Local 848's Civil Rights Committee presented a commemoration of African-American history at our hall on February 19. Music, a fashion show, and an outstanding speaker were featured.
Brother Pete Peterson led off with the Black National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Robert Cauley led a prayer, then Johnnie Durham gave an interpretation of a gospel song. Syndicated radio host Tunde Obazee was then introduced.
Obazee gave his perspective, as a West African turned American, on the way that the transatlantic slave trade had affected the present character of America. He mentioned that present-day people sometimes refer to African-Americans as "lazy." But history showed that thousands of slavers would not have risked their lives and fortunes to bring "lazy" workers to America. Further, the slavers threw all the weak ones overboard during the Atlantic passage; only the strongest Africans made it to America.
Once there, the Africans were subjected to centuries of the horrible conditions of slavery, which further eliminated the weak and left the strong. Thus, Obazee concluded, African Americans of today must be very strong indeed.
Obazee said that historians set the slave days as 1450 to 1867. But Trans-Saharan slavery pre-dated Trans-Atlantic slavery, thus slavery actually began long before 1450. "And did it end in 1867?" the speaker asked. He went on to talk of the days of lynching, discrimination, and segregation that had plagued Americans of African descent. He brought the period up to today, and said that the exploitation of America's workers was dramatically worsening under the present government. "Slavery," the speaker concluded, "did not end finally in 1867."
The program concluded with a "fashion show" of African outfits
