GM – FBF – Our
story today is about one of the greatest writers of all time. I had a chase to
meet with her because she came to Ewing High School, New Jersey to receive the
Mickey Leland Award from my student club called The Spectrum Project and my Varsity
Debate team from Red Bank Regional High School, New Jersey had a chase to sit
in on one of her classes at Princeton University. She is both knowledgeable and
kind and I hope that you enjoy her story. I won’t be able to return any
response to your posts today last day of workshop. Make it a champion day!
Remember – “If there is a book
that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to
write it.” Toni Morrison
Today in our History – October 7,
1993 – Writer, Toni Morrison awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Toni
Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony Wofford, (born February 18, 1931, Lorain,
Ohio, U.S.), American writer noted for her examination of black experience
(particularly black female experience) within the black community. She received
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
Morrison grew up in the American
Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for
black culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part
of her childhood. She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell
University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two
years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. In 1965 she became a fiction
editor. From 1984 she taught writing at the State University of New York at
Albany, leaving in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University.
Morrison’s first book, The Bluest
Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black
girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes.
In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues)
the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the
community. Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his
identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby
(1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex.
The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for
fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of
recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery.
Jazz (1992) is a story of violence and passion set in New York City’s Harlem
during the 1920s.
Subsequent novels are Paradise
(1998), a richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma,
and Love (2003), an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of
love and its ostensible opposite. A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in
17th-century America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a traumatized Korean War
veteran encounters racism after returning home and later overcomes apathy to
rescue his sister. God Help the Child (2015) chronicles the ramifications of
child abuse and neglect through the tale of Bride, a black girl with dark skin
who is born to light-skinned parents.
A work of criticism, playing in
the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, was published in 1992. Many
of her essays and speeches were collected in What Moves at the Margin: Selected
Nonfiction (edited by Carolyn C. Denard), published in 2008. Additionally,
Morrison released several children’s books, including Who’s Got Game? The Ant
or the Grasshopper? and who’s Got Game? The Lion or the Mouse?, both written
with her son and published in 2003. Remember (2004) chronicles the hardships of
black students during the integration of the American public school system;
aimed at children, it uses archival photographs juxtaposed with captions
speculating on the thoughts of their subjects. She also wrote the libretto for
Margaret Garner (2005), an opera about the same story that inspired Beloved.
The central theme of Morrison’s
novels is the black American experience; in an unjust society her characters
struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy,
her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her
stories great strength and texture.
In 2010
Morrison was made an officer of the French Legion of Honour. Two years later
she was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Research more about
great American Black writers and share with your babies and make it a champion
day!
GM – FBF – Today’s lesson in our quest to find as many unsung
Black history makers, was an U.S. Ambassador, Peace Corp worker , special envoy
to Senegal where I was married. He comes from a musical family background.
Worked at a HBCU and authored a book. Let’s learn more about him. Enjoy!
Remember –I have always viewed my role as a sort of ambassador
or bridge between groups to help provide a dialog. – Will Mercer Cook
Today in our History – October 4 ,1987 Will Mercer Cook died of
pneumonia at the age of 84 in a Washington, D.C. hospital.
Will Mercer Cook served as the United States ambassador to the
Republic of Niger from 1961 to 1964. Cook directed U.S. economic, social, and
cultural programs in Niger, which included the Peace Corps. During the
mid-1960s he also became the special envoy to Gambia and Senegal.
Will Mercer Cook was born on March 30, 1903, in Washington, D.C., to Will
Marion Cook, a composer and Abbie Mitchell Cook, an actress and classical
singer. Cook had one sibling, Abigail, an older sister. During his childhood,
he frequently traveled with his family as they performed at various venues
throughout the United States and abroad. Jazz superstar Duke Ellington lived on
the same block in Cook’s middle class Washington, D.C. neighborhood.
Cook attended Washington, D.C. public schools and graduated from
the historic Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in the city. In 1925 he earned
his bachelor’s degree in French language and literature from Amherst College in
Massachusetts and a teacher’s diploma the following year from the University of
Paris in France. In 1929 Cook married Vashti Smith and they had two sons,
Mercer and Jacques. Cook earned a master’s degree in French language and
literature in 1931 from Brown University in Rhode Island and a doctorate from
the same institution in 1936.
While still a graduate student, Cook was hired as an assistant
professor of romance languages for one year at Howard University in Washington,
D.C. After he earned his doctorate, Cook joined the foreign language faculty of
Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia where he taught French until 1943.
During his career at Atlanta University, Cook received the
prestigious Rosenwald Fellowship to conduct research abroad in Paris and the
French West Indies. In 1943 Cook also became a professor at the University of
Haiti. While in Haiti he authored the Handbook for Haitian Teachers of English
and other studies related to the Haitian experience.
Cook completed his tenure in Haiti in 1943 and moved that same
year to Washington, D.C. to accept what would become a permanent position as
professor of romance languages at Howard University. While at Howard, Cook
continued to produce scholarship on Haiti and he translated the works of
African authors.
During the late 1950s Cook shifted his career to focus more on
international relations. In 1958 he became foreign representative for the
American Society of African Culture and later an administrator in the Congress
of Cultural Freedom. President John F. Kennedy, in 1961, appointed Cook to
serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Niger, a position he held until
1964. Cook also served from 1964 to 1966 as special envoy to Senegal and
Gambia.
Upon the completion of his foreign relations service, Cook
rejoined the faculty of Howard, serving as chair of the department of romance
languages. He also became a visiting professor at Harvard University. During
the final phase of his teaching career, Cook continued to produce scholarship
and translate texts of African and Caribbean scholars. In 1969, he co-authored
with Stephen Henderson the groundbreaking anthology The Militant Black Writer
in Africa and the United States. In 1970 Cook retired from teaching, but
continued to publish books and articles.
On October 4, 1987, Will
Mercer Cook died of pneumonia at the age of 84 in a Washington, D.C. hospital.
Research more about Black Ambassadors and share with your babies. Make it a
champion day!
GM – FBF – As the last quarter of the year 2018 is upon us, I
would like to thank all of the readers who have come to this history page on a
daily basis. Many of the stories you have never known about and some were just
a reminder of something you knew but just forgotten and some to reinforce what
you already know and maybe shared with your friends and families. Today’s story
is no different a look at, a math wizard who earned a PHD in mathematics and
ta. ught at some of the best colleges in America. He walked in circles that
other blacks would not go and he demanded respect everywhere he went and would
always say “ Black is beautiful” long before it became a standard in the ‘50’s
and ‘60’s. Enjoy!
Remember – “One of the noblest men I’ve ever known.”- Leo
Zippin- former president of the American Mathematical Society
Today in our History – October 3, 1881 – Dudley Weldon Woodard was born
Dudley Woodard was a gifted teacher in mathematics. Always the
scholar, Weldon earned numerous degrees and was the second African American to
receive a PHD in mathematics. Woodard taught as such prestigious schools as the
Tuskegee Institute, Howard University, and the University of Chicago. He
attained he PHD from Penn in 1928. Dudley Woodard devoted his entire
professional life to the promotion of excellence in mathematics through the
advancement of his students, teaching and research.
Dudley Weldon Woodard was born October 3, 1881, in Galveston,
Texas, where his father worked for the U. S. Postal Service. Woodard was a smart
child whose curiosity was supported by his family. After finishing his primary
education in his home state, Woodard attended Wilberforce College in Ohio,
receiving a bachelor degree in mathematics in 1903, and an M. S. degree in
mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1907. From 1907 to 1914, Woodard
taught mathematics at Tuskegee Institute and then moved to join the Wilberforce
faculty from 1914-1920.
When Dudley Woodard enrolled in the Graduate School at Penn in
1927, he had already accumulated a remarkable set of achievements. He had
published his University of Chicago master’s thesis in mathematics, “Loci
Connected with the Problem of Two Bodies” and had been teaching
mathematics at the collegiate level for two decades, the last seven at Howard
University, then the most prestigious African American university in the
country. At Howard, he also held the post of Dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences.
In the early 1920s Dudley Woodard began taking advanced
mathematics courses in the summer sessions at Columbia University. It then
became clear that he was among the gifted mathematicians in the nation.
Columbia’s loss was Penn’s gain when in 1927 Woodard took scholarly leave from
Howard and spent a year at Penn, working under the direction of John R. Kline,
one of the best and brightest of Penn’s mathematics faculty. On Wednesday, June
28, 1928, Woodard became the 38th person to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics from
Penn. More significantly, Woodard was only the second African American in the
nation to receive that degree.
Deane Montgomery, former president of the American Mathematical
Society and the International Mathematical Union, described Woodard as,
“an extremely nice man, well-balanced personally.” Leo Zippin, who
was an internationally known specialist in Woodard’s field, said that he was
“one of the noblest men I’ve ever known.
Dr. Woodard was not only a brilliant mathematician, but a man of
dignity; he enjoyed life in spite of his racial environment. He used the phrase
“Black is beautiful” in the 1930s; he often ignored the
“colored” signs and visited any men’s restroom of his choice. He also
ate at many “nice” restaurants and enjoyed the theaters of his choice
in New York. He and his family once moved into what had been an all-white
neighborhood because it was aesthetically nice and it was near Howard.
When he retired in 1947 as
chairman of the department, he had led Howard’s mathematics faculty through a
quarter century of steady advancement. In an age of discrimination, Dudley
Weldon Woodard had competed and triumphed in the face of overwhelming odds.
Penn is proud to claim him among its most distinguished alumni. Dudley Weldon
Woodard died July 1, 1965 in his home in Cleveland Ohio. Research more about
this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!
b. Explain how nationalism led
to independence in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria.
c. Explain the creation and end
of apartheid in South Africa and the roles of Nelson Mandela and F.W.de Klerk.
Essential
Question: How did ethnocentrism influence
the treatment of the Bantu people in South Africa and set up a complete
separation of the Bantu and the Afrikaner/British people in South Africa?
Materials:
self-adhesive name tags, scrap paper, yarn, chart paper, markers, M&Ms (56
oz will cover 8 classes, 84 oz for 3 teams of 4 classes)
Part
1-Intro: (5 min) Have students
define together what discrimination means, what it looks like, how it feels,
etc. Also, discuss what segregation means, what it looks like, how it feels,
etc. See how much they know about the US’s Civil Rights Movement. (Prior
knowledge)
Part
2-Segregation Simulation: (Set up/segregate
into groups and students read the basic instructions: 15 min. Running the
activity: 20 min)
Before
class: using painter or masking tape,
outline a small space designated for the Bantu (approximately 20% of the room)
a small space for “jail”, and the rest of the room is designated for the
Afrikaner/British. Make sure to make the Bantu space away from the door, pencil
sharpener, trash can, and anything else useful.
Identify a way to separate students.
(Suggestion: students choose out of a paper bag a poker chip. 30 students = 4
chips of one color representing the minority Afrikaner/British population, 26
chips of a different color representing the majority Bantu population.)
Place
students in separate areas of the classroom according to their classification.
Explain that for the rest of the class period they will be kept separate from
each other.
Hand
out the instruction sheets to each student according to their classification
and have them read their instructions for the period while you hand out name
tags.
Issue
name tags to the students that they must wear for the remainder of the period.
Pass out self-adhesive name tags to the minority group, and pass out name tags
made out of scrap paper and yarn to hang around the necks of the majority group.
This illustrates the difference between ID cards and pass books. Tell them that
if they lose their name tags, they will be removed from the activity and be
place in the “jail” area.
Explain
that there are certain areas of the classroom that are only accessible to the
minority group. Make sure they have more space. Play up the preferential
treatment of the minority group and continue the segregation for the duration
of the period. Explain to the majority group that under no circumstances may
they go outside their designated areas unless given permission from you or one
of the “privileged minority” or they will be sent to “jail.” Explain that you
will enforce the orders given by the privileged minority.
Explain
that in this simulation the “M&M”s will represent income. Explain further
that to succeed at this exercise each student must be in possession of at least
2 “M&M”s by the end of the simulation.
Give
57 “M&M”s to each of the privilege minority. 12 are to be kept at all times
until the end of the activity, the others can be used as wages for the rest of
the class. (To determine the total number of M&Ms available for these wage
packets, multiply the number of the majority students by 1.5.) This simulates
the roughly 8 to 1 Afrikaner/British income to the Bantu.) The Majority get
none. They must “work” for their wages.
Tell
students that some people in this society make more than others, but if they
haven’t made enough to survive they can go to work for the privileged. Suggest
certain jobs around the room that students can “work for”, such as empting the
trash, cleaning the board, moving books, straightening desks, etc. Make certain
the minority demands proper respect from the others.
Encourage
the minority to write any laws on the board, such as no talking back, no
talking between groups, etc. If students break the laws, then they are placed
in “jail” and all wages are confiscated.
Allow
the majority to resist and refuse to cooperate as long as it’s peaceful.
Violent protesting will result in “jail” time.
During the Simulation, You as the
teacher are mimicking some well known events in Apartheid.
Students who
are labeled Afrikaner Minority will be giving “jobs” to the students who are
labeled “Bantu.” Jobs can be physical. Encourage Privileged to “pay them only
1-2 beans per job.
Periodically
take up “taxes” from people who have money. 1 bean at a time, though, and not
from everyone.
All of a sudden, announce that there is a new law and
randomly put people into homelands based upon “parameters,” such as everyone
with shorts or Capris on go to Homeland # 1, Those wearing Green, go here…
You as the teacher randomly check “pass books” of
people outside of the homelands. Of course no one has them, so send them to
“jail.”
Announce that someone has been “beaten in Jail” and
have the students sit just outside the door. They have to pay $20 M&Ms to
be “seen” by a Dr. If they are in there more than 2 mins, announce that that
person died of their injuries.
To “Get out of Jail” it’s 25 M&Ms. Students must
stay in jail until someone “pays” you for their release.
Declare one of the Homelands “condemned” and
“bulldoze” the homeland, then put people into jail who are “out of their
homeland.”
Any “M&Ms “ that are paid to get out of jail,
Dr/hospital, or Taxes, divide it between the Afrikaners.
Part 3- Discussion: Have students write the
answers, and then discuss as a whole group. (20 min + 5 min
writing/reflecting.)
Who succeeded in
acquiring at least two M&Ms? (Point out that the privileged succeeded
before the activity even began!)
Those of you with
6 or more M&Ms have enough money to 1. pay for rent, 2. buy food, 3. buy
clothing, and 4. pay for education.
Those of you with
3-5 M&Ms, you must decide which 3 out of the 4 things above you’ll pay for.
Those of you with
2 M&Ms, you must decide which 2 out of 4 you will pay for or go without.
Those of you with
1 M&M, you must decide which 1 out of 4 you will pay for or go without.
Those of you with
no M&Ms, you’ve died of starvation.
What did you have
to do to get the wages?
(Ask the Majority
representing Bantu)
Did anyone end up
with no wages at the end? Why was this so? What made it hard to earn wages?
Did you think the
privileged minority preferred things the way they were?
Did you speak out, complain, or demand any
changes?
How did the minority respond to your effort?
Why did they respond that way?
If you didn’t
speak up, why not?
How did you feel
about being separated from the other students in the class based on something
outside your control?
If this type of separation would continue,
what would you do to change it?
(Ask the Minority
representing the Afrikaner/ British)
How did you deal
with people who were uncooperative or tried to change the system?
If you knew the
members of the majority were dissatisfied, why didn’t you try to make the
situation more fair?
(Whole group)
Were there any conflicts among people in the majority groups? What caused
these? (overcrowding, competition for jobs?)
Did the
privileged minority do anything to try to increase the conflict between people
in the majority?
What reasons
might the majority have for prohibiting protest and change? Can you make any
general statement about the connection between repression and a system which is
blatantly unequal?
How does this
relate to the era of apartheid and the struggle for change?
Distribute
Student Handout #2 Map so students can see the actual locations and size of the
“homelands” for Bantu South Africans.
Why are these
areas so chopped up into so many pieces?
How might this
make it difficult for a united movement for equality and justice?
Student
Handout 1:
Privileged Minority Representing the
Afrikaners/British in South Africa
You have been given a number of
privileges which the other students in the class do not have:
You
will not be forced to squeeze into the small areas like the rest of the class.
You
may wonder the room freely. (Except
behind my desk.)
You
will receive a packet of “M&M”s. 12 of them will be kept at all times. This
represents your inherited wealth. You will use the rest of them to hire members
of the unprivileged majority to work for you. Obviously you will receive many
more “M&M”s than the other students.
You
are privilege. You look down on the unprivileged and call them “Bantu.” They
must call you “boss” if they want to work for you.
As
mentioned, your responsibility is to make other people (the less privileged)
work for you. Use the candy to pay out wages. Think up a number of jobs which
need to get done (books moved to another part of the room, the floor swept,
desk cleaned or moved, enforcing the law that other “Bantu” don’t step out of
their separate areas, etc.) You may want to talk with the other privileged students
before deciding on the jobs to be done and what you’ll pay. Don’t pay too much for a job. You don’t
want to spoil them! Start out with paying 1-2 per job.
Make
sure that the under privileged students don’t step outside the areas they are
confined to unless it is work for you. When the job is done, they should return
to their areas. Remember, the unprivileged must treat you with respect at all
times or they will go to “jail.”
Should
any of the underprivileged students fail to obey orders, leave their designated
area, protest their treatment, not show you their passbook/id card, or not show
you enough respect, you may punish them by sending them to “jail.” Designate
one or more of you, or even some of the unprivileged students, as police in
order to watch out for troublemakers.
Unprivileged Majority Representing the
Bantu
You
are, unfortunately, representing the under privileged group in South Africa.
They minority (Afrikaners and British) have passed laws that restrict your
freedoms within the class.
You
are restricted to the taped off section of the room. You may NOT leave this
area for any reason without being asked or hired by the minority. If you leave
the designated area, then you will be sent to “jail.”
You
have been given a name badge. That represents your pass book. You must present
it to the minority whenever asked. If you lose it or damage it, then you will
be sent to “jail.”
You
must who the minority respect no matter what, even if they are mean to you. You
must call the minority “boss” at all times and do whatever they ask of you
without complaint. If you don’t, then you are sent to “jail”.
The
minority have received packets of M&Ms representing their wealth. Notice
you don’t have any! Their wealth is inherited, but you must work for your earnings.
Volunteer as much as you can to be “hired” for the various jobs they give you.
Remember, the faster and better job you do the higher wages you get! Also, you
are competing with every other member in your group! You don’t have M&Ms at
the end of the activity, then you cannot pay rent, feed your family, buy
clothing, etc! Also, if you are sent to jail, it’s impossible to work!
Remember,
protesting your treatment or job will land you in jail! Your goal is to earn as
many M&Ms as you can… more candy = more wealth!
Student
Handout: 2
Apartheid
in South African Society
Bantu (Black)
Afrikaner/British (Whites)
Assigned to 13%
of land designated as “Homelands”
Own/Occupy 87% of
land
Income less than
1/8 of whites
Income 8 times
that of Bantu
Social/Occupational
subordinates
Social/Occupational
superiors
No vote or voice
in lawmaking, but must obey laws
Makes laws which
everyone must follow
Must have
permission to live in the 87% of South African designated “white” areas
Control through
laws who may or may not live in “white” South Africa
Must carry
passbooks at all times or be arrested or beaten
Carried IDs like
a driver’s licenses but don’t have to carry it
Virtually all protest, non-violent or otherwise,
is outlawed. Even to meet together is illegal.
People
may be detained without trial indefinitely. Thousands are in jail without
having been convicted, or even accused of any crime.
According to human rights groups, 70% of these
have been physically tortured. Hundreds have been shot in the streets by police
and army.
There is very little arable farm land in the
Homelands. For example, only 15% of the Ciskei is arable, 89% of Ciskei
children suffer from malnutrition.
According to The
Economist, on average 50,000 children died every year during apartheid from
the effects of malnutrition, while South Africa exported over $1 billion worth of food annually.
None of the Homelands has significant mineral
resources.
Only 3% of practicing doctors in South Africa
are Bantu (black). Infant mortality among rural blacks is 282 per 1,000
births while among whites 12 per 1,000.
According to the South African Council of
Churches, 3. 5 million Bantu have been forcibly removed from “white” South
Africa to the Homelands since 1960.
Lesson 2: PowerPoint on brief history of South Africa.
Standard: SS7H1:
b. Explain how nationalism led
to independence in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria.
c. Explain the creation and end
of apartheid in South Africa and the roles of Nelson Mandela and F.W.de Klerk.
Essential
questions:
How did ethnocentrism play a part in the segregation
and discrimination of the Bantu people and how did it influence the laws and
government structure of South Africa? What events led up to apartheid?
What is apartheid? What was its purpose?
How were the black South Africans treated and
how does it compare to the treatment of the black Americans prior and during
the Civil Rights Movement?
Part
1: (5 min)
Discuss how laws are a reflection of cultural
norms and personal values/point of view of the people who live in the land and
have the power to write laws.
Have
students come up with examples.
Discuss
who writes the laws in an autocracy, oligarchy and a democracy.
Discuss
how looking at the past/history helps us understand why people think and behave
the way they do and why the Afrikaners created the laws that they did in South
Africa.
Part
2:
View
PowerPoint on brief history of South Africa up to the 1st assignment
Show
video links when noted in the PowerPoint.
Part
3: Students look deeper into how the System worked. Students are given
the Human Rights Fact Sheet
and ask them to take out a sheet of paper, create 4 boxes to take notes on.
Divide
students into 8 groups. Assign 2 groups per section to read and take notes and
be able to share with the class. Students will write down the key points and
ideas of their section.
Students
debate/discuss which laws were the
Most
restrictive
Most
hurt self esteem
Impacts
education
Part
4: Give ½ the room the Worksheet “Learning
was Defiance” and the other half “South
African Student.” Students are to read and write a summary paragraph on
the article, then an additional paragraph on their thoughts, feelings, and
reactions of the article. (6-8 sentences per paragraph) Be prepared to share
with the class what your article was about. (Formative assignment)
Part
5- Activity/product: (Formative: Homework) Students will create a
protest poster illustrating apartheid.
You are a reporter in South Africa during the
Apartheid protest demonstrations. You have taken a “picture” of the scene that
you are witnessing. You see mass amounts of people, mostly Bantu but there are
a few Afrikaners/British there. They are all shouting and holding up protest
posters and banners. Create a picture that shows this scene: protestors holding
up signs and banners. Include 4 restrictions on the banners that the Afrikaners
are doing that restrict your rights as a black South African. Make it colorful
and creative! You want to draw people’s attention! Below, write a paragraph
explaining your picture and the 4 things that are being protested on your
banners.
Picture:
_______5 points accurately showing protest _____ 5 points:
Colored and appealing _____ 20 points for showing 4 different
restrictions protested (5 points for each different restriction) _____ 60 points for
paragraph accurately describing the restrictions (15 points each) ______ 10 points punctuation and
spelling
Antoinette Sithole and Mbuyisa
Makhubo carrying and 12-year-old Hector Pieterson moments after he
was shot by South African police during a peaceful student demonstration in
Soweto, South Africa
Human
Rights Fact Sheet
“Because
I’m black, I’ve got to suffer just because of my skin.” Black student, Witness
to Apartheid
A. How the System Worked
All people are
classified by the government by race. The four racial categories are
white, Bantu (black), Colored (mixed races), and Indian. A person does not
determine his or her own race, the government decides.
The Group Areas Act
declares that South Africa is to be separated into white, Bantu, colored,
and Indian areas. Individuals from each group are legally allowed to live
only in areas determined by the government. No black, Indian, or colored
may reside legally in a “white” area without permission. 87% of the
country’s land, including that with the most resources, minerals, and the
best farmland, is reserved for whites only.
Those people who are
living in white areas illegally are subject to arrest and imprisonment.
Although blacks are no longer required by law to carry passbooks, they
still must have official permission to live in the black townships
surrounding the cities. There is a severe shortage of housing for blacks.
However, black without housing may be arrested for vagrancy. Decisions to
build or not to build new housing are made by the government.
According to the South
African Council of Churches, between 1960 and 1985 an estimated 3.5
million black South Africans were forced to move to barren tribal
reserves, called “homelands.” Families are frequently broken up with the
men working in factories located in areas designated “white.” By law, 97%
of black South African mine workers must be migrant laborers, they are
prohibited from bringing their families with them.
Blacks have no vote in
South Africa. The white controlled government decides who may live where,
how much money will be spent on schools, hospitals, parks, etc.
B. Schooling
All public schools in
South Africa are strictly segregated. No black child in South Africa may
legally sit in a classroom with a white child.
The government spends
over seven times as much to educate a white child as it spends to educate
a black child.
On average, there is
one teacher in each white South African school for every 18 students. In
black schools the ratio is one teacher for every 43 students.
Many black schools in
South Africa are occupied by heavily armed government troops. Soldiers
with automatic rifles often sit and observe inside the classrooms. No
white schools are occupied. Many black schools have been closed by the
government.
C. Healthcare
If you are white in
South Africa, you can expect to live 72.3 years. Bantu can expect to live
58.9 years, unless they live in the rural areas where life expectancy is
much lower. Coloreds live an average of 56.1 years and Indians, 63.9
years.
An average of 136
black children died every day from the effects of malnutrition (starvation).
(South Africa is on e of the top seven food exporting nations in the
world! Every year, the country exports over $1billion worth of agriculture
products, including grain, beef, vegetables, and fruit.) The major cause of death for black
children in South Africa is disease brought on by malnutrition: for white
children the major cause of death is swimming pool accidents.
Government hospitals,
even ambulances, are classified by race.
The Government may
arrest anyone at anytime for any reason and keep them for any length of
time. No one need to be notified of an individual’s arrest. Under a State
of Emergency (announced June 12, 18986) more than 30,000 people have been
arrested as of April 1987; 9,000 of these are children under 18 years old.
According to
independent reports, torture is widespread and systematic in South African
prisons. Many of those tortured are children. A recent survey by the
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights found that 83% of all detainees held by
South African government authorities have been physically abused.
In the last two years,
hundreds of blacks have been killed by the South African security forces.
Many of these people were children. Under the regulations of the State of
Emergency, policemen and soldiers who beat and even kill people are immune
from prosecution.
D. Political Repression: Preserving the Apartheid
System
Because
most people in South Africa suffered from Apartheid, many were involved in
trying to change it. The minority that benefited from apartheid used whatever
means it could to secure submission and preserve the system:
The two major
liberation organizations, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan
African Congress (PAC) are outlawed, as are many other student and
community organizations.
NO outdoor political
meetings may be held, including many funerals. In fact, almost all forms
of protest were outlawed. The press is even barred from reporting any acts
of resistance unless the government first gives permission.
It is against the law
for anyone to urge foreign companies to stop investing in South Africa.
(Against the law to encourage economic sanctions.
Learning Was Defiance, by Demisani
Kumalo
I began school in
Evalton, a village twenty miles south of Johannesburg. When I went to school,
white education was compulsory and virtually free, and still is today. Yet, I,
like other black students, had to pay school fees to the government. If your
parents could afford the fees you could get an education. But, if your parents
could afford the fees, but not the uniforms, you couldn’t get an education. If
your parents could afford a uniform and school fees, but no books, then you
still couldn’t get an education.
And then, even if
all the fees were paid, you couldn’t go to school if you didn’t have a “Christian”
name, meaning a name that whites could pronounce. We would often lead dual
lives. At home I was Dumissani. At school I became Shadrack. Every so often the
government inspectors would come and check the school register for Christian
names and if we had paid our school fees. Those that hadn’t paid were sent
away.
In spite of the
fees paid to the government, black education of often left up to the community.
In other words, the government didn’t build schools for black students, so my
parents had to help build mine. They had to buy the furniture, they had to buy
the books, the chalk and help pay the teacher’s salary.
The school I went
to was just for mud walls and a corrugated iron roof. During the summer the
school was like an oven because there were only little holes for window. When
it rained, or hailed, we couldn’t hear each other speak because o the
corrugated iron roof. We had to wear uniforms, black gym dresses and white
shirts for the girls, black pants and white shirts for the boys. But we had no
chairs, so we had to sit on the ground, the dusty ground. We had nothing. I
left home wearing a nice pressed white shirt and nice pants, but I came home
dusty and dirty.
We had one teacher
for a class of 129. All the grades were mixed up together. The teacher, who had
one small piece of blackboard to teach us with, divided us into two shifts, one
from 7-1 o’clock and the rest from 1-5. Teachers were tough. They waned to make
sure we learned as much as we could in that short time. The teacher in my school
was paid $20 a month to teach 120 kids per day (under rotten conditions.)
Teaching was something done out of love. It was a career. It was a calling.
When I started
school in 1953, African could be taught in English. But the following year,
they changed th4e law and Bantu Education was introduced. Now black children
could be taught just enough to become the “better tool of the white man.” This
meant that we had to be taught in our “mother tongue.” In other words, if you
were a Zulu, you had to be taught in Zulu. But the trick was that there were no
books in Zulu. We had to read a book in English, translate it in our heads into
Zulu, and then write in Zulu.
But we always wanted to learn.
Since the government made it so difficult to get an education, we had to prove
that we could. Learning became defiance for us. It was the one of the few
things they couldn’t take away. In old Zululand, a man’s worth was judged by
the amount of land he tilled and the amount of cattle he had. My father saw all
his father’s land and cattle taken from him, and so, education was seen as
something irrevocable. (Couldn’t’ take away) They could take away our land,
they could lock us up in jail, but they couldn’t take away what’s in our head.
This was our strongest motivation for learning.
It wasn’t until I
was in junior high school that I became more politically aware and, as a
result, more rebellious. This was around the time of the Sharpeville Massacre
(Children’s massacre) and I had begun demonstrating with my father. We stared
having strikes at school over issues as trivial as food. That was just an
excuse, of course, a way to begin to voice our anger. The police would come and
beat us, but we didn’t care. It didn’t matter. We could be out there again the
next day.
I remember very
clearly one incident that made us go on strike. One thing whites used to do for
amusement on Friday nights was to get very drunk and drive out to the rural
areas with rods and hooks. They would drive past black people and “hook” them anywhere they could and drive
away. One day they hooked the sweetest guy at our school. They badly tore up
his face and made us strike with anger.
Black education
suffers continually from government indoctrination and the oppression and this
is why students in South Africa are very politicized. In the English/ Afrikaans
dictionary, for example, the word “haas” (the subservient word for master_ was
defined as “white man,” “hero” and “clever man.” I grew up being taught the
praises and heroes of Bloodriver, I mean our heroes. But when I went to school,
the teacher told me that the Zulus lost in Bloodriver. I was so upset that
after school I ran home as fast as I could. I went to my aunt who was the
oldest member of my family (or as we put it, she had seen more winters than anyone
else among us.) “How come you told me there were heroes in Bloodriver, yet the
teacher says we lost to the Borers?” I asked in confusion. “Never say that
again,“ my aunt replied forcefully. “We never lost the war, it was postponed
until we got our own fire sticks,” For some time after that, I lost interest in
history and took up math. I figured they couldn’t’ change the numbers.
The main problem in
South Africa, then, is not that there aren’t enough schools. It is the nature
of the education itself. That’s what we are struggling against. We don’t wan
the rotten education they are feeding us. The fundamental problem is not simply
that black children are given a different education from the whites, but that
it is inferior. That’s what the poison is. It’s not that for two school year we
didn’t have a classroom and had to sit under the sun in the summer. It’s what
they taught us. The indoctrination is the issue. While we are learning to
become the “better tool of the white man” white children are learning that we
are inferior and potentially terrorists.
About the Author: Demisani
Kumalo, A South African in exile, was formally the director for the American
Committee on Africa in New York. This article is reprinted courtesy of The
Council, an interracial books for Children.
South African Student
You are 16 years
old and live in Soweto, a black township near Johannesburg with a population of
around two million people. You are a high school student there. Your family is
very poor. Your mother is a domestic (maid). She cares for a white family with
two children in Johannesburg. You see her only once a week on her day off. Your
father is unemployed and even though he is experienced in many kinds of factory
work, he cannot find a job. You are not hopefully about finding a good job
after you graduate from school.. In fact, you fear you wont find any kind of
job.
Your school is very
run down. Many windows are broken, the playgrounds are duty fields, the dirt
road that runs in front of your school has garbage piled high. Classes in your
school are filled to capacity. Sixty or more students is not uncommon., though
classrooms are much too small to handle so many people. Some of the teachers in
your school care about giving a good education and try hard. But many are poorly
trained and don’t really know ho to teach. Others are insensitive to students,
and lazy an at times even threaten female students with a failing grade if the
girls don’t agree to have an inappropriate relationship with them. This
behavior outrages you, but the principal won’t do anything to stop it.
Some of your
teachers use corporal punishment and beat students with sticks. You watched a
friend of your beaten just because he questioned why a teacher never had you
read books by black authors. Of course, schooling in South Africa is strictly
segregated. No African may attend a government run white school. There are also
separate schools for Indians and people of mixed races, the so called “colored”
people. These segregated schools are so separate they even have different
vacations and different departments of education which control them. It’s not
that you want so badly to go to a white school. What angers you is that you
have no say over any of these educational policies and that the whites have
reserved a good education for themselves.
Your school
curriculum and the curriculum for all black schools was written by white South
Africans who want everyone to believe their version of history. According to
your textbook, South Africa’s history began with the coming of the whites in
1652. The books say almost nothing about the long history of African sin the
country before the arrival of the white settlers. And all the history after
that is also told only from the point of view of the whites. Even literature classes
are taught as if white people were the only ones who ever did anything. You
want to read black writers who talk about freedom and justice like Alex La
Guno, Dennis Brutus, Mutuzeli Matshoba and Can Themba. You’ve coined a phrase
to sum up your feelings about schooling you receive. You call it “gutter
education.”
Because you are
dissatisfied with the conditions at your school and the quality of your
education, you feel the need for some kind of elected organization to represent
your views and complaints in order to win better conditions. For a long time,
students at your school and other black schools in the country have called for
democratically elected Student Councils. Unfortunately, the government refuses
to recognize these councils and has suggested a different kind of student
organization which, in your opinion, would be more like establishing a kind of
student police force.
Black students in
South Africa, like yourself, have not merely complained about the bad
conditions, they’ve organized to change them. Up until just recently you had
been a member of COSAS, the Congress of South African Students. The COSAS was a
national organization set up to fight for a “free,” dynamic and compulsory
education for all and was part of the larger struggle for a nonracial democracy
in South Africa. Your organization was seen as a threat to the system by the
South African government was outlawed in August of 1985, cut off in mid stream
before COSAS had a chance to develop a strategy. Even though COSAS is now
banned, you are still committed to working to change the whole system of
apartheid education, and apartheid itself. What good would it be to have a good
school in a rotten system? Even if school changed, the rest of your life would
still be like slavery. You’re told where you can and cannot live, when you can
and can’t work, and you have no vote. When you get work, which is not often
these days, you work in the worst conditions for the lowest pay.
But even though you
know there must be change and that someday there will be change, it is
difficult for your fellow students to know exactly what to do. Every day you
are faced with difficulty choices, choices which hare sometimes dangerous.
Lesson 3:
A Deeper understanding of Apartheid
Standard: SS7H1:
b.
Explain how nationalism led to independence in South Africa, Kenya, and
Nigeria.
c.
Explain the creation and end of apartheid in South Africa and the roles of
Nelson Mandela and F.W.de Klerk.
Essential Question: How did Apartheid
personally affect the people of South Africa?
Materials:
Internet access, video analysis worksheets and print-outs of essays linked
below from www.overcomingapartheid.msu.edu (may want to print
articles if you don’t have access to a computer lab)
Part 1-Intro: Review some of the
Apartheid laws discussed. Which laws were the most restricted? Explain why.
Part 2-Activity: Students are to
analyze each video clip, noting how each person was affected by apartheid.
Part 3– assign students to
small groups and have each group read an essay from the following links which
goes deeper into the events during apartheid. Students are to write the main
ideas/points that the articles are trying to express. Present to the class
findings.
Part 4- Formative/ Homework: Imagine you are a
citizen of South Africa during Apartheid. Write a letter to a government
official explaining what changes you think should be made in the country.
Include an intro, two changes and a conclusion. (6-8 sentences in the body
paragraphs.)
Bantu Education
“In 1953 the government
passed the Bantu Education Act, which the people didn’t want. We didn’t want
this bad education for our children. This Bantu Education Act was to make sure
that our children only learnt things that would make them good for what the
government wanted: to work in the factories and so on; they must not learn
properly at school like the white children. Our children were to go to school
only three hours a day, two shifts of children every day, one in the morning and
one in the afternoon, so that more children could get a little bit of learning
without government having to spend more money. Hawu! It was a terrible thing
that act.”
Baard and Schreiner, My
Spirit is Not Banned, Part 2
The 1953 Bantu Education Act
was one of apartheid‘s most offensively racist laws. It brought African education
under control of the government and extended apartheid to black schools.
Previously, most African schools were run by missionaries with some state aid. Nelson Mandela and many other political
activists had attended mission schools. But Bantu education ended the relative
autonomy these schools had enjoyed up to that point. Instead, government
funding of black schools became conditional on acceptance of a racially
discriminatory curriculum administered by a new Department of Bantu Education.
Most mission schools for Africans chose to close rather than promote apartheid
in education.
Centralization of schools
under a new government department was not in and of itself opposed by school
administrators, parents, and students. What the African community vehemently
opposed was the creation of a separate and unequal system of black education
rather than a single public schooling system for all South Africans. The white
government made it clear that Bantu education was designed to teach
African learners to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for a
white-run economy and society, regardless of an individual’s abilities and
aspirations. In what are now infamous words, Minster of Native Affairs, Dr. Hendrik F. Verwoerd, explained the government’s
new education policy to the South African Parliament:
There is no space for him
[the “Native”]
in the European Community above certain forms of
labor. For this reason it is of no avail for him to receive training which has
its aim in the absorption of the European Community, where he cannot be
absorbed. Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him
away from his community and misled him by showing him the greener pastures of
European Society where he is not allowed to graze. (quoted in Kallaway, 92)
The ideological framework
for Bantu education had its origins in a manifesto crafted in 1939 by Afrikaner
nationalists. Based on the racist and paternalistic view that the education of
blacks was a special responsibility of a superior white race, this document
called for “Christian National Education” and advocated separate
schools for each of South Africa’s “population groups”-whites,
Africans, Indians, and Coloureds. Segregated education
disadvantaged all black groups, but was particularly devastating for Africans.
In a pamphlet released in 1948, the organization asserted: “… the task
of white South Africa with regard to the native is to Christianize him and help
him culturally… [N]ative education and teaching must lead to the development
of an independent and self-supporting and self-maintaining native community on
a Christian National basis” (quoted in Hlatshwayo, 64).
Bantu education served the
interests of white supremacy. It denied black people access to the same
educational opportunities and resources enjoyed by white South Africans. Bantu
education denigrated black people’s history, culture, and identity. It promoted
myths and racial stereotypes in its curricula and textbooks. Some of these
ideas found expression in the notion of the existence of a separate “Bantu
society” and “Bantu economy” which were taught to African
students in government-run schools. This so-called “Bantu culture”
was presented in crude and essentialized fashion. African people and
communities were portrayed as traditional, rural, and unchanging. Bantu
education treated blacks as perpetual children in need of parental supervision
by whites, which greatly limited the student’s vision of “her place”
in the broader South African society (Hartshorne, 41).
Bantu education schools
suffered terribly from government’s neglect. Enormous disparities in funding
between white and black schools and student-teacher ratios adversely affected
the quality of education for black students. The Bantu Education Account of
1955 made matters worse by mandating that African education be funded by the
general poll tax collected from Africans rather than from the General Revenue
Account used to fund white education. Even after the separate account was
abolished in 1972, education of African children still remained grossly
under-resourced, receiving one-tenth of the money afforded to whites and
struggling with 56:1 student-teacher ratios (Hartshorne, 41).
Dilapidated school
buildings, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate instruction, poor teacher
training, and a lack of textbooks plagued African education. Students struggled
to learn under such conditions. As former teacher Eddie Daniels observed, even
the sports fields at white schools were far superior to those at black schools:
“the first thing that strikes me at both [white] schools was these huge
stretches of green fields. Hell man! And in black schools you’ve got nothing,
and I look at this it’s just vast. You’ve got huge playing fields, tennis
courts… It’s painful, painful.” Watch Daniels interview segment]
In an interview in 2006, Obed Bapela described his experience in overcrowded
Bantu education schools in Alexandra township (in Johannesburg’s northern
suburbs):
… the school that I went to
was an overcrowded school, there were quite many of them in Alexandra that were
overcrowded, there were not enough schools to take care of all of us so we used
to share classes. There would be a morning class that goes up to 11 o’clock and
then we’ll go home and then other kids of the same grade will come after 11
o’clock up to 2 o’clock and therefore the teachers will then run two sets of
class … in some situations they will even use a tree in the schoolyard… We were
around 70 to 80 [pupils in class] when I was in grade 1 and grade 2. [Watch Bapela interview segment]
A racist educational system
perpetuated South Africa’s social hierarchy in which skin color was very
closely correlated to class. But Bantu education also brought a huge increase
in the number of pupils attending primary (and later secondary) schools. Black
students rose in protest in 1976 when the Department of Bantu Education
mandated that higher primary and junior secondary students would have to learn
some key subjects in Afrikaans – the language of the
oppressor. This decision sparked a youth uprising in Soweto, which then spread
nationwide and become a watershed event in the struggle against apartheid.
References
Baard, Frances, and Barbie Schreiner. My
Spirit Is Not Banned. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/library-resources/online%20books/baard/
Hartshorne, K. B. Crisis and
Challenge : Black Education 1910-1990. Cape Town: New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Hlatshwayo, Simphiwe A. Education
and Independence : Education in South Africa, 1658-1988. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Hyslop, Jonathan. The
Classroom Struggle: Policy and Resistance in South Africa, 1940-1990.
Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999.
Kallaway, Peter. Apartheid and
Education : The Education of Black South Africans. Johannesburg:
Ravan Press, 1984.
Kallaway, Peter, ed. The
History of Education under Apartheid, 1948-1994 : the Doors of Learning and
Culture shall be Opened. New York: P. Lang, 2002.
Soweto Student Uprising
On the morning of June 16, 1976,
thousands of students from the African township of Soweto, outside
Johannesburg, gathered at their schools to participate in a student-organized
protest demonstration. Many of them carried signs that read, ‘Down with Afrikaans‘ and ‘Bantu Education –
to Hell with it;’ others sang freedom songs as the unarmed crowd of schoolchildren
marched towards Orlando soccer stadium where a peaceful rally had been planned.
The crowd swelled to more than 10,000 students. En route to the stadium,
approximately fifty policemen stopped the students and tried to turn them back.
At first, the security forces tried unsuccessfully to disperse the students
with tear gas and warning shots. Then policemen fired directly into the crowd
of demonstrators. Many students responded by running for shelter, while others
retaliated by pelting the police with stones.
That day,
two students, Hastings Ndlovu and Hector Pieterson, died from
police gunfire; hundreds more sustained injuries during the subsequent chaos
that engulfed Soweto. The shootings in Soweto sparked a massive uprising that
soon spread to more than 100 urban and rural areas throughout South Africa.
The immediate cause for the June 16, 1976, march was student opposition to a
decree issued by the Bantu Education Department
that imposed Afrikaans as the
medium of instruction in half the subjects in higher primary (middle school)
and secondary school (high school). Since members of the ruling National Party spoke
Afrikaans, black students viewed it as the “language of the
oppressor.” Moreover, lacking fluency in Afrikaans, African teachers and
pupils experienced first-hand the negative impact of the new policy in the
classroom.
The Soweto uprising came after a decade of relative calm in the resistance
movement in the wake of massive government repression in the 1960s. Yet during this
“silent decade,’ a new sense of resistance had been brewing. In 1969,
black students, led by Steve Biko (among others), formed the South African Student’s Organization (SASO). Stressing
black pride, self-reliance, and psychological liberation, the Black Consciousness Movement in the
1970s became an influential force in the townships, including Soweto. The
political context of the 1976 uprisings must also take into account the effects
of workers’ strikes in Durban in 1973; the liberation of neighboring Angola and
Mozambique in 1975; and increases in student enrollment in black schools, which
led to the emergence of a new collective youth identity forged by common
experiences and grievances (Bonner).
Though the
schoolchildren may have been influenced by the Black Consciousness Movement of
the 1970s, many former pupils from Soweto do not remember any involvement of
outside organizations or liberation movements in their decision to protest the
use of Afrikaans at their schools. In his memoir, Sifiso Ndlovu, a former
student at Phefeni Junior Secondary School in Soweto, recalls how in January
1976 he and his classmates had looked forward to performing well in their
studies but noted how the use of Afrikaans in the classroom significantly
lowered their grades. (Hirson 175-77; Brooks and Brickhill 46) Echoing Ndlovu,
current Member of Parliament Obed Baphela recalled: “It was quite
difficult now to switch from English to Afrikaans at that particular point and
time.” [Watch Bapela video segment] The firing
of teachers in Soweto who refused to implement the Afrikaans language policy
exacerbated the frustration of middle school students, who then organized small
demonstrations and class boycotts as early as March, April and May (Ndlovu).
As the
mid-year exams approached, boycotts took place in many Soweto schools (Ndlovu).
It was around that time that the older students of the South African Students
Movement (SASM) decided to organize a mass protest in Soweto. In a 1977
interview, Tebello Motapanyane, then secretary general of SASM, provided an
account of the action committee’s decision to launch the protest:
We took a
decision to inform the staff that we totally reject the half-yearly examinations
and were not going to write the exams until our demands were met. The Naledi
branch called a meeting under SASM on Sunday, June 13 where it was actually
decided that there should be positive action from all the high schools and
secondary schools in Soweto. We discussed Afrikaans and how to make the
government aware that we opposed their decision. The delegates decided that
there should be a mass demonstration from the Soweto students as a whole. [Read full interview.]
The brutal
killing of the school children on June 16, 1976, shocked the international
community. Newspapers across the world published Sam Nzima’s photograph of a
dying Hector Peterson on their front page. In the meantime, South African
security forces, equipped with armored tanks and live ammunition, poured into
Soweto. Their instructions were to shoot to kill, for the sake of “law and
order.” By nightfall another eleven more people had been shot dead (Bonner).
Students in Soweto responded by pelting the police with stones and attacking
what they regarded to be symbols of the apartheid government. Across much of
Soweto government buildings and liquor stores were looted and burned.
On the
second day of the uprising, the violence spread to African townships in the
West Rand and Johannesburg. At the University of Witwatersrand, police broke up
a group of 400 white students who had been marching to express their solidarity
with the pupils of Soweto. On the third day, police began placing youth
protestors in jail; students later testified to being tortured while
imprisoned. What began as a local demonstration against the Afrikaans language
decree quickly turned into a countrywide youth uprising against apartheid
oppression. Kgati Sathekge, current Director for Communications and Marketing
for the Ministry of Social Development, was one of thousands of students from
Atterridgeville, an African township near Pretoria, who took part in the
protests in that region. In his 2006 interview, he explained:
We could not
accept that type of behavior . . . personally it was a great shock. We started
organizing protests . . . On June 21 when students came to school we mobilized
them and said we’re not going to go to school that day, we’ll engage in protest
marches throughout the township . . . Different government offices were
targeted and burned down including . . .buildings seen as symbols of oppression
The police
shootings and the defiant response of African students in Soweto emboldened
youth throughout the country to wage protests. Students in Port Elizabeth
mobilized in their schools, leading to a conflict between the police and a
crowd of 4,000 high school students and township residents en route to the local
soccer stadium that left eight residents dead. Shepi Mati, who arrived in Port
Elizabeth at the end of 1976 to attend high school, recalls the violence and
tension of that time: On any given day,
you would just hear this sound – it was a very ominous sound – you could feel
it in the air. And suddenly there would be a Caspir that comes past, a police
armored car – woosh – throwing tear gas or shooting as it goes past. This was
really my welcome to Port Elizabeth. [View Mati interview segment.
Protest was
not limited to African students, as Yusuf Omar describes from his perspective
in an Indian township of Johannesburg: “It’s a virtual world when it comes
to emotion … We weren’t seeing the truth, but we got it from comrades… In our
own schools, we did what we could.” [Watch Omar video segment]
In the Cape,
Coloured and African high school students expressed solidarity with students in
Soweto, while black students at the University of the Western Cape boycotted
their classes for a week and clashed with police and university authorities.
Demonstrations also took place in rural boarding schools and black University
campuses all over the country (Brooks and Brickhill; Karis and Carter 172-73).
To sustain
resistance, leaders of the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC,
founded in August 1976) decided to involve adults in the protests in order to
build inter-generational unity and to strike an economic blow against
apartheid. From August through December 1976, SSRC leaders organized a number
of campaigns, including stay-at-homes (short strikes) for adult workers,
marches to Johannesburg, anti-drinking campaigns, mass funerals (which became
politically charged and often turned into protest rallies), and a Christmas
consumer boycott. In preparation for the stay-at-homes, the SSRC printed flyers
urging adults to participate. One read, “…the scrapping of BANTU EDUCATION,
the RELEASE of Prisoners detained during the demos [demonstrations], and the
overthrowal of oppression, we the students call on our parents to stay at home
and not go to work from Monday” (Karis and Carter 591; Hirson 248-61).
Sporadic clashes between students and police continued into 1977; by the end of
the year, the government acknowledged that nearly 600 people had been killed,
although recent research showed that at least 3,000 people died. Thousands more
were imprisoned and many black South Africans fled into exile or joined the
armed struggle.
The student
uprising marked a decisive turning point in the history of the anti-apartheid
struggle. Roseberry Sonto, an activist in Cape Town at the time, regarded the
student uprising as a “gift” that reinvigorated organizing efforts:
“That was after which we started lots of things like bus boycotts, rent
boycotts, meat boycotts – all kinds of boycotts just tp drive the point
home.” [Watch Sonto video segment]
The student
uprising of 1976 was recognized as a watershed by the previous generation of
activists. Ahmed Kathrada, convicted in the Rivonia Trial and imprisoned on
Robben Island since 1964, learned of the student activism only in August when
student leaders began to be sent to the Island. Then he and other prisoners
understood its significance:
Especially
after our sentence in 1964, the rest of the ‘60s was fear among the people… End
of ’69, the Black Consciousness movement came in, and the beginning of the ‘70s
there was a revival of the trade union movement, so that gave us hope that
things are changing. But come ’76, when the students of Soweto came into the
streets unarmed and they were killed in the hundreds – nobody knows how many of
them were killed – that changed history. Fear was now driven out. [Watch Kathrada video segment]
The
politicization and activism of young South Africans in Soweto and beyond
galvanized the liberation movements and set in motion a series of
transformations that ultimately led to the demise of apartheid (Karis and
Carter 180-84).
References
Bonner, P. L. “The Soweto Uprising of June 1976: A Turning Points
Event.” Turning Points in
History: People Places and Apartheid.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/governence-projects/june16/extract-soweto-uprising.html
Brooks, Alan, and Jeremy Brickhill. Whirlwind
before the Storm: The Origins and Development of the Uprising in Soweto and the
Rest of South Africa from June to December 1976. London:
International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1980.
Hirson, Baruch. Year of Fire,
Year of Ash : The Soweto Revolt, Roots of a Revolution? London: Zed
Press, 1979.
Hlongwane, Khangela Ali, Sifiso Ndlovu and Mothobi Mutloatse. Soweto ’76: Reflections on the
Liberation Struggles. Houghton [South Africa]: Mutloatse Arts
Heritage Trust, 2006.
Karis, Thomas, and Gwendolen Margaret Carter. From Protest to Challenge; A Documentary History of African
Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964. Stanford, CA: Hoover
Institution Press, 1972.
Ndlovu, Sifiso Mxolisi. “The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-Memories of June
1976.” Ravan Local
History Series. Ed. Monica Seeber and Luli Callinicos. Randberg:
Ravan Press, 1998.
Detentions without Trial during the Apartheid Era By Robert
Vassen
Throughout most of the
English-speaking world, the writ of habeas corpus was adopted, respected and
practiced. Habeas corpus is a Latin term translates as “let us have the body”
and was issued to any detaining authority to produce the detained person in
court and show just cause for holding this person in detention. If the
authority believed it had just cause, a formal charge had to be laid and
evidence brought to court to prove the case. If the authority could not justify
the detention, the person had to be set free.
In South Africa, this writ
was practiced without exception until the end of the 1950s. In fact, the only
meaning given to, or associated with, ‘detention’ related to school children in
primary or high schools who were held back after regular school hours as
punishment or in some cases as a ‘last chance’ to complete unfinished homework
assignments.
In 1963, the then Minister
of Justice, B.J.Vorster, gave new meaning to
‘detention.’ On the 10th July, 1963, the most senior members of the African National Congress, The High Command, most of
whom had been living “underground,” were caught at Lilliesleaf Farm in Rivonia.
To accommodate the capture of these senior ANC members, the General Laws
Amendment Act, Number 37 of 1963 was rushed through Parliament and applied
retroactively to June 27th 1962, mainly but not exclusively so that the people
arrested at Rivonia could be detained and held in solitary confinement. On the
6th October, 1963, these Rivonia Trialists were formally fingerprinted and
charged. Nelson Mandela, who was already serving a
five-year sentence on Robben Island, was brought back to join these senior
members and all were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment and flown to
Robben Island on the 13th June, 1964 to serve their sentences. It should be
remembered that as political prisoners, a life sentence meant life, with no
chance of parole.
Under this General Law
Amendment Act, the security police, also known as the Special Branch, were
given the authority to arrest anyone they suspected of being engaged or
involved in any act against the State and to hold them incommunicado for 90
days at a time. The once highly respected and almost sacred habeas corpus fell
away. This act, usually referred to as the 90-Day Act, was passed to give the
Special Branch the authority to interrogate and to extract information, and the
public was not entitled to any information including even the identity or
whereabouts of people being detained. Detainees could literally and effectively
“disappear.” If no charges were to be laid, the Special Branch had to release
the individual or individuals after 90 days. At the time, Vorster boasted that
this was repeatable “until this side of eternity.”
In her book, 117 Days,Ruth First gave a vivid account of
this repeatable process: of how she had been handed her clothing and
possessions and told she was free only to be re-arrested as she exited the
police station where she was being held. When this process of being released
and then re-arrested proved to be too cumbersome, the government introduced and
passed the 180-Day Detention Act (the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act, Number
96 of 1965). Eventually, this 180-day law would be replaced yet again by the
Terrorism Act, Number 83 of 1967, which allowed the government to detain
individuals indefinitely until all questions had been answered satisfactorily
or no further purpose could be achieved by holding the detainees.
The primary aim of the
government was to extract as much information from detainees as possible, and
the Special Branch resorted to all means possible to get this information.
Endless hours of interrogation, where detainees were deprived of sleep, was
commonplace. Leaving the lights on 24 hours a day to disorient detainees was
another form of coercion. Forcing detainees to stand on their toes with
protruding nails on a wooden strip placed under the heels was another form of
torture. Where these methods did not work, physical assaults were common. The
Special Branch often worked in twos: the ‘good guy’ and the ‘bad guy’ taking
turns to inflict both physical and mental torture.
The aim of the detainee was
to resist at all costs. This was the most difficult part of detention. Alone
and subjected to all sorts of humiliation and physical and mental torture, it
was difficult to remain steadfast. Always uppermost in the mind of the detainee
was: “Will they break me? Will I cave in and give them what they want to know?”
Some did not succumb, while others did. Two who did not ‘break’ were Mac Maharaj and Laloo Chiba, cadres in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the
African National Congress, who served their sentences on Robben Island. Ahmed Kathrada, who was imprisoned with
them on Robben Island, wrote:
Both had been severely
tortured with electric shocks and beatings, made to stand on the same spot for
days on end and verbally abused. It disturbed us greatly to hear how Mac,
desperate not to break under this onslaught ‘of the most sadistic and obscene
nature’ had tried to slit his wrists with shards of broken eggshell. It was not
until Laloo testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that I
realized how much he had suffered, but neither man betrayed their comrades.
(Ahmed Kathrada, Memoirs, pp. 208-209; 155) It remains a great moral
dilemma how the ones who broke and gave information should be regarded. History
will have to deal with that.
The other important factor
in detention for the detainees was how to hold on to one’s sanity. These people
were in solitary confinement and held under the worst of conditions with only a
copy of the Bible. In such circumstances, how does a person retain their sanity
and try to remain rational? Stories abound of individuals reciting all the
poems they had ever learned in school; others made chess boards with whatever
was at their disposal and spent hours playing. Yet others, who could find
nothing to make marks with, played mental chess. Stories are told of detainees
singing all the songs they heard or remembered. Whatever came to mind they
would utilize just to keep a firm grip of reality and the world outside.
Tragically, a great many
detainees would be killed in detention while under intense interrogation and
torture. It was not uncommon for the authorities to inform the press that
so-and-so had slipped on a bar of soap, suffered concussion and died, while
others had purportedly committed suicide. Hundreds came to such tragic ends;
Kathrada wrote about one of them, Suliman ‘Babla’ Saloojee, who was his close
friend:
Suliman Saloojee, my dearest
friend Babla, was dead, killed by the police. This most gentle of men, this
inveterate prankster, my comrade and source of strength, had been picked up
under the ninety-day detention law, brutally interrogated and tortured to death
– by the sadistic Rooi Rus Swanepoel – then flung from a window on the seventh
floor of Gray’s Building, Johannesburg headquarters of the security police, on
Wednesday 9 September 1964…
Not surprisingly, the
so-called inquest accepted the police version that Babla had committed suicide
by jumping to his death. I have never doubted, however, that he died under
interrogation, and that his body was then thrown out of the window… The
magistrate found that ‘nothing in the evidence suggested that Saloojee had been
assaulted or that methods of interrogating him were in any way irregular. He found
that no one was to blame for his death. Ahmed Kathrada, Memoirs (p. 207)
In his notes in Memoirs,
Ahmed Kathrada notes: “In later years, inquest after inquest – in the cases of Imam Haron, Ahmed Timol, Neil Aggett, to name but a few –
returned verdicts of suicide. I cannot recall a single case among the scores of
deaths under 90-day detention in which an inquest magistrate held the security
police responsible” (page 384).
There were others who were
more fortunate and were eventually released. Many threw themselves back into
the struggle while others went into exile, either on orders or self-imposed. In
exile, the vast majority continued to be active in working for the struggle.
Life as a
Political Prisoner By Robert Vassen
We, that is the Rivonia
group [Mandela, Mbeki, Sisulu, Kathrada, Mhlaba, Mlangeni, and Motsoaledi], arrived on Robben Island
on the 13th of June 1964. It was a Saturday – cold, windy, raining. We cannot
forget the first months at the quarry where we mined stone – we came back with
blisters, bloody hands, and sore muscles. And we cannot forget the dozen years
or more when we were forced to sleep on the cold cement floors with three
blankets and a thin sisal mat. Also we cannot forget the cold showers for 13 or
14 year. There is so much more that one can recall, much more that we have
found in ourselves to forgive, but these we will never forget.
Ahmed Kathrada on opening
the “Esiqithini: The Robben Island Exhibition” 26 May 1993
The prison authorities had
told these political prisoners sentenced to life in 1964 at the Rivonia Trial
and other political prisoners that work in the quarry would be for a few months
only. They would work there for 13 years. Another form of hard labor was
breaking stone. In his Memoirs, Kathrada recounts how from 8:00am to
4:00pm daily they would sit on concrete blocks breaking stones into gravel,
which was then used for construction. He wryly remarks that, “in effect, the
prisoners built their own jail”. (Memoirs, (p. 205)
Those cold cement floors on
which they slept measured about 6 by 8 feet; in one corner stood a bucket for
ablutions, which had to be emptied and cleaned first thing every morning. The
only other item in the cell was a basin of water for drinking, washing, and
shaving. The water for showering was cold sea water of the Atlantic.
When they arrived on the
island they were given prison garb, and even here, apartheid was in evidence:
the non-Africans were given long trousers and socks, while the Africans were
given short trousers and no socks. This was both calculated and sinister in
intent. In the South Africa of the time, all Africans regardless of age were
referred to, and often even called, “girls” or “boys.” The message was loud and
clear: “Boys wear short trousers!” To complete this wardrobe, all prisoners
were given a canvas jacket, a shirt, and a jersey (or sweater).
When political prisoners
entered prison they were automatically placed in “D” category, while common-law
prisoners, including murderers, bank robbers, and rapists, were placed in the
higher “B” category. Every six months the political prisoners would appear
before a prison board of senior police officials. The prisoners would be
questioned, reports from their warders would be considered, and an assessment
and decision would finally be made: they could be promoted to the next category
or demoted, or remain the same. In a letter to a friend, Eddie Daniels, who
served a 15-year sentence, wrote that it took him four years to be promoted
from “D” to “C” and that, within months, he was demoted back to “D”. Those who
got to “A” category, and who had the financial means, could buy additional foods
such as cookies, candy, and beverages. They also could purchase tobacco and
newspapers and magazines.
Just as with discrimination
in clothing, there was also discrimination in the food prisoners were given
depending on their “racial classification”: the non-Africans received a
teaspoon of sugar with their morning “pap” (finely ground corn) while the
Africans got only a half teaspoonful. Coffee or tea was given twice a day to
non-Africans, while Africans got only one cup a day. For lunch, non-Africans
were given mealie rice (grits) while Africans got boiled corn. For supper,
non-Africans received bread and Africans got none. Non-Africans and Africans
were given meat or fish four times a week, but while non-Africans were given
110 grams, Africans got only 60. The one ‘deprivation’ the Africans felt more
than any of the others was not being allowed to have bread. In the B-section of
the prison, which held more than 30 political prisoners, including the Rivonia
group, the non-Africans were able to share their bread with their fellow
African comrades. In later years the African political prisoners were allowed
one slice of bread a week, and this improved later to three slices a week: one
on Wednesdays, one on Saturdays, and one on Sundays. Eventually the political prisoners
won the day when everyone was made equal for all of them irrespective of
“racial classification”!
One of the boasts of the
apartheid government after the Rivonia Trial was that they would see to it
that, in a short period of time, South Africa and the world would have
forgotten about the Mandelas, the Mbekis, the Sisulus and others. To realize
this boast, contact with the outside world was virtually non-existent, while
laws in South Africa forbade any information or images from appearing in the media.
For the political prisoners this meant no newspapers, no radios, no watches, no
television, no books and only a very limited number of no-contact visits by
blood relatives only. One 30-minute visit was allowed every six months; only
family matters could be discussed and this was closely monitored. Furthermore,
no children under 16 were allowed. Of all the privations the people suffered,
none was worse than the total absence of children in their confined, male,
adult, gray, world. Often permits to visit were ‘mislaid’ by the authorities
and the prisoners were powerless to do anything but to accept this with
dignity, painful as it was.
When it came to letters, the
prison authorities were even more blatant. All letters, incoming and outgoing
were heavily censored and in some cases not given to the prisoner or sent on to
its destination. Ahmed Kathrada, one of the Rivonia group often quotes the
letter sent by his brother in 1964. Kathrada only received it in 1982. The
reason it has been withheld for 18 years was because of its political content:
the offending sentence in the letter was that there had been a change of
government in Britain and Harold Wilson of the Labor Party had come into power.
Quotas and restrictions
clogged the lives of all the political prisoners, and letters were not an
exception. A prisoner could write one 500-word letter every six months and
receive one 500-word letter in the same time period. It was not unusual for
wardens to count off what they considered 500-words in an incoming letter and
snip off the rest. But soon the wardens tired of this counting and changed and
the regulation which allowed for 1 ½ sides. Prisoners soon learned to write in
small print. As censorship was so stringent, prisoners soon found ways round
this problem: write in code. This was by and large successful and, in this way,
the prisoners were able to keep in touch from time to time with what was
happening in the outside world and know what SAMAD’S attitude was to AMRIT, or
to decode: What America (=Samad=Sam=Uncle Sam) felt about the African National
Congress.
Letters from Robben Island [MSU Press 1999], a selection of letters
written by Ahmed Kathrada to family and friends, provides the interested
readers with a range of areas of interest from education to religion to
language to youth, including coded messages and covers the period of his
incarceration from 1964-1989. While authorities and the government were bent on
breaking the spirits of the prisoners, the prisoners viewed their incarceration
as a continuation of their struggle against apartheid on a different terrain.
By the 1980s, the political
prisoners had a library; many had studied for and were successful in earning
degrees; they had television, magazines, and could order full-length movies.
They even put on their own Christmas shows and concerts and were able to
cultivate vegetable gardens. After 20 years, Kathrada was allowed to hold a
child in his arms! In May 1991, the last political prisoners were removed from
the island.
While quarry work was
exclusive to Robben Island, conditions generally were similar in the prisons
that held white political prisoners – men and women. The association of “white”
with “privilege” was unquestionable, that is, until it came to white political
prisoners. Just the opposite was true: the white political prisoners were given
the most menial, humiliating, and degrading tasks that could be found. They were
seen by the white warders and wardresses as traitors to their own people, as
people who had thrown in their lot with the swart gevaar (black danger) and the
godless communists. Punishment for them was swift, and no allowances were made.
Bram Fischer, who was dying of cancer, was not spared from his duties. On the
eve of his death, he was allowed to be placed in his brother’s care. And after
his funeral, the Security Police stipulated that his ashes had to be returned
to the Department of Prisons – his remains were their “property.”
Robert Vassen
wrote this essay specifically for South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid,
Building Democracy. Vassen is editor of Letters from Robben Island: A
Selection of Ahmed Kathrada’s Prison Correspondence, 1964-1989.
Lesson
4: Struggle for Equality
SS7H1C:
Explain the roles of Nelson Mandela and F.W. DeKlerk in South Africa
SS7G4C:
Evaluate how the literacy rate affects the standard of living
Materials: 2nd
½ of PowerPoint
Essential questions:
What did F.W. DeKlerk
and Nelson Mandela do to end apartheid?
What
were their roles in the new government?
How
did denying black South Africans the same education during apartheid impact
today’s South African economy and standard of living?
Part 1- Intro: Show second video
and PowerPoint slides from 2nd ½ of PowerPoint
Part 2- As a whole
group,
Discuss the
similarities and differences between the US’s Civil Rights Movement and the
anti-Apartheid movement.
Create a Venn diagram
comparing MLK to Mandela
Part 3– Summative Written activity:
Students will write a newspaper article
You
are living in South Africa at the time of the abolishment (outlawing) of
apartheid. Write a newspaper article describing what Nelson Mandela and F.W.
DeKlerk are doing to create equal rights.
Describe
what rights the black South Africans now have due to the new republic and
abolishment of apartheid.
Include
an illustration (picture) and a headline announcing the “main idea” of your
article.
Article
needs to be at least 4 paragraphs long. (1st = life like under
apartheid 25 pts, 2nd = Mandela’s role in abolishing apartheid (25
pts), 3rd= DeKlerk’s role in abolishing apartheid (25 pts), 4th
= what life is like in South
Africa Today (25 pts). (Summative
assignment)
Lesson 5: Democracy Today in South Africa
SS7G2C:
Students will explain the structures of the modern governments of Africa
Essential Question: What was the
government of South Africa like after the abolishment of Apartheid?
Materials: Copy of the
Declaration of Independence and the US constitution, The book Awesome South
Africa
Part 1-Intro: Review what a
democracy means. Have students give examples of democracy.
Part 2- Activity: Students review
documents in small groups
Share with students
the excerpts from South Africa’s constitution that is in the book Awesome
South Africa (pp.62-63).
Students are to look
for language that is similar to what would be found in the US Constitution and
the US Declaration of Independence.
Ask students if they
think both exhibit beliefs and ideas that are expressed in the founding
documents of our own democracies.
Part 3- Discussion: Are your thoughts
and opinions of our government similar to or different from the South Africans’
thoughts and opinions?
Before
listening to the interview: Note what you already know about
the subject and/or person. Make predictions about what information this person
will give you; write down any questions you have. What would you like to know
about/from this person?
While listening to the
interview: Note any answers to your questions you obtain from
the interview, the impressions you had, the emotions you felt, and any other
facts or insights you can get from the source. Also note the information or
statements that you did not expect or were new to you.
After listening to the
interview: Comprehension,
Evaluate, and Create
Comprehension
questions should test understanding of the key facts and memories provided by
the interviewee or the topics addressed.
Evaluation
questions may include: Is the source credible? Does s/he contradict or support
other sources? Is the interview helpful in giving a sense of the history you
are studying? How does the source help you understand how historians write
history? How does this person’s personal experience influence his or her
perspective? Does the amount of time that has elapsed between the event an
interviewee is speaking about and the time of the interview influence how he or
she describes that event? If so, how?
Create something,
such as a journal entry or poem about the source and your reaction to it; an
illustration of something the source describes; an essay describing how this
source fits into the historical period; or a fictional personal letter or
newspaper article drawing on information obtained from the source.
A. Study the photograph for 2 minutes. Form an overall impression of the
photograph and then examine individual items. Next, divide the photo into
quadrants and study each section to see what new details become visible.
B. In three columns, list people, objects, and activities in the photograph.
Step 2. Inference
Based on what you have observed above, list three things you might infer from
this photograph.
Step 3. Questions
A. What questions does this photograph raise in your mind?
B. Where could you find answers to them?
Adapted from worksheet designed and developed by the Education Staff, National
Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408 (with permission).
Resource page:
Adapted from the work of
Bigelow, William. “Witness to
Apartheid: A Teaching Guide.” The Southern Africa Media Center. SanFrancisco,
CA, 1987.
Campbell, Derryn. Awesome South
Africa, Awesome SA Publishers, 2010.
Garrison, Dana. “South Africa’s
Journey to Democracy: A Cross-Curricular Unit for Grade 6.” Ohio. 2010.
GM – FBF – It is incumbent upon all of us to build communities
with the educational opportunities and support systems in place to help our
youth become successful adults.
Remember – Is Georgia going to go down in history as another
Alabama or Missassippi or are you going to do the right thing. – Charlayne
Hunter
Today in our History – January 11, 1961 – The 1961 desegregation
of the University of Georgia by Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter is
considered a defining moment in civil rights history, leading to the
desegregation of other institutions of higher education in Georgia and
throughout the Deep South. When the two students walked on to North Campus on
January 9 to register for classes, the event marked the culmination of a legal
battle that had begun a decade earlier when Horace Ward unsuccessfully sought
admission to the law school. Holmes and Hunter were represented by a legal team
headed by Atlanta civil rights attorney Donald Hollowell and Constance
Baker-Motley of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. They were joined
by Ward, who had earned his law degree at Northwestern, and by Vernon Jordan, a
young Atlantan who had just graduated from Howard University Law School.
Holmes and Hunter had both attended all-black Turner High School
in Atlanta where Holmes had been valedictorian, senior class president, and
co-captain of the football team. Hunter had finished third in her graduating
class, had edited the school paper, and had been crowned Miss Turner.
Nevertheless, for a year and a half university officials gave a variety of
reasons for denying their applications. While the court fight was being waged,
the two students started their college careers at other institutions: Holmes at
Morehouse and Hunter at integrated Wayne State University in Detroit.
On January 6, 1961, federal judge William Bootle handed down his
finding that “the two plaintiffs are fully qualified for immediate
admission” and “would already have been admitted had it not been for
their race and color.”
On Monday, January 9, as the two students arrived on North
Campus, they were met by a crowd of reporters and fellow students, the latter
chanting “Two-four-six-eight! We don’t want to integrate!” Still,
relative calm prevailed until the third evening after their arrival, when a mob
of students descended on Myers Hall, where Hunter resided. The crowd hurled
bricks and bottles before finally being dispersed by Athens police, who arrived
with tear gas, and Dean of Men William Tate, who waded into the crowd demanding
student IDs.
Later that night, Holmes and
Hunter were escorted back to Atlanta by state troopers. They were informed by
Dean of Students J. A. Williams that he was withdrawing them from UGA “in
the interest of your personal safety and for the safety and welfare of more than
7,000 other students at the University of Georgia.” The riot and the
suspension decision sparked an outcry, and more than 400 faculty members
immediately signed a resolution calling for the return of Holmes and Hunter to
campus. Within days, a new court order brought them back. Research more about
this event in our history and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!
GM – FBF – I always enjoy telling any story about my beloved New
Jersey, born in Camden, raised in Trenton and owned property in Trenton,
Willingboro and Edgewater Park. My family members still reside in Mercer,
Burlington, Camden and Atlantic Counties. Today’s story has a link in
Willingboro to the famed track family of the Lewis’s. We know of Carl and
Sister Carol who passed on Trenton Central High School for the ‘boro. Did you
know that their mother Evelyn Lawler Lewis, attended Tuskegee on a track-and-field
scholarship, and competed for the U.S. at the 1951 Pan American Games? Injuries
prevented her participation in the 1952 Olympics; at that time she was one of
the top three hurdlers in the world. She taught school, coached sports,
developed physical education programs, and co-founded the Willingboro Track
Club (Burlington, NJ) in 1969. Today’s story is about her Track Coach at
Tuskegee. Enjoy!
Remember – “Over my career I taught toughness and determination,
if I had the resources that the other schools we competed against had, we would
have been hard to beat for decades” – Coach Cleveland Leigh Abbott
Today in our History – December 9, 1892 – Cleveland Leigh Abbott
was born in Yankton, South Dakota. He is most remembered for his coaching
career at Tuskegee Institute (now University) in Alabama.
Abbott was the son of Elbert and Mollie Brown Abbott who moved
to South Dakota from Alabama in 1890. He graduated from Watertown High School,
Watertown, South Dakota, in 1912 and then from the South Dakota State University
at Brookings in 1916. Abbott earned 16 varsity athletic awards during his
collegiate career.
Students residing in Abbott Hall, one of the new residential
halls dotting the SDSU campus, should be schooled on the significance of the
building’s namesake.
The class of 1916 featured Cleveland Leigh Abbott. Better known
as “Cleve,” his impact at South Dakota State was felt long after he left the
College on the Hill.
He was a four-sport star, lettering in track, football,
basketball, and baseball. He went on to become a legendary coach and was
inducted to several halls of fame, including SDSU. However, his most notable
achievement was his advancement of women’s sports, particularly
African-Americans.
Abbott’s destiny was put in motion a few months later when SDSU
President Ellwood Perisho attended a meeting in New York City on the
advancement of African-Americans. After the conference, he met Tuskegee
Institute President Booker T. Washington on the train.
Washington informed Perisho that he wanted to start a sports
program if he was to hold the interest of young folks attending Tuskegee and
attract greater numbers to the school.
When quizzed if he had any young men who might qualify as a
sports director, Perisho told him about Abbott, but cautioned that he was only
a freshman. Washington replied that if Abbott worked and studied hard, he could
come to Tuskegee as its sports director when he graduated from SDSU.
When Perisho returned to Brookings, he contacted Abbott about
Washington’s proposal, and in response, “Cleve” committed himself to excellence
on the field and in the classroom.
The 172-pound Abbott earned all-state football honors four
straight years, including one year being named all-northwestern center. He was
the starting center on the basketball team and was team captain as a senior. In
track, he ran the anchor leg on the relay team.
Abbott’s future was in doubt as a junior when he learned that
Washington had died. However, during his senior year, Washington’s secretary
discovered a memo of agreement for Abbott’s employment and enclosed a contract
for him to come to Tuskegee.
In 1916 Cleveland Abbott married Jessie Harriet Scott (1897–1982). They had one
daughter, Jessie Ellen, who in 1943 became the first coach of the women’s track
team at Tennessee State University in Nashville.
Arriving at the famous Alabama school, Abbott was assigned to teach various
phases of the dairy business to agricultural students and serve as an assistant
coach.
His college duties were postponed, though, when the United States
entered World War I. As a lieutenant, he was the regimental intelligence
officer attached to the 336th Infantry Company of the 92nd Division. He saw
action at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918. When the armistice was declared,
it was Abbott who carried the message of cease-fire from his colonel to the
troops. Abbott was later a commissioned officer in the Army Reserve. (The US
Army Reserve Center at Tuskegee is now named the Cleveland Leigh Abbott
Center.)
After the war, Abbott joined the faculty of Kansas Vocational School in Topeka,
where he coached and was commandant of cadets.
In 1923 Cleveland Abbott was hired as an agricultural chemist
and athletic director at Tuskegee Institute, a job that had been personally
offered to him by Booker T. Washington in 1913 on the condition that he
successfully earn his B.A. degree. As athletic director Abbott was expected to
coach the Institute’s football team. During Abbott’s 32-year career, the
Tuskegee team had a 202–95–27 record including six undefeated seasons;
positions he held until his death in 1955.
In 32 seasons, Abbott’s gridiron record was 203-95-15. His teams claimed 12
conference titles and six mythical National Black College championships. In
1954, he was the first African-American college football coach to rack up 200
victories.
Abbott also started the women’s track and field program at
Tuskegee in 1937. The team was undefeated from 1937 to 1942. Six of his
athletes competed on U.S. Olympic track teams, among the notable female
athletes he coached were Alice Coachman, Mildred McDaniel, and Nell Jackson.
Coachman was the first African-American woman to win a gold medal, taking the
high jump title at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. McDaniel repeated the feat
in 1956 with a world-record jump of five feet, nine inches at the Helsinki
Olympics.
From 1935 to 1955, Abbott’s outdoor track and field teams won 14
national titles, including eight consecutive. His squads captured 21
international AAU track and field crowns. Individually, Tuskegee athletes brought
home 49 indoor and outdoor titles with six making Olympic track and field
teams.
Abbott served on the women’s committee of the old National AAU
(USA Track and Field predecessor) and twice was on the U.S. Olympic Track and
Field Committee. He is also a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and is
one of the founders of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
Basketball Tournament.
Abbott is credited with being one of the pioneer coaches of
women’s track and field for more than four decades. He is said to have
developed the program that opened track and field to women in the United
States.
Abbott was inducted into the South Dakota State University Hall
of Fame in 1968, the Tuskegee University Hall of Fame in 1975, the Southern
Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Hall of Fame in 1992, the Alabama Sports
Hall of Fame in 1995, and the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1996. Also in
1996, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to athletics, the
Tuskegee University Football Stadium were renamed the Cleveland Leigh Abbott
Memorial Alumni Stadium.
Another female track and field standout was Evelyn Lawler Lewis,
mother of Olympic track great Carl Lewis. A 1949 Tuskegee graduate, Lewis named
her second son, Cleveland Abbott, after him. After college, she went on to
compete in the 1951 Pan American Games in Argentina, and like “Cleve,” she also
turned to coaching.
Lewis says Abbott was well ahead of his time, from coaching to
teaching and training techniques. What’s more, she says, Abbott inspired his
athletes.
“He made us believe we could
be something,” she explains. “His main theme—what he always talked about—was
‘you can do it.’ You can do what you want. You can be as good as you want. He
wasn’t a driving-type of coach—he was a motivator.”
Cleveland Leigh Abbott died at the Veterans Hospital in Tuskegee on April 14,
1955 and was buried in the Tuskegee University Campus Cemetery at Tuskegee,
Alabama. Research more about this great American and share with your babies.
Make it a champion day!
GM – FBF – Today’s story centers around a black woman who did
her best to tell her story in the U.S. Congress, every day I ride pass by a
stretch of highway in her honor. Enjoy!
Remember – Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are
those who have been trying to silence my voice. I’ve been told to ‘sit down and
shut up’ over and over again. Well, I won’t sit down and I won’t shut up until
the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people. Cynthia
McKinney
Today in our History – On December 8, 2006, in her last major
act as a member of Congress, Cynthia McKinney introduced legislation to Impeach
President George Bush because of his conduct of the Iraq War.
Cynthia Ann McKinney was born on March 17, 1955 in Atlanta,
Georgia to parents Billy McKinney, who was a police officer and to a mother,
Leola Christion McKinney, who was a nurse. Her father was a political activist
who challenged his employer, the Atlanta Police Department, for its practice of
racial discrimination. This desire to use activism in the cause of racial
justice was inherited by Cynthia McKinney who initiated her first petition
against racism while still in school. In 1971 she challenged a teacher at the
Catholic institution for using racist language. Meanwhile, her father, Billy
McKinney was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1973 as a Democrat.
After completing St. Joseph’s High School in Atlanta in 1973,
McKinney in 1978 received a degree in international relations from the
University of Southern California. This degree would serve her well in the
future as became increasingly concerned about the role and impact of U.S.
foreign around the world. McKinney then entered the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. There she met and
Jamaican politician Coy Grandison and returned to Jamaica with him.
McKinney’s political career began in 1986 when her father, Billy
McKinney persuaded his 31-year-old daughter become a write-in campaign for
another legislative seat. Without any campaigning because she lived in Jamaica
at the time, and little help from other Democrats, Cynthia McKinney still
managed to get 20% of the total vote. Two years later she decided to mount an
all-out campaign for the seat. Elected in 1988 at the age of 33, McKinney was
one of the youngest members of the state legislature. She and her father became
the first father-daughter pair in the Georgia legislature.
McKinney soon became controversial in the Georgia legislature
for opposing the Gulf War and for challenging the chamber’s dress code by
wearing slacks instead of dresses. She also joined Georgia civil rights leaders
in a lawsuit to increase the number of black judges appointed in the state.
In 1992, McKinney ran for Georgia’s Fourth Congressional
District seat. She won and remained in the U.S. House of Representatives for a
decade. While in Congress McKinney was appointed to the Armed Services
Committee and the International Relations Committee where she served as Ranking
Member on its International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee. A member
of the Congressional Black Caucus, she also led the Women’s Caucus Task Force
on Children, Youth and Families.
While agreeing with most of the Clinton administrations policies, she
challenged the Administration on the North American Free Trade Agreement. She
also called for the end of U.S. arms sales to nations with a history of human
rights violations. She also continued to be a strong voice for racial justice
issues. She opposed welfare reform in 1996 because she felt it would intensify
the conditions facing impoverished black women and children. She called for
election reform after the 2000 presidential election partly because of what she
termed the disfranchisement of many Florida African American voters.
In 2002, McKinney was defeated in the Democratic Primary race by
DeKalb County Judge Denise Majette. An estimated 40,000 Republicans voted in
the Democratic Primary to defeat McKinney, angry over a controversial interview
she had given earlier that year at a Berkeley, California radio station where
she alleged that the Bush Administration had prior knowledge about the 9-11
attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
In 2004, McKinney returned to
Congress where she became most noted for her criticism of the Bush
Administration for its lack of support for Hurricane Katrina victims. In 2006
McKinney lost in the Democratic Primary to DeKalb County attorney Hank Johnson.
On December 8, 2006, in her last major act as a member of Congress, McKinney
introduced legislation to Impeach President George Bush because of his conduct
of the Iraq War. Research more about this great American and share with your
babies. Make it a champion day!
GM – FBF – We are proud to be back in New Jersey for today’s
story. He was a public school graduate, teacher and later became a dentist and
taught blacks the practice of dentistry. He was abolitionist and became a
lawyer and helped assemble the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the
American War between the States. He became the first African American lawyer to
argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Enjoy!
Remember – “I Will Sink or Swim with My Race” – John Swett Rock
Today in our History – John Swett Rock died in Boston on
December 3, 1866.
John Swett Rock was born to free black parents in Salem, New
Jersey in 1825. He attended public schools in New Jersey until he was 19 and
then worked as a teacher between 1844 and 1848. During this period Rock began
his medical studies with two white doctors. Although he was initially denied
entry, Rock was finally accepted into the American Medical College in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1852 with a medical degree. While
in medical school Rock practiced dentistry and taught classes at a night school
for African Americans. In 1851 he received a silver medal for the creation of
an improved variety of artificial teeth and another for a prize essay on
temperance.
At the age of 27, Rock, a teacher, doctor and dentist, moved to
Boston, Massachusetts in 1852 to open a medical and dental office. He was
commissioned by the Vigilance Committee, an organization of abolitionists, to
treat fugitive slaves’ medical needs. During this period Dr. Rock increasingly
identified with the abolitionist movement and soon became a prominent speaker
for that cause. While he called on the United States government to end slavery,
he also urged educated African Americans to use their talents and resources to
assist their community.
Following his own advice, Rock studied law and in 1861 became
one of the first African Americans to be admitted to the Massachusetts Bar
before the Civil War. Soon afterwards Massachusetts Governor John Andrew
appointed Rock Justice of the Peace for Boston and Suffolk County. In 1863 Rock
helped assemble the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the first
officially-recognized African American unit in the Union Army during the Civil
War. Rock would later campaign for equal pay for these and other black
soldiers.
In 1865, with support from Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner,
Rock became the first African American lawyer to argue a case before the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Previously, Rock’s health had deteriorated in the late 1850s. He underwent several
surgeries and was forced to halt his medical practice. Believing he would
receive more advanced care overseas, Rock made plans to sail to France in 1858.
Rock, however, was denied a passport by U.S. Secretary of State Lewis Cass who,
citing the 1857 Dred Scott Decision, claimed Federal passports were evidence of
citizenship and since African Americans we not citizens, Rock could not be
issued a passport.
Outraged abolitionist supporters in Boston persuaded the
Massachusetts Legislature to demand the Secretary of State grant Rock a
passport. The State Department relented and Rock sailed to France. French
surgeons recommended that Rock give up his speaking engagements and his medical
practice. Rock agreed but continued his abolitionist activities. Nonetheless
his health continued to worsen.
On April 9, 1866 the Civil
Rights Act of 1866 was passed which enforced the 13th Amendment. Rock enjoyed
this honor for less than a year. He became ill with the common cold that
weakened his already failing health, and limited his ability to commute
efficiently. On December 3, 1866, John S. Rock died in his mother’s home in
Boston of tuberculosis at the age of 41. He was laid to rest in Everett’s
Woodlawn Cemetery, and was buried with full Masonic honors. His admittance into
the Supreme Court is recorded on his tombstone. Research more about this great
American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!
GM – FBF – Today’s Story is about a black female who was blessed
to be around family that understood the Importance of the spoken word. Her
mother was one of the founders of a sorority and a teacher. Her mother was a
graduate of my famed University of Wisconsin, so naturally journalism and
education were Important to her. She also was named one of the 100 Most
Influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine. Enjoy!
Remember – “Education in any form will give strength to a person
for life, if the knowledge is sound they will go far in life” – Frances Louise
Murphy
Today in our History – November 21, 2007, Frances Louise Murphy,
II, died.
Born on October 8, 1922, in Baltimore, Maryland, Frances Louise
Murphy, II, grew up in a household that was focused on the newspaper the family
published. Murphy’s grandfather, a former slave and Civil War veteran, founded
the Afro-American in 1892; her father, Carl, was the editor and publisher of
the paper and a professor of German at Howard University.
Murphy’s mother, Vashti, was one of the co-founders of the Delta
Sigma Theta sorority and was trained as a teacher. Murphy taught until she
married Carl Murphy; she then went on to earn her B.A. degree from the
University of Wisconsin in 1944, where she majored in journalism. In 1958,
Murphy earned her B.S. degree from Coppin College, and her M.Ed. degree from
Johns Hopkins University in 1963.
During her summers, Murphy worked for the family paper. After
graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Murphy went to work full-time for
the Afro-American, and the paper expanded from a single edition to numerous
local editions around the country. By 1956, Murphy was the city editor for the
Baltimore edition of the paper. After earning her teaching degree from Coppin
College, Murphy became an elementary school teacher; she went on to pursue her
master’s degree in education. Frustrated with her school assignment, Murphy
resigned and began teaching English and working as the director of the news
bureau at Morgan State University.
Murphy stayed at Morgan State until 1971, when she was named
chairman of the Afro-American. In 1975, Murphy left to become a professor of
journalism at State University College in Buffalo, New York, and then on to
Howard University in 1985. Murphy became publisher of the Washington
Afro-American in 1987, and left Howard University in 1991; she served as editor
of the editorial page and wrote the column, “If You Ask Me,” by Frankie Lou for
several years.
Murphy was honored by numerous organizations for her achievements;
she received the Women of Strength Award from the National Black Media
Coalition in 1994 and 1995; the Woman of the 20th Century Award by the National
Congress of Black Women; and was named one of the 100 Most Influential Black
Americans by Ebony magazine. Murphy served on the boards of the Freedom
Foundation, the University of the District of Columbia and the African American
Civil War Memorial.
Murphy raised four children,
and had seventeen grandchildren, and six great grandchildren.
Frances Louise Murphy, II, passed away on Wednesday, November 21, 2007, at the
age of eighty-five. Research more about the great American and share with your
babies. Make it a champion day!
GM – FBF – Today I want to share with you a story of a black
woman, who was well educated and also one of the founders of (NOW) National
Organization for Woman. Enjoy!
Remember – “We had been led to believe that American education
is inferior. We have been impressed with American technology, however, and
through your Constitutional law class—the first time we have ever been taught
by an American—we have come to change our views. We used to accept without
questioning whatever the lecturer said. Through your class we have learned to
inquire.” – Pauli Murray
Today in our History – November
20,1910 Pauli Murray was born on November 20, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland, the
daughter of Agnes and William Murray.
Pauli Murray was born on November
20, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of Agnes and William Murray. Her
father, a Howard Universitygraduate, taught in the Baltimore public schools.
Both of Murray’s parents died when she was a child. Her mother suffered from a
brain hemorrhage and died in 1914. Her father was the victim of typhoid fever
and died in 1923.
Despite such heartbreaking
tragedy, Murray pursued her life goals. In 1933 she graduated from Hunter
College in New York City, New York. Despite a stellar academic record, Murray
in 1938 was denied admission into the University of North Carolina Law School
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She later enrolled in the Howard University Law
School in Washington, D.C. and graduated in 1944. Not long afterwards, Murray
sought admission to Harvard University Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts
for an advanced law degree but was denied admission because of her gender. She
enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley where she received a
master of law degree in 1945. Twenty years later, in 1965, she became the first
African American awarded a J.S.D. (a law doctorate) from Yale University in New
Haven, Connecticut. Her degree was based on her dissertation, “Roots of the
Racial Crisis: Prologue to Policy.”
Murray argued that her
experiences encountering and overcoming racial and gender discrimination gave
her special insight into the nature of racial and sexual hierarchies in U.S.
and wrote about its various manifestations in America’s legal history. Murray
coined the term “Jane Crow and Jim Crow” to describe the impact of dual
discrimination. She also joined both the civil rights movement and the feminist
movement. In 1966 Murray was one of the founders of the National Organization
for Women (NOW) with feminist icon Betty Friedan.
Murray’s life took an abrupt turn
when at the age of 62 she entered a seminary and became in 1977 the first black
female priest ordained by the Episcopal Church. On July 1, 1985, cancer claimed
the life of Pauli Murray in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her autobiography Song in
a Weary Throat: an American Pilgrimage was published posthumously in 1987.
Research more about black female lawyers and share with your babies. Make it a
champion day!
