Category Archives: Africa

We Remember and Salute Wangari Maathai

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Wangari Maathai, the first black African woman to receive the Nobel Prize


Wangari Maathai’s compelling life story is inextricably linked with the social and political changes that so much of Africa has been through since the idea of throwing off European colonialism began to gain traction shortly after World War II.

Her unique insight was that the lives of Kenyans – and, by extension, of people in many other developing countries – would be made better if economic and social progress went hand in hand with environmental protection.

The Green Belt Movement, which she founded in 1977, has planted an estimated 45 million trees around Kenya.

Read more via BBC

Led by Danny Glover, African and Caribbean Filmmakers to Gather in Cuba

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Cubasi.cu. September 12,2011. U.S. actor Danny Glover will lead a large delegation of filmmakers from Africa and the Caribbean to participate in a meeting in Havana on audiovisual production in those regions and their cultural ties and identity.

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Geronimo Pratt Remembered in Los Angeles

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“Lives of great men all remind us; we can make our lives sublime,
and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Family, friends and comrades gathered today at the Agape International Spiritual Center to celebrate the life and legacy Black Panther leader Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt. Speakers included Pratt’s attorneys Stuart Hanlon, Shawn C. Holly and Kathleen Cleaver. Other scheduled speakers were U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, Mrs. Mollie Bell, nephew Patrick Pratt and former Panthers Wayne Pharr, Roland Freeman and Mubarakart. He was eulogized by Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith with music by Rickie Byars Beckwith and the Agape International Choir.

Many speakers reminded us we best honor him by honoring that part of ourselves that also seeks Freedom and knows that to that end, there is still much work to be done.

Pratt, the target of the notorious FBI COINTELPRO program, served 27 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit. His conviction was overturned in 1997. He won a $4.5 million judgment against the City of Los Angeles and the FBI after his release. He had been splitting his time between his childhood home in Morgan City, Louisiana and a community founded by former Panther Pete O’Neal outside Arusha, Tanzania in East Africa. He died there in June of malaria.