FYI AFRICA
The many faces of Africa around the world remains largely unheralded, unknown and at times, mythical. Weekly, our editors identify various subjects about Africa and unpack them for you.
May 2023 marked 98 years since the birth of civil rights leader Malcolm X, formerly Malcolm Little.
Malcolm X was a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, or NOI, and helped to lead the organization until he left in 1964 – the year before his assassination.
The NOI, whose role in civil rights movements is a focus of my research, included leaders such as Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan, who along with Malcolm X are known for their fiery rhetoric and teachings on race.
The NOI, which teaches a Black supremacist message and advocates for racial separatism, has also been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
WITH various leaders and commentators having suggested that things have gone horribly wrong in South Africa since Cyril Ramaphosa became president more than five years ago, to such an extent that the country could be facing imminent state and economic collapse.
South Africans must act and rebuild their country before its too late.
And talking to people on the streets, some even die-hard ANC members and supporters. You get a sense that if South Africans don’t’ stand up now and take charge of the running of their country, by the time the situation reaches total collapse, it could be little to late for the once powerful African giant, with the most promising future.
For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. As a scholar of American voting rights, I believe their long game is finally bearing fruit.
The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder seemed to be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.
In that case, the court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that supervised elections in areas with a history of disenfranchisement.
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language of Southern Africa mostly derived from Dutch. It developed as Dutch settlers and indigenous African mixed languages beginning in the 17th century. Today, an estimated 15 to 23 million people call Afrikaans their mother tongue. It is mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia and can also be heard in parts of Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Nicholas was born during the third century in the village of Patara, in what is now the southern coast of Turkey. He was born of very wealthy ethnic Black Anatolians of the ancient Roman Empire. According to tradition, Saint Nicholas still young, traveled to Palestine and Egypt. He became bishop of Myra soon after returning to Lycia.
He was one of those ancient and dominant Black Moors of European Mediterranean that you only fleetingly come across in today’s western history, because the Gothic Europeans would hide the true and rich Black history in Europe.
AHH! – The great taste of this American classic is due to a Black Master Distiller named Mr. Nearest Green who while being owned and then employed as free man by Reverend Dan Call used the African way to filter water with charcoal to make Call’s whiskey smooth and mellow.