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Our last interview was December 6, 2019, and it was a joyous occasion and spirited conversation. Today's interview was recorded on Zoom for broadcast during the BAMBD Fest throughout the month of August.
We talked about Black History, beginning in the critical years of the 1830s, with the publication of David Walker's Appeal in 1829, "they" killed him a year later, such was the power of his Appeal that was distributed in the South by African ship workers when they arrived at southern ports. I asked Dr. West about the importance of the 1830s that included the slave revolts of Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and Grabriel Prosser. Dr. West elaborated on the "dirty thirties" (my metaphor on North Oakland's "dirty thirties").
Dr. West then skipped ahead to the 1840s with mention of the great black nationalist Henry Highland Garnett, his 1843 speech is the prototype for Rap Brown, aka, Imam Jamil Alamin. West said when Patrick Henry said liberty or death, it was cool but not when H. Rap Brown said the same for the liberation of black people. They put Imam Jamil Alamin so deep in the American Gulag they must pump light into his cell. Long live Rap Brown, the original Rapper before the devil reduced revolutionary Rap to bitch, ho and motherfucker.
I asked Dr. West, Harvard Professor, to deconstruct the life and times of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the greatest Pan African intellectual of the 19th Century, not to ignore the great Abolitionist Frederik Douglas.
In 1989 Blyden published is classic work Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race. As a Pan Africanist, he returned to Africa to work in West Africa.
Dr. West, I then asked him to summarize the relationship between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, followed by my request to do the same for DuBois and Marcus Garvey. Dr. West gave great praise to the Black Nationalism of Marcus Garvey and was deeply saddened by the black bhe ourgeoisie betrayal of Marcus Garvey, not only by DuBois to the FBI but a plethora of Negro leaders, including Walter White and the NAACP.
He praised Elijah who followed in the tradition of Garvey and praised Malcolm X as the Master Teacher of Black Nationalism in the present era. We agree!
Don't miss this historic interview with two of our greatest black minds in the present era of Black Power Matters, and BLM, i.e., Black Liberation Movement. Let's correct the narrative and the psycholinguistics of the devil in the blue dress and pink sweater!
Marvin X