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The Case for Reparations: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Reckoning With U.S. Slavery & Institutional Racism
An explosive new cover story in the June issue of The Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates has rekindled a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism. Coates explores how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally backed housing policy systematically robbed African Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing inter-generational wealth. Much of the essay focuses on predatory lending schemes that bilked potential African-American homeowners, concluding: "Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole."TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: "The case for reparations. 250 years of slavery. Nine years of Jim Crow. 60 years of separate but equal. 35 years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole." So begins an explosive new cover story in the June issue of the Atlantic magazine by the famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates. The article is being credited for rekindling a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and institutional racism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the essay, Ta-Nehisi Coates exposes how slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and federally backed housing policy systematically robbed African Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing intergenerational wealth. Much of the piece focuses on predatory lending schemes that built potential African-American homeowners. This is a video that The Atlantic released a preview its new cover story, "The Case for Reparations."
*BILLY LAMAR BROOKS SR.: This area here represents the poorest of the poor in the city of Chicago.
MATTIE LEWIS: I’ve always wanted to own my own house, because I work for white people when I was in the South, and they had beautiful homes and I always said, one day I was going to have me one.
JACK MACNAMARA: White folks created the ghetto. It drives me crazy today even that we don’t admit that. This is the best example I can think of the institutional racism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: To talk about "The Case for Reparations," we’re joined now by Ta-Nehisi Coates here in New York City. Welcome to Democracy Now! You start your article with one particular figure, Clyde Ross. Tell us his story and why you decided to begin with him.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Mr. Ross is really just emblematic of much of what has happened to African-Americans across the 20th century, and I emphasize 20th century. Mr. Ross was born in the Delta region of Mississippi. His family was not particularly poor, they actually quite prominent farmers. They had their land and virtually all of their possessions taken from them through a scheme around allegedly back taxes and were reduced to sharecropping. In the sharecropping system, there was no sort of assurances over what they might get versus what they actually picked. When I first met Mr. Ross, the first thing he said to me was he left Mississippi for Chicago because he was seeking the protection of the law. I didn’t quite understand what he meant by that. But, as he explained it to me, he said, listen, there were no black judges, no black prosecutors, no black police — basically, we had no law. We were outlaws and people could take from us whatever they wanted. That was very much his early life. He went to Chicago thinking things would be a little different. On the surface, they were. He managed to get a job, got married, had a decent life. He was basically looking for that one more emblem of the American middle class in the Eisenhower years, and that was the possession of a home. Unfortunately, due to government policy, Mr. Ross at that time, like most African-Americans, was unable to secure a loan due to policies or red-lining and deciding who deserved the loans and who doesn’t. There was a broad, broad consensus that African-Americans, for no other reason besides blatant racism, could not be responsible homeowners. Mr. Ross, as happens when people are pushed out of the legitimate loan market ended up in the illegitimate loan market and got caught up in the system of contract buying, which is essentially just a particularly onerous rent to own scheme for people looking to buy houses. Ended up purchasing a house, I believe at $27,000 he paid for it. The person who sold it to him had bought the house only six months before for $12,000. Mr. Ross later became an activist, helped formed the Contract Buyers League, and just fought on behalf of African American home owner on the west side of Chicago. I should add that it is estimated during this period that 85% of African-Americans looking to buy homes in Chicago bought through contract lending.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Let’s hear Clyde Ross and his onward speaking a in 1969 on behalf of the Contract Buyers League a coalition of black homeowners on Chicago’s South and West Sides from all of whom had been locked into the the same system of predatory lending.
CLYDE ROSS: They have cheated us out of more than money. We have been cheated out of the right to be human beings in a society. We have been cheated out of buying homes at a decent price. Now it’s time now, we got a chance. The Contract Buyers League has presented a chance for these people in this area to move out of this crippled society, to move up. Stand on your own two feet. Be human beings, fight for what you know is right. Fight.
AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, can you talk about this example and others in this remarkable piece and how you then talk about the bill for reparations that has been introduced by John Conyers year after year in the house, and what reparations would actually look like?
TA-NEHISI COATES: What I try to establish in this piece is that there is a conventional way of talking about the relationship in America between the African-American community and the white community, and it is one that we are very comfortable with. I call it basically the lunch table view of the problem with racism in America is that black people want to sit at one table and white people want to sit at another lunch table. If we could just get black and white people to like each other, love each other, everything would be solved. In fact, even these terms that we’re using are inventions, and they’re inventions of racism. If you trace back the history back to 1619, a better way of describing the relationship between black and white people is one of plunder, the constant stealing, the taking from black people that extends from slavery up through Jim Crow policy. Slavery is obviously the stealing of people’s labor. In some cases the outright theft of people’s children, and the vending of people’s children, the taking of the black body for whatever profit you can wring from it, up through the Jim Crow South where you have a system of debt peonage, sharecropping — which really isn’t much different minus the actual selling of children you steal, exploiting labor and taking as much as you can from it. Into a system when you think about something like separate but equal. In the Civil Rights Movement, we traditionally picture colored only water fountains, white only restrooms. The thing people have to remember, if you take a state like Mississippi or anywhere in the deep South where you have a public university system, black people are paying into that. Black people are pledging their fealty to the state and yet, they aren’t getting the same return. This is theft. This is systemized. When we try to talk about the practicality of it, I spent 16,000 words almost just trying to actually make the case. At the end, what I come to is that the actionable thing right now is to support Representative John Conyers’ Bill H.R.40 for a study of what slavery has actually done, what the legacy of slavery has actually done to black people and what are remedies we might come up with. I did that not so much to dodge the question, but because I think to actually even sketch out what this might be would take another 16,000 words. We have to calculate what slavery was. We have to calculate what Jim Crow was. We have to calculate what we lost in terms of redlining and come to some sort of ostensible number and figure out whether we can actually pay it back. And if we can’t, what we might do in lieu of that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you mentioned that the systemic plunder that occurred, I mean, this is not ancient history.
TA-NEHISI COATES: No, no.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In the most recent economic crisis in the country, there was this enormous reduction in the wealth of African-Americans in the country as a result of the housing crisis, yet the narrative portrays it as the housing crisis was caused — the conservative narrative is — by affirmative action policies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make it easier for African-Americans with low credit to get loans. Talk about that and this enormous wealth loss that occurred recently.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, the great sociologist Douglas Massey has a very interesting paper out specifically about the foreclosure crisis as it should be rightly called that happened very, very recently. One of the things he demonstrates in the paper is the thing that made this possible, segregation was a driver of this. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The African-American community is the most segregated community in the country, and what you have in that community is a population of people who have been traditionally cut off from wealth building opportunities. So, anxious to get wealth-building opportunities. If you are a banker and you are looking sell a scheme to somebody and rip somebody off, well there your marks are, right there, right in the same place. That’s essentially what happened.
AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, I wanted to go to this issue of reparations and the examples you have seen, for example, after the Holocaust, Germany and the Jews. Can you talk about how those reparations took place?
TA-NEHISI COATES: It is very, very interesting. One of the reasons why I included that history, because as we know, reparations for African-Americans has all sorts of practical problems that we would have to deal with and fight about. I wanted to just demonstrate that even in the case of reparations to Israel, the one that’s most cited, this was not a sure thing. One thing that people often say about African-American reparations is, well, oh you’re just talking about savory, that was so long ago, as though if we were talking about a more proximate or more present case it would be much easier. But, in fact, the fact it was so close made it really, really hard for people, made it hard for some Israelis who did not want to feel like they were taking a buck off of folks’ mothers or brothers or sisters or grandmas who had just been killed. In Germany in fact, if we look at the public opinion surveys at the time, they were no more — Germans in the popular sense — were no more apt to take responsibility today than Americans are for slavery. So, it was a very, very difficult piece. What’s interesting and I think one of the lessons that can be learned from it, however, is the way it was structured. In fact, Germany did not just cut a check to Israel. What they actually did was they gave them vouchers. Those vouchers that were worth a certain amount of money, those vouchers had to be used with German companies. So, essentially, what they structured was a stimulus for West Germany while giving reparations to Israel at the same time. It gives us some clue that some sort of creative solutions we might have in the African-American community.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the issues you also raise is that this reparations demand is not new in American history. You talk about Belinda Royall who in 1783 had been a slave for 50 years, became a freed woman. She petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for reparations.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Right, right, right, and I think people think of this as something that just sort of came up, you know 150 years — Black people — reparations is basically as old as this country is, and it’s not just, as you mention, Belinda Royall, people like that, but, it is also white people who understood at the time some great injury had been done. Many of the quaker meetings for instance — basically, they would excommunicate people who didn’t just free their slaves, but actually gave them something, you know, paid them reparations in return. We have the great quote from Timothy Dwight who was the president of Yale who said, to liberate these folks, to free these folks and to give them nothing would be to entail a curse upon them. Effectively, that is actually what happened upon African American and really, I would argue, upon the country at large. Many, many people of the Revolutionary generation, the generation that fought in the Revolutionary War, understood that slavery was somehow in contradiction to what America was saying it was. Many of those folks also at the very least gave land to African-Americans when they were liberated. Some of them educated them. But they understood to just cut somebody out into the wild, which is basically what happened to black people, would not be a good thing.
AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, we want to thank you very much for being with us. We’re going to do part two right after the show and we will post it online at democracynow.org. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent of The Atlantic where he writes about culture, politics and social issues. He has just written a cover story called "The Case for Reparations." Ta-Nehisi Coates is also the author of the memoir "The Beautiful Struggle."
"A Peace Warrior": Poet, Civil Rights Activist Maya Angelou Remembered by Sonia Sanchez
The legendary poet, playwright and civil rights activist Maya Angelou has died at the age of 86. Born in the Jim Crow South, Angelou rose to become one of the world’s most celebrated writers. After becoming an accomplished singer and actress, Angelou was deeply involved in the 1960s civil rights struggle, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Encouraged by the author James Baldwin, among others, to focus on her writing, Angelou penned "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," her first of seven autobiographies. The book launched the phenomenal career for which she is known around the world as an award-winning author and people’s poet. We look back at some of Angelou’s most celebrated poems and speeches, and speak to her close friend Sonia Sanchez, the renowned writer, activist and leader in the black arts movement.TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We devote much of today’s program to honoring the life and legacy of the writer and activist Maya Angelou. She died Wednesday at her home in North Carolina. She was 86 years old. Her son, Guy Johnson, issued a statement that she, quote, "lived a life as a teacher, activist, artist and human being. She was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace."
Born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Maya Angelou grew up in Arkansas in the Jim Crow South. At the age of seven or eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He was killed shortly thereafter. As a result of the trauma, she remained virtually silent for five years, speaking only to her brother.
She became a mother at age 17. In the 1950s and ’60s she went on to become an actress, singer and dancer. After she fell in love with a South African civil rights activist, they moved to Cairo. She later lived in Ghana, where she met Malcolm X, and the two collaborated on developing his Organization of Afro-American Unity. She returned to the U.S. to support the effort, but Malcolm X was assassinated shortly after her return.
AMY GOODMAN: That tragedy and the 1968 assassination of her friend, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., devastated Angelou. It was in 1969 she was encouraged by the author James Baldwin, among others, to focus on her writing. Thus was born "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," her first of seven autobiographies and the phenomenal career for which she is known around the world. Maya Angelou was also an award-winning people’s poet. This is Maya Angelou in her own words, as she reads one of her most celebrated poems, "Still I Rise."
MAYA ANGELOU: You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
Just ’cause I walk as if I have oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like suns and like moons,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my sassiness upset you?
Don’t take it so hard
Just ’cause I laugh as if I have gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You can shoot me with your words,
You can cut me with your lies,
You can kill me with your hatefulness,
But just like life, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness offend you?
Oh, does it come as a surprise
That I dance as if I have diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past rooted in pain
I rise
A black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak miraculously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the hope and the dream of the slave.
And so, naturally, there I go rising.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Maya Angelou, reading from her poem "Still I Rise." In 1993, she recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. She was the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost did so at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961.
MAYA ANGELOU: Mr. President and Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Vice President and Mrs. Gore, and Americans everywhere:
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.
Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the Rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveler, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You, Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You, Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers—desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You, the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me,
The Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes,
And into your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Maya Angelou, reciting the poem she wrote for Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, "On the Pulse of Morning." Eight years later, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When we come back, we’ll be joined by Maya Angelou’s close friend, Sonia Sanchez, the renowned writer, poet, playwright and activist.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Run Joe" by Maya Angelou from her 1957 album "Miss Calypso". By the way, over the years Democracy Now! featured Angelou’s tributes to Fanny Lou Hamer, Ossie Davis, Correta Scott King, Max Roach and Nelson Mandela. You can go to our website to see all of her selected speeches from eulogies our archives with full transcripts at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re joined now by Maya Angelou’s close friend Sonia Sanchez. Sonia was a renowned writer, poet, playwright, activist and one of the foremost leaders of the Black Studies and the Black Arts movement. She is the author of 20 books including "Morning Haiku," "Shake Loose My Skin," and "Homegirls and Hand Grenades."
AMY GOODMAN: Sonia Sanchez joins me here in Philadelphia. We welcome you back to Democracy Now! It is such a pleasant to be with you in person, though sad on this occasion, Maya Angelou’s death. Maya Angelou lived 86 years, she died in North Carolina. Talk about how you first met her and share your reflections about her life and her contributions.
SONIA SANCHEZ: It’s going being her sister, Amy, and you are right, it is a very sad occasion, but anytime I can hear and see her perform, you know that she will live forever. I first met Sister Maya in the 1960’s. That was period when we were all gathering together to change the world. I saw her on a couple of occasions at affairs where we all read our poetry. I most especially remember her in the play "The Blacks." She came out in her tall, six feet majesty, and you were just stricken by her, by her beauty and by her grace. And I still have in my memory, when Lumumba was killed, Louise Meriwether and Sister Maya, climbing, going over the walls there at the U.N. They were protesting. To have seen that, you stood there in awe.
AMY GOODMAN: The first president of the Congo.
SONIA SANCHEZ: Yes, Lumumba.
AMY GOODMAN: The democratically elected president of the Congo.
SONIA SANCHEZ: It was an amazing moment to see the resistance that they were doing there in New York City at the U.N. But over the years, I got to know her in so many ways on the road, when we read together at various occasions and going to her home there in North Carolina when she was given her birthday parties. Sister Oparah would give birthday parties for her. And she had everybody you can imagine. You imagine that person, that person was there at Sister Maya’s house in North Carolina for birthday parties. You could call her on the telephone and cry and say, what a terrible mistake I made. You could call and say, I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, and she will listen and say, dear, dear, Sonia, you need to come on down here to the house and just rest for a while and sleep. You need for me to cook you some good food.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Sonia Sanchez, she lived in a lot of pain. She was raped and she was a child. The rapist was her mother’s boyfriend, he was murdered. Is it true she stopped talking for five years to everyone but her brother?
SONIA SANCHEZ: That is what we were told. This is an interesting thing, this idea of people not talking. Audrey Lloyd also stopped talking at some point in her life. When my grandmother died, the trauma was so great that I began to stutter. I was the child that went ... I. And Luckily enough, that stutter saved me a great deal because my sister and I after my grandmother died, were sent to house to house to house. As I walked into the house, it was announced, oh here’s Pat, she’s the beautiful one, my sister, and here comes S-s-s-sonia, so just give her a book and put her in a corner. So, it’s amazing, but I think that when you don’t speak, when you’re quite like that, you’re filtering out perhaps all of the damage that was done to you, all the pain gets filtered out. Finally when you do speak, you are healed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sonia Sanchez, I wanted to ask you, Maya Angelou was already an accomplished singer, dancer, actress, but then she gets involved in the civil rights movement. Could you talk about the relationship between her art and her activism? She worked with both Martin Luther King and then with Malcolm X later.
SONIA SANCHEZ: There was no separation for us between our art and activism at all. Sister Bernice Reagon talks about the blues singer Montgomery who said we all come here naked. Even though we all come here naked, one of the things we have to do is we have to make arrangements for other people beyond ourselves. This is what she did. Yes, and she raised so much money for the civil rights movement. People forget that. She and Brother Harry Belafonte raised money because the movement needed money. Yes, she marched and did all these things that other people did and she wrote and she knew brother Malcolm, she knew Brother Martin, she was in Africa, she knew Nkrumah. This is a woman who simply at some point moved constantly with her art and activism and saw no problem with the two of them.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Maya Angelou talking about her close friend Coretta Scott King. The two shared a close bond as Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on Maya Angelou’s birthday. They would talk every year on that date, April 4. In 2006, Maya Angelou spoke at Coretta Scott King’s funeral in Georgia.
MAYA ANGELOU: On those late nights when Coretta and I would talk, I would make her laugh. And she said that Martin King used to tell her, you don’t laugh enough. There is a recent book out about sisters in which she spoke about her blood sister. At the end of her essay she said I do have a chosen sister— Maya Angelou, who makes me laugh even when I don’t want to. And it is true. I told her some jokes, jokes only for no mixed company. Many times on those late evenings, she would say to me, "Sister, it shouldn’t be an either or, should it? Peace and justice should belong to all people everywhere all the time. Isn’t that right?" And I said then and I say now, Coretta Scott King, you are absolutely right. I do believe that peace and justice should belong to every person, everywhere, all the time.
Those of us who gather here, principalities, presidents, senators, those of us who run great companies, who know something about being parents, who know something about being preachers and teachers, those of us, we owe something from this minute on. So that this gathering is not just another footnote on the pages of history. We owe something. I pledge to you, my sister, I will never cease. I mean to say, I want to see a better world. I mean to say, I want to see some peace somewhere. I mean to say, I want to see some honesty, some fair play. I want to see kindness and justice. This is what I want to see. I want to see it through my eyes and through your eyes, Coretta Scott King. [singing] I open my mouth to the Lord, and I won’t turn back. No I will go. I shall go. I’ll see what the end is going to be. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Maya Angelou speaking in 2006 at Coretta Scott King’s funeral. And this is her speaking in 2011 around the time when she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom.
MAYA ANGELOU: What I thought about first, this morning, actually, is how wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times. We have actually enslaved people and been enslaved. And we have actually liberated people and been liberated. Amazing. Amazing. If I had my druthers, I’d rather be born black, American, female in the 20th century. And I was. What a luck I have. I’m trying to be a Christian. And trying to be a Christian is like trying to be a jew or Buddhist or Muslim or Shintoist. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, I’m a Christian. I think, already? You already got it? I’m working at it. Which means that, I try to be as kind and fair and generous and respectful and courteous to every human being. Seeing myself as him, not as his keeper or her keeper, but really seeing myself. Black, white, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native American — I try to treat everybody as I want to be treated. And that is no small matter. Really, that is trying to be an American because we have to say, I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. The statement is made by a Terence in 154 B.C. — black man, a slave sold to a senator. He was freed by that senator. This man became the most popular playwright in Rome. Five of his plays and that one statement have come down to us from 154 B.C., I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. And by the time I leave my students and they leave me, some of — they have ingested some part of that, and they can never be the same. Be proud, not haughty, but proud of what you have achieved. And see the future as your career, your job. This is not a rehearsal. This is your life.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Maya Angelou speaking in 2011 around the time she was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. Sonia Sanchez, among the many collaborations that you had with your friend Maya Angelou over many years was on a peace mural in Philadelphia. Could you talk about that?
SONIA SANCHEZ: Oh, yes. I became the Poet Laureate here in Philadelphia. One of the things that I wanted to do — the first thing was to have a peace mural. So, I called Sister Maya and Sister Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and I said, I want you to send me three lines about peace. And they did immediately. I got in contact with Brother Carmen and we also put some — three lines from Brother Martin and Sister Bernice Reagon. It is a beautiful mural. We ended up doing a book also called "Peace is a Haiku Song." Sister maya said to me, Sonia, good, do that, we need peace. One of the things we wanted to do was to have her words there. I chose words from her book "Amazing Peace," a Christmas poem that she had put out. So, If you’re ever in Philadelphia, come too Broad and Christian Street and you’ll see this beautiful mural with the words of these women and these men, simply talking about peace. Because peace is indeed a right for all of us on this earth. Our dear Sister Maya was a peace warrior. She was a cultural worker. She was a woman who insisted the way Max Roach and Abby Lincoln instead about peace. Freedom now, peace now, we insist.
AMY GOODMAN: Her radical nature — Maya Angelou’s — now as she’s being remembered, she read the poem at the presidential inauguration. As you said, climbing over the wall for Lumumba, the assassinated president of Congo. Befriending Fidel Castro in Cuba. Meeting Malcolm X in Africa, coming back with them to help him organize The Organisation of African Unity, we’re not hearing as much about it.
SONIA SANCHEZ: That is what you do as an activist. She always said simply, we have to listen to everyone’s story. We have to be involved with everyone. We cannot separate ourselves. So, she spoke at the Million Man March, if you remember that march. She was there with a problem. She was always every place. Anyplace there was any action, we used to say, you would find sister maya there, constantly talking, constantly entreating people to find a way to resolve and solve problems.
AMY GOODMAN: Her books, some have been banned from libraries as she unflinchingly described her life and the experience of people, African-Americans, and others. I remember when I was in high school, our library invited Maya Angelou to speak. Hundreds of people came out, a rainbow of people. She didn’t just be, she spoke, she sang, she danced, and she moved everyone together.
SONIA SANCHEZ: My dear sister, when she got on stage, she would start off with — we do it ourselves too. I started one of the programs, "woke up this morning with my eyes on Maya, woke up this morning with my eyes on Maya, woke up this morning with my eyes on Maya, going to resist, going to love, going to resist just like her, her, her. We learn how to mix the song and the poem and the poetry and the love. People came in rain to see her. When I brought her to Temple University, there were 3000 people standing up waiting to hear her. There were little children lined up who recited her poetry. This is, was, a great woman. When I was told yesterday that she had made transition. I sat up in my bed and I said, Na nga def? Sister Maya, Na nga def? It was important to say, how are you, dear sister? I heard a voice say, maa ngi fi rekk, Maa ngi fi rekk. I am well, I am well, I am well. And we are well because this great woman walked on this earth, my dear sister.
AMY GOODMAN: We are going to end with Maya Angelou’s own words. In 2005, she spoke at Riverside Church in Harlem during the funeral of Ossie Davis, the famous actor, director, activist. He and his wife Ruby Dee were renowned civil rights activists. In her address, Maya Angelou reads from her poem "When Great Trees Fall."
MAYA ANGELOU: When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder. Lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests small things recoil into silence, their senses are eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes sterile, light rare. We breathe briefly. Our eyes briefly see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines gnaws on kind words unsaid, on promised walks not taken. Great souls die, and our reality bound to them takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon them, upon their nature, upon their nurture, now shrink wizened. Our minds formed and informed by their radiance seems to fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable silence of dark, cold caves. And then our memory comes to us again in the form of a spirit, and it is the spirit of our beloved. It appears draped in the wisdom of DuBois, furnished in the humor and the grace of Paul Laurence Dunbar. We hear the insight of Frederick Douglass and the boldness of Marcus Garvey. We see our beloved standing before us as a light, as a beacon, indeed, as a way. We are not so much reduced. Suddenly the peace blooms around us. It is strange. It blooms slowly, always irregularly. Space is filled with a kind of soothing electric vibration. We see the spirit, and we know our senses. We change, resolved, never to be the same. They whisper to us from the spirit. Remember, he existed. He existed. He belonged to us. He exists in us. We can be, and be more, every day more. Larger, kinder, truer, more honest, more courageous, and more loving because Ossie Davis existed and belonged to all of us.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Maya Angelou, in 2005, speaking at Riverside Church, remembering the famous actor and activist Ossie Davis who is survived by his wife Ruby Dee, also a well known activist and actor. As we remember Maya Angelou today, she died yesterday at her home in North Carolina at the age of 86.
Headlines:
•Obama Calls for U.S. Military Restraint, But Endorses "Unilateral" Force to Defend "Interests"
President Obama has laid out his vision for the direction of U.S. foreign policy in a speech to graduates at the West Point Military Academy in New York. Obama offered no major policy changes, but said U.S. military force should be used more cautiously than it has in the past.
President Obama: "Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership. But U.S. military action cannot be the only -– or even primary -– component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."
Despite calling for restraint, Obama endorsed continuing a policy that allows for U.S. military action to defend what he called the nation’s "core interests," not just in cases of self-defense, the international norm.
President Obama: "United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it -– when our people are threatened; when our livelihood is at stake; or when the security of our allies is in danger. In these circumstances, we still need to ask tough questions about whether our action is proportional, effective and just."
In the only new policy to come out of his speech, Obama proposed a multi-billion dollar "Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund" to train U.S.-allied forces throughout the Middle East and Africa.
•Sisi Poised for Overwhelming Egypt Election Win Amidst Low Turnout
Egyptian General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is poised for an overwhelming victory in Egypt’s presidential elections, with partial returns showing him taking more than 90 percent of the vote. Sisi becomes the sixth military leader to run Egypt since the army overthrew the monarchy in 1952. Turnout was at just 44 percent, compared to the 52 percent that came out for the election of former President Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Sisi led the military coup that ousted Morsi last year. The Egyptian authorities scrambled to boost voter turnout when it appeared many Egyptians were staying home, extending voting for a third day and declaring a public holiday. Several Islamic and liberal political groups boycotted the election in protest of Sisi and the military regime.
•Indian Girls Found Hanging after Gang Rape
Two teenaged girls have been found hanging in India following their gang rape by five men. The girls from the Dalit community in Uttar Pradesh state were 14 and 15 years old. Police say they believe the girls took their own lives after they were raped, but some reports say they may have been strangled to death. Three people have been arrested, two of them police officers.
•Judge Issues 3-Month Moratorium on Ohio Executions
A federal judge has ordered a three-month ban on all executions in Ohio following a botched killing earlier this year. The execution of Dennis McGuire in January lasted more than 30 minutes and saw him gasping for air. Ohio had planned on using higher doses of the same lethal injection drugs. But on Wednesday, District Judge Gregory Frost ruled Ohio’s new protocol is insufficient. The Ohio ruling is the latest in a series of developments challenging lethal injections in the United States. Three executions have been stayed nationwide in the weeks since Oklahoma botched the killing of Clayton Lockett, who died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the execution began.
•Supreme Court Ruling on IQ Guidelines Could Stop Up to 20 Executions
A Supreme Court ruling striking down death row guidelines in Florida could halt scores of executions nationwide. The decision this week overturned a Florida law that limited how death row prisoners can prove they are mentally disabled. The law said prisoners must have an IQ below 70 before being allowed to present any additional evidence to prove their case. That meant despite a federal barring execution of the mentally disabled, a prisoner scoring just above the numerical threshold would be eligible for death. The ruling will now force Florida and eight other states to come up with new guidelines. The New York Times reports up to 20 prisoners could be eligible for new hearings challenging their death sentence.
•Chicago Mayor Calls for Videotaping Gun Purchases
The mayor of Chicago has unveiled a series of new measures aimed that would make it harder to buy firearms in one the nation’s deadliest cities for gun violence. The proposal from Rahm Emanuel calls for videotaping all gun sales and limiting them to one per month. Retailers would be required to undergo background checks, complete training, and face quarterly audits of their inventory. Gun buyers would also face a waiting period of up to 72 hours. A city report blames lax gun laws in neighboring states for the spread of firearms in Chicago. Sixty percent of guns used to commit crimes were originally purchased out of state.
•Georgia Police Accused of Assaulting Former Black Panther
Georgia police are being accused of brutality after video emerged of an officer shoving an African-American writer and activist to the ground. Sixty-nine year-old Dhoruba Bin-Wahad was being questioned by officers on his front porch. The tape shows an officer grabbing him by the wrist and pushing him down. At a rally outside the Clayton County Police Department, Bin-Wahad said he had been mistreated.
Dhoruba Bin-Wahad: "I was not out of control. I was not a flight risk. I was not cussing them out, and let’s assume that I did cuss them out. Let’s assume that I was verbally uncooperative. Let’s just assume all those things. Does that justify me being slammed on the ground while I’m sitting there after being searched?"
A former Black Panther, Dhoruba Bin-Wahad was wrongly imprisoned for 19 years after being convicted based on fabricated evidence in a police shooting case.
•House Approves Sanctions on Venezuelan Gov’t
The House has passed a bipartisan measure that would impose new sanctions on the Venezuelan government. The resolution follows weeks of protests that have left dozens of people dead from both sides of Venezuela’s political divide. Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York spoke out against the measure, calling it counterproductive.
Rep. Gregory Meeks: "I know that there are high emotions on all sides of this issue, and I understand why. But the House should not act emotionally, it should act judiciously. This bill does not advance U.S. interests. It will not help the people of Venezuela. And it sends the message to our regional allies that we do not care much about what they think."
•Snowden: Leaks Helped U.S.; State Dept. Forced Russia Asylum
The National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has spoken out in his first interview with an American television network. NBC aired an hour-long interview with Snowden Wednesday night conducted by anchor Brian Williams in Moscow last week. Snowden told Williams he believes his disclosures of mass surveillance had helped his country rather than caused harm.
Edward Snowden: "We’ve had the first federal open court to ever review these programs to declare it likely unconstitutional and Orwellian. And now you see Congress agreeing that mass surveillance, bulk collection, needs to end. With all of these things happening, that the government agrees, all the way up to the president again, make us stronger, how can it be said that I did not serve my government? How can it be said that this harmed the country when all three branches of government have made reforms as a result of it?"
The first of Snowden’s disclosures were revealed one year ago next week. In his interview, Snowden blamed the State Department for forcing him to remain in Russia after revoking his passport.
Brian Williams: "What are you doing in Russia?"
Edward Snowden: "So this is a really fair concern. I personally am surprised I ended up here. The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia. I had a flight booked to Cuba, onwards to Latin America and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow airport. So, when people ask, 'why are you in Russia?' I say, please, ask the State Department."
•Kerry to Snowden: "Man Up" and Return to Face U.S. Charges
Edward Snowden’s temporary asylum in Russia is due to expire in August. He faces up to 30 years in prison in the United States for multiple charges under the Espionage Act. Speaking to CBS’ "This Morning," Secretary of State John Kerry lashed out at Snowden’s comments, telling him to "man up" and return to face charges in the United States.
Secretary of State John Kerry: "The bottom line is this is a man has betrayed his country, sitting in Russia, an authoritarian country, where he has taken refuge. You know, he should man up and come back to the United States if he has a complaint about what’s the matter with American surveillance. Come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case.”
•U.S. Gov’t Damages Evidence in Blackwater Nisour Square Massacre Case
In Iraq, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has moved to destroy vehicles that were supposed to be preserved as evidence in the case of five former Blackwater guards accused of massacring Iraqis at Nisour Square. Politico reports an FBI agent stopped the destruction just weeks before the guards are set to go on trial next month for the 2007 shootings, which killed 17 Iraqis. Government prosecutors say several of the vehicles were damaged and one was “substantially crushed,” even though embassy personnel had been repeatedly “admonished” to retain them. It is the latest in a series of accusations about government mishandling, which caused the judge overseeing the case to remark last month: "If the Department of State and the Diplomatic Security Service had tried deliberately to sabotage this prosecution, they could hardly have done a better job.”
•Docs: FBI Monitored Mandela During 1990 Visit
New documents show the FBI monitored South African leader Nelson Mandela during his visit to the United States in 1990. Mandela had just been released after 27 years in prison. The released files show the FBI was primarily concerned with Mandela’s security amidst a number of threats from right-wing extremists. But the FBI also redacted 169 pages of documents, citing national security. The records were obtained by transparency activist Ryan Shapiro, who has sued the U.S. government to release information on its role in Mandela’s initial capture in 1962 and on why it took until 2008 for Mandela to be removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list.
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"Maya Angelou, Still She Rises" by Amy Goodman
“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise”
wrote Maya Angelou, in her poem “Still I Rise.” She died this week at 86 at her home in North Carolina. In remembering Maya Angelou, it is important to recall her commitment to the struggle for equality, not just for herself, or for women, or for African-Americans. She was committed to peace and justice for all.
“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat,” she wrote in the opening pages of her first breathtaking autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which chronicles her childhood to the age of 17. Born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, at the age of 7 or 8, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He was killed shortly thereafter. As a result of the trauma, she remained virtually silent for five years, speaking only to her brother. She became a single mother at 17, and struggled to support her son as she worked a variety of jobs, eventually gaining success as a calypso singer.
She heard Martin Luther King, Jr. address the Harlem Writers Guild, of which she was a member, and joined with a fellow performer to produce and sing in “Cabaret for Freedom” in Greenwich Village, to raise funds for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. By some accounts it was King, or the legendary activist and organizer Bayard Rustin, who asked her to take on a leadership role with the SCLC, which she accepted, becoming the group’s Northern coordinator.
Maya Angelou became a supporter of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. She met and fell in love with a South African civil-rights activist, and they moved to Cairo with her son. They stayed together for three years, but she stayed on in Africa, moving to Ghana, where she met Malcolm X. The two collaborated on the pivotal political project that Malcolm X was developing, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. She returned to the U.S. to support the effort, but Malcolm X was assassinated shortly after her return. That tragedy, and the 1968 assassination of her friend Martin Luther King Jr., devastated Angelou. It was in 1969 that she was encouraged by the author James Baldwin, among others, to focus on her writing. Thus was born her first of seven autobiographies and the phenomenal career for which Maya Angelou is known around the world. Reciting her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s first inaugural in 1993 catapulted her into the mainstream consciousness.
While some schools and libraries still censor her work for unflinchingly depicting the life she led, it was through my hometown library, while in my early teens, that I first saw Maya Angelou. The library invited her to speak, and speak she did—and danced, and sang, in a display of talent that made us laugh, cry and gasp as she moved her black and white audience of hundreds ... together.
In commemorating Maya Angelou, none can speak as eloquently as she did herself about people who inspired her. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, she spoke of Fannie Lou Hamer, who attempted, 40 years earlier, to gain recognition for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Angelou said: “In the most private part of the heart of every American lives a burning desire to belong to a great country. To represent a noble-minded country where the mighty do not always crush the weak and the dream of democracy is not in the sole possession of the strong.”
Maya Angelou’s tribute two years later, on the passing of her friend Coretta Scott King, could be said of Angelou herself: “She was a quintessential African-American woman. Born in the small-town, repressive South. Born of flesh and destined to become iron. Born a cornflower and destined to become a steel magnolia.”
In eulogizing actor and activist Ossie Davis at his 2005 memorial service in Harlem’s historic Riverside Church, Maya Angelou’s delivery was poetic as always. Her words of reflection on his death can serve as well as we note her passing:
“When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder. Lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests small things recoil into silence, their senses are eroded beyond fear. ... Great souls die, and our reality bound to them takes leave of us.”
Maya Angelou’s eloquence, in her poetry, lives on:
“Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
...Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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