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Testimonies of African Americans Who returned to Africa & settled | YEAR OF RETURN
(via African Insider)

American economist Professor, Jeffrey Sachs exposes how America, its Western allies, the CIA and the defence industry have rigged the system to keep Africa from being prosperous. It is a stunning expose and rebuke to the present world order. When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land.They said ' let us pray' we closed our eyes when we opened our eyes, we had the bible and they had our land. This expose shows the extent to which Africa has been deprived of the chance of development at the expense of others. What do you think of this expose?

Jamaica was once the world's leading exporter of bauxite, which is the ore from which aluminum is made, but decades of mining have taken a toll on the land and the people. With reserves depleted, the government is now pushing to move mining operations into the most ecologically sensitive part of the island known as Cockpit Country. The people of Cockpit Country fought off the British in the 1700s, and now they're conjuring the warrior spirit of their ancestors to take that fight to the mining companies. The Jamaican government seems to be in support of this. What do you think?

In 1837, Houston, Texas was incorporated and divided into four wards. The Southeast ward was named Third Ward and over time this area became an important center of African American-owned businesses and a hub for black culture.

Third Ward originally comprised the area east of Main Street and south of Congress Street. After the Civil War ended former slaves from the areas surrounding Houston began to move into Third Ward.  At the time, African Americans were forced to live on the outskirts of the ward but as whites moved to the suburbs, blacks began to purchase property in the heart of the ward. In 1872, influential African Americans led by Reverend John Henry “Jack” Yates raised $8,000 to purchase four acres of land which would become Emancipation Park, the first park for black Houstonians and home to the annual Juneteenth Celebration commemorating the liberation of African Americans from slavery in Texas.

Between 1910 and 1930 the African American population in the Third Ward exploded from 22,929 to 66,357. As a result of the rapid population growth, African American owned businesses increased along Dowling Street, which became the area’s main business corridor.

Dowling Street also became the center of Houston’s blues movement. Blues clubs were lined up and down the street and became places where artists from throughout the South and Southwest went to experiment and perfect their craft. The Eldorado Ballroom the self-styled “Home of the Happy Feet,” was the premier venue featuring artist like Ray Charles, and B.B. King, as well as local artist Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, and Jewel Brown.  African Americans came from all over East Texas to frequent the nightlife in Third Ward to have a fun night, allowing them a brief release from the everyday realities of the Jim Crow South.

The Third Ward was also home to other community landmarks such as Jack Yates High School, the second African American high school in Houston, the Covington House which served as Houston’s unofficial guest quarters for many prominent African American visitors, the Shape Community Center and Riverside Hospital, the first non-profit hospital for African Americans in Houston. Texas Southern University, founded in 1947, was the largest institution in the ward.

As African Americans left the South for better opportunities in the North in the first half of the 20th century, the Houston Chamber of Commerce, unlike most white urban leaders in the South, took out advertisements for “Heavenly Houston,” hoping to lure blacks to the city.  By the early 1950s, however, wealthy and middle-class blacks started leaving the Third Ward as they integrated formerly all-white residential areas. That outward migration continued through the 1960s and 1970s and now included business departures.  Those businesses that remained of the began to fail, leaving Third Ward a shell of its former prominence.

Today there are approximately 33,000 residents remaining in Third Ward and despite the efforts to gentrify the area, residents and community leaders have begun a concerted effort to preserve, protect and celebrate the rich history and heritage of Third Ward.

Beginning as the Chesters in 1957, Little Anthony and the Imperials are a legendary Doo-Wop rhythm and blues/soul vocal ensemble founded in Brooklyn, New York by tenor Clarence Collins, Countertenor/Falsetto and principal singer Jerome Anthony “Little Anthony” Gourdine, Ernest Wright, bass Glouster “Nate” Rogers, and tenor Tracey Lord. The teenage boys were born in the early 1940s and attended Boys’ High School in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

The group changed its name in 1958 and began producing a string of chart hits, including their first hit, “Tears On My Pillow” (1958) on the End label. It entered Billboard’s Top 100 chart and peaked at #4, spent 19 weeks on the Top 100. It also reached #2 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart selling more than one million copies. The flip side of the record, “Two Kinds of People,” also became a hit as well.

The ensemble briefly separated in 1961 but reunited in 1963. In 1964 they released, “I’m on the Outside Looking In” which was a Billboard Top 20 Pop hit, peaking at # 15. During that same year, “Goin’ Out of My Head” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #75 and peaked #6. Additionally, the song peaked at #8 on Cashbox magazine’s R&B chart.

In 1965, Little Anthony and the Imperials released another hit, “Hurts So Bad.” This single entered Billboard’s Hot Top 100 chart and peaked at #10 for one week before spending eight additional weeks in the Top 100. It also reached #3 on Billboard’s R&B Singles chart.

A decade later, in 1975, Little Anthony and the Imperials released the album Hold On on Avco’s label. While the musical composition was appealing, it was not a financial success.

In 1993, Little Anthony and the Imperials were awarded the Rhythm and Blues Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Six years later in 1999 they were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. They were inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. The following year, 2007, they were inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. In 2009, Little Anthony and the Imperials were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2008 the ensemble released the album You’ll Never Know and performed on the Late Show with David Letterman. However, Tracey Lord, one of the original members, died on March 19, 2008, at 68. 

As of 2021, all of the still living original members of Little Anthony and the Imperials are in their eighties with plans to perform at the Willwood Convention Center in Willwood, New Jersey, on October 16, 2021.

The Tampa Bay Race Riot was one of dozens of race riots that occurred in U.S. cities during the spring and summer of 1967. The riot took place between June 11 and June 14, 1967 after nineteen-year-old Martin Chambers who was a suspect in the robbery of a camera store in Tampa, was killed by the Tampa police. Chambers was seen running from the police near Nebraska and Harrison Streets and was shot in the back by Police Officer James Calvert. He later died. Following the incident, a riot broke out along Central Avenue.

On the afternoon of June 11 Officer Calvert pursued Chambers and two other young men who he suspected had just robbed a local photo supply store. Calvert chase Chambers and shot him, claiming that he would not stop when ordered to do so. According to newspaper accounts Calvert said he aimed for Chambers’s shoulder but missed. When news of the shooting spread around the Tampa Black community, Black residents began a peaceful protest in the afternoon that turned to rioting and looting that night along Central Avenue, the heart of Tampa’s local Black community. Often called the “Harlem of the South” because of its many nightclubs that hosted top Black entertainers from across the nation, Central Avenue also was home to more than 100 stores, shops, and restaurants.

During the riot, arsonists specifically targeted white-owned Central Avenue businesses while a crowd of 400 rocked an occupied police car yelling “Kill them” until police reinforcements arrived. Another 100 people surrounded the Tampa municipal bus barn and threatened to burn it to the ground.

The Tampa Bay Riot lasted three days. On June 14, 1967, Florida Governor Claude Kirk Jr. ordered 500 Florida National Guardsmen, 235 Florida High Patrol troopers, and 250 local law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions to Tampa to help Tampa and St. Petersburg police. The next day the violence ended.

A two-day investigation by the Hillsborough County District Attorney’s office declared the shooting was justified. Florida State Attorney General Paul Antinori would also claim after his office investigated the incident, that the use of deadly force against unarmed Chambers was justified because he was a known felon evading arrest. Although Chambers never experienced a trial for the camera store robbery because of his death at the hands of police, Antinori asserted that people who broke the law had to accept the risk that law enforcement would use force.

The Spingarn Medal is the highest honor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Since 1915, it has been awarded annually for the highest achievement of a living African American in the preceding year or years. The twofold purpose of the award, according to the NAACP, is to call the attention of the American people to the existence of distinguished merit and achievement among Americans of African descent and to stimulate the ambition of African American youth.

The award was established in 1914 by Joel Elias Spingarn, chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors and one the organization’s first Jewish leaders, who wished, in his words, “to perpetuate the lifelong interest of my brother, Arthur B. Spingarn, of my wife, Amy E. Spingarn, and of myself in the achievements of the American Negro.” Spingarn joined the NAACP in 1913 after resigning his professorship at Columbia University over free-speech issues. He was instrumental in establishing the NAACP’s New York office, and he sponsored the award in an attempt to counter the negative depiction of Black people as criminals that was common in newspapers of the time.

The committee established to select Spingarn Medal recipients initially consisted of John Hope, president of Morehouse College, and John Hurst, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Spingarn, who was white, insisted the awards committee include prominent white individuals so as to ensure attention would be drawn to awardees in the mainstream press. Former president William H. Taft and Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, were later named to the awards committee.

The first recipient of the Spingarn Medal was Ernest E. Just, professor of biology at Howard University. The list of Spingarn awardees reads as a veritable Who’s Who of African Americans in fields such as politics, the military, medicine, arts, entertainment, and sports. Awardees include W. E. B. DuBois, George Washington Carver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Ralph Bunche, Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Colin Powell, and Sidney Poitier. Eleven women have won the Spingarn Medal. Two awardees received the medal posthumously. No award was made in 1938.

Upon Spingarn’s death in 1939, he left an endowment of $20,000 to enable the NAACP to continue giving the award in perpetuity. Today the awardee is selected by a nine-person committee with the presentation of the medal taking place at the NAACP’s annual convention.

The Battle of Nashville occurred on December 15-16, 1864 south of Nashville, Tennessee. The battle, between approximately 22,000 Union troops led by Major General George Henry Thomas and 40,000 Confederate troops led by Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, was considered a major Union victory in the Western Theater of the Civil War (the area west of the Appalachian Mountains). It was also significant because African American Union troops played a crucial role in the Union victory.

African American Union soldiers served in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiments. The USCT were eight regiments—the 12th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 44th, and 100th—all units of the U.S. Colored Infantry led by white officers. An estimated 13,000 USCT soldiers participated in the Battle of Nashville, the largest number of black soldiers on any battlefield so far in the Civil War.

On December 15, 1864, the 13th USCT and the 2nd Colored Brigade (three regiments of black troops) were ordered to move in position for an assault on a Confederate battery position along the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad near Nolensville Pike. The Confederates who expected a Union attack, positioned their artillery to open fire on the USCT brigade. Confederate troops also opened fire on the 13th USCT but they were guarded by earthworks. The 13th USCT used the earthworks as shelter as they exchange gunfire with Confederate forces. The 20th Indiana Battery arrived to give support to the 13th USCT men and with those reinforcements, they forced the Confederates to pull their cannons back.

The next day, Union Colonel Charles R. Thompson received orders to take his 2nd Colored Brigade to join General Thomas J. Woods’ 4th Corps. The 13th USCT along with the 12th and 100th USCT arrived at Peach Orchard Hill where the Confederates immediately opened fire at them but none of the USCT took any losses. General Wood told Thompson that he would attack the Confederate position at Overton Hill and requested three USCT regiments to support his left flank. Around 3:00 p.m., the Union troops began their attack. Thompson placed the 100th and 12th USCT in front and use the 13th as support. The 12th encountered a dense thicket which slowed their advance. Meanwhile the 100th USCT came upon several fallen trees that slowed their advance as well. Both regiments faced heavy fire from the Confederate troops occupying Overton Hill.

Colonel Thompson ordered the 12th USCT to take shelter to regroup. The 100th USCT and 4th Corps attempted to advance but were pushed back by the Confederates. The 13th USCT, however pushed past the 2nd Brigade and continued to advance up the hill while subject to withering fire from Confederate troops. With no support from the white Union troops or other black regiments, who fell back from their positions, the 13th USCT continued to storm the Confederate earthworks. The regiment took heavy casualties but failed to take Overton Hill. Despite that failure, Confederate troops were forced to withdraw.

The Union Army would go on to win the Battle of Nashville and end the Army of Tennessee (Confederates) as a fighting force in Tennessee. The battle, however, cost the 13TH USCT dearly. The 900-soldier regiment lost four white officers and 55 enlisted men killed along with 4 white officers and 165 enlisted men wounded. Their bravely in the battle however was acknowledged by their white counterparts and officers alike. General George H. Thomas, the Union commander who was a Virginian by birth and who previously harbored doubts about the black soldiers under his command, rode across the battlefield seeing the bodies of black Union soldiers and white Confederate soldiers lying together, said to his officers, “Gentlemen, the question is settled, negro soldiers will fight.”

On September 16, 1928, the Okeechobee Hurricane or Hurricane San Felipe Segundo, one of the most devastating tropical cyclones in Florida’s weather history and one of the ten most intense hurricanes to hit the United States mainland, came ashore near Palm Beach, Florida. It began as a tropical depression somewhere between West Africa’s Cape Verde and Senegal but by the time it crossed the Atlantic Ocean it was the first recorded Category 5 hurricane in the country’s history with winds at 140 miles per hour. The Okeechobee Hurricane came without the warning systems available today for such storms and state and local officials were barely prepared for the catastrophe. The impact of the storm was made worse by the ineffective communication and political posturing of Republican President Calvin Coolidge and Democratic Governor Doyle Elam Carlton, Sr.

The City of Palm Beach had by that point developed a reputation as the residential area of the wealthy and famous. West of Palm Beach into Palm Beach County there were extensive agricultural enterprises that specialized in sugarcane production. This labor-intensive crop depended on poor communities comprised primarily Bahamian migrant farm workers and African American sharecroppers, for labor.

While the Okeechobee Hurricane impacted all in Palm Beach County, the vast majority of the deaths from the storm came in the Bahamian and African American communities. Many of these people perished from the thrush of water rising as high as 20 feet and destroying weakened levees and dikes. Between 1,800 and 4,000 men, women, and children died and it was estimated that 75% of them were Black making this one of the deadliest natural disasters to impact African Americans and Afro-Bahamians. Officially there were 69 white victims and 674 black victims. This deadly hurricane caused more than $100 million in damage but the county and other local governments did not have resources to help the survivors or deemed them less important than the wealthy coastal population which was mostly white.

Blacks who survived were often forced to recover the bodies of relatives and friends who died in contaminated waters. Most of the black survivors were not even allowed to bury their family members on the soil of the white landowners where they worked and lived as sharecroppers. This hurricane revealed institutional racism and in particular how unfairly allocated governmental resources were held back from local black families.

While white residents buried their relatives and friends with dignity in coffins in local cemeteries or rested them peacefully on their properties, deceased blacks were stacked on top of each other and the corpses burned ostensibly to prevent the spread of disease. Local authorities then authorities bulldozed the scorched bodies, burying them in makeshift mass graves on lands that were later zoned for industrial use.

In 2000, the city of West Palm Beach, recognizing what callous disregard of black life and lack of respect for the dignity of the black deceased, purchased the main mass burial site in 2000, and eight years later, placed a historical marker there in acknowledgment of what had happened and to restore some dignity to those who suffered and perished in 1928.

The Shady Rest Golf & Country Club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey is the oldest African American golf club in the United States. It was the mecca of black middle-class society in New Jersey from the 1920s to the 1960s with members traveling from as far as the Carolinas to enjoy its amenities.

The land, previously the Ephraim Tucker Farm, was a 31-acre plot which was sold to the Westfield Golf Club whose members then converted it into a nine-hole golf course, keeping the farmhouse as its new clubhouse. On September 21, 1921, a group of black investors known as the Progressive Realty Company, Inc., including Scotch Plains resident Henry Willis Sr., purchased the club and renamed it the Shady Rest Golf and Country Club.

Designed to provide a recreational facility to its members during a time of intense racial segregation, many African American residents from surrounding New Jersey communities were able to partake in the clubs’ activities such as golfing, croquet, skeet shooting, horseback riding, and tennis. A Place For Us was its motto as many prominent black activists such as W.E.B. DuBois lectured there. And as a result of its location, just thirty miles west of New York City and its inclusion in The Negro Motorist Green Book, the clubhouse became a haven for many prominent black entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstein, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, Chick Webb, and Billie Holiday. They all came to perform there while enjoying the exclusivity that Shady Rest provided. In addition, Ora Washington and Althea Gibson, the first African Americans to win a grand slam title, honed their skills on its tennis pavilion.

The golf course was home to the first National Colored Golf Championship held in 1925 and sponsored by the United States Colored Golfers Association which had been founded earlier that year and led by its president, B.C. Gordon. Gordon was also the president of Shady Rest. Its head professional golfer, John Shippen, served as its groundskeeper. In 1896, Shippen was the first African American professional golfer to play in the U.S. Open. Shippen, an African American of Jamaican descent, played in five U.S. opens before settling in Scotch Plains in 1931 and managing Shady Rest until his retirement in 1960.

In 1964, after a legal battle, the township of Scotch Plains gained ownership of the Club and made the grounds public and racially integrated. It also changed the name to the Scotch Hills Golf and Country Club. The Club House still survives. When under a threat of demolition in 2013, local residents formed The Preserve Shady Rest Committee and raised money to have the clubhouse renovated and restored. It now includes a small museum dedicated to John Shippen and his contribution to golf history. Shady Rest is currently on the list of endangered landmarks in New Jersey in anticipation of being declared a historical landmark.

The Longview Race Riot occurred on July 10-12 in this northeast Texas city where 1,790 blacks comprised 31% of the town’s 5,700 people in 1919. Racial tensions were high across the United States due to race riots that began in March 1919. Just before the Longview Riot, local teacher and newspaper correspondent Samuel L. Jones and Dr. Calvin P. Davis, prominent leaders of the black community, had begun encouraging local black farmers to avoid selling to local white cotton brokers and to instead sell directly to buyers in Galveston. Also, local blacks set up a cooperative store where they competed with and angered local white merchants. These incidents raised tensions in Longview long before the riot occurred.

In early June, a local black man, Lemuel Walters, was beaten by two white men for allegedly making romantic advances towards their sister, a white woman from Kilgore. Walters was arrested and put in the Gregg County jail, but a mob showed up at the jail on June 17, and the sheriff gave Walters to the mob, who shot and killed him. The story was printed in the Chicago Defender on July 10 and enraged local whites who blamed the article on Jones although he denied writing it.

Later that day Jones was attacked and beaten across the street from the Gregg County courthouse by the same men who beat Walters. Dr. Davis arrived in his vehicle and took Jones to his office to treat him. The two men appealed to Mayor Gabriel A. Bodenheim for protection but were instead advised to leave town. Jones hid with relatives and they gathered twenty-five friends to protect his home. Around midnight, a group of white men arrived at Jones house but were met with gunfire. Three of the white men were injured, and another who hid under a nearby house was beaten badly by the black defenders of the home.

As the word spread, a crowd of almost 1,000 whites began to gather back in town with some breaking into Welch’s Hardware Store to take guns and ammunition. The crowd burned down Jones’s home, Dr. Davis’s home and office, and a black dance hall. Although Texas governor William P. Hobby sent eight Texas Rangers to Longview, the violence continued. On the night of July 12, Marion Bush, father-in-law of Dr. Davis, was killed by a local white farmer. On Sunday, July 13, Governor Hobby declared martial law in all of Gregg County, and ordered all residents of Longview to surrender their weapons at the county courthouse. An estimated 5,000 to 7,000 weapons were turned in, and more soldiers and Rangers arrived in town to quell the riots.

Seventeen white men were arrested for attempted murder on July 14, but all were released. Nine other white men were arrested for arson and then released. None of the men were prosecuted. Twenty-one black men were arrested for assault and attempted murder and moved to an Austin, Texas jail for their safety. Eventually, all were released without trials, to avoid any further unrest in Longview. Martial law ended on July 18, and citizens were allowed to retrieve their firearms the next day. The Longview Race Riot was one of twenty-five riots that took place from May through October 1917 during what would be called the Red Summer.

Zhou Enlai’s first tour of Africa, popularly known as Zhou’s “Safari,” was a series of state visits to ten independent African countries, undertaken between December 1963 and February 1964 by the Chinese Premier. These visits, which occurred during a period when many countries were gaining independence from colonial power, marked the first time any high-ranking Chinese Communist leader had traveled to Africa.

Zhou’s original plan was to visit every country on the continent that had established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing. He traveled at the head of a delegation of more than fifty people, including China’s foreign minister, Chen Yi. The delegation began its tour in Egypt, which in May 1956 had become the first African country to recognize the Communist government of China. During the journey, the itinerary was amended several times to add Tunisia, whose government planned to recognize Communist China; remove Tanganyika, which was in the midst of the Zanzibar Revolution; and add Ethiopia, despite the fact that it did not recognize the Beijing regime until 1970.

In the end, the ten countries visited were as follows: Egypt (The United Arab Republic: December 14–21, 1963), Algeria (December 21–27), Morocco (December 27–30), Tunisia (January 9–10, 1964), Ghana (January 11–16), Mali (January 16–21), Guinea (January 21–26), Sudan (January 27–30), Ethiopia (January 30–February 1), and Somalia (February 1–4).

Zhou’s primary goal in Africa was to raise China’s profile on the continent at a time when it was beginning to challenge the Soviet Union openly over the direction of the global Communist movement. While Zhou received a warm reception in countries with left-wing governments, such as Algeria and Mali, he faced more hostile encounters with leaders who were adamantly anti-communist, especially in Tunisia and Ethiopia.

In response, Zhou consistently asserted that countries with different “political systems” could maintain friendly relations. Rather than focus on the affairs of postcolonial governments, he largely restricted himself to calling for African countries still under colonial rule to win independence. Zhou did, however, employ potentially inflammatory Marxist rhetoric in several of his speeches in Africa. In a farewell address in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, before returning to China, for example, he pledged that China would support “revolutionary struggles” throughout the continent and oppose both foreign intervention and native “reactionaries.”

Another important goal of Zhou’s trip to Africa was to drum up enthusiasm for holding a second Asian–African Conference in Algiers in 1965, a decade after the first Asian–African Conference had been held in Bandung, Indonesia. Zhou was especially concerned to ensure that the Soviet Union not be invited to send a delegation to the conference, since it would make it more difficult for the Chinese government to present itself as the only truly anti-imperialist Marxist power. Zhou made a second, shorter trip to Africa in June 1965 to lobby several African leaders to support his vision for the second Asian–African Conference, but the conference was canceled soon thereafter in the wake of the overthrow of Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella.