Kecia E. Cole

Editor and Founder of UHURU Magazine
 

 UHURU Stands for “Freedom Now!”

Even though freedom* is a road seldom traveled by the multitude, African people need freedom now! (Uhuru sassa!) We need freedom by any means necessary as brother Malcolm used to say. And so this publication will from now on be called UHURU, which is the Kiswahili word for freedom. Any African American calling her or himself free must not know the true meaning of the word freedom.

Webster defines freedom as the "exemption or liberation from the control or power of some other person or arbitrary power. Political liberty. The exemption from discomfort. Exemption from imprisonment and being able to act and move without the hindrance or restraint." Does this sound like the situation existing for the Africans living in America? I think not.

We are controlled by everyone in the world but ourselves. We don't control our means of economics or our means of education. We don't even control our so-called "Black neighbor- hoods" where we often don't own so much as a corner store. Instead of instituting Ujamaa, cooperative economics, we continue to support any businesses other than ones belonging to us. Emancipation, which means to free from hand, describes the situation of Africans living in America. Lincoln did not free the slaves — he simply emancipated them.

To be free is to be exempt from discomfort. I think that being perpetually lied about, lied to and ignored by the authors of America's history books is quite enough to cause discomfort. I think that the constant vice-laden, negative portrayal of our race by the EuroAmerican media is enough to cause discomfort. I think the perpetuation of economic servitude that we are bound to is discomforting. I think the fact that there are more African American males in prison than in college is discomforting. (The list goes on.) Our race is free. We are free from something called comfort, self-love and economic independence.

Our freedom lies within knowledge of self — a knowledge that we as a people do not possess. The African contribution to the world is immeasurable, yet we know almost nothing about our great history. African people started civilization. They were the first scientists, mathemati- cians, navigators, physicians and philosophers. This clandestine knowledge is part of the key to our freedom, yet we cannot expect Europeans to tell us the truth about our history. We cannot depend on anyone else for ourfreedom but us. African Freedom lies within the truth.

UHURU hopes to bring African Americans closer to their long awaited freedom by simply telling them the truth. We will no longer wait for freedom to be given to us because we have waited 400 years too long.

We must always strive to educate ourselves. Africans learning from a total Eurocentric per- spective yields nothing but miseducation, and will only perpetuate our mental servitude.

Who wants freedom? I believe that everybody wants freedom, but if wanting to be free would make us free, then freedom would have been ours long ago. Our fight is not a passive one in which we all gather around singing 'We shall overcome someday . . ." while the racists beat our heads in. The song should say 'We shall overcome TODAY," not someday.

Although we struggled in the 60s for equality and freedom, our fight is far from over. The Virginia Beach incident lets us know that the riots are not merely things of the past. The endangerment of the Black Man as a species on this earth lets us know that genocide is not a thing of the past. But oftentimes when African Americans get a little bit of money from work- ing for Caucasian people, they walk around as though they were free. They no longer have to fight for freedom, or so they think. But how can you be free if your race is still enslaved psychologically, economically and otherwise?

We all claim to want freedom, but we will never be free unless we actively seek it out, claim it, steal it and live it. We must obtain our freedom by any means necessary!