Rastafari letter to US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama

An Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama

Dear Senator Barack Obama,

My name is Ras Siphiwe Nathaniel Ka Baleka, and I am reading The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah as part of my Black History studies in preparation for the upcoming celebrations on March 6th, for the 50th Anniversary of Ghana's Independence and the Ethiopian Millennium which begins September 11, 2007. I was reading page 141, where Kwame Nkrumah, as the newly elected leader of the majority party, became Leader of Government Business of the Colonial Government's new Legislative Assembly, when I thought of you. For some reason I couldn't continue to read because I felt compelled to write to you. Here is what it says on pages 140-1:

"In order to acquaint the C.P.P. Assemblymen of the policy of the Party and of the dangers and difficulties that lay ahead of them when they took their seats in the Assembly, I arranged to address them at the Arena. Because of the importance of this message, I had copies of it printed so that it would be a permanent record for them.

In this address I pointed out that the Convention People's Party, although alert to the dangers of trying to work under the existing constitution, was committed to pursue the struggle for 'full self-government now.' Going to the Assembly, I said, is not an end but a means whereby 'self-government now' can be fought for and won, both from within and from without the Assembly. Our Party was the only one in the country that had this aim and therefore it would be impracticable for it to work with those who held different views.

I explained that in a democratic society, if a political party was in the minority it formed the Opposition; if it was in the majority, then it formed the Government, and as far as we were concerned there should be no compromise on this point. Coalition with the other political groups in the country, such as we knew them, would be dangerous.

The C.P.P., if it was to take part in forming the new government, would ask that all the eight ministerial positions should be from party members, but a concession might be made for the inclusion of one or two territorial members in the Executive Council. I pointed out that colonial governments did not give self-government to their colonies until circumstances forced them to do so and that it was only by determination, by singleness of purpose and by effective and relentless agitation and organisation that we could achieve our goal, and this regardless of victimisations, persecutions and imprisonments.

Members of the Assembly should not overlook the fact that the essential part of any proposal for a democratic government consisted in the desire to create all the conditions--political, economic, social and cultural -- that are necessary to maintain a decent and full life for the people.

I warned them also that there was one great risk attached to accepting office under the present constitution: the temptation to identify oneself with such a constitution and to be swayed by considerations of temporary personal advantage instead of seeking the interest of the people. Bribery and corruption, which had been part and parcel of the colonial set-up, must be stamped out. Our election to the Assembly showed that the public had confidence in the integrity of the Party. The trust which the people had placed in the C.P.P. was the most precious thing we possessed and as long as we were able to maintain it, victory would be ours.

The people of the country needed political power to manage their own affairs, but we should not be deceived by such things as the creation of African ministers under the new constitution, for these ministers could very easily become tools and puppets in the hands of British colonial administrators."

I stopped reading here, and could go no further. I began to think about your candidacy for the Presidency of the United States of America and its prophetic significance on the eve of a global dialogue, lead by America, Britain and Ghana, on the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. What I and a great number of black people in America what to know is, if you become President of the United States, will you be a tool and puppet, or will you really bring about justice in the form of reparations, repatriation, and 'self government now' for all Black people in America?

This begs the question, can a "black" man really become President of the United States?

I feel it necessary to take some time, respectfully, to call to your attention to the potential historical praxis that this moment affords in light of the global dialogue on the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

As you are aware, President George W. Bush, while visiting Senegal on July 8, 2003, stated that slavery was "one of the greatest crimes in history" and that "many of the issues that still trouble America have their roots in slavery". This is because the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade consisted of a minimum of 34,482 and perhaps a maximum of 35,561 slave voyages, 27,233 of which are documented in Davis Eltis’ Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM.

The earliest known English slave trading voyage to Africa and America were the London-owned ships Salomon, Swallow, and Jonas in 1562 and over the next 245 years, the English were the main slave carriers.

The enslavement of Africans in the American colonies began in 1619 with statutory recognition in Massachusetts (1641), Connecticut (1650), Virginia (1661), Maryland (1663), New York (1665), South Carolina (1682), Pennsylvania (1700), New Jersey (1702), Rhode Island (1703), New Hampshire (1714), North Carolina (1715), Delaware (1721), and Georgia (1756).

The first systematic venture from New England in the Americas to Africa was undertaken in 1644 by an association of Boston traders who sent three ships in search of gold and black slaves, one of which returned with wine, salt, sugar and tobacco which it acquired in Barbados in exchange for African American ancestors. Massachusetts ships, seeking to avoid confrontations with slave-trading superpowers Dutch West India Company and the English Royal African Company, sailed the longer trip to the east coast of Africa to capture and enslave these ancestors. Others were taken from the west coast of Africa.

Thomas Cooper, in the Supplement to Mr. Cooper’s Letter on the Slave Trade, suggests that for every 100 Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved, 1,000 were murdered in European inspired or exacerbated warfare in Africa, 20 were murdered on the "way of death" in Africa and the Middle Passage, and 70 were murdered during seasoning, for a total of 170 million deaths.

For more than 6 centuries and 30 generations, the theft of African labor, in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas and Caribbean, and of the untold wealth that it produced, has, redistributed income and wealth earned by black labor to generations of Europeans and Americans, leaving the former impoverished as a group and the latter relatively privileged as a group.

From the very first African who was loaded onto those Boston merchant slave ships, all African people who suffered the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade to America had the same prayer: to be delivered from the white demons (as they were thought to be) who put them in chains and forced them to work from sun up to sun down, and be returned to their families in their homeland.

During the slave breaking process, those Africans that survived the holocaust of the Middle Passage were forbidden to speak their native tongue or learn to read. Those that resisted this Euro-American cultural imperialism were cruelly punished, brutalized, and tortured. This did not stop some Africans from escaping from their enslavers, however, and these people continued to speak of Africa in their native tongue and pray for their return to their families and homeland.

American "slave-catchers" hunted these African ancestors, while plantation owners extracted slave labor to build the United States of America. In time, some of the Africans in America learned to read English by reading the King James and other versions of the Bible. In 1783, George Liele established the Ethiopian Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia. He taught his followers that they, as black people, were the "Ethiopians" written of in the Bible. A year later George Liele brought this "Ethiopianism" to Jamaica, becoming the first recorded licensed and ordained Black Preacher-Missionary in the world.

George Liele was a powerful preacher and his church grew rapidly. This provoked opposition from the Established Church of England. Liele's services were frequently interrupted with cruel persecution and in 1797, Liele and his companions were even imprisoned, arrested, and charged with "sedition", a capital offense under the law. Nevertheless, the congregation grew to over five hundred people. That same year, in January, Prince Hall, a free mason, and seventy-three other black men presented a Repatriation plea to the Massachusetts legislature proposing that the state secure funds for sending Massachusetts' black population to a point on the African coast. The proposal also called for a colonization effort that would result in mutual benefit to both parties, including extensive future trade between the two states. The petition, which appears to be the first major statement on African colonization by black Americans, died in committee.

In 1842, George Liele sent fifty missionaries from his Ethiopian congregation in Jamaica to work in Africa, thus spreading "Ethiopianism" from the America's forward to the motherland and becoming the first Father of Ethiopianism in America, Jamaica, and Africa. By this time, other black men were publishing their own books. Robert Alexander published The Ethiopian Manifesto Issued In Defense of the Black Man's Rights In The Scale of Universal Freedom in 1829, the same year that David Walker wrote the Appeal To The Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America. By 1836, Martin Delany laid out his "Project for an Expediton of Adventure to the Eastern Coast of Africa" to resolve the dilemma of his people. The project was to start the settlement of "enlightened freemen."

Finally, in 1861, Martin Delany proclaimed in the Official Report on the Niger Valley Exploring Party,

"Our policy must be -- and I hayard nothing in promulging it; nay, without this design and feeling, there would be a great deficiency of self-respect, pride of race, and love of country, and we might never expect to challenge the respect of nations -- Africa for the African race, and black men to rule them. By black men I mean, men of African decent who claim an identity with the race."

Thus, with George Liele, Robert Alexander and Martin Delany, Pan Africanism, by way of Ethiopianism, is institutionalized, and the slogan, "Africa for the Africans" is given. Since then, the agenda of Pan Africanism as established by black men in the Americas, has been Repatriation fueled by the desire, as Kwame Nkrumah says, "to create all the conditions--political, economic, social and cultural -- that are necessary to maintain a decent and full life for the people." In this case it is the people who were and are still the victims of the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.

This Ethiopian Pan African liberation agenda has been advocated by great, learned black men in every generation such as Reverend Henry Highland Garnett (1843), Edward Wilmott Blyden (1862), and Bishop Henry McNeil Turner (1877). So widespread was this feeling of Ethiopian Pan Africanism and Repatriation, that in 1875, Henry Adams of the New Orleans Organizing Committee wrote,

"We first organized and adopted a plan to appeal to the President of the United States and to Congress to help us out of our distress, or protect us in our rights and privileges. And if that failed, our idea was then to ask them to set apart a territory in the United States for us, somewhere we could go and live with our families. When that failed then our idea was to appeal to other governments outside of the United States to help us to get away from the United States . . . ."

The New Orleans Organizing Committee then decided to collect the names of those interested in leaving Louisianna for Liberia. By August of 1877, they had enrolled 69,000 people. The following months saw the Committee hold public meetings, canvass door-to-door, and attempt to generate a broader consensus for their movement. That is why, in 1998, the African Peoples Commission reported in "Building on the Tradition: Lessons of African American Conventions and Congress for the Black Radical Congress,

"So, the continuously arising central question manifested itself again in 1875: What is the relationship of African Americans to the United States? Is this the land where we should struggle and attempt to transform after investing so many years? Or is this land beyond our abilities to reform, and therefore we should look for another place to live? Or is there some alternative?"

The basic problem, of course, was poverty.

All of this lead the way to the convening of the Chicago Congress on Africa in 1893 and the Atlanta Congress on Africa in 1895. Commenting on the first congress, the Advance, a Chicago newspaper stated: ' This great congress was unquestionably one of the most notable convocations of recent years in any country. We have had pan-Presbyterian, pan-Methodist, pan-Anglican, pan-missionary and pan-Congregational councils. . . .But none signified more than this pan-African conference.'"

Almost immediately, Ethiopianism and Pan-Africanism faced its greatest threat: Ethiopia was attacked by the Italians on March 1, 1896. The Battle of Adwa was, at the time, the greatest defeat inflicted upon a European army by an African army since the time of Hannibal, and its consequences were felt well into the 20th century. As an example of colonial warfare on an epic scale, it cannot be surpassed. The victory at Adowa had a galvanizing effect on black people all over the world, and a renewed "Ethiopianism" further propelled "Pan-Africanism". The Italians made a second invasion to destroy Ethiopia in 1935, and failed again, this time defeated by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I.

I would say that the rest of the history of Pan Africanism is well known were it not for the fact that the roles played by His Imperial Majesety Emperor Haile Selassie I, Ghana's liberator and first President Kwame Nkrumah, and his greatest influence, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, in defending the African continent and black people everywhere against white supremacy, colonial and neo-colonial domination while steadily achieving the goals Pan Africanism, were not so quickly written out of their respective countries' national curriculums and omitted from the American national education curriculum. For example, the first visit of an African Emperor to the United States of America occurred on May 25, 1954 when the Emperor of Ethiopia himself, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I arrived and was received by President Eisenhower. Except for the book that I published to commemorate the visit, there was no public or academic recognition of it nor of the role it played in the US Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision that was given just eight days before. How many people recall that for eighteen months prior to that visit, the Emperor sent Madam Sahara to recruit black Americans in New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois to return to Ethiopia offering them "a house, rent-free, a salary at least equaling that which applicants are now earning or could earn in America, free transportation to Ethiopia for applicants and their families, annual three-months vacations with pay, and, in some instances, automobiles provided by the government"?

Thus, Senator Obama, I am writing this letter to find out your views, as a Black man who might become President of the United States of America at the turn of the Ethiopian Millennium, regarding the well-established Ethiopian Pan-African agenda of Repatriation and Reparations which means, "Africa for the Africans", the right of all black people to return to their ancestral homeland, self government now, "to create all the conditions--political, economic, social and cultural -- that are necessary to maintain a decent and full life for the people." This, I believe, is especially important in light of the fact that,

1. 18,810 delegates from 170 countries, 16 heads of state, 58 foreign ministers, 44 ministers, 7,000 non-governmental representatives, and 1,300 journalists attending the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) August 31 to September 3, 2001, that "slavery, and the slave trade, including the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature [and] especially their negation of the essence of the victims . . . [and] that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity..."

2. According to the International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (IHRAAM) African American Task Force to the World Conference on Racism http://www.geocities.com/ihraam/AATaskForceWCAR.htm 

"It is customary for aggrieved groups, minorities, nations, indigenous peoples, etc. to organize themselves into a POLITICAL UNITY in keeping with democratic norms, and national and international law through which they can politically represent themselves in relation to the government, the United Nations, other friendly nations, and the international community at large. Quite often it is the ability of a group, minority, etc to politically and democratically ‘self-identify’ and ‘self-organize’ that will, from a practical point of view, determine the degree of seriousness with which its demands and grievances, in relation to its government, will be given serious consideration to that government, the UN or the international community at large. Since all groups have consisted of people with different religious, ideological and socioeconomic beliefs and opinions as well as educational and economic backgrounds and organizations, THE CREATION OF A POLITICAL UNIT THAT RESPECTS, ENCOMPASSES AND PROVIDES FOR EQUAL PARTICIPATION FOR ALL OF ITS INTERNAL DIVISIONS, BECOMES THE FIRST AND ULTIMATE TASK IN THE SEARCH FOR COLLECTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS AS WELL AS SELF-GOVERNMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION. It also provides the fundamental foundation on which legitimate and effective leadership can be elected." [capital emphasis mine]

3. Up until Emancipation, all Africans held in slavery were not considered citizens in the country of their captivity. The legal status of Africans in America after the Emancipation is undetermined. According to Imari Abubakari Obadele (founder of the Republic of New Africa):

"We are not American citizens . . . . the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."

By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slavemasters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will.

What the rule of jus soli demanded at this point -- at the point of the passage of the slavery-halting Thirteenth Amendment -- was that America not deny to this African, born on American soil, American citizenship -- IF THE AFRICAN WANTED IT. This last condition is crucial: the African, his freedom now acknowledged by persons who theretofore had wrongfully and illegally (under international law) held him in slavery by force, was entitled as a free man to decide for himself what he wanted to do -- whether he wished to be an American citizen or follow some other course.

The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom.

Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment is incorrectly read when its Section One is deemed to be a grant of citizenship: it can only be an offer. The positive tone of the language can only emphasize the intention of the ratifiers to make a sincere offer. On the other hand, the United States government, under obligation to make the offer, also had the power to create the mechanism -- a plebiscite-- whereby the African could make an informed decision, an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of American citizenship. Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.;)

The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required -- was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

Let us recall that, following the Thirteenth Amendment, four natural options were the basic right of the African. First, he did, of course, have a right, if he wished it, to be an American citizen. Second, he had a right to return to Africa or (third) go to another country -- if he could arrange his acceptance. Finally, he had a right (based on a claim to land superior to the European's, sub-ordinate to the Indian's) to set up an independent nation of his own.

Towering above all other juridical requirements that faced the African in America and the American following the Thirteenth Amendment was the requirement to make real the opportunity for choice, for self-determination. How was such an opportunity to evolve? Obviously the African was entitled to full and accurate information as to his status and the principles of international law appropriate to his situation. This was all the more important because the African had been victim of a long-term intense slavery policy aimed at assuring his iliteracy, dehumanizing him as a group and depersonalizing him as an individual.

The education offered him after the Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the policy of dehumanization. It was continued in American institutions . . . for 100 years, through 1965 . . . . Now, again following the Thirteenth Amendment, the education of the African in America seeks to base African self-esteem on how well the African assimilates white American folk-ways and values . . . . Worse, the advise given the African concerning his rights under international law suggested that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. For the most part, he was co-opted into spending his political energies in organizing and participating in constitutional conventions and then voting for legislatures which subsequently approved the Fourteenth Amendment. In such circumstances, the presentation of the Fourteenth Amendment to state legislatures for whose members the African had voted, and the Amendment's subsequent approval by these legislatures, could in no sense be considered a plebiscite.

The fundamental requirements were lacking: first, adequate and accurate information for the advise given the freedman was so bad it amounted to fraud, a second stealing of our birthright; second, a chance to choose among the four options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to Africa, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new African nation on American soil. . . .

On the other hand, the United States government still has the obligation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to 'enforce' Section One (the offer of citizenship) in the only way it could be rightfully 'enforced' -- by authorizing US participation in a plebiscite. By, in other words, a reference to our own will, our self-determined acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship. . . . There are further important ramifications. A genuine plebiscite implies that if people vote against US citizenship, the means must be provided to facilitate whatever decision they do make. Thus, persons who vote to return to Africa or to emigrate elsewhere must have the means to do so. . . .

Now then, we repeat: an obvious and important ramification of the plebiscite is that there must exist the capability of putting its decisions into effect. If the decision is for US citizenship, then that citizenship must be unconditional. If it is for emigration to a country outside Africa, those persons making this choice must have transportation resources and reparations in terms of other benefits, principally money, to make such emigration possible and give it a reasonable chance of success. If the decision is for a return to some country in Africa, the person must have those same reparations as persons emigrating to countries outside Africa PLUS those additional reparations necessary to restore enough of the African personality for the individual to have a reasonable chance of success in integrating into African society in the motherland. If, finally, the decision is for an independent new African nation on this soil, then the reparations must be those agreed upon between the United States government and the new African government. Reparations must be at least sufficient to assure the new nation a reasonable chance of solving the great problems imposed upon us by the Americans in our status as a colonized people."

4. In his autobiography, Kwame Nkrumah writes,

"The British statement on the future of British Togoland was submitted to the United Nations Trusteeship Council in 1954....As a result of the British statement, the United Nations decided to dispatch a visiting mission to British Togoland in August, 1955, to put forward proposals as to how the wishes of the inhabitants concerning their future status could best be ascertained.

The Report of the visiting mission evoked in the united Nations a great deal of discussion, some of it acrimonious. They finally decided, however, that a plebiscite should be held in Togoland under British administration as soon as possible in order that the people themselves should decide whether they wanted to unite with the Gold Coast at the time of Gold Coast Independence or whether the territory should be separated from the Gold Coast and continue under Trusteeship.

The United Nations appointed as its Plebiscite Commissioner Senior Eduardo Espinoza Y Prieto, assisted by a team of United Nations observers drawn from a number of different nationalities, and the Colonial Office in London seconded Sir John Dring as Plebiscite Administrator. Much organization was needed not only in the arrangements for the actual plebiscite, but in preparing the people and in making sure that they understood the issues at stake. It was important that I impressed upon my party organisers in Togoland that the plebiscite was not just a temporary affair, like a general election, but that they were making history and that whatever they decided would seal the fate of generations of their people to come."

5. During the Twentieth Century,

The Universal Negro Improvement Association submitted a Petition of Four Million Negroes of the United States of America to His Excellency the President of the United States Praying for a Friendly and Sympathetic Consideration of the Plan of Founding a Nation in Africa for the Negro People, and to Encourage Them in Assisting to Develop Already Independent Negro Nations as a Means of Helping to Solve the Conflicting Problems of Race (1924);

The National Negro Congress sent a Petition to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 1946 stating the Facts on The Oppression of the American Negro;

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Appeal to the World was presented to the UN Human Rights Commission;

The Civil Rights Congress’ We Charge Genocide Petition was submitted to the United Nations in 1951in response to the Genocide Convention of the UN General Assembly December 9, 1948;

The Organization of Afro American Unity Petition to the United Nations was prevented from being submitted by Malcolm X’s assassination;

Silas Muhammad and the Lost Found Nation of Islam submitted a Petition Under the 1503 Procedure of the United Nations in 1994;

The National Black United Front submitted a Declaration of Genocide by U.S. Government Against the Black Population in the United States

5. During the time when other African people were waging armed struggle to gain their independence, the United States Government

· extended the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s COMINFIL program to destroy the Organization of African American Unity (1964-65)

· created the COINTELPRO to prevent a coalition of militant Black nationalist groups, to prevent the rise of a "Messiah" who could unify, and electrify the militant Black Nationalist Movement, to prevent militant Black Nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, and prevent the long-range growth of militant Black Nationalist organizations, especially among the youth (1967)

· issued the NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL MEMORANDUM-46 to inhibit coordinated activity of the Black Movement in the United States with the African Liberation Movement in Africa, generate mistrust and hostility in American and world opinion against joint activity of the two forces, and to cause division among Black African radical national groups and their leaders, thus making possible at least partial neutralization of the adverse effects of their activity

· declared a War on Drugs and now spends $35 Billion a year to arm its police/soldiers and arrest and incarcerate 700,000, mostly black and poor people while brutalizing and even torturing members of the black community

· has used discriminatory policies to reduce the number of Black farmers in the United States from 1 million (1900) to less than 19,000 (2005)

6. When these issues were raised by US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban South Africa (2001), the United States delegation, lead by another black man, General Colin Powell, promptly walked out of the conference. Just days after the US walkout at the World Conference Against Racism, the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001.

7. In 2003, and 2005, the African Union amended its Constitutive Act and added "Article 3 (q) that the AU hereby '.. invite(s) and encourage(s) the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our continent, in the building of the African Union.'"

Senator Obama, the goal of the first black slaves was always to return to Africa. Only after great suffering and struggle were education and political office made available to the victims of the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade to fulfill their ancestor's prayers and return to their ancestral homeland.

Regarding this return, both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X agreed. On April of 1957, Dr. King had already begun to promote going back to Africa. In his sermon "The Birth of a New Nation" delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on April 7, Dr King stated,

"Yes, there is a wilderness ahead, though it is my hope that even people from America will go to Africa as immigrants, right there to the Gold Coast, and lend their technical assistance, for there is great need and there are rich opportunities there. Right now is the time that America Negroes can lend their technical assistance to a growing new nation. I was very happy to see already people who have moved in and making good. The son of the late president of Bennett College, Dr. Jones, is there, who started an insurance company and is making good, going to the top. A doctor from Brooklyn, New York, had just come in that week and his wife is also a dentist, and they are living there now, going in there and working, and the people love them. There will be hundreds and thousands of people, I’m sure, going over to make for the growth of this new nation. And Nkrumah made it very clear to me that he would welcome any persons coming there as immigrants and to live there. . . . There is a great day ahead. The future is on its side. Its going now through the wilderness, but the Promised Land is ahead.

To Dr. King, that Promised Land was Ghana:

"Now don’t think that because they have 5 million people the nation can’t grow, that that’s a small nation to be overlooked. Never forget the fact that when America was born in 1776, when it received its independence from the British Empire, there were fewer, less than four million people in America, and today its more than a hundred and sixty million. So never underestimate a people because it is small now. America was smaller than Ghana when it was born . . . Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a colony of the British Empire. Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there, and he never voluntarily gives it up. And that is where the strong resistance comes. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance. . . . If we wait for it to work itself out, it will never be worked out. Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil. The bus protest is just the beginning. . . . Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you better get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for homes to be bombed. You better get ready for a lot of nasty things to be said about you, because you’re getting out of Egypt, and whenever you break loose from Egypt, the initial response of the Egyptian is bitterness. It never comes with ease. It comes only through hardness and persistence of life. Ghana reminds us of that. . . . But finally, Ghana tells us that the forces of the universe are on the side of justice. That’s what it tells us now. You can interpret Ghana any kind of way you want to, but Ghana tells me that the forces of the universe are on the side of justice. That night when I saw that old flag coming down and the new flag coming up, I saw something else. That wasn’t just an Ephemeral, evanescent event appearing on the stage of history, but it was an event with eternal meaning, for it symbolizes something. That things symbolized to me that an old order is passing away and a new order is coming into being. An old order of colonialism, of segregation, of discrimination is passing away now, and a new order of justice and freedom and goodwill is being born. That’s what it said: that somehow the forces of justice stand on the side of the universe, and that you can’t ultimately trample over Gods children and profit by it."

Similarly, Malcolm X stated,

"One of the things I saw the OAAU doing from the very start was collecting the names of all the people of African descent who have professional skills, no matter where they are. Then we could have a central register that we could share with independent countries in Africa and elsewhere. Do you know, I started collecting names, and then I gave the list to someone who I thought was a trusted friend, but both this so-called friend and the list disappeared. So, I’ve got to start all over again." (Jan Carew, Ghosts In Our Blood, p. 61)

"The 22,000,000 so-called Negroes should be separated completely from America and should be permitted to go back home to our African homeland which is a long-range program; so the short-range program is that we must eat while we’re still here, we must have a place to sleep, we have clothes to wear, we must have better jobs, we must have better education; so that although our long-range political philosophy is to migrate back to our African homeland, our short-range program must involve that which is necessary to enable us to live a better life while we are still here." (Interview with Malcolm X, by A.B. Spellman, Monthly Review, Vol. 16, no.1 May 1964)

"We must establish a technician bank. We must do this so that the newly independent nations of Africa can turn to us who are their brothers for the technicians they will need now and in the future." (Organization of African American Unity Basic Unity Program section iv. Economic)

William Kunstler, who served as special trial counselor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in the early 1960’s, speaks of a telephone conversation between Malcolm and Dr. King on February 14, 1965:

"There was sort of an agreement that they would meet in the future and work out a common strategy, not merge their two organization - Malcolm had the Organization Afro-American Unity and Martin, of course, was the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - but that they would work out a method to work together in some way. And I think that that quite possibly led to the bombing of Malcolm’s house that evening in East Elmhurst and his assassination one week later." (David Gallen, As They Knew Him, p. 84)

To demonstrate this agreement to work together, Malcolm X traveled to Selma, Alabama, where the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was involved in a campaign for blacks' voting rights and spoke at Brown's Chapel AME Church.

Senator Obama, your visit to Selma therefore represents a nexus in the history of the African liberation struggle. You, a black man who is a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America, will be speaking in the place where Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. began to work together, during the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of the criminal Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the 111th Anniversary of the Battle of Adowa, the 53rd Anniversary of black voting rights in the Gold Coast General Election, and the 50th Anniversary of Ghana's Independence.

I believe that it is your duty to express the hopes and aspirations of all the African ancestors that suffered the Middle Passage and have struggled for justice and equality. It is therefore most appropriate while you are commemorating the 42nd Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Alabama, that you address what it is that America must do in order to atone for its wrongdoings and ensure justice that is due to the victims of the criminal Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. You must speak out on the issue of Reparations and Repatriation. In this regard, if you prove yourself not to be a tool or puppet, you will have the support of the black people in America.

Most respectfully,

Ras Siphiwe Nathaniel Ka Baleka