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Organization of Afro-American Unity
Basic Unity Program
Pledging unity...
Promoting justice...
Transcending compromise...
We, Afro-Americans, people who originated in Africa and now reside in
America, speak out against the slavery and oppression inflicted upon us by
this racist power structure. We offer to down-trodden Afro-American people
courses of action that will conquer oppression, relieve suffering, and
convert meaningless struggle into meaningful action.
Confident that our purpose will be achieved, we Afro-americans from all
walks of life make the following known:
Establishment
Having stated our determination, confidence, and resolve, the Organization
of Afro-American Unity is hereby established on the 15th day of February,
1965, in the city of New York.
Upon this establishment, we Afro-American people will launch a cultural
revolution which will provide the means for restoring our identity that we
might rejoin our brothers and sisters on the African continent, culturally,
psychologically, economically, and share with them the sweet fruits of
freedom from oppression and independence of racist governments.
1. The Organization of Afro-American Unity welcomes all persons of African
origin to come together and dedicate their ideas, skills, and lives to free
our people from oppression.
2. Branches of the Organization of Afro-American Unity may be established by people of African descent wherever they may be and whatever their ideology, as long as they be descendants of Africa and dedicated to our one goal: freedom from oppression.
3. The basic program of the Organization of Afro-Ameircan Unity which is now being presented can and will be modified by the membership, taking into
consideration national, regional, and local conditions that require flexible
treatment.
4. The Organziation of Afro-American Unity encourages active participation
of each member since we feel that each and every Afro-American has something to contribute to our freedom. Thus each member will be encouraged to participate in the committee of his or her choice.
5. Understanding the differences that have been created amongst us by our
oppressors in order to keep us divided, the Organization of Afro-American
Unity strives to ignore or submerge these artificial divisions by focussing
our activities and our loyalties upon our one goal: freedom from oppression.
BASIC AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
Self-Determination
We assert that we Afro-Americans have the right to direct and control our
lives, our history, and our future rather than to have our destinies
determined by American racists...
We are determined to rediscover the true African culture, which was crushed
and hidden for over four hundred years in order to enslave us and keep us
enslaved up to today...
We, Afro-Americans, enslaved, oppressed, and denied by a society that
proclaims itself the citadel of democracy, are determined to rediscover our
history, promote the talents that are suppressed by our racist enslavers,
renew the culture that was crushed by a slave government and thereby, to
again become a free people.
National Unity
Sincerely believing that the future of Afro-Amrericans is dependent upon our
ability to unite our ideas, skills, organizations, and institutions...
We, the Organization of Afro-American Unity pledge to join hands and hearts
with all people of African origin in a grand alliance by forgetting all the
differences that the power structure has created to keep up divided and
enslaved. We further pledge to strengthen our common bond and strive toward one goal: freedom from oppression.
THE BASIC UNITY PROGRAM
The program of the Organization of Afro-American Unity shall evolve from
five strategic points which are deemed basic and fundamental to our grand
alliance. Through our committees we shall proceed in the following general
areas:
I. RESTORATION
In order to enslave the African it was necessary for our enslavers to
completely sever our communications with the African continent and the
Africans that remained there. In order to free ourselves from the oppression
of our enslavers then, it is absolutely necessary for the Afro-American to
restore communications with Africa.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will accomplish this goal by means
of independent national and international newspapers, publishing ventures,
personal contacts, and other available communications media.
We, Afro-Americans, must also communicate to one another the truths about
American slavery and the terrible effects it has upon our people. We must
study the modern system of slavery in order to free ourselves from it. We
must search out all the bare and ugly facts without shame for we are still
victims, still slaves, still oppressed. Our only shame is believing
falsehood and not seeking the truth.
We must learn all that we can about ourselves. We will have to know the
whole story of how we were kidnapped from Africa; how our ancestors were
brutalized, dehumanized, and murdered; and how we continually kept in a
state of slavery for the profit of a system conceived in slavery, built by
slaves, and dedicated to keeping us enslaved in order to maintain itself.
We must begin to reeducate ourselves and become alert listeners in order to
learn as much as we can about the progress of our motherland; Africa. We
must correct in our minds the distorted image that our enslaver has
portrayed to us of Africa that he might discourage us from reestablishing
communications with her and thus obtain freedom from oppression.
II. REORIENTATION
In order to keep the Afro-American enslaved, it was necessary to limit our
thinking to the shores of America, to prevent us from indentifying our
problems with the problems of other peoples of African origin. This made us
consider ourselves an isolated minority without allies anywhere.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will develop in the Afro-American
people a keen awareness of our relationship with the world at large and
clarify our roles, rights, and responsibilities as human beings. We can
accomplish this goal by becoming well informed concerning world affairs and
understanding that our struggle is part of a larger world struggle of
oppressed peoples against all forms of oppression. We must change the
thinking of the Afro-American by liberating our minds through the study of
philosophies and psychologies, cultures and languages that did not come from
our racist oppressors. Provisions are being made for the study of languages
such as Swahili, Hausa, and Arabic. These studies will give our people
access to ideas and history of mankind at large and thus increase our mental
scope.
We can learn much about Africa by reading informative books and by listening
to the experiences of those who have traveled there, but many of us can
travel to the land of our choice and experience for ourselves. The
Organization of Afro-American Unity will encourage the Afro-American to
travel to Africa, the Caribbean, and to other places where our culture has
not been completely crushed by brutality and ruthlessness.
III. EDUCATION
After enslaving us, the slave masters developed a racist educational system
which justified to its posterity the evil deeds that had been committed
against the African people and their descendants. Too often the slave himself participates so completely in this system that he justifies having been enslaved and oppressed.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will devise original educational
methods and procedures which will liberate the minds of our children from
the vicious lies and distortions that are fed to us from the cradle to keep
us mentally enslaved. We encourage Afro-Americans themselves to establsh
experimental institutes and educational workshops, liberation schools, and
child-care centers in the Afro-American communities.
We will influence the choice of textbooks and equipment used by our children
in the public schools while at the same time encouraging qualified
Afro-Americans to write and publish the textbooks needed to liberate our
minds. Until we completely control our own educational institutions, we must
supplement the formal training of our children by educating them at home.
IV. ECONOMIC SECURITY
After the Emancipation Proclamation, when the system of slavery changed from chattel slavery to wage slavery, it was realized that the Afro-American
constituted the largest homogeneous ethnic group with a common origin and
common group experience in the United States and, if allowed to exercise
economic or political freedom, would in a short period of time own this
country. Therefore racists in this government developed techniques that
would keep the Afro-American people economically dependent upon the slave masters, economically slaves, twentieth-century slaves.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will take measures to free our
people from economic slavery. One way of accomplishing this will be to
maintain a technician pool: that is, a bank of technicians. In the same
manner that blood banks have been established to furnish blood to those who
need it at the time it is needed, 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 Afro-American brothers for the technicians they will need now
and in the future. Thereby, we will be developing an open market for the
many skills we possess and at the same time we will be supplying Africa with
the skills she can best use. This project will therefore be one of mutual
cooperation and mutual benefit.
V. SELF-DEFENSE
In order to enslave a people and keep them subjugated, their right to
self-defense must be denied. They must be constantly terrorized, brutalized,
and murdered. These tactics of suppression have been developed to a new high by vicious racists whom the United States government seems unwilling or
incapable of dealing with in terms of the law of this land. Before the emancipation it was the Black man who suffered humiliation, torture, castration, and murder. Recently our women and children, more and more, are becoming the victims of savage racists whose appetite for blood increases daily and whose deeds of depravity seem to be openly encouraged by all law-enforcement agencies. Over five thousand Afro-Americans have been lynched since the Emancipation Proclamation and not one murderer has been
brought to justice!
The Organization of Afro-American Unity, being aware of the increased
violence being visited upon the Afro-American and of the open sanction of
this violence and murder by the police departments throughout this country
and the federal agencies, do affirm our right and obligation to defend
ourselves in order to survive as a people.
We encourage the Afro-Americans to defend themselves against the wanton
attacks of racist aggressors whose sole aim is to deny us the guarantees of
the United Nations Charter of Human Rights and of the Constitution of the
United States.
The Organization of Afro-American Unity will take those private steps that
are necessary to insure the survival of the AfroAmerican people in the face
of racist aggression and the defense of our women and children. We are
within our rights to see to it that the Afro-American people who fulfill
their obligations to the United States government (we pay taxes and serve in
the armed forces of this country like American citizens do) also exact from
this government the obligations that it owes us as a people, or exact these
obligations ourselves. Needless to say, among this number we include
protection of certain inalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In areas where the United States government has shown itself unable and/or
unwilling to bring to justice the racist oppressors, murderers, who kill
innocent children and adults, the Organization of Afro-American Unity
advocates that the Afro-American people insure ourselves that justice is
done, whatever the price and by any means necessary.
National concerns
GENERAL TERMINOLOGIES:
We Afro-Americans feel receptive toward all peoples of goodwill. We are not
opposed to multiethnic associations in any walk of life. In fact, we have
had experiences which enable us to understand how unfortunate it is that
human beings have been set apart or aside from each other because of
characteristics known as "racial" characteristics.
However, Afro-Americans did not create the prejudiced background and
atmosphere in which we live. And we must face the facts. A "racial" society
does exist in stark reality, and not with equality for Black people; so we
who are nonwhite must meet the problems inherited from centuries of
inequalities and deal with the present situations as rationally as we are able.
The exclusive ethnic quality of our unity is necessary for selfpreservation.
We say this because our experiences backed up by history show that African
culture and Afro-American culture will not be accurately recognized and
reported and cannot be respectably expressed nor be secure in its survival
if we remain the divided, and therefore the helpless, victims of an
oppressive society.
We appreciate the fact that when the people involved have real equality and
justice, ethnic intermingling can be beneficial to all. We must denounce,
however, all people who are oppressive through their policies or actions and
who are lacking in justice in their dealings with other people, whether the
injustices proceed from power, class, or "race." We must be unified in order
to be protected from abuse or misuse.
We consider the word "integration" a misleading, false term. It carries with
it certain implications to which Afro-Americans cannot subscribe. This
terminology has been applied to the current regulation projects which are
supposedly "acceptable" to some classes of society. This very "acceptable"
implies some inherent superiority or inferiority instead of acknowledging
the true source of the inequalities involved.
We have observed that the usage of the term "integration" was designated and
promoted by those persons who expect to continue a (nicer) type of ethnic
discrimination and who intend to maintain social and economic control of all
human contacts by means of imagery, classifications, quotas, and
manipulations based on color, national origin, or "racial" background and
characteristics.
Careful evaluation of recent experiences shows that "integration'' actually
describes the process by which a white society is (remains) set in a
position to use, whenever it chooses to use and however it chooses to use,
the best talents of nonwhite people. This power-web continues to build a
society wherein the best contributions of Afro-Americans, in fact of all
nonwhite people, would continue to be absorbed without note or exploited to
benefit a fortunate few while the masses of both white and nonwhite people
would remain unequal and unbenefited.
We are aware that many of us lack sufficient training and are deprived and
unprepared as a result of oppression, discrimination, and the resulting
discouragement, despair, and resignation. But when we are not qualified, and
where we are unprepared, we must help each other and work out plans for
bettering our own conditions as Afro-Americans. Then our assertions toward
full opportunity can be made on the basis of equality as opposed to the
calculated tokens of "integration." Therefore, we must reject this term as
one used by all persons who intend to mislead AfroAmericans.
Another term, "negro," is erroneously used and is degrading in the eyes of
informed and self-respecting persons of African heritage. It denotes
stereotyped and debased traits of character and classifies a whole segment
of humanity on the basis of false information. From all intelligent
viewpoints, it is a badge of slavery and helps to prolong and perpetuate
oppression and discrimination.
Persons who recognize the emotional thrust and plain show of disrespect in
the Southerner's use of "nigra" and the general use of "nigger" must also
realize that all three words are essentially the same. The other two:
"nigra" and "nigger" are blunt and undeceptive. The one representing
respectability, "negro," is merely the Same substance in a polished package
and spelled with a capital letter. This refinement is added so that a
degrading terminology can be legitimately used in general literature and
"polite" conversation without embarrassment.
The term "negro" developed from a word in the Spanish langnage which is
actually an adjective (describing word) meaning "black," that is, the color
black. In plain English, if someone said or was called a "black" or a
"dark," even a young child would very naturally question. "A black what?" or
"A dark what?" because adjectives do not name, they describe. Please take
note that in order to make use of this mechanism, a word was transferred
from another language and deceptively changed in function from an adjective
to a noun, which is a naming word. Its application in the nominative
(naming) sense was intentionally used to portray persons in a position of
objects or "things." It stamps the article as being "all alike and all the
same." It denotes: a "darkie," a slave, a subhuman, an ex-slave, a "negro."
Afro-Americans must reanalyze and particularly question our own use of this
term, keeping in mind all the facts. In light of the historical meanings and
current implications, all intelligent and informed Afro-Americans and
Africans continue to reject its use in the noun form as well as a proper
adjective. Its usage shall continue to be considered as unenlightened and
objectionable or deliberately offensive whether in speech or writing.
We accept the use of Afro-American, African, and Black man in reference to
persons of African heritage. To every other part of mankind goes this
measure of just respect. We do not desire more nor shall we accept less.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Afro-Americans, like all other people, have human rights which are
inalienable. This is, these human rights cannot be legally or justly
transferred to another. Our human rights belong to us, as to all people,
through God, not through the wishes nor according to the whims of other men.
We must consider that fact and other reasons why a prodamation of
"Emancipation" should not be revered as a document of liberation. Any
previous acceptance of and faith in such a document was based on sentiment,
not on reality. This is a serious matter which we Afro-Americans must
continue to reevaluate.
The original root-meaning of the word emancipation is: "To deliver up or
make over as property by means of a formal act from a purchaser." We must take note and remember that human beings cannot be justly bought or sold nor can their human rights be legally or justly taken away.
Slavery was, and still is, a criminal institution, that is: crime en masse.
No matter what form it takes: subtle rules and policies, apartheid, etc.,
slavery and oppression of human rights stand as major crimes against God and
humanity. Therefore, to relegate or change the state of such criminal deeds
by means of vague legislation and noble euphemisms gives an honor to
horrible commitments that is totally inappropriate.
Full implications and concomitant harvests were generally misunderstood by
our foreparents and are still misunderstood or avoided by some
Afro-Americans today. However, the facts remain; and we, as enlightened
Afro-Americans, will not praise and encourage any belief in "emancipation."
Afro-Americans everywhere must realize that to retain faith in such an idea
means acceptance of being property and, therefore, less than a human being.
This matter is a crucial one that Afro-Americans must continue to reexamine.
Worldwide concerns
The time is past due for us to internationalize the problems of Afro-Americans. We have been'too slow in recognizing the link in the fate of Africans with the fate of Afro-Americans. We have been too unknowing to understand and too misdirected to ask our African brothers and sisters to help us mend the chain of our heritage.
Our African relatives who are in a majority in their own country have found
it very difficult to gain independence from a minority. It is that much more
difficult for Afro-Americans who are a minority away from the motherland and
still oppressed by those who encourage the crushing of our African identity.
We can appreciate the material progress and recognize the opportunities
available in the highly industrialized and affluent American society. Yet,
we who are nonwhite face daily miseries resulting directly or indirectly
from a systematic discrimination against us because of our God-given colors.
These factors cause us to remember that our being born in America was an act of fate stemming from the separation of our foreparents from Africa; not by choice, but by force.
We have for many years been divided among ourselves through deceptions and misunderstandings created by our enslavers, but we do here and now express our desires and intent to draw closer and be restored in knowledge and spirit through renewed relations and kinships with the African peoples. We further realize that our human rights, so long suppressed, are the rights of all mankind everywhere.
In light of all of our experiences and knowledge of the past, we, as
Afro-Americans, declare recognition, sympathy, and admiration for all
peoples and nations who are striving, as we are, toward self-realization and
complete freedom from oppression!
The civil rights bill is a similarly misleading, misinterpreted document of
legislation. The premise of its design and application is not respectable in
the eyes of men who recognize what personal freedom involves and entails.
Afro-Americans must answer this question for themselves: What makes this
special bill necessary.
The only document that is in order and deserved with regard to the acts
perpetuated through slavery and oppression prolonged to this day is a
Declaration of Condemnation. And the only legislation worthy of
consideration or endorsement by Afro-Americans, the victims of these tragic
institutions, is a Proclamation of Restitution. We Afro-Americans must keep
these facts ever in mind.
We must continue to internationalize our philosophies and contacts toward
assuming full human rights which include all the civil rights appertaining
thereto. With complete understanding of our heritage as Afro-Americans, we
must not do less.
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