Friday, September 9, 2011

December 4th, 1969 Chicago - The Execution of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark


The following is a re-print from African American Publications. African American Publications is committed to providing students and adult researchers with accurate, authoritative, and accessible information on a wide variety of ethnic and ethno-religious groups in the United States and Canada.
Fred Hampton
1948-1969
Nationality: American
Occupation: Activist
PERSONAL
Born in 1948 in Chicago, IL; both parents were starch company employees; children: Fred Hampton, Jr. Education: Attended Triton Junior College, 1966.
CAREER
NAACP, Youth Council leader for West Suburban (Chicago) Branch, 1967-68; founded and leader of Black Panther Party, Illinois Chapter, 1968-69.
AWARDS
Junior Achievement Award, 1966; "Fred Hampton Day" declared in Chicago, 1990.
NARRATIVE ESSAY:
To members of Chicago's African American community in the late 1960s, no leader was more inspiring, more articulate, or more effective than Fred Hampton. He organized food pantries, educational programs, and recreational outlets for impoverished children, and he helped bring about a peaceful coexistence among the city's rival street gangs. To civic leaders in Chicago, the FBI, and many others, however, he was a dangerous revolutionary leader, committed to the violent overthrow of the white-dominated system. Hampton was killed in a 1969 raid on the headquarters of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther party, in what was almost certainly a planned assassination orchestrated by Federal agents and city leaders, who feared that Hampton's influence could lead to an all-out armed uprising by the city's most disenfranchised residents.
Hampton was born in 1948 in Chicago, and grew up in Maywood, a suburb just to the west of the city. His parents had moved north from Louisiana, and both held jobs at the Argo Starch Company. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and on the athletic field. To those who knew him, he seemed a likely candidate to escape the ghetto and "make it" in the white-dominated world outside. At Proviso East High School in Maywood, Hampton earned three varsity letters and won a Junior Achievement Award. He graduated with honors in 1966.
Following his graduation, Hampton enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, majoring in pre-law. He also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), assuming leadership of the Youth Council of the organization's West Suburban Branch. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, Hampton began to show signs of his natural leadership ability. From a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group 500-members strong, an impressive size even for a constituency twice as large. Hampton considered it his mission to create a better environment for the development of young African Americans. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods, and to improve educational resources for Maywood's African American community. Through his involvement with the NAACP, Hampton hoped to achieve social change through nonviolent activism and community organizing.
At about the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense started rising to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panther approach, which was based on a ten-point program of African American self-determination. Hampton joined the Black Panther Party and relocated to downtown Chicago, where he launched the party's Illinois chapter in November of 1968.
Over the next year, Hampton and his associates recorded a number of significant achievements in Chicago. Perhaps his most important accomplishment was his brokering of a nonaggression pact between Chicago's most powerful street gangs. By emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict between gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, he was able to forge a class-conscious, multiracial alliance of black, Puerto Rican, and poor white youths. In May of 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that a truce had been declared among this "rainbow coalition," a phrase coined by Hampton and made popular over the years by Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Equally important was Hampton's work as a developer of community service programs. His leadership helped create a program that provided free breakfasts for schoolchildren, a program the Panters had initiated in several cities. Hampton was also instrumental in the establishment of a free medical clinic, and other programs accessible to poor African Americans. By the tender age of 20, Hampton had become a respected community leader among Chicago's black population.
Meanwhile, Hampton was growing more militant in his political views. One factor in the increasing intensity of his rhetoric was his 1969 arrest for the strong-arm theft of $71 worth of Good Humor bars, which he then allegedly gave away to neighborhood children. Hampton was initially convicted and sentenced to two to five years in prison before the decision was overturned. He came away from the experience with a reinforced distrust of the American legal system, and a renewed conviction that it must be completely overhauled.
Although he was still more of an organizer than a revolutionary, Hampton's commitment to non-violence seemed to weaken. He began carrying guns, and, in a 1969 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, openly declared that "I'm not afraid to say I'm at war with the pigs." Still, his position on violence was that it was necessary for self-defense; African Americans needed to protect themselves against the brutal tactics of the police and other white-dominated institutions. "What this country has done to nonviolent leaders like Martin Luther King--I think that objectively says there's going to have to be an armed struggle," he was quoted as saying in the Sun-Times article.
By all accounts, Hampton was one of the most articulate and persuasive African American leaders of his time. His quiet demeanor and restrained speaking style belied the abrasive image most people attached to the Black Panthers. The Rev. Thomas Strieter, a member of the Maywood village board who knew Hampton from his earliest days as an organizer, was quoted in a 1994 Chicago magazine article as saying that Hampton "had charm coming out his ears. My impression of the Black Panthers in Oakland (California) was that they were thugs. Fred was not a thug." Former Chicago corporation counsel James Montgomery called him "one of the most persuasive speakers I've ever heard." Dr. Quentin Young, a member of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's inner circle, went even further. "He (Hampton) was a giant, and this is not some idle white worship of a black man," he was quoted in Chicago as saying. "This is a terrible way to put it, but the people who made it their business to kill the leaders of the black movement picked the right ones."
Indeed, while Hampton impressed many of the people with whom he came into contact as a great leader and talented communicator, those very qualities marked him as a major threat in the eyes of the FBI and other concerned agencies. The FBI began keeping close tabs on his activities, and subsequent investigations have shown that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black radical movement in the United States. Hoover saw the Panthers, and gang coalitions like that forged by Hampton in Chicago, as frightening stepping stones toward the creation of just such a revolutionary body.
Urged on by the FBI, the Chicago police launched an all-out assault on the Black Panthers and their allies, characterizing the group as nothing more than a criminal gang. Over the course of the escalating conflict in 1969, eleven black youths from Chicago's South Side were killed in separate skirmishes with police. During that year alone, shoot-outs killed or wounded a dozen Panther members and almost as many police officers. Over 100 Black Panthers were arrested during the year, and Panther party headquarters at 2337 West Monroe Street on the city's West Side were raided by police and FBI agents four separate times. The last of these four raids was the one in which Hampton was killed.
One of the individuals who spent a lot of time at Panther headquarters in Chicago was William O'Neal. It turned out that O'Neal, a convicted car thief, had been recruited out of the county jail to be a paid informant for the FBI. One of O'Neal's chief contributions to the FBI's infiltration of the Black Panthers was to provide them with a floor plan of the building. O'Neal's information was key to the December 4, 1969, police raid that killed Hampton and fellow party member Mark Clark. Four other Panthers were seriously injured.
Chicago Police entered the building at 4:45 in the morning. The police version of the raid claimed that the Panthers began firing guns at them the moment they began knocking on the door. According to this version of events, a ten-minute shootout ensued, resulting in the deaths of Hampton and Clark. Subsequent investigations suggest otherwise; it is likely, in fact, that the raid more closely resembled an execution than a legitimate police action. For example, ballistic evidence showed that at most one shot could have been fired by a Panther. The police did virtually all of the shooting that took place. Hampton died in bed. There is strong evidence that he had been drugged that night, probably by O'Neal, and it is likely that he slept through the entire ordeal.
Hampton's funeral was attended by 5,000 people, and he was eulogized by such black leaders as Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his eulogy, Jackson noted that "when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere."
The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any crimes. The families of Hampton and Clark filed a $47.7 million civil suit against the city, state, and federal governments. More than a decade later, the suit was finally settled, and the two families each received a large but undisclosed sum. In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring "Fred Hampton Day" in honor of the slain leader.
Since Hampton's death, the Black Panthers have faded from the limelight, thanks in large part to the concentrated efforts of the FBI and various other police agencies. Hampton's memory lives on, however, in part due to a scholarship fund set up in his name by Jackson and Abernathy. Education may be a less dramatic path to social change than armed revolt, but Hampton's idea of revolution was broad enough to include it. As Hampton often said, according to The Nation, "You can kill a revolutionary, but you cannot kill a revolution. You can jail a liberation fighter, but you cannot jail liberation."
SOURCES:
BOOKS
Newton, Michael, Bitter Grain, Holloway House, 1980.
Search and Destroy: A Report by the Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police, Metropolitan Applied Research Center, Inc., 1973.
PERIODICALS
Chicago, November 1994, p. 100.
Jet, March 21, 1983, p. 5; December 10, 1990, p. 9.
The Nation, December 25, 1976, pp. 680-684.
New York Times, November 25, 1990, p. 24.
Biography Resource Center
© 2001, Gale Group, Inc.
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Mark Clark , Chairman and First Member of the Peoria, Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party


Mark Clark"Mr. Clark was committed, very warm, very affable, and he had a dedication to help his people. Certainly, Mark Clark should be considered one of the martyrs to the cause of black dignity and human equality."
 —Rev. Blaine Ramsey, Pastor
Davis Memorial Chapel in LaGrange, IL
Source: Mark Clark page by
Lawrence J. Maushard
Mark Clark
 
 
Mark Clark was the Chairman and first member of the Peoria, Illinois, chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Mark Clark was born on June 28, 1947, in Peoria, Illinois, to Elder William Clark and Fannie Bardley Clark.

He became active in the N.A.A.C.P at an early age and joined in demonstrating against discrimination in employment, housing and education. According to John Gwynn, former President of state and local chapters of the N.A.A.C.P, Mark Clark and his brothers played a major part in keeping other teenagers in line. "He could call for order when older persons or adults could not," he said of Mark in a December 1969 interview with the Chicago Tribune.

According to family members, Mark Clark enjoyed reading and art. He was very good at drawing portraits. He attended Manual High School and Illinois Central Junior College in Peoria but did not graduate. His sister, Elner, says he "liked the process of learning but didn't like school, so most of his knowledge came from his own efforts."

After reading literature from the Black Panther Party, he felt they were doing a lot of worthwhile things - like the free breakfast program. He joined the BPP and later decided to organize a local chapter. He went from church to church in an effort to find a building to house a free breakfast program. He was turned away time after time, but he never gave up. Eventually, Pastor Blaine Ramsey agreed to allow a free breakfast program. The program was shortlived.

Family members and friends say that Mark Clark knew he would be assassinated in Chicago. Before he made the trip, he told many people he would not see them again.

In the pre-dawn hours of December 4, 1969, Chicago Police stormed into the apartment of BPP State Chairman Fred Hampton at 2337 W. Monroe Street, killing both Mark Clark and Fred Hampton. Seven other members of the Black Panther Party were beaten, arrested and later charged with attempted murder of those Police officers.

Those who remember Mark Clark refer to him as a "quiet leader" and a "thinker." "He had a feeling for people and placed them above himself," said one friend. One thing most people seem to remember about him is that he was always urging you to improve, to do the right thing. Some police officers have been quoted in newspapers as saying that "Mark Clark was not a criminal."

Mark Clark was the son of a preacher. His father, Elder William Clark, had been Pastor of the Greater Holy Temple Church of God in Christ in Peoria. Elder Clark died some seven months before his son was assassinated.
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WRITTEN STATEMENT BY SHORT CORRIDOR COLLECTIVE


Written Statement by Short Corridor Collective (a small representative of the Hunger Strike Leaders at Pelican Bay)

AUGUST 4, 2011
To Supporters:
On July 1, 2011, a collective group of PBSP-SHU inmates composed of all races began an indefinite hunger strike as a means of peacefully protesting 20-40 years of human rights violations. The offenses against us rose to the level of both physical and mental torture—for example, the coercing of SHU inmates into becoming known informants for the state and thereby placing those prisoners, and possibly their families outside of prison, at serious risk of danger in response to being known to have informed on and caused harm to other inmates via informing on them. The decision to strike was not made on a whim. It came about in response to years of subjection to progressively more primitive conditions and decades of isolation, sensory deprivation and total lack of normal human contact, with no end in sight. This reality, coupled with our prior ineffective collective filing of thousands of inmate grievances and hundreds of court actions to challenge such blatantly illegal policies and practices (as more fully detailed and supported by case law, in our formal complaint available online here) led to our conclusion that a peaceful protest via hunger strike was our only available avenue to expose what’s really been going on here in CDCR-SHU prisons and to force meaningful change.
We ended the hunger strike the evening of July 20, 2011, on the basis of CDCR’s top level administrators’ interactions with our team of mediators, as well as with us directly, wherein they agreed to accede to a few small requests immediately, as a tangible good faith gesture in support of their assurance that all of our other issues will receive real attention, with meaningful changes being implemented over time. They made it clear: such changes would not happen over night, nor would they be made in response to a hunger strike going on.
Many inmates across the state heard about our protest and rose to the occasion in a solid show of support and solidarity, as did thousands of people around the world! Many inmates put their health and lives on the line; many came close to death and experienced medical emergencies. All acted for the collective cause and recognized the great potential for forcing change on the use of SHU units across the country.
With this support in mind, a core group of us was committed to taking the hunger strike to the death, if necessary, to force the changes sought. Naturally, though, we hoped it would not come to that!
On July 20, 2011, several top CDCR administrators sat across the table from us and made assurances that they are in the process of making meaningful changes right now, and will make affecting change a priority in the future, while providing regular updates and engaging in additional dialogue. And, we know they’re being forced to restructure the entire CDCR system in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plata ruling, which deals with reduction of inmate population.
Thus, our collective decision was to end the hunger strike, on basis of their good faith gesture with a few small things and to give them the opportunity to make good on their assurances, e.g. an end to human rights abuses and torture. This decision drew from our view that we have been successful in exposing CDCR’s illegal policies and practices to the world!
And, when it’s all said and done, there comes a point where you have to give an entity the opportunity to perform their end of an agreement and the bottom line is this: CDCR could have signed off on a piece of paper, granting all of our demands and telling us, “you’ll all be cut loose to the general population prison in six months.” Then, six months later, tell us, “we’ve reconsidered and it’s not happening.” So, we’ll see soon enough where CDCR is really coming from. More important is the fact that while the hunger strike is over, the resistance/struggle to end our subjection to (SHU) human rights violations and torture is just beginning!
We’ve drawn the line on this and should CDCR fail to carry out meaningful changes in a timely fashion, then we will initiate a class action suit and additional types of peaceful protest. We will not stop until the CDCR ends the illegal policies and practices at SHU!
We’re counting on all of our outside supporters to continue to collectively support us and to carry on with shining light on our resistance in here. This is the right time for change in these prisons and the movement is growing across the land! Without the peoples’ support outside, we cannot be successful! All support, no matter the size, or content, comes together as a powerful force. We’ve already brought more mainstream exposure about these CDCR-SHU’s than ever before and our time for real change to this system is now! As for CDCR’s propaganda—that the hunger strike was initiated and ordered by gang members and the fact that up to 6,600 inmates participated in 13 prisons across the state demonstrates the gangs’ influence, which is why they’re in SHU in the first place—our response is, (1) CDCR has never responded to our formal complaint, wherein we state, many of us have been in SHU 10-40 years, just based on a CDCR gang label, based on claims by confidential inmate informants; we have never been found guilty of committing an illegal gang-related act! Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other inmates whom CDCR has also labeled as gang affiliates are allowed in the general population of prisons! And, (2) the other inmates who participated did so based on their own recognition of, and decision to resist and protest, their similar conditions! All of our public statements about the PBSP-SHU protest clearly stated it was voluntary and those whose age and/or medical issues were an issue, should not participate! If PBSP-SHU inmates had the influence over the gang affiliates in CDCR prisons, as their propaganda claims, there wouldn’t have been tens of thousands of inmates participating in the hunger strike (by CDCR’s own statistics, their system is composed of approximately 70% gang affiliates—that’s 70% of more than 140,000 inmates!)
The protest and resistance is not about gangs. It’s all about a collective effort to end the torture in these SHUs and we hope it sill serve as an example to all inmates: there’s real power in collective peaceful protest actions.
Todd Ashker, Arturo Castellanos, George Franco, Louis Powell.
Written July 22nd, 2011
**************************************************************

Declaring a Victory & Ongoing Struggle

July 27, Prisoner Hungerstrike Solidarity:
The Short Corridor Collective, representatives of the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike leaders, released a statement explaining their reasoning behind accepting the CDCR’s offer and ending the hunger strike. (see above)
As this struggle enters a new phase post-initial-negotiation with the CDCR, supporters outside prison are called on to carry this fight and make sure that the CDCR follows through with its offer of good faith. Supporters everywhere are called on to continue to amplify prisoners’ voices, and to strengthen our ties and connections to better consolidate a growing movement against imprisonment, torture, and all violence. Please keep encouraging everyone you know to refer to this website as a source for information regarding the hunger strike, and the ongoing work to win the five core demands presented by the Pelican Bay hunger strikers.
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Latino Political Prisoners





Political Prisoners
There are about 100 political prisoners in various prisons across the United States. These women and men are listed and recognized as political prisoners by numerous human rights, legal defense and progressive/socialist organizations. These people all come from the Civil Rights/Black Power/New African Liberation struggles, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Indigenous Peoples survival struggles, Chicano/Mexicano Movements, anti-imperialist/anti-war movements, anti-racist/anti-fascist struggles, the Women’s Movement, social and economic justice struggles, and especially in the past several years, from the Environmental/Animal Rights movement. They are Black, white, Latino and Native American. Most of these political prisoners have been in captivity since the 1970s and 80s. Some were convicted on totally fabricated charges, others for nebulous political conspiracies or for acts of resistance. All received huge sentences for their political beliefs or actions in support of these beliefs.
Additionally, there are many thousands of revolutionary minded, politically conscious prisoners in U.S. jails. These are people who became more politically aware and active once they landed in prison. A lot of these prisoners also get singled out for extra harsh and restrictive treatment like the political prisoners. Since 9/11, the U.S. has also imprisoned thousands of Arab and Muslim visitors to this country, as well as some Islamic citizens and residents.
The U.S. government likes to deny that it holds political prisoners. The harsh punitive conditions of confinement, often in special “control unit type” prisons, that political prisoners face day in, day out, decade after decade, exposes and refutes this government myth. Not only does America hold political prisoners, but they are being held under longer sentences than any kind of prisoners, anywhere in the world! Despite this, these women and men remain committed to their communities, movements, and principles. As best they can, through their voices and very lives, they continue to uphold the politics of justice, equality and liberation, especially for the poor and working class people throughout the world. Political prisoners in the United States want and need your awareness and support.

The following organizations do support work for political prisoners in the U.S.:

Jericho Movement – www.thejerichomovement.com
P.O. Box 650
New York, NY
10009 USA
Partisan Defense Committee – www.partisandefense.org
P.O. Box 99 Canal Street Station
New York NY
10013 USA
ABC Federation - www.abcf.net
P.O. Box 11223
Whittier, CA
80603 USA
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SOME TACTICS TO FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS


SOME TACTICS TO FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS
  • Form legal defense committees and affinity groups to support political prisoners.
  • Adopt a political prisoner and then write support letters to him/her.
  • Include resolutions to free political prisoners at organizational meetings.
  • Make up flyers publicizing political prisoners then distribute them at rallies, on school bulletin boards, etc.
  • Organize benefit concerts.
  • March in human rights demonstrations.
  • March in protests against police brutality.
  • Demand the dissolution of the BATF-DEA-IRS and all other secret police agencies, all vice and narcotics squads, all police political intelligence sections.
  • Do not argue over ideological points with other groups in political prisoner coalitions. The real issue is freeing all political prisoners.
  • Learn from other groups. The Free Mumia abu Jamal Movement has lots of experience--and success--in turning a political prisoner case into an international cause celebre.
    GOVERNMENT COUNTER-TACTICS
  • Divide and conquer: the government will attempt to play off different groups in a coalition against each other.
  • Impeaching the victim: the government will accuse the political prisoner of assorted henious acts.
  • Playing off the center against the extremes: government collaborators will claim that your cause is just but that the political prisoner in question is too radical to gain support from the general populace.
  • Infiltration and entrapament: government agents may attempt to manipulate an organization into committing blatantly illegal acts.HOW TO COUNTER GOVERNMENT TACTICS
  • Keep to your stated objectives.
  • Maintain solidarity with political prisoners and coalition partners.
  • Remember, an attack on one is an attack on all.
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    101 AFRICAN AMERICAN FIRSTS


    101 African American Firsts

    The following list provides the names of the first African Americans in a variety of areas of achievement in government, law, diplomacy, the military, science and medicine, sports, literature, and other fields.

    African-American Firsts: Government
      African-American Firsts: Law
        African-American Firsts: Diplomacy
        African-American Firsts: Military
          African-American Firsts: Science and Medicine
          African-American Firsts: Scholarship
          African-American Firsts: Art and Literature
          African-American Firsts: Newspapers and Other Print Media
          African-American Firsts: Music and Dance
              African-American Firsts: Film and Theater
              African-American Firsts: Radio and Television
              African-American Firsts: Sports
              African-American Firsts: Religion
              African-American Firsts: Business and Labor
              Other African-American Firsts:
              Sources:Jessie Carney Smith, Black Firsts: 4,000 ground-Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events (Detroit, Visible Ink Press, 2003); Charles M. Christian, Black Saga: The African American Experience, A Chronology (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995); Factmonster.com, http://www.factmonster.com/spot/bhmfirsts.html
              For a detailed chronology of African American history please consult the following BlackPast.org timelines:
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              DIANE ABBOTT


              Abbott, Diane (1953- )


              Diane Abbott, the first black woman to be elected to the British Parliament, was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in 1953. Growing up in Paddington, London, she attended Harrow County grammar school before pursuing studies in History to Master’s level at Newnham College, Cambridge.

              Upon graduation, Abbott worked as a civil servant with the Home Office as well as being employed by the National Council for Civil Liberties. In 1982, she was elected to Westminster city council before winning the Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency for the Labour Party in 1987. She was elected along with Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant who became the first black men to be elected to the British Parliament.

              Abbott’s parliamentary career has been diverse and fruitful. For most of the 1990s she sat on the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons and the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.  These posts allowed for global travel, with Abbott visiting Kenya, Uganda, China, Hong Kong, and many European states in an official capacity. Abbott was also the first black woman to hold the position of Equality Officer in the British Government. She was also elected to the National Executive of the Labour Party. Abbott is still serving as an MP in her original seat after she secured her place in the 2010 general election, which saw several Labour losses, with a 55% majority of the vote.

              Outside of Westminster duties, Abbott has been an important figure in community politics. She has been visible in work for the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) while voicing support for racial equality within the Trade Union movement. During the 1990s, Abbott founded “Black Women Mean Business,” an organisation established to empower and promote black businesswomen as well as various educational projects such as “London Schools” and “Black Child,” which are aimed at increasing educational opportunity in ethnic minority neighbourhoods. Other youth work has included a commitment to the “Scrap Sus” campaign which works to abolish police profiling of black youngsters in stop-and-search patrols.

              Abbott has worked as a freelance journalist, broadcaster, and public speaker. In 2009 she was awarded the “Spectator Speech of the Year” for her condemnation in the Commons of the proposed 42 day detention policy which would have allowed the government to detain terror suspects for six weeks without charge or trial. This is one example of Abbott bucking the party line to stand by her beliefs. Another, which caused wide controversy, was her decision to send her son to private school despite the Labour party being opposed to fee paying education.
              Sources:

              Diane Abbott’s constituency website: http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/about.aspx; Newnham College, Cambridge Alumni page http://www.800.cam.ac.uk/page/144/diane-abbott.htm; http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/bios/diane_abbott.html
              Contributor(s):
              Cousins, Emily
              University of Bath, England
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              AZIKIWE, BENJAMIN NNAMDI "ZIK"


              Azikiwe, Benjamin Nnamdi "Zik" (1904-1996)


              Image Ownership: Public Domain
              Nnamdi Azikiwe was the first President of Nigeria and was instrumental in founding a string of newspapers across Nigeria.
              Azikiwe was born on November 16, 1904 in Zungeru which was then the capital of Northern Nigeria.  His father, Chukwumeka Azikiwe, was a civil servant in the British colonial government.  Azikiwe began attending school in 1912 after enrolling in the Church Missionary Society (CMS) Niger Mission in Onitsha.  Between 1912 and 1921 Azikiwe switched mostly between CMS and Wesleyan Boys High School, both in Lagos, at the request of his father.  In 1921 Azikiwe passed his civil servant exam and was assigned to work in the Treasury Department in Nigeria.
              Believing that education was his key to advancement in Africa, Azikiwe left Lagos in 1925 to attend Storer College in West Virginia in the United States.  He also attended Howard University for a time before graduating from Lincoln University in 1930 with his Bachelor's Degree in Political Science.  By 1933 Azikiwe would also earn two Master's Degrees in Arts and Science from Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania.
              In late 1934 Azikiwe returned to Africa, settling in Accra, Ghana where he became the editor of the newly founded African Morning Post.  With that position he began his career in the newspaper industry where he promoted African nationalism and later African independence.  After returning to Nigeria in 1937 Azikiwe founded the West African Pilot and the Zik Group of Newspapers which by 1944 controlled five major publications across Nigeria. 
              In 1947 Azikiwe was elected to his first government position in the Nigerian Legislative Council.  By 1954 he was the Premier of Eastern Nigeria where he was forced to relinquish his business interests.  On October 1, 1960 Nigeria became independent of the British government and Nnamdi Azikiwe became its first indigenous Governor General.  Three years later, on October 1, 1963 Nigeria was declared a republic and Nnamdi Azikiwe was elected as its first President.  He shared power with the newly elected Prime Minister Abubakar Balewa.
              A military coup ousted Nigeria's government on January 16, 1966.  That coup was part of a series of events that led to the Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970.  Nnamdi  Azikiwe became the most recognized spokesman for the Igbo struggle for independence when they attempted to craft the nation of Biafra from the eastern states that seceded from Nigeria.   Two years after the war ended in a Federal victory over the Biafra rebels, the central government in Lagos allowed Azikiwe to reenter public life.  In 1972 he became the Chancellor of the University of Lagos, a post he held until 1976. 
              Nnamdi Azikiwe died on May 11, 1996 in Enugu, Nigeria.
              Sources:
              Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey:  An Autobiography (London:  C. Hurst & Company, 1970); Vincent C. Ikeotuonye, Zik of New Africa (London:  P.R. MacMillan Limited, 1961); K.A.B. Jones-Quartey, The Life of Azikiwe (Baltimore:  Penguin Books, 1965); http://www.lincoln.edu/history/journal/azikwe.htm
              Contributor(s):
              Faal, Courtney
              University of Washington, Seattle
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              Chinua Achebe


              Achebe, Chinua (1930- )

              Image Ownership: Public Domain
              Chinua Achebe, of Nigeria, has become one of the most famous 20th Century African writers.  He published his first novel Things Fall Apart in 1958 and has since published four more novels and a series of short stories, essays, and other literature.  Much of Achebe’s work focuses on the themes of colonialism, post-colonialism, and the tumultuous political atmosphere in post colonial Nigeria.
              Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 at St. Simon's Church, Nneobi, Nigeria to a father who was a Christian teacher and missionary.  Achebe was very heavily influenced by his native Igbo culture in Eastern Nigeria as well as his father’s desire for all his children to earn their education. Throughout his schooling Achebe was consistently at the top of his class and twice completed two grades within a year. In 1948 Achebe began his university career by attending University College in Ibadan which was affiliated with the University of London.  While at University College, Chinua Achebe switched his major from Medicine to English and History.
              Chinua Achebe graduated in 1954 and left to teach at the Merchant of Light School in Eastern Nigeria.  After four months he was offered and accepted a job at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service as the senior broadcasting officer of the Eastern Region.  It was during this time that his first novel was published.  Achebe also met his future wife, Christie Chinwe Okoli, a co-worker at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service.  The two married September 10, 1961.
              In October of 1960 Nigeria claimed its independence from Great Britain.  Around the same time, Achebe published his second novel, No Longer at Ease.  Achebe became the editor for the African Writers Series in 1962 and published his third novel, Arrow of God, in 1964. By that point regional and ethnic tensions began to push Nigeria toward civil war.  The 1964 national census was disputed and election results were manipulated.  Soon after the disputed census and election, the first two coups in Nigerian history occurred as Army officers deposed the civilian government and then each other. Achebe's fourth novel, A Man of the People, explored these rapidly evolving developments in Nigerian society
              Between 1967 and 1970 Nigeria was convulsed in a civil war as the Igbo people attempted to form their own republic, Biafra.  Achebe was active in publicizing this struggle internationally.  After the rebellion was crushed, Achebe left Nigeria and became a Professor of English in the United States, first at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and later at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.  Eventually he returned to Nigeria and taught at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.  
              In 1987 Achebe published his last novel Anthills of the Savanna.  Three years later he was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident in Lagos, Nigeria.
              Sources:
              C.L. Innes, Chinua Achebe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe: A Biography (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997); http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/profile/chinua-achebe.shtml; http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/achebe.htm
              Contributor(s):
              Faal, Courtney
              University of Washington, Seattle
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