In Memoriam
His Black Consciousness Program
Rocked the Bay Area like no other
black panthers black arts black studies kwanza
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Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour
AKA, Attorney Donald Warden
When I graduated from Edison High School, Fresno CA, 1962, I wanted to attend Howard University. When I came to Oakland and told my father, he suggested I go see his friend, Oakland Post Publisher Tom Berkley. When I told Tom my desire, he told me to forget about Howard, you don't need to go to Howard, we have good schools out here. I forgot about Howard and enrolled at Oakland City College, aka, Merritt College, on Grove Street, now Martin Luther King, Jr. Ave.
By the time I graduated from OCC, I had to admit maybe Tom Berkley was right, especially after I was initiated into revolutionary black nationalism that I would carry with me to San Francisco State College/University and beyond for the remainder of my life. en
But unlike Howard, there were few Black instructors and no Black Studies. My Black consciousness came from listening to brothers and sisters rapping on the steps of OCC. Rapping was not beats and rhymes, but extemporaneous speaking on revolution by a variety of speakers, including Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Maurice Dawson, Richard Thorne, and Attorney Donald Warden, head of the Afro American Association.
I was fascinated at the brothers rapping. I don't recall sisters rapping but sisters were involved. There was Ann Williams, partner of Richard Thorne. Richard Thorne introduced me to Huey Newton. Carol Freeman, Mississippi poet, married to Ken Freeman, aka, Mamadou Lumumba. Sisters Ellendar Barnes, Judy Juanita, and others whose names I can't recall. There were elder sisters like Mother McKenya, Mother Ruth Hagwood, et al.
From the steps of the college, the rap sessions would move to a campus room for an AAA meeting, or across the street to a greasy spoon .cafe for hamburgers, fries, milkshakes and more rapping. From the cafe we might gather in a fellow student's room. From the steps of OCC, AAA meetings, greasy spoon cafe sessions and meetings in our rooms, we had non-credit independent peer group study, discoursing on black nationalism, the black bourgeoisie (Dr. E. Franklin Frazier), Dr. Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, the writings of Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. We discussed Patrice Lumumba, first prime minister of the Congo, assassinated by African neo-colonialists at the behest of the West, Belgium, America, et al. We talked about the Sharpesville Massacre in South Africa, about Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.
In Cultural Anthropology, we studied Jomo Kenyatta's ethnography of his Kikuyu tribe. Outside of class we were enthralled by the Mau Mau fighters in Kenya, guerrilla fighters who attacked the European colonialists and the reactionary colonial elite who resisted the call for independence. "They" say the Mau Mau had to kill more African resisters to independence than Europeans.
In order to extricate North American Africans from this American matrix, quagmire, conundrum of tricknology, lies, fake news, world of make believe Hollywood CIA propaganda films, arresting our development, keeping us on the low information vibration, we must confront our domestic neo-colonial elite, if necessary with the Mau Mau model. See my Parable of Black Man and Block Man.
Imagine the Catholic Church has sexual psychopathic priests abusing children. Aw, we say the Black Culture Police are even worse, Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, et al., moral hypocrites. I was a moral hypocrite once. I spoke at Berkeley High School about Crack addiction. A few days later I was buying Crack in North Oakland. The youth selling me the Crack recognized me from his class at Berkeley High, "Hey teach, wasn't you in my class at Berkeley High talking against Crack? How could I lie? I was busted. I vowed to myself to never be a contradiction. From reading my critics, I know I am my worse critic. I seem to learn best by experience. At OCC we also studied the writings of Ho Chi Minh, leader of the North Vietnam national liberation movement. We saw our struggle and theirs as one international movement for the nation liberation of oppressed peoples. Not only did our peer group independent study sessions include dialouge on the Cuban revolution and the writings of Che Guevara. We especially like Fidel Castro's court speech History Will Absolve Me!
Malcolm X was our hero on the West Coast, not Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, although we connected with student Rights workers in SNCC, Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Toure, John Lewis, H. Rap Brown/Imam Jamil Alamin, Kathleen Neal Cleaver.
The Afro American Association sold sweat shirts with revolutionary fighter Jomo Kenyatfta on the front. Kenya won independence 1963. The AAA rapped on the streets of the Bay Area, from Oakland to San Francisco's Fillmore District, usually on corners, speaking on liberation, cultural consciousness and do for self economics. Aside from students, the AAA had some heavy minds, intellectuals, lawyers: Donald Hopkins, Fred and Mary Lewis, Henry Ramsey and Eleanor Mason, Paul Cobb, Ed Howard, et al. It may have been too many great minds in one space that was the ultimate undoing of the AAA. Khalid was charismatic, for sure, and a great speaker. He was humorous. I recall him saying if you can make the people laugh, you got your audience.
Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour and the Afro American Association was critical to the spread of revolutionary Black and African consciousness in the Bay Area. We must give thanks and praise for the AAA, from which the Black Panther Party leaders were nourished; the West Coast Black Arts Movement evolved from the AAA influence that impressed Marvin X, Judy Juanita, Ellendar Barnes and others who were budding artists and writers. Surely the AAA inspired the call for Black Studies, along with students who were not associated with the AAA, although the AAA's influence was pervasive. Revolutionary students, inspired by the AAA and the explosive world revolution for national liberation from colonialism and neo-colonialism, when the colonial elite take power without decolonizing their Euro-African minds, connected with the national black student revolution, from SNCC in the South to RAM in the North. RAM or Revolutionary Action Movement was founded by Robert F. Williams, North Carolina NAACP leader who believed in arm self defense (see his classic Negroes With Guns). Max Stanford/Muhammad Ahmad was a co-leader from Philadelphia, helped organize RAM at Howard University, connecting RAM with SNCC in the South. At OCC RAM had members and associates who helped publish SoulBook, Edited by Kenny Freeman/Mamadou Lumumba, Donald Freeman (Kenney's brother, although there is another revolutionary brother Donald Freeman of Cleveland, Ohio. Other editors included Isaac Moore, Ernest Allen, Caroll Holmes Freeman, Bob Hamilton. My first published story won a prize in the Merritt Student Magazine, actually I won a prize for Delicate Child, and Soulbook published it. Growing in Marxism and black revolutionary nationalist thought, the AAA was not a place for Soulbook people, so they/we moved on. Donald Warden held us in his tender caring arms until we could walk on and we did. Thank you Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour for your leadership. Thank you for your talks on Black and African consciousness on radio stations KDIA and KPFA. Thank you helping brothers in San Quentin Prison, at the request of Malcolm X. We were among the seven thousand students outside Sproul Hall when Malcolm X addressed seven thousand students.
Maulana Ron Karenga was the Los Angeles representative of the AAA. AAA member Ed Howard says Kwanza came from Oakland. Mother MrcKenya is said to have produced the first Kwanza ceremony in Oakland.
At some point Donald Warden converted to Islam, in fact, became a lawyer for OPEC, the oil cartel, then a lawyer for the Saudi Arabian royal family. At the direction of the Saudi Royal family, Khalid is said to have steered Barack Hassien Obama into Harvard. Khalid wrote many books you can Google.
Our last interaction with Khalid was 1979 at the Oakland Auditorium, a rally to protest the OPD killing of 15 year old, Melvin Black, actually they were killing a Black monthly, until they killed my close friend's Melvin Black. While teaching English, Creative Writing and Technical Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno and Nevada Community College, I read the San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper to keep up on events in the Bay. One morning I looked at the SF Chronicle to see another killing of a Black man by the OPD. I threw the paper down in disgust, but later I turned to the back page to finish the article and their was a picture of my close friend and best Elementary Arabic student, Mustafa/Lawrence McKinney, along with his sister Charla Black, outside Oakland City Hall protesting the OPD murder under the color of law of their 15 year old brother Melvin Black.
We formed a planning committee for the rally. Speakers included Minister Farakhan as featured speaker, along with Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Paul Cobb, Dezzie Woods Jones, Jo Nina Abram, Oba T'Shaka, et al. The rally was from noon to midnight, five thousand attended. Journalist Edith Austin wrote about the rally in her Sun Reporter column, said it was without incident.
But let me give you the untold story. We were behind schedule and running late, it was ten o'clock when Minister Farakhan sent an FOI with a message to come to the Green Room. 'When I got there, the Minister said, "Marvin, if you don't get Khalid off the mike, I'm leaving for Chicago right now."
"Yes, Sir, Brother Minister," I said. As MC, I went up on stage and gently grabbed the mike from Khalid who had been rambling on and on about a Wakandan style state in South Africa. Minister Farakhan came on stage with his entourage, Minister Khalid Muhammd, Minister Billy X/Rabb Muhammad.It was the last time I saw Khalid Muhammad Tariq Al Mansour.
--Mavin X/El Muhajir
8/19/18
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2012
A Dialogue on the Afro American Association
'Arif Khatib is the main host of this show, a discussion of the historic Afro American Association in Oakland. Arif, Donald Warden, aka Dr. Mansour, and Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb were founders of this organization, along with Ed Howard, Donald Hopkins, Henry Ramsey et al.
This program features the living legend Donald Warden, aka Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour,
Paul Cobb, publisher of the Oakland Post and founding member of the African American Association along with Donald Warden. One of the hosts is Afrif Khatib, also a founding member of the AAA.
This organization was the pivotal group that gave black consciousness to students at Oakland's Merritt College, including Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Mamadou Lumumba, aka Kenny Freeman, and Marvin X. The AAA thus influenced the founding of the Black Panther Party, Black Studies and the Black Arts Movement. Maulana Ron Karenga was the Los Angeles representative of the AAA. The Kwanza ritual came out of the AAA in Oakland.
A white view of Dr. Khalid
A native of Texas, Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University and a law degree from UC Berkeley. Today he is an attorney who has sat on numerous corporate boards, including those of the Saudi African Bank and the Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Company. Mansour made headlines in 2008 when it was revealed that he had formerly been a patron of a young Barack Obama, whom he recommended for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988.
It is likely that the two first met at Columbia University in the early 1980s, when Obama was a student there and Mansour was a guest lecturer.
Before converting to Islam, Mansour (whose original name was Don Warden) was heavily involved in San Francisco Bay Area racial politics as founder of the African American Association in the early 1960s. He also served as a personal mentor to Huey Newton andBobby Seale, helping the pair establish the Black Panther Party; a subsequent falling-out, however, caused Mansour to end his association with them.
In the mid-1970s, Mansour met and became an advisor to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Tatal, who today is best known for having offered a $10 million donation toward 9/11 relief efforts in 2001 – an offer that was rejected by New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani when the prince suggested that the terrorist attacks were an indication that America “should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.” Not long after meeting the prince, Mansour in 1977 was introduced to the king of Saudi Arabia and became his attorney.
A friend of the late professor Edward Said, Mansour -- a black nationalist -- is an outspoken hater of the United States, Israel, and white people generally. In recent years he has accused the U.S. of plotting a "genocide" designed "to remove 15 million black people, considered disposable, of no relevance, value or benefit to the American society." He has told fellow blacks: "Whatever you do to [white people], they deserve it, God wants you to do it, and that's whether you cut off the nose, cut off the ears, take flesh out of their body, don't worry. God wants you to do that." Alleging further that Palestinians in Israel "are being brutalized like savages," he accuses Israel's Jews of "stealing the land the same way the Christians stole the land from the Indians in America."
Mansour's has written numerous books, including such titles as The Destruction of Western Civilization as Seen Through Islam and Will the West Rule Forever?
Obama and Al-Mansour:
Another Radical Connection
What is the connection between Obama and Al-Mansour?
Much has been reported recently about the long list of Barack Obama's questionable relationships, and how they affect his qualifications to be President of the United States. They also reflect his judgment and tell us a lot about who he is.
It is true that like attracts like. We tend to gravitate towards other people who share our beliefs and values. We all know that from our own lives. That's especially troubling in the case of Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama.
Update: At the bottom of this article, you will find a 2012 update.
We wrote earlier that because of just one of those relationships, Barack Obama could not pass the background investigationrequired for members of "The President's Own" Marine Band!" Yet millions of Americans want to trust him with our country's most sensitive classified information.
So we continue our exploration of Barack Obama and his radical connections.
Many have asked who or what is behind Senator Barack Obama's meteoric rise onto the national political stage. It seems odd to many people that someone with so few "real" accomplishments could be so quickly propelled to status as a major party nominee for President.
Jack Cashill, at WorldNetDaily.com wonders if perhaps that meteoric rise could be attributed to "an affluent and unseen political godfather, someone with a grander vision than Bill Ayers or Tony Rezko." That certainly sounds like a plausibleexplanation. The question we have is this: Is there only one?
There have been many stories about wealthy Obama supporters including billionaire George Soros, David Geffen, and others.
Whether one or more, it is possible one of Barack Obama's "political godfathers" is Khalid Al-Mansour.
Who is Al-Mansour?
Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, describes himself as "an internationally acknowledged adviser to heads of state and business leaders in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North America."
"Although many Americans have never heard of Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour (his full name), he is well known within the black community as a lawyer, an orthodox Muslim, a black nationalist, an author, an international deal-maker, an educator, and an outspoken enemy of Israel.
A graduate of Howard University with a law degree from the University of California [Berkeley], al-Mansour sits on numerous corporate boards, including the Saudi African Bank and Chicago-based LaGray Chemical Co. LaGray, which was formed to do business in Africa, counts former Nigerian President General Abdusalam Abubakar on its advisory board.
He also sits on the board of the non-profit African Leadership Academy, along with top McCain for President adviser Carly Fiorina, and organized a tribute to the President of Ghana at the Clinton White House in 1995, along with pop star Michael Jackson.
But his writings and books are packed with anti-American rhetoricreminiscent of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s disgraced former pastor."
Born Donald Warden, al-Mansour changed his name after studying Islam and learning Arabic. Said al-Mansour, "I found that Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, if you put ’em together, it means that, if I’m eternally the slave of God, and I follow the right path, I will always be victorious. I liked that. So that became my name.'
During his days at Berkeley, Donald Warden served as a mentor to young Black Panthers Huey Newton and Donald Seale.
According to Timmerman:
"Al-Mansour’s rise to fame and fortune began with an introduction to the Saudi king in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1977.
'I was asked by a Saudi friend – he was a student down in Newport (Calif.) – to go home with him to Riyadh,' al-Mansour told Newsmax.
His friend was a member of the royal family and planned to ask the king for money to help with his studies in the United States. But the king was in no mood to be generous.
'He was mad. And then my friend told me that the basis of his anger was that OPEC was being sued," al-Mansour said. 'This was a very nasty conspiracy that involved some of the biggest respected political names in America. The king didn’t know all of that, but he knew he wasn’t happy.'
Al-Mansour’s friend told the king he (Al-Mansour) was a lawyer. 'The King didn’t know if I was a good lawyer or bad lawyer, but said, 'Will you do it?' I said, 'I’d have to study it.' He said, 'Just take it, and get out!''
The king required that only one lawyer represent the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. 'So you win or you lose, based on the outcome because no one’s going to listen to any excuses. You’re either a loser for life, or a winner for life,' al-Mansour said.
Al-Mansour was a winner – big time.
. . .
He met and befriended Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world’s 19th-wealthiest person, when the prince was studying at Menlo College in California in the late 1970s. Al-Mansour’s law partner was representing the prince in a court case in California.
After getting a degree in business administration from Menlo in 1979, Prince Alwaleed went back to Saudi Arabia determined to become extremely successful, al-Mansour recalled.
The two began to work together, and the prince asked him to help him invest in Africa. 'He said, let’s make our focus turning Africa around. He has never told me until today where this idea came from, but it became an obsession.'
Al-Mansour says he and the prince flew from country to country as he introduced the prince to heads of state. 'It was easy for me, because I knew all the presidents.'"[How?]
So where did Al-Mansour run into Barack Obama?
The only reports we've been able to locate speculate that the two may have met at Columbia, when Obama was a student there and Al-Mansour was a guest lecturer. Obama refuses to discuss anything about his days at Columbia. There is also speculation that he may have met Williams Ayers there as well.
Timmerman says:
"Asked specifically whether he had 'spotted' Barack Obama while he was an undergraduate at Columbia as a promising student he wanted to help get into Harvard Law School, al-Mansour pleaded a faulty memory.
'I give a lot of speeches on college campuses, in the US and abroad. So I meet people all the time…. But I can’t say that I remember that.'"
Last March, one-time New York City mayoral candidate Percy Sutton recalled that Al-Mansour contacted him some 20 years ago to write a letter of recommendation to support the admission of a young man named Barack Obama to Harvard Law school. Sutton says Al-Mansour thought perhaps a letter from Sutton would carry more weight because Sutton was a frequent lecturer there.
Sutton did so, and said he believed that Al-Mansour was also raising money to help support Obama's education.