On January 17, 1961, Congos independence hero and first democratically elected Prime Minister was assassinated with the complicity of the CIA, Belgium, the United Nations and Congolese elites. It was one of the most important assassinations of the 20th Century. Chief of Station of the CIA Larry Devlin said in his memoirs of the Congo operations that we [the US] had to overthrow Lumumba because if we did not overthrow him not only would we have lost the Congo but all of Africa. Lumumbas biograher Ludo deWitte said in his book the Assassination of Lumumba that the overthrow and assassination of Lumumba was not only a setback for the Congo but for the entire African continent. Malcolm X in his hommage to Lumumba said: Lumumba [is] the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent. He didn’t fear anybody. He had those people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn’t buy him, they couldn’t frighten him, they couldn’t reach him. Why, he told the king of Belgium, Man, you may let us free, you may have given us our independence, but we can never forget these scars. The greatest speech—you should take that speech and tack it up over your door. This is what Lumumba said: You aren’t giving us anything. Why, can you take back these scars that you put on our bodies? Can you give us back the limbs that you cut off while you were here? #BlackLivesMatter Response in 1961 after the delayed announcement in February about the assassination of Lumumba On February 15, 1961, Adiai E. Stevenson Jr., Kennedys new ambassador to the United Nations, rose to defend the Security Councils handling of the crisis in the Congo, less than forty-eight hours after the news of Patrice Lumumbas execution was made public [...] (his death was kept secret until the following month). As Stevenson began his remarks, a group of between fifty and sixty African Americans, clad in all black in testament to the slain leader, stood in the gallery in silent protest. A fight (riot) ensued as security personnel attempted to suppress the protestors, setting off the most violent demonstration in U.N. history (Walker and Gosset 1961). The demonstration at the United Nations represented a significant shift in black activism from passive nonviolence to a more aggressive militancy, an ideological shift that demonstrated the increasing internationalization of the black liberation movement. As John Henrik Clarke (1961, 285) bluntly put it, Lumumba became Emmett Till. The composition of the demonstrators was also significant. The protestors in the gallery included Daniel Watts, activist and publisher of the Liberator (the publication of the Committee on the Liberation of Africa), Rosa Guy of the Harlem Writers Guild, writer/ poet Maya Angelou, poet, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), percussionist Max Roach, and singer Abbey Lincoln: a configuration made up of activists, artists and musicians that also revealed the broadening political front of the black liberation movement of the 1960s. As James Baldwin (1961) put it, The negroes who rioted in the United Nations are but a very small echo of the black discontent now abroad in the world. (2) In the early 1960s, the slackening pace of civil rights reform at home and the foreign policy failures and misadventures abroad coincided with the spread of anticolonial struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and marked a decisive shift in black liberation politics. Baldwin continued: The power of the white world to control [black] identities was crumbling as these young Negroes were born; and by the time they were able to react to the world, Africa was already on the stage of history. Source: https://questia/library/journal/1G1-202513825/dedicated-to-the-struggle-black-music-transculturation Present-Day Global Call to Conscience Every January 17th Congolese, Africans and people of conscience throughout the world commemorate the life, ideas and teachings of Lumumba as a way of saying to the West that you can kill the man but you cannot kill his ideas, teachings and spirit. We encourage you to join us in commemorating Lumumba, an African hero by tweeting and sharing with your followers: Use any of the following hash tags #IamLumumba #WeareLumumba #JesuisLumumba Follow @congofriends and @congojustice for retweets Sources for Lumumba Quotes: June 30th Independence Day Speech friendsofthecongo.org/lumumba/speeches.html Last Letter to his wife Pauline who recently made her transition friendsofthecongo.org/last-letter.html About Lumumbas Life friendsofthecongo.org/bio.html
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 15:55:18 +0000
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