From Accra to Harlem and Back: Black Histories Matter
/#BlackLivesMatter
The murder of George Floyd has sparked a global protest movement as well as declarations of solidarity from black peoples and their allies all over the world, including in Africa. The Ghanaian President was one of the first African leaders to issue a statement of solidarity with black people in the United States of America (U.S.) over the tragic killing of George Floyd. In his statement, he criticized the continued hate and racism suffered by African Americans. The President’s declaration of support has been welcomed by many Ghanaians as well as praised by international audiences. His statement was certainly the right thing to do. Yet, he has also received criticism from his own citizens, regarding his government’s lack of accountability for the recent murder of Eric Ofotsu, a homeless man with mental health issues, who was gunned down by a military soldier during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Nana Akufo-Addo is not the only Ghanaian President to recognize that #BlackLivesMatter. Black Lives Mattered for Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of independent Ghana, who spent ten years in the U.S., studying at Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania, before heading to London in 1945. Nkrumah’s many conversations around black liberation and pan-Africanism started in the U.S. and began to advance a radicalizing discourse aimed at transforming a state of dependency into one of political and economic emancipation for all African peoples. As historian Jeffrey S. Ahlman (2017: 40) writes:
“Nkrumah’s American experiences were the political and economic realities of being black in the Depression-era and wartime United States as he embarked on a number of economic endeavors outside of his schooling, including hawking fish, laboring in a shipyard near Philadelphia, and working in a soap factory, before waiting tables on a shipping line running between New York and Vera Cruz, Mexico. Even more importantly, for Nkrumah, this was also a period of political experimentation in which he sought to embed himself in an eclectic array of pan-African political and social networks…”
Nkrumah’s identity as a black man and his pan-African politics were informed by his life experiences in the U.S. When he first arrived there – in New York, to be precise – on board a steamer ship, he had little money and stayed with other West Africans in Harlem. He then lived with black communities, preached in black churches (he had a degree in theology) and learnt from black intellectuals like C.L.R. James, W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. His ideas around pan-Africanism were influenced by his experience of race relations, as Nkrumah saw first-hand the racism black people endured in the U.S.
Cartoon by Bright Ackwerh, https://www.instagram.com/brightackwerh/
Nkrumah later invited Martin Luther King Jr. to the then Gold Coast for the country’s independence ceremony on 6th March 1957. They had a healthy admiration and respect for each other. When King returned to the U.S., he gave a sermon about his trip to Ghana entitled “The Birth of a New Nation”. He told his congregation that Ghana’s road to independence should teach African Americans that “the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a colony of the British Empire…Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.”
At a rally in Harlem: Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah and Adam Clayton Powell
Soon after, in 1958, Nkrumah met Malcolm X at a rally in Harlem. They became friends. When responding to King’s assassination in 1968, Nkrumah wrote: “Even though I don’t agree with [King] on some of his non-violence views, I mourn for him. The final solution of all this will come when Africa is politically united. Yesterday it was Malcolm X. Today Luther King. Tomorrow, fire all over the United States” (Nkrumah, in Biney 1990: 231). Perhaps, Nkrumah would have expressed his solidarity differently. He certainly would not be surprised that in the 21st Century, the U.S. “continues to grapple with racism”. It is neither a shock nor a contradiction, once we understand why #BlackLivesMatter.
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#BlackLivesMatter is a necessary response to the social distancing, the police brutality, the social injustice and violence that black communities across the U.S. continue to endure. It is a reminder that “equality” and human rights does not apply to a segment of the population, that the American civil war has not really ended, that white supremacy is institutionally entrenched into the state and federal systems and is presently reflected in the highest seat of power. That the slave plantation still lives on in the dreams of those in power. It is a not only a reminder that the system is broken. It is a living statement that the system has always been unfair, unjust and racist – it has always been broken. That it has always favoured the plantation owners and those who obeyed them faithfully. That nothing has changed, really. The nation that claims to protect them would gladly see them die; physically pushed into the darkest of corners of the world, slaving for their meals, policed and caged like animals, lynched and strangulated for sport.
Black.
Lives.
Matter.
Not because other lives matter less. But because some lives have always mattered more.
#BlackLivesMatter is a call to action. It is a spiritual journey you can take once you’ve accepted the truth – that this is a system of oppression and not an event that happened. It is a pilgrimage that does not require you to leave your home for a holy site, a mountain top or a wall on which blood has already been spilt, in order to find god or heal yourself. It is a journey into your own heart and soul, to ask yourself whether you like what you see. “Do you see the holy?” Or is yours the exclusive holy of a few who will enter paradise while others are abandoned by your greed, your lack of compassion and humanity, your cruelty? The truth is, there was already a crisis before the crisis. An imagined geography of separation and colonial sundering has left us segregated and distanced from each other. The truth is, some people have always seen themselves as superior and, calling themselves races, have murdered and enslaved others they deemed unworthy of the same life. The truth is, greed, fame and hypocrisy are part of the holy we worship. And even if the truth sets you free – it won’t be easy. To overturn the tables and defy those who hold a monopoly over everyone’s lives, who control the world’s purse strings, and who favour the status quo. Jesus, we know how that ended. “Jesus” – now on the mouths of the perpetrators of violence. The cycle of violence never ends. Jesus, we killed you. Jesus, we love, you. Jesus, we kill for you. “Jesus!”
#BlackLivesMatter. In a white supremacist fantasy “All Lives Matter”. In a late liberal fantasy “All Lives Matter”. In a democratic fantasy – a post-colonial, settler-colonial, still-colonial democratic fantasy – “All Lives Matter” (ALM). ALM is a pathetic response that comes from fear, fear of destabilization, the toppling of a secure world in which some thrive because others are forgotten, where some are swept aside and kept in the broom closet so that other voices are amplified over others, and some deaths less valued. It is a response that comes from the self-preservation of those who already enjoy the power and privilege of a majority status. It resembles words like “equity”, “diversity” or “meritocracy,” mantras chanted by many governments, institutions and universities, founded on elite interests and racially-gendered-ableist-class divides. “We” care for everyone and all lives matter to us has to be accompanied by its hidden, dark, side – “We” say this in order to carry on benefitting from the institutions that provide special privileges to us, or, “We” say this so we can continue to invest in unethical corporations and profit from unethical investments. “We” say this so that nothing changes. Saying ALM allows one to continue to look away and to preserve what is wrong with this world. To truly recognize that all lives matter (and not just utter as a slogan used by white supremacists or their liberal sympathisers) we need to truly acknowledge that #BlackLivesMatter, and that some lives have systemically been made to matter less than others. Those who say ALM will continue to look the other way.
#BlackLivesMatter. Is not an event. It is responding to historical and systemic repression. It is not about “unrest”. It is about waking up from our apathetic slumber. Waking up from our pathetic selves. We can no longer rest in what we know. We need to undo the indifference we have endured for so long. Yet, the declaration of recent events as an “unrest” or a “crisis” allows systemic violence to go unchecked and unanswered. Protestors are called “trouble-makers”, out to destroy the U.S., and every state, legal or bureaucratic form of power at the disposal of those in power are used against them – including police and military violence. We’ve seen this before. The 1807 Insurrection Act, recently resurrected, was passed when the enslaver class got the U.S. federal government to agree to deploy the military in case there was a Black uprising. It emerged out of fear, a post-Haitian revolution fear. Slave owners were afraid of the potential of a widespread Black rebellion in the U.S. (there were many who did rebel) – another “Santo Domingo”. Proponents of this law still do not want things to change. It is the violence wielded by those in power, by the State, by the institutions built on theft and the accumulation of wealth through slavery and appropriation of land, that allows them to maintain their high walls of impunity. It is the slave-owning classes and their fears of Black unrest that has allowed a President to declare war on his own country – or at least a segment of his country. It is a law of unfreedom that has been used to supress Black freedom. By focusing on the “thugs” who are rioting, we lose focus of the police who are the real thugs in the unfolding violence, and of the corporations that are robbing us while our attention is fixed elsewhere. By focusing on the future, we do not always see what is happening around/to us now. The straying away from the path of “civility” and the movement toward “civil unrest” allows extreme measures to be taken and, in the interim, for power to be consolidated in fewer hands and for billionaires and corporations to be bailed out or given more financial incentives.
#BlackLivesMatter because This is America: Standing in front of the Episcopal Church, upside-down Bible in right hand, and with the threat of military violence – a man makes a threat to his own nation. He is “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) personified. MAGA has been a rallying call that past Presidents have used to speak of a nostalgic return to an imagined past of “greatness”. But this “greatness” has always been tied to slavery and white supremacy, to military conquest and colonial capitalism, to division and conquest. Make America Great Again is a response of white fragility and of the fear of Black communities and their allies. The police, as an institution, serves as the violent arm of the state that grew largely out of the southern "Slave Patrols". They continue to enforce “law and order” and continue to force brutal violence upon black bodies. Studies show that black men between the ages of 15 and 34 are 9 times more likely to be killed by the police than other Americans. This is not lost in the song This is America by Childish Gambino.
This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Don’t catch you slippin’ up
Look what I’m whippin’ up
In the chorus to his song, Childish Gambino makes it clear that black people should not get caught when they slip up.
This is America (skrrt, skrrt, woo)
Don’t catch you slippin’ up (ayy)
Look at how I’m livin’ now
Police be trippin’ now (woo)
This is America is a reminder that racism and police brutality do not come as a shock to African Americans, that they are mundane facts of their embodied life.
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What is happening should not come as a shock to anyone, in the U.S., in Canada, where I'm penning these lines, or elsewhere. On 6th June 2020, a group in Accra, Ghana, organized a vigil in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter called #AccraBlackOut. Calling themselves the Economic Fighters League, or Fighters for short, they describe themselves as a “radical revolutionary non-partisan Nkrumaist movement asking basic questions.” On their Facebook page are the words:
“The ultimate aim of our fight is to achieve economic freedom for all by bringing down the system where our collective wealth is used to serve the luxuries of the few rather than the necessities of all.”
Fighters followed protocol, notified police, and even asked all attendees to wear masks and maintain physical distancing. While held in remembrance of the tragic murder of George Floyd, those gathered at Independence Square used the event to amplify the lives of black Ghanaians that had been violently taken, including the four Taadi girls and the death of Eric Ofotsu at the hands of a soldier. Why? Because Dis Be Ghana and black lives matter everywhere. The vigil had barely started when police and military showed up, holding sticks and carrying guns to disrupt the peaceful gathering. One of main organizers, Ernesto Yeboah, was taken into police custody. The vigil continued with people taking a knee and yelling “I can’t breathe”. Some others continued on to the police station to protest the unexplained abduction of Yeboah. Police responded by firing shots into the air to force the group to disperse. If protests against police brutality in the U.S. can be supported by a Presidential statement and a protest organized by the diaspora community, attended by the CEO of the Ghana Tourism Authority and Coordinator of Beyond the Return, why not a vigil in support of that same cause from within one’s own country organized by those who are not part of the élite establishment but who believe that Black Lives Matter?
There is a tradition of protest in Ghana, in resisting economic exploitation and colonial rule, and in fighting for redistributive justice. But there is also a history of brutality, negligence and murder by colonial police. One event, in 1948, stands out. It was precipitated by a national boycott of European goods organized by an Accra chief and businessman, Nii Kwabena Bonne II. Large businesses and firms that formed the Association of the West African Merchants (AWAM) had conspired with the colonial government to keep the prices of goods artificially high and to maintain a monopoly over their distribution. This inflation of prices and the relative scarcity of essential items motivated the boycott. On the last day of the boycott, WWII veterans led a peaceful march to bring a petition to the colonial Governor’s residence. These ex-servicemen had not been given the pensions, paid employment and housing they had been promised for their military service with the British and Allied forces in Burma, India and Ceylon. Historian Bianca Murillo (2017: 1) describes the unfolding of events:
“Singing old war songs and marching in unison, the ex-servicemen, accompanied by more than two thousand supporters, were stopped en route by a group of armed police and instructed to turn back… A few minutes later, just after 3:00 p.m., the head of police ordered his men to open fire in order to “control the mob.””
In their attempt to “control the mob”, these colonial policemen fired their guns into a crowd of demonstrators, killing three veterans and wounding several others. This violent response to what was a peaceful protest led to the burning and looting of European and foreign owned shops. The Governor declared a state of emergency. He brought into effect the Riot Act. This event, which came to be called “the Accra Riots” (by British colonialists), led to the arrest and detention of several nationalist fighters, including Kwame Nkrumah, but also opened the way for an inquiry that set the foundation for the gradual independence of the Gold Coast into what is now Ghana.[i] On March 6th, 1957, while giving Ghana’s Independence Day speech, Nkrumah said:
“And as I pointed out... I made it quite clear that from now on – today – we must change our attitudes, our minds, we must realise that from now on, we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people. But also, as I pointed out, that also entails hard work”
We certainly need to change our minds, our attitudes, and work hard to make sure that things never stay the same. Yet, things have not changed. Even as protests have increasingly become a viable way for citizens to express their frustrations at the lack of government accountability and to demand change, multipartyism and electoral competition continue to be tied to colonial structures and systems that protect elite-capitalistic interests and to the violent and inhumane strategies of police forces that play a role in the death and murder of innocent citizens in the U.S., in Canada, in Ghana, and multiple other countries. Any legitimate response to social injustice becomes categorized as a crisis that has to be averted through a show of ever-increasing force, dominance, and legislation. The aim of governments and institutions is to maintain the status quo. But the status quo has not worked. It has been killing many of us. What we need now are more than words of support. And what we need is more than a statement of solidarity, or shock and surprise that police brutality and institutional racism is everywhere and an inherent component of white supremacy in the U.S. or of post-colonial nation-states. Those institutions and governments expressing solidarity need to understand and help unravel these systems that continue to oppress black peoples, to commit to making structural changes, and to remember why #BlackLivesMatter exists in the first place. And "when you know better, do better" (Maya Angelou).
References
Ahlman, Jeffrey S. 2017. Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State and Pan-Africanism in Ghana. Athens: Ohio University Press
Milne, June. 1990. Kwame Nkrumah: The Conakry Years: His Life and Letters. Panaf Books.
Murillo, Bianca. 2017. Market Encounters: Consumer Cultures in Twentieth Century Ghana. Athens: Ohio University Press
[i] Kwame Nkrumah and other independence leaders (known as the “Big Six”) were detained and jailed as co-conspirators of the protest. Nkrumah eventually formed his own political party – the Convention People’s Party (CPP) – became Prime Minister in 1957 and was voted in as President of the Republic of Ghana in 1960. In the years that followed, what became known as Nkrumaism changed as the realities of decolonization changed (see Ahlman 2017). Nkrumah’s vision for Ghana was ambitious but also filled with contradictions. Ghana (under the CPP) became a one-party state and Nkrumah’s political style became more authoritarian. For example, he used the Prevention Detention Act to imprison people suspected of plotting against him – many of whom were his political opponents. However, Nkrumah’s fear that western countries like the U.S. and Britain were trying to remove him from power (and even assassinate him) was not without merit. After two failed attempts on his life (1962; 1964), Nkrumah was overthrown in a 1966 coup led by senior Ghanaian military and police officers supported by British and American intelligence agents. Nkrumah lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea and eventually passed away in Romania in 1972. In Ghana, and around the world, Nkrumah’s legacy as an anti-colonial freedom fighter and political visionary remains.