Malcolm X, Barack Obama and Oginga Odinga
by Norman (Otis) Richmond
Malcolm would have been 84 years old on May 19, 2009. Africans in New York City have made a pilgrimage to Malcolm’s gravesite every year since Feb. 21, 1966. While it is unlikely that U.S. President Barack Obama will acknowledge Malcolm’s joining the ancestors, people from Cape Town to Nova Scotia and Brazil to Brixton definitely will.
Unlike other U.S. presidents, President Obama knows who Malcolm was and what he stands for. Like many males with African roots, President Obama was moved by Malcolm’s life story. A cursory reading of his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” will prove this point.
President Obama is truly an African American; parts of his roots are with the Luo people in East Africa. The Luo are an ethnic group in Kenya, Eastern Uganda and Northern Tanzania. The Luo are the third largest ethnic group (13 percent) in Kenya, after the Kikuyu (20 percent) and the Luhya (17 percent). The Luo and the Kikuyu inherited the bulk of political power in the first years following Kenya’s independence in 1963.
When Malcolm visited Africa in 1964, he visited Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. It was during that trip that he met with Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, Ugandan President Dr. Milton Obote, and President Julius K. Nyerere and Muhammad Babu of Tanzania. Babu, Malcolm and Leroi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) held a meeting during this period in New York City. Malcolm talked about meeting President Kenyatta. Malcolm, however, was also aware of Kenya’s Oginga Odinga.
He later served as Kenya’s first vice president and a member of the Kenya African National Union (KANU) and thereafter as opposition leader. Odinga’s son, Raila Odinga, is the current prime minister, and another son, Oburu Odinga, is assistant minister for finance in the 2008 Grand Coalition government. Odinga was vice president of Kenya in 1964-66 but, in 1969, he was placed under house arrest due to his opposition to the KANU government.
Odinga had an impact on human rights groups in the United States. While he was in the U.S., the State Department took him on a tour of America. The last stop was Atlanta, self-described as “The City Too Busy to Hate.” Odinga was housed at one of Atlanta’s two non-segregated hotels.
When the activists of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) heard about Odinga’s visit, they decided to “pull his coat” and provide him with information that would be neglected by the State Department. They visited Odinga’s hotel room and shared stories and songs of the human-rights movement to acquaint this African visitor with how the United States treated her African population.
He responded, “Uhuru,” the Swahili word for “freedom.” Following their visit to Odinga, the SNCC delegation went to the Toddle House restaurant near the hotel. They sat in to protest the restaurant’s “whites only” policy, and 17 were arrested.
“Immediately after these events, Knoxville’s Matthew Jones, a SNCC worker, wrote a song, ‘Oginga Odinga of Kenya,’ telling this story. Odinga described the racial situation in America as ‘very pitiful.’ Soon the Toddle House restaurants chose to desegregate,” recalled Jones in an interview.
“Oginga Odinga of Kenya” became one of Malcolm’s favorite songs. Malcolm and the legendary human rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party shared the platform at a church in Harlem. The Freedom Singers of SNCC performed various songs, including “Oginga Odinga of Kenya.”
Contrary to popular belief, it was Malcolm, not Martin Luther King, who first opposed the war in Vietnam. Malcolm was the first African American leader of national prominence in the 1960s to condemn the war. He was later joined by organizations like the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and the SNCC, the Black Panther Party, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Republic of New Africa.
This was in the tradition of David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin R. Delaney, Bishop Henry McNeil Turner, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, Claudia Jones, Ella Baker and Paul Robeson.
Malcolm continued this anti-imperialist tradition. He continued to link the struggles of African people worldwide. King always maintained, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He came out against the Vietnam War with his famous April 4, 1967, speech at Riverside Church in New York City.
Norman Richmond can be contacted at norman@ckln.fm.
Becoming aware of Africa
It was in ’63 that we really started to become aware of Africa, as I remember. Oginga Odinga, who was at that time the vice president of Kenya, was touring the United States, and one of the places he visited was Atlanta, Georgia.
A whole bunch of us went to see him, just because he was an African leader. There was no political assessment of Kenya, or any of that. He was a black guy who was a vice president of a country, and we had just never seen that. He was staying at some posh hotel in downtown Atlanta, and he saw us. We had this talk, and shook his hand; it was a big thing.
Afterwards we decided to go have coffee at a restaurant next door to the hotel, and we were all refused service. We were kind of high on meeting this black leader, and so naturally we refused to leave the restaurant, and we all got arrested. Oginga Odinga became a known name in the organization. There were songs written about him. Because of this incident, discussion started.
Oginga Odinga
I went down to the Peach Tree Manor
To see Oginga Odinga
The police said ” Well, what’s the matter?”
To see Oginga Odinga.
Oginga Odinga, Oginga Odinga
Oginga Odinga of Kenya
Oginga Odinga, Oginga Odinga
Oginga Odinga of Kenya.
Uhuru, uhuru
Freedom now, freedom now
The folks in Mississippi
Will knock you on your rump
And if you holler FREEDOM
They’ll throw you in the swamp.
Malcolm X brought dignity to men. He did so with basics:
Self Reliance
Literacy
Faith
Fidelity to Family
Sobriety
After his pilgrimage to Mecca he saw the larger picture and it had less to do with races than with mankind. He became dangerous to vested interests at that point. Keeping racial conflict inflamed fits the needs of those interests. The truth of our oneness, our spiritual nature, our individual potential power has always been a threat to vested interests. They become cowardly perpetrators of conflict. Malcolm X would have understood this: Those who create and perpetuate conflict are the true enemies of mankind. Had he lived he may well have become the greatest leader of the century, certainly of the second half. I did not appreciate him when he was alive. I feel I somehow failed him. He is missed.
Hmmmm. What to say about the world’s Prince Malcolm… So many things.He is the living example of one of the world’s most Beautiful spirits! He showed us through living example things that we thought were traditionally impossible.Coming out from the deepest and darkest hut of society and emerging through faith, self-revolution, and self-determination into the husband Malcolm, the father Malcolm, the friend Malcolm, the leader Malcolm, the Prince Malcolm and the Great Spirit Malcolm! He awakened the somber spirit of mankind to act in its most pure and humble of forms. He infected so many with power, of whom were the downtrodden, the sunken, the weak and the miserable of society. He loved his people, kidnapped Africans living in America when nobody loved them, not even themselves. He grew to learn and firmly believe that the oppression of his Africans in the Americas was inseparable from the oppression suffered by his sisters and brothers and friends on the continent itself. This emerged into his truth that the oppression of both of these was inseparable from the oppressions suffered by all peoples in the Entire World! He said,”The only way we’ll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti… Cuba – yes Cuba too.” He spoke up for those who very little or nobody spoke up for. He educated himself and closely watched the actions of those taken by the oppressed people across the seas to gain their Independence. Everything he did was for the Liberation of his peoples, all peoples. That was his ultimate aim. And he is of Islam’s martyrs. Yes Prince Malcolm, thank you…
“It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.”-Prince Malcolm X.
Those who are dead are never gone, they are in the thickening shadow.-African Poem.
Do not suppose that those killed in the Way of God are dead. No indeed! They are alive and well provided for in the very presence of their Lord, delighting in the favour God has bestowed on them, rejoicing over those they left behind who have not yet joined them, feeling no fear and knowing no sorrow, rejoicing in blessings and favour from God and that God does not let the wage of the believers go to waste.-Qur’an.
Their Lord responds to them: ‘I will not let the deeds of any doer among you go to waste, male or female – you are both the same in that respect. Those who have left their homes or been driven out therefrom or suffered harm in My Cause and fought and were killed, I will erase their bad actions from them and admit them into Gardens with rivers flowing under them, as a reward from God. The best of all rewards is with God- Qur’an.
Malcolm, you remain our shining melanin prince. Your words remain as valid today as 100 years ago. I loved you then and I love you now.
First of all, there is a Kenyan Birth Certificate for Obama and it has been submitted as evidence to Judge David O. Carter in California, complete with an affidavit from Lucas Smith, the man who obtained it in Mombassa.
Second, there was a supporting document released yesterday (October 21, 2009) with signatures from Obama’s maternal grandmother, which clearly states “Birthplace: Kenya; Registered Honolulu. HRS 338-17.8 per Grandmother”.
http://sites.google.com/site/obamabirth/Home/obama-short-form-birth-certificate
(Scroll down and click on image of the COLB application to see it full size.)
It seems that both of his grandmothers, maternal and paternal, refused to lie on his behalf.
“Audacity of Hypocrisy” does not even begin to cover this greatest of all frauds! Barack Obama’s days in power are numbered. Hopefully he and his administration will not be able to do more harm to this nation than they already have.
Hollywood and the Mainstream Media will never recover the people’s trust after this.
Who ever posted this is a disgrace to society, you are one of the few ignorant people who still supports racism. Woe on you, hope your days living is numbered
Malcolm “was a hero and a legend” Every man and woman of sane mind must propagate his seed to the latter day,
Every race should lift itself up to the common standard of humanity. Malcolm was the king of kings to me.
Brother Malcolm truly stood for something. Obama is a disgrace, not strong enough of character to have real convictions.