AAHP 387 Malik Rahim African American History Project (AAHP) Interviewed by Justin Hosbey and Brittany King on August 6, 2015 1 Hour, 19 Minutes | 30 Pages
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Joel Buchanan Archive of African American History: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ohfb Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz 241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 https://oral.history.ufl.edu AAHP 387 Malik Rahim African American History Project (AAHP) Interviewed by Justin Hosbey and Brittany King on August 6, 2015 1 hour, 19 minutes | 30 pages Abstract: Mr. Malik Rahim in this interview discusses his life experiences and family history in New Orleans, Louisiana. He shares the racism his family faced and the resilience they built together. He joined the Navy and traveled to California. There, he became a part of the Black Panther Party and got involved with them back in New Orleans. He discusses the role the Panther Party played in building up the Black community in New Orleans. He shares about the violence from the police and prison system. He concludes the interview delving into the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the community. Keywords: [New Orleans, Louisiana; Black Panther Party; Hurricane Katrina; African American History] Standards: SS.8.A.1.7 View historic events through the eyes of those who were there as shown in their art, writings, music, and artifacts, SS.912.A.7.5 Compare nonviolent and violent approaches utilized by groups (African Americans, women, Native Americans, Hispanics) to achieve civil rights, SS.912.A.7.6 Assess key figures and organizations in shaping the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement, SS.912.C.2.2 Evaluate the importance of political participation and civic participation. For information on terms of use of this interview, please see the SPOHP Creative Commons license at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AfricanAmericanOralHistory. AAHP 387 Interviewee: Malik Rahim Interviewer: Justin Hosbey and Brittany King Date: August 6, 2015 H: We’re here today at the Wilhelmina Johnson Community Center in Gainesville, Florida. Today is August 6th? K: I think it’s the fifth. H: August 6th. R: Yes. H: August 5th, I’m sorry, August the 5th, 2015, and my name is Justin Hosbey, and I am here from the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project. K: Brittany King. R: Malik Rahim. H: Okay, and today is August 6th, 2015. [Laughter] Okay, so Mr. Rahim we wanted to say first, thank you for coming out and allowing us the chance to speak with you. Usually we start the interviews with a question to jog memory. So, where were you born? And state your date of birth. R: I was born in New Orleans. I was born on December the 17th, 1947. H: Okay, all right. And is your family from Louisiana? R: Yes. H: Southern Louisiana area? R: Yes. H: Okay, okay. So, where did you grow up in New Orleans? R: I grewed up in a community called Algiers. H: Algiers. AAHP 387; Rahim; Page 2 R: In a area that was mostly known as Freetown. It was an area of, basically, maroons. So I grewed up in a maroon area of New Orleans. H: Right, right. Okay, so had your family always lived in Algiers? R: My family on my mother’s side was from the West Bank. H: The West Bank. Okay. R: On my father’s side, it was from the East Bank. So, except for my father’s mother, she was from an area, an all-Black area in Morgan City, a little island called [inaudible 02:00]. H: Okay. R: So, my family have a rich history of coming from maroon areas. H: Yes, areas of Black people who kind of had a measure of freedom during those times. R: Right. H: So who’s the oldest relative of yours that you still remember? R: My grandmother. H: Your grandmother. What was her name? R: Bertha Lewis. H: Bertha Lewis, okay. And she was from New Orleans as well? R: Oh, yes. H: All right. What was it like growing up in New Orleans? R: In the time I grewed up in, in the area, in a period, in an era of Jim Crowism. It was very racist, but it was one of—well, we was able to endure that racism by our will to work and live together. So it was, to me, one of the best periods of my life. AAHP 387; Rahim; Page 3 I met many people through my lifetime, and I never met anyone that had a blessed upbringing in the same manner that I had. Again, it was a maroon area, and my grandfather was a UNIA member. Our community had the second-largest UNIA chapter outside of New York. My grandfather was familiar with Queen Mother Moore, and then when Marcus Garvey was deported out of the country, it was out of our area. So I can always remember my grandfather and my grandmother telling the stories about how they lined the levee all the way to Plaquemines Parish, going through all these maroon areas, waving Garvey goodbye. And the fact that after they deported him, how they did a caravan leaving from Algiers going all the way to Canada, to see him in Canada. H: Wow! R: So, I was raised with that history. H: Right, right. So being raised with that sense of history, and growing up in New Orleans especially, did you feel that that’s how many people in New Orleans were raised? R: Oh, no. Oh no, it was a big distinction between our community and the rest of the African-American community, all the so-called free people of color. We was more isolated. We was more withdrawn from those areas. I didn’t grow up with a disdain for free people of color or for that area, but I grew up knowing that they wasn’t us. H: Okay, and when you say “free people of color,” who are you speaking of? R: Basically what we used to call Passe Blancs. So it looked like White, tried to pass for White, and then those who feel like a slave culture or mentality was the way AAHP 387; Rahim; Page 4 of living. And that wasn’t us. The history of our community—I don’t know if you ever heard the story of Juan Malo. H: No I haven’t. R: Juan Malo, he was the head of the largest maroon camp in the history of Louisiana. For almost twenty-five years, they controlled St. Bernard Parish, Plaquemines Parish, on both side of the river. Many look at him as a villain; we looked at him as a hero. Many of your so-called free People of Color used to use him as a saying to the kids, “If you don’t be good, you going to sleep and Juan Malo going come in and get you at night.” And on our side we would say, “Well go get them!” [Laughter] We used to celebrate that, and so it was a totally different from the— H: Right, right, right. I’m sure it did, but can you talk about how, growing up you became involved with the Panthers. Is that part of what encouraged you to—? R: Well, in my community, they built the elementary school with all of the amenities that go along with it. We wasn’t allowed to go into the yard because it was for White, even though it was one block from where I was raised, that we had to walk something like about maybe two miles or two and a half miles to our school. And then, once we were arrested for just sneaking in there and playing on the swings. So then as a teenager we didn’t ask to—it was a movement not to integrate, but basically in our community, to—they had just built a White park with a swimming pool. And we said, “Well hey; we pay taxes, too. We want a pool and a park for us.” And we did it during an election time, and they say, “Yeah, we’ll give it to you, and we’ll build it for you.” And they did; big old spacious pool with a AAHP 387; Rahim; Page 5 fine, beautiful park. But they built on top of the city dump. So with that, I could always remember the fact that my father would not allow us to go to that pool, even though we had this big, brand-new, spacious pool. I used to have to sneak to go to it until you could tell, with the slime on the top of the water, because it was on the city dump. And with that, it really stopped us from using it. So I knew then that I could no longer survive here in this community. During the same time came urban renewal, and when they just built this middle-African, middle-class suburb, it was the second oldest in New Orleans. The first one was Ponchartrain Park, and then came Truman Park. Truman Park was in our community, and it was surrounded by homes, and faith-based institutions, and businesses that had been established since the end of slavery. Most people wasn’t home-buyers, they was homeowners. The city had decided, since they had built a bridge across the Mississippi, that it wasn’t the right community for the first thing a person see when they cross the river: our community. So under urban renewal, they forced the majority of us to move and they built a project. Now, the stipulation was that instead of a hundred or two hundred homes that—during pre-urban renewal, they were going build a thousand units of housing for African Americans, with all the amenities.