DOCSLIB.ORG

UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title From Southern California to Southern Africa: Translocal Black Internationalism in Los Angeles and San Diego from Civil Rights to Antiapartheid, 1960 to 1994 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86n7g448 Author Odom, Mychal Matsemela-Ali Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO From Southern California to Southern Africa: Translocal Black Internationalism in Los Angeles and San Diego from Civil Rights to Antiapartheid, 1960 to 1994 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Mychal Matsemela-Ali Odom Committee in Charge: Professor Luis Alvarez, Co-Chair Professor Daniel Widener, Co-Chair Professor Dennis R. Childs Professor Jessica L. Graham Professor Jeremy Prestholdt 2017 © Mychal Matsemela-Ali Odom, 2017 All Rights Reserved. The Dissertation of Mychal Matsemela-Ali Odom is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2017 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to all my ancestors, family, and elders who made this study possible. This is dedicated to my ancestors beginning with Manch Kessee, the rebel enslaved African whose spirit lives in all his descendants. To Daphne Belgrave Kersee, Manch H. Kersee, Sr., Felton Andrew Odom, and Nadine Odom. It is dedicated to my parents Michael Andrew Odom and Maria Odell Kersee-Odom. This is for my wife Michelle Rowe-Odom and our children: Mayasa-Aliyah Estina Odom and Malika-Akilah Maria Odom. It is in honor of my siblings, Mosi Tamara Rashida Odom and Matthieu Renell Clayton Jackson; as well as your children, Jeremiah Harris, Makhia Jackson, and Josiah Harris. It is also dedicated to all members of the Odom, Kersee, Belgrave, Joseph, and Rowe families. As well, this is dedicated to the lives lost from state murder during the composition of this study: Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Alfred Olango and the many others. Your deaths have not been in vain. They instead underscore the urgency of the work that has filled the succeeding pages as well as streets of the United States and beyond. iv EPIGRAPH Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. Steve Biko Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight. Malcolm X v TABLE OF CONTENTS SIGNATURE PAGE ··············································································· iii DEDICATION ······················································································ iv EPIGRAPH ··························································································· v TABLE OF CONTENTS ·········································································· vi LIST OF FIGURES ··············································································· vii GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS ···························································· x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ······································································· xi VITA ······························································································· xvii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ······················································ xix INTRODUCTION The Black Global Spatial Imaginary from Central Avenue to Sophiatown ·············································································· 1 CHAPTER ONE Why Not the Same Concern?: Civil Rights, Black Nationalism, and the Development of African Consciousness in Southern California ····························· 44 CHAPTER TWO Crisis of the African Intellectual: The Racial Encounters of African Students in the Cold War University ··························································· 120 CHAPTER THREE Towards a Black International: The War on Poverty, Peace Corps, and Black Power’s Counterpoint to Cold War Liberalism ·································· 177 CHAPTER FOUR Ufahamu Na Kuumba: The Road to African Liberation Support in Southern California ··············································································· 256 CHAPTER FIVE “Free South Africa, You Dumb SOB”: Culture, Education, and Resistance in the Southern California Divestment Movement ····························· 347 EPILOGUE “You Still Got One Brother Left”: The Black Global Spatial Imaginary in a Post-Apartheid World ············································································ 428 BIBLIOGRAPHY ················································································ 449 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Printed in the SDSU Daily Aztec, Herbert “Herblock” Lock’s political cartoon shows how Americans began to see clear similarities in African American and South African liberation movements in the spring of 1960. (Daily Aztec, SDSU Special Collections and University Archives) ···························································· 47 Figure 2 As CORE embraced more militant tactics, their membership grew. As well, they increasingly criticized American racial liberalism and San Diego's constructed image. (San Diego Union) ········································································· 68 Figure 3 Brown leading a Bank of American Protest. (Brown Papers, SDSU) ············ 72 Figure 4 Notice Brown's tatter and wrinkled clothes. Once released from jail, he immediately returned to the picket lines. (People's World) ··································· 76 Figure 5 Logo for the Afro-American Association. (Afro-American Dignity News, Freedom Archives) ················································································· 84 Figure 6 Von Wolfolk leading a private lesson on Black Studies. Photograph by Norman Baynard (San Diego History Center) ···························································· 95 Figure 7 “Why Not the Same Concern?” San Diego Voice, 12/10/64 (Brown Papers, SDSU Special Collections and University Archives) ········································ 103 Figure 8 Young men at the Africa House. While African clothing became largely associated with the cultural nationalist organizations of the late 1960s, this photo displays that such style politics were already being embraced. (San Diego History Center) ····· 108 Figure 9 An assorted variety of visual art was displayed at the Africa House. (San Diego History Center) ···················································································· 109 Figure 10 Usquiano and Bolden were slated to be instructors at the Africa House (San Diego Voice) ······················································································ 114 Figure 11 Mitchell was the director of the art guild at the Africa House (San Diego Voice) ······························································································ 114 Figure 12 The Case of Kumbula and Muchenje became a front-page story for the student newspaper. (SDSU Special Collections) ······················································ 131 Figure 13 The SAFAC Wilshire Boulevard Protest ca. 1964 linked Anti-Apartheid to Civil Rights protests in practice. (African Activist Archive) ······························· 150 vii Figure 14 Samuel Carr-Damu and members of the Simba Wachanga (Young Lions) ca. 1966 ································································································ 193 Figure 15 Unity and Leadership Conference Organizing Committee ca. 1966 (Sukumu Private Collection) ················································································ 201 Figure 16 Harold Brown at the Unity and Leadership Conference ca. 1966 (Brown Papers, SDSU) ···················································································· 202 Figure 17 Mervyn Dymally at the Unity and Leadership Conference (Brown Papers, SDSU Special Collections) ······································································ 202 Figure 18 San Diego Community Patrol Against Police Brutality ca. 1967 (Vernon Sukumu Private Collection) ····································································· 204 Figure 19 1968 Kuzaliwa at Mountain View Park (Vernon Sukumu Private Collection) ························································································· 229 Figure 20 Harold Brown delivering his Eulogy to Dr. King at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Maseru, Lesotho. Brown’s wife Laverne is to his right with her newly adopted natural hairstyle. The man sitting to Brown’s left is King Moshoeshoe II. Moshoeshoe II was amongst the opposition to the Jonathan’s BNP-led government. ·· 249 Figure 21 Baraka on one of his many visits to SDSU. Next to him is Sukumu ca. 1970. (SDSU Special Collections) ····································································· 271
Recommended publications
  • Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan- African Vision: Between Acceptance and Rebuttal

    Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan- African Vision: Between Acceptance and Rebuttal

    Austral: Brazilian Journal of Strategy & International Relations e-ISSN 2238-6912 | ISSN 2238-6262| v.5, n.9, Jan./Jun. 2016 | p.141-164 KWAME NKRUMAH AND THE PAN- AFRICAN VISION: BETWEEN ACCEPTANCE AND REBUTTAL Henry Kam Kah1 Introduction The Pan-African vision of a United of States of Africa was and is still being expressed (dis)similarly by Africans on the continent and those of Afri- can descent scattered all over the world. Its humble origins and spread is at- tributed to several people based on their experiences over time. Among some of the advocates were Henry Sylvester Williams, Marcus Garvey and George Padmore of the diaspora and Peter Abrahams, Jomo Kenyatta, Sekou Toure, Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah of South Africa, Kenya, Guinea, Tanza- nia and Ghana respectively. The different pan-African views on the African continent notwithstanding, Kwame Nkrumah is arguably in a class of his own and perhaps comparable only to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. Pan-Africanism became the cornerstone of his struggle for the independence of Ghana, other African countries and the political unity of the continent. To transform this vision into reality, Nkrumah mobilised the Ghanaian masses through a pop- ular appeal. Apart from his eloquent speeches, he also engaged in persuasive writings. These writings have survived him and are as appealing today as they were in the past. Kwame Nkrumah ceased every opportunity to persuasively articulate for a Union Government for all of Africa. Due to his unswerving vision for a Union Government for Africa, the visionary Kwame Nkrumah created a microcosm of African Union through the Ghana-Guinea and then Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union.
  • Stalinism and Trotskyism in Vietnam

    Stalinism and Trotskyism in Vietnam

    r Telegram: Defend the DRV-NLF! The following telegram was sent as the u.s. imperialists mined Haiphong harbor and the North Vietnamese coast. At the time Soviet bureaucrats were preparing to receive Nixon in Moscow just as their Chinese counterparts a few months earlier wined and dined him in Peking as he terror-bombed Vietnam. Embassy of the U.S.S.R. Washington, D.C. U.N. Mission of the People's Republic of China New York, N.Y. On behalf of the urgent revolutionary needs of the international working class and in accord with the inevitable aims of our future worker~ government in the United States, we demand that you immediately expand shipment of military supplies of the highest technical quality to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and that you offer the DRV the fullest all­ sided assistance including necessary Russian-Chinese joint military collaboration. No other course will serve at this moment of savage imperialist escalation against the DRV and the Indochinese working people whose military victories have totally shattered the myths of the Vietnamization and pacification programs of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. signed: Political Bureau, Spartacist League of the U.S. 8 May 1972 copies to: D RV and N LF delegations, Paris -from Workers Vanguard No.9, June 1972 6 n p Stalinism and Trotskyism In• Vietnam ~···· l,~ ~ r SPARTACIST PUBLISHING co. Box 1377, G.P.O. New York, N.Y. 10001, U.S.A . • December 1976 Ho Chi Minh Ta Thu Thau CONTENTS CHAPTER I In Defense of Vietnamese Trotskyism (I:·: • >'~ Stalinism and Trotskyism in Vietnam ...................
  • Musical Imaginary, Identity and Representation: the Case of Gentleman the German Reggae Luminary

    Musical Imaginary, Identity and Representation: the Case of Gentleman the German Reggae Luminary

    Ali 1 Musical Imaginary, Identity and Representation: The Case of Gentleman the German Reggae Luminary A Senior Honors Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with distinction in Comparative Studies in the undergraduate colleges of The Ohio State University By Raghe Ali April 2013 The Ohio State University Project Advisors Professor Barry Shank, Department of Comparative Studies Professor Theresa Delgadillo, Department of Comparative Studies Ali 2 In 2003 a German reggae artist named Gentleman was scheduled to perform at the Jamworld Entertainment Center in the south eastern parish of St Catherine, Jamaica. The performance was held at the Sting Festival an annual reggae event that dates back some twenty years. Considered the world’s largest one day reggae festival, the event annually boasts an electric atmosphere full of star studded lineups and throngs of hardcore fans. The concert is also notorious for the aggressive DJ clashes1 and violent incidents that occur. The event was Gentleman’s debut performance before a Jamaican audience. Considered a relatively new artist, Gentleman was not the headlining act and was slotted to perform after a number of familiar artists who had already “hyped” the audience with popular dancehall2 reggae hits. When his turn came he performed a classical roots 3reggae song “Dem Gone” from his 2002 Journey to Jah album. Unhappy with his performance the crowd booed and jeered at him. He did not respond to the heckling and continued performing despite the audience vocal objections. Empty beer bottles and trash were thrown onstage. Finally, unable to withstand the wrath and hostility of the audience he left the stage.
  • Understanding Gun Laws

    Understanding Gun Laws

    FOR INFORMATION ONLY NORTHERN VIRGINIA BAPTIST ASSOCIATION, INC. COMMISSION ON CIVIL AND SOCIAL ACTIONS GUN LAWS IN VIRGINIA Compiled by Dr. George W. Farmer, Jr chairperson 1 FOR INFORMATION ONLY Gun laws in Virginia (Wikipedia) This document is a compendium of data concerning gun laws in the State of Virginia. These data are drawn from the general data bases of Wikipedia and should be assessed in light of the reputation of that data source. It is a convenient array of relevant information and is provided to give the reader useful background information. Gun laws in Virginia regulate the sale, possession, and use of firearms and ammunition in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. SUMMARY STATEMENT This compendium of data concerning gun laws in Virginia has been developed to provide interested individuals background data to aid in making decisions concerning purchasing and storing guns of all types available in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This document does not endorse or oppose the gun laws as they exist, but is provided as a resource that hopefully will aid those who seek objective information concerning the possession of firearms in the State. It is important to recognize that laws concerning guns are on the books and that those laws are “morality neutral.” Moreover, the Northern Virginia Baptist Association has not established a position based on the scriptures concerning the purchase or use of guns. We provide this information more or less as a “clearinghouse” with the goal of increasing the prospects that individuals may use it to help them make informed decisions concerning the purchase and use of fire arms.
  • Kwame Nkrumah, His Afro-American Network and the Pursuit of an African Personality

    Kwame Nkrumah, His Afro-American Network and the Pursuit of an African Personality

    Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData Theses and Dissertations 3-22-2019 Kwame Nkrumah, His Afro-American Network and the Pursuit of an African Personality Emmanuella Amoh Illinois State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the African History Commons Recommended Citation Amoh, Emmanuella, "Kwame Nkrumah, His Afro-American Network and the Pursuit of an African Personality" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 1067. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/1067 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact [email protected]. KWAME NKRUMAH, HIS AFRO-AMERICAN NETWORK AND THE PURSUIT OF AN AFRICAN PERSONALITY EMMANUELLA AMOH 105 Pages This thesis explores the pursuit of a new African personality in post-colonial Ghana by President Nkrumah and his African American network. I argue that Nkrumah’s engagement with African Americans in the pursuit of an African Personality transformed diaspora relations with Africa. It also seeks to explore Black women in this transnational history. Women are not perceived to be as mobile as men in transnationalism thereby underscoring their inputs in the construction of certain historical events. But through examining the lived experiences of Shirley Graham Du Bois and to an extent Maya Angelou and Pauli Murray in Ghana, the African American woman’s role in the building of Nkrumah’s Ghana will be explored in this thesis.
  • Legal and Lethal

    Legal and Lethal

    November 15, 2017 LEGAL AND LETHAL: 9 PRODUCTS THAT COULD BE THE NEXT BUMP STOCK How the gun industry is putting public safety at risk by manufacturing extremely lethal firearms designed to skirt the federal laws established to keep us safe DAVID CHIPMAN Senior Policy Advisor at Giffords, former ATF Special Agent LINDSAY NICHOLS Federal Policy Director at Giffords Law Center In the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, the nation was shocked to learn how the Las Vegas shooter used an accessory to increase the severity of the shooting. That device, known as a “bump stock,” attaches to a semi-automatic rifle, increasing its rate of fire to nearly that of a BUMP STOCKS machine gun—to inflict maximum carnage Bump stocks, like those used by the Las Vegas on the 22,000 concertgoers, killing 58 and shooter, increase the rate of fire of semi- injuring hundreds more. The catastrophic automatic weapons but do not convert them into automatic firearms. Bump stocks allow a loss of life in the Las Vegas shooting was person to hold a finger steady while the recoil of due in large part to the use of bump stocks, the fired rifle simply “bumps” the stock of the gun against the shooter’s shoulder. There, the but this device is just one of many types of gun is propelled forward against the shooter’s guns and accessories being marketed by finger, causing the trigger to be pulled. Although the person pulls the trigger each time the gun the gun industry that convert firearms into is fired, the force of the recoil fires the gun at a military-style weapons.
  • Kunene's Shaka and the Idea of the Poet As Teacher

    Kunene's Shaka and the Idea of the Poet As Teacher

    Kunene's Shaka and the Idea of the Poet as Teacher JOHN HAYNES I IN AN ESSAY PUBLISHED a year after the English version of Emperor Shaka the Great, Mazisi Kunene writes that "Classical African literature takes it as its primary strategy to broaden the base of the characters through mythification and symbolism" ("Relevance" 200). As he says in the poem itself, "Indeed, artists embellish their past to inspire their children" ( 166 ). What I want to look at is the trend of this mythification and embellish• ment. In doing this I shall not make any claims about the capacity of a poem to change people's attitudes or actions, nor will I deal with the ways in which a poem, as opposed to some other genre, might achieve such a goal. These are very vexed questions, neither of which has been tackled by African critics, even those who emphasize the traditional African artist's role of teacher. All I can claim is that if literature can have any bearing on political or social circumstance it is likely to be at times of crisis, such as we see now in Kunene's country, when people can be expected to reflect on the meaning of what they are doing and suffering. Yet we have to remember that what readers (or hearers) take from a work of art is affected by the attitudes they bring to it, and the social structures within which it is experi• enced — the school, the political party, exile, and so on. I will attempt, at the end of this account, to relate the implied "teach• ing" of Kunene's poem to present events, but I cannot pretend to comment, since I do not have anything like sufficient knowl• edge, nor indeed sufficient experience.
  • The Gordian Knot: Apartheid & the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order, 1960-1970

    The Gordian Knot: Apartheid & the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order, 1960-1970

    THE GORDIAN KNOT: APARTHEID & THE UNMAKING OF THE LIBERAL WORLD ORDER, 1960-1970 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Ryan Irwin, B.A., M.A. History ***** The Ohio State University 2010 Dissertation Committee: Professor Peter Hahn Professor Robert McMahon Professor Kevin Boyle Professor Martha van Wyk © 2010 by Ryan Irwin All rights reserved. ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the apartheid debate from an international perspective. Positioned at the methodological intersection of intellectual and diplomatic history, it examines how, where, and why African nationalists, Afrikaner nationalists, and American liberals contested South Africa’s place in the global community in the 1960s. It uses this fight to explore the contradictions of international politics in the decade after second-wave decolonization. The apartheid debate was never at the center of global affairs in this period, but it rallied international opinions in ways that attached particular meanings to concepts of development, order, justice, and freedom. As such, the debate about South Africa provides a microcosm of the larger postcolonial moment, exposing the deep-seated differences between politicians and policymakers in the First and Third Worlds, as well as the paradoxical nature of change in the late twentieth century. This dissertation tells three interlocking stories. First, it charts the rise and fall of African nationalism. For a brief yet important moment in the early and mid-1960s, African nationalists felt genuinely that they could remake global norms in Africa’s image and abolish the ideology of white supremacy through U.N.
  • Chant Down Babylon: the Rastafarian Movement and Its Theodicy for the Suffering

    Chant Down Babylon: the Rastafarian Movement and Its Theodicy for the Suffering

    Verge 5 Blatter 1 Chant Down Babylon: the Rastafarian Movement and Its Theodicy for the Suffering Emily Blatter The Rastafarian movement was born out of the Jamaican ghettos, where the descendents of slaves have continued to suffer from concentrated poverty, high unemployment, violent crime, and scarce opportunities for upward mobility. From its conception, the Rastafarian faith has provided hope to the disenfranchised, strengthening displaced Africans with the promise that Jah Rastafari is watching over them and that they will someday find relief in the promised land of Africa. In The Sacred Canopy , Peter Berger offers a sociological perspective on religion. Berger defines theodicy as an explanation for evil through religious legitimations and a way to maintain society by providing explanations for prevailing social inequalities. Berger explains that there exist both theodicies of happiness and theodicies of suffering. Certainly, the Rastafarian faith has provided a theodicy of suffering, providing followers with religious meaning in social inequality. Yet the Rastafarian faith challenges Berger’s notion of theodicy. Berger argues that theodicy is a form of society maintenance because it allows people to justify the existence of social evils rather than working to end them. The Rastafarian theodicy of suffering is unique in that it defies mainstream society; indeed, sociologist Charles Reavis Price labels the movement antisystemic, meaning that it confronts certain aspects of mainstream society and that it poses an alternative vision for society (9). The Rastas believe that the white man has constructed and legitimated a society that is oppressive to the black man. They call this society Babylon, and Rastas make every attempt to defy Babylon by refusing to live by the oppressors’ rules; hence, they wear their hair in dreads, smoke marijuana, and adhere to Marcus Garvey’s Ethiopianism.
  • Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora Since 1787 Hakim Adi University of Chichester, H.Adi@Chi.Ac.Uk

    Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora Since 1787 Hakim Adi University of Chichester, [email protected]

    African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter Volume 8 Article 6 Issue 4 September 2005 7-1-2005 Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 Hakim Adi University of Chichester, [email protected] Marika Sherwood University of London Robert Trent Vinson Washington University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan Part of the African American Studies Commons, African History Commons, African Languages and Societies Commons, African Studies Commons, American Art and Architecture Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons, Folklore Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, Other International and Area Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Adi, Hakim; Sherwood, Marika; and Vinson, Robert Trent (2005) "Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787," African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter: Vol. 8 : Iss. 4 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan/vol8/iss4/6 This Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Adi et al.: Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspo Book Review H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-SAfrica, http://www.h-net.org/~safrica/ (April, 2005) and H-Atlantic, http://www.h-net.org/~atlantic (June 2005). Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood.
  • The South African National Poet Laureate Prize for Mazisi Kunene

    The South African National Poet Laureate Prize for Mazisi Kunene

    Untitled Document The South African National Poet Laureate Prize for Mazisi Kunene. (March 5 th 2005 at the Durban International Convention Centre) by Ntongela Masilela It is an incomparable honour for me to be congratulating Mazisi Kunene for receiving The South African National Poet Laureate Prize bestowed by our nation. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Mazisi Kunene is unquestionably one of our great national poets. In this lineage of poetic greatness, Mazisi Kunene belongs in the pantheon of S. E. K. Mqhayi, J. J. R. Jolobe, Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, H. I. E. Dhlomo and David Livingstone Phakamile Yali-Manisi. Though belonging to this pantheon, Mazisi Kunene surpasses all of them because he is arguably the greatest poet produced by Africa in the twentieth century. His two great epics, Emperor Shaka The Great (1979) and Anthem of the Decades (1981) have no comparable counterparts anywhere in Africa . Mazisi Kunene is a great Imbongi for all seasons and for the whole African continent. In this sense, Mazisi Kunene is the first continental poet Africa has produced. His poetic vision encompassing a profound philosophy of life and a true African cosmology is what holds together the metaphysical unity of the continent. This poetic vision also postulates the unity of Africa and the African Diaspora. In this unification of the black world, Mazisi Kunene's achievement is similar to that realized by Aime Cesaire in Return To My Native Land (1939). It is perhaps because of the affinities between them that Ngugi wa Thiong'o considers Mazisi Kunene's “Introduction” to the 1969 edition of Cesaire's epic to be the finest essay ever written on the great poet from the Caribbean/Antilles.
  • “Access”: Rhetorical Cartographies of Food

    “Access”: Rhetorical Cartographies of Food

    TROUBLING “ACCESS”: RHETORICAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF FOOD (IN)JUSTICE AND GENTRIFICATION by CONSTANCE GORDON B.A., San Francisco State University, 2011 M.A., University of Colorado Boulder, 2015 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication 2018 ii This dissertation entitled: Troubling “Access”: Rhetorical Cartographies of Food (In)Justice and Gentrification written by Constance Gordon has been approved for the Department of Communication Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Ph.D. (Committee Chair) Karen L. Ashcraft, Ph.D. Joe Bryan, Ph.D. Lisa A. Flores, Ph.D. Tiara R. Na’puti, Ph.D. Peter Simonson, Ph.D. Date The final copy of this dissertation has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. IRB Protocol #17-0431 iii Gordon, Constance (Ph.D., Communication) Troubling “Access”: Rhetorical Cartographies of Food (In)Justice and Gentrification Dissertation directed by Professor Phaedra C. Pezzullo ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the rhetorical and spatiotemporal relationships between food politics and gentrification in the contemporary U.S. developing city foodscape. Specifically, I explore a seemingly innocent, yet incredibly powerful key term for the food movement today: “access.” The concern over adequate food access for the food insecure has become a national conversation, as everyone from governments to corporations, non-profits to grassroots advocates, have organized interventions to bring healthy food to those most in need. In rapidly developing cities, however, these politics have become particularly complicated, as new food amenities often index or contribute to gentrification, including the displacement of the very people supposedly targeted for increased food access.