Events

History-making Civil Rights Activists to Speak at Black History Month Celebration

Published

10 years ago

January 31, 2015

San Leandro will celebrate African American History Month on Saturday, Feb. 7 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Main Library at 300 Estudillo Ave. in downtown San Leandro.

Admission is free. Guest speakers will include Carol Ruth Silver and Freddye M. Davis, who were both activists in the Civil Rights Movement.

Ms. Silver’s will discuss her experience as a Freedom Rider.

The Freedom Riders, a group of civil rights activists, in 1961 travelled on interstate buses into the southern regions of the United States to test U.S. Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregation in interstate bus terminal facilities.

Brutality and arrests inflicted on the Riders called national and worldwide attention to the disregard for federal law and local violence that was used to enforce segregation.

“The Freedom Riders as well as countless other organizations and individuals peacefully challenged what was an inherently unjust system of segregation that existed in some regions of the United States,” said Mayor Cutter.

Carol Ruth Silver was arrested and jailed as a Freedom Rider along with other activists. At the time of her arrest, she was a 22-year-old recent college graduate from Massachusetts.

She spent the next 40 days in Mississippi jail cells. She chronicled her horrifying experiences on hidden scraps of paper and smuggled them out upon release.

From these notes she published Freedom Rider Diary 50 years later.

Silver graduated from law school in 1964 and spent her post-law school internship working for African-American attorney Floyd McKissick, who later became head of the Congress for Racial Equality.

From 1977–1989, she served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, working with LGBT pioneer Harvey Milk on legislation.

Silver now devotes her energy to pro bono educational projects.

Freddye M. Davis, president of the Hayward Branch of the NAACP, will speak on her personal experiences during the civil rights movement.

Freddye Davis.

She was one of two NAACP members honored as “Woman of the Year” by the California State Legislature in 2006 for her strength as a crusader for civil rights.

Since moving to Hayward in 1967, Ms. Davis has continued her efforts in creating greater awareness on race equality and has been President of the Hayward Branch since 1990.

A book-signing session for Silver and a reception will follow for both honored guests.

For more information, please call the Library Information Desk at (510) 577-3971.

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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Oakland Post: Week of October 23 – 29, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 23 – 29, 2024

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Soaring Birds and Towering Waves Greet Attendees at 29th Annual Maafa Commemoration at Ocean Beach

The 29th Annual MAAFA Commemoration San Francisco Bay Area was held at Ocean Beach, Sunday, Oct. 13. Warm and cloudy with waves as high as tall buildings, we gathered to honor African ancestors who died by the millions over the centuries of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 21, 2024

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Ayikwei H. Scott (drummer standing), Dr. Uzo Nwankpa (seated), Iya Nefertina Abrams (in background), unnamed participant to the left. Next frame: co-founder, Sister Wanda Sabir at mic. MAAFA winged chorus (center frame). We are singing the MAAFA song Brotha Clint composed. Chorus: Sister Wanda and Antwuanette Queen-Pope, Brother Desmond Iman, Baba Darinxoso Oyamasela. Minister Alisha Teasley (Lower right). Photo montage by Zochi.

By Wanda Sabir

Special to The Post

The 50 or so children and adults attending Maafa, Kiswahili word meaning ‘great disaster,’ came from as far as Monterey and Sacramento to just up the block. We all felt the ancestors’ ethereal embrace as Min. Imhotep and Min. Alicia of Wo’Se Community Church poured libations and invited us to call their names with our mouths, feet, and hands.

Birds on the beach lifted their wings in flight moving towards us and flying overhead the way legends say African ancestors flew away from plantation fields. Their collective Aṣé!

The theme for the 29^th Maafa event was accountability and as Zochi led us through Mu-i (pronounced moo-ee, a movement meditation) we embraced our power from our roots through our crown chakras. Dr. Uzo Nwankpa, a healer in residence at Freedom Community Clinic, taught us the Igbo war chant —“Eyinmba” which was also an embodied movement.

Our ancestral poet this year was Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911), born in Baltimore to free parents. She was a poet, abolitionist, suffragist, educator, and freedom fighter who lived in Philadelphia.
“It’s time to be a grown person,” Wanda Sabir, Maafa CEO stated. “Own up, fess up, get righteous. Accountability means we don’t blame others for our poor choices and their consequences. We don’t blame the system, genetic weakness, structural racism, poverty of the soul, families of origin, peer pressure, ignorance….
“We are more than the worse thing we have suffered. We are more than what our ancestors survived.
“Our ancestors do not want us to be functional. Our ancestors want us to be free.”
The drummers were phenomenal, and the section of the program open to reflections was filled with song, poetry, dance and prayers. A special treat was “Amkara Music” by Karamo Susso and Amina Janta, who will perform at Bissap Baobab in San Francisco on Oct. 20.
Join us for a Zoom dialogue on adrienne maree brown’s article, “Murmations: Love Looks Like Accountability” (Yes! Magazine, 7/25/22): Sunday, Nov. 10, 2-4 pm PT. Register in advance: MaafaSFBayArea.com, 510-397-9705. Here is the MAAFA 2024 program (https://qr1.be/CPFI).