The murder of Emmett Till (July 25 1941-August 28 1955)

"The story of Emmett Till is one of the most important of the last half of the 20th century. And an important element was the casket.... It is an object that allows us to tell the story, to feel the pain and understand loss. I want people to feel like I did. I want people to feel the complexity of emotions."

Lonnie Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture  

On August 28 1955 , fourteen year old African American teenager Emmett Till who was visiting relatives, was abducted and murdered in Money, Mississippi by two white men who claimed he was disrespectful to a white woman by whistling at her.

Emmett's murderers were the husband and brother of the white woman he supposedly disrespected.

In the US this weekend the significance of Emmett Till's life is being commemorated by civil rights activists, relatives of the black teen and other families "victimized by racial violence", including the family of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown , who are uniting for a commemorative weekend in Chicago to remember Till and to continue the legacy of Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley.

Emmett Till was born and lived in Chicago and at the time of his murder he was visiting family in Money, Mississippi.

A few days before his murder Emmett went into a local store, Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, and, on a dare, said something to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the owner's wife who was working behind the counter. A few nights later, the woman's husband, Roy Bryant, and her half brother, J.W. Milam, went to house where Emmett Till was living with his great uncle  and forced him into their car. After driving around they beat Till and drove to the Tallahatchie River. 

Emmett Till was forced carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered to take off his clothes. He was beaten nearly to death, had his eyes gouged out, was shot in the head, and then his body was tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire and he was thrown into the river.

Emmett Till's corpse was found three days later. He was found with a bullet hole in his head, barbed wire wrapped around his neck and a cotton gin fan weighing him down  He was so disfigured that his Mississippi relatives could only identify him by an initialled ring. 

(photo of Emmett Till in his casket) 

 

Bryant and Milam were subsequently arrested and charged with murder.

 

Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, requested the body be sent back to Chicago. After seeing her son's mutilated remains, she arranged an open-casket funeral to show the brutality of the white murders.

Tens of thousands of people attended his funeral or viewed his casket and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S.

Less than two weeks after Emmett’s body was buried, the two murderers went on trial in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. There were few witnesses besides a relative of Emmett Till who positively identified the defendants as Emmett’s killers. On September 23, the all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of “not guilty,” explaining that they believed the state had failed to prove the identity of the body.

 Many people around the country were outraged by the decision and also by the state’s decision not to indict Milam and Bryant on the separate charge of kidnapping.

Months after the trial and immune from further prosecution, the two men openly admitted to a national magazine that they had abducted, mutilated and murdered Emmett Till.

Roy Bryant never showed remorse for the murder, claiming in an interview in 1992 that Emmett Till had ruined his life, stating "Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he can't just stay dead" Ray Bryant died in 1994 aged 63. 

The murder of Emmett Till  was a pivotal event for the African American civil rights movement and provided a spark that contributed to igniting the civil rights movement in the USA by exposing the brutality of the conditions of black civil rights in Mississippi.

The killing of Emmett Till has inspired songs (for example by Bob Dylan), movies, books, artistic displays and memorials.

Till's mother Mamie Till-Mobley published a book titled Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, which is  currently being made into a feature film. 

The book was co-written with  journalist Christopher Benson and was nominated for a 2004 Pulitzer Prize and won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award special recognition that year.  She died in 2003, aged 81, 58 years after her son's murder. 

Bob Dylan' song The Death of Emmett Till appears on the

The Bootleg Series, Vol 9: The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964

 

The Death of Emmett Till
By Bob Dylan

’Twas down in Mississippi not so long ago
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door
This boy’s dreadful tragedy I can still remember well
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till
Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up
They said they had a reason, but I can’t remember what
They tortured him and did some things too evil to repeat
There were screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds
out on the street
Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain
The reason that they killed him there, and I’m sure it ain’t no lie
Was just for the fun of killin’ him and to watch him slowly die
And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this
awful crime
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin’ down the courthouse stairs
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free
While Emmett’s body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea
If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust
Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood
it must refuse to flow
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live

Copyright © 1963, 1968 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1996 by Special Rider Music

Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/death-emmett-till#ixzz3k6sIgfJW

Remembering Ken Sprague (1927-204) and his powerful images

image by Ken Sprague

"In essence, the leitmotif of his work is about power and the abuse of power as well as the resilience of ordinary working people to this abuse... It is an art of engagement – engagement for change."

(John Green, from the Introduction to Ken Sprague – People’s Artist.)

People continue to ask about this powerful image that appears on this site. (It it also continues to appear in its original or modified form elsewhere).

The image is a drawing by Ken Sprague. I have written before here and here about Ken Sprague who I had the privilege to know during the 1980's. You can read more about Ken's life, his work and legacy here

Ken Sprague's remarkable image captures the recent zeitgeist of uprisings and revolts happening around the world, in which ordinary people are standing up and fighting against state and corporate power and political and financial plundering.

Ken's image was created decades ago but reflects his profound and lifelong commitment to  human rights, justice, peace and socialism.

Ken was a renowned artist, cartoonist, illustrator, poster designer , print maker, educator and filmmaker  who believed profoundly that art should  always serve social justice, peace, human rights and political struggle.

 The obituary for Ken was written by John Green and appeared in the Guardian newspaper. John wrote a book on Ken's life titled Ken Sprague: People's Artist.

 Ken Sprague: Radical artist in pursuit of Socialism
By John Green ( from The Guardian 6th August 2004)

 The aim of Ken Sprague, who has died of a stroke aged 77  was, he said, “to build a picture road to socialism, to the Golden City, or as Blake called it, Jerusalem”. A painter, sculptor, muralist, banner-maker and sometime television presenter, Ken was, for half a century a regular, but dissenting cartoonist for the Daily Worker and its successor the Morning Star, and for papers like Tribune and Peace News.

As a posterman his work included material for Martin Luther King, and the women of Greenham Common — and against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslavakia, and Edward Heath’s Industrial Relations Bill. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was designing scenery and backdrops for Unity Theatre and was involved in the Centre 42 trade union arts project.

All round talents
His linocuts for the radical collective Cinema Action’s Kill The Bill film (1971) began an involvement in moving images. I made a film about him in 1972 which led to Jeff Perks’s 1976 BBC Omnibus documentary The Posterman. This led to a series of Channel 4 films, devised with Jeff Perks and presented by Ken, called Everyone A Special Kind Of Artist (1986). There was also a BBC South West series, The Moving Line with Joan Bakewell. In later life, he taught and practised as a  psychodrama specialist. Ken was born in Bournemouth , his father was a train driver and his mother worked in a cardboard box factory. His first work of art, in 1937, was a linocut made from linoleum, torn from the kitchen floor in response to the Spanish civil war.

Early life
He was educated at Alma Road Elementary School — until it was bombed — and Porchester Road Secondary Modern School. There the headmaster, noticing his talent, recommended that he apply to the local art college. He won a scholarship to Bournemouth Municipal  College and, from 13 and a half, studied graphics — in those days students of his background were hardly considered for fine arts courses. One morning in 1944 he volunteered, aged 17 for the Royal Marines — and that afternoon, in Southampton, he joined the Communist Party. After basic military training he was transferred to Vickers-Supermarine as a technical artist, work which took him to wartime Yugoslavia. Postwar, and after a summer stint in a circus, he completed his college diploma course in design and illustration. The CP, he told me, was his university, but after the Bournemouth Daily Echo had labelled him a college revolutionary, local job prospects dwindled. He briefly worked for a volunteer labour battalion in Yugoslavia, was employed  by the Boy Scouts and then, between 1950 to 1954 he worked in a Carlisle mining company design office — doubling as a cartoonist for the local Conservative, and Liberal newspapers. Then came a move to London as the Daily Worker’s publicity manager, which also had him working as a journalist and cartoonist. Devastated by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, in 1959 Ken left to set up, with Ray Barnard, the publicity company, Mountain & Molehill. Yet he continued producing cartoons for the Worker, and its successor the Morning Star into the 21st century.

Mountain & Molehill
M&M — later The Working Arts — was responsible for some of the most innovative trade union campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s. Ken told union leaders they had to (TO) use publicity to win hearts and minds and to see it as an integral part of union work. And it was Sprague and Barnard who initiated the sensational 1961 visit to Britain of the first man in space Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. M&M also worked for the Indian High Commission — which led to a meeting with Jawaharlarl Nehru In the late 1960s Ken began editing the Transport and General Workers Union’s the Record, transforming it into a lively newspaper, — and illustrating it with his own cartoons. As a poster and print-maker he worked with a number of leading progressive organisations and individuals, including Pete Seeger.

New life in Devon
In 1971 he moved with his wife, Sheila, a talented potter, to Holwell, a farmhouse in Devon, and converted it into an artistic centre. Sheila died of cancer in 1973, but with his second wife, Marcia he set up the Holwell International Centre For Psychodrama and Sociodrama which continued until 1998. There Ken combined his artistic talents with pedagogic expertise, using them in this new field in which he became a leading practitioner.

It is his posters and prints that will remain his true epitaph. His innovative and prolific creativity, his recalcitrant questioning, determination and belief in others’ potential was an inspiring beacon for everyone who met him, young and old. His images remain etched in the mind, they unsettle, provoke, discomfort but also amuse. Ken was concerned about how politics impact on the ordinary person. In essence the leitmotif of his work is about power and the abuse of power as well as the resilience of ordinary people. He depicted the world as changeable. His work is imbued with unfashionable optimism, depicting a world where ethics and values still have relevance. It is the antithesis of post-modern fragmentation and its disdain of value systems. Every morning, he drew a political cartoon to assuage his anger and frustration at the state of the world. And only a few weeks before he died, he was excitedly telling me about plans for an artistic project in Cuba and a book he was determined to publish of anti-war drawings. He left the Communist Party, after the acrimonious split in 1988. He continued to call himself a communist, however, saying “The party left me, I didn’t leave the party”. He won several prestigious awards, including poster of the year award from the National Council of Industrial Design on two occasions.

He is survived by Marcia, from whom he recently separated, his five children and seven grandchildren.

John Green

Celebrating the poetry of Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

"writing becomes a greater life"

Maya Angelou

" You should be angry. If you are not angry you are either a stone or you are too sick to be angry. But you must not be bitter. Use that anger. You write it, you paint it, you dance it, you march it, you vote it, you talk it"

Maya Angelou

A Zorro Man

By Maya Angelou

Here

in the wombed room

silk purple drapes

flash a light as subtle

as your hands before 

love-making

Here 

in the covered lens

I catch a 

clitoral image of

your general inhabitation

long and like a

late dawn in winter

Here

this clean mirror

traps me unwilling

in a gone time

when I was love

and you were booted and brave

and trembling for me.

******
Million Man March Poem
Maya Angelou

The night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

Under a dead blue sky on a distant beach,
I was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach.
Your hands were tied, your mouth was bound,
You couldn't even call out my name.
You were helpless and so was I,
But unfortunately throughout history
You've worn a badge of shame.

I say, the night has been long,
The wound has been deep,
The pit has been dark
And the walls have been steep.

But today, voices of old spirit sound
Speak to us in words profound,
Across the years, across the centuries,
Across the oceans, and across the seas.
They say, draw near to one another,
Save your race.
You have been paid for in a distant place,
The old ones remind us that slavery's chains
Have paid for our freedom again and again.

The night has been long,
The pit has been deep,
The night has been dark,
And the walls have been steep.

The hells we have lived through and live through still,
Have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.
The night has been long.
This morning I look through your anguish
Right down to your soul.
I know that with each other we can make ourselves whole.
I look through the posture and past your disguise,
And see your love for family in your big brown eyes.

I say, clap hands and let's come together in this meeting ground,
I say, clap hands and let's deal with each other with love,
I say, clap hands and let us get from the low road of indifference,
Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts,
Let us come together and revise our spirits,
Let us come together and cleanse our souls,
Clap hands, let's leave the preening
And stop impostering our own history.
Clap hands, call the spirits back from the ledge,
Clap hands, let us invite joy into our conversation,
Courtesy into our bedrooms,
Gentleness into our kitchen,
Care into our nursery.

The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain
We are a going-on people who will rise again.

And still we rise. 

Everyday heroes: sit-ins 50 years apart show the power of ordinary people to take action against injustice

"You don't have to be a big name to make a difference and impact change. Small things can make ripples that make a big difference"
Joan Trumpauer Mullholland

Today in a Perth court 11 Christian leaders were fined $50 each for trespass after they held a prayer vigil and sit-in at the office of the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as a protest against the plight of 1100 children imprisoned in Australia's onshore and offshore immigration detention camps.

There was some concern that the Christian leaders faced a jail sentence for their protest.

The protest in the Foreign Minister's office was followed by subsequent prayer vigils and sit-in by other Christians and Church leaders on the east coast, this time in the offices of the Immigration Minister, The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.

The Christian leaders are part of a long tradition in which ordinary people use sit-ins as a form of direct action protest against injustice and domination,

This iconic photo was taken on May 28th 1963 in Jackson Mississippi and shows 3 people- 2 white people and one black woman- participating in a sit- in protest at a Woolworths lunch counter. They are surrounded by angry and aggressive white men who are pouring sugar, liquid and ketchup over the 3 protesters.

The protesters were three students- John Salter, Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody- who were protesting against racial segregation of lunch counters in Woolworths stores throughout the American south.

Initially the protesters were jeered and taunted and then doused in sugar and ketchup. They were then beaten and kicked.  

It was one of the most violent attacks on protesters involved in a sit-in the history of the civil rights movement.

The attack went on for 3 hours as the Police stood by and watched

 The Woolworths store manager eventually had to close the store and the protesters were escorted away by Police.

 
The story of the Woolworths sit in, the events that lead up to the protest and the fall out from it (including the murder two weeks later of civil rights leader Medger Evers) and the stories of the protesters involved are told in Mike O'Brien's book We Shall Not Be Moved.

The Jackson sit-in was one of a long line of sit-ins used during the civil rights movement to protest against racial segregation in the South during the early 1960's.

The rising voice of Paul Robeson

“All that Paul Robeson stood for had enormous impact on American and global history. The combination of his art, intellect and humanity was rarely paralleled. The cruelties visited upon him by the power of the State stands as a great blemish on the pages of American history.”
Harry Belafonte

"..while Robeson’s reputation and name recognition will gradually grow, he will remain a marginal figure, greatly admired by the relatively few Americans who understand his giant accomplishments and his remarkable courage, but otherwise eclipsed by one of the ugliest episodes in our country’s history, one of the lasting legacies of McCarthyism and the Cold War'
Peter Dreier

We are witnessing a growing recognition of the remarkable life and achievements of Paul Robeson, who is unquestionably one of the towering figures of the twentieth century.

There are few people whose achievements can match those of Paul Robeson.

In an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books titled, We are long overdue for a Paul Robeson revival, Peter Dreier writes that Paul Robeson was the most talented man of the twentieth century.

Dreier writes:

He was an internationally renowned concert and opera singer, film star and stage actor, college football star and professional athlete, writer, linguist (he sang in 25 languages), scholar, orator, lawyer, and activist in the civil rights, labor, and peace movements. In the 1930s and 1940s, Robeson was one of the best-known, and most admired, Americans in the world. Today, however, he is almost a forgotten figure. Few Americans know his name or accomplishments.

We are familiar with authoritarian governments that seek to “erase” the memory of prominent critics, but how can it happen in a democracy like the United States? Starting in the late 1940s, as the Cold War escalated, America’s political establishment began an assault on Robeson’s career and reputation because of his political activism and outspoken radicalism. He was blacklisted, his concerts and recording contracts canceled, and his passport revoked. By the mid-1950s, he had become a marginal figure — emotionally depressed, physically exhausted, and politically isolated.

As Dreier points out, other public figures who challenged the status quo retained their reputation, but not Robeson. Dreier writes:

He is, at best, a footnote in history textbooks, little known outside a small circle of Americans with a special interest in the history of the civil rights and left-wing movements, although somewhat better known among African Americans than white Americans.

But as Dreire and others have noted, Robeson's outstanding achievements are at last being recognized. 

A range of factors are at work;

• the death of his son Paul Robeson jr who had spent his life promoting and protecting his father's reputation has focused greater attention on Robeson.
• growing interest in and recognition of Robeson's achievements and legacy, including artistic events, public forums and press and media reports (here here, here, here, here).
• the publication of Jordan Goodman's new book "Paul Robeson A Watched Man", which tells of his political awakening and political engagement and his relentless persecution by the US Government.
• the publication of "Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson, Barbara Ransby's biography of Eslanda Robeson, Paul Robeson's wife.

Here in Australia Robeson is remembered for his famous 1960 visit, which is the subject of recent historical investigation (described in this article by Ann Curthoys and this piece in The Australian), recent ABC Radio programs (here) and his famous concert on the building site of the Sydney Opera House, which at the time was under construction. 

Paul Robeson and the crimes of the US Government against African Americans

"As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this."  Paul Robeson (1898 –  1976) 

Paul Robeson is one of my heroes.  And I find this photo of the great man profoundly moving.

This photo was taken in 1951, around the time Robeson was blacklisted by the US Government, who had taken away his passport and issued stop notices at all ports to prevent him leaving the US. 

The US Government was outraged by his political advocacy for civil rights for African Americans and his frequent advocacy for the independence of colonial peoples around the globe.

The US Government believed that by isolating him inside US borders they could limit his freedom of expression and his political campaigning. Robeson was told by the US State Department that he was denied a passport because  "his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries".

This photo of Robeson was taken when he presented a petition titled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People” to a UN official.

The document was written by William Patterson, an African American lawyer and Communist, who was Secretary of the Civil Rights Congress. 

The document charged the U.S. with genocide against Black Americans and cited evidence of genocide by the US Government (defined as acts committed with "intent to destroy" a group, "in whole or in part"). The document argued that the US Government is complicit with and responsible for creating genocidal situations, including instances of lynching, legal discrimination, and systematic inequalities in health and quality of life. It argued that the US government is both complicit with and responsible for genocidal situations.

The document included hundreds of cases of lynching, which showed a clear pattern of government inaction or actual complicity. It charged that in the 85 years since the end of slavery more than 10,000 Blacks are known to have been lynched (an average of more than 100 per year), and that the full number can never be known because the murders are often unreported.

The American government and white press accused Robeson and Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress  of advancing the cause of Communism by exaggerating racial conflict and inequality. The US State Department forced Patterson to surrender his passport after presenting the petition to a UN meeting in Paris.

More detail about the document We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People” and Robeson's involvement in its development is here.

Photographing the destruction of communities and ecosystems by the coal industry

"Social documentary has to go beyond propaganda. It has to speak to people's lives and struggles"
Builder Levy

In his book Appalachia USA, the photographer Builder Levy has done what Australian photographers have not yet done. 

Levy has documented the destruction caused by the mining industries, particularly the coal industry, in the Appalachian region of the USA. 

Levy has spent 45 years photographing the effects of mining on communities, families, livelihoods, ways of life and ecosystems and environments in the Appalachain region and his new book Appalachia USA contains over 600 photos taken since 1968. 

Despite its massive mineral wealth, Appalachia is one of the poorest regions in the US. The extractive industries, particularly the coal industry, have made massive profits, whilst polluting the land,water and air and capturing democracy to serve their corporate interests and plundering from the public purse. In excess of 100,000 coal workers have been killed in mining accidents.

Levy's photography springs from his deep commitment to progressive ideals and to social, economic and racial justice. But his work is neither didactic nor polemical

"I always wanted to show people's struggles. And I wanted to show people with humanity, dignity, culture and heritage that others might not know about. you want to go beyond the superficial and stereotype.... What I needed from my art was to be able to talk about what was going on in the world, out there in the streets. I could do that with photography.”

As well as Appalachia, Levy has photographed  inner-city New York City where he was a NYC teacher of at-risk adolescents for 35 years;  civil rights and peace demonstrations (in the 1960s & new millennium), Mongolia and other developing nations including Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

Antony Martin Fernando: A truly great Australian

Australian Aboriginal activist and human rights campaigner Anthony Martin Fernando died unknown, penniless and forgotten in a London nursing home in 1949.  For thirty years Fernando had single handedly campaigned in Europe and the UK to publicize the cause of Aboriginal people and protest against Australian and British colonial domination of Aboriginal people.

I have written before about his remarkable life (here and here) which features in the touring exhibition about Aboriginal activism and Aboriginal activists From Little Things Big Things Grow which is currently touring the country (The exhibition will be in Perth later this year).

The ABC Radio National's social history program Hindsight had this program today (February 3rd) about the life and legacy of Antony Martin Fernando.

The story of the extraordinary international career of the Aboriginal rights activist Anthony Martin Fernando, who is slowly emerging from the shadows 60 years after his death.
He was an Aboriginal man who pinned toy skeletons to his overcoat and picketed Australia House in London in the 1920s. He tried to petition the Pope and was accused of being a German spy.

Fernando was born in Sydney in 1864, the son of an Aboriginal mother, his 'guiding star' from whom he was separated as a child. He claimed to have been brought up in the home of a white family who denied him an education and treated him like a pet. He complained bitterly about the mission system, describing its settlements as 'murderhouses' -- instead proposing that an Aboriginal state be established in Australia's north, free from British and Australian interference, under the mandate of a neutral power.

Even though Fernando is relatively unknown, he has a mythology. This program explores the documentary evidence of his random but constant political activity -- from letters he wrote, to newspaper reports and secret communiques between British and Australian authorities.

As far as historians can ascertain, Fernando was driven into self-imposed exile in the early 1900s, after being excluded from giving evidence in the trial of white men accused of the murder of Aboriginal people. He believed the only way to secure justice for his people was to go to Europe. There he believed he might confront the British, whom he accused -- through the Australian Government -- of 'systematically exterminating' Indigenous people.

A religious man who could quote tracts of the Bible, he believed that God had entrusted him with a mission to save Aboriginal people from the colonial system that oppressed them.

A stain on our country: Another Aboriginal death in custody

So another Aboriginal Western Australian has died in custody here in Western Australia.

On Saturday a 51 year old Aboriginal man died in a cell at the Kalgoorlie Watch House. Apparently the man was in custody because he had breached a Move on Order. A spokesperson from The Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee has raised serious questions about the death:

"Was he medically assessed in terms of his physical health and mental health? Was he identified as a prisoner at risk, a detained person at risk? Was he under observation, how often was that observation? It raises all of these questions and we want answers to that sooner rather than later"

And once again we have the terrible injustice where a death in police custody is to be investigated by Police Internal Affairs. As Marc Newhouse from the Aboriginal Death in Custody Watch Committee put it:

"We've got grave concerns about the police investigation of this case and believe that the Corruption and Crime Commission should step in and conduct the investigation".

In a recent op ed piece in the West Australian social justice activist Gerry Georgatos highlighted that  Australia has one of the worst records of Aboriginal deaths in custody and the rate is increasing, not declining. In the last 18 months an Aboriginal person dies in custody in this country every month. Twenty years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody the situation today is worse than it was in 1990. Whilst the commission made 339 recommendations most have not been carried out.

The remarkable story of Antony Martin Fernando

The travelling exhibition From Little Things Big Things Grow about Aboriginal activists who fought for Indigenous rights between 1920-1970 is heading westwards and will be in Perth between July and September 2011.
I wrote a piece early in 2010 about the remarkable story of Anthony Martin Fernando one of the activists featured in the exhibition Fom Little Things Big Things Grow and reprint part of it below

Recently a friend of mine introduced me to the remarkable story of Anthony Martin Fernando, an Aboriginal activist who stood outside Australia House in London in the 1920's protesting against Australia's treatment of Aboriginal people. Pinned to his coat were small toy skeletons which he handed out and a placard that proclaimed "This is all Australia has left of my people".

From the early 1900's, when he left Australia disgusted with its treatment of Aboriginal people, until his death in an Essex nursing home in 1949, Fernando tirelessly and singlehandedly publicized the cause of Aboriginal people internationally and campaigned against colonial domination.

Fernando was born in NSW in 1864 and was removed from his family at an early age. He grew up in a white family who he claimed treated him like a pet. In 1904 he came to Western Australia where he tried to hold the Chief Protector accountable for the treatment of Aboriginal people and made complaints about the New Norcia mission and police threats.

It appears that Fernando left Australia after being excluded from giving evidence in a trial of white men accused and acquitted of the murder of Aboriginal people. Fernando had witnessed the murder. Convinced that God had entrusted him with a mission to save Aboriginal people from an oppressive colonial system he believed that justice could only be pursued through international pressure. He lived in Austria for a while, where he was interned during WWI, in Switzerland and Italy where he was imprisoned by Mussolini because he was considered "an enemy of an ally of fascist Italy". He tried to obtain an audience with the Pope, wrote articles critical of Australia throughout Europe and appealed to the League of Nations and other national governments.

He returned to England in the 1920's and continued to campaign against the British authorities and the Australian government. He took to the streets of London carrying placards and handing out pamphlets highlighting the ill treatment of Aboriginal people. He picketed Australia House and the Australian authorities tried to silence him.

Fernando was a man of immense courage and strength. He was arrested and imprisoned many times and in the UK efforts were made to have him admitted to a mental asylum. He was charged for pulling a gun on a man who racially abused him.

Fernando's struggle and courage are inspirational. For decades he pursued a one man campaign of unrelenting protest to bring to the world's attention the appalling treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia. Despite the setbacks and struggle he never relented.

Remembering Dennis Brutus and all he stood for

"If you have a sense that there is this global struggle going on, where one is winning little victories in a number of places, then the real question in my mind should be how do we combine all these successes and develop them into a powerful voice. But it certainly seems to me that the mere fact that one is occasionally winning a few victories, however small they be, is one way to keep going" Dennis Brutus 2008

Twelve months have passed since Dennis Brutus- South African poet, political activist, environmental and social justice activist and freedom fighter- passed on.

Brutus's achievements were many, notably his poetry, his anti-apartheid activism and his leadership of the anti-apartheid sports boycott campaigns, which played a key role in ending apartheid. As a tribute to Dennis Brutus's legacy the excellent US online publication Truth Out has published Beverley Bell's euology for Dennis Brutus, A Small Tribute to a Giant Man. Bell reminds us of Brutus's humility and compasssion and his profound commitment to the struggle against injustice. She writes that Brutus's message was:

" .. in the humility with which he carried himself, the kindness with which he treated others, and the wisdom and clarity of his words. His message, and his life, lay also in the strength of his convictions and the energy with which he worked for them whether the cause be liberation form oppressive regimes; reparations to victims of apartheid from corporations that made profits off the system; the dissolution of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organisation; or control over corporations creating climate change"

There is much we can learn from Brutus's example. Bell points out that Brutus urged activists to direct their anger at unjust systems and policies and not waste it on the individuals behind them. He urged people to keep their eye on the ultimate goal; the principles at play.

Bell tells us that Brutus was tireless and fearless into his 80's and until the day he died he was working and fighting for social, economic and environmental justice. At the time of his death Brutus was fighting global corporations who had propped up and benefited from the apartheid regime.

"He lobbied us all to involve ourselves, to turn out, to unite our voice and strength, to do more than we were already doing".

I have written before about the legacy of Dennis Brutus's life, work and poetry. A piece I wrote on his death in 2009 has been republished on this blog. Other pieces can be found here.

The pact consumers live by

Stephanie McMillan on the pact between the corporations who produce the goods and the consumers who buy them

In memory of Abbey Lincoln (1930-2010)

Throw it away. Throw it away
Give your love, live your life,
Each and every day
And keep your hand wide open
Let the sun shine through
Cause you can never lose a thing 
If it belongs to you

There's a hand to rock the cradle 
And a hand to help us stand
With a gentle kind of motion
As it moves across the land,
And the hand's unclenched and open.
Gifts of life and love it brings,
So Keep your hands wide open
If you're needing anything,

Abbey Lincoln Throw it Away

 The US jazz singer and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln has died at the age of 80 in Manhattan.

Lincoln recorded more than 20 albums, acted in films, performed with Billie Holliday and became a leading voice in the civil rights movement during her six-decade career. As an actor she was one of the first African-American women to act in a leading role, alongside Sidney Poitier in the 1968 movie For Love of Ivy.

Her last 2007 CD  Abbey Sings Abbey is a fine celebration of  a distinguished career. It is a beautifully restrained album performed by a singer-songwriter of great wisdom at the top of her craft.

Art that honors dissent and the spirit of social justice

painting of Paul Robeson by Robert Shetterly

I really like what American painter Robert Shetterly has done to fulfill what he describes as the societal and political obligation of the artist.

Despairing in the wake of the war militancy and the narratives of retribution and domination that gripped his country after the events of September 11 2001, Shetterly gave up his artistic career to identify and understand radicals and truth tellers who in dark times resisted imperialism, war, injustice and domination.

Shetterly decided to honor people who struggled for peace, justice and human and civil rights by painting their portraits.

The result is an exhibition "150 Americans who Tell the Truth" which comprises 150 "portraits of courage"- paintings of everyday and prominent Americans who acted with courage in dark times.

Shetterly has painted people who oppose slavery and war, people who challenged corporate and political power, people who fought to protect the environment, people who struggled against economic injustice, racism and discrimination and people who fought for the rights of the marginalized and impoverished. There are also portraits of artists, musicians and writers who used their creative abilities to fight for social and political change.

Alice Walker on Medger Evers, civil rights, Israel and the attack on the Gaza flotilla

image of Israeli soldiers boarding (courtesy of Kate Geraghty/Sydney Morning Herald)

The African-American activist, author, writer and poet Alice Walker has written the piece reproduced below in the wake of the Israeli attack on the Gaza peace flotilla which resulted in the deaths of 9 people and many others injured and detained.

Australian journalists Paul McGeough and photographer Kate Geraghty were passengers on one of the boats attacked . You can read their account of the attack here in the Sydney Morning Herald.

You Will have no Protection by Alice Walker (courtesy of the Electronic Intifada, June 4 2010)
"You will have no protection"

-- Medgar Evers to Civil Rights Activists in Mississippi, shortly before he was assassinated, 12 June, 1963

My heart is breaking; but I do not mind.

For one thing, as soon as I wrote those words I was able to weep. Which I had not been able to do since learning of the attack by armed Israeli commandos on defenseless peace activists carrying aid to Gaza who tried to fend them off using chairs and sticks. I am thankful to know what it means to be good; I know that the people of the Freedom Flotilla are/were in some cases, some of the best people on earth. They have not stood silently by and watched the destruction of others, brutally, sustained, without offering themselves, weaponless except for their bodies, to the situation. I am thankful to have a long history of knowing people like this from my earliest years, beginning in my student days of marches and demonstrations: for peace, for non-separation among peoples, for justice for Women, for People of Color, for Cubans, for Animals, for Indians, and for Her, the planet.

I am weeping for the truth of Medgar's statement; so brave and so true. I weep for him gunned down in his carport, not far from where I would eventually live in Mississippi, with a box of t-shirts in his arms that said: "Jim Crow Must Go." Though trained in the United States Military under racist treatment one cringes to imagine, he remained a peaceful soldier in the army of liberation to the end. I weep and will always weep, even through the widest smiles, for the beautiful young wife, Myrlie Evers, he left behind, herself still strong and focused on the truth of struggle; and for their children, who lost their father to a fate they could not possibly, at the time, understand. I don't think any of us could imagine during that particular phase of the struggle for justice, that we risked losing not just our lives, which we were prepared to give, but also our children, who we were not.

Nothing protected Medgar, nor will anything protect any of us; nothing but our love for ourselves and for others whom we recognize unfailingly as also ourselves. Nothing can protect us but our lives. How we have lived them; what battles, with love and compassion our only shield, we have engaged. And yet, the moment of realizing we are truly alone, that in the ultimate crisis of our existence our government is not there for us, is one of shock. Especially if we have had the illusion of a system behind us to which we truly belong. Thankfully I have never had opportunity to have this illusion. And so, every peaceful witnessing, every non-violent confrontation has been a pure offering. I do not regret this at all.

When I was in Cairo last December to support CODEPINK's efforts to carry aid into Gaza I was unfortunately ill with the flu and could not offer very much. I lay in bed in the hotel room and listened to other activists report on what was happening around the city as Egypt refused entry to Gaza to the 1,400 people who had come for the accompanying Freedom march. I heard many distressing things, but only one made me feel, not exactly envy, but something close; it was that the French activists had shown up, en masse, in front of their embassy and that their ambassador had come out to talk to them and to try to make them comfortable as they set up camp outside the building. This small gesture of compassion for his country's activists in a strange land touched me profoundly, as I was touched decades ago when someone in John Kennedy's White House (maybe the cook) sent out cups of hot coffee to our line of freezing student and teacher demonstrators as we tried, with our signs and slogans and songs, to protect a vulnerable neighbor, Cuba.

Where have the Israelis put our friends? I thought about this all night. Those whom they assassinated on the ship and those they injured? Is "my" government capable of insisting on respect for their dead bodies? Can it demand that those who are injured but alive be treated with care? Not only with care, but the tenderness and honor they deserve? If it cannot do this, such a simple, decent thing, of what use is it to the protection and healing of the planet? I heard a spokesman for the United States opine at the United Nations (not an exact quote) that the Freedom Flotilla activists should have gone through other, more proper, channels, not been confrontational with their attempt to bring aid to the distressed. This is almost exactly what college administrators advised half a century ago when students were trying to bring down apartheid in the South and getting bullets, nooses, bombings and burnings for our efforts. I felt embarrassed (to the degree one can permit embarrassment by another) to be even vaguely represented by this man: a useless voice from the far past. One had hoped.

The Israeli spin on the massacre: that the commandos were under attack by the peace activists and that the whole thing was like "a lynching" of the armed attackers, reminds me of a Redd Foxx joke. I loved Redd Foxx, for all his vulgarity. A wife caught her husband in bed with another woman, flagrant, in the act, skin to skin. The husband said, probably through pants of aroused sexual exertion: All right, go ahead and believe your lying eyes! It would be fun, were it not tragic, to compare the various ways the Israeli government and our media will attempt to blame the victims of this unconscionable attack for their own imprisonment, wounds and deaths.

So what to do? Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus. Martin Luther King followed her act of courage with many of his own, and using his ringing, compassionate voice he aroused the people of Montgomery, Alabama to commit to a sustained boycott of the bus company; a company that refused to allow people of color to sit in the front of the bus, even if it was empty. It is time for us, en masse, to show up in front of our conscience, and sit down in the front of the only bus we have: our very lives.

What would that look like, be like, today, in this situation between Palestine and Israel? This "impasse" that has dragged on for decades. This "conflict" that would have ended in a week if humanity as a whole had acted in defense of justice everywhere on the globe. Which maybe we are learning! It would look like the granddaughter of Rosa Parks, the grandson of Martin Luther King. It would look like spending our money only where we can spend our lives in peace and happiness; freely sharing whatever we have with our friends.

It would be to support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to End the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and by this effort begin to soothe the pain and attend the sorrows of a people wrongly treated for generations. This action would also remind Israel that we have seen it lose its way and have called to it, often with love, and we have not been heard. In fact, we have reached out to it only to encounter slander, insult and, too frequently, bodily harm.

Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity.

This we can do. We the people; who ultimately hold all the power. We the people, who must never forget to believe we can win.

We the people.

It has always been about us; as we watch governments come and go. It always will be.

Alice Walker is a poet, novelist, feminist and activist whose award-winning works have sold over ten million copies.