A Passion to Understand

Saturday, 30 January 2021

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre by Carole Boston Weatherford and Floyd Cooper | Book Review

Greenwood District, Tulsa, Oklahoma was once home to a thriving African American community. On May 31st and June 1st 1921, a mob of armed white Tulsans attacked the community, killing as many as 300 African Americans and displacing 8,000 more. 2021 will mark the 100th anniversary of what became known as the Tulsa Race Massacre, the history of which was suppressed for seventy-five years.

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre is a picture book by author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper. It's short at 32 pages but aims to help young readers understand these terrible events so that "we can move toward a better future for all". It's aimed at the 8-12 years age group.

Reading Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre was physically painful. In the beginning, the book describes the thriving community of Greenwood District and the high street that became known as the "Black Wall Street". The descriptions of culture, fashion and community reminded me so much of what I've read about Sophiatown and District Six in South Africa, communities with vibrant cultures that were similarly razed to the ground.

Weatherford has done a fine job of simplifying the events for young readers, but presenting sufficient detail to draw older readers into healthy debate and discussion. It would be a good platform to stimulate further research and self-study too. The author's and illustrator's notes were particularly interesting, detailing their personal reasons for being involved in this work. Of particular note is the author's comment that the event was not even taught in Oklahoma schools until the twenty-first century.

The illustrations by Floyd Cooper are exquisite, showcasing the fashions and vibrancy of Greenwood District, and ultimately the violence and devastation. The illustrations do a great job of bringing the events and people to life, ensuring that the reader relates to them and to the injustice of the events.

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre is published by Carolrhoda Books, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group

I would wholeheartedly recommend this book and am pleased to note that it's being released in both the US and UK (and presumably around the world).

An advance, electronic copy of this book was provided by Netgalley for the purposes of this review.

Book Review: West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line by Lynn Hudson ★★★★☆

I know very little about American civil rights history from the late 19th to early 20th century. This is not surprising; my focus has primarily been on Africa (especially South Africa) and on genocides in the 20th century. It has been interesting to learn that anti-miscegenation laws and job-colour bars weren't the invention of Apartheid South Africa but originated in North America. Specifically, a set of so-called Jim Crow laws emerged in America from about 1880 that sought to enforce racial segregation and these laws would be a highly influential on laws adopted by South Africa.

In West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line, Lynn M Hudson focuses on the African Americans who moved to California to escape Jim Crow, expecting freedom and the benefits of full citizenship but instead realising that Jim Crow and racial segregation were all too present in the west.

This is not simply a recounting of the racism, fear-mongering and obsession with eugenics that featured so prominently in white society for the century after the Reconstruction Era (although these are mentioned in some detail throughout the book). West of Jim Crow is about the tireless efforts of Black Americans to assert their citizen rights, establish respectability, secure equal opportunities and protect their men and women from the scourge of lynching and the rise of the KKK.

It is also notably about the role of Black women, their agency and the significant roles they took in journalism, activism and other roles to secure their rights both as women and as human beings. As Lynn M Hudson remarks on many occasions, just because there is little in the written records about Black women's struggles for freedom and activism, does not mean there wasn't significant agency and activism present.

West of Jim Crow is structured around six chapters, each concentrating on a specific event in Californian history:

Reconstruction: the initial gains and setbacks in the period following the Civil War, with the rise of Jim Crow and associated Jim Crow entertainments and minstrelsy
The Panama Pacific International Exposition: a look at the systematic erasure of civil rights gains, the emergence of the NAACP, the popularity of Birth of a Nation and the rise of eugenics
The Rise and Fall of Allensworth: the town founded by and for African Americans, doomed to fail because of misrepresentation, geographical and environmental issues
On Lynching: an account of the events that divided a country into those who supported lynching and those who were appalled by it; eerily prescient of Trump, tiki-torch marches and the gun lobby
On the Ku Klux Klan: fighting arson and intimidation while the KKK infiltrated law enforcement and local government in California
The Fight to Desegregate Pasadena's Municipal Swimming Pools: how activists began to use the damages of Jim Crow to argue for civil rights, winning the Pasadena pool case and later the Brown v Board of Education case

West of Jim Crow covers an incredible wealth of information and provides an interesting, readable account of African American history in California. Initially I felt a bit exhausted by the repetitive, circular mode of writing, featuring titbits and breadcrumbs followed by elaboration and exposition. I've noticed that this form of writing is favoured by many historians and while it can be taxing to read, the truth is it is preferable to a dry, linear account and also aids significantly in the reader's retention and comprehension of historical information.

Despite this small reservation, I give West of Jim Crow an excellent four out of five stars and highly recommend to those wishing to know about this particular area of Black history.

★★★★☆

West of Jim Crow: The Fight Against California's Color Line is available to purchase from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (disclosure: affiliate links. I will earn a small amount if you purchase using these links, at no additional cost to you).

My thanks to University of Illinois Press and Netgalley for advance, electronic copy of this book.

Alfred Birney’s ‘The Interpreter from Java’ - Blog Tour and Guest Post

I’ve previously covered the suppressed history of Dutch atrocities in post-war Indonesia on this blog in 2012 and I was very interested to hear about Alfred Birney’s novel about a man named Alan Nolan who discovers his father’s memoirs about the atrocities he committed in the Dutch East Indies during the war with Japan – his life as an assassin, the murder of Indonesians in the service of the Dutch and his escape to the Netherlands to avoid execution. Today I’m taking part in the blog tour for the English-language release of The Interpreter from Java and thank Alfred Birney for the guest post below.

Colonial Shame by Alfred Birney

The Netherlands’ colonial past has been resurfacing regularly in the national media since 2016, spurred on in part by the success of my novel The Interpreter from Java. Slavery has also become a staple of public debate, though activists often face a barrage of criticism for asking the Dutch to take a broader look at their own history.

Colonial history has never been top of mind in the Netherlands, but things took a dramatic turn for the worse with the introduction of a new education system in the 1970s: secondary school students were allowed to pick and choose much of their own curriculum and history lost its status as a compulsory subject. And so we set about producing entire generations with the historical awareness of your average mollusc. Grist to the mill of a nation that was all too eager to sweep its own colonial history aside while pointing the finger at Germany, a country more inclined to shoulder the burden of guilt and apologise for its wartime atrocities. That same finger was pointed at Japan for having the temerity to invade the Dutch East Indies. But what about the troops – over 100,000 of them – dispatched from the Netherlands to reassert Dutch colonial rule after the war by mowing down Indonesian freedom fighters? No British-style Round Table Conferences preceded Indonesia’s independence.

Unsurprisingly, the Dutch were happy to join in the worldwide protests against the US bombing of Vietnam. If there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s railing against abuses that occur far from our own little patch of mud. But many Americans now look back with a profound sense of what was done in their name. Countless movies and songs about that wretched Asian war have seen the light of day. A ten-part series on the Vietnam War, complete with blunders and atrocities, is now available on Netflix. And what have Dutch post-colonial sensibilities produced? Little more than small-screen adaptations of books from before 1900.

The Dutch government is spending over four million euros on an ‘independent study’ into war crimes committed during our great colonial war, a war we lost. This is a farce. Everything of note has already been recorded and filed away, nothing new will surface. These millions are earmarked for the Royal Netherlands Institute for South East Asian and Caribbean Studies, the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Netherlands Institute for Military History.

A study conducted by three government-funded institutes – how independent is that? The men in charge say they welcome cooperation with Indonesia, yet failed to invite a single Indonesian to their obligatory kick-off event. They are eager to talk to Indonesian eyewitnesses from the colonial war of independence, all of whom are long dead.

While the stated aim of this study is to analyse the violence on both sides, the Netherlands refuses to simply translate the work of Indonesian historians. Every effort will be made to explain Dutch violence in the broader context of post-war decolonisation, a framework of international political, administrative, judicial and military justifications. International, eh? They’ll be blaming the Allies next!

But there is hope. Truly independent researchers in the United States and Flanders are sifting through the facts and taking up their pens. Free from that peculiar mix of colonial shame and arrogance that inflicts the Dutch, they will one day rap us on the knuckles as firmly as we have done with other nations.

The Interpreter from Java is translated by David Doherty, published by Head of Zeus and available in hardcover from today.

Photo credit portrait of Alfred Birney © Eddo Hartmann

Survivors Speak: RLTM and the Role of the Media in the Tutsi Genocide

The media played a critical role in the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994. There is still debate about the nature of that role; while it is unlikely that the media played a direct role in influencing Hutus to kill, it certainly played a secondary role in inciting and prolonging the genocide.

Almost four years before the genocide began, the pro-Hutu, anti-Tutsi newspaper Kangura published the Hutu Ten Commandments which explicitly called for an end to inter-ethnic relationships and business partnerships between Tutsis and Hutus; an exclusion of Tutsis from public office, the military and education sector; and an end to so-called Hutu ‘mercy’ on Tutsis.

The Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM, translates as “Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television”) specifically targeted the younger Hutu generation, playing popular music from neighbouring countries and referring to Tutsis as ‘cockroaches’ during anti-Tutsi, pro-Hutu broadcasts. During the genocide, government forces used RTLM to promote violence, going so far as to broadcast specific instructions for carrying out the killings (including the names and whereabouts of Tutsis).

Link: ICTR ‘Media Case’: sentencing of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, Ferdinand Nahimana and Hassan Ngeze

The Hutu Ten Commandments were attributed to the editor of Kangura, Hassan Ngeze. In 2003, in a judgement pertaining to the ICTR ‘Media Case’, Ngeze was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity along with RTLM co-founder Ferdinand Nahimana and RTLM executive Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza.

Genocide Survivors' Recollections of RTLM

Link: 'Music to kill to': Rwandan genocide survivors remember RTLM (Al Jazeera, June 2020)

RTLM office Rwanda
The office from which RTLM was broadcast during the genocide against the Tutsi [Source: Kigali Wire/Flickr]

84-year-old Félicien Kabuga was a former businessman in Rwanda and was arrested in Paris, France on 16 May in relation to his role as founder and financier of both RTLM and Kangura magazine.

"[In 2011] Kabuga was charged before the ICTR with genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity, committed in Rwanda between 6 April and 17 July 1994"

- Case File: Félicien Kabuga [IRMCT.org]

Following the arrest of Kabuga, Al Jazeera have published an excellent in-depth report on the recollections of three genocide survivors about RTLM. Read the full report by Mia Swart on Al Jazeera.

Claver Irakoze

"I remember RTLM broadcasting songs conveying hatred and demonising the Tutsi. The songs would openly call for our extermination. Political slogans were translated into song and young people were mobilised into youth movements. These youth movements were key to executing the genocide"

- 'Music to kill to': Rwandan genocide survivors remember RTLM [Al Jazeera, June 2020]

Honore Gatera

"Before April 1994, RTLM sent messages about how the Hutus must protect themselves against the "snakes" and the "cockroaches", meaning the Tutsis. There were already some killings taking place. People my family knew in another region of Rwanda were killed. "

- 'Music to kill to': Rwandan genocide survivors remember RTLM [Al Jazeera, June 2020]

Beatrice Uwera

"More than 200 people in my own family had been killed. In my mother's family, there were eight siblings. Only one survived. We had to begin again from zero. . "

- 'Music to kill to': Rwandan genocide survivors remember RTLM [Al Jazeera, June 2020]

CST Research Briefing on Jack Renshaw

The news broke today that four members of banned far-right terrorist group National Action were convicted and sentenced to between 18 months and five-and-a-half years in prison. Typically, news reports dedicate very little time to what National Action represented and the crimes its members committed, focusing instead on the sensational aspects of the case.

"National Action, founded in 2013, was outlawed in 2016 after it celebrated the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox"
- National Action: 'Miss Hitler' hopeful among four jailed [BBC News]

It is vital that the public are made aware of the greater extent of this group's anti-Semitic leanings and their explicit calls for genocide and violence against Jews.

Link: CST.org.uk

CST is Community Security Trust, a charity that protects British Jews from antisemitism and related threats. In response to today's news, CST have shared their briefing on Jack Renshaw, the student activist and would-be terrorist who was imprisoned in 2019.

The briefing is comprehensive and eye opening, tracking Jack's far right activity from his membership of BNP Youth at age fifteen to his trial for planning to murder a policewoman and a Labour MP. Over sixteen pages the briefing details the violent rhetoric that permeates Britain’s far right, giving far more detail than news reports can usually dedicate.

Download the report at the CST website: 'White Jihad': Jack Renshaw's journey from a far right student to would-be terrorist