REBELLION // SWFL SquaDD

REBELLION // FIU SquaDD in Miami

Artwork by Larry McCullough @state_of_mind77 // @stateofminddesignz

FREE graphic by: Steven Pargett

REBELLION // TRiLL SquaDD in Tallahassee

Artwork by Steven @pargett @PeaceisHuman 

FREE graphic by: Ian Mann

REBELLION // LEFT ROOTS

Artist credit & FREE graphic: Ian Mann

Instagram: @_mannmade

REBELLION // YOUNG LORDS

Artwork credit: Jabari Lukman Mickles

Twitter: @Eshufunkart IG: @eshufunkart

FREE graphic: Ian Mann

REBELLION // Day 4: Zapatistas - Miami SquaDD

Artwork by: @romes_

IG: @rommyyy123

Website: www.rommytorrico.com

FRELIMO // Mozambique Liberation Front

Artist credit: Ian Mann

Instagram: @_mannmade

FREE graphic: @Pargett

The Black Panther Party

Artist credit: Sandra Khalifa

Twitter, @snkhalifa

The Truth about the MLK Assassination

In 1999, Martin Luther King’s family and attorney won civil trial “King Family vs Jowers,” which found US government agencies guilty in the wrongful death of Martin Luther King, Jr..  The jury decided it did not believe that James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the crime, killed Dr. King, and that King had been the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis police as well as federal agencies. The King family believes the government’s motivation to murder Dr. King was to prevent his plans of mobilizing a poor people’s campaign to occupy the national lawn in Washington D.C. until the economic system changed.  The evidence of government involvement includes: the attendance of US military intelligence groups and special forces sniper teams at the site of the assassination; police bodyguards and regular police protection being removed prior to the shooting; and King being relocated from a secure 1st floor room to an exposed balcony room. This historic trial was widely ignored by the media.  After the trial Coretta Scott King stated: “We have done what we can to reveal the truth, and we now urge you…to do what they can to share the revelation of this case to the widest possible audience.”

Maroon communities were intentional communities of freed slaves during the U.S. slavery era. Maroon communities started small. A handful of slaves might run away together, or meet by chance in the swamp, and decide to live as a group. The Great Dismal Swamp on the border between Virginia and North Carolina was a particularly strong magnet for runaway slaves. Elsewhere in the South, runaways formed significant Maroon groups around New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast.  While marronage existed in all the Southern colonies/states to a greater or lesser degree, it reached its greatest extent in South Carolina, home of the Black Seminoles - Black Indians associated with the Seminole indigenous tribes in Florida and Oklahoma. Black Seminoles are the descendants of free Blacks and escaped slaves – maroons – who allied with Seminole tribes in Spanish Florida. Today, Black Seminole descendants live primarily in rural communities within the reservation of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. Other centers are in Florida, Texas, the Bahamas and Northern Mexico.

The Lomax Recordings

During the New Deal, Alan Lomax & his father, famed folklorist and collector John A. Lomax, recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs, with a special emphasis on the musical contributions of African Americans. Just like today, a disproportionate percentage of African American males were held as prisoners in the 1930s and 1940s. The Lomaxes toured Texas prison farms recording work songs, reels, ballads, and blues from prisoners such as James "Iron Head" Baker, Mose "Clear Rock" Platt, and Lightnin’ Washington. In 1933, they acquired a state-of-the-art phonograph recorder. Installing it in the trunk of his Ford sedan, John Lomax used it to record, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a twelve-string guitar player by the name of Huddie Ledbetter, better known as "Lead Belly”. “Lead Belly” is now known as a giant among blues & folk musicians, with influence on thousands of artists. The Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress contains songs collected in thirty-three states of the Union and certain parts of the West Indies, the Bahamas, and Haiti. John & Alan Lomax’s work contains some of the first recordings of the greatest Black blues and folk gems in the world.

On May 26, 1956, two female students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, sat down in the “whites only” section of a segregated bus in the city of Tallahassee. When they refused to move to the “colored” section at the rear of the bus, the driver pulled into a service station and called the police. Tallahassee police arrested Jakes and Patterson and charged them with “placing themselves in a position to incite a riot.” In the days immediately following these arrests, students at FAMU organized a campus-wide boycott of city buses. Their collective stand against segregation set an example that propelled like-minded Tallahassee citizens into action.

Early Slave Rebellions: Many Black slave rebellions and insurrections took place in North America during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Of those documented, there is evidence of more than 250 slave uprisings or attempted uprisings involving ten or more slaves. Three of the best known in the United States are the revolts by Gabriel Prosser in Virginia in 1800, Denmark Vesey in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, and Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. The 1811 German Coast Uprising, which took place outside of New Orleans in 1811, involved up to 500 slaves. It was suppressed by volunteer militias and a detachment of the United States Army. They killed 66 black men in the battle, executed 16, and 17 escaped and/or were killed along the way to freedom. Slave resistance in the South did not gain academic or popular attention until the 1940s when historian Herbert Aptheker started publishing the serious research on the subject, stressing how rebellions were rooted in the exploitative conditions of Southern slavery.

The National Brown Berets are a Chicano community based organization that was formed during the Chicano movement of the late 60’s in California. When formed, their agenda was to fight police harassment, inadequate public schools, inadequate health care, inadequate job opportunities, minority education issues, lack of political representation, and the Vietnam War. Units still exist in most sections of California and a few in other southwestern states. Comprised of mostly youth and college students, in the 1960s the Brown Berets were known to organize free clinics and free breakfast programs. They were a part of the Rainbow Coalition, an alliance of other social justice organizations including the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords (Puerto Rican independence movement).

Queen Nzinga Mbande (c. 1583 – December 17, 1663)