Up From Slavery

By Sicebise Msengana

Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves 

I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads post-office called Hale's Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters--the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins. 

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many others. I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.

Black Panther Party Platform, Program, and Rules

By Sicebise Msengana

October 1966 Black Panther Party

Platform and Program

What We Want
What We Believe

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

I'm Not Afrikan, I'm Negro

By Sicebise Msengana

To analyze the above statement would take volumes of books on philosophy, history, economics, psychology, biology, slave studies and a host of other disciplines. It is the nucleus of a problem that has caused a whole people to change the concept of who they were, their status in the world, and effectively erased the history and culture of their original homeland. The Afrikan was literally written out of the history books from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade onward. Adjoining those realities, Afrikans were brutally forced to abandon every tradition, custom, ritual, religion,

Go Back to Africa

By Sicebise Msengana

It is difficult not to get angry when hearing the "Go back to Africa" argument. This argument is not about Africa but the so-called kindness of white America. It assumes: white America has been very kind and offered the best parental care ever to Africans, besides the European powers. Black Africans were enslaved and sold by their own African brothers. Chattel slavery was immoral wrong, but whites ended it. Racism ended when Jim Crow laws were abolished. We even voted for the first black president, Barack Obama. Racism is a done deal -- get over it! If black Americans are still suffering, it's their own fault!

Where Was God During Slavery

By Sicebise Msengana

Where was God during slavery? In other words, what did he do to stop the Transatlantic slave trade? This is a tough question because God has been silent on many issues facing his creation. Instead,  he has been hidden, never letting us see or hear God, but occasionally trying to get our attention through indirect means: "working" through people, revealing his supposed existence through creation and dropping "hints" here and there. But it is not direct.

The Weapon of Theory

By Sicebise Msengana

www.warscapes.com

Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January, 1966. 

If any of us came to Cuba with doubts in our mind about the solidity, strength, maturity and vitality of the Cuban Revolution, these doubts have been removed by what we have been able to see. Our hearts are now warmed by an unshakeable certainty which gives us courage in the difficult but glorious struggle against the common enemy: no power in the world will be able to destroy this Cuban Revolution, which is creating in the countryside and in the towns not only a new life but also — and even more important — a New Man, fully conscious