Freedom Now - Saturday, May 30, 2026

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1. Fiercely Independent Pacifica Radio, KPFK 90.7 FM, People Have the Power.
2. Hi, this is Lisa Gay Hamilton, and you're listening to KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, the voice of mass dissent in Southern California.
3. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.
4. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment,
5. and it seems that I can hear God saying to America,
6. you are too arrogant.
7. If you don't change your ways,
8. I will rise up and break the backbone of your power.
9. O-Tip, which in the language of ancient Egypt means we come with justice in peace.
10. Welcome to Freedom Now, a Saturday Pan-Africanist internationalist world affairs program.
11. Freedom Now is committed to the principle of the rights of all peoples and nations to self-determination.
12. We thank you deeply for your contribution to KPFK, which permits programs like Freedom Now to stay on the air.
13. In this era of corporate acquisition and co-optation of all dissident media,
14. We provide the microphone, challenging their corporate and racist point of view.
15. So stay tuned for Agenda here at Freedom Now.
16. Fellas, I'm ready to get up and do my thing.
17. I want to get into it, man, you know.
18. Peace.
19. Soteps and wisdom to all of our faithful and devoted listeners out there in the radio verse.
20. This is Brother Brandon Sankara, and I want to start things off by thanking you loyal listeners yet again for joining us this weekend.
21. You keep us on our mission and allow us to bring you our agenda for today, Saturday, May 30th, 2026.
22. Our theme today is Black Exile, as we'll be diving deep and charging those revolutionary batteries for yet another Saturday.
23. We begin with a radio relay coming to us from Prison Radio as the one and only Mumia Abu speaks to us about the work of the legendary Frantz Fanon and his perspective on the problem with one of my personal favorite books Black Skin White Masks Then we get right into things as our very own treasure trove of wisdom author historian and professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston and Freedom Now co
24. Dr. Gerald Horne is being joined on the line by Gregory Vargo,
25. Associate Professor of English at New York University
26. and editor of the volume, Ira Aldridge, on the stage in Anthology.
27. After that, we'll hear from Baba Mumia Abu-Jamal yet again
28. to pay tribute to a lesser known but profound and important author, revolutionary and political
29. prisoner by the name of Khalid Rahim, who recently made his transition.
30. Then, in the second half of our program, Dr. Horn will be joined on the line by Russell
31. Rickford, Associate Professor of History at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and
32. author of the book, A Proxy Africa, Guyana, African Americans and the Radical 1970s.
33. Lastly, we want to pay small tribute to the life and work of legendary jazz saxophonist
34. Sonny Rollins, who passed away on May 25th at the age of 95.
35. Enjoy some of his music throughout the program and enjoy an extended play following our two
36. interviews.
37. Now I'm going to be on the ones and twos as we pour this knowledge, making sure your
38. mental cup runneth over with revolutionary wisdom right here to quench your mental thirst
39. on Freedom Now, KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, and kpfk.org streaming live on the web. To make sure
40. we stay on a smooth ride with that cultural vibe you know and love, we'll be enjoying a musical
41. bottom featuring Tyler Qualley, Modern Jazz Quartet, Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, and Sonny
42. Rawlings. Now people get ready for this train of coming, taking you one step closer to mental
43. liberation and stay tuned for these words from none other than mumia abu jamal followed by an
44. interview with dr gerald horn and professor gregory bargo
45. God bless you.
46. Here's the problem with black skin, white masks.
47. in my study and read and reflection
48. of Black Skin White Masks
49. and then
50. The Wretched of the Earth
51. A Dying Colonialism
52. and other works by Fanon
53. I find
54. that the man who wrote
55. Black Skin White Masks
56. is not the man who wrote
57. The Wretched of the Earth
58. why do I say that?
59. I say that because, you know, scholars have shown that black skin, white mask was supposed to be his doctoral thesis.
60. His advisors, who were doctors, who admired his remarkable brilliance, talked him out of that.
61. he did like a standard doctoral thesis on a medical problem and a psychological problem right but the man who wrote Black Skin White Masks was a man wrestling with himself He writes in that book what do I care about black nationalism
62. That's not me. I am a Frenchman. My culture is French. My language is French. France is
63. This is a quote, a direct quote.
64. France is my religion.
65. I can hardly repeat that word, repeat that line without laughing because it's so preposterous when you read The Wretched of the Earth.
66. Because he is another man when he writes The Wretched of the Earth.
67. He is no longer a Frenchman.
68. He speaks French because that's his, you know, the language of his youth and of his education.
69. But in his mind, he is a combatant against the French Empire.
70. When he wrote Black Skin, White Masks, he was what he would call a colonized subject.
71. Right.
72. He said Martinicans went to France, you know, almost like for them, it was almost like going to heaven.
73. except when they met French people,
74. they learned that they weren't who they thought they were
75. because the French are the French,
76. and you're either one of them or not.
77. And if you're coming from their colonial possessions,
78. you are not regarded as French,
79. especially if your skin is dark or you're brown or black or yellow
80. when you think about it.
81. So, the consciousness that wrote that was the tortured consciousness of a colonized
82. subject.
83. When he broke out of that, when he was on his way to medical school in Lyon in France,
84. on the French equivalent of the GI Bill, his mind was exploded by a child who looked at
85. him and the little boy looked at his mother and said mama mama a nigger mama mama a nigger and it
86. blew his mind and he was never the same and he writes about that in black skin white masks
87. he said my body was shattered into a thousand pieces and i tried to pull it all together
88. But it was a new me pulling it all together.
89. And he was traumatized.
90. You know, his dream of what he thought France was, was not.
91. And when he went to Algiers and he saw how his fellow doctors and psychiatrists treated the Algerian people, he knew what side he was on.
92. You know, he not only tried to transform that medical system in Algiers, he joined the FLN.
93. And he worked underground, but he taught them how to survive torture.
94. And, you know, and he treated torturers.
95. It in The Wretched of the Earth you know his medical files So so this this this extraordinary man you know was not the same man so read black skin white masks with that knowledge and that caution and it will speak to you
96. piano plays softly
97. For KPFK Los Angeles, this is Gerald Horn, and with me on the line is Gregory Fargo,
98. Associate Professor of English at New York University and editor of the volume,
99. Ira Aldridge on the stage, an anthology. Thank you for joining us on Freedom Now, KPFK Los Angeles,
100. Gregory Vargo. Thanks very much for having me. So who was Ira Aldridge and why did you decide
101. to publish a book about him? Well, Ira Aldridge is an amazing person with an amazing story.
102. He was the first Black British theatrical star, a New Yorker by birth.
103. He moved to England in 1824 and spent the better part of the next four decades touring Britain and ultimately Europe.
104. And he rose to fame as one of the greatest actors of his age.
105. And all of this at a time when major events are rocking the British Empire.
106. A massive slave rebellion in Jamaica in 1830-31, the abolition of slavery, the rise of transatlantic abolitionism, but also the rise of pseudoscientific racism.
107. So he's a young man performing in Britain, kind of at this very charged moment.
108. And inevitably, his career and his success get drawn into debates about slavery, abolition, black liberation, and racist pseudoscience.
109. He's also an artistic genius, a real pioneer of the theater who adopts a more realistic, restrained acting style that dominates the stage even today.
110. And that really doesn't kind of come fully into its own until the end of the 19th century.
111. So decades before Aldridge was kind of carving that path.
112. I was drawn to Aldridge through research on the relationship
113. between protest campaigns and the theater.
114. And he's just an amazing life story, and I want his work to be more fully known.
115. So you mentioned that he rose to prominence during a charged age, particularly
116. debates, transatlantic debates, with regard to slavery and equality. Could you elaborate on that
117. point? Yes. So Britain abolishes slavery in 1833 slash 1838. There's kind of an interregnum period.
118. And then, of course, abolition comes to America later. But many Britons are involved
119. in the debate over slavery and abolition.
120. And what really strikes me about Aldridge's corpus
121. is it offers a very different version of Black liberation
122. than what white abolitionists typically promoted.
123. Abolitionist writing in the 19th century
124. often cast enslaved people in the role of patiently suffering innocence,
125. people worthy of philanthropy and the gift of freedom kind of the uncle tom archetype
126. but aldridge's plays foreground the agency of enslaved people in their own liberation and and
127. they think about you know a huge variety of forms of resistance from what the scholar james scott
128. calls the weapons of the weak daily acts of disobedience and recalcitrance to fugitivity
129. to revolutionary violence.
130. And his works are really giving a hearing
131. to the question of the ethics and the politics
132. and necessity, potentially, of militant resistance.
133. And that isn't much of a part of abolitionist discourse in Britain.
134. You know, maybe has some say in the United States, but still he gives a kind of very challenging version in this corpus of plays that he returns to again and again.
135. So he was also a stage director. What contributions did he make in that field?
136. Yeah, I mean, he was a real innovator. He kind of confronted the problem of a white culture industry and a kind of an elite culture industry that wanted to cast him in very few roles, kind of, you know, maybe a dozen black parts.
137. And he kind of pushed against these trammels by eventually acting in plays of non-Black characters.
138. Like he played Shylock, he played King Lear, and a variety of other parts.
139. He was a Shakespearean actor, among other things.
140. But he also developed kind of his own formats where he would create excerpts of many scenes from different plays.
141. And he would mix these on lectures about the theater and about politics.
142. And so, you know, he kind of performed in a wide variety of plays, like including minstrel dramas.
143. but his lectures contextualize those and made people see the
144. problematic aspects of them.
145. So, Les is known about him as a director, but he was a
146. significant innovator in that regard too So talk to us about the African Grove Theater in New York City to which he had an affiliation and which drew protests elaborate on that Yeah so the the
147. the African Theater or the African Grove Theater it's kind of renamed a couple of of different
148. Times was the first black theatrical company in the United States. And it faced racist harassment.
149. White theater owners contributed to it kind of losing its license. There were protests there.
150. And it's a kind of vision of how charged theater could be for 19th century people.
151. Though, you know, even today, of course, we see many censorship debates and in a new way in recent years.
152. But recognizing kind of the limited opportunities for acting in the United States for a gifted young black performer, Aldridge decides to move to England in the early 1820s.
153. And he certainly encountered racism in England as well, but he was able to carve a path probably with kind of different possibilities.
154. So he spent a lot of time acting in Eastern Europe, in Russia. As I recall, he died in Poland.
155. Do you have any reflections on his experiences there, particularly his experiences in comparison to those in the United States and Great Britain?
156. Yes, he I mean, it was another way that he kind of was a pioneer and did amazing experimental work.
157. He would act in mixed language productions, though in Germany, he actually performed one play in German as he spoke kind of moderate German.
158. But in the others, he would speak in English and other performers would speak in the language native there.
159. And in many ways, we get the best theatrical reviews of him in these other places.
160. He was less likely to be considered kind of only a novelty because of his race.
161. And so you can learn a lot about his style by reading those reviews.
162. He had a different corpus.
163. It was overwhelmingly Shakespeare there, whereas he's performing in Britain.
164. He performed in many kind of slavery melodramas, minstrel plays, along with Shakespeare in Restoration Tragedy.
165. Now, elaborate on his pro-antislavery stances, his pro-abolitionist stances.
166. Yes, well, Aldridge came to speak more and more forthrightly and directly on the issue as he became a kind of more prominent star.
167. Frequently on the last night of a performance run, the kind of theatrical industry was you would visit a town as a touring actor and perform for a week or a few weeks.
168. So on the last evening he would give a lecture and he would it would include pro and anti sentiments He might read abolitionist poetry from local poets
169. But the corpus of his works, too, are overwhelmingly, well, I mean, they're all abolitionist to some extent,
170. though they're sometimes mixed and, you know, the works can kind of at points portray stereotypes,
171. but in others kind of explode what those stereotypes they articulate.
172. Finally, Gregory Vargo, editor of the volume Ira Aldrich on the Stage, an anthology.
173. What would you say is the legacy of Ira Aldrich?
174. Yeah, he has a really important and large legacy. He gave his name to four semi-professional or amateur acting troops in the United States in the early 20th century.
175. He was a predecessor for other African-American actors, particularly in Shakespeare, like Paul Robeson's Othello and others.
176. He shifted the conversation about race and abolition in Britain and had a demonstrable effect on those politics.
177. And he anticipated the theatrical style that has dominated the stage from the late 19th century until today.
178. well I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there
179. but thank you for joining us on Freedom Now
180. KPFK Los Angeles
181. thank you
182. Thank you.
183. Khalid Rahim makes his transition.
184. The name Khalid Rahim may not ring many bells,
185. but to those who knew him,
186. his life was one of lifelong struggle
187. for the black nation as a revolutionary,
188. as a Muslim convert,
189. and as a prisoner deeply enmeshed
190. within Pennsylvania's mass incarceration system.
191. Rahim was also a skillful writer whose 2021 book,
192. Panthers That Makes a Lot,
193. recounts the struggles of former members of the Black Panther Party who struggled in prison across the state from the early 1970s to the mid
194. They faced repression, beatings, long-term lockdowns, and onerous sentences.
195. Rahim typified the deep influence of Malcolm X upon Panther and other black revolutionary
196. groups who embraced Islam as he did. Rahim wrote of days of rebellion, resistance, of revolutionary
197. resistance as a Panther and also a political prisoner at Holmesburg, at Greaterford State
198. prison, Huntington state prison, Weymart state prison, and back to Graterford, known in the
199. old days as the farm.
200. As he did time for robberies to bring resources to revolutionary movements, as he would say,
201. he saw the emergence and expansion of what we now call mass incarceration.
202. He was young and therefore receptive to the rebelliousness and passions of youth.
203. Naturally, under prison's inherent repression, he rebelled and rebelled constantly.
204. He got thrown into the hole.
205. He got transferred to other prisons.
206. And lastly, he was transferred to Western, a penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
207. There he met old heads from Holmesburg and Graterford.
208. He continued to try to utilize his political teachings as a panther and his spiritual teachings as a Muslim.
209. He spent over a decade in the joint.
210. He was released in 1984 and later settled in Pittsburgh, where he worked on peace initiatives among street gangs.
211. He founded the New African Independence Party there
212. I didn't know him as Rahim
213. But I did know him as a member of the Black United Liberation Front
214. In Philadelphia, the BULF
215. Led by former Panther Captain Reggie Schell
216. In fact, I met him at Bolf Headquarters
217. On Columbia Avenue
218. When he was known as Bird
219. He was as thin as a minute
220. with a youthful face and a laugh that bounced off the walls.
221. That youthful face lives in memory.
222. Khalid Rahim, revolutionary, writer, believer,
223. and community organizer and activist,
224. returns to the source with love, not fear.
225. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
226. These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
227. This is Sister Flora
228. and you are listening to Freedom Now at KPFK 90.7 FM
229. in occupied Mexico, including Los Angeles.
230. 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 93.7 FM in San Diego, and streaming live on the web at kpfk.org.
231. Today's program, as well as 10 prior editions, can be re-heard at kpfk.org slash audio archive,
232. and scroll down to Freedom Now.
233. For a truly alternative international perspective on world affairs,
234. check out RTTV Russia, CCTV China, and online at Presna, Latina Cuba, Telesur, Venezuela.
235. News 24 South Africa and Press TV Iran
236. We will now continue with historian professor Dr. Gerald Horn
237. For KPFK Los Angeles, this is Gerald Horn
238. And with me on the line is Russell Rickford, associate professor of history at Cornell University and author of the book A Proxy Africa, Guyana, African-Americans and the Radical 1970s.
239. Thank you for joining us on Freedom Now, KPFK Los Angeles, Russell Rickford.
240. Thanks so much for having me. Delighted to be here.
241. And we're delighted to have you. So why did you produce this book?
242. Well, that's a good question. I mean, I guess first and foremost, I should acknowledge that I'm Guyanese. I was born in Guyana in 1975. In fact, right in the midst of the time that I'm discussing in this book.
243. But beyond that, you know, sort of intellectually and politically, my interest has been black internationalism and black radicalism.
244. And so I came to discover that my native Guyana actually played a really important role in terms of African-American internationalism and progressive or left visions of pan-Africanism and global struggle in the 1970s.
245. So I was fascinated with that and discovered, you know, what I call Guyana's golden age of Pan-Africanism, roughly between 1970 and 1980.
246. Now, Los Angeles plays a role in your story insofar as in 1969, quite famously or infamously, there were killings on the UCLA campus in the context of a struggle over Black Studies.
247. And an accused or the accused fled to Guyana. Tell us more about that story.
248. Yes. Well, so this is one of the African-Americans in the book that wound up fleeing to Guyana largely because of Guyana's very generous asylum policy.
249. policy. You know, Burnham, Forbes Burnham, the prime minister at the time, had basically welcomed
250. any African-American refugee, you know, seen as political refugees or racial refugees fleeing
251. repression or racism in the United States and really throughout the global north to resettle
252. in Guyana.
253. Forrest Burnham was very interested
254. in positioning Guyana
255. as a kind of beacon
256. of global solidarity
257. with connections both to black power and a kind of multiracial third worldism And so one of the or at least two actually of the men convicted of being involved in that shooting
258. that infamous shooting at UCLA in 1969, wound up fleeing to Guyana.
259. And for at least one of them, it was not actually a happy experience.
260. Larry Watani Steiner, who was a member of the US organization,
261. the cultural nationalist organization that was involved in a deep political feud with the Black Panther Party,
262. was one of the men who fled to Guyana.
263. But, you know, he was an activist, and he is an activist at heart,
264. and he actually wound up speaking out against the growing authoritarianism in Guyana.
265. So in some respects, he went from the frying pan to the fire
266. and ultimately ended up fleeing the Burnham regime later in the 1970s as well.
267. So, I mean, which really sort of reflects the arc of the story, because the book begins with the sort of growing promise in the late 1960s and particularly in the 1970s of Guyana in the eyes of many Pan-Africanists in the United States and across the diaspora.
268. and by the end of the book there's a real sort of disillusionment with Guyana particularly
269. in the context not just of the Jonestown tragedy in 1978 but especially the assassination of
270. Walter Rodney, the famous dissident, the left pan-Africanist, the author of How Europe
271. Underdeveloped Africa. That assassination in 1980, many people around the world saw the Burnham
272. administration as complicit in Rodney's assassination. Rodney had been a fierce
273. advocate of democracy and multiracialism and the civil rebellion against the regime.
274. And so that event in 1980 really kind of confirms Guyana's decline and the sort of loss of this
275. mystique of a kind of pan-Africanist socialist haven in the Western Hemisphere.
276. Now, Guyana is cited in South America, as we know, and it is predominantly English-speaking nation in light of the fact that it had been colonized by the British.
277. And therefore, it's oftentimes grouped with Jamaica, Barbados, and the Caribbean nations, despite being cited in South America.
278. And you mentioned Forbes Burnham, and for a number of years, he was perceived, at least, as a leader of the African population in Guyana.
279. And on the other side was Chetty Jagan of South Asian ancestry, the leader of the People's Progressive Party, which as early as 1953 had sought to lead Guyana to a kind of independence, invoking interference by the British colonizers, including the United States of America.
280. So tell us more about these men and the forces that they represented.
281. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Well, I mean, I should say from the beginning that this whole
282. experience the whole process of writing the book has been an education for me even though as I said I was born in Ghana I grew up here in the United States and came to history mainly through my focus on African radicalism So I
283. sort of been in the process of refashioning myself as a Caribbeanist, but, you know, in just
284. delving into Guyanese history, a fascinating, rich history, but also a very tragic history
285. in a lot of ways.
286. I mean, as you said,
287. Guyana was the site
288. of one of the most powerful
289. anti-colonial movements.
290. And its leaders included
291. Chetri Jagen,
292. who was a Marxist-Leninist
293. and very much aligned
294. with Moscow,
295. and also Forbes Burnham.
296. Forbes Burnham was Afro-Guyanese
297. and Chetri Jagen was Indo-Guyanese
298. and their alliance
299. was part of this multiracial
300. leftist, internationalist, very inspiring
301. anti-colonial movement beginning in the late 1940s
302. and in the 1950s. And part of Diana's
303. tragedy is the
304. subversion of imperialism,
305. basically of Anglo-American imperialism, of London and Washington
306. collaborating to subvert
307. this very powerful, working class, you know, based anti-colonial movement in Guyana.
308. And ultimately, Forbes Burnham is able to prevail and is seen by many progressives throughout
309. the world and certainly in the diaspora, including leftists in the United States, such as W.E.B.
310. Du Bois and Paul Robeson and others, Forrest Burnham is sort of seen as an opportunist
311. who basically appeases Western interests in order to prevail over Chetty Jagan and lead
312. Guyon into independence in 1966. So the early part of the book is really about Burnham's
313. efforts to shed this stigma of collaborationism with empire and to sort of rebrand himself
314. as a progressive on the global stage, even as he refashions Guyana as a kind of third world
315. stronghold. And he's able to do so quite successfully, in part because of some of the
316. people he has around him, some of the allies in the United States. And among the most important
317. allies, at least, into the early 1970s, was a man named UC Quayana, who's still living.
318. Mr. Quayana is, I think, near 100 at this point. But he's one of the most important figures in
319. terms of the anti-colonial movement, but also the Black Consciousness Movement in Guyana. And so
320. UC Quayana launches in the 1960s a cultural revolution that first catches the attention
321. of African-American progressives, but it's then burned him in the early 1970s through his
322. nationalization policies, his support for Southern Africa, that sort of puts Guyana on the map as a
323. third world and pan-Africanist mecca of sorts. How many African-Americans wound up migrating
324. to Guyana during this period? That's a really good question. I don't know for sure. Some of them were
325. you know, more visible than others.
326. But many African Americans ended up playing some role with the Burnham government working for the state in one way or another So there were prominent people like Julian Mayfield the writer
327. and also Tom Feelings, the artist.
328. And both of these men, and in fact other African American immigrants
329. who wound up spending substantial periods of time in Ghana,
330. were expats in a kind of earlier iteration.
331. They were Afros, they were African-American expats in Ghana, in West Africa,
332. which actually has a very close history with Guyana.
333. So in some ways, this was kind of a second act for people like Tom Feelings and Julian Mayfield
334. in terms of their internationalism, in terms of resettling overseas
335. and a site that's seen as a kind of pan-Africanist Mecca,
336. and in terms of their commitment to contribute to a nation-building project
337. in what they saw as a progressive land.
338. Now, one of the more prominent Black American migrants to Guyana was Herman Ferguson.
339. And he, if I'm not mistaken, wound up becoming a major in the Guyanese military, which some perceived as controversial.
340. Tell us more about Herman Ferguson.
341. Yeah, well, Herman Ferguson is a really fascinating figure.
342. he sort of came to political consciousness in part because of Malcolm X.
343. Herman Ferguson was an activist in Queens and struggling against, you know, segregation
344. in the building trades and sort of derisive cultural depictions of African-Americans in
345. murals in Queens.
346. But then he becomes a Malcolm X aide, and then his radicalism deepens, his internationalism deepens.
347. He plays a role both in the Republic of New Africa and the Revolutionary Action Movement.
348. And he, basically his radicalism draws the attention of authorities.
349. And in a very sort of dubious case, he's charged with, you know, plotting against moderate civil rights leaders.
350. Essentially, he has to flee the United States and he winds up in Guyana in the early 1970s.
351. And after some time, his spouse, Yolua, also joins him in Ghana.
352. And they play important roles, both in the sort of educational reform movement.
353. You know, Herman Ferguson was also an assistant principal back in New York City and continues in terms of work in education and in the context of Guyanese efforts.
354. basically to decolonize the public schools.
355. But he also plays a role in the armed forces of Ghana, as you say,
356. and rises to a fairly high rank, which is remarkable in some ways.
357. It both shows Herman Ferguson's commitment and the commitment of many African-American expats
358. to genuinely contribute to nation-building projects.
359. And I mean, I think that's,
360. part of the context of the internationalism in the 1970s,
361. you know, so often we think about,
362. we sort of equate the 1970s
363. with the decline of 1960s radicalism,
364. and that can obscure all of these fascinating
365. and important internationalist efforts.
366. Herman Ferguson actually ultimately returns
367. to the United States in the 1990s.
368. So an important, I think, takeaway from the book
369. is that despite the promise of a nation building in the third world,
370. I think many African-American progressives and internationalists
371. collided with some of the inherent limitations,
372. the problems of the post-colonial nation state and perhaps nationalism itself.
373. Herman Ferguson ultimately comes back to the United States
374. because he believes that this is where his fight lies,
375. even though he spends such a huge portion of his life, many years, almost two decades, I believe, in Guyana.
376. He comes home to be with his family and to resume the fight for African-American liberation at home.
377. So it's not a story about which battlefront, you know, the home front or overseas is more important.
378. And it's really a story of this complex balancing of these strands of radicalism in the 1970s, the nationalism, the internationalism, the pan-Africanism, the leftism, all of which converge in these complicated ways in Guyana during the 1970s.
379. Now, possibly the most well-known aspect of Guyanese history, to some in our audience at least, might be the tragedy in Jonestown.
380. Therein, and others recall that Reverend Jones of San Francisco led his flock to Guyana, and there was, depending on who you read, either mass homicide or mass suicide.
381. What do you have to say about Jonestown?
382. Yeah, well, so Jonestown has always been a challenge for me because, listen, I'm writing about Ghana in the 1970s and very few people in North America know anything about Ghana.
383. But if they do know something about Ghana, overwhelmingly, it's the Jonestown reverence.
384. And it's not so much that people know a lot about Jonestown.
385. It's just that they have a kind of a sort of a cultural image about Jonestown.
386. And much of that can be summed up in the phrase, you know, the regrettable phrase, actually, don't drink the Kool-Aid.
387. Right. And don't drink the Kool-Aid. Really.
388. And what that means is that the victims of Jonestown, the over 900 people that died,
389. mostly Americans who died in Jonestown in this act of, you know, it's a kind of strange blend of mass suicide,
390. but also homicide in 1978, that these people are sort of mindless sheep, that they were dupes.
391. And so Jonestown has become a sort of metaphor for a kind of mindless groupthink.
392. I argue in the book that that's a real problem.
393. It a real I think obfuscation of the realities of the rank and file folks who wound up going to Jonestown and dying in Jonestown
394. I mean, the first thing I would say is that many, many of those victims were Black people, right?
395. So that Jim Jones was able, in Northern California,
396. where his People's Temple ultimately was headquartered,
397. to attract lots of Black folk and people of color,
398. in large part because he was very shrewdly drew upon
399. some of the contemporary political themes of the day,
400. you know, the rhetoric of the civil rights movement
401. and the rhetoric of Black power,
402. but also some of the ideas about third worldism, right?
403. So he drew on these ideas about a practical transition to socialism,
404. the allure of cooperativism, right?
405. There's a deep cooperative tradition in Guyana.
406. In fact, Guyana was the first cooperative republic, right?
407. So formerly the cooperative republic of Guyana.
408. So Jim Jones mobilized a lot of these themes
409. to help both draw people,
410. including many African-Americans,
411. to his church, to his ministry,
412. ultimately to persuade them to resettle in Guyana.
413. So this ends horrifically in 1978
414. with this mass suicide.
415. But I make the strong case in the book
416. that we should see Jonestown,
417. if not akin to the sort of larger Black internationalism,
418. these sort of Afro-diasporic tendencies
419. that I'm talking about in the book,
420. but certainly having a kind of deep cross-currents, right,
421. with these ideas.
422. And so dismissing, you know,
423. the victims of Jonestown, just as dupes, I think really elides the politics.
424. Okay, I'm not trying to oversimplify Jonestown.
425. Jonestown is a complex and a disturbing event,
426. but there are these deep elements of Black internationalism.
427. And if we put Jonestown in the context,
428. at least it helps us to see the African-American victims of Jonestown
429. owns down as more culturally legible, and that simply is sort of mindless ponds of sheep.
430. Finally, Russell Rickford of Cornell University, author of the book A Proxy Africa, Guyana,
431. African Americans and the Radical 1970s. What's next on your research agenda? What do your eager
432. readers have to look forward to? That's a great question, and it's a humbling question.
433. coming from you, Professor Horne, who has always been one of my real mentors and influences. And
434. of course, I'll never catch up with your record and influence. But I mean, so there's a number
435. of different things I'm thinking about. I mean, at the moment, I have to sort of choose. I've
436. always been fascinated with African-American cooperative movements. And there's an African-American
437. cooperative movement in the 60s and 70s that I think that, you know, would be worthwhile to
438. write about. There's some good books on African American cooperativism. I have been thinking about
439. Palestine, obviously, for some time, and especially in the context of the ongoing genocide.
440. I'd love to write about that.
441. I think one of the topics that fascinating me at the moment and it absolutely I think a result of the kind of despair of our current political moment is the question of utopias right
442. And black utopias or African-American utopias.
443. And I think partly why this topic fascinates me, even though my research is just beginning, is not so much the question of escape, it's escaping from our current political realities.
444. But again, something akin to what Robin Kelly calls freedom dreaming and the power of imagining a dramatically different alternative.
445. Right. And what that can mean in terms of shaping, inspiring our sort of very concrete day to day organizing.
446. So, yeah, those are some some directions in which I could go.
447. Well, you have at least one reader and myself whenever these projects emerge, Russell Rickford, but thank you for joining us on Freedom Now, KPFK, Los Angeles.
448. Thank you so much, Gerald, and thank you for your example, brother.
449. Thank you.
450. Thank you.
451. Thank you.
452. Thank you.
453. Thank you
454. me
455. um
456. ¶¶
457. In closing, we'd like to thank our guests, starting with Gregory Vargo,
458. Associate Professor of English at New York University
459. and editor of the volume, Ira Aldridge on the Stage, an anthology.
460. We also thank Russell Rickford,
461. Associate Professor of History at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,
462. and author of the book, Aproxy Africa, Guyana, African Americans, and the Radical 1970s.
463. Shout out to Dr. Gerald Horne for doing what he does best
464. and guiding this train of mental liberation towards pan-African enlightenment for yet another Saturday.
465. Word to producer Sister Tej.
466. Shout out to Prison Radio and the legendary Mumia Abu-Jamal, of course.
467. special shout out and thanks to our spiritual backbone freedom now founder and ancestor
468. babadidhan kamathi abundant thanks to our marvelous engineer and last but certainly not least thanks
469. to all of our loyal listeners and supporters it takes a village to build a revolution and freedom
470. now is a village to be reckoned with this has been brother brandon sankara and you can join us
471. on Facebook at Freedom Now Gerald Horn.
472. You can email the program at freedomnow at kpfk.org.
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474. Go to the audio archives on kpfk.org,
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479. With that, we send you off.
480. And until next Saturday here at Freedom Now,
481. we stand running our marathon ready for revolution.
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