Habari Gani? Ujamma – Cooperative Economics

To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

It was a little more than three years ago when I giving particular attention to the development of the early Christian church as described in the book of Acts. Scripture says that after the departure of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God descended in mass upon his followers imbuing them with confidence, power, and the ability to speak in foreign languages so that others nearby could understand. Not only that, but the Spirit also was the fuel which re-organized this infant community around daily fellowship and shared meals. Remarkably, another feature of this new community of Faith was that they rejected personal possessions and sold their belongings in order to provide for anyone’s needs. [You can read the full biblical account by Clicking Here]

My excitement of that scriptural vision at that time pushed me to proclaim that the early Christians were Socialists and to suggest that today’s Christians should be as well.

And while I’m not sure that I would so hastily draw the same conclusion today, at the very least I still maintain that scripture presents the early Church as embracing an inspiring COMMUNALISM. There was a certain and celebrated interconnectedness that characterized the early Christian community. And when I think about that interconnectedness and strong sense of communalism, I think about today’s Kwanzaa principle – Ujamaa: Cooperative Economics.

Many have spoken on the importance of the Black Community handling money with greater intentionality and for purposes that would uplift our community. Brother Malcolm X spoke plainly about the importance of us having a hand in the economics of our own neighborhoods, owning the businesses in our neighborhoods and thereby being in a position to employ our own people. Tied to Bro. Malcolm’s position, research shows that Black businesses are more likely than White businesses to hire Black people. Given the stark unemployment rate today for American Africans (15.5% among those still looking for work), supporting Black Businesses must become a priority in our community for in many cases when we support Black Businesses, we support ourselves.

I’m so thankful to live in a city with so many industrious American Africans who are running their own businesses and I make it my business to support them in many ways.

For example, like many of you, I have tons of meetings to attend every month and many of these meetings happen over some kind of meal. Whenever I can, I recommend the “meeting over a meal” to take place at a Black cafe’ or restaurant. Baltimore has many of them, but two of my favorites are the Darker Than Blue Cafe on Greenmount Avenue and Terra Cafe on 25th Street. These two award-winning restaurants are led by inspiring Black Men – Bro. Casey Jenkins (Darker Than Blue) and Bro. Terence Dickson (Terra Cafe) respectively. They’ve created a “down home” atmosphere and serve good food at reasonable prices.

Rev. Heber Brown, III pictured with Brother Nati of Everyone's Place African Cultural Center

You can also get great books and Afrocentric DVD’s from Reality Speaks Bookstore and Media Center. Bro. Jabari and Sista Yaa are longtime advocates for an Afrocentric way of life for African people in Tubman City (Baltimore) and should be supported.

When it comes to apparel, I tend to head to Sankofa African & World Bazaar on North Charles Street.

But for the past month or so, I’ve been excited though because the clothing brand, Alkebu-Lan Gear, has had a kiosk at Towson Mall now located on the third floor. Bro. Darron Waller, (a fellow Morganite!) has created an exciting and fashionable brand that is worn by people all over the world – including on Sesame Street. Bro. Waller has a special sale running until Saturday, December 31, 2011 – buy one shirt, get two free!

I could go on, but you get the point. For all the unseemly and parasitic businesses that drain life and resources from the Black community (with our support!); there are many many more inspiring and empowering Black-owned establishments that stand as beacons of our industrious history, champions of our culture, and founding stones of the 21st-Century Black Wall Street that we have yet to rebuild.

No matter what city or state you’re reading this from; I’d love to know what Black-owned, community-supportive businesses that you frequent or know of. Let’s connect the dots and share. Please provide a website or physical address where possible.

Ashe.

Habari Gani? Kujichagulia! which means Self Determination – To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Self-Determination is such a beautiful principle which speaks to the freedom that all individuals and people-groups should be able to rightly exercise. Though not always using the term, I have been writing about “kujichagulia” on this site for a long time.

In early 2008, I was blessed to be a part of the Park Heights Community “Dry Out” campaign that sought to expel liquor stores and predatory businesses from the 5100 block of Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore. It’s beyond shameful that there are 4 liquor stores in that one block! It’s also telling that in this overwhelmingly Black community; all of those liquor stores are owned by non-Black people. Under the leadership of Derrick Compton and with the support of others like now-councilman Brandon Scott, Al Watson, and Pastor Kevin Brooks; we put weekly pressure on these establishments to let them know they were being monitored for infractions and targeted for eventual expulsion.

In November 2009, I critiqued the Emerging Christian Movement in the spirit of self-determination, for its exclusion of non-white voices as it presented theological dynamics and features as if they created them while all the while People of Color of other Faith traditions and denominations have been practicing different “emerging” principles for generations.

I wrote about “kujichagulia” back in August 2010 when I proclaimed that “Black People Should Control The Baltimore City Public School System” on the grounds that Afrikan youth make up about 98% of the student population and the city is somewhere around 65% Afrikan. This notwithstanding, Black folks are regularly begging and pleading to have substantive say in the education of their own youth.

Self-determination pushed me back in April 2011 when I talked about the general “whiteness” of the Urban Farming/Healthy Food Movement and the need for people of color to be at the lead of the food revolution just as we are in most cases the ones suffering under the brunt of America’s food deserts.

And of course, my involvement in the struggle against Governor O’Malley’s plan to build a new youth jail in East Baltimore has been fueled by my firm belief that the Black Community should decide what institutions we want or don’t want in our community just like White people and Jewish people decide what will or won’t come in their communities. If White people don’t want a business or even a church to come into their community; chances are it won’t come. If Jewish people don’t want a business to come in their community; chances are it doesn’t come. Why should it be any different for Afrikan people? We don’t want O’Malley’s multi-million dollar youth jail and many of us have committed ourselves to organize, agitate, and protest – even if it means physically impeding the path of construction trucks – until O’Malley bends to our wishes.

This, my friends, is self-determination and in different ways it’s happening all over the world.

I pray that the flames of “Kujichagulia” burn even brighter in the new year for the Global Afrikan Family. As Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. reminded us – “No one can ride your back unless its bent.” No more hunched-backness in the Black community! May we stand up straight like righteous women and men and commit to “define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves” without timidity or apology.

Ashe.

So off the top let me say that yes – I am a follower of Christ and yes – I celebrate Kwanzaa. Some may see these affirmations as incompatible and polar opposites, however, there is no incongruity with me. I am thankful for Kwanzaa and truly appreciate the fact that the day after I join countless millions of Christians in celebrating the gift of new life in Christ; I can immediately keep the celebration going by observing the new life that is possible for the Afrikan community as we embrace sacred values.

Those sacred values in Kwanzaa are called the Nguzo Saba – the 7 principles – and today the principle that is uplifted is UMOJA which means UNITY. With this principle we are invited to “strive for and maintain unity between the family, community, nation, and race.”

In my estimation this is a beautiful way to start this sacred week of observance for the Afrikan community. And leading up to this day of UNITY, my mind was reflecting on Bro. Malcolm X and his speech entitled The Ballot of The Bullet – given in 1964. The whole speech is powerful to say the least, but the first few paragraphs and the closing paragraph are particularly important given today’s focus on UNITY.

Bro. Malcolm goes to great lengths in the opening of the speech to diminish divisions between himself and other Freedom Fighters who embraced different religious perspectives. By 1964, he understood that religion should NOT be a barrier that keeps the Black Community from working together. He shared his position that the Black community has a common fight and a common enemy. At the end of his talk that day, he pledged his support for any of the organizations or ministers (Christian or otherwise) on the rostrum who needed his support. Bro. Malcolm’s evolution in that way can inspire the Black Community today.

There are yet unhealthy levels of factionalism and outright division in the Afrikan community…there is even disconnect within factions that causes greater splintering. As I shared recently on a WEAA radio program; one of the tools of the MAAFA (or Afrikan Holocaust) was Disconnection. African people were forcibly disconnected from their names, their villages, their culture, their land, their religious beliefs, etc. My position is that if DISCONNECTION was the tool used to overpower us; then RECONNECTION and thereby UNITY will be the path that restores our collective strength.

I am excited to see the seeds of this in Baltimore. There is a rising generation of social justice activists and servants of the Afrikan Community that are expressing a greater readiness for strategic unity around shared goals. We are African Spiritualists, Muslims, Christians, Black Nationalists, Pan Africanists, and Integrationists. We don’t agree on every minor point or detail, however, we recognize that no one of us and no one of our organizations will be able to achieve some of the laudable goals that we cherish for the broader Afrikan community in the city.

We MUST work together. We MUST share resources. We MUST lend support to each others initiatives. We MUST begin to identify specific points that we will work together on in 2012. This does not mean that the distinct identities of any of our organizations must be erased. Rather, I believe that our greatest strength is in our varied gifts, organizational identities, and perspectives that when combined can produce lasting fruit.

I close this Umoja reflection by giving thanks for some of the Afrikan-centered groups that I know of that are serving Baltimore’s Afrikan community in remarkable ways. I give thanks for Everyone’s Place Bookstore & African Cultural Center, Solvivaz Nation/Reality Speaks Bookstore, Habesha, the Pan-Afrikan Liberation Movement and its various programs, ISA Academy, Nsoroma Academy, Ujima People’s Progress Party, the Marshall “Eddie” Conway Freedom School, and the many others that I don’t even know about (please add other Baltimore-based, Afrikan-centered organizations that you know of in the comments section)

May 2012 be a year of continued blessing to your organizations and I pray that we can lay the foundation for closer cooperation and functional unity for the benefit of our people. If there is anything that I can do to support you, your organizations, and/or initiatives that will benefit our community; please don’t hesitate to ask. I truly appreciate you all and look forward to strengthening the ties that bind us together.

Ashe.

Mr. Marshall "Eddie" Conway

Mr. Marshall “Eddie” Conway is a true servant of his community. Imprisoned for more than four decades for the crime of murdering a Baltimore City Police Officer – a crime for which he maintains his innocence – Mr. Conway has not allowed the prison cell to suppress his spirit and will to organize his community.

The former Baltimore-based, Black Panther Party Leader, has been a stabilizing and healing force in Maryland prisons. Mentoring young prisoners, co-creating violence prevention dramatic presentations, and speaking to the world through his writings – telling his story of growing up in Baltimore so that others might be helped.

I am so thankful that members of my church and I have connected with Friend of a Friend Mentoring Program – an effort that Mr. Conway cofounded that focuses on conflict resolution, communication, and coping skills inside three of Maryland’s correctional institutions.

On Tuesday, November 1, 2011, there will be a parole board hearing for Mr. Conway. Supporters are asking that all people of Faith and Conscience would consider faxing a letter to the Board requesting that Mr. Conway be granted parole. He has been a tremendous blessing to so many individuals and families while behind prison bars; there’s no telling the positive impact he would have on the community as a physically free man. Please consider editing the letter below and given the deadline PLEASE PRINT OUT AND FAX THE LETTER TO THE FOLLOWING NUMBER TODAY: 410-764-4355

Please comment below to let me know that you’ve faxed the letter if you feel led to do so. You’ll be joining more than 200 others who have already extended themselves in support of Mr. Conway. Thank you.

Honorable Members of the Maryland Parole Board
6776 Reisterstown Road
Suite 307
Baltimore, Maryland 21215

RE: Marshall Eddie Conway, # 116469

Dear Honorable Parole Board Members,

Support for the release of Marshall Eddie Conway has been previously and persistently expressed by thousands of Maryland tax payers and community citizens throughout the nation and abroad. This petition respectfully reiterates the sentiments of those who support the parole of Marshall Eddie Conway.

Inmate Conway, whose parole is scheduled for November 1, 2011, has been incarcerated in the Maryland state penal system for over four decades. Throughout that period, inmate Conway has utilized and continues to utilize his time to resolve conflict, build peace, and improve life outcomes for fellow prisoners and at-risk youth. The information below highlights ways in which Marshall Eddie Conway has been of invaluable service to the prison and Maryland community.

• Founded Friend of a Friend (2007), a peace building program that has trained 200 plus inmates per year to be mentors and peacemakers

• Collaborated with WombWorks Productions to produce “The Birth of Peace”, a play about finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts between street organizations in poor communities

• Worked to secure a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to help improve the literacy skills of Maryland inmates

• Created a counseling program for youth at risk of imprisonment that operated for 12 consecutive years

While incarcerated, Mr. Conway has exhibited extraordinary character and personal commitment to peace building and positively impacting society. Maryland residents, including those representing the Baltimore City Council and the Maryland General Assembly support Mr. Conway’s release and re-integration into the Maryland community. In light of these factors, I respectfully ask this Honorable board to grant parole. Marshall Eddie Conway has proved himself a model inmate and will undoubtedly prove a model citizen.

Respectfully submitted,

[Your name]

Rev. Heber Brown, III with Former Black Panther, Kathleen Cleaver

The first time I met Kathleen Cleaver was a November 2007 Black Panther Rank & File Symposium that the Maryland Institute College of Art put on. As my blog article from that day reveals; I was touched by the continuing flame of Cleaver’s passion for the same issues she put her body on the line for back in the Panther’s heyday.

Which is why I’m excited that she’s on her way to Baltimore once more. This time to talk about Cointelpro – the U.S. Government’s covert and illegal assault upon those individuals and groups that it deemed were a threat to national security. (sound familiar?)

There will also be a viewing and discussion of COINTELPRO 101 – an educational film about the FBI program.

This is a timely event and viewing given that Clint Eastwood is preparing to release a film about J. Edgar Hoover – the man who directed COINTELPRO and has federal buildings named after him today -authorized the harassment and in some cases outright assassination of Black people in this country.

If you’re in the Baltimore area, you don’t want to miss this event:

Photo Courtesy: Adam Jackson (Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle)

So on that faithful Saturday – at that forum – I finally had to promote the exploration of a new path for my people. Instead of the usual song and lyrics, I offered up for the consideration of the crowd possibilities that are enveloped in practical philosophies that are less popular in this city. I prodded the crowd toward Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism. We’ve been promoting other paths for our people for so long with so few results for the masses that it’s about time that we found the courage to at the very least begin exploring other avenues for communal empowerment.

Let’s not denounce or dismiss Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism from the table of options before we even give it a try. Let’s not disregard these two philosophies because it makes other people uncomfortable. What about the depressing conditions that make our people more than uncomfortable, but uneducated, unemployed, uninsured, and uninvited?

We talk about diversity, but how diverse are the Black voices that we commonly hear speaking about our condition as a people. Even when they appear to be arguing different positions – like the much discussed “debate” between Dr. Cornel West and Rev. Al Sharpton – closer analysis will reveal that they in large measure are arguing nuances of the same position.

As I said “Black Nationalism” and “Pan Africanism” on the LBS panel that day, I sensed an uneasiness with the audience. White people were in the audience and it’s been my experience that Black people get nervous when you start talking Black Pride around White people. – as if cultural pride and love of self are inexcusable offenses. But the uneasiness just might have had to do more with my poor job of explaining what I meant by those loaded terms. Black Nationalism/Pan Africanism isn’t taught in schools, talked about in churches, or examined on television so one must not assume general understanding.

I wish I would have been able to succinctly define Black Nationalism as Bro. Malcolm X does in this clip.

Can any conscious American African person genuinely disagree with what is advocated with the philosophy of Black Nationalism based on that understanding? As one listens to Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) speak on Pan Africanism can the oppressed African masses truly discard its potential power so quickly?

We don’t need a juvenile Black Nationalism which beats its chests to proclaim it’s hatred for White people. Black Nationalism in its most powerful expression revolves around LOVE for African people not hatred of another people. And we don’t need this rhetorical revolutionary Black Nationalism/Pan Africanism which touts the long listing of books on revolution that have been read. With that, as Amos Wilson said, you’ll just die Black and Proud and your obituary will read, “Here lies a Black Revolutionary who read a lot of books, but left no enduring legacy.”

American Africans need to explore and embrace a Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism which holds as its most important action love of self. Only deep and abiding love of self can provide the sustainable energy necessary to re-orient, re-educate, and release African people around these two powerful concepts. Furthermore, a Pan Africanism fueled by love can appropriately re-connect African people in places where the African Holocaust (or MAAFA) fractured and disconnected us.

Think about it – one of the mandatory goals of the MAAFA involved the DISCONNECTION of African people from their names, their language, their land, their history, their cultural ways, their communities, their families, etc. Disconnection prompted discombobulation and we are largely still confused because we’ve lost our unique orientation to the world. Pan Africanism promotes a RECONNECTION to our ancestral identity which has the potential to bring about the communal healing that we so stand in need of. There’s no doubt about it – if African people don’t embrace love of self and its expression in tangible ways in every area of our activity and thinking then we are likely to remain in bondage.

Furthermore, with this reorientation to love-of-self, we must also commit ourselves to the construction of conscious anchor institutions – schools, banks, businesses, cultural centers, spiritual centers, etc. Especially in these cities where the population is predominantly African, we need to start building enclaves which champion our cultural values, orients our children to the world based on our ancestral understanding, and promotes an active unity and interdependence within the community.

It’s an enormous task that is possible by taking measured steps. For instance on the way to organizing an Afrikan-centered Public School System that is independent of the government funded public school systems; we can start a Saturday academy or after school programs in partnership with kindred spirits. Don’t just try to jump up and build a whole school system! Start one quality program and learn how to run it well before trying to organize a system. On the way to food sovereignty for our community – where we return to eating only what we grow ourselves; start a community garden or assume responsibility for a vacant plot of land. Grow there and supplement your diet with what you grow with your own hands. Learn how to grow and manage a garden well before you jump out there to run a farm! In the way of economic empowerment, perhaps a first step is to organize a Giving Circle before you begin talking about starting a credit union or bank.

These steps can present building blocks toward greater manifestations of what is needed. The American African community must embrace self-determination, self-government, and most important of all – SELF LOVE.

The question now is can we love ourselves enough to even consider different modes of understanding that will give rise to different communal behaviors that can potentially lift African people exponentially?

Photo Courtesy of: Adam Jackson (Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle)

I was asked to serve as a panelist at the first Freedom Forum hosted by the think tank focused on policy analysis and community change. The theme of the event was Baltimore’s Youth Movement: Are They Ready To Lead? And it’s funny because I remember when I was squarely included in the crowd of city youth leaders, but more and more I’m being informed that my license has expired!

I couldn’t help, but sit there though and think about the days when folks like Bro. Farajii Muhammad, Hassan Giordano, C.D. Witherspoon, Ezekiel Jackson and I would run the same type of events. Gatherings focused on serious discussion about our generation and our city. We would link up with the Elders who weren’t threatened by us and examine the many ideas that sprung forth from our minds – pretending to be new ideas.

It was a very reflective moment for me to sit on the LBS panel at yet another forum and just think about all the ideas and all the perspectives that I’ve heard over the few years that I’ve been grinding for social justice in Baltimore. I just couldn’t sit there and regurgitate the same responses that I’ve been giving and hearing for all these years. I feel like I’ve been chasing after a family of rabbits in a field…feeling a sense of accomplishment by catching up to one of them only to have another one of them run across my path and entice me to chase it. In a very fragmented and compartmentalized way, I’ve been running after the rabbit of “better economic opportunities for Blacks in Baltimore” then chasing down “youth mentoring for young Black men” then being lured to leap after the prison industrial complex then better schools then gentrification then street gangs then youth jobs then then Then THEN!

No doubt, some gains have been made, but the masses of my people are still in bondage on so many levels. Surely, chasing after all these different rabbits was doing more to keep me preoccupied and assured of my self worth than it was providing holistic systemic change for my community.

I sat on that LBS panel unwilling to once again serve up a fractured picture of the plight of my beloved and beleaguered community in Baltimore. We need fresh insight. New ideas. New understanding. And a holistic framework which not only pinpoints the cause of our collective pain, but also provides a path to our communal wholeness. I just couldn’t sit there and pretend as if all we need is one more Black person on the corporate board, one more Black politician in office, one more Black Student doing better on the MSA’s, one more Black firefighter or police officer, one more Black church or preacher and then all would be right with the Black world. This incremental approach to community empowerment has not worked for the masses of African people.

Think about it.

How many quarters would you put in a vending machine that didn’t provide you with the snack you selected? At most you’d put 2 quarters in the machine and if by chance you did put a third one in and it still didn’t work, you’d start kicking or rocking that machine trying to get your honey glazed donut. Some of you would even call that 1 (800) number on the sticker not so much because you wanted your quarter back, but because the machine did not provide you with what you know you deserved and you felt cheated.

In that same way, African people in cities across the country have been investing in strategies and systems that have not yielded the desired results for the masses. We’ve been promoting and preaching incrementalism…just go along and we’ll get along-ism…just wait on the benevolence of White folks-ism.

I’m reminded of that quote by the Great Ancestor Amos Wilson who said, “One reason for the condition we’re in today is a leadership that has not yet decided it will determine a new reality and develop an Afrocentric reality, one that is suitable to the advancement and development of Afrikan people.” It’s a statement that rings truer and truer to my ears.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Honorable Marcus Garvey

Tributes, websites, songs, poems, and scholarships dedicated to The Honorable Marcus Garvey can be found all over the internet – and deservedly so. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, (August 18, 1887 – June 10, 1940) the Jamaican-born, Pan Africanist organizer made tremendous impact in this world – the reverbs of which many of us are still feeling to this day.

Even as many are currently marveling at the populist uprising and revolution in Egypt which saw an overwhelming number of Egyptians descend on Tahrir Square and other sites demanding the right to determine their own destiny; it should be noted that under the banner of the United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, Garvey organized hundreds of thousands of Africans all over the world in the 1920′s and had upwards of 700 chapters situated in cities throughout the U.S., the West Indies, Canada, and Europe….all this without facebook, twitter, a website, or the reach of a 24/7 news cycle!

As a Pan Africanist, Garvey traveled the world casting the vision of a unified African nation that could pull up to the table of nations as an equal with the European, the Asian, and the Arab nations. He said, “What we want is an independent African nationality, and if America is to help the Negro peoples of the world establish such a nationality, then we welcome the assistance. It is hoped that when the time comes for American and West Indian Negroes to settle in Africa, they will realize their responsibility and their duty. It will not be to go to Africa for the purpose of exercising an over-lordship over the natives, but it shall be the purpose of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to have established in Africa that brotherly cooperation which will make the interests of the African native and the American and West Indian Negro one and the same, that is to say, we shall enter into a common partnership to build up Africa in the interest of our race.”

Being more than just a man of great oratory; Garvey made good on his words by incorporating The Black Star Line, a shipping line intended to be used for the transport of goods and eventually American Africans to our Ancestral Homeland. This along with his other business ventures including the Negro World newspaper and the Negro Factories Corporation underscored the need for African people not just to be rhetorical revolutionaries, but to be actively engaged in building institutions that will aid in the practical liberation of African people.

His example has extreme significance for Africans today – where ever we are found – who profess a commitment to advocating within the African community. We must honestly face the question every day of how are we organizing amongst our people and what are we actively building (in an institutional sense) to the benefit of our people. It’s not good enough to have charismatic personalities and a “way with words” that stir audiences with glee and feigned courage. We must come to grips with the reality of our mortality and understand that per Dr. Carter G. Woodson, our people don’t need any more leaders. They need servants. They also don’t need any more speeches. We need brick and mortar! We need to establish institutions that will long outlive us.

However, there is an angle on Marcus Garvey that is largely overlooked by the “conscious” community and unfortunately ignored by the Faith community. It is that Marcus Garvey was a Christian. Not just a “church goer”, but a passionate disciple of The Christ. His Christmas and Easter sermons recorded in The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey by Amy Jacques Garvey make clear the convictions of his Christian Faith. And the way he made sense of his persecution toward the end of his public service, sheds light on how he didn’t just worship The Christ as caricature or a kind of blessed bobble-head, but he sought to emulate the public ministry of Jesus as well – which he realized included crucifixion. But it is not just his convictions that are clear, but it is the way that he viewed God that is of particular interest.

The theology of Marcus Garvey built upon the Faith perspectives of other Black Nationalist and Pan African Christians like Rev. Edward W. Blyden, Pastor Henry Highland Garnet, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, David Walker, and many others. Garvey advocated the position that African people should view God through “their own spectacles” giving credence to the position that our overstanding and interpretation of The Divine would either injure or empower us.

With this in mind, it is the position of this writer that by and large, too many Christian ministries today don’t embrace a theology grounded in a Pan African or Black Nationalist construct – opting instead to champion an understanding of God that is promulgated by those outside of our community who don’t have the best interest of African people at heart nor should they be expected to!

It is not the responsibility of Joyce Meyers, John Hagee, or Joel Osteen to produce a practical Pan Africanist theology for Black Christians today. The academics of the African community have already provided much in the way of scholarship around this and the task for African Christians today is to study both historical and contemporary expressions of a Pan Africanist Christian Theology and going on from there then to contextualize what we observe to our local setting. The preponderance of blighted, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden, exploited Black communities bereft of political, economic, and educational vitality across this nation speaks, in part, to the negligence of Christian leaders to craft an understanding of God in light of ourselves that will help lift and strengthen us to stand in the storm of global, institutionalized racism.

Listen as Garvey outlines a Pan Africanist theological framework in this excerpt and note its differences from the popular Black sermonic positions of today:

“I repeat that God created you masters of your own destiny, masters of your own fate, and you can pay no higher tribute to your Divine Master than function as man, as [God] created you. The highest compliment we can pay to our Creator; the highest respect we can pay to our risen Lord and Savior, is that of feeling that [God] as created us as His masterpiece; His perfect instruments of His own existence, because in us is reflected the very being of God…and when we allow ourselves to be subjected and create others as our superior, we hurl an insult at our Creator who made us in the fullness of ourselves.” [SOURCE]

The Honorable Marcus Garvey presents a model of Christianity that Christian pastors and ministries would do well to study, reflect upon, and employ today. To fully appreciate the broad spectrum of ways that African people have embraced and utilized this great Faith; we need to make more room in our ministries, in our Sunday Schools, and in our sermons to highlight alternative examples of Christian practice that are no less meaningful than the profiles and personalities that we regularly feature. I am of the belief that the more Marcus Garvey and others become staples in the ethos of Black Churches; the more we will be prepared to experience transformative ministries springing from behind the walls of our sacred sanctuaries and reaching out to the children of Africa both on the Continent and in the Diaspora.

One of the joys of my life currently involves the privilege I have been afforded to mentor incarcerated youth. Twice per week I am blessed to connect with young men who have been charged as adults for various crimes. For me, they truly represent what I like to call “brilliance behind bars.” Though some would like to lock these young brothers into a particular stereotype; I’ve learned from first-hand experience that these young men are some of the most thoughtful, reflective, loyal, and spiritual brothers I’ve ever met.

I speak to them about how being free mentally, spiritually, and emotionally is often a precursor to physical liberation. Indeed, there are many people in our communities who have freedom of movement, but who are prisoners in a larger cell. Slave mentalities, self-destructive behaviors, and unhealthy relationships are the wardens that keep too many of our people in bondage.

My mentees who range from age 14 to 17, are beginning to understand the need to embrace freedom on a higher plain. Toward that end, to help plant that seed even deeper, we are preparing to begin reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Brother Malcolm’s story is not just a source of inspiration, but it’s also a testimony of redemption and that’s what my young brothers need. They need to know that despite their current condition and irrespective of the circumstances that brought them to the City Jail, they too can be redeemed. Reading this book together will help cement that truth.

I would like for you to consider donating a book to this effort. For those in the Baltimore City area, you can purchase a book from Everyone’s Place (1356 West North Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217) and leave it there for me to pick up. The book is $7.99 plus tax. Or you can purchase the book from a vendor of your choice and drop it off or mail it to my church: Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, 430 E. Belvedere Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21212.

Any support you can give will be greatly appreciated and I’ll be sure to provide regular updates on our progress.

Asante Sana (Thank You Very Much)

Rev. Heber Brown, III