1962 
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela secretly leaves South Africa to participate in the conference of the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East, Central and Southern Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He also visits several other countries, receives military training and returns to continue the struggle in South Africa underground. 

U.S. astronaut, John Glenn, Jr., the second man to orbit the earth, addresses a joint session of Congress. 

Earl Camerson and John Willis appear in Atlantic Films’ "Flame in the Streets." 

The Telstar satellite relays TV programs across the Atlantic. 

John Steinbeck wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is, perhaps, best known for his novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). 

The Nation of Islam has more than 51 temples, schools and associated missions in the U.S. 

African heads of state meet in Lagos, Nigeria and draft a charter for a confederation of newly independent African nations. 

Sir W. Alexander Bustamante becomes the Prime Minister of Jamaica. 

The Road to South African Freedom, the program of the SACP, is adopted at its 5th national conference, held illegally in Johannesburg. 

SNCC works on voter registration in the South, especially in Mississippi with Fannie Lou Hamer. See Clayborne Carson, In Struggle, SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (l981). 

From J.A. Rogers. Your History from the Beginning of Time to the Present (Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Co., 1940). Reprinted from the origional collection of Heru-Ka Anu, 1983

Sugar cane cultivation is abandoned in St. Vincent; two years later it is abandoned in St. Lucia. In 1965, sugar produced in Grenada is restricted to local consumption. Montserrat uses sugar cane only for rum and syrup production. The future of sugar cane production in Trinidad and Jamaica is uncertain. 

The Congress of Democrats is banned in South Africa under the Suppression of Communism Act. 

President Kennedy issues an Executive Order against racial and religious discrimination in federally financed housing. In the same year he initiates the U.S. military’s imperialistic invol- vement in Vietnam after the collapse of the French at Dien Bien Phu. During this war, more than 23% of the 58,000 plus fatalities are Africans, even though Africans comprise only 10 to 12% of the total U.S. population. See Wallace Terry, Bloods, An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984). 

A suit accusing the New York City Board of Education of using “racial quotas” is filed in a U.S. District Court on behalf of African and Puerto Rican children. 

Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana closes because of a series of demonstrations protesting the expulson of a sit–in demonstrator. 

An ANC conference is held in Botswana. Delegates come from all over South Africa and other African and overseas nations. 

Demonstrations against discrimination in off–campus housing is staged by students at the University of Chicago. CORE charges that the university operates about 100 segregated apart- ment houses. This practice is evident at a number of predominantly white colleges and univer- sities throughout the nation. Kent State University in Ohio, for instance, meets with controver- sy over this issue during this same year. 

Jamaica becomes an independent nation within the British commonwealth of nations, the first West Indian colony to achieve this status. Jamaica has currently a population of 2,388,000.  This island nation encompasses 4,244 square miles of territory. 

Lieutenant Commander Samuel L. Gravely assumes the command of a destroyer escort, USS Falgout. The Navy says he is the first black man to command a U.S. warship. 

Four African mothers are arrested for staging a sit–in at a Chicago elementary school. The mothers later receive suspended $50 fines. Protests, picketing and demonstrations continue for several weeks against de facto segregation, double shifts and mobile classrooms. 

Seven whites and four American Africans are arrested at an all–night sit–in at the Englewood, New Jersey City Hall. A suit seeking to bar Englewood from maintaining “racially segregated” elementary schools is filed in a U.S. District Court. 

A bus boycott is organized in Macon, Georgia. 

Sit–in demonstrations and a passive resistance movement begin in Cairo, Illinois. Demonstra- tions against segregation in swimming pools, skating rinks and other facilities continue for several months. 

Algeria gains its independence from France. Presently, this North African nation has a popu- lation estimated at 21,351,000 and a land area of 918,497 square miles. 

Robert F. Williams publishes Negroes with Guns. This book docu- ments how the African community of Monroe, North Carolina organized armed self–defense tactics to fight off the racist violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Eventually Robert Williams and Mae Mallory are forced to flee the state, Williams to Cuba and China and Mae Mallory to New York and Cleveland. 
 
For the second time, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is arrested and jailed in Albany, Georgia, after an anti–segregation prayer pilgrimage. President Kennedy says the city officials of Albany, Georgia, should negotiate with the African leadership. Police close the municipal parks and library in Albany after integrated groups try to use these facilities. 

The island nation of Trinidad and Tobago gains its independence. It has presently a population of 1,168,000 and a land area of 1,970 square miles. To help celebrate, the nation’s first presi- dent, Dr. Eric Williams, writes the History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago, the first full and authoritiative history of Trinidad. 

The Cuban missile crisis breaks. The U.S. and Russia almost come to nuclear blows. 

The Shady Grove Baptist Church is burned in Leesburgh, Georgia. 

The racist South African régime places a blanket ban on all named and banned people. The ANC decides to send some leading cadres abroad to set up an external mission of the ANC and reinforce the work being done by the liberation movement from abroad. 

About 75 Northern ministers and laymen — African and white — are arrested after a prayer vigil in downtown Albany, Georgia. 

Two black churches are burned near Sasser, Georgia. African leaders ask the President to put a stop to the “Nazi”–like reign of terror in southwest Georgia. 

The Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black vacates an order of a lower court, and rules that the University of Mississippi must admit James H. Meredith, a black Air Force veteran, whose application for admission has been on file and in the courts for 14 months. 

Two African youths involved in the SNCC voter registration drive in Mississippi are wounded by shotgun blasts fired through the windows of a home in Ruleville, Mississippi. 

James Forman, Executive Secretary of the Student Non–violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), asks the President to “convene a special White House Conference to discuss means of stopping the wave of terror sweeping through the South, especially where SNCC is working on voter registration.” 

Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett defies the federal government. In a speech on state–wide radio–television hookups, he says he would “interpose” the authority of the state between the University of Mississippi and federal judges who have ordered the admission of James H. Meredith. Barnett insists, “There is no case in history where the Caucasian race has survived social integration.”  His defiance sets the stage for the gravest federal–state crisis since the Civil War. 

President Kennedy denounces the burning of African churches in Georgia and supports the voter registration drive in the South. 

Three Louisiana segregationists are excommunicated by Archbishop Joseph Rummel for con- tinuing their opposition to his order to integrate Catholic parochial schools in New Orleans. 

The Southern School News reports that 246,988 or 7.6% of all the U.S. African pupils in public schools in 17 Southern and Border states and the District of Columbia attend integrated classes in 1962. 

A suit alleging de facto school segregation is filed in Rochester, New York by the NAACP. 

The fourth African church is burned near Dawson, Georgia. Three white men later admit burn- ing the church and are sentenced to seven–year prison terms for arson. 

A U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals orders the Board of Higher Education of Mississippi to admit Meredith to the university or be held in contempt. The Board announces that it will comply with the order. Governor Barnett again defies the orders of the court and personally denies Meredith admission to the university. Mississippi, therefore, bars Meredith for the third time.  Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson and a blockade of state patrolmen turn back Meredith and federal marshals and officials about 400 yards from the gate of the school. Governor Barnett is found guilty of civil contempt of the federal court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit orders Barnett to purge himself of contempt or face arrest and a fine of $10,000 a day. Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson is also found guilty of civil contempt of court and ordered to purge himself of contempt or face a fine of $5,000 a day. A large contingent of federal marshals escorts James H. Meredith to the campus of the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy federalizes the Mississippi National Guard and urges in a radio–TV address that the Missis- sippi citizenry accept the orders of the court. University of Mississippi students and adults from Oxford, Mississippi and other Southern communities riot on the university campus. Two persons are killed and 100 or more are wounded. Some 12,000 federal soldiers restore order on the campus and in the town of Oxford, Mississippi. James H. Meredith, escorted by federal marshals, finally registers at the University of Mississippi. 

Morocco, which encompasses an area of 171,117 square miles and has a population esti- mated at 23,565,000 in 1984, receives its independence from France. 

Edwin A. Walker, a former major general in the U.S. Army, is arrested and charged with inci- ting insurrection and seditious conspiracy. Walker, who led federal troops during the Little Rock integration crisis, calls for “volunteers” to oppose federal forces in Mississippi. Witnes- ses say he led students in charges against federal marshals during the campus riots at “Ole Miss.” 

FRELIMO — the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique — is founded. 

President Kwame Nkrumah officially opens Ghana’s man–made harbor at Tema. 

The University of Guyana is chartered as an independent institution. 

A black church is destroyed by fire in Macon, Georgia. This is the eighth black church to be attacked within a month. 

The Republic of Burundi, which encompasses an area of 10,759 square miles and has a population, based on 1984 estimates, of 4,691,000, gains its independence from Belgium. 

President Kennedy issues an Executive Order barring racial and religious discrimination in federally–financed housing. 

1963 
James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is a national best seller. In this book which pointedly expresses the views of African Americans, Baldwin writes . . . 

“there is simply no possibility of a real change in the Negro’s situation without the most radical and far-reaching changes in the American political and social structure.  And it is clear that white Americans are not simply unwilling to effect these changes; they are, in the main, so slothful have they become, unable even to envision them.  It must be added that the Negro himself no longer believes in the good faith of white Americans — if, indeed, he ever could have.  What the Negro has discovered, and on an international level, is that power to intimidate which he has always had privately but hitherto could manipulate only privately—for private ends often, for limited ends always.  And therefore when the country speaks of a “new” Negro, which it has been doing every hour on the hour for decades, it is not really referring to a change in the Negro, which in any case, it is quite incapable of assessing, but only to a new difficulty in keeping him in his place, to the fact that it encounters him (again! again!) barring yet another door to its spiritual and social ease. . . . The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to pre- cipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream.” 

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech climaxes the historic March On Washington, marking 100 years of African “freedom.” A quarter of a million American Africans and whites take part. 

The centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation begins with a massive voter registration campaign in Greenwood, Mississippi. Civil Rights protests intensify throughout the nation.  The U.S. Civil Rights Commission publishes Freedom to the Free, A Century of Emancipation in response to the President’s request for a report on civil rights in America since the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. 

This year marks the beginning of the armed struggle in Guinea–Bissau. Militants of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) attack Portuguese troops deep inside the country. 

Diana Sands and Osceolo Archer appear in An Affair of the Skin. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., opens an anti–segregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. More than 2,000 demonstrators, including King, are arrested before the campaign ends. See Martin L. King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in A Documentary . . . Montgomery to Memphis (1976). 

The Birmingham Manifesto — “Black People’s Stand against White Oppression” — issued by Birmingham’s African community following a peaceful demonstration, is written in hope that law, order and peace will somehow prevail. 

Percy Julian, a noted chemist, contributes to scientific research and pioneering in many areas including cortisone treatment of arthritis, birth control pills, and utilization of soybean protein. 

Malcolm X delivers his “Message to the Grass Roots” in Detroit. He states in this speech that . . . 

“America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very seri- ous problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America’s problem is us. We’re America’s problem. The only reason she has a problem is she doesn’t want us here. And every time you look at yourself, be you black, brown, red or yellow, a so–called Negro, you represent a person who poses such a serious problem for America because you’re not wanted. Once you face this as a fact, then you can start plotting a course that will make you appear intelligent, in- stead of unintelligent. What you and I need to do is learn to forget our differences. When we come together, we don’t come together as Baptists or Metho- dists. You don’t catch hell because you’re a Baptist, and you don’t catch hell because you’re a Methodist. You don’t catch hell because you’re a Methodist or a Baptist, you don’t catch hell because you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you don’t catch hell because you’re a Mason or an Elk, and you sure don’t catch hell because you’re an American . . . because if you’re American you wouldn’t catch no hell. You catch hell because you’re black. You catch hell, all of us catch hell, for the same reason.” 

Pope John XXIII dies in Rome; he is succeeded by Pope Paul VI. 

Two African students, escorted by federalized national guard  troops and federal officials, en- roll at the University of Alabama despite the opposition of Governor George C. Wallace. 

The outspoken young South African, Bloke Modisane, publishes his Blame Me on History, an autobiography. 

President Kennedy tells white America, in an historic radio–TV address, that segregation is morally wrong and that it is “time to act in the Congress, in your state and local legislative bodies, and, above all, in all of your daily lives.” 

Medgar W. Evers, 37, NAACP field secretary in Jackson, Mississippi, is assassinated in front of his home by segregationists. 

Three thousand students participate in a boycott of Boston’s pubiic schools in protest against de facto segregation. 

A Civil rights group stages mass demonstrations at Harlem construction sites to protest discrimination in building trades unions. 

Demonstrations and marches are held in every major metropolitan area in June, July and August to dramatize African discontent over housing, school and job discrimination. 

Kenya, which has a population estimated at 19,362,000 in 1984, wins its independence from Britain. This East African nation, whose first president is Jomo Kenyatta, encompasses 224,081 square miles. 

National guard troops impose limited martial law in Cambridge, Maryland, after open confrontations between African demon- strators and white segregationists. 

W.E.B. DuBois, scholar, protest leader, editor of Crisis, author and founder of NAACP, dies in Accra, Ghana, on August 28, at age of 95. 

Four African girls are killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The white perpetrators of this heinous crime are never apprehended. 

Uganda wins its independence from Britain. It is estimated that this nation currently has a population of 14,268,000. Uganda has a land area of 93,104 square miles. 

Some 225,000 students boycott Chicago’s public schools during the “Freedom Days” protest of de facto segregation. 

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 46-year-old President of the United States, is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. American indulgence in force and violence causes some critics to quip coldly: “The chickens have simply come home to roost!” 

"The Century of Negro Progress Exposition, 1863-1963" is held in Chicago. 

The Organization of African Unity (OAU) is established with its Charter being signed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by African leaders from 30 different nations. The intellectual force behind this “Pan–African” organization is Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana. See Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite (1963), for a detailed examination of the need for African unity. 

Lyndon Baines Johnson, Democrat from Texas, becomes the 36th U.S. President after the untimely death of President Kennedy. 

The OAU successfully arbitrates in a number of inter–African disputes and consistently opposes white rule in South Africa. Conflicting national policies, personalities and ideologies prevent the Organization from achieving the continental unity to which the Pan-African world aspires. See Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, “The Rational Choice” in Man and Development (1974). 

The neo–colonialist Central African Federation organized by Europeans in 1953 to maintain their colonial privileges in “independent” Africa, is finally dismantled. 

Some 464,000 African and Puerto Rican students boycott New York City’s public schools.  More than 267,000 are absent during second boycott. 

Sidney Poitier becomes the first African to win an “Oscar” as best actor of the year. His per- formance in United Artists’ "Lillies of the Field" is superb. 

New York police arrest 294 civil rights demonstrators at the opening of the World’s Fair. A scheduled “stall–in” on highways and bridges leading to the Fair fails to materialize. 

The U.S. Senate imposes cloture for first time on a civil rights measure, ending a Dixiecrat filibuster by a vote of 71 to 29. 

A race riot explodes in Harlem. Rioting spreads to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and continues for several days. 

A race riot erupts in Rochester, New York, causing Governor Nelson Rockefeller to dispatch national guard troops to the city. 

Hammer Brothers Films releases "Gone Are the Days" with Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and Godfrey Cambridge. The movie is based on Ossie Davis’ play, Purlie Victorious. 

A race riot breaks out in Jersey City, New Jersey. 

1964 
The bodies of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney, three civil rights workers — two white, one African — are discovered in a crude grave on a farm near Philadel- phia, Mississippi. The FBI says they were murdered on the night of their disappearaance by white segregationists. 

Almost a million students boycott New York City’s public schools on one day; another quarter million students boycott schools on a later day. 

The Civil Rights Act with public accommodation and fair employment sections is passed by Congress and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. 

American International Films releases Free, White and Twenty–One with Frederick O’Neal. 

The Rivonia Trial, which takes place in South Africa, results in Mandela, Mbeki, Sisulu, Gold- berg (a white man), Kathrada, Mhlaba, Mlangeni and Motsoaledi being sentenced to life in prison. 

A dynamic force in Mississippi politics, Fannie Lou Hamer spearheads the move to have a bi–racial Mississippi delegation seated at the Democratic Convention. 

Race riots erupt in New York City, Rochester, Jersey City, Chicago and Philadelphia. 

Malcolm X declares his independence of the Nation of Islam and founds the Organization of Afro–American Unity (OAAU). 

Civil rights organizations undertake the Mississippi Freedom Project during the summer, opening freedom schools and community centers and aiding Blacks to register to vote. 

Zambia becomes an independent nation. Currently, Zambia has a population of 6,554,000 and a land area of 290,586 square miles. 

The Freedom Democratic Party is organized in Mississippi, and nominates three African Americans for Congress, the first since Reconstruction. 

Vuylisile Mini, Mkaba and Khayinga, three prominent trade unionists from South Africa’s Eastern Cape, are executed. 

The Simba Rebellion takes place in the former Belgian Congo. The rebels capture Kisangani, formerly Stanleyville. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. He views his winning the coveted Prize as recognition of his non–violence precept. Others view it as an attempt to neutralize the increasing militancy of Southern and Northern civil rights demonstrations. 

A.T. Walden is sworn in as an Atlanta municipal judge, becoming the first African judge in Georgia since Reconstruction. 

FRELIMO launches its armed struggle in Mozambique. This act is observed as an internation- al protest against Portugal’s wars in Africa. 

The Republic of Malawi becomes independent of Britain and has  a population, based on 1984 estimates, of 6,829,000. Malawi encompasses 45,747 square miles. 

Cleveland State University in Ohio is established on the foundation of Fenn College, a private institution. Wright State is established near Dayton, Ohio, and competes with Central State University for state resources and students. Central State is the only traditionally black institu- tion of higher education in the state. 

The United States intervenes in Guyana’s politics to prevent the return of its Marxist Premier, Cheddi Jagan, in favor of Forbes Burnham. In 1976 Burnham turns around and declares Guyana a “Marxist” state, which is, of course, patently misleading. 

1965 
Vivian Malone becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Alabama. 

Warner Brothers releases "Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary," a documentary. 

Thurgood Marshall is nominated as Solicitor General of the United States on July 13. In 1967 he becomes the first Black to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Ten African nations — Angola, Basutoland, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Malawi, Burundi/Ruanda and Uganda — have, on the average, only 413 doctors. The average number of inhabitants per doctor is a whopping 31,800. By contrast, in Britain there is one doctor for every 840 inhabitants. 

The number of African American high school graduates between ages 20–29 rises sharply from 52% to 65%. 

American troops land in  the Dominican Republic to prevent a leftist government from assum- ing power and stay there for more than a year. See Juan Bosch, former President of the Domi- nican Republic, Pentagonism, a Substitute for Imperialism (1968). 

A voter registration drive is launched in Selma, Alabama, by SCLC and SNCC. When violence is used against demonstrators on Selma bridge, a Selma–to–Montgomery march is held to dramatize the African voting rights drive. In all, some 3,200 U.S. Africans and whites from all over the nation participate in the march, protected by 4,000 troops. The march ends with a rally of 25,000 in front of the capitol in Montgomery. See Charles E. Fager, Selma 1965: The March that Changed the South (1985). 

President Johnson signs the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Federal examiners begin to register Africans under the Act, the first use of federal registrars since Reconstruction. The new Act provides for suspension of literacy tests and for federal registration of African Americans in states and subdivisions where less than 50 percent of the voting age population were regis- tered or enrolled in November, 1964. The areas covered by the law include two million unregis- trered black men and women. 

Father Divine, the spiritual leader of thousands, dies. 

Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white civil–rights activist, is murdered in Lowndes County, Alabama. 

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting job discrimination in private businesses, goes into effect. 

Kenneth B. Clark, educator, social psychologist, winner of the NAACP’s Springarn medal, authors a classic study of an African American community. Born in Panama in 1914, Dr. Clark describes in his study, Dark Ghetto, how and why the national African community is an internal colony, or ghetto, in terms of its relationship to the larger, dominant white society. He writes . . . 

“Ghetto was the name for the Jewish quarter in sixteenth–century Venice.  Later, it came to mean any section of a city to which Jews were confined. America has contributed to the concept of the ghetto the restriction of persons to a special area and the limiting of their freedom of choice on the basis of skin color. The Ghetto’s invisible walls have been erected by the white society, by those who have power, both to confine those who have no power and to per- petuate their powerlessness. The dark ghettoes are social, political, educa- tional, and — above all — economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt and fear of their masters.” 

Lorraine Hansberry, noted playwright, dies in New York City. 

Rhodesia declares its unilateral independence (UID) from Britain. Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) has currently a population of 8,325,000: Africans, 8,075,250; whites 249,750. This white settler nation encompasses 150,873 square miles. See Charles E. Cobb, “After Rhodesia, a Nation Called Zimbabwe,” National Geographic, 1981. 

Racial violence continues to occur in Chicago. 

Blacks end a three–month boycott of white merchants in Natchez, Mississippi after the city government and business leaders agree to their demands for a voice in city affairs. 

Dorothy Dandridge dies at age 43. Ms. Dandridge was born in Cleveland in 1922. 

The first of the Duke Ellington scared jazz concerts in churches is performed in San Francisco. 

The Gambia, which encompasses an area of 4,361 square miles and has a population, based on 1984 estimates, of 695,886,  gains its independence from Britain. 

Malcolm X, 37–year–old Black Nationalist leader and former minister of the Nation of Islam, is shot to death on February 21 by five black men at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City as he delivers an address before a rally of several hundred followers. It is conjectured that the CIA/FBI are involved in the assassination. Of the three members of the Nation of Islam who are accused and convicted for murdering Malcolm — Talmadge S. Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson — only Hayer confesses to actually having committed the crime 
against African American humanity with four other men. At his trial, he repeatedly states that Butler and Johnson are not implicated.  He does not, however,  divulge the names of his actual accomplices. The controversy following Malcolm’s assassination is recorded in the following publications and many others: The New York  Amsterdam News, Vol. 69, No. 2., January 14, 1978; The Real Paper, Boston, January 21, 1978; Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X  (1980); George Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks, Selected Speeches and Statements (1966), The Assassination of Malcolm X (1977) and The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (1968). See also The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (l965) and Cathy Perkus, ed., Cointelpro: the FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom (1975). 

The Dhofar Liberation Front begins its armed revolution in Oman, an oil–rich Arabian Gulf state. Enforced backwardness and exploitation under Sultan Said bin Taimur and British colonialism give rise to the revolutionary movement, now embodied in the People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO). 

An explosives factory is officially opened in Liberia. 

President Nkrumah of Ghana lays a concrete block marking the beginning of the construction of a gold refinery. 

Ten Portuguese soldiers are killed, 15 are wounded, and four bridges are destroyed by African guerrillas in Mozambique. 

Ghana opens a 12–mile railway line from a steel mill to Port Tema. 

The Nigerian government announces plans to reorganize the country’s postal and telecommu- nications system. 

Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah publishes his Neo–Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965). 

African Liberation fighters kill 39 Portuguese troops in Guinea–Bissau. 

In Libya, the oil wells owned by Nelson Hunt and British Petroleum (BP) are damaged by bombs. 

A bomb damages the U.S. Embassy in Tananarive, Madagascar. Discontent with inflation and French domination of the university lead to student demonstrations, followed by a coup in 1972. 

Uganda, during the presidency of Apolo Milton Obote, denounces U.S. intervention in Vietna- mese civil war. 

1966 
Dr. Robert C. Weaver is appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, becoming the first African Cabinet member in U.S. history. 

Constance Baker Motley is the first black woman to be appointed a federal judge. 

The Cooperative Republic of Guyana becomes an “independent” state. In 1984 it is estimated to have 775,000 citizens and a land area of 83,000 square  miles. The population is approxi- mately 50% East Indian, 51%, African and Mixed (Amerindian, Chinese or European), 43%. 

U.S. Supreme Court rules that Virginia’s poll tax is unconstitutional, thereby ending similar taxes in three other Southern states. 

A group of African Americans occupies a deactivated U.S. Air Force base in Greenville, Mississippi, protesting lack of jobs and land. 

Cab Calloway appears in MGM’s The Cincinnati Kid. 

Botswana gains its independence. This Southern African nation has presently a population of 1,038,000 and a land area of 231,804 square miles. 

Sidney Poitier appears in Columbia’s "The Bedford Incident." 

Six alumni of Kent State University — Donald M. Henderson, Edward W. Crosby, Paul Welcher, Carolyn Dorsey, Lee Chatman and Wiley Smith III — join the staff of Southern Illi- nois University–Edwardsville's East St. Louis Center to initiate the Experiment in Higher Education (EHE). This program enrolls each year for four years 100 students from East  St. Louis, Illinois, where it is located. The Experiment in Higher Education, the first of its type in the U.S., is very successful in terms of its innovative academic and student personnel struc- ture, dynamic curricular process, staffing practices, and student retention. The Experiment continues in operation for 16 years, until 1982. Remnants of EHE still persist in the East Saint Louis Center of Southern University today. 

James Meredith begins his 200–mile march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, to bolster a voter registration drive and is shot in the back from ambush. Other civil rights leaders join Meredith’s march, which concludes with a rally of 15,000 before the state capitol at Jackson.  In Mississippi’s primaries, 35,000 African people vote, the largest number to vote in the state in the twentieth century. “Black Power,” as a slogan, is raised by SNCC leaders Stokely Carmichael and Willie Ricks during the Mississippi march and becomes a national and 
international slogan for the world’s black and oppressed peoples. See Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture) and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967). 

Surrounded on all sides by racist South Africa, the Kingdom of Lesotho receives its “indepen- dence” from Britain. Lesotho has a population of 1,474,000 , based on 1984 estimates, and a land area of 11,716 square miles. 

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., opens SCLC’s assault on slum conditions in Chicago. 

Riots occur in several urban ghettos, especially Chicago and Cleveland. See the report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issued in 1968. 

John Hope Franklin narrates Booker T. Washington, a documentary produced by Encyclopae- dia Britannica, Inc. 

The Black Studies Educational Movement formally begins at Merritt Junior College in Oakland and at San Francisco State. See Armstead L. Robinson et al., eds., Black Studies in the University, A Symposium (1969). The philosophical foundation for this movement is found in Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis–Education of the Negro (1933), in which he writes . . . 

“The so–called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples. . . . No systematic effort toward change has been possible, for, taught the same economics, history, philosophy, literature and religion which have established the present code of morals, the Negro’s mind has been brought under the control of his oppressor. . . . When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.” 

Barbados becomes independent with 252,000 people as estimated in 1984. This island nation has a land area of 166 square miles. 

Julian Bond, elected to the Georgia Legislature, is denied his seat for opposing U.S. involve- ment in the Vietnam War. 

Calvin C. Herndon publishes his Sex and Racism in America.  In 1974, his novel, Scarecrow, is published. 

Edward W. Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts, becomes the first African  elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. 

The first Conference of the Organization of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAAL) meets in Havana, Cuba. OSPAAAL has become an important tool for strengthen- ing solidarity and cooperation among Third World revolutionary movements on all continents. 

Jaime Siquake, African Freedom Fighter and member of FRELIMO’s central committee, is killed. 

SWAPO launches its armed struggle for Namibia when its guerrillas for the first time attack South African police units. With increasing People’s Liberation Army activity, South Africa has been forced to commit units of its armed forces and to develop a series of military bases in the north. 

Governor Edward Breathitt of Kentucky signs a civil rights law, the first of its kind adopted by any state south of the Ohio River. 

Maulana Karenga creates “Kwanzaa” which is based on his the Nguzo Saba (i.e., Seven Principles) which form the basis of the Kawaida Black Value System. “Kwanzaa” is the only non–heroic African American holiday nationally celebrated from December 26 to January 1.   See his Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts and Practice (1977). 

One hundred thirty Portuguese troops are killed, and four vehicles and three barracks are destroyed by Angolan Freedom Fighters in a major engagement. 

An African school teacher by profession and a Freedom Fighter by avocation sets fire to a post office in South Africa. 

Jessie Warders, a Kentucky state legislator, is the first Black in the history of the state to serve as acting floor leader in the House of Representatives. 

Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia agree to form a jointly–owned East Africa Shipping Line. 

Algeria nationalizes all mines and French held properties. 

A Nuclear Studies Center opens in Tunisia. 

The frontier guards of the Peoples Republic of the Congo, whose capital city is Brazzaville,  shoot down two Portuguese aircraft. 

There are about 330,000 West Indian–born persons living in Britain. 

1967 
The Poor Feather Campaign (or Poor People’s Partnership) is launched in Cleveland. 

The Arusha Declaration, which sets out Tanzania’s broad policy on socialist development, is announced in Arusha, Tanzania. The Declaration states in part that . . . 

“A poor man does not use Money as a Weapon: . . . it is obvious that in the past we have chosen the wrong weapon for our struggle, because we choose money as our weapon. We are trying to overcome our economic weakness by using the weapons of the economically strong — weapons which in fact we do not possess. By our thoughts, words and actions it appears as if we have come to the conclusion that without money we cannot bring about the revolution we are aiming at. . . . What of external Aid? It is stupid to rely on money as the major instrument of development when we know only too well that our country is poor. It is equally stupid, indeed it is even more stupid, for us to imagine that we shall rid ourselves of our poverty through foreign financial assistance rather than our own financial resources.  It is stupid for two reasons. Firstly, we shall not get the money. . . . Secondly, even if it were possible for us to get enough money for our needs from external sources, is this what we really want. Inde- pendence means self–reliance. Independence cannot be real if a nation depends upon gifts and loans from another for its development. . . . The English . . . have a proverb which says: ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’” See Martin Minogue and Judity Molloy, eds., African Aims and Attitudes, Selected Docu- ments (1974). 

Civil war erupts in Nigeria. The federal government defeats the breakaway state of Biafra in 1970. 

John Coltrane, the tenor saxophonist who revolutionized jazz, dies. 

Carl B. Stokes is elected Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. 

The Federation of South African Women has 20,000 demonstrators converge on Pretoria to denounce the régime’s plans to introduce passes for African women. 

Twenty–five Portuguese soldiers are killed by African Freedom Fighters along the Congo– Angola borders. 

Al Freeman, Jr., stars in "The Dutchman," based on Amiri Baraka’s (aka LeRoi Jones) power- ful play. Baraka also authors two other plays, The Baptism (1966) and The Toilet (1963). 

Richard C. Hatcher is elected the first African Mayor of Gary, Indiana. He remains as Gary’s mayor until 1987. 

Forty Portuguese soldiers are killed or wounded in Mozambique by African Freedom Fighters between November 21st – December 6th. 

H. “Rap” Brown, one year after he joins SNCC, is elected to its chair. During this time, he becomes a national speaker and spokesman for the student movement. He soon becomes viewed as a controversial national figure due to his readiness to fight, outspokeness, and no–nonsense attitude toward the racial problems confronting African America. In July, he is arrested by the FBI after a speech in Cambridge, Maryland, during which he is supposed to have incited his audience to riot. “Rap” was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1943. 

The “Lutuli Combat Detachment,” which symbolizes the ANC(SA)–ZAPU military alliance is announced as the two movements launch a joint guerrilla campaign in Zimbabwe. These guerrillas cross the Zambesi River into Rhodesia, commencing the battles of Wankie and Sipolilo, which last until late 1968. 

The U.S. Army is ordered into Detroit by President Lyndon Johnson in an attempt to put down an African rebellion. See John Hersey, The Algiers Motel Incident: Three Killings in Detroit (1968). 

An East African Cooperation Treaty is signed by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  This treaty collapses in 1977. 

To commemorate the death of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the "Day of the Heroic Guerrilla" is declared on October 8. See Donald C. Hodges, The Legacy of Che Guevara (1977). 

Tanzania announces that all residents living along the Ruvuma River, which forms the Tanza- nia–Mozambique border, will be armed by the government. 

Twelve Portuguese soldiers are killed in Angola by African Freedom Fighers. 

Jim Brown stars in MGM’s The Dirty Dozen. 

The Tanzanian government orders that Kiswahili be used for all official government business and in the schools. 

Sidney Poitier stars in Mirisch Corporation’s In the "Heat of the Night," with Beah Richards.  The musical score is by Quincy Jones. 

The Zambian government sends soldiers to protect the Zambia–Angola border against further Portuguese attacks on the Zambian people. Five South African police are arrested by Zambian authorities after violating Zambia’s territorial integrity. 

1968 
Eartha Mae Kitt, prominent singer and actress, is named “Woman of the Year” by the National Association of Negro Musicians. She was born in South Carolina in 1928. 

Richard M. Nixon, a Republican from California, becomes the 37th President of the United States. 

Frederick O’Neal appears in Finian’s Rainbow, released by American International Films. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee. His killing results in over 180 retaliatory rebellions in urban African American communities all over the United States. 

Charlene Mitchell runs for president on the Communist Party ticket; Eldridge Cleaver runs for the same office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket; Dick Gregory runs for president on the Freedom and Peace Party ticket; and Dick Boutelle runs for vice president on the Socia- list Workers Party ticket. 

Abby Lincoln, Leon Bibb and Sidney Poitier appear in Cinerama’s For Love of Ivy. 

Bobby Hutton, age 18, is murdered in California by the racist Oakland police department. 

Beah Richards and Sidney Poitier star in Columbia’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? 

The Poor People’s March to Washington, which begins in Memphis, Tennessee, is led by Ralph D. Abernathy. The march was originally planned by Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Fela Sowande receives, in full recognition of his research into Yoruba folklore, the Bagbile of Lagos Award, which allows him to be called “chief,” from the state of Lagos, Nigeria. Chief Sowande is also a world renowned organist, composer, ethnomusicologist and philosopher. In 1972, the University of Ife in Nigeria, awards him the doctorate in music, Honoris Causa. Sowande was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1905. He dies on March 13, 1987. 

Roy Innis succeeds Floyd McKissick as executive director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). 

For perhaps the first time in U.S. history, a white man, Wilson Atkinson, is sentenced to death for killing a black man. 

The second Congress of the Oman Revolution at Hamrin abandons the Dhofar separatist program and aims at liberation of all Oman and the other Gulf states. The People’s Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Occupied Arabian Gulf is formed with a scientific socialist program. 

Equatorial Guinea becomes independent of Spain. It has currently a population of 275,000 and a land area of 10,832 square miles. The off–shore island of Fernando Po (now Bioko), which has a population of approximately 45,000+, is also an integral part of Equatorial Guinea. 

Four police are wounded by sniper shotgun fire in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

The presidents of Tanzania and Zambia officially open the 1,058 mile Tanzama pipeline. 

Filmmakers releases "Mingus," a documentary about the jazz bassist, Charlie Mingus. 

Tommie Smith and John Carlos make the “Black Power” Salute, a raised clenched fist, at the 1968 Olympics. Their gold and silver medals are taken away by the International Olympics Committee for this supposedly political display. 

Six police are wounded by a sniper outside Chicago. 

Jim Brown appears in MGM’s "Dark of the Sun." 

The armed forces of Rhodesia and South Africa are ambushed by African liberation fighters in Zimbabwe. 

Swaziland, surrounded by South Africa on three sides, wins its “independence.” Swaziland encompasses 6,704 square miles. Based on a 1984 estimate, Swaziland  has a population of 651,000. 

Three white Cleveland, Ohio, policemen are allegedly killed in ambush by African revolutionary nationalists led by Ahmed Evans. See Louis H. Masotti and Jerome R. Corsi, Shoot–out in Cleveland (1969). See also Carlos Marighella, Mini–Manual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969); and Kwame Nkrumah, Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968). 

Raymond St. Jacques and Barbara McNair appear in Cinerama Releasing’s "If He Hollers Let Him Go," which is supposedly based on a novel by Chester Himes. 

Two policemen are wounded by sniper fire in Brooklyn, New York. 

In Orangeburg, South Carolina, after several American African students from South Carolina State University and Clafin College march to protest discrimination in a bowling alley, three students are killed and 40 are wounded. 

A clash between African rebels and French troops erupts in Chad. 

Two policemen are ambushed and killed by a sniper in Inskter, Michigan. 

Jim Brown stars in MGM’s "Ice Station Zebra." 

Twenty–eight American African students attending San Fernando Valley State College (currently California State University at Northridge) occupy the Administration Building to force their demands for a Black Studies Department, the recruitment of more black students and the hiring of more black faculty. 

Ten police are wounded by snipers in Peoria, Illinois. 

The United States’s investment in the Dominican Republic and Haiti is estimated at $150 million and $51 million respectively, while investment in all West Indian islands and Guyana totalled $4,756 million, of which $2,440 million is in Puerto Rico, $900 million in the Bahamas and $500 million each in Trinidad and Jamaica. 

The African American market represents $30 billion before taxes. 

Three hundred of Kent State University’s 600 or so American African students stage a self–imposed exile from the university promising not to return until the “KSU administration acceded to their demand for ‘complete amnesty’ for all who took part in the sit–in demonstra- tion against recruiters for the Oakland, California Police Department.” The students’ “week of absence” is ended when the university “decided that no charges should be applied against dissenting students.” 

1969 
The Society of Black Composers is organized in New York City. 

Lena Horne appears in Universal’s "Death of a Gunfighter." 

The Afro–American Music Opportunities Association, Inc., is organized in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers, becomes the first African since Reconstruction to hold the position of mayor in a Southern city when he is elected to the post in Fayette, Mississippi. 

James C. Hall, educator, authors with James M. Gibson, Damn Reading: The Case Against Literacy. 

"Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee" is released by Grove Films. This is a documentary about the life and career of Muhammad Ali. 

A seven–day ANC Consultative Conference is held in Morogoro, Tanzania.  The main aim is to bring about a qualitative change in the organizational content of the South African liberation movement in keeping with the new situation — namely, the need to conduct a Revolutionary People’s War. 

Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane, President of FRELIMO, is assassinated by Portuguese secret police in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 

Twenty white soldiers are killed and five vehicles destroyed by African Freedom Fighters in the Caprivi Strip, Namibia. 

Al Freeman, Jr., appears in Columbia’s "Castle Keep." 

The first Pan–African Cultural Festival opens in Algiers. 

Ahmed Evans, black nationalist leader, is sentenced to the electric chair in Cleveland, Ohio, for allegedly killing two policemen. 

Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, Raymond St. Jacques and Roscoe Lee Browne star in MGM’s "The Comedians." The film takes place in Haiti during the reign of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his dreaded secret and personal army, the Tonton Macoutes (i.e., bogey- men). 

American Africans at North Carolina A & T battle over 500 police and national guard for 3 days. 

Fifty Portuguese troops are killed in an ambush by revolutionary fighters in Guinea-Bissau. 

The inaugural conference of the South African Students Organization (SASO) is held at Turfloop University. 

The fifth East and Central African States Summit opens in Lusaka, Zambia. 

Three Portuguese soldiers are killed in an encounter with Zambian security forces. 

1970 
There are 22,580,000 American Africans residing in the United States. Fifty–three percent live in the southern cities; 20 percent live in North–Central cities; 8 percent in Western cities.  Seventy-four percent of the African population resides in metropolitan areas; 26 percent in areas outside the metropolis; only 5 percent reside in suburban areas. Forty percent of the black population resides in the nation’s 30 largest cities. When the decennial census is adjusted for the anticipated undercount, the American African population increases to 24,388,000. The median income for Blacks is $6,191 or roughly 61 percent of the median for whites. 

The United Black Appeal is launched in Boston.  At the same time, the United Black Fund is established in Washington, DC, with a campaign to raise $1,000,000. 

Henry Dumas’s Play Ebony, Play Ivory (1970), Ark of Bones and Other Stories (1970), Jonah and the Green Stone (1976), Rope of Wind (1979), Goodbye, Sweetwater (1988) are published posthumously through the untiring efforts of poet and scholar, Eugene Redmond who edits Dumas’s works for his estate. Henry Dumas was born on July 29, 1934, in Sweet Home, Arkansas. When he was killed in April 1968, at age 33, by a New York Transit Authority policeman in a case of “mistaken” identity, he had already completed several manuscripts of poetry and prose the quality and quantity of which are seldom achieved in one lifetime. 

James Earl Jones appears in Allied Artists’ "End of the Road." 

Two black youths are killed and nine others are wounded when police fire into a crowd at Jackson State College in Mississippi. 

Rick Dowdell, a 19-year-old African American warrior, is killed in Lawrence, Kansas. 

President Eric Williams of Trinidad-Tobago, publishes his  From  Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969. His Capitalism and Slavery was published in 1966. 

Two policemen are ambushed and killed in Chicago. 

James Earl Jones stars in Twentieth Century–Fox’s "The Great White Hope." 

Ralph Featherstone and William “Che” Paine are murdered in the fight for African liberation by the forces of white nationalism in an auto explosion in Bel Air, Maryland.  Memorial Services for the African warriors are held in Washington, DC for Featherstone, and in Covington, Ken- tucky for “Che.” Memorial Services are also held in Lagos, Nigeria, for Ralph Featherstone. 

Four white students — Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheur, William Schroeder — are killed at Kent State University when Ohio National Guardsmen fire into a boisterous crowd of students demonstrating against the U.S.’s imperialistic war in Vietnam. 

Zimbabwean Freedom Fighters attack a Rhodesian airport. 

At the annual African Studies Association meeting in Montreal, Canada, African scholars fight to reclaim African history from the snares of white academic neo–colonialism. See John Henrik Clarke, “The Fight to Reclaim African History,” Black World (formerly Negro Digest), 1970; and Ali Mazrui, “The African University as a Multi–National Corporation,” Harvard Educa- tional Review, 1975. 

United Artists releases Cotton Comes to Harlem with Redd Foxx, Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques. 

Babatunde Olatunji celebrates his 20th anniversary of service as the “Ambassador of Africulture.” Olatunji was born in the small fishing village of Ajido–Badagry, Nigeria. He came to the United States in 1950 as a Rotary Scholar to attend Morehouse College in Atlanta. Questions about Africa, many of which betrayed an unbounded ignorance of Africa and its culture, led Olatunji to attempt to educate his fellow students by giving lectures on the rich traditional heritage of Africa through songs, music, folklore and dance. This venture along with his becoming a professional master drummer, musicologist and educator has made him the foremost exponent of African culture in North and South America today. Olatunji’s career has taken him and his dancers all over the United States and the world. He has also given featured performances with the Radio City Music Hall Symphony Orchestra where he combined the African drums and song with a contemporary classical score. In 1964–1965, he performed at the New York World’s Fair. His dedication to awakening people all over the world, especially American Africans led him to establish the Olatunji Center for African Culture in New York in the 1950s and later in Washington, DC. 

THE BLACK DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, issued and signed on July 4 by the mem- bership of the National Committee of Black Churchmen, declares in part . . . 

“The Experience of White America has been that the descendants of the African citizens brought forcibly to these shores, and to the shores of the Caribbean Islands, as slaves, have been patient long past what can be expected of any human beings so affronted. But when a long train of Abuses and Violence, pursuing invariably the same Object, manifests a Design to reduce them under Absolute Racist Domination and Injustice, it is their Duty radically to confront such Government or system of traditions and to provide, under the aegis of legitimate . . . Power and Self Determination, for their present Relief and future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of Black People in the United States of America; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to address this Declaration to Despotic White Power, and to give due notice of their determined refusal to be any longer silenced by fear or flattery, or to be denied justice.  The history of the treatment of Black People in the United States is a history having in direct Object the Establishment and Maintenance of Racist Tyranny over this people. . . . We, therefore, the Black People of the United States of America, in all parts of this Nation, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name of our good People and our own Black heroes — Richard Allen, James Varick, Absalom Jones, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and all Black People past and present, great and small — Solemnly Publish and Delcare, that we shall be, and of Right ought to be FREE AND INDEPENDENT FROM THE INJUSTICE, EXPLOITATIVE CONTROL, INSTITUTIONALIZED VIOLENCE AND RACISM OF WHITE AMERICA, that unless we receive full Redress and Relief from these Inhumanities we will move to renounce all Allegiance to this Nation, and will refuse, in every way, to cooperate with the Evil which is perpetrated upon ourselves and our Communities. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. 

Calvin Lockhart appears in United Artists’ Halls of Anger.  

1971  
Captain Samuel L. Gravely, Jr., a frigate commander, becomes the first African admiral in U.S. Naval history. 

Delores Tucker is the first African to become the Secretary of the Commonwealth of the State of Pennsylvania. 
 

From J.A. Rogers. Your History from the Beginning of Time to the Present (The Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Co., 1940) . Reprinted from the originia collection of Heru-Ka Anu, 1983.

Samuel F. Yette publishes his The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America. The theme of the book is that the African is obsolete in today’s white America. Technocratic and scienti- fic advancements have made the American African’s traditionally inferior occupations super- fluous, while his increasing unwillingness to accept the position assigned him by white America poses a threat to the status quo. See also Sidney Wilhelm, Who Needs the Negro? (1970), Ronald Segal, Race War (1969), and Robert B. Hill, The Illusion of Black Progress, published by the National Urban League (1978). 

Thousands are massacred in Burundi after an unsuccessful revolt against the government. 

Melvin H. Evans, an African physician, is installed as the first elected governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

A rebellion erupts at Attica State Prison which is near Buffalo, New York. The prisoners take hostages and force prison authorities to negotiate with them for four days. An impass results and it is resolved when Governor Nelson Rockefeller orders state police to attack. Forty–three inmates and hostages are killed. Many of them are killed by bullets fired from weapons belonging to the state police. See Tom Wicker, A Time to Die (1975). 
 

1972  
Approximately 727,000 American Africans or 18% of those between the ages 18–24 are enrolled in college. Almost twice as many Blacks are attending college compared with the year 1967. The African student population at the University of Michigan goes from 2.5 to 3.8%; Penn State from 1.8 to 3.0%; and Ohio State from 2.6 to 2.8%. Africans among college fresh- men in the Fall of 1971 total 9.1%. In 1968, African freshmen totalled only 5.8%. 

A committee to agitate for the removal of the “imperial political presence in the Caribbean” is formed as a result of a meeting in Guyana by a group of African activists from the Caribbean, Africa and the U.S. A statement issued after the meeting tells of “new techniques of suppression and intimidation being used against the citizens of Cayenne (French Guiana) and Belize (formerly British Honduras) in their efforts to create people’s organizations.” 

Shirley Chisholm runs for President on the Democratic ticket; she complains, however, that African males give her very little assistance. 

Films with pornographic scenes are banned in Haiti. President Jean–Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier says he wants to preserve “the moral health of Haitian youth.” 

Frank Willis, an American African, discovers the Watergate burglars, causing a series of reve- lations concerning high government officials in the White House arrogantly abusing their power and the principles of democracy. Willis’ “discovery” leads to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974 and the imprisonment of many of his top aides including Robert Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Dean, Herbert Kalmbach and John N. Mitchell, the former U.S. Attorney General. 

Trinidad outlaws casinos as part of its tourism policy. Industry and Commerce Minister Ove- rand Padmore says gambling casinos encourage an influx of organized crime. 

A temporary occupation of the U.S.-owned Panamanian Light and Power Company is ordered by the government of General Omar Torrijos. The move follows a long dispute between the firm, 90% of which is owned by the Boise Cascade Corporation of Boise, Idaho, and the Panama Public Utilities Commission. The temporary occupation takes place because PL&P “had ceased its program of investments, halting the country’s development and endangering the national economy.” 

Jarvis Tyner runs for the Vice Presidency on the Communist Party ticket; Andrew Pulley, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, runs for President. 

General Idi Amin Dada, upon assuming control of the Ugandan government after his defeat of Apolo Milton Obote, expels East Indians from Uganda who consider themselves British citizens and still have British passports after having lived in Uganda for many years. Fighting erupts on the Uganda-Tanzania border. 

A Canadian-built $200 million nickel plant makes the Dominican Republic the world’s fourth largest producer of nickel. 

Diana Sands appears in Cinerama’s Georgia Georgia. 

The Black Panther Party platform as enunciated regularly in The Black Panther Intercommu- nal Newsservice includes the following planks . . . 

• We want freedom; 
• We want the power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities; We want full employment for our people; 
• We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed commu nities;We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings; 
• We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. 
• We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present–day society; 
• We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people; 
• We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the United States; 
• We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression; 
• We want freedom for all black and poor oppressed people now held in U.S. federal, state, county, city and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so–called crimes under the laws of this country; and 
• We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology. 

The first National Black Political Convention is held in Gary, Indiana. See "The National Black Political Agenda," Gary, Indiana, 1972. 

The Caribbean Ministers Conference, held in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, votes down Jamaica’s formal request that Cuba be asked to attend the group’s next meeting. Op- posed to the resolution are Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela. 

George Jackson dies in Soledad Prison in California after being shot by prison guards. While in prison he writes Soledad Brother, The Prison Letters of George Jackson (1970) and Blood in My Eye (1972). 

MGM releases "Hit Man" with Bernie Casey, Pamela Grier, Lisa Moore and Sam Laws. 

Two views on Pan–Africanism are presented by Robert Allen in “Pan-Africanism and Socialism: Enemies or Allies” and by Tony Thomas in “Pan–Africanism and Black Liberation Day.”  Both pieces are found in the International Socialist Review (1971). 

Despite its oil wealth, the new Venezuelan administration, under the leadership of recently elected Alfonso López Michelsen, reveals that it plans to nationalize the U.S.–dominated iron ore industry plus a broad range of other foreign–owned companies. 

Peruvian President Juan Velasco announces that his nation will open diplomatic relations with Cuba. Earlier Peru unsuccessfully tried to win a policy change in the Organization of American States (OAS) concerning its eight-year embargo of Cuba. Only six of the other 20 nations backed the Peruvian resolution. 

Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, after serving three terms in the California Assembly, wages a suc- cessful campaign and wins the first seat in the U.S. Congress ever held by an African woman from California. 

Puerto Rico’s Governor Hernández Colón asks that his island be exempt from federal laws, noting that “more than 95% of Puerto Ricans want to continue close and permanent ties” with the U.S. Governor Hernández urges more freedom in allocating expenditures and a greater role for the island in international relations. He also contends that federal laws, often “while beneficial to the mainland, are inadvertently detrimental to the best interests of Puerto Rico.” 

Fred Williamson stars in United Artists’ Hammer. 

Premier Michael Manley of Jamaica sponsors a four–year campaign against illiteracy which involves more than 20,000 volunteer workers and costs millions of dollars. 

A sustained ZANU military campaign in northeastern Zimbabwe begins. The armed struggle spreads to cover large areas of the country. United liberation forces confront the racist white-settler régime with increased strength and effectiveness, while desperate settlers raise draft calls, employ more mercenaries and intensify repression of the Zimbabwean people. 

Almost one third of the U.S. Senate, nearly enough to bar a treaty, publicly oppose giving sovereignty over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. 

Bill Cosby appears in Hickey and Boggs, released by United Artists. 

Grenada, Dominica, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Montserrat and Belize join the Caribbean Commu- nity and Common Market (CARICOM). Prime Minister Bradshaw of St. Kitts walks out of the meeting after announcing that his government will not let St. Kitts sign the treaty on the behalf of Anguilla. 

In November, two African students are fatally shot on the Baton Rouge, Louisiana campus of Southern University. The report of the Attorney General’s Special Commission of Inquiry states that “Leonard Brown and Denver Smith were shot as they were running away from the entrance of the Administration Building. They were not under arrest and were not armed. They were shot as they ran along the escape route which the law enforcement agencies had plan- ned in the event gas was used. There was no justification. . . . Southern University is a Black [college] under the control of a state board of education which has no members who are black. This fact evidently caused much of the student frustration, confusion and distrust that led to the unrest on campus” before the shootings. Despite overwhelming evidence stablishing police responsibility in the deaths of the two students, those responsible are never brought to trial. 

Mexico’s President Luís Echeverría, addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress, surprises his hosts when he sharply criticizes the attitudes and policies of the U.S. and other major nations toward underdeveloped countries, especially Latin America. He warns that Third World nations are suspicious of pacts between the great powers that ignore the rights and vested interests of the less–developed countries. 

In the Virgin Islands, the bullet–punctured bodies of retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Howard D. Hensley and his wife are found in the driveway of their St. Croix home. 

Grenada’s dock workers end a nearly three–month–long strike following an agreement with Prime Minister Eric Gairy that he disband his secret police force, the “Mongoose Gang.”  
 

  

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