RACISM

Contrary to the Black capitalist myth, most Greenwood residents were low wage working people employed by whites and living in substandard housing. It was the super-exploitation of poor Black labor that facilitated both the function of Tulsa as a whole and the Black Wall Street District.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) — the most important and most powerful pro-Black, class-conscious, community protection organization in American history- was born 51 years ago on October 15, 1966. It was so important and so powerful that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described it as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country…” He added that its revolutionary activities, especially the children’s free breakfast program, were “potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities… to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.”

As bad as the FBI’s words were, its actions were even worse. As made clear in the 1976 report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence Activities, “In August… 1967, the FBI initiated COINTELPRO (i.e., the counterintelligence program that operated from 1956-1971) to disrupt and ‘neutralize’… (certain) organizations…” By July 1969, indicated the report, “the BPP had become the primary focus of the program and was ultimately the target of 233 of the total authorized… COINTELPRO actions… (targeting pro-Black groups).”

Amazingly, in his four decades confinement, he refused to let anger, despair and resentment destroy him alive and used his time to gain an education, learning civil and criminal law. He kept fighting against his conviction, which was overturned then reinstated several times. Eventually the cause of the Angola 3 was taken up by human rights activists, legal teams and celebrities and real progress was made. Even the widow of the murdered prison guard became an ardent supporter of the Angola 3’s freedom.

GARY OLSON—Their work strongly suggests they would all advocate a gradual merging of Black Lives Matter demands such as “stop killing black people,” ending mass incarceration and abolishing institutional and cultural racism with demands to dismantle capitalism in all its predatory forms. The aforementioned social justice activists knew that a reckoning with America’s history of racism and economic injustice can never be realized without joining both sets of demands. For example, as Martin Luther King Jr. matured as a leader, thinker and radical activist, be became openly anti-capitalist (and anti-U.S. imperialism).

RUSSELL RICKFORD—Black is King is, of course, a Disney venture. One would hardly expect a multinational corporation to sponsor a radical critique of social relations in the Global South. (It is worth mentioning that in recent years the Disney Company has come under fire for allowing some of its merchandise to be produced in Chinese sweatshops.) Small wonder that Disney and Beyoncé, herself a stupendously rich mogul, have combined to sell western audiences a lavishly fabricated Africa—one that is entirely devoid of class conflict.