Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: a man born to imprisoned victims of a racist police vendetta recounts his life in the Move organization. And, today’s Black activists could learn something from the Maroons, who built communities of freedom outside the reach of the slave master,
Black nationalism is a potent political force, with studies showing that about half of Black Americans see themselves as a nation within a nation. Edward Oh-NAH-Chi teaches history at Ursinus College, and has written a book titled, “Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State.” Onaci says there have been calls for a separate Black nation for generations.
Mike Africa was born in a Pennsylvania prison, a captive of the long Philadelphia police vendetta against the Move organization, in 1978. After for decades behind bars, all of the surviving Move members are now free, as Mike Africa explains.
In North and South America and the Caribbean, there is a long history of escaped slaves establishing their own communities in far-off swamps and mountains. Willie Jamaal Wright is a professor of Geography and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. Wright wrote an article titled, “The Morphology of Marronage,” which explores the history of the people we call Maroons.