An Unfinished Journey William Minter

An Unfinished Journey William Minter he early morning phone call came on Febru- 1973; Patrice Lumumba in 1961; Malcolm X in 1965; ary 4, 1969, the day after I arrived back from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968; Steve Biko in 1977; Tanzania to my parents’ house in Tucson, Ruth First in 1982; and Samora Machel in 1986—to Arizona. “Eduardo has been assassinated.” name only a few. TThe caller was Gail Hovey, one of the co-editors Memories of those who gave their lives can bind of this book. She was then working with the South- together and inspire those who carry on their lega- ern Africa Committee in New York, a group sup- cies. So can highly visible public victories, such as porting liberation movements in Mozambique and the dramatic release of Nelson Mandela from prison other Southern African countries. Eduardo, as he in February 1990 and the first democratic election was known to hundreds of friends around the world, in South Africa in April 1994. The worldwide anti- was Eduardo Mondlane. At the time of his death by apartheid movement, which helped win those victo- a letter bomb, he was president of the Mozambique ries, was arguably the most successful transnational Liberation Front, known as Frelimo. Had he lived to social movement of the last half century. All of us see the freedom of his country, he would likely have engaged in this book project were minor actors in joined his contemporary and friend Nelson Mandela that movement, and our roles will become clear as as one of Africa’s most respected leaders. the story unfolds. It’s hard to say what factors build lasting con- In February 1969, when Hovey and I spoke of nections between people, but surely the deaths of Mondlane’s assassination in Tanzania, I had not yet those engaged in a common struggle must count met Charlie Cobb, also a co-editor of this book. But among the most powerful. I had just said goodbye he and his comrades at the Center for Black Educa- to Mondlane at the airport in Dar es Salaam, Tan- tion in Washington had already made connections zania, on New Year’s Day 1969, after two years of to liberation circles in Dar es Salaam after years of teaching in Frelimo’s secondary school. I was one civil rights organizing in the U.S. South. Later that of many inspired by his leadership, and his sacrifice year he moved to Tanzania, determined to live in an reinforced our commitments. The deaths of Mond- African country “long enough to really learn some- lane and others involved in freedom movements thing about it.” “What looks simple turns out to be had profound impact not only on their own coun- complex,” Cobb told an interviewer in 1981, after tries but around the world. The list is long: Amilcar returning to the United States to continue his career Cabral, whose words provide our title, was killed in as a journalist. “If you want to write about it, as I did Eduardo Mondlane’s funeral, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, February 1969. Janet Mondlane stands with the couple’s children, Chude, Nyeleti, and Eddie. President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania is at left with arms crossed. Photo reproduced from Manghezi 1999. when I got to Africa, or if you want to organize it, States, making connections between African and which is what I did in Mississippi, then you have to American activists on many fronts. learn to deal with these complexities.” Nesbitt and I became involved with groups Dar es Salaam was indeed a gathering place in the working on Africa in the mid-1960s. Even earlier, 1960s. The city welcomed both the liberation move- however, we felt the influence of Eduardo Mondlane ments of Southern Africa and veterans of the U.S. civil and other Africans who came to the United States as rights movement who looked to independent Africa students or visitors and spoke out eloquently for the for answers that were not forthcoming in the United freedom of their countries. Nesbitt, growing up in a States. Exiles from apartheid South Africa, its colony progressive African American family in Chicago, had South West Africa (Namibia), white-ruled Rhodesia already met Mondlane at his family’s Warren Avenue (Zimbabwe), and the Portuguese colonies of Angola Congregational Church. Mondlane was exceptional and Mozambique all found their way to Tanzania. in his range of contacts and his powerful presence, Liberation movement leaders regularly visited, even winning the respect of hundreds of Americans who from distant West Africa, where Guinea-Bissau and would become involved with African liberation. Cape Verde remained under Portuguese rule. In a still-segregated United States, Africans It was in Dar es Salaam in 1968 that I first met speaking of freedom for their homelands found Prexy Nesbitt, who was still there in 1969 when eager listeners among those engaged in organizing Mondlane was assassinated. Over the decades for equal rights in the United States. George Houser, Nesbitt, who has been an indispensable adviser to for example, became the first executive secretary of this book project, traveled from Chicago to Mozam- the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Chicago bique and South Africa and around the United in 1943 and helped organize a “freedom ride” to the 10 William Minter South in 1947. Later he moved to New York and the Spanish slave ship Amistad. Afterwards the ship headed the American Committee on Africa, which was captured by a U.S. Navy ship; the Africans were was founded to support the civil disobedience cam- charged with the murder of the captain and jailed in paigns of South Africa’s African National Congress New Haven, Connecticut. After a long legal battle, in (ANC) against the apartheid system. which they were supported by abolitionists and rep- Both the African and African American move- resented in court by former president John Quincy ments entered a new stage in that decade. The year Adams, the Supreme Court freed the “mutineers” in 1955 marked a turning point for both. In June, 1841, and they returned to Africa. the ANC and its allies convened the Congress of Historians are beginning to trace far earlier con- the People in Kliptown, near Johannesburg. The nections as well, such as the contacts between black Freedom Charter adopted there, just before police American and Caribbean sailors and the black popu- moved in to disperse the assembly, declared that lations in Cape Town, South Africa before the nine- “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black teenth century (Atkins 1996; Linebaugh and Rediker and white.” Two months later, a 15-year-old from 2000). In the nineteenth century, the complex interac- Chicago named Emmett Till was kidnapped, killed, tion among the Americas, the Caribbean, and Africa and dumped in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, featured influences in many different directions. In the accused of provocative remarks to a white woman. first half of the twentieth century, the links between That killing was one of the decisive catalysts for the resistance leaders in South Africa and African Amer- U.S. civil rights movement of the next 10 years. icans were particularly close, as shown most recently in David Anthony’s (2005) richly textured biography Prexy Nesbitt and I were only a few years younger of the complex figure of Max Yergan. than Emmett Till. For both of us, there is a direct line from his death to our engagement with support for Nonetheless, the last half of the twentieth African liberation. Nesbitt was in Chicago when Till’s century stands out as a distinct period. In Africa, body was brought back and viewed by thousands at a remarkable march to freedom produced more an open-casket funeral. I, a white American growing than 50 independent states. In the United States, up on an interracial cooperative farm in Mississippi, organizing, protest, and legislative changes resulted spent my childhood just 35 miles from where Till in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was killed. Our cooperative, a legacy of the South- the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most important ern Tenant Farmers Union of the 1930s, served the advances for African Americans since the Emanci- local black community with a clinic and a coopera- pation Proclamation. Throughout this period, there tive store that were more successful than our limited was a constant interplay between how activists in farming operations. In the charged atmosphere of the United States understood their own country and the mid-1950s, white plantation owners targeted the how they made connections with others in Africa co-op with a boycott, threatening their black workers and around the world. with expulsion if they continued to associate with it. These reciprocal connections—and in particular Within a year of Till’s murder, the co-op residents the influence of Africa on Americans—hardly appear had dispersed, most leaving Mississippi. in conventional historical accounts. When a journal- For both Nesbitt and me, our memories of the ist from Ebony magazine asked Mandela about how 1950s and our understandings of racism in the United the American civil rights movement had influenced States are linked to our later involvement with Africa. South Africans, Mandela replied, “You are correct, Similar links are common to many other activists there are many similarities between us. We have we have spoken to. But diverse connections between learned a great deal from each other” (May 1990). Americans and Africans, embedded in the history of While the reporter’s question implied one-way influ- race on both sides of the Atlantic, are not unique to ence, Mandela’s tactful correction stressed that the this period.

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