Dear Editor,
The African Business Roundtable (ABR) salutes all African Guyanese entrepreneurs during Black History Month.
Kudos must be given to the first 83 African Guyanese entrepreneurs who saved their money, some by burying it in the ground, and who rolled out their savings in a wheelbarrow to buy Plantation Northbrook which they renamed Victoria in 1839. Five women: Maria Grant, Belinda Hopkinson, Catherine Thom, Molly Archer and Hanna Foster should be remembered as heroines.
History has recorded that within 12 years, freed Africans in Guyana defied the odds of over 200 years of enslavement and the genocidal loss of many thousands of lives, to pool their monies to establish communities that subsequently were under siege by the British planters who relentlessly deployed 12 different techniques including flooding and taxes to destroy the Village Movement.
However, within 12 years of the first purchase, the freed Africans asserted their independence in a dramatic way in that over 42,000 of the 82,000 population lived in villages they had bought and where they had set up their own local government. Over the first 12 years, freed Africans spent approximately US$2½ million, the equivalent of over US$2 billion in today’s terms.
This greatest entrepreneurial endeavour in any post-slavery society should put to rest the racist view by some writers who still say that Africans were lazy and still are. Part of this falsity lies in the lack of understanding of what the Village Movement was all about. It wasn’t just about buying land. It was far more and consisted of 10 separate but integrated goals: (1) real estate development (2) agricultural crop production (3) self-governance (4) community development (5) a sustainable life in a now new Guyanese environment (6) the creation of a new identity after enslavement (7) freedom and economic independence (8) schools and churches of their own (9) food security and (10) gold production and other economic activities.
Black History Month should remind all Guyanese of the contributions and sacrifices African Guyanese made for Guyana and should be provided reparatory justice. Amerindians did receive reparatory justice in the form of 13.8% of Guyana by the Guyanese Parliament even though the Wai Wais, Macushis and Wapishanas came to Guyana 100 to 200 years after Africans first came to Guyana.
Black History Month should also remind African Guyanese youth of their innate abilities which enslavement and discrimination cannot stop. The destruction of Black Wall Street is something they should remember.
In 1921, a thriving Black community known as the ‘Little Africa’ section of Greenwood, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa, was the type of community that African Americans are still, today, attempting to reclaim and rebuild. It was modern, majestic, sophisticated and unapologetically Black. Tragically, it was also the site of one of the bloodiest and most horrendous acts of terrorism that the United States has ever experienced.
As many as 300 African Americans lost their lives and more than 9,000 were left homeless when the small town was attacked, looted and literally burned to the ground beginning in 1921. It’s impossible, however, to realize what was lost in Greenwood, which was affectionately known as ‘Black Wall Street.’
The oil booms of the early 1900s had many moving to Tulsa for a shot at quick economic gains and high life, and African Americans hoped to prosper from the new industry as well. Tulsa, like many cities and towns throughout the US, was hostilely segregated, with African Americans settling in the northern region of the city. African Americans in the area created entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves, which housed an impressive business centre that included banks, hotels, cafes, clothiers, movie theaters, and contemporary homes. Greenwood residents enjoyed many luxuries that their White neighbours did not, including indoor plumbing and a remarkable school system that gave Black children a superior education.
It was pure envy, and a vow to put progressive, high achieving African Americans in their place that would cause the demise of the Black Mecca many called ‘Little Africa’, and its destruction began the way much terrorism, violence and dispossession against African Americans did during that era. A young White woman accused a young Black man of attempted sexual assault, which gave local mobs and White men acting as police just cause to invade the unsuspecting community.
Linda Christenson, a White woman, wrote the following on this terrorist act:
“The term ‘race riot’ does not adequately describe the events of May 31-June 1, 1921 in Greenwood… In fact, the term itself implies that both blacks and whites might be equally to blame for the lawlessness and violence. The historical record documents a sustained and murderous assault on black lives and property. This assault was met by a brave but unsuccessful armed defense of their community by some black World War I veterans and others.
During the night and day of the riot, deputized whites killed more than 300 African Americans. They looted and burned to the ground 40 square blocks of 1,265 African American homes, including hospitals, schools, and churches, and destroyed 150 businesses. White deputies and members of the National Guard arrested and detained 6,000 black Tulsans who were released only upon being vouched for by a white employer or other white citizen. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless and lived in tents well into the winter of 1921.”
African Guyanese history like African American history has been distorted by the media.
I hope this letter helps to remind all Guyanese that the nation’s patrimony belongs to all, including oil, and local content from Exxon and its contractors must reflect this.
Yours faithfully,
Eric Phillips
President
ABR