Ujima Newspaper, Volume 1, Issue 10 - March 1978

UJIMA Volume 1, Number 10 LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY March, 1978 Black History Festival “Greatest Program Ever Presented” LMU senior Mark Harris, Congresswoman Yvonne B. Burke , and Father Merrifield, LMU President , enjoi ) themselves during Universi¬ ty’s Black History Festival on Feburary 18. On Saturday, February 18, LMU sponsored its first annual Black History Festival on the University campus. The program began at 11:00 a.m. with various booth activities on the Sunken Gardens. Participants included the Sickle Cell Research Founda¬ tion, L.A.Brotherhood Crusade, Maridade African Arts, Patty’s Af¬ rican Arts, Onaje Cultural Tea House, L. A. Air Station, Air Force ROTC, Zoma Arts and Af¬ rican Foods, Al-Islam Publica¬ tions, Third World Press, USC, Cal State L. A., Olatunde Arts World, St. Frances Cabrini Church, and several campus or¬ ganizations. A college orientation for high school students was held at 12:00 and was followed by a King Tut slide presentation. Also, radio station KKTT (“The Kat”) did an all day remote broadcast from the University campus. A high school “Battle of the Bands” contest was held on the Regent’s Terrace featuring bands from Crenshaw, Dorsey, Mor- ningside, and Gardena high schools This was followed by a live telecast of the KNBC Satur¬ day Show on the Regent’s Ter¬ race. Performing during the tele¬ cast were the Descendants of the Motherland African Dance Group, a demonstration by the Black Stuntmen’s Association, the Trinidad Steel Drum Band, “Iron Jaws” Wilson and Renee Denise from Redd Foxx Produc¬ tions, Leslie Mohammed Jazz Band, a fashion show by L. A. Air Station, and the Normanaires. Also appearing during the tele¬ cast were Congresswoman Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, Councilwoman Pat Russell, Diane Watson from the Board of Education, and Mother Julia Rol¬ lins, a 114-year-old woman who received a Congressional Cita¬ tion from Congresswoman Burke and a citation from the L. A. City Council. Bern Nadette Stanis of the “Good Times” TV show per¬ formed a dance while Judy Ann Mason, a writer for the show, read poetry. After the television broadcast, the Trinidad Steel Drum Band came back and played to the de¬ light of a large crowd. Also, the rock group “Potential” per¬ formed in St. Robert’s at the same time. Later that evening, the L. A. Rams basketball team played a benefit game with a group of LMU All-Stars in the gym. The Ram team featured Doug France, Harold Jackson, Larry McCute- heon, Monte Jackson, and sev¬ eral other stars. The game was won by the Rams. The day was culminated by a disco dance in the Terrace Room featuring “Dr. Disco.” Coordinated by Bill Franklin, President of the Black Students’ Freedom Alliance, the festival was an overwhelming success. Besides attracting numerous celebrities, the program was at¬ tended by many people from the larger community. According to campus security, numerous people came to campus on Sun¬ day thinking that the festival would be going on for the entire weekend. A sour note to the festival was the obvious absence of many of the non -Black. University com¬ munity, especially the faculty. One reason for this might be the fact that the Loyolan issue for that week failed to mention anything about the festival. Despite this, comments re¬ garding the festival ranged from “the greatest program ever pre¬ sented by the University” to “very well organized.” Father Merrifield stated that “the prog¬ ram had a positive value to the school and the community.” Black And Native American Relations Before 1800: Part I by Rhett S. Jones ED. NOTE: Rhett S. Jones is pre¬ sently an Associate Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at Brown University. “Hostility between Indians and Negroes in the Colonial Southeast,” writes William Willis, “was more pronounced than friendliness. Southern whites were afraid of these two colored races, each of which outnum¬ bered them. Whites were espe¬ cially afraid that these two exploited races would combine against them.” Since American history is largely dominated by the doings of white males, com¬ paratively little attention has been given to relations between Native Americans and Blacks. This paper attempts to sketch an out¬ line of relations between Indians and persons of African descent prior to 1800 and in this sense, the paper is an exploratory one. Enlightenment rhetoric con¬ cerning the equality of man was legitimated by the North Ameri¬ CONTENTS FEATURES THE BLACK R(X)TS OF KING TUT . Page 3 THE BLACK HISTORY FESTIVAL . Page 4 NEFERTITI: BLACK OR WHITE . . . Page 6 BLACK STUDIES: AN ECOLOGICAL PROCESS Page 7 can, French, Haitian, and South American revolutions. At the same time the rights of man were being celebrated, a pernicious doctrine which insisted some men were different from others, racism, was growing in strength. It would be both impossible and foolish to set a hard and fast date on the full development of racist doctrine, but in various parts of the Americas, the ideology was fully legitimated sometime bet¬ ween 1760 and 1830. Blacks and Indians were themselves influ¬ enced by this rising tide of racism, and it clearly influenced their rela¬ tions with each other. In Virginia, Blacks and Indians were both savagely treated by a people who found them a strange, ugly folk, and yet were determined to make use of their labor. Unfortunately for people of color, cruely did not end at the border of the English settlements. Blacks and Native Americans were often maltreated in the set¬ tlements of the other European powers. The Spanish settlements have received considerable at¬ tention in this regard. If the Spaniards have had a reputation for being cruel to the Indians, they have had a reputation, for being kind to Blacks. Both perspectives represent gross oversimplification. The pattern of race relations which emerged in the Anglo- North American colonies was un¬ ique in the hemisphere in that it recognized but three racial groups, one white, one red, and one Black. Elsewhere in the hemisphere there were at least six racial groups: whites, Native Americans, Blacks, mestizos, mulattos, and zambos. But in the Anglo-North American colonies the reality of miscegenation and assimilation was legally and cul¬ turally denied, and the consequ¬ ences of this denial remain obvi¬ ous today, when the United States is compared to other American republics. Mexico, for example, celebrates itself as a mestizo nation and boasts of its fusion of Native American and European races. Brazil and Cuba — two nations at the opposite end of the political spectrum — acknowledge and appreciate their African past, and use their Black heritage as an opportunity for African intrigue. The mulatto (Continued on Page 8)