Tag: black heritage

British Caribbean – The Windrush Generation, Commemoration & Controversy

WHO ARE THE WINDRUSH GENERATION AND WHY HAVE A DAY OF COMMEMORATION?

Windrush Day marks the anniversary of the arrival of MV Empire Windrush at the Port of Tilbury, near London, on 22 June 1948. The arrival of the Empire Windrush nearly 72 years ago marked a seminal moment in Britain’s history and has come to represent the rich diversity of this nation.

Those who arrived on the Empire Windrush, their descendants and those who followed them have made and continue to make an enormous contribution to Britain, not just in the vital work of rebuilding the country and public services following World War 2 but in enriching our shared social, economic, cultural and religious life.

Overcoming great sacrifice and hardship, the Windrush Generation and their descendants have gone on to lead the field across public life, in business, the arts and sport. Britain would be much diminished without their contribution.

The MV Empire Windrush docked at the Port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948. However, passengers disembarked a day later on 22 June 1948 – hence why this has come to be known as Windrush Day.
WINDRUSH DAY GRANT SCHEME
The Windrush Day Grant scheme was launched on 22 November 2018.
In June 2018, the government announced an annual Windrush Day to encourage communities across the country to commemorate the Windrush story on Windrush Day and throughout the year.
The national celebration is backed by a £500,000 Windrush Day Grant Scheme overseen by a Windrush Day Advisory Panel of community representatives.
Launched in October 2019, the Windrush Day Grant Scheme received over 200 bids for funding from community groups, charities and local authorities across England.
This year’s successful bids came from across the country from Bristol to Birmingham and Leicester to Leeds indicating the breadth of enthusiasm in communities across the country to mark Windrush Day 2020.
WINDRUSH DAY 2020
Building on from the last two years, there was a Press Release on 5th March 2020 on the UK Government Website from:Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP as follows:
‘The nation will pay tribute to the outstanding and ongoing contribution of the Windrush Generation and their descendants on 22 June 2020.’
  • Community groups and local authorities across England to receive share of £500,000 to host events to honour the second national Windrush Day
  • Funding will support exhibitions, lectures and workshops on June 22 and beyond
  • Commemorative events and activities will place communities front and centre of Windrush Day 2020 as nation pays tribute to outstanding legacy of British Caribbean community.
ASKED TO COME BUT NEVER WELCOMED
Despite the plans for a Windrush Day and events of 22nd June 2020 which has taken effect there has been so much controversy and disappointment in relation to how the Windrush generation have been treated by the UK government; Many have been deported and declared as illegal immigrants because they did not have legal documents or passports proving they came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation.
The government has said they have no record of these people… one would think they would or it would not be difficult to ensure they had legal documents.
One can only conclude that after they managed to get people to come and do much needed work, once they came, ensuring their residence status and that of their children would never be in doubt was sadly not the government’s priority. No one thought of how this lack of foresight or sheer neglect in the early years of this great multitude of people would adversely affect their residence status and generations after them… no one cared.
Many of the Windrush Generation have been scheduled to be deported but sought legal aid and some won their case against deportation. Many testimonials of those who resisted deportation and those who could not can be found in newspapers.
These brothers and sisters either came from the Caribbean as children with their parents or as adults and not illegally, but because BRITAIN asked them to come and be part of the much needed workforce (rail workers, nurses etc…). Upon arrival, they were traumatised to their dismay with inhumane treatment and racial discrimination; Many landlords did not want to rent their accommodation to them because they were black, signs on property literally read “no blacks allowed”.
I quote below from a Guardian article:
Windrush scandal survivors deliver petition to No 10
Call to speed up compensation for people wrongly detained and deported by government.19/06/2020
“The Windrush Lessons Learned review, written by Wendy Williams, set out 30 recommendations, including a full review of the hostile environment policy that formed the backdrop to the scandal, and called on ministers and Home Office staff to be educated in Britain’s colonial past. The home secretary, Priti Patel, promised to consider the recommendations in March but has since made no further comment.
Patrick Vernon, the Windrush campaigner who organised the petition, which remains open, said apologies had already been offered by three home secretaries, and it was time for action.
“The Home Office can no longer ignore the true scale of the scandal and its impact on people – from being made homeless or unemployed to being denied access to the NHS or unfairly deported,” he said. “The Home Office must urgently stop any racial discrimination and learn from the lessons published, so this never happens again.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary has been clear that the mistreatment of the Windrush generation by successive governments was completely unacceptable and she will right those wrongs.” However, they added, Williams had recommended that the Home Office consider the review carefully before responding, “and we are committed to honouring that request”. Patel had said she would update parliament before the summer recess.
Officials in charge of organising the compensation scheme stressed that claimants should not feel discouraged by the difficulties experienced by others and should persist with making claims. A spokesperson said assistance in completing the claim form was available via the free Windrush helpline on 0800 678 1925.”
For the full article click: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/19/windrush-scandal-survivors-deliver-petition-to-no-10
Government website:https://www.gov.uk/government/news/windrush-day-2020-launches-with-500-000-for-communities

 

Part 2 – Harriet Tubman & the Daring Raid up the Combahee River, South Carolina, USA

 On June 2, 1863, Harriet Tubman and Colonel James Montgomery led Union Forces in what can only be described as a daring raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina, USA. It was so successful it destroyed the local Confederate infrastructure (another word) and resulted in the liberation of 756 slaves.

Details of the military raid
Harriet is known to have scouted the area and received widespread credit for planning the raid and her accompaniment of Montgomery was widely seen as a joint leadership of the raid.
This raid that enabled slaves to free themselves is what earned Harriett Tubman the honourable title as the first woman in U.S. history to plan and lead a military raid.

The night before, the pair had set off from Beaufort in three U.S. Navy gunboats. Montgomery led a detachment of soldiers from the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, an all-black infantry regiment. A company from the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery was entrusted with manning the ships’ guns.

The two Union gunboats reached the Combahee on the morning of June 2, 1863 went up the river, disembarking troops as they went.
The Commonwealth, a Boston newspaper, reported on July 10 that what caused the expedition’s successes included “destroying millions of dollars worth of commissary stores, cotton, and lordly dwellings, and striking terror into the heart of rebeldom,” all “without losing a man or receiving a scratch.”

One of the goals of the raid was also for the intention of removing mines (“torpedoes”) placed by Confederate forces along the river, and it is to Tubman’s intelligence efforts, that this was accomplished.

The easy process of liberating the “contraband”
The final objective of the raid, to liberate slaves, which the union forces tended to refer to as
“contraband.” Proved easy for Tubman and Montgomery.

This is because as word spread of the operation along the river, slaves began to leave their work in the fields and rush to the riverbanks to board the gunboats faster than they could be stopped by overseers and soldiers trying to stop them.

Harriet described the scene as follows:
“I nebber see such a sight … we laughed, an’ laughed, an’ laughed. Here you’d see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin’ in it jus as she’d taken it from de fire, young one hangin’ on behind, one han’ roun’ her forehead to hold on, ‘tother han’ diggin’ into de rice-pot, eatin’ wid all its might; hold of her dress two or three more; down her back a bag wid a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs, a white one, an’ a black one; we took ’em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, an’ de black pig Jeff Davis. Sometimes de women would come wid twins hangin’ roun’ der necks; ‘pears like I nebber see so many twins in my life; bags on der shoulders, baskets on der heads, and young ones taggin’ behin’, all loaded; pigs squealin’, chickens screamin’, young ones squallin’.1”

In addition, Harriet Tubman reported that the raid liberated 756 enslaved blacks and that almost all of the able-bodied male slaves immediately joined the Union’s colored regiments.

James DeWolf Perry writes “The broader significance of the Combahee River Raid, I think, is that it shattered two persistent myths which had long impeded the arrival of emancipation for black Americans. First, the raid demonstrated very publicly that black troops were not merely fit as laborers or cannon fodder, but were every bit as capable as their white brethren at executing complex military operations under the most challenging circumstances. Second, the raid’s success in liberating hundreds of blacks (or, in allowing them to liberate themselves) electrified the northern and southern publics and defied the Confederacy’s insistence on the quiet loyalty of its enslaved population. The raid showed convincingly that enslaved blacks were, in fact, eager for freedom and willing to rise up on a moment’s notice, if given the opportunity, and to then join Union forces in droves and fight back.

Together, these two powerful truths helped to show the necessity and rightness of emancipation, at a time when the northern public, in particular, was only beginning to wrestle with that very issue.”

Sources:
Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid by James DeWolf Perry
Harriet Tubman, quoted in Sarah H. Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (Auburn, N.Y.: W. J. Moses, 1869), pp. 40-41.
www.tracingcenter.org

This is part of a series: American Civil War, Underground Railroad & Abolition Movement
SECTION 3.0 Abolitionists
3.1 Harriet Tubman Parts 1 & 2

Afua Cooper, Jamaican Canadian Educator, Historian, Performance Artist, Poet


Afua (Ava Pamela) Cooper, educator, historian, performance artist, poet (born 8 November 1957 in the Whithorn district of Westmoreland, Jamaica), is considered one of the most influential and pioneering voices in the Canadian dub poetry and spoken word movement. Her poems are published in numerous regional, national and international journals and anthologies. Afua Cooper also has CDs of her performances that make her work well known to the global community. In addition to her renown as a performance artist, she is an internationally-ranked historian. She has taught Caribbean cultural studies, history, women’s studies and Black studies at Ryerson and York universities, at the University of Toronto and at Dalhousie University.

Early Life and Education

Afua Cooper is one of nine children — five sisters and three brothers. Her parents are Ruth Campbell Cooper and Edward Cooper. In 1966, she moved from Westmoreland to Kingston to live with her aunt, Elfleda Campbell. She attended St. Michael’s All-Age School in Rae Town. Cooper then attended Camperdown High School (East Kingston) from the age of 12 where she was a founding member of the African Studies Club. Graduating in 1975, Afua Cooper was by then a Rastafarian, and she spent the year living with dub poet Mutabaraka and his wife, Yvonne Peters. In 1979–80, she went to teach at Vauxhall Secondary School, after earning a teaching diploma from Excelsior Community College. She later moved to Canada in December 1980 during a period of great political unrest throughout Jamaica (1979‒80).

Career Path

Afua Cooper’s initial residency in Canada involved work as an instructor at Bickford Park High School in Toronto. While teaching, she began to perform her poetry at a variety of Toronto’s spoken word spaces such as Fall Out Shelter, Strictly Ital and Trojan Horse. Shortly thereafter, Cooper joined Gayap Riddim Drummers as resident poet and percussionist, touring Canada with a brand of poetry infused with womanist perspectives and contemporary social commentary. (Womanism, while similar to feminism, designates a movement that arose in response to racial and gender-based oppression experienced by women of colour.)

Cooper also was performing with major dub poets Lillian Allen, Clifton Joseph and Devon Haughton during a period described by some cultural critics as a “black cultural renaissance.” Her first book of poetry, Breaking Chains was published in 1983, concurrent with her enrollment in the African Studies and Women’s Studies programs at the University of Toronto.

Article is an excerpt from The Canadian Encyclopedia https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/afua-cooper

Similarities: Ghana & Jamaica Video 01 (Nanny of The Maroons…)

WE ARE ONE!!
Nanny of The Maroons, Jamaican Akan (Asante) Freedom Fighter:
The story (using Ghanaian highlife music) of Nanny the woman who with Kujoe led a revolt against the British and won. She and her Community called the Maroons fled to the mountains…

The Maroons are descendants of Akan Ghanaian slaves in Jamaica who still retain much of the Akan culture and some Akan words are still used in their patois.

Enjoy!!

Source: You Tube: OffDaGroundTV Story Time with FuseODG (FuseStory)