Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey is probably the most important and influential black person of the twentieth and ultimately the twenty first century. His relationship to England is not often known or spoken about.

He was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 17th August, 1887. After seven years of schooling he worked as a printer. He became an active trade unionist and in 1907 was elected vice president of compositors' branch of the printers' union. He helped lead a printer's strike (1908-09) and after it collapsed the union dissolved.

In 1911 Garvey moved to England and briefly studied at Birkbeck College in London, where he met other blacks who were involved in the struggle to obtain independence from the British Empire. He also met and worked for Duse Mohammed Ali the editor of the African Times and Orient Review staying with him whilst he was in London. Marcus Garvey was a frequent speaker and visitor to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. In 1913 in Southampton (England) he came up with the name of Universal Negro Improvement Association whilst talking to a man who had recently arrived from South Africa. Inspired he returned to Jamaica and established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and published the pamphlet, The Negro Race and Its Problems. Garvey was influenced by the ideas of Booker T Washington and made plans to develop a trade school for the poor similar to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Garvey arrived in the United States on 23rd March 1916 and immediately launched a year-long tour of the country. He organized the first branch of UNIA in June 1917 and began publishing the Negro World, a journal that promoted his African nationalist ideas. Garvey's organization grew quickly and by1919 UNIA they had 30 branches all over the world in Cardiff Wales, London England and even Australia, as well as all over America, Africa and the Caribbean, South America and Europe. At that time they had 2 million members. But at the organisation’s height it had 11 million members (Royal Albert Hall Speech 1940), although other estimates put the figure at around six million.

Garvey campaigned against lynching, Jim Crow laws, denial of black voting rights and racial discrimination. Where UNIA differed from other civil rights organizations was on how the problem could be solved. Garvey doubted whether whites in the United States would ever agree to African Americans being treated as equals and argued for segregation rather than integration. Garvey suggested that African Americans should see Africa as their shinning star and building it up and ultimately plan to settle and control the whole continent, ‘Europe for the Europeans, Asia for the Asiatics Africa for the Africans at home and abroad".

Garvey began to sign up recruits who were willing to travel to Africa and "clear out the white invaders". He formed an army, equipping them with uniforms and weapons. Garvey appealed to the new militant feelings of black that followed the end of the First World War and asked those African Americans who had been willing to fight for democracy in Europe to now join his army to fight for their rights.

In 1919 Garvey formed the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company. With $10,000,000 invested by his supporters Garvey purchased two steamships, Shadyside and Kanawha, to take African Americans to Africa. At a UNIA conference in August, 1920, Garvey was elected provisional president of Africa. He also had talks with the Ku Klux Klan about his plans to repatriate African Americans and published the first volume of Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.

After making a couple of journeys to Africa the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company ran out of money. Several people in the UNIA had been involved in corruption, perhaps as part of the general plan launched by the US federal Government to discredit him under the young J Edgar Hoover (later head of the FBI). Or perhaps because of the general jealousy that seemed to infect his opposition and even some of his followers regarding his achievements. This was most pronounced with educators like WB Dubois (NAACP) and A Philip Randolph (later head of the Union of Sleeping Car Porters), Cyril Briggs (of the African Blood Brotherhood and later the communist party) and CLR James (Marxist historian).

Marcus Garvey survived an assassination attempt on his life, in which his stalwart wife Amy Ashwood actually knocked the attacker to the ground and saved him. The assailant George Tyler an unemployed African-American from the South was never allowed to confess who had put him up to it. He was found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs. But the entire incident had all the hallmarks of a conspiracy at the highest level.

Garvey was arrested and charged with mail fraud and in 1925 was sentenced to five years imprisonment. He had served half of his sentence when President Calvin Coolidge commuted the rest of his prison term and had him deported to Jamaica.

In 1928 Garvey went on a lecture tour of Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. On Garvey's return to Jamaica he established the People's Political Party and a new daily newspaper, The Blackman. The following year Garvey was defeated in the general election for a seat in Jamaica's colonial legislature.

In July, 1932, Garvey began publishing the evening newspaper, The New Jamaican. The venture was unsuccessful and the printing presses were seized for debts in 1933. He followed this with a monthly magazine, Black Man. He also launched an organization that he hoped would raise money to help create job opportunities for the rural poor in Jamaica.

The project was not a success and in March, 1935, Garvey moved back to England where he worked again with Duse Mohammed. With Duse he published The Tragedy of White Injustice. Marcus Garvey continued to hold UNIA conventions and to tour the world making speeches on civil rights until his death in London on 10th June 1940 at Number 2 Beaumont Crescent, West Kensington, London.

Garvey’s influence on Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta; Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, etc was vast. He was certainly the forerunner for the black movements in Africa, Caribbean, America and Europe, including the independence movement in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, ANC in South Africa, and a direct influence on the Nation of Islam through Elijah Muhammad and the Little family including Malcolm (X) his sisters Ella Collins and his brothers Wilfred, Reginald, and Philbert. Marcus Garvey’s work initiated the Nationalist movements including the Black Power movement and the changes that took place in the Student Non-Violent (later National) Co-ordinating Committee and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). Marcus Garvey was instrumental in the development of the modern Pan Africanist ideology and the rebirth in the love of African culture and history. The two stalwarts of the Pan Africanist books revolution Professor John Henrik Clarke and Dr Joseph Ben Jochnanon were very closely associated with Garvey. The former actually attended his school of African philosophy studies in Canada.

Garvey’s impact and importance on what is now considered modern black history cannot be overstated. In fact it is often understated, because of the political ends that those who have in discrediting him. But those who wish to learn more will do so and in turn will realise that he ahs had a landmark impact on the future destiny of the African/black race.

Mary Prince 1788-1828

Mary was born in Bermuda to parents who were both slaves. When the slave owner died, Mary and her mother were sold. Mary was only 12 when she was sold again to work in the field and as a domestic. She was sold in 1806 and again in 1818 to Mr & Mrs Wood of Antigua, to work as a domestic. In 1826 she married a free Black man, Daniel Jones who worked as a carpenter. She had not asked her slave owners' permission and they severely beat her. The slave masters decided to bring their children to school in England and Mary was brought here in 1828, even though she was married to Daniel Jones. The marriage was considered by the Wood family to be null and void. Mary suffered from rheumatism and depression, from being separated from her husband. The rheumatism was made worse by the English climate. Matters came to ahead, when she refused an order to launder 'a freat of many heavy things'. Instead of doing the work, she took her mistress at her word when she told her she would be turned out onto the streets if she did not obey her orders.

She found her way to the Anti-Slavery Society, whose secretary offered her employment as a domestic servant. Though according to Shyllon she could not write, with the help of her new employer and a houseguest of his, her autobiography, History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, was published by the Anti-Slavery Society, 1831. John Wood the slave owner and her former owner sued the publisher, but eventually lost the case.

Mary Prince told her life story in vivid detail. She managed to convey to respectable middle class white society , ‘what a slave suffered'. For example, Mary had endured severe floggings, her flesh was 'deeply lacerated with gashes, and deformed with boils from standing for many hours in salt ponds'.

Mary’s writings like Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho and Ottabah Cugoano, form part of the panathea of African British writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth century which ultimately helped make slavery unfashionable amongst the English middle classes and influenced men like Granville Sharpe and later William Wilberforce to take up the abolitionists creed. Although it was a combination of the Haitian revolution, the advances in technology and the American Civil war which really brought chattel slavery to an end.

Julius Soubise

Julius Soubise was another interesting and important character of the eighteenth century. He came to England from the West Indies, carried by Captain Stair Douglas of the Royal Navy. Catherine Hyde, the Duchess of Queensberry met Soubise and persuaded the Captain to part with him as she found the boy extremely Charming and likable.

He was given to her like a pet dog or a cat would have been.
The young Soubise was liked by the Staff of The Queensberry Household too. They called him 'The young Othello'. Soubise was taught to Fence (the Queensberrys were the famous writers of the rules for boxing, known as the Marquis of Queensberry rules) and ride, he soon became extremely notorious amongst the upper classes. Both the men and the women and appeared to indulge in all kinds of excesses and fancies. Flattered by the attention, Soubise exaggerated his social standing and began to pass himself off as the son of an African King. He was in correspondence with Ignatius Sancho who warned him to give up his womanising and wild behaviour.

He became an assistant at the riding and Fencing School where he again was extremely popular. He played the violin, and read poetry. Julius accompanied his Trainer’s son to Eton and Windsor where he led a double life, as an assistant and the ‘gay’ darling of Society.

However, Soubise's lavish lifestyle was noticed and he and the Duchess were subject to satire in the press. Later, or perhaps as a result of the mounting criticism he was accused of raping a servant girl, and he was sent to India. There was a genuine fear he might be attacked or even lynched. He established a riding School in Bengal and trained private students. He was later paid by the British government to ‘break horses,’ he became a renowned expert and it was here that he met his demise; he was killed in India breaking in a troublesome Horse.

Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho was born on the ship carrying his enslaved mother to the Americas and sold to three London sisters who treated him very badly. He soon found another patron the Duke of Montague. Sancho was employed in the household of the Duke of Montague for most of his adult life. Whilst there, the Duke of Montague wanted him to develop his education and lent him books.

Later Ignatius attained his freedom and economic independence by opening up a grocery business in Mayfair in the early 1770s. Members of the royal family and others from polite society frequented this store. He moved in literary and artistic circles, gaining a reputation as a connoisseur of the arts and establishing friendships with the writer Laurence Sterne (author of Tristram Shandy) and actor/manager David Garrick.

However, the Letters of the Ignatius Sancho were only published in 1782 after his death. The letters ran to a number of later editions. The engraving above was made in 1802, and copied from a portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, painted from life. Ignatius wrote correspondence about slavery and the slave trade and wrote commentaries about the commercial greed that maintained slavery. Sancho’s letters also contain comments on contemporary British life and are full of references to his circle of friends and his love of music, the theatre, his family and wife.

Ignatius married a black woman of West Indian heritage. It was one of the few same race marriages among the blacks that mixed in ‘polite society. Ignatius appeared to love his wife dearly and writes:

‘Dame Sancho would be better if she cared less. - I am her barometer - If a sigh escapes me, it is answered by a tear in her eye. - I oft assume a gaiety to illume her dear sensibility with a smile - which twenty years ago almost bewitched me: - and MARK! - after twenty year enjoyment constitutes my highest pleasure!’

Ignatius died in 1780, at the age of 50, leaving a wife and six children.

Other interesting facts about Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius was ashamed that Christians who followed the same religion as him were so actively involved in the trade and wrote about this hypocrisy in several letters to friends, family and the church.
Ignatius Sancho made famous the saying, ‘whatever cannot be cured must be endured.’
Ignatius was buried in St James Park and there is a note to him in the main square.

Equiano

Equiano was born in Nigeria around 1745. As a boy of 11 he was kidnapped and transported to the West Indies to work as a slave. He found work on English ships, and learned to read and write. In England he converted to Christianity and was baptised 'Gustavus Vassa'. He married a white English woman from Cambridge and had a family. In 1789 he published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It provides an insight into the Africa he knew as a boy: memories of loved ones he left behind, their lifestyle, customs, music and culture.

Olaudah talks about how he was kidnapped and enslaved and describes encounters n the West Indies with his fellow Igbo countryfolk. After its publication, Equiano travelled around Britain promoting his book and speaking out against the slave trade. He was very influential in the development of the Abolitionist movement in particular and in influencing Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce to push for more changes to the law to prohibit the bad treatment of slaves. Olaudah also travelled around the world and promoted his other books, like the Kidnapped Prince.

Olaudah was initially involved in the scheme to resettle Africans from England in Sierra Leone. He pulled out when mismanagement and corruption became evident. In the end the scheme resulted in the deaths by disease and hunger of many of the Africans who were resettled.

Quobna Ottabah Cugoano

Quobna Ottabah Cugoano, usually known by the shorter form Ottabah Cugoano, was born in present-day Ghana in the 1750s. Kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1770, at the age of 13. He worked in chain gangs on plantations in Granada. A few months after Lord Mansfield handed down his judgement in the Somerset case, Cugoano arrived in England. He was baptised as 'John Stuart' in 1773, a name he continued to use over the next fifteen years, during which time he worked as a servant to the artist Richard Cosway. While working for Cosway he wrote his Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Commerce of the Human Species, it was published in 1787. In London, he was a friend of Olaudah Equiano, and a neighbour of Ignatius Sancho. After publishing his work, he dropped out of the historical record, and we do not know where, when, or how he died. His work; part autobiography, part political treatise, and part Christian exegesis, has an enduring legacy. Despite being employed by one of the most famous artists of his day, no image of Cugoano survives.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London in 1875, the son of a Sierra Leonean doctor and English mother. He felt that his career as a surgeon was blocked because he was black, his father returned to Africa, abandoning Samuel and his mother in England. At the age of fifteen, Coleridge Taylor entered the Royal College of Music to study the violin and he also studied composition with Stanford.

His best known work, which was immensely popular during his lifetime, is "Hiawatha", a trilogy based upon poems by Longfellow. He also wrote other works, such as the songs "African Romances", the "African Suite" for piano, and "Five Choral Ballads", a setting of poems on slavery by Longfellow, which include influences from native African music.

He visited America several times, in 1904, 1906, and 1910, where he was lionised as a role model for black composers and was received by President Roosevelt.

He died in Croydon, in 1912.

Moor

Now the term has become synonymous with the Muslims who conquered parts of Spain in the 8th century and settled there until they were driven out in the 15th century. But it also denotes people from Morocco or Mauritania (pronounced Moor a taina/ land of the moors) in North Africa. But in Britain and most of the rest of Europe the term moor was used to refer to any Black person. The word 'Moor' appears in Shakespearean literature. It was spelt in a variety of ways (such as 'more', 'moir', 'moorish' 'moris' 'moryen') and often combined with 'black' or 'blak', as in 'black moor', 'blackamoor' and 'black more'. 'Blackamoor'. It was used synonymously for 'negroe' throughout the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries (see Queen Elizabeth’s proclamation of 1601 in What is Britain.)

The African Conquest of Europe

As early as the 8th century, contact between Africa and Europe increased dramatically with the conquest of Spain and Portugal by Muslim forces (called Moors by the Spanish) from North Africa (and also, later, from Northwest Africa. Their leader was Tarik Ibn al-Walid, who also gave his name to a rocky island off the southern tip of Spain - 'Jabal [mount of] Tarik', or Gibraltar, as it is now known.

The Moors extended their influence via trade into northern Europe. Their political power was centred at Córdoba, which became one of the most important Islamic cultural centres. They were scholars, engineers and also great builders (consequently, Moorish architectural influence is visible in many parts of Spain today). Islamic political power ended in 1492, with the conquest of Granada by King Ferdinand of Spain who instituted genocide on to the blacks, moors and Muslims, many of whom had been present in the country for over four hundred years. To note, Christian moors were also driven out, this destroys the fallacy that the term only relates to religion.

Nubia

The Nubia are accredited as being the first people on earth by ancient historians like Herodotus. Certainly the oldest remains, not just of the human race but also of the beginnings of civilisation can be found along the Nile valley as it runs from Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan. Prior to Muslim conquest of North Africa and the rule by the Ottoman Empire, Africans of the world looked to Nubia as the source of civilisation.

For students of history it can be confusing trying to understand all the different terms to describe the kingdoms south of the civilisation of Kemet (Egypt). Much of the ancient commentaries on Nubia are spatial. This is to Nubia’s credit, outsiders were never allowed access and she remained unconquered for many centuries. Assyrians, Persians, Hyskos and Muslim invaders only saw Nubia from afar. The nearest they would get would be the shaft of an arrow from a Nubian bow. (Hence the name the land of the bow). Nubians managed to successfully repel invaders even when Kemet fell. This includes, the Greeks, Romans and even the Persians under Cambyses.

What is even more confusing for historians is that the same titles and labels are given to the same region often at the same time. For example Nubians are sometimes called, Ethiopians (Greek ) - to note the modern Ethiopia was founded by their descendants, or Kushites. The last term is not strictly accurate as Kush flourished in the 4 and 5 century AD precisely as Nubia began to decline, due to the conquest of the northern cities like Meroe.

The land of Nubia (also known as the land of Ponts ie. the Gods) is now widely accredited as giving birth to the Egyptian/Kemet civilisation. The earliest rudimentary pyramids are found in the south in Nubia slowly becoming larger as they get into Egypt. The knowledge of pyramid building was therefore was not confined to the Egyptians. However, the Nubians choose to maintain strong ties to the earth and maintain at periods a minimalist approach to worship. This was almost certainly religious and not because of a lack of technology and science.

The conflicts that did arise between Egypt and Nubia were not racial, since both belonged unequivocally to the same race. As Herodotus says, “the Egyptians, Ethiopians (Nubians), Carthagians, Colchins are the same people…. Having woolly hair and black skin, although that is not confined to them. But the Ethiopians are the best example of these people.”

Most of the customs and traditions of the Nubians were adopted by the ancient Egyptians, even some of the Gods like Amum became linked to Nubian gods. This could have been a deliberate part of policy during the years when Egypt managed to conquer Nubia or more likely because the Ancient Egyptians understood that the Nubians were there historic brothers and fathers.

When Egypt was overrun by successive waves of invaders from the east. Nubian Kings like Shabbaka and Tharqua and Piankhy came from the South and restored order by driving out the invaders, like Narmer had done two thousand years earlier. However their union was a temporary respite and Kemet was eventually overrun. The Nubians retreated back to Nubia and remained until the 4th century AD. When it to was overrun and Kush in the south took over supremacy.

The power of Nubia and its people on the affairs of the African world cannot be overstated. The name of Nubia and Ethiopia has become synonymous with the entire race. In the same way that Egyptian and Moor were later to be. This shows that in many ways Nubia can be seen as one of the best examples of an ancient African centered society.

Nubian Kings and Queens from the 7th century BC to the 1st century AD

Australian Aborigines

Australian Aborigines are the indigenous peoples of Australia. Their ancestors probably arrived in Australia just over 50,000 years ago, although the date remains uncertain. Some researchers put the date of arrival at close to 100,000 years ago, but the case for very early occupation presently rests on a single archaeological site of uncertain date. But in reality the Aboriginal population of Australia at the time of European contact was the result of several migrations from several different parts of the world over a 50,000 year history.

When Europeans in the late 18th century arrived the Aboriginal population was estimated to be at 300,000. Most but not all were hunter-gatherers with a complex oral culture and spiritual values based upon reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime is a state of being where creation and the present day mix together in a reality of dreaming.

There were many different Aboriginal groups, each had particular individual cultures, belief structures, and languages (approximately 200 different languages at the time of European contact). These cultures overlapped to a greater or lesser extent, and evolved over time. Lifestyles varied a great deal, and the sterotyped image of a proud and naked hunter standing one-legged in the red sand of the central Australian desert cannot be applied across the board. In present-day Victoria, for example, there were two separate communities with an economy based on fish-farming in complex and extensive irrigated pond systems (one on the Murray River in the state's north, the other in the south-west near Hamilton), and trade with other groups.

The Aboriginal population was decimated by British colonization which began in 1788. A combination of disease, loss of land (and thus food resources) and outright murder reduced the Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% during the 19 century and early20 century. A wave of massacres and resistance followed the frontier. The last massacre was at Coniston in the Northern Territory in1928. Poisoning of food and water has been recorded on several different occasions.

The number of violent deaths at the hands of whites is still the subject of a vigorous and politically-loaded debate, with some figures—notably Prime Minister John Howard—rejecting what Howard terms "the black-armband" view of Australian history. Historians have claimed that as many as 10,000 have been killed at the hands of whites.Henry Reynolds , makes these claims based upon the evidence of oral history, added to the records of deaths in police custody, racist attacks etc. The numbers of Aborigines now number less than 5,000.

Loss of land was also an important factor in dislocation, starvation and the decline of Australia's Aboriginal population. The new diseases brought in by Europe in particular:chicken pox, smallpox, influenza, venereal diseases, and measles spread throughout the population. Aborigines had little to no natural resistance. Entire communities in the moderately fertile southern part of the continent simply vanished without trace, often before European settlers arrived or recorded their existence. The large fish-farming economy in south-west Victoria, for example, was entirely unknown to science until the turn of the 21st century, when investigations by a team of archeologists working with and guided by surviving members of a local Aboriginal community began to unearth the foundations of houses and rediscover the irrigation system.

In spite of the decline in their numbers throughout the 19th century, Aboriginal men, women and children became a very important source of labour to the large sheep and cattle stations (i.e. ranches) which came to dominate northern Australia. They were also employed in other northern industries, such as pearling. Aborigines in northern Australia were often forced to work and the term slavery has been used in regard to their employment. They were usually paid only in food and other basic items. This labour system lasted until the pastoral industries began to decline in the late 20th century.

During the first half of the 20th century, native welfare boards were established in the various states. These instituted a policy of separating children from their parents based upon racial stereotyping. Pale-skinned children were forcibly removed, and Aboriginal parents often darkened up their children to keep them. This aspect of Aboriginal history is also open to considerable debate. See Stolen Generation and the film Rabbit Proof Fence.

Many Aborigines now live in towns and cities around Australia, but a substantial number live in settlements (often located on the site of former church missions) in what are often remote areas of rural Australia. The health and economic difficulties facing both groups are substantial (for instance, life expectancy of Aboriginal people is often 20 years shorter than the wider white Australian population) and yet the history of this group of people has been brutally ripped from history and even the memory of the world.

Sioux

Pawnee

Group of Pawnees. From the left, Ari-Wa- Kis, Captain Jim; Si-Ri-Rey-Sa-Ra-Kuh, Roam Chief; Ra-Ruh-Wah-Kuh, John Louwalk; William Mathews; Sa-Ku-Ru-Ti-Wa-Ri, Walking Sun; Asa-Wa-Ki-Ra-Ray-Saru, Spotted Horse Chief; and James R. Murie. Photo Courtesy of William Hammond Mathers Museum, Indiana University, from the Wanamaker Collection.

The Pawnee Nation has a long and proud history going back over 700 years. At one time, early in the 19th century, there were over 10,000 members of the Pawnee Nation along the North Platte River in Nebraska.

The Pawnee villages consisted of dome shaped, earth covered lodges with a diameter of 25 to 60 feet with a long entrance leading towards the east. A centre pit dug three to four feet in diameter served as a fireplace. These lodges housed extended families.

The Nation then, as it is now, was composed of four distinct bands: the Chaui 'Grand'; the Kitkihahki, 'Republican"; the Petahauirata, 'Tappage"; and Skidi, 'Wolf'. Each band went on separate hunts and often fought separate battles.

Before the middle of the 19th century, the tribe was stricken with smallpox and cholera. A great loss of life occurred and by 1900, the tribe's membership was decreased to approximately 600.
The Pawnees were well known for their ability to raid neighbouring tribes and acquire their horses. They set out on foot and brought back hundreds of horses, especially from the tribes to the south and southwest. Horses gave the Pawnees the mobility that made them a name to be feared by their enemies.

Although the Pawnees never waged open war against the U.S. Government and were classified as a 'friendly nation", extra privileges were not gained. The government felt the need to placate warring tribes with gifts, which sometimes consisted of rifles to hunt buffalo. These rifles were in turn used against other tribes, including the Pawnees, who were not so fortunately armed.
Nevertheless, the Pawnee warriors were men of courage and great endurance. Even when outnumbered and outgunned, they fought valiantly. Some of these warrior feats were considered legendary.

One such great feat was that of Chief Crooked Hand of the Skidi Band, who arose from bed to muster the old men, women and boys and led the charge to defend their home. Although outnumbered two to one, they outfought a superior armed enemy and drove them away.

Pawnees dressed similar to other Plains tribes; however, the Pawnees had a special way of preparing the scalp lock by dressing it with buffalo fat until it stood erect and curved backward like a horn.
The Pawnees unwillingly ceded their lands to the U.S. Government in 1833, 1848, 1857 and 1872. The move from Nebraska to what is now Pawnee County was completed in 1875. The Pawnee Indian Agency was established just east of the present site of the City of Pawnee and an Indian boarding school, called Pawnee Industrial School, was built. The school, affectionately known as "Gravy U" was closed in 1958 and the land was returned to the tribe in 1968. Many of the old 'Gravy U' buildings have been renovated and are now used as tribal offices.

Today, the tribal enrolment numbers a little over 2,500 members and Pawnees can be found in all areas of the United States as well as foreign countries in many walks of life. Pawnees take much pride in their ancestral heritage. They are noted in history for their tribal religion, rich in myth, symbolism and elaborate rites.

Nok

Ancient Kemet

Surrounded by the hostile desert, Egypt arose as a populated settlement. It has often been called a "gift of the Nile River". Civilisation arose first here on the banks of the Nile. The Nile River is a major factor in this development. The Nile has a peculiar flooding cycle, sometimes flooding more than once in a single day. Despite the Nile’s size, (it is largest river in the world), it lacks damaging winds which might make living on its banks impossible. The Nile’s banks for the most part are made up of thick mud, which makes the Nile Delta, probably one of the most fertile in the world.

Ancient farmers had to do less to produce the crops and yields that farmers situated elsewhere had to work all year round to get. This enabled surpluses to be produced and stored. Surpluses meant less work in the fields and more time for planning and development. The first advances in science and technology were made in agriculture, and these in turn had a knock on effect, making the need to focus on food production, even less important. This was the beginning of the civilisation that we now know as the Egyptian civilisation. Although the civilisation almost certainly did not start in Egypt but further to the south near the source of the Nile itself: in Uganda, Sudan and Kenya. Egypt or Kemet merely became the international focus for this civilisation.

Straddling the strategic crossroads, between Africa, Asia, and Europe, Egypt also became a point for interchange between the Mediterranean and Red seas and the Persian Gulf. Many developments affecting the rest of Africa took place in or near the Nile Valley, such as the cultivation of plants and the development of metal smelting. Thus, Egypt's major role in forming early African civilizations has been well established.

In modern times, scholars often underestimated the contributions of ancient Egypt to European civilization. More than two millennia ago, when the Ptolemaic Greeks came to rule Egypt, they extensively adopted and interpreted Egyptian spiritual, material, political, aesthetic, and intellectual systems. Although later Greek authorities freely acknowledged their cultural debt to Egypt, during the nineteenth century many European writers, limited by their ethnocentrism and racism, decided that black Africa could have had nothing to do with Europe's rise to greatness. Some treated Egypt as part of the Middle East divorcing it from the rest of Africa. Others went further, asserting that white Aryans invaders started the civilisation of Egypt. Read the Stormfront website for a white supremacist view of Egypt.

Egypt attracted many conquerors, most of whom came for booty and did not advance technology. In the past three millennia, for example, Egypt has been ruled by the Kushites, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Arabs, Turks, French, and the English. This has obscured the original root of the civilisation and the Africans who built it and ruled it with very little outside interference for many thousand of years.

There is much more that you can read about Egypt, Kemet and Nubia, read, Chancellor Williams Destruction of Black Civilisation, Stolen Legacy GM James, Ancient Egypt Light of the World Gerald Massey, Black Man of the Nile and His family, DR Ben Jochnanon, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite empire etc.

Carthage

Carthage was an ancient city in modern Tunisia. Several dates are given of when and how it was founded. One has Elissa (Dido) fleeing from Tyre and founding the city of Carthage in 814 BCE, but another source gives the foundation date as 751. No archaeological remains have been uncovered at Carthage before the 8th century, but both dates are plausible. Several accounts place the Phoenicians as the founders, whether this is true or not is a matter of historic debate. But what is certain is that the Carthaginians were unmistakably African (see Herodotus, Dr Ben Jochnanon, Professor John Henrik Clarke, etc. etc). This may be because the mixed fleet of Phoenicians and Egyptians, which founded the city, were themselves black or it may be the result of mixture with the native population. What must be remembered is at this time there was not a large Arabic/semetic/indo-european population in North Africa. The population of North Africa at this time resembled that which is now found in West Africa. But this population did include Berbers who had been in the area since the ninth millennium BCE. An admixture did occur here and the resulting culture we call Punic. The Berbers, who had been semi-nomadic, adopted urban living. The Carthaginians also soon made their presence felt in Sardinia, north of Carthage.

The major gods Carthaginians worshiped were Baal Hammon (the name Hannibal means "favourite of Baal'), Tanit, Baal's consort, Eshmoun, and Melqart, later assimilated to Hercules.

At Carthage, the cult of Tanit became the most important god. Her symbols include, doves, palm tree, grapes, and crescent moon. She is the goddess of many names (like Isis) a queen of the Manes (shades of the dead). See the following site on Canaanite Mythology. For an image of a Carthaginian goddess. This work is now in the Cagliari Museum on Sardinia.

For more information about Carthage click Hannibal

Timbuktu

No name makes people think of ancient Africa better than Timbuktu. Timbuktu was the greatest trading place in sub-Saharan Africa for more than four hundred years. Cities exist for a reason, and Timbuktu was no exception. Timbuktu was located on a bend in the Niger River. Traders mined salt in the desert. Miners would carry the salt to the city where merchants would transport it on the river to faraway places.

Timbuktu developed as a trading city, but the wealth of the city attracted others. In time, Timbuktu became well known as a religious and educational site. Mansa Musa built a great mosque, or Islamic temple in Timbuktu. Timbuktu began to decline in influence when the Portuguese showed that it was easier to sail around the coast of Africa than travel through the desert. The city was destroyed by the war between Morocco and Songhai. Today it remains a shadow of its former self, a mud built town of 20,000 people on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

 The Black Roman Emperor
Septimius Severus (AD 145-211)

Emperor - Septimius Severus (AD 145-211)Septimius Severus was the first Roman emperor not to be born and raised in Italy. His father's family originally came from Libya (Leptis Magna) and his mother's family were Etruscans (Italian). His grandfather, a knight of the Roman empire, owned land near Rome, but Septimius grew up in North Africa with his father.Septimius married Julia Domna, a Syrian, daughter of a high priest. The name Domna is derived from the archaic Arabic word dumayna, meaning 'black'. Septimius and Julia had two sons, Caracalla, the elder, born in AD 188, and Geta.Because Septimius's ancestors were Roman citizens, he was entitled to be educated in Rome. He briefly practised as a lawyer, became a Roman senator, and from the age of 24 took part in campaigns in Spain, Syria, Gaul, Sicily and Athens. He spent time extending Rome's borders eastwards across the Tigris in Mesopotamia and the Balkans. His education and experience won him strong support within the empire. He was described by contemporaries such as the famous physician Galen and the historians Herodian and Cassius Dio as 'a man of such energy...wise and successful...that he left no battle except as a victor'.

In AD 193, following the assassination of Emperor Pertinax, Septimius Severus was proclaimed emperor. Later, when the Caledonians (inhabitants of what is now Scotland) invaded Roman Britain in AD 208, Septimius travelled to this most western part of the Roman Empire. He made this remote region a separate province, under the commander of the Sixth Legion stationed at York, and launched an attack into Scotland. Nearly a century earlier, around AD 122, the Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-38) had fortified the northern border of Roman Britain by building a defensive wall. However, Hadrian's Wall had been abandoned by a later governor of Roman Britain, Clodius Albinus, and the undefended frontier was overrun by the Caledonians.

Emperor Septimius spent the last years of his life reorganising Britain's northern border. In AD 197 he ordered the reconstruction of Hadrian's Wall, and in AD 208 the Romans once more took control of the wall. However, the region was abandoned again after his son Caracalla succeeded him as Emperor in AD 211.

Coins from AD 208 depict Septimius riding off to war, but due to a painful condition in his legs or feet (probably gout or arthritis) he was carried for most of the journey. During the winter of AD 210-11, his condition worsened, and he died at York in AD 211. His body was cremated, and his ashes - carried in an urn of porphyry (a purple-and-white stone reserved for imperial rulers) - were taken back to his homeland, Libya.

Black Romans

Emperor Septimius Severus was not the only Black Roman in Britain. There were other African officers, soldiers and slaves here in the 3rd century. Excavations at York between 1951 and 1959 uncovered the largest number of human skeletons from Roman Britain ever exhumed. Archaeologists suggest that several of these people were of African origin and referred to as moors. There were three Roman legions in Britain for most of the period, each consisting of 6,000 men. The legions were made up of different ethnic groups from Spain, Africa, Italy and Germany. The historian Anthony Birley notes that a Numerus Maurorum was stationed at Burgh-by-Sands near Carlisle. The soldiers of this unit would have been among those who rebuilt and stood guard on Hadrian's Wall in the 3rd century. During his time in office, Septimius legalised marriage during military service. There is no evidence to suggest that all the Roman legionaries returned home upon their discharge from military service, so it is possible that some Black Romans married, had children, and remained in Britain after their tour of duty. This would certainly fuel the rumours and myths of black knights that existed throughout Britain of the 3rd century and after Rome’s departure from Britain. There was even a legend of a black knight at King Arthur’s round table.

The Dark Ages

Outline: The Franks

I. :
occupied Gaul by 481
combined German & Roman cultures
The Merovingians
A. Clovis (481-511 A.D.) -- united the Franks
B. Clovis converted -- politics and Christianity
C. Decline of the Merovingians
i. Merovingian kings incompetent, weak rulers -- became figure heads
ii. succession -- kingdom divided among sons
iii. counts acted in their own interests
iv. power in the hands of the Mayors of the palace
v. Charles Martel (the Hammer) in control in 714 A.D.
vi. defeated Muslims at Poitiers (732-733 A.D.) ending threat
Battle of Tours
D. Pepin the Short -- The House of Pepin & the Carolingian dynasty
i. legitimacy assured by pope -- coronation in 751 A.D.
ii. the donation of Pepin (the papal states in 756 A.D.)
iii alliance of Franks and pope
iv. began tradition of church approval of kings
v. coronation helped establish papal authority over kings
vi. widened split with Byzantium
E. Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) 768-814 A.D. Charlemagne
i. the conquest and conversion of the Saxons
the wars against the Spanish Muslims: The Song of Roland

The History of Charlemagne
ii. the appeal from the pope and the defeat of the Lombards
iii. renewal of papal alliance
iv. his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D. by Leo III
v. extended Christianity
i. moved the centre of power to western Europe
vii. the political structure of Charlemagne's empire --

Charlemagne’s Empire
a. Kingdom divided into counties and marks
b. missi dominici -- king's envoys / agents
c. ** feudalism:
d. lord/vassals -- king assisted by local nobility
e. homage -- investiture
f. fief given in return for feudal obligations
g. the church and feudalism
viii. the Carolingian Renaissance

Timeline

Louis the Pious and his sons
i. divided kingdom among sons -- led to civil war
ii. Lothar
iii. Charles the Bald
iv. Louis the German
v. the Strasbourg Oaths between Charles & Louis
vi. the Treaty of Verdun 843 A.D. -- led to division of Europe
vii. Charles the Bald and the loss of the west
viii. the deposition of his successor -- Charles the Fat
ix. power divided
The Collapse of the Carolingian Empire
weakened Frankish kingdoms easy prey for Vikings, Magyars, Moors
Vikings Raid European Mainland
need for security
The Rise of Feudalism

Kings & Queens of England

Anglo-Saxon Kings
924-939 Athelstan; (15yrs, 102 days)
939-946 Edmund; (6yrs, 210 days)
946-955 Edred; (9yrs, 181 days)
955-959 Edwy; (3yrs, 313 days)
959-975 Edgar; (15yrs, 280 days)
975-978 Edward the Martyr; (2yrs, 253 days)
978-1016 Ethelred the Unready; (38yrs, 36 days)
1016 Edmund Ironside; (222 days)

Danish Kings
1013 Sweyn Forkbeard; (a few weeks)
1016-1035 Canute; (18yrs, 347 days)
1035-1040 Harold I; (4 yrs, 125 days)
1040-1042 Hardecanute; (2yrs, 83 days)

Anglo-Saxon Kings (cont.)
1042-1066 St Edward the Confessor; (23yrs, 294 days)
1066 Harold II; (283 days)

Norman and Plantagenet Kings, 1066-1377
William the Conqueror 1066-1377
William Rufus 1087-1100 (son of William)
Henry I 1100-1135 (William Rufus' brother)
Stephen 1135-1154 (nephew of Henry I)
Henry II 1154-1189 (grandson of Henry I)
Richard I 1189-1199 (third son of Henry II)
John 1199-1216 (fifth son of Henry II)
Henry III 1216-1272 (son of John)
Edward I 1272-1307 (son of Henry III)
Edward II 1307-1327 (son of Edward I)
Edward III 1327-1377 (son of Edward II)

Houses of Lancaster and York, 1377-1485
Richard II 1377-1399 (grandson of Edward III, son of the Black Prince)
Henry IV 1399-1413 (grandson of Edward III, son of John of Gaunt)
Henry V 1413-1422 (son of Henry IV)
Henry VI 1422-1461 (son of Henry V)
Edward IV 1461-1483 (great grandson of Edmund of York, Edward III's youngest son)
Richard III 1483-1485 (uncle of Edward V)

House of Tudor, 1485-1603
Henry VII 1485-1509 (grandson of Henry V, wife's second husband)
Henry VIII 1509-1547 (Henry VII's second son)
Edward V 1547-1553 (Henry's son by Jane Seymour)
Mary 1553-1558 (Henry's daughter by Queen Catherine)
Elizabeth I 1558-1603 (Henry's daughter by Anne Boleyn)

House of Stuart, 1603-1714
James I 1603-1625 (great-great-grandson of Henry VII)
Charles I 1625-1649 (second son of James)
[Commonwealth 1649-1660 Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector]
Charles II 1660-1685 (oldest son of Charles)
James II 1685-1688 (brother of Charles II)

lorious Revolution 1689
William of Orange (grandson of Charles I) and Mary (daughter of James II)
[William and Mary 1689-1694; William as William III to 1702]
Anne 1702-1714 (sister of Mary)

House of Hanover, 1714-1834
George I 1714-1727 (great-grandson of James I)
George II 1727-1760 (son of George I)
George III 1760-1820 (grandson of George II)
George IV 1820-1830 (son of George III)
William IV 1830-1837 (brother of George IV)

House of Saxe-Coburg and Windsor
Victoria 1837-1901 (niece of William IV)
Edward VII 1901-1910 (son of Victoria and Albert)
George V 1910-1936 (second son of Edward VII)
Edward VIII 1936 (son of George V)
George VI 1936-1952 (second son of George V)
Elizabeth II 1952 - (daughter of George VI)

Ayi Kwei Armah

Ghanaian novelist and poet, known for his visionary symbolism, poetic energy, and the extremely high moral integrity of his political vision. Armah's first three novels were hailed as modernistic prose, while his next two were praised for their Afrocentrism. Armah has lived and worked in the different cultural zones of Africa. Much of Armah's earlier work deals with the betrayed ideals of Ghanaian nationalism and Nkrumahist socialism.

...

"Ra's no self-created god
Ra is our self-creation
Ra is us
embracing space
traversing time. So
no my love
whatever we've run short of
this hasty day
its name cannot be
time."
(from 'Seed Time')

Ayi Kwei Armah was born in 1939 to Fante-speaking parents in the twin harbour city of Sekondi Takoradi, in western Ghana. On his father's side Armah was descended from a royal family in the Ga tribe. He attended the prestigious Achimota College. In 1959 he went on scholarship to the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts. After graduating he entered Harvard University, receiving a degree in sociology. Armah then moved to Algeria and worked as a translator for the magazine Révolution Africaine. In 1964 Armah returned to Ghana, where he was a scriptwriter for Ghana Television and later taught English at the Navarongo School. Between the years 1967 and 1968 he was editor of Jeune Afrique magazine in Paris. In 1968-70 Armah studied at Columbia University, obtaining his M.F.A. in creative writing.

In the 1970s Armah worked as a teacher in East Africa, at the College of National Education, Chamg'omge, Tanzania, and at the National University of Lesotho. He has also lived in Dakar, Senegal from the 1980s and taught at Amherst, and University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Armah started his career as a writer in the 1960s. He published poems and short stories in the Ghanaian magazine Okyeame, and in Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and New African. Armah's first novel, The Beautiful Ones Are not Yet Born, appeared in 1968. The allegorical story depicts the life of an anonymously railway office clerk, simply called "the man," and his daily struggle in the slums against poverty on one side and material greed on the other. He is pressured by his acquisitive family and fellow workers to accept the norms of society, bribery and corruption in order to guarantee his family a comfortable life. His virtues go largely unrewarded, his wife thinks him a fool, and his relatives prosper. At the end of the novel, the moral strength of "the man" is contrasted to a once-powerful politician who has been deposed in a military coup.

In Fragments (1971), the protagonist, Baako, is a "been-to", a man who has been to the United States and received his education there. Back in Ghana he is regarded with superstitious awe as a link to the Western life style. Baako's grandmother, Naana, is a blind-seer, who understands Baako and who stands in living contact with the ancestors. Under the strain of the unfilled expectations Baako finally breaks. As in his first novel, Armah contrasts the two worlds of materialism and moral values, corruption and dreams, two worlds of integrity and social pressure. Why Are We So Blest? (1972) was set largely in an American University, and focused on a student, Modin Dofu, who has dropped out of Harvard. Disillusioned Modin is torn between independence and Western values. He meets a Portuguese black African named Solo, who has already suffered a mental breakdown, and a white American girl, Aimée Reitsch. Solo, the rejected writer, keeps a diary, which is the substance of the novel. Aimée's frigidity and devotion to the revolution leads finally to destruction, when Modin is killed in the desert by O.A.S. revolutionaries.

...

"they dream of substituting
another small tight group
for the one serving its bitter time
at the tip of
the overripe colonial abscess
on this sliver of our continental home
we've been connected into calling
our state."
(from 'News')

Two Thousand Seasons (1973) is an epic, in which a pluralized communal voice speaks through the history of Africa, its wet and dry seasons, from a period of one thousand years. Characterization is concerned only with the representation of the group experience and collective states and feelings. Armah depicts Arab and European oppressors, "predators," "destroyers," and "zombies," and prophesies a new age. The novel is written in allegorical tone, and shifts from autobiographical and realistic details to philosophical pondering. The Healers (1979) mixed fact and fiction about the fall of the celebrated Ashante empire. The healers in question are traditional medicine practitioners who see fragmentation as the lethal disease of Africa. In the 1980s Armah remained silent as a novelist. In 1995 published novel Osiris Rising depicted a radical educational reform group, which reinstates ancient Egypt at the centre of its curriculum.

Armah has often been regarded as belonging to the next generation of African writers after Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. At the same time he is said to "epitomize an era of intense despair." Especially Armah's later work have aroused strong reaction from many critics. Two Thousand Seasons has been labelled dull and verbose, although Wole Soyinka considered its vision secular and humane.
As an essayist Armah has dealt with the identity and predicament of Africa. His main concern is for the establishment of a pan-African agency that will rope all the diverse cultures and languages of the continent. Armah has called for the adoption of Kiswahili as the continental language.

For further reading: Ayi Kwei Armah, Radical Iconoclast by Ode Ogede (2000); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 1); Postcolonial African Writers, ed. by Pushpa Naidu Parekh and Siga Fatima Jagne (1998); An African Focus - A Study of Ayi Kwei Armah’s Narrative Africanization by Leif Lorentzon (1998); The Existential Fiction of Ayi Kwei Armah, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre by Tommie L. Jackson (1996); The Wisdom of the Ages by Yaa Oforiwaa, Akili Addae (1995); Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah by K. Damodar Rao (1993); Critical Perspective on Ayi Kwei Armah, ed. by Derek Wright (1992); Ayi Kwei Armah's Africa by Derek Wright (1989); The Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah by Robert Frase (1980)

Selected bibliography:

• "African Socialism:Utopian or Scientifi", 1967 (Présense Africaine 64)
• The Beautiful One Are Not Yet Born, 1968
• "The Offal Kind", 1969 (short story)
• Fragments, 1970 - suom. Pirstaleita
• Why Are We So Blest?, 1972 - suom. Mistä meille tämä armo?
• Two Thousand Seasons, 1973
• The Healers, 1978
• "The Caliban Complex", 1985 (West Africa, March 18 and 25)
• "The Festival Syndrome", 1985 (West Africa, April 15)
• "Dakar Hieroglyphics, 1986 (West Africa, May 19)
• "Doctor Kamikaze", 1989 (short story)
• Osiris Rising, 1995

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered to be the archetypal chronicler of the Victorian times. Dickens's works are characterized by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy.

He had also experienced in his youth oppression, when he was forced to end school in his early teens and work in a factory. Dickens's good, bad, and comic characters, such as the cruel miser Scrooge, the aspiring novelist David Copperfield, or the trusting and innocent Mr. Pickwick, have fascinated generations of readers.

"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice." (from Great Expectations, 1860-61)

Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Hampshire, Dickens's father was a clerk in the navy pay office. He was well paid but often ended the week in financial troubles. In 1814 Dickens moved to London, and then to Chatham, where he received some education. The schoolmaster William Giles gave special attention to Dickens, who made rapid progress. In 1824, at the age of 12, Dickens was sent to work for some months at a blacking factory, Hungerford Market, London, while his father John was in Marshalea debtor's prison. "My father and mother were quite satisfied," Dickens later recalled bitterly. "They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge." Later this period found its way to the novel LITTLE DORRITT (1855-57). John Dickens paid his £40 debt with the money he inherited from his mother; she died at the age of seventy-nine when he was still in prison.

In 1824-27 Dickens studied at Wellington House Academy, London, and at Mr. Dawson's school in 1827. From 1827 to 1828 he was a law office clerk, and then a shorthand reporter at Doctor's Commons. After learning shorthand, he could take down speeches word for word. At the age of eighteen, Dickens applied for a reader's ticket at the British Museum, where he read with eager industry the works of Shakespeare, Goldsmith's History of England, and Berger's Short Account of the Roman Senate. He wrote for True Sun (1830-32), Mirror of Parliament (1832-34), and the Morning Chronicle (1834-36). Dickens gained soon the reputation as "the fastest and most accurate man in the Gallery", and he could celebrate his prosperity with "a new hat and a very handsome blue cloak with velvet facings," as one of his friend described his somewhat dandyish outlook. In the 1830s Dickens contributed to Monthly Magazine, and The Evening Chronicle and edited Bentley's Miscellany. These years left Dickens with lasting affection for journalism and suspicious attitude towards unjust laws. His career as a writer of fiction started in 1833 when his short stories and essays to appeared in periodicals. 'A Dinner at Poplar Walk' was Dickens's first published sketch. It appeared in the Monthly Magazine in December 1833. It made him so proud, that he later told that "I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear the street, and were not fit to be seen there." SKETCHES BY BOZ, illustrated by George Cruikshank, was published in book form in 1836-37. THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB was published in monthly parts from April 1836 to November 1837.

Dickens's relationship with Maria Beadnell, the daughter of a banker, whom he had courted for four years, ended in 1833. Three years later Dickens married Catherine Hogart, the daughter of his friend George Hogarth, who edited the newly established Evening Chronicle. With Catherine he had 10 children. They separated in 1858. Some biographers have suspected that Dickens was more fond of Catherine's sister, Mary, who moved into their house and died in 1837 at the age of 17 in Dickens's arms. Eventually she became the model for Dora Copperfield. Dickens also wanted to be buried next to her and wore Mary's ring all his life. Another of Catherine's sisters, Georgiana, moved in with the Dickenses, and the novelist fell in love with her. Dickens also had a long liaison with the actress Ellen Ternan, whom he had met by the late 1850s.

Dickens's sharp ear for conversation helped him to create colourful characters through their own words. In his daily writing Dickens followed certain rules: "He rose at a certain time, he retired at another, and, though no precision, it was not often that arrangements varied. His hours for writing were between breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done, no temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. The order and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he was governed by rules laid down for himself - rules well studied beforehand, and rarely departed from. " (anonymous friend, in Charles Dickens, An Illustrated Anthology, Cresent Books, 1995)

Many of Dickens's following novels first appeared in monthly installments, including OLIVER TWIST (1837-39). It depicts the London underworld and hard years of the foundling Oliver Twist, whose right to his inheritance is kept secret by the villainous Mr. Monks. Oliver suffers in a poorfarm and workhouse. He outrages authorities by asking a second bowl of porridge. From a solitary confinement he is apprenticed to a casket maker, and becomes a member of a gang of young thieves, led by Mr. Fagin. Finally Fagin is hanged at Newgate and Mr. Barnlow adopts Oliver. NICHOLAS NICKELBY (1838-39) was a loosely structured tale of young Nickleby's struggles to seek his fortune.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843) is one of Dickens's most loved works, which has been adapted into screen a number of times. The character of Ebenezer Scrooge, the "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching" miser, has attracted many British actors.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES was set in the years of the French Revolution. The plot circles around the look-alikes Charles Darnay, a nephews of a marquis, and Sydney Carton, a lawyer, who both love the same woman, Lucy.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1860-61) began as a serialized publication in Dickens's periodical All the Year Round on December 1, 1860. The story of Pip (Philip Pirrip) was among Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's favourite novels. Pip, an orphan, lives with his old sister and her husband. He meets an escaped convict named Abel Magwitch and helps him against his will. Magwitch is recaptured and Pip is taken care of Miss Havisham. He falls in love with the cold-hearted Estella, Miss Havisham's ward. With the help of an anonymous benefactor, Pip is properly educated, and he becomes a snob. Magwitch turns out to be the benefactor; he dies and Pip's "great expectations" are ruined. He works as a clerk in a trading firm, and marries Estella, Magwitch's daughter.

Dickens participated energetically in all forms of the social life of the time, "light and motion flashed from every part of it," wrote his friend and future biographer John Forster. In the 1840s Dickens founded Master Humphrey's Cloak and edited the London Daily News. He spent much time travelling and campaigning against many of the social evils with his pamphlets and other writings. In the 1850s Dickens was founding editor of Household World and its successor All the Year Round (1859-70). Although Dickens's works as a novelist are now best remembered, he produced hundreds of essays and edited and rewrote hundreds of others submitted to the various periodicals he edited. Dickens distinguished himself as an essayist in 1834 under the pseudonym Boz. 'A Visit to Newgate' (1836) reflects his own memories of visiting his own family in the Marshalea Prison. 'A Small Star in the East' reveals the working conditions on mills and 'Mr. Barlow' (1869) draws a portrait of an insensitive tutor.

Dickens lived in 1844-45 in Italy, Switzerland and Paris, and from 1860 one his address was at Gadshill Place, near Rochester, Kent, where he lived with his two daughters and sister-in-law. He had also other establishments - Gad's Hill, and Windsor Lodge, Peckham, which he had rented for Ellen Ternan. His wife Catherine lived at the London house. In 1858-68 Dickens gave lecturing tours in Britain and the United States. By the end of his last American tour, Dickens could hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry. In an opium den in Shadwell, Dickens saw an elderly pusher known as Opium Sal, who then featured in his mystery novel THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. He collapsed at Preston, in April 1869, after which his doctors put a stop to his public performances. Dickens died at Gadshill on suddenly of a stroke on June 8, 1870. Dickens had asked that he should be buried "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner".

For further reading: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (2002); Dickens and the 1830s by Kathryn Chittick (1991); Dickens by Peter Acroyd (1990); The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin (1990); Dickens on America and the Americans, edited by Michael Slater (1979); Dickens and Charity by Norris Pope (1979); Charles Dickens as Familiar Essayist by Gordon Spence (1977); The World of Charles Dickens by Angus Wilson (1970); Dickens the Craftsman: Strategies of Presentation, edited by Robert B. Partlow, Jr. (1970); The Inimitable Dickens by A.E. Dyson (1970); Dickens at Work by Kathleen Tillotson and John Butt (1957); Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson (1953); The Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster (1872-74) - Dickens links: The Dickens Page - Charles Dickens Gad's Hill Place - See also: Monica Dickens and friedly rival William Makepeace Thackeray - Trivia: Dickens suffered periodically insomnia like many authors, among them Franz Kafka

Columbus

The young frivolous courtesan with a definite Italian touch		This image is considered the most exact. Jovian Gallery, Como		The distinguish and arrogant Spanish Caballero

Who was he and where did he come from? His personal history is veiled in imprecision, mysteries, contradictions and romantic myths: everything about it is confusing and because of this it is subject to endless, sometimes inflamed controversies.When Columbus appeared on the world scene at the age of forty two, with a figure of great dimension. His majestic presence, as de Las Casas wrote, was, "like that of a Roman Senator, ... blue eyes and his red hair that had already gone white". de Las Casas also says: "because of his affable personality and sweet conversation he became friendly with all those who gave him an opportunity". The historian, Barros described him as talkative, desirous of showing off his abilities, fantastic and imaginative, and Rui de Pina, King Alfonso V's chronicler, described Columbus as arrogant and with a tendency to "always exceed the parameters of truth".His first biography, written by his son Fernando (Historia del Almirante don Cristóbal Colón) is considered one of circumstance, in which filial passion and the interest that motivated the biographer at that moment, at times veiled the truth. On the other hand, Fernando confesses when he refers to his father's juvenile activities: "I do not have enough information, because he died when I did not have the audacity or the experience to ask him, out of filial respect or to speak with greater veracity, because as a boy I was far from the idea of ever writing it."(the biography)Writing about Columbus the man is a task more difficult than chronicling his achievements, even that is at times difficult.

His Place of Birth

Alleged places of birth: Extremadura, Galicia, Portugal, Cataluña, England, Switzerland
and of course Genoa.

Fernando Colón, leaves no doubt about his father's Italian origin, indicating Genoa and other locations surrounding that city as Columbus' place of birth. Towards the end of his life Columbus had no qualms in declaring his homeland, in a letter to Genoa he wrote: "While the body may be here (Spain), the heart is constantly there". His will also states: "...because from her (Genoa) I came and in her I was born".

His Language

ITALIAN: He was moderately proficient, but wrote very little in Italian.

PORTUGUESE: He lived eight years in Portugal and if he spoke Portuguese, he left no documents written in that language.

LATIN: His Latin was mediocre, according to Ballesteros.

SPANISH: With the exception of a few lines in Latin and Italian, Columbus always wrote in Spanish, as if it were the only cultured language in which he could express himself freely. With relative freedom though, affected by his use of Portuguese terms, made his Spanish defective. de Las Casas wrote: "He (Columbus) never completely penetrated the significance of the vocabulary of the Castilian (Spanish) language nor the form of speaking it."

His Education and Culture

Columbus' education and culture was in fact, autodidactic, he described himself the following way:

"I have had dealings and communication with wise, ecclesiastical and worldly peoples, Latins and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and with many of other sects... In the seamanship he gave me abundance, of astrology he gave me enough and the same in geometry and arithmetic; and genius I devise in the one it encourages and hands to draw spheres, and in them the cities, rivers and mountains, islands and ports, everything in their own place. In this time I have seen and studied all writings, cosmography, history, chronicles and philosophy, and of other arts."

His relationship with Américo Vespucio

About the relationship between these two men all that is known is that it had to be one of profound friendship, if one is to judge by Columbus' own testimony. One year before his death and in the midst of anguish and bitterness, the Admiral writes his son Diego on the occasion of a visit by Vespucio to the Court:

"... I spoke to Américo Vespucio, the porter of this (letter)... He has always(1) wished to please me; he is a man of good will, fortune has been contrary to him as it has been to many others; his works have not benefited him as reason requires. He backs me and has the desire to do things that redound in my benefit, if it were in his hands... he is determined to do for me every thing that he can." (2)

Fernando Columbus, who never hid his aversion for those he thought decided in damaging his father, with the exception of the King, says nothing about Vespucio, a fact that amazes de Las Casas.

"In January of 1492 Vespucio returned to Seville and some months later a group of Italians: Negrón, Capatal, Doria, Rivarol, Catagno, Spínola and Gianetto Berardi loan Columbus money for the realization of his first voyage. When the Admiral leaves on his second voyage he appoints Berardi as his administrator. This way Vespucio links to the great adventure of the Indies and its discoverer."(3)

Columbus and Vespucci were different types of people. Amerigo Vespucci was considered a modern man from the Renaissance period of scientific inquiry that allowed men to independently question events of the times. These men took nothing for granted. They had the thirst for knowledge and had to be shown the reasons in scientific methods for all facts. Columbus on the other hand was a man from the old world and not having the advantages of the Renaissance period believed without question the reasons given for events in his time. Columbus believed in tradition and faith of his world while Vespucci had the modern mentality of the Renaissance period.

(1) Always:Siempre in this case denotes a long time
(2)The original of this letter is written in old and rudimentary Spanish and has been translated with some license. The facts contained in the translation though are accurate.
(3) Isacc J. Pardo Historia de Venezuela, Vol 11

Countries Discovered

San Salvador (Haiti), Santa María de la Concepción (Haiti), Fernandina (Haiti), Isabela (Haiti), Juana (Haiti), Española (Haiti),

I think it appropriate to initiate the narration of the first voyage with a quote from Columbus' JournalFriday, 3 August 1492.Set sail from the bar of Saltes at 8 o'clock, and proceeded with a strong breeze till sunset, sixty miles or fifteen leagues south, afterwards southwest and south by west, which is the direction of the Canaries.

The Coat of Arms

The original Coat of Arms given to Columbus contained: a golden castle on a field of green for Castilla; a purple rampant lion on a field of silver for Leon; some golden islands on a blue sea and he was allowed to include in the lower part, his alleged old family arms. A later modification included another quarter with golden anchors on a field of green and a motto that reads: "To Castilla and Leon the New World was given by Colón"The Coat of arms displayed here is the final version.

The Second Voyage: September 25, 1493 - June 11, 1496
Countries Discovered: Dominica, Maria Galante, Santa Maria de Guadalupe, San Juan Bautista (Puerto Rico), Jamaica, San Juan Evangelista

The Third Voyage: May 30, 1498 - November 25, 1500
Countries Discovered: La Santissima Trinidad

The Fourth Voyage: May 11, 1502 - November 7, 1505

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce, the son of a wealthy merchant, was born in Hull in 1759. William's father died when he was young and for a time was brought up by an uncle and aunt. William came under the influence of his aunt, who was a strong supporter of John Wesley and the Methodist movement. Disturbed by these developments, Mrs. Wilberforce brought her son back to the family home.

At seventeen Wilberforce was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. Wilberforce was shocked by the behaviour of his fellow students and later wrote: "I was introduced on the very first night of my arrival to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives." One of Wilberforce's friends at university was William Pitt, who was later to become Britain's youngest ever Prime Minister.

William Wilberforce decided on a career in politics and soon after leaving university at the age of twenty, he decided to become a candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary election in Hull. His opponent was Lord Rockingham, a rich and powerful member of the nobility, and Wilberforce had to spend nearly £9,000 to become elected. In the House of Commons Wilberforce supported the Tory government led by William Pitt.

In 1784 Wilberforce became converted to Evangelical Christianity. He joined the Clapham Set, a group of evangelical members of the Anglican Church, centred around John Venn, rector of Clapham Church in London. As a result of this conversion, Wilberforce became interested in social reform and was eventually approached by Lady Middleton, to use his power as an MP to bring an end to the slave trade.

Society of Friends in Britain had been campaigning against the slave trade for many years. They had presented a petition to Parliament in 1783 and in 1787 had helped form the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Of the twelve members on the committee nine were Quakers. As a member of the evangelical movement, Wilberforce was sympathetic to Mrs. Middleton's request. In his letter of reply, Wilberforce wrote: "I feel the great importance of the subject and I think myself unequal to the task allotted to me." Despite these doubts, Wilberforce agreed to Mrs. Middleton's request, but soon afterwards, he became very ill and it was not until 12th May, 1789, that he made his first speech against the slave trade.

Wilberforce, along with Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, was now seen as one of the leaders of the anti-slave trade movement. Most of Wilberforce's Tory colleagues in the House of Commons were opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he had to rely on the support of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Grenville and Henry Brougham. When William Wilberforce presented his first bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88.

Wilberforce refused to be beaten and in 1805 the House of Commons passed a bill to that made it unlawful for any British subject to transport slaves, but the measure was blocked by the House of Lords.

In February 1806, Lord Grenville formed a Whig administration. Grenville and his Foreign Secretary, Charles Fox, were strong opponents of the slave trade. Fox and Wilberforce led the campaign in the House of Commons, whereas Grenville, had the task of persuading the House of Lords to accept the measure.

Greenville made a passionate speech where he argued that the trade was "contrary to the principles of justice, humanity and sound policy" and criticised fellow members for "not having abolished the trade long ago". When the vote was taken the Abolition of the Slave Trade bill was passed in the House of Lords by 41 votes to 20. In the House of Commons it was carried by 114 to 15 and it become law on 25th March, 1807.

British captains who were caught continuing the trade were fined £100 for every slave found on board. However, this law did not stop the British slave trade. If slave-ships were in danger of being captured by the British navy, captains often reduced the fines they had to pay by ordering the slaves to be thrown into the sea.

Some people involved in the anti-slave trade campaign such as Thomas Fowell Buxton, argued that the only way to end the suffering of the slaves was to make slavery illegal. Wilberforce disagreed, he believed that at this time slaves were not ready to be granted their freedom. He pointed out in a pamphlet that he wrote in 1807 that: "It would be wrong to emancipate (the slaves). To grant freedom to them immediately, would be to insure not only their masters' ruin, but their own. They must (first) be trained and educated for freedom."

In 1823 Thomas Fowell Buxton formed the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Buxton eventually persuaded Wilberforce to join his campaign but as he had retired from the House of Commons in 1825, he did not play an important part in persuading Parliament to bring an end to slavery.

William Wilberforce died on 29th July, 1833. One month later, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act that gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and an American mother, was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst.

Following his graduation from the Royal Military College in Sandhurst he was commissioned in the Forth Hussars in February 1895. As a war correspondent he was captured during the Boer War. After his escape he became a National Hero.

He became a Conservative Member of Parliament in 1900. He held many high posts in Liberal and Conservative governments during the first three decades of the century. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty - a post which he had earlier held from 1911 to 1915. In May, 1940, he became Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and remained in office until 1945. He took over the premiership again in the Conservative victory of 1951 and resigned in 1955. However, he remained a Member of Parliament until the general election of 1964, when he did not seek re-election. Queen Elizabeth II conferred on Churchill the dignity of Knighthood and invested him with the insignia of the Order of the Garter in 1953. Among the other countless honours and decorations he received, special mention should be made of the honorary citizenship of the United States which President Kennedy conferred on him in 1963.

Churchill's literary career began with campaign reports: The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898) and The River War (1899), an account of the campaign in the Sudan and the Battle of Omdurman. In 1900, he published his only novel, Savrola, and, six years later, his first major work, the biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. His other famous biography, the life of his great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, was published in four volumes between 1933 and 1938. Churchill's history of the First World War appeared in four volumes under the title of The World Crisis (1923-29); his memoirs of the Second World War ran to six volumes (1948-1953/54). After his retirement from office, Churchill wrote a History of the English-speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-58). His magnificent oratory survives in a dozen volumes of speeches, among them The Unrelenting Struggle (1942), The Dawn of Liberation (1945), and Victory (1946).

Churchill, a gifted amateur painter, wrote Painting as a Pastime (1948). An autobiographical account of his youth, My Early Life, appeared in 1930.

Empire Windrush

After the Second World War people were needed due the to labour shortage. An advert in the Jamaican "Daily Gleaner" appeared, advertising that there was a journey on the troopship SS Empire Windrush (SteamShip) costing only £28.10. On that troopship there were space for 300 passengers below deck. For the poor people living in Jamaica this was the chance of a lifetime. On the 24th of May in 1948 the ship left the harbour of Kingston in Jamaica with 300 passengers below deck and 192 passengers on the deck This ship was on the way from Australia to the UK. Most of the people travelling to England were ex-servicemen and women. Most of them did not know what to expect in England. 25% of them were promised to get a job in the RAF. 30% being ex-servicemen who expected to get a job anywhere in the UK. Approximately 45% were unsure about what to expect, hence leaving it to fate.

When they got closer to the coast of the UK, it was heard on the radio, that, if there were any disturbances on the Windrush, the HMS Sheffield (His Majesty's Ship) would send them back. Some of the men on the Empire Windrush started to panic and a few were already crying because they thought that the ship would take them back to their home country. This was told by Sam King an ex-RAF serviceman and Windrush emigrant. They also heard that the newspapers "The Daily Graphic" and "The Dispatch" were printing that the Empire Windrush should be turned back and that there were great discussions in the Houses of Parliament , on whether the settlers should be turned back or not. It was the Labour Government's Colonial Secretary Creech Jones who said that they would be allowed to land as long as they had British Passports. He added that this would not be a problem because the settlers would not stay longer than a year anyway.

Baron Backer was one of the few West Indian servicemen who stayed in England after the war. He was demobbed in 1948, when the Windrush settlers came to the coast of England. So he went to a man called Major Keith who was an official from the Colonial Office. Since the Colonial Office had nothing prepared for the settlers to live in, Baron suggested the use of Clapham Common Deep Shelter. He told Major Keith that the shelter had been used for German and Italian prisoners of war and was no longer used. This could be used to house the settlers for a short time. Baron knew about this shelter as he had used it when he came to London and had no where to live. Major Keith told Baron Baker that he should get in touch with Joan Vicars who later became Dame Joan Vicars. Baron went there and got in touch with Fenner Brockway and Marcus Lipton. They discussed the situation in detail and Baron decided that he would go on the ship and tell the people not to leave the ship until the telegram had arrived.

One hour after he was on the ship he received that telegram he was waiting for. The shelter housed 236 settlers that night. Brixton was made a multi-racial community. As the shelter was less than a mile away from Brixton, most of the settlers found places to live in that locality.

After that the London Transport started in April 1956 to recruit more and more people from the West Indies. At least 3.787 Barbadians were taken over to Britain. There were still more people needed. Finally 11 million workers from other countries were recruited, that was 5% of the workforce in the UK. These people were faced with many problems, especially since most people did nor accept them in the UK. Many signs could be found in pubs and hotels saying, "No coloureds, No Irish, No dogs".
But things became better for the black /ethnic minority people after the first Race Relation Act in 1965 was passed. After this in 1968 and in 1976 further Race Relations Acts were passed. In spite of this many black people were harassed by many people and threatened by thugs and other people. Nevertheless the black people stayed and they will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Windrush this year.

Sikh

The word Sikh means disciple or student. Sikhs are students and followers of Guru Nanak (b. 1469), the founder of the Sikh religious tradition, and the nine prophet-teachers—called Gurus—who succeeded him. Though sometimes mistaken for members of a sect of Hinduism or Islam, Sikhs belong to a distinct religion with its own unique, divine scriptures, which are collected in the Guru Granth Sahib, the eternal spiritual guide of the Sikhs. This extraordinarily poetic treasure of sacred and practical wisdom contains not only the writings of the Sikh Gurus, but remarkably, those of Muslim and Hindu saints as well. It is also notable in that the holy text was written by the Gurus themselves, without the use of any intermediaries.

Sikhism is the youngest of the World Religions, barely 500 years old. It was founded by Siri Guru Nanak Dev Ji in 1469 who laid the basic principles of Sikhism. It offered the people a simple Sikh religion teaching "Oneness of God", whose name is TRUTH. Nine Gurus followed him who all reinforced and added to what was taught by the first Guru. After which in 1708, the holy book of the Sikhs, The Siri GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI was Proclaimed to be the only Guru by the last Guru, Siri Guru Gobind Singh Ji. This holy book embodies the philosophy and fundamentals of Sikhism. It is the only holy book of a major religion which was written and authenticated by its founders.

All the fundamentals of Sikhism emanate from the concept of love for God which follows the love of man. God is the Supreme being, Universal and all powerful. For a Sikh, all human beings are creatures of God and must be treated equally. One must work hard and share one's earnings with the less fortunate which had to be earned by righteous means. One must be always active in mind and body.
Siri Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the last Guru gave the Sikhs a distinct Uniform and appearance so that they were easily recognized. So, in 1699 on the day of Vasakhi April 13, he assembled his Sikhs and baptized five beloved who were brave and obedient to his orders and called this brotherhood - The Khalsa. Also he gave them a new surname "SINGH" (Lion) to be added to their first names. He gave them the five symbols and five basic prayers. These saint - soldiers were devoted to mankind. The women were given equal status with men as the new brotherhood had no distinctions of caste, creed, color or sex. The women were to add "KAUR" (Princess) to their names and were to be always protected.

The five symbols are necessary for the strength and unity of the religion and also for the value each had. All Sikhs were to have Kesh or unshorn hair, a Kanga or the comb to keep this hair neat and clean, Kaccha or the underwear worn as a symbol of agility and readiness for action, Kirpan or sword which is an emblem of courage and adventure to be used for defensive purposes and lastly, Kara or the Steel bracelet to remind the Sikh of his bond to the God.

A Sikh is easily recognized by his beard (Uncut and untrimmed ) and unshorn hair which he protects with a turban on his head. Sikhs are not allowed to wear caps and have to grow their hair to its natural lengths as it be going against the law of God and nature to cut them. Also it is a mark of Distinction for the Sikhs. The simple ideals of Sikhism and the history of fearless courage of the Sikhs has made the Khalsa proud and fearless even today. In fact, a Sikh has his feet firmly planted on the earth but his head is always towards god.

Spike Lee

Spike Lee was born Shelton Lee in 1957, in Atlanta Georgia. At a very young age he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from a proud and intelligent background. His father was a jazz musician, and his mother a school teacher. His mother dubbed him Spike, due to his tough nature. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he developed his film making skills. After graduating from Morehouse, to go to the Tisch School of arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, Answer, The (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, The (1915) - a ten minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45 minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983), which won a student academy award. However success did not mean money, and Lee's next film, 'The Messenger', in 1984, was somewhat biographical.

In 1986 Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for 175,000 dollars, and made seven million. Since then Lee has become a well-known, intelligent, and talented film maker. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set in a historically black school, and focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible and uncaring. The film also saw one of Fishburne, Lawrence's first major roles. With School Daze in profit, Lee went on to do his landmark film, Do The Right Thing (1989), a movie specifically about his own town in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed a neighbourhood (Bed-Stuy, to be exact) on a very hot day, and the racial tensions that emerge. The movie garnered an Oscar nomination, for Danny Aiello, for supporting actor. It also sparked a debate on racial relations, and exactly where Lee was taking the film.

Lee went on to produce the jazz biopic Mo' Better Blues (1990), which is often considered heavy handed, but still good, and did not seem to be as controversial as his previous efforts, but showed his talent for directing and acting, and was the first of many Spike Lee films to feature ‘Denzel Washington’ (qv). His next film, Jungle Fever (1991), was about interracial dating. Lee's handling of the subject proved yet again highly controversial although it did not quite arouse the debate that similar earlier films did, such as 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'. Lee's next film was the self-titled biography of Malcolm X (1992), which had Denzel Washington portraying the civil rights leader. The movie was a success, and resulted in an Oscar nomination for Washington.

His next films were the comparatively light, Crooklyn (1994), and the intense crime drama, Clockers (1995). In 1996 Lee directed two movies: the badly-received comedy, Girl 6 (1996), and the politically pointed, Get on the Bus (1996), about a group of men going to the Million Man March. His next film, He Got Game (1998), proved to be another excursion into the collegiate world as he shows the darker side of recruiting college athletes. The movie, in limited release, yet again featured Denzel Washington. It was well received and well liked, if for nothing else than the fine quality of acting and directing the film showed its audience.

Bamboozled (2000), proved so over the top and too much for Hollywood. The movie made a near mockery out of television and the way African-Americans are perceived by white America, and the way African-Americans perceive themselves. The movie, however, was a resounding critical success.
Lee also has produced films like New Jersey Drive (1995), Tales from the Hood (1995), and Drop Squad (1994). He also has produced and or directed movies about Huey Newton, Jim Brown, and has commented in many documentaries about varied subjects.

Hannibal

Hannibal Barca: Military Genius

Introduction

Carthage Before Hannibal Carthage, one of the most famous cities of antiquity, was founded on the north coast of Africa by the Phoenicians of Tyre (sur) in 814 B.C. The foundation of Carthage was closely followed by the establishment of other Phoenician cities in the west Mediterranean over which Carthage gradually gained control. From then on, Carthaginian power expanded into Spain, Sicily and numerous other places in the northern Mediterranean. This brought them into direct conflict with the empires in Rome and Greece. At the start of the 3rd century B.C..

Carthage was supreme in the western Mediterranean, enjoying the security of sea power and trading with her stations in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain as well as with the shores of Africa. Rome was painfully strug-gling to obtain the mastery of central and southern Italy, where she had absorbed the power and culture of the Etruscans and gradually forged a fed- eration of small states. It must havc already become clear that there was not going to be room in the Mediter- ranean for both Rome and Carthage. The clash came over Sicily in the First Punic War (264-241 B.C), at the end of which Carthage lost Sicily. sea-power, and security. The Roman victory in Sicily induced Rome to cross the narrow straits to Africa and attack Carthage directly. Fortunately for Carthage, a strong and honest man appeared in the person of Hamilcar Barca, a commander who had evacuated his forces undefeated from Sicily in the best tradition of Dunkirk. Hamilcar was able to put down a mutiny in the Carthagian army and restore order to it. The political situation at that time had a strangely modern flavour. Rome pursued a policy of cold war during which annexed Sardinia and Corsica, increased the reparations which Carthage was obliged to pay, and declared the Roman sphere of interest in Spain to extend from the North down to the river Ebro. In Carthage, a peace treaty was in power, commercially minded, ready to play the quisling. Hamilcar Barca, on the other hand, had popular support and the command of the armed forces. With these he proceeded to develop the Carthaginian hold on Spain, os- tensibly to enable Carthage to pay repatriation to Rome, but in fact, be- cause he saw in Spain a source of manpower and supplies and a base from which to attack Rome. With his son-in-law Hasdrubal and his four sons Hannibal, Hasdrubal, Hanno, and Mago, the 'lion's brood' as he cafled them. Hamilcar barca soon succeeded in turning southern Spain into a sort of empire where new Carthage or Carthagena was founded. In 228 B.C. he fell in battle and was succeeded by hasdrubal his son-in- law who, in his turn was murdered seven years later in 221 B.C.

The Rise of Hannibal

The army thereupon unanimously chose Hannibal to be their general in spite of his youth, "because of the shrewdness and courage which he had shown in their service." Hannibal was then 26 years old. This strange man, whose name means "Joy of Baal", had accompanied his father on his campaign in Spain. at the tender age of nine. Hamilcar Barca had agreed to take him on his campaign on one condition, that before the sac- rifice which he was then making to the gods, Hannibal should swear eter-nal enmity to Rome. No man ever kept a promise more faithfully. Hannibal's first military success was in Saguntum, which precipitated the Second Punic War. It is quite clear that Hannibal carried out a carefully prepared plan which he had inherited from his fa-ther. His object was nothing less than the destruction of the power of Rome before Rome destroyed Carthage, and Rome's most vulnerable spot was in Italy itself where the Roman federation of states was still loose and the Celtic tribes of Gauls in the North were in revolt. But since Carthage had lost command of the sea to Rome, how was Hannibal to get to Italy with his troops? The Romans never imagined for one moment that he could or would make the journey of 1500 miles overland from Spain, across the Pyrenees, the south of France, and the Alps; but that was exactly what Hannibal had decided to do. Having decided on his strategy and selected his theatre of operations? Hannibal followed two principles, which have grown no less important since his day: the seizure of the initiative, and the maintenance of the element of surprise. 218 B. C. may seem a long time ago. but the manner in which Hannibal set about his task is identical with that which a compel-tent commander would follow today. Hannibal first secured his bases at Carthage and Carthagena. Next he collected detailed information about the countries and peoples through which he proposed to pass. For this purpose he sent for messengers (liai-son-officers) from the Gaulish tribes and asked for detailed accounts of the terrain and the fertility of the country at the foot of the Alps, in the midst of the Alps, and in the plain of the river Po. Today, this aspect of Hannibal's planning would come under the head-ing of logistics. He also wanted to know the number of the inhabitants of the various populations, their capacity for war, and particularly whether their enmity against the Romans was main- tainted. This would be called political intelligence. He was particularly anxious to win over the Gauls on both sides of the Alps as he would only be able to operate in Italy against the Romans if the Gauls co-operated with him. He therefore planned a cam-pain of psychological warfare, to raise and maintain the morale of his supporters and to undermine the en-em’s will and power to resist. The operations began in great secrecy in the spring of 218 B.C. after Hannibal delivered a morale boosting speech to his troops. Moved by the emotions of indignation and lust for conquest, his men then leapt to their feet and shouted their readiness to follow Hannibal. He praised them for their valour and fixed the date of D- day, which was about the end of May. In this episode Hannibal's actions were paralleled two thousand years later by another young general of about his age, like him about to cross the Alps, and again like Hannibal, to make his initial reputation there