Maroons w/ Haile Gerima & Akinyele Umjoa; the “Black church” w/ Torin Alexander

Africa World Now Project

[Note: Produced and aired in 2017]

For more than four centuries, the communities formed by such escaped enslaved peoples dotted the fringes of plantations in the Americas, from Brazil to southeastern United States, from Peru to the American Southwest. Known variously as quilombos, mocambos, or mambeses, these new societies ranged from tiny bands that survived less than a year to powerful states encompassing thousands of members that survived for generations and even centuries. Their descendants still form semi-independent enclaves in several parts of the hemisphere -for example, in Suriname, French Guiana, Jamaica, Colombia and Belize.

For generations, historians believed that even the most remarkable of maroon settlements in the North America did not rival the achievements of maroon communities in South and Central America as well as the Caribbean.

Nevertheless, according to a number of scholars such as Cedric Robinson, Gerald Mullin as well as Herbert Aptheker evidence of the existence of at least fifty such communities in various places and at various times, from 1672 to 1864, has been found.

Taken further back, Herbert Aptheker’s work shows us that the 1st maroon communities pre-dated Jamestown settlements by 82 years. They were slave insurrectionists from abortive Spanish colonizing efforts in North and South Carolina.

With this……We will listen to part of a discussion between famed independent filmmaker, activist, scholar Haile Gerima and Dr. Akinyele Umjoa where they discussed maroons and Dr. Umjoa’s book, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement…

Haile Gerima is an independent filmmaker and professor of film at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Ethiopia, Gerima immigrated to the United States in 1967. After the award-winning Ashes & Embers (1982) and the documentaries Wilmington 10—U.S.A 10,000 (1978) and After Winter: Sterling Brown (1985), Gerima filmed his epic, Sankofa (1993).

Gerima continues to distribute and promote his own films, including his most recent, Teza, which won the Jury and Best Screenplay awards at the Venice Film Festival in 2008. He also lectures and conducts workshops in alternative screenwriting and directing both within the U.S. and internationally.

Dr. Akinyele Umjoa is a scholar-activist, who currently serves as the Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University (GSU). Dr. Umoja’s writing has been featured in scholarly publications such as The Journal of Black Studies, Black Scholar, Radical History Review and Socialism and Democracy. And a number of edited volumes. He is also author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.

We then turn our attention to the theory and practice of the Black church.

I sat down with Dr. Torin Alexander, where we explored the deep epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the black church. Paying attention to the differentiation of the Black church as an institutional-physical space and incubator of liberatory practice.

Dr. Alexander is a scholar of African American religion and religious experience. His interdisciplinary research and teaching are influenced by phenomenology, critical theories on race and gender, and post-colonial/post-structuralist studies.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

Enjoy the program….