Today is the birthday of IYALODE AKOSUA BOAHEMAA AMY ASHWOOD GARVEY
Born in Jamaica, on this day in 1897, Mama Amy was born to a family that held on to its oral history. From young, her Grandmother taught her that she was an Asante descendent, instilling a sense of...
unshakable pride in her beautiful, dark skin grand daughter; A pride which served her well in a society infected with the virus of "light skin privilege".
In 1914, Mama Ashwood met Marcus Mosiah Garvey - apparently besting him in an elocution contest. They would go on, with...
others to found the Universal Negro Improvement Association & African Communities League. Mama Ashwood would become its first secretary. She also founded and organised the Womens section of the UNIA-ACL, laying the foundation for one of the organisations most enduring legacies...
- Women Leadership.
Mama Ashwood would go on to marry Marcus Mosiah Garvey in 1919. Their marriage was intimately tied to the mission of the organisation they had founded. As Mama Ashwood would write: "Our joint love for Africa and our concern for the welfare of our race urged...
us to immediate action."
Though the marriage was short lived, Mama Ashwood dedication to the liberation fight was self generated and eternal. She moved to London and founded the the Nigerian Progress Union with Oladipo Solanke. Her fellow members bestowed the name IYALODE...
"Mother has arrived", upon her.
Between London and New York, Mama Iyalode engaged her creative talents as music producer and playwright, working with some of the highest profile Calypsonians of the time.
An adventurous woman & prolific organiser, Mama Iyalode spent the...
30's in Jamaica, London & New York, founding a number of organisations including the International African Friends of Abyssinia, International African Service Bureau, London Afro-Women's Centre, J. A. G. Smith Political Party, West Indies National Council and the Council on...
African Affairs.
Her work in the UK however, is perhaps most noted. Mama Ashwood played a key role in organising the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester, 1945. She stood at the helm, chairing the session on "Freedom from British Colonial Rule", which would go on to have a...
lasting impact in the African Liberation Movement. She co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, along with Mama Claudia Jones, organising the Black community in London in response to the Notting Hill Race Riots.
Mama Ashwoods Africa legacy is also...
prolific. She lived in Liberia during the 1940's during which time she organised with African Women in Liberia & Nigeria. Upon travelling to Ghana, she would visit her ancestral home of Dwaben, confirming her family history and reclaiming the name Akosua Boahemaa.
In the 1950's Mama Akosua conducted speaking tours through out the Caribbean, paying special attention the plight of Afrikan women and organising with them for African Liberation. In 1968, she wrote and produced an album celebrating the legacy of her former Husband -
Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
Today, we celebrate her with as much gusto and appreciation for the steadfast, stalwart and selfless contribution to the liberation fight of African people.
Mama Iyalode Akosua Boahemaa - We venerate you. ASE!
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#AYIBOBO#AYITI - On this day in 1804, Emporer Jean Jacques Dessalines stood at the helm of a free Afrikan Republic in #Haiti & Declared it independent:
"It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; it is not enough to have...
restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving..
us away from the inhuman government that for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or die.
Independence or death... let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of our reunion."
Today is the birthday of QUEEN MAMA AMY JACQUES EUPHEMIA GARVEY, activist, journalist, Secretary General & leading member of the UNIA-ACL and 2nd wife of Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
✊🏿❤️🖤💚
Upon joining the UNIA-ACL, Mama Amy took on the thankless task of...
Secretary General, ensuring that the administration of the organisation maintained impeccable standards.
With the founding of the Negro World Newspaper in 1918, she initiated and edited the "Our Women & What They Think" page, where African women from around the world found...
voice - contributing to the Nation Building efforts of the UNIA-ACL. A prolific writer in her own right, she penned many passionate editorials on the role of Black women in the Liberation fight as Activists as well family women. she compromised neither role in favour of the other
@guy_law@kzshabazz@Respec_ADOS@DOmowale There's more. Let's explore the history of "The Establishment" relationship with PA movements & thus reveal the Pan-European nature of US/Western Imperialism.
1. The US Government collaborated with the Belgian, French & British Governments to Assassinate Patrice Lumumba in 1961.
@guy_law@kzshabazz@Respec_ADOS@DOmowale 2. The USA Governent were the principal backers of the brutal Mobutu regime In Congo. When PA forces (e.g. The Rebellion lead by Piere Mulule) rose up, the US sent troops to crush the Rebellion; as well suppress PA orgs in the USA who declared solidarity with the ppl of Congo.
@guy_law@kzshabazz@Respec_ADOS@DOmowale 3. The CIA expended considerable resources spying on & trying to undo the work of Omowale Malcolm X while he was travelling through Afrika. They even attempted to posion him in Egypt. Numerous articles by now known FBI journalists plastered the media opposing his actions.
Trading Companies, Enslavement & The Colonial Process
The capitalist institution which came into most direct contact with African peasants was the colonial trading company: that is to say, a company specialising in moving goods to and from the colonies. The most notorious were
the French concerns, Compagnie Française d’Afrique Occidentale (CFAO) and Societé Commerciale Ouest Africaine (SCOA) and the British controlled United Africa Company (UAC). These were responsible for expatriating a great proportion of Africa’s wealth produced by peasant toil.
Several of the colonial trading companies already had African blood on their hands from participation in the slave trade. Thus, after French merchants in Bordeaux made fortunes from the European slave trade, they transferred that capital to the trade in groundnuts from Senegal...
The African working class produced a less spectacular surplus for export with regard to companies engaged in agriculture. Agricultural plantations were widespread in North, East and South Africa; and they also appeared in West Africa to a lesser extent. Their profits depended on
the incredibly low wages and harsh working conditions imposed on African agricultural labourers and on the fact that they invested very little capital in obtaining the land, which was robbed whole-sale from Africans by colonial powers and then sold to whites at nominal prices.
For instance, after the Kenya highlands had been declared ‘Crown Land’, the British handed over to Lord Delamere 100,000 acres of the best land at a cost of penny per acre. Lord Francis Scott purchased 350,000 acres, the East African Estates Ltd. got another 350,000 acres, and...
Profits from Mining Companies in the Colonial Process.
In the final analysis, the shareholders of the mining companies were the ones who benefited most of all. They remained in Europe and North America and collected fabulous dividends every year from the gold, diamonds,
manganese, uranium, etc. which were brought out of the South African sub-soil by African labour. For years, the capitalist press itself praised Southern Africa as an investment outlet returning super profits on capital invested. From the very beginning of the Scramble for Africa,
huge fortunes were made from gold and diamonds in Southern Africa by people like Cecil Rhodes. In the present century, both the investment and the outflow of surplus have increased. Investment was mainly concentrated in mining and finance where the profits were greatest.