(the following is a fictious conversation I am having in my head, interacting with the actual words spoken by Malcolm X. It is intended to motivate people to recommit themselves to the unfinished business of Malcolm X and the OAAU Basic Unity Program. I encourage everyone to take the time to reflect and answer Malcolm’s question to see where you are in your journey.)
Malcolm: If you can’t do for yourself what the white man is doing for himself, don’t say you’re equal with the white man. If you can’t set up a factory like he sets up a factory, don’t talk that old equality talk.…
ME: Understood. I won’t talk that equality talk, I’ll just start doing for self. I did set up my own business, Fitness Trucking. And I was growing about 30% of my own food during the summer and fall. Vegetables, chickens and eggs. It’s a start.
Malcolm: Who are you? You don’t know? Don’t tell me ‘Negro”. That’s nothing.
Me: I am the son of Jeremiah Nathaniel Blake Jr. and Yolanda Harris. grandson of Jeremiah Nathaniel Black Sr., son of Jacob Steven Blake, son of John Addison Blake, son of Yancey Blake, son of Jack Blake, son of George. As such, I am a New Afrikan descended from the Balanta people.
Malcolm: What were you before tha white man named you a negro?
Me: We were known as Balanta people.
Malcolm: And where were you? And what did you have? What was yours?
Me: We lived in a village called Untche. It is near a river. We were known as great swimmers and we were the best farmers in the area. We had freedom as we had no chiefs or kings over us. We had a life of freedom under natural law. We lived by the spirituality of the Great Belief.
Malcolm: What language did you speak then?
Me: Krassa
Malcolm: What was your name? It couldn’t have been Smith or Jones or Bunch or Powell. That wasn’t your name. They don’t have those kinds of names where you and I came from. No, what was your name?
Me: The alante n’dang, the Balanta elders, call me Brassa Mada, which means “He who knows how to do”. My great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was given the name “George” when he was trafficked to and enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina. I don’t know what his Balanta name was, but I like to call him Brassa Nchabra (Crocodile).
Malcolm: And why don’t you now know what your name was then? Where did it go? Where did you lose it? And how did he take it? What tongue did you speak? How did the man take your tongue?
Me: George was taken as a young boy about the age of eight, from his village in Untche. He was probably taken by Mandinka or Bijago man hunters and brought to the port of Cacheu and put on a slave ship as a prisoner of the Dum Diversas war that was launched in the name of Jesus Christ by his earthly representative Pope Nicholas V and the King of Portugual on June 18, 1452. George was sold to Joseph Blake, the great grandson of Robert Blake, Commander-In-Chief of the British Navy under Oliver Crommwell. The Negro Law of South Carolina (1740), sanctioned ethnocide against young George and on pain of violent corporeal punishment or death, George was forced to give up his culture and language in order to survive. George’s son Jack was then sold to Joseph’s son, Dempsey Blake and taken to North Carolina. By this time, George could no longer speak Krassa and Jack never learned his father’s mother-tongue. This is how we lost our language.
Malcolm: Where is your history? How did the man wipe out your history? How did the man - what did the man do to make you as dumb as you are right now?
Me: The Balanta people kept their history through oral traditions and the alante n’dang can tell the history from the 10th century to the present. I did a lot of research, including studying genetic migration data, and collected everything I could find about the Balanta people and compiled it into three volumes entitled Balanta B’urassa, My Sons! Those Who Resist Remain. I did this so that my sons would not remain dumb and would know their true history. I’ve made much of it avaialbe on the internet at my website so that other Balanta people in America will also not remain dumb.
Malclom: This is good. Very good. John Henrik Clarke and I wrote the following into the Organization of Afro- American Unity (OAAU) Basic Unity Program
i. Restoration: “In order to free ourselves from the oppression of our enslavers then, it is absolutely necessary for the Afro-American to restore communication with Africa . . .
ii. Reorientation: “ . . . We can learn much about Africa by reading informative books . .
iii. Education: “ . . . The Organization of Afro-American Unity will devise original educational methods and procedures which will liberate the minds of our children . . . We will . . . encourage qualified Afro-Americans to write and publish the textbooks needed to liberate our minds . . . . educating them [our children] at home.”
Me: Yes, I know. Your student and founder of the OAAU Canadian chapter, Dr. Y.N.Kly, wrote many books that I read after reading your autobiography and I have faithfully been following your true political philosophy and the Basic Unity Program of the OAAU.
Malcolm: In an interview for the Monthly Review, Vol. 16, no.1 in May 1964, I told A.B. Spellman that “The 22,000,000 so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our African homeland which is a long-range program; so the short-range program is that we must eat while we’re still here, we must have a place to sleep, we have clothes to wear, we must have better jobs, we must have better education; so that although our long-range political philosophy is to migrate back to our African homeland, our short-range program must involve that which is necessary to enable us to live a better life while we are still here.”
Me: Well, it has been 58 years since you said that. I have returned to my ancestral homeland and to facilitate the long-range program of the OAAU, I launched the Lineage Restoration Movement utilizing the new dna testing that allows us to identify our direct maternal and paternal ancestors and where they came from. I also launched the Decade of Return Initiative in Guinea Bissau to help as many people return there who so desire. We host regular tours and our next one is November 22-29, 2022.
Malcolm: Point iv. of the OAAU Basic Unity Program concerned Economic Security. WE MUST ESTABLISH A TECHNICIAN BANK. WE MUST DO THIS SO THAT THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT NATIONS OF AFRICA CAN TURN TO US WHO ARE THEIR BROTHERS FOR THE TECHNICIANS THEY WILL NEED NOW AND IN THE FUTURE.
Me: Interestingly, the first mention of the people of Guinea Bissau in European history was made by Gomes Eannes de Azurara,, the royal chronicler of the King Don Affonso the Fifth of Portugal in his book, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea Volume II. He mentions an attack made off the coast and says, “But our men had very great toil in the capture of those who were swimming, for they dived like cormorants, so that they could not get a hold of them.” The people of Guinea Bissau, like my great, great, great, great, great grandfather were great swimmers, some of the best in the world. Sadly, today, there are no swimming programs and very few swimming pools suitable for competition. No swimmer had ever represented Guinea Bissau in international competition. Being a former world class swimmer, having the expertise and knowing there was no one in the country to develop a national swimming program, I left the United States and have become President of the Guinea Bissau Swimming Federation and was the first swimmer in Guinea Bissau’s history to compete in the continental African Swimming Championships. This past June the Swimming Federation held the first modern swimming competition in Guinea Bissau. I am now preparing the Guinea Bissau National Team for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Malcolm: Did you hear my “The Ballot or The Bullet” speech. I said that our next move is to take the entire civil rights struggle problem into the United Nations and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans....So, I say in my conclusion the only way we're going to solve it -- we gotta unite in unity and harmony, and Black Nationalism is the key.
Me: Yes. I heard it. When I left Yale University, I went to the Nkrumah Washington Community Learning Center in Chicago. El Amin had begun to direct my studies towards the law. Taking me to its old location, El-Amin explained to me the history of the National Council of Black Lawyers Community College of Law and International Diplomacy where he used to work. He provided documents about its co-founders Dr. Charles Knox and Dr. Y.N. Kly, both distinguished experts in international law and diplomacy, and provided me with textbooks on the U.N. and its procedures. One book in particular would change my life the way your Autobiography had: International Law and the Black Minority in the U.S. by Dr. Y.N. Kly. Along with another of his books, The Black Book which details your program to internationalize our struggle through the Organization of Afro American Unity, I gained some clarity on what must be done and what I must do, in order to gain relief from genocide and win reparations. I thus began writing Ras Notes: Conceptualizing Our Case for the U.N. At this time, I established communication with Dr. Kly’s International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (IHRAAM) and UHRAAP. I then began researching U.N. resolutions through the internet at DePaul University, and obtaining articles, petitions, and reports from NGO’s concerning our case. From these I began drafting the Petition of the Nkrumah-Washington Community Learning Center on Behalf of their Members, Associates and Afro-American Population Whose Internationally Protected Human Rights Have Been Grossly and Systematically Violated By the Anglo-American Government of the United States of America and Its Varied Institutions. But that was back in 1996-7. Right after that, I went to the African Union just like you went to the Organization of African Unity. More recently, in 2020, however, I addressed the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent concerning the trangenerational epigenetic effects of United States slavery and ethnocide. And just last week I submitted a Statement entitled NEW AFRIKAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS to the upcomming 20th session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action Geneva, Switzerland 10-21 October 2022. Now I am working with the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) International Affairs Commission and Health Commission and one of the major focus of my work is studying the feasability of conducting a plebiscite for New Afrikan self-determination. So I hope I have shown myself approved in faithfully carrying forward your work, your legacy and the Basic Unity Program of the OAAU. And I hope that my efforts will inspire other New Afrikans to dedicate their energy, their resources and their life towards this vital Basic Unity Program. One thing they can do right now is
