Black August: “A month of meaning, of repression and radical resistance — Mumia Abu-Jamal

His­tory :

Black August ori­gin­ated in the con­cen­tra­tion camps of Cali­for­nia to hon­or fallen Free­dom Fight­ers, Jonath­an Jack­son, George Jack­son, Wil­li­am Christ­mas, James McClain and Khatari Gaulden. Jonath­an Jack­son was gunned down out­side the Mar­in County Cali­for­nia court­house on August 7, 1970 as he attemp­ted to lib­er­ate three imprisoned Black Lib­er­a­tion Fight­ers: James McClain, Wil­li­am Christ­mas and Ruchell Magee.

Ruchell Magee is the sole sur­viv­or of that armed rebel­lion. He is the former co-defend­ant of Angela Dav­is and has been locked down for 40 years, most of it in sol­it­ary con­fine­ment. George Jack­son was assas­sin­ated by pris­on guards dur­ing a Black pris­on rebel­lion at San Quentin on August 21, 1971. Three pris­on guards were also killed dur­ing that rebel­lion and pris­on offi­cials charged six Black and Latino pris­on­ers with the death of those guards.

Black August con­tends that from the very incep­tion of slavery, New Afrik­ans huddled illeg­ally to com­mem­or­ate and draw strength from New Afrik­an slaves who met their death res­ist­ing. Black August asserts that it is only nat­ur­al for each gen­er­a­tion of New Afrik­ans faced with the task to lib­er­ate the nation, to draw strength and encour­age­ment from each gen­er­a­tion of New Afrik­an war­ri­ors that pre­ceded them. It is from such a rich her­it­age of res­ist­ance that Black August developed, com­mit­ted to con­tinu­ing the leg­acy of res­ist­ance, vow­ing to respond to the destruc­tion of colo­ni­al oppres­sion with our George Jack­sons, Mal­colm X’s, and Fred Hamp­tons.

“Right­eous rebel­lion” and “racist repres­sion” includes:

August 20, 1619—First born Afrik­an cap­tives were brought to England’s North Amerik­an colony of Jamestown, Vir­gin­ia.

August 16, 1768—Charlestown, South Car­o­lina rebel­li­ous Afrik­an slaves (known as maroons) engaged Brit­ish mil­it­ary forces in bloody battle defend­ing their camp which was a haven for fugit­ive slaves.

August 30, 1800—Day set for launch­ing Gab­ri­er Pross­ers revolt. On this day over 1000 armed slaves gathered to endeavor to secure their liberty, how­ever bad weath­er forced them to post­pone the revolt and betray­al ulti­mately led to the crush­ing of their phys­ic­al force.

August 21, 1831—Slave revolt launched under the lead­er­ship of Nat Turn­er which las­ted four days and res­ul­ted in fifty-one slave­hold­ers and their loved ones being sub­jec­ted to revolu­tion­ary People’s justice.

August 29, 1841—Street skir­mish took place in Cin­cin­nati between Afrik­an and Euro- Amerik­an, wherein for five days Afrik­ans waged vali­ant struggle in
defense of their women, chil­dren and prop­erty against bru­tal racist ter­ror cam­paigns.

August 1854 —Del­eg­ates from elev­en states met in Clev­e­land at the Nation­al
Emig­ra­tion Con­ven­tion of the Colored People, to advance the pos­i­tion that an inde­pend­ent land base (nation) be set up for the absorp­tion of cap­tive Afrik­ans in Babylon who wanted to return to Afrika.

August 1, 1856 —North Car­o­lina, fierce battle erup­ted between fugit­ive slaves and slave­hold­ers who sought their cap­ture and re-enslave­ment. Only recor­ded cas­u­al­ties was among slave­hold­ers.

August 1860 —Free­dom (slave) con­spir­acy uncovered with the dis­cov­ery of an organ­ized camp of Afrik­ans and Euro-Amerik­an co-con­spir­at­ors in Tall­adega County, Alabama.

August 2, 1865 —Vir­gin­ia a statewide con­fer­ence of fifty Afrik­an del­eg­ates met to demand that Afrik­ans in Vir­gin­ia be gran­ted leg­al title to land occu­pied dur­ing the Civil War. Numer­ous off-pitch battles ensued dur­ing this same month as ter­ror­ist mobs moved to evict Afrik­ans from the land and were met with res­ist­ance.

August 17, 1887—Honorable Mar­cus Gar­vey, fath­er of con­tem­por­ary Afrik­an Nation­al­ism was born.

August 1906 —Afrik­an sol­diers (in ser­vice of Babylon) enraged behind racial slurs and dis­crim­in­a­tion struck out and wrecked the town of Brown­ville, Texas.

August 1906 —Niagara Move­ment met at Harp­ers Ferry, Vir­gin­ia and issued W.E. Mar­cus Gar­vey DuBois’ his­tor­ic mani­festo against racist dis­crim­in­a­tion in Babylon against Afrik­ans.

August 1, 1914 —Gar­vey founds Uni­ver­sal Negro Improve­ment Asso­ci­ation, advan­cing the call for Land, Free­dom, and Inde­pend­ence for Afrik­an people.

August 23, 1917—Afrikan sol­diers in Hus­ton engaged in street skir­mishes that left more than sev­en­teen Euro-Amer­ic­an racists dead.

August 1920 —Over two thou­sand del­eg­ates rep­res­ent­ing Afrik­an from the four
corners of the earth gathered in New York for the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ven­tion of the Negro People of the World, sponsored by UNIA con­ven­tion issue a bill of rights for Afrik­ans.

August 1943 —Slave revolt took place in Har­lem as res­ult of a K‑9 shoot­ing a broth­er defend­ing the hon­or of Afrik­an woman­hood. More than 16,000 mil­it­ary and police per­son­nel was required to quell the rebel­lion.

August 1963 —190,000 Afrik­ans (250,000 people all toll) took part in the March on Wash­ing­ton led by Dr. Mar­tin Luth­er King to peti­tion for the exten­sion of the rights and priv­ileges due to them man­dated by the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion.

August 1964 —Afrik­an launched com­par­at­ively large-scale urb­an slave revolt in the fol­low­ing cit­ies: Jer­sey City NY, Pater­son NJ, Keans­burg NJ, Chica­go IL, and Phil­adelphia PA. These slave revolts were for the most part sparked by either police bru­tal­ity or dis­respect shown toward Afrik­an woman­hood.

August 16, 1965—Urban revolt took place in North­ern Phil­adelphia.

August 7–8, 1966––Large-scale urb­an revolt was launched in Lans­ing, Michigan.

August 28, 1966—Waukegan, Illinois, urb­an slave revolt launched in response to police bru­tal­ity.

July 30- August 2, 1967 —Urb­an slave revolt launched in Mil­wau­kee.

August 19–24, 1967-Com­par­at­ively large-scale urb­an slave revolt was launched in New Haven, Con­necti­c­ut.

August 7, 1970 —Jonath­an Jack­son killed in fire­fight while lead­ing the Mar­in County Court­house raid. George Jack­son

August 21, 1971 — George Jack­son was assas­sin­ated by San Quentin pris­on guards 

August time of birth of:

Dr. Mutulu Shak­ur (New Afrik­an pris­on­er of war)
Pan-Afric­an­ist Lead­er Mar­cus Gar­vey.
Maroon Rus­sell Shoatz (polit­ic­al pris­on­er).
Chica­go Black Pan­ther Party Chair­man Fred Hamp­ton.

Black August Film

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqtL5iCi3WE[/youtube]

George L. Jack­son, (Soledad Broth­er, Pris­on Let­ters); pris­on organ­izer, Field-Mar­shall of the Black Pan­ther Party and co-founder of the infam­ous Black Guer­rilla Fam­ily pris­on organ­iz­a­tion.

George L. Jack­son Let­ter to his moth­er 

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Gata Malandra

Edit­or / Research­er at No Bounds

Gata is a music and arts lov­er, stud­ied anthro­po­logy, art man­age­ment and media pro­duc­tion ded­ic­at­ing most of her time to cre­at­ive pro­jects pro­duced by No Bounds.

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