Gaddafi. At a March 31, 2011 press conference held at the Mosque Maryam, Farrakhan warned that the United States could be "facing a major earthquake as part of God's divine judgment against the country for her evil".

On May 28, 2011, Farrakhan, speaking at the American Clergy Leadership Conference, lambasted Obama over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Libya intervention, calling him an "assassin" and a "murderer." "We voted for our brother Barack, a beautiful human being with a sweet heart," Farrakhan said, in a video making the rounds on the internet. But he has turned into someone else, Farrakhan told the crowd. "Now he's an assassin."

Farrakhan, a critic of military interventionism overseas, was strongly opposed to Obama's proposal to intervene in Syria in 2013.

Dianetics

On May 8, 2010, Farrakhan publicly announced his embrace of Dianetics and has actively encouraged Nation of Islam members to undergo auditing from the Church of Scientology. Although he has stressed that he is not a Scientologist, but only a believer in Dianetics and the theories related to it, the Church honored Farrakhan previously during its 2006 Ebony Awakening awards ceremony (which he did not attend). Farrakhan has also urged European Americans to join the Church of Scientology, stating, "All white people should flock to [Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard. You can still be a Christian; you just won't be a devil Christian. You can still be a Jew, but you won't be a satanic Jew."

Since the announcement in 2010, the Nation of Islam has been hosting its own Dianetic courses and its own graduation ceremonies. At the third such ceremony, which was held on Saviours Day 2013, it was announced that nearly 8,500 members of the organisation had undergone Dianetic auditing. The Organisation announced it had graduated 1,055 auditors and had delivered 82,424 hours of auditing. The graduation ceremony was certified by the Church of Scientology, and the Nation of Islam members received official certification. The ceremony was attended by Shane Woodruff, vice-president of the Church of Scientology's Celebrity Centre International. He stated that "The unfolding story of the Nation of Islam and Dianetics is bold, it is determined and it is absolutely committed to restoring freedom and wiping hell from the face of this planet."

Praise for Donald Trump

During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, Farrakhan praised Republican candidate Donald Trump as the only candidate "who has stood in front of the Jewish community and said 'I don’t want your money.'" While he declined to endorse outright, he said of Trump "I like what I'm looking at." In 2018, Farrakhan again praised Trump for "destroying every enemy that was an enemy of our rise." Conservative pundits Candace Owens and Glenn Beck both took note of Farrakhan's position, with Owens saying it was a "really big deal" that Farrakhan had "aligned himself with Trump's administration" and Beck declaring that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and urging "reconciliation" between conservatives and Farrakhan.

Criticism and controversy

Farrakhan has been the center of much controversy with critics saying that his political views and comments are antisemitic or racist. Farrakhan has categorically denied these charges and stated that much of America's perception of him has been shaped by the media.

Malcolm X's death

Many, including Malcolm X's family, have accused Farrakhan of being involved in the plot to assassinate Malcolm X. For many years, Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, harbored resentment toward the Nation of Islam—and Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their role in the assassination of her husband. In a 1993 speech, Farrakhan seemed to confirm that the Nation of Islam was responsible for the assassination:

We don't give a damn about no white man law if you attack what we love. And frankly, it ain't none of your business. What do you got to say about it? Did you teach Malcolm? Did you make Malcolm? Did you clean up Malcolm? Did you put Malcolm out before the world? Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours? You just shut your mouth, and stay out of it. Because in the future, we gonna become a nation. And a nation gotta be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats. The white man deals with his. The Jews deal with theirs.

During a 1994 interview, Gabe Pressman asked Shabazz whether Farrakhan "had anything to do" with Malcolm X's death. She replied: "Of course, yes. Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honor. Everybody talked about it, yes."

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired during May 2000, Farrakhan stated that some of the things he said may have led to the assassination of Malcolm X. "I may have been complicit in words that I spoke", he said. "I acknowledge that and regret that any word that I have said caused the loss of life of a human being." A few days later Farrakhan denied that he "ordered the assassination" of Malcolm X, although he again acknowledged that he "created the atmosphere that ultimately led to Malcolm X's assassination."

Allegations of racism

The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Farrakhan's Nation of Islam (NOI) as a hate group and black separatist organization. As the leader of NOI, Farrakhan has preached the organization's theology that blacks are superior to whites. He has said whites were created 6,600 years ago as a "race of devils" by an evil scientist named Yakub. At an event in Milwaukee in August 2015, Farrakhan said: "White people deserve to die, and they know, so they think it’s us coming to do it."

Antisemitic comments

Farrakhan has made many comments that have been deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League and others. In 2012, the Simon Wiesenthal Center included some of Farrakhan's comments on its list of the Top 10 antisemitic slurs of that year.

"Gutter religion" remarks

In 1984, after returning from a visit to Libya, Farrakhan delivered a sermon that was recorded by a Chicago Sun Times reporter. A transcript from part of the sermon was published in The New York Times:

Toward the end of that portion of his speech that was recorded, Mr. Farrakhan said: "Now that nation called Israel never has had any peace in 40 years and she will never have any peace because there can be no peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name.

Farrakhan has repeatedly denied referring to Judaism as a "gutter religion" explaining that he was instead referring to what he believed was the Israeli Government's use of Judaism as a political tool. In a June 18, 1997, letter to a former Wall Street Journal editor Jude Wanniski he stated:

Countless times over the years I have explained that I never referred to Judaism as a gutter religion, but, clearly referred to the machinations of those who hide behind the shield of Judaism while using unjust political means to achieve their objectives. This was distilled in the New York tabloids and other media saying, 'Farrakhan calls Judaism a gutter religion.'

As a Muslim, I revere Abraham, Moses, and all the Prophets whom Allah (God) sent to the children of Israel. I believe in the scriptures brought by these Prophets and the Laws of Allah (God) as expressed in the Torah. I would never refer to the Revealed Word of Allah (God)—the basis of Jewish Faith—as 'dirty' or 'gutter.' You know, Jude, as well as I, that the Revealed Word of Allah (God) comes as a Message from Allah (God) to purify us from our evil that has divided us and caused us to fall into the gutter.

Over the centuries, the evils of Christians, Jews and Muslims have dirtied their respective religions. True Faith in the laws and Teaching of Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad is not dirty, but, practices in the name of these religions can be unclean and can cause people to look upon the misrepresented religion as being unclean.

Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust

In response to Farrakhan's speech, Nathan Pearlmutter, then Chair of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, referred to Farrakhan as the new "Black Hitler" and Village Voice journalist Nat Hentoff also characterized the NOI leader as a "Black Hitler" while a guest on a New York radio talk-show.

In response, Farrakhan announced during a March 11, 1984, speech broadcast on a Chicago radio station:

So I said to the members of the press, 'Why won't you go and look into what we are saying about the threats on Reverend Jackson's life?' Here the Jews don't like Farrakhan and so they call me 'Hitler'. Well that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He wasn't great for me as a Black man but he was a great German and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of all of Europe and America after the First World War. Yet Hitler took Germany from the ashes and rose her up and made her the greatest fighting machine of the twentieth century, brothers and sisters, and even though Europe and America had deciphered the code that Hitler was using to speak to his chiefs of staff, they still had trouble defeating Hitler even after knowing his plans in advance. Now I'm not proud of Hitler's evil toward Jewish people, but that's a matter of record. He rose Germany up from nothing. Well, in a sense you could say there is a similarity in that we are rising our people up from nothing, but don't compare me with your wicked killers.

At a later meeting of the Nation of Islam at Madison Square Garden in 1985, Farrakhan said of the Jews: "And don't you forget, when it's God who puts you in the ovens, it's forever!" He has claimed German Jews financed the Holocaust in a speech at the Mosque Maryam, Chicago in March 1995. Almost three years later at a Saviors' Day gathering in the same city, he said: "The Jews have been so bad at politics they lost half their population in the Holocaust. They thought they could trust in Hitler, and they helped him get the Third Reich on the road."

Incidents and comments since 2002

On March 23, 2002, Farrakhan visited Kahal Kadosh Shaare Shalom in Kingston, Jamaica, which was his first visit to a synagogue, in an attempt to repair his relationship with the Jewish community.

Farrakhan was accepted to speak at Shaare Shalom in the native country of his father, after being rejected to appear at American synagogues, many of whom had fear of sending the wrong signals to the Jewish community.

Farrakhan made antisemitic comments during his May 16–17, 2013 visit to Detroit and in his weekly sermons titled "The Time and What Must Be Done", which began during January 2013. In March 2015, Farrakhan accused "Israelis and Zionist Jews" of being involved in the September 11 attacks. In his Saviours' Day speech in February 2018, Farrakhan described "the powerful Jews" as his enemy and approvingly cited President Richard Nixon and the Reverend Billy Graham's derogatory comments about Jews "grip on the media", and claimed they are responsible for "all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men".

Allegations of sexism

Farrakhan received sexual discrimination complaints filed with a New York state agency when he banned women from attending a speech he gave in a city-owned theater in 1993. The next year he gave a speech only women could attend. In his speech for women, as The New York Times reported,

Mr. Farrakhan urged the women to embrace his formula for a successful family. He encouraged them to put husbands and children ahead of their careers, shun tight, short skirts, stay off welfare and reject abortion. He also stressed the importance of cooking and cleaning and urged women not to abandon homemaking for careers. 'You're just not going to be happy unless there is happiness in the home,' Mr. Farrakhan said at the Mason Cathedral Church of God in Christ in the Dorchester section, not far from the Roxbury neighborhood where he was raised by a single mother. 'Your professional lives can't satisfy your soul like a good, loving man.'

Social media

Farrakhan lost his blue tick on his Twitter posts in June 2018, denying him full verification, after asserting the Harvey Weinstein scandal was about "Jewish power". A contributor to the Tablet website, Yair Rosenberg, objected to a potential suspension as "erasing hate from social media doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it easier to ignore" making them more difficult to dismiss as "inconsequential". The following October, Twitter said that it would not suspend Farrakhan's account after he made his "anti-termite" comment as he had not broken the site's rules.

At the beginning of May 2019, Farrakhan was banned from Facebook, along with others considered to be extremist figures, with antisemitism believed to be the reason.

During a speech at Saint Sabina Catholic Church in Chicago a week later, Farrakhan stated he had "never been arrested" for "drunken driving" and asked: "What have I done that you would hate me like that?" The Nation of Islam said his speech was Farrakhan's response to the "public outrage over the unprecedented and unwarranted lifetime ban" from Facebook. He insisted he was neither a misogynist nor a homophobe and that: "I do not hate Jewish people". Archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich condemned the decision of the church in allowing Farrakhan to speak there.

Other issues

Brief return to music

When Farrakhan first joined the NOI, he was asked by Elijah Muhammad to put aside his musical career as a calypso singer. After 42 years, Farrakhan decided to take up the violin once more primarily due to the urging of prominent classical musician Sylvia Olden Lee.

On April 17, 1993, Farrakhan made his return concert debut with performances of the Violin Concerto in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn. Farrakhan intimated that his performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was, in part, an effort to heal a rift between him and the Jewish community. The New York Times music critic Bernard Holland reported that Farrakhan's performance was somewhat flawed due to years of neglect, but "nonetheless Mr. Farrakhan's sound is that of the authentic player. It is wide, deep and full of the energy that makes the violin gleam."

Health

Farrakhan announced that he was seriously ill in a letter on September 11, 2006, that was directed to his staff, Nation of Islam members, and supporters. The letter, published in The Final Call newspaper, said that doctors in Cuba had discovered a peptic ulcer. According to the letter subsequent infections caused Farrakhan to lose 35 pounds (16 kg), and he urged the Nation of Islam leadership to carry on while he recovered.

Farrakhan was released from his five-week hospital stay on January 28, 2007, after major abdominal surgery. The operation was performed to correct damage caused by side effects of a radioactive "seed" implantation procedure that he received years earlier to successfully treat prostate cancer.

Following his hospital stay, Farrakhan released a "Message of Appreciation" to supporters and well-wishers and weeks later delivered the keynote address at the Nation of Islam's annual convention in Detroit.

In December 2013, Farrakhan announced that he had not appeared publicly for two months because he had suffered a heart attack in October.

Awards and honors

2005, a Black Entertainment Television (BET) poll voted Farrakhan the 'Person of the Year'.

2006, an AP-AOL "Black Voices" poll voted Farrakhan the fifth-most important black leader, with 4 percent of the vote.

#05/11

4 notes · View notes