This
is the libation Wanda Sabir shared at the Monumental Reckoning opening ceremonies,
June 18, 2021. Watch the libation at deYoung Museum@Instagram (All photos James Watkins, SF REC and Parks.)
Dana King, artist, created 350 African Ancestors, to surround the plinth in the Concourse at Golden Gate Park. It is opposite the Spreckels Temple of Music where Ben Davis, Illuminate, hopes to get permission from the SF Historic Sites Commission (7/21) to add the words: Lift Ev'ry Voice to its stage.
Monumental Reckoning considers the recent removal of public art depicting historic villains like Francis Scott Keys (Juneteenth 2020) who by its very presence condone the continuation of policies and practices that deny Black people access to true democracy and with it, freedom.
On Friday, June 18, 5 p.m., the program opened with a wonderful musical tribute by Warmth of Other Suns led by Martin Luther McCoy. Queen Rhodessa Jones, Co-Artistic Director, Cultural Odyssey, was emcee. Tongo Eisen Martin, SF Poet Laureate shared a poem; Mayor London Breed gave a few remarks which included stories of her strong grandmother who was a sharecropper in Texas, decided (like many other African Americans) to leave that life for a better life in the north. She settled in San Francisco.
Mayor Breed gave the City of SF employees the day off to acknowledge and honor Freedom Day, the newest federal commemoration and now a City of San Francisco holiday.
Mayor Willie Brown arrived too late to speak, but he was front and center at the libation ceremony which followed the procession.
Dana King, sculptor, acknowledged the elders and gave the history of Monumental Reckoning. She told the story of her research and desire to bring these 350 Ancestors to hold space for freedom and liberty where injustice was elevated for too many years.
I call her the Ancestor Lady. For those who know her work -- King is an alchemist who breathes life into bronze or any medium she choses to shine or allow light to pass. Aṣe.
The 350 Ancestors represent, King said, the Angolan ancestors taken from home August 1619 on a Spanish ship, then twice stolen by English pirates in the Gulf of Mexico where 10-20 ended up in the English colony where they were traded for provisions at Old Ft. Comfort, which is now known as Ft. Monroe National Monument in Hampton, VA.
King hits the singing bowl 4 times for the 400 years of African history and then began to sing, the Hon. James Weldon Johnson's hymn Lift Ev'ry Voice. The lyric was pick up by all present who began to line up behind the drummers. Heart and Soul Center of Light and Glide Church choirs participated.
Led by Mar Stevens, all the drummers wore ancestor pigment on their faces as they marched. The women looked both regal and fierce as we all sang ourselves closer and closer to the plinth where the ancestors awaited us.
Dressed in white, the "official processioners" invited other African descendants along this Sankofa journey in Golden Gate Park to join us while others in the audience stood in respect for the solemn funeral march.
It is one thing to think 10 million, it is another to see 350 ancestors and imagine that number multipled. It is a lot of people, a lot of Black people.
An altar with tulips, candles, water and food was in place. It was in front of the altar that Rev. Andriette Earl, King's pastor, Heart and Soul Center of Light, led us in prayer. It was a beautiful invocation and opening of the way.
I wrote two libations and then combined them-- long story. I tried to highlight the lives of Native San Franciscans, knowing that the communities in San Francisco and the East Bay were tighter knit then than now and knew each other well, so I also mentioned prominent citizens on both sides of the bay, especially those born in the early 20th century whose grandparents were enslaved.
The Libation:
We remember
Aṣe
Memory is important
We remember because greatness is in our genes Black people.
Aṣe
We remember because if we forget who we come from no one will remind us
Aṣe
These 350 ancestors connect us to our people from across the lands--
across the waters . . . 350 spilled into 10 million ancestors. Even if it is 3
million, that’s still a lot of African people! Who does this to another human
being for profit?
In the California Constitution, Article 1, Sec.6 Slavery is still legal. Support
the bill to remove “slavery” from our constitution Nov. 2022. SF Board of Supervisors voted in Feb. this year to support this
Assembly Constitution Amendment-3.
Aṣe
We are American
Aṣe
We are also African
Aṣe
Claim the whole continent
Aṣe
You belong here too
Aṣe
We are the people
Claim the preamble
Demand our human rights
All of them
I see you
I see all of you
I value what I see
I value what I don't see
See me
Touch yourselves
Say
I am
Here
Aṣe
Claim it
Aṣe
You belong.
Stamp your feet
Occupy this body
Claim this space
Open your heart
Be bigger
Be more awesome
Be expansive
Claim your legacy
Our ancestors earned it
The inheritance is ours
Aṣe
"Just do it" is not a slogan
This is your country.
Aṣe
Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey Aṣe
Called us a mighty people
You can accomplish what you will he said
Aṣe
We are people of the sun
Aṣe
We walk with light
The wick is our hearts
Lit with love
Aṣe
Hug yourselves
Say
I love you to yourselves
Aṣe
We are our ancestors dreams realized
Aṣe
Black people need a pep talk
Water clears our thinking
Aṣe
We drink water
We are water
Liquid people
Aṣe
This prayer
This libation is for you
Aṣe
Call your people to come stand with you now
We need our ancestors to stand with us.
Call them
I call the warriors to join us
Be fearless
Mother Father God's got you
Aṣe
Your higher power
The energy that cannot be destroyed
Has us all
This is an ancient story
Aṣe
We remember greatness
As we recall the great loss or Maafa
Aṣe
There is so much. . .
Words are inadequate
Aṣe
Be still mind
Remember
Memory lives in the blood
Sojourner Truth asked Ain’t Black Women, Wom(b)(en) too
Aṣe
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, "Isis Papers: Keys to the Colors";
Aṣe
We call Freedom fighter
Mary Ellen Pleasant (Aug.
19, 1817-Jan. 4, 1904), abolitionist, freedom fighter, businesswoman,
entrepreneur, millionaire. (San Francisco civic leader and entrepreneur, is
known as the Mother of
California’s early Civil Rights Movement. She was a conductor of the Underground Railroad and she financially
supported John Brown, 1857-59 (http://mepleasant.com/story.html).
Aṣe
Delilah Beasley, newspaper
woman, published a paper Jan 1 1919 called Slavery in CA
We pour libations for the 350 Buffalo
soldiers buried at the Presidio who fought for this nation and
established the National Park Services
Aṣe
James Weldon Johnson, Esq., who would have been 150 June 17, reminds us to Lift
our voices. . . to speak up and speak out-- Black people, to not silence
ourselves or be silenced
Lift Ev’ry Voice and sing until earth and heaven ring with the sounds of chains
breaking, ceilings cracking and freedom rolling down Mt. Tamalpais and
Mt. San Bruno
Aṣe
A libation is a prayer
Libations acknowledge the energy that cannot be destroyed
Libations are the filaments that tie (link) our lives to the great love that
holds all we see and all we can no longer see
We are because they were
They live in us
We call honored ancestors names
We call their position if we do not know their names: elder sister, great aunt.
. .
The womb that held the womb
The hand that held great grandfather's hand
The shoulders standing next to the shoulders that surround us now
The "I am" that resonates in our throats with each lifted voice
I am because you were – Ancestors.
Ancestors live in us
Say it: “they live in us”
Those 350 ancestors live in us collectively
Our ancestors live in us specifically
We honor them
We respect them
We acknowledge their courage and we are encouraged
They live in us
We say Aṣe
We say amen
We say hallelujah
We pour with gratitude
We will start with the names of public servants
Then affinity ancestors
And end with personal ancestors
This is a monumental reckoning -- the list is long. . . longer than tonight can
hold. . . this weekend or the two years these ancestors will mark in San
Francisco with their presence, but it is a start and for this beginning, this
public acknowledgement of the political, economic and moral sins of California
legislators and white citizens on its African residents -- we say Aṣe.
It is okay to feel sorrow
This is not a celebration it is a commemoration.
Black people die and not only are there no grave markers, not only are there no
ceremonies-- we are disappeared as if we never existed.
This libation is the long awaited acknowledgement that we were and we still are
here:
Aṣe!
Our ancestors live in us
Their presence encourages us, it strengthens us
Our ancestors live because they loved and continue love us.
Love never dies. We pour libations with water. Water has no enemies.
We pour libations for the 350 ancestors who were taken by the Spanish slave
ship San Juan Bautista which was captured by English pirate ships the White Lion and the Treasurer in August
1619 along the coast of Veracruz, Mexico. The 20-30 Angola captives were then
brought to King James Colony in Virginia @ Point Comfort (now Ft. Monroe
National Monument) and traded for provisions thus starting the English trade in
human flesh.
However, earlier in 1535, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés used 300 enslaved
Pan Africans to colonize Baja, California. The west coast is pivotal
in the story of captured and enslaved African bodies.
We pour libations for these African lives represented by the Ancestors
surrounding the plinth in front of us
Say Aṣe
Say: they live in us
Say: Aṣe
Say: they live in us
Say: Aṣe
Say: they live in us
Aṣe
She lives in us
[Bridget “Biddy” Mason (Aug.
15, 1818-Jan. 15, 1891) walked with a caravan from Mississippi to Utah to
Southern California. The
African-American nurse and a Californian real estate entrepreneur and
philanthropist founded of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los
Angeles, California
(https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mason-bridget-biddy-1818-1891/).]
Colonel Allen Allensworth, April
7, 1842, Louisville, KY- September 14, 1914, Monrovia, CA, who with educator William
Payne, former miner, John W. Palmer, minister William H. Peck, and Harry A. Mitchell, a real estate agent, founded the first and only independent
township in California governed in 1908 by formerly enslaved African Americans.
Aṣe
William Alexander Leidesdorff 1810-1848) “was a
social, economic and political force in pre-gold rush San Francisco, California with a number of “firsts” credited to his name. When he was named the U.S. Vice Consul to Mexico in 1845, he became the
nation’s first African American diplomat. He was elected to San
Francisco’s first city council and its first school board in 1847. He
built the first hotel, the first shipping warehouse, he operated the first
steamboat on San Francisco Bay, and he laid out the first horse race track in
California.”
We pour libations for the ancestors who moved west from the south in what is
called the Great Migration, ancestors who built prosperous, thriving
communities
Aṣe
Dr. Carlton Goodlett, founder and publisher, The Sun Reporter
Aṣe
[Dr. David Blackwell, 1st African American appointed full
professor at UCB (1954)]
Aṣe
CL Dellums, VP Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
Ron Dellums, Congressman, Oakland Mayor
Aṣe
Enola D. Maxwell (1919-2003)
Executive Director of the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House (PHNH). In 1971, she
not only became the first black director, but also the first African American
to be appointed to any position in the PHNH.
Aṣe
Barbara Christian, 1st AA woman tenured at UCB (1978)
Aṣe
Doris Ward (1932-2018)
trustee for the San Francisco Community College District. Ward also took on
several more positions including County
Supervisor in 1979, President
of the Board of Supervisors in 1990, and served as the San Francisco County Assessor-Recorder in
1996. While on the Board of
Supervisors she wrote rent control legislation, worked for better oversight for
police and pushed for more affordable housing. In 2000, she also
became a delegate for the Democratic National Convention as a representative
for California before she retired in 2006.
Aṣe
Vernon Alley, musician, who served on the SF Human Rights
Commission and later the SF Arts Commission. In 1993, Vernon Alley
was voted into the San Francisco Prep Hall of Fame. In 2002, he received the presidential medal
from San Francisco State University, where he graduated in 1940 and
continued to perform at alumni events. Vernon continued to be a devout public
servant, joining the San Francisco Arts Commission. The city of San Francisco commemorated his
influence by naming an alley between two buildings on Brannan Street “Vernon
Alley.” Alley’s musical prowess was acknowledged by the Human
Rights Commission, who recruited him not only to be a member, but to also serve
as Musical Director for “Evolution of Blues.” As a member of the Human Rights
Commission, Alley passionately fought for civil liberties and advocated against
police discrimination.
Aṣe
His brother, Edward Henry Alley, Jr., (1910-2005) known as Eddie Alley, was one of the Fillmore’s leading big band
drummers for decades. Alongside his brother, Vernon Alley, who was an
equally celebrated bassist, Eddie Alley’s musical prowess helped break barriers
between white and black audiences. Alley is one of the many change makers
on the walls of the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center because of his great
impact on the Fillmore community in San Francisco.
Aṣe
Dr. William Byron Rumford wrote The California Fair Housing Act of 1963,
better known as the Rumford Act (AB
1240), while a CA Assemblyman. It was one of the most significant and sweeping
laws protecting the rights of blacks and other people of color to purchase
housing without being subjected to discrimination during the post-World War II period.
It was enacted in in response to weaknesses in earlier fair housing legislation
in California and evolved from a larger civil rights struggle
that emerged over the movement to create a permanent Fair Employment Practices
Commission (FEPC) at the state level between 1946 and 1959.
Aṣe
Frances Albrier, President, National Council of
Negro Women, SF Chapter which organized Black voters (1956-57). There is a
Community Center in South Berkeley named after her. Her daughter Anita Black, a
retired nurse, is 98 years old now. Ms. Albrier was the granddaughter of
formerly enslaved people and moved to Berkeley, California, from Alabama in
1920, beginning nearly six decades of community activism while working as a
nurse, maid and union organizer.
As
early as 1939, Albrier campaigned as the first African American candidate for
Berkeley’s City Council. By 1940, she had formed the Citizens Employment
Council to fight for jobs and fair employment practices for the city’s black
community. After being denied work at the Kaiser Shipyards during World War II,
Albrier fought for and won a job as the first black woman welder in the
company’s Richmond shipyards. Her victory paved the way for thousands of
African American and women workers to secure better-paying jobs in the Bay
Area’s booming shipyard industry.
Albrier would go on to integrate Berkeley’s League of Women Voters and the Red
Cross, teaching first aid classes to local youth for many years. During the
1950s, she created the first Negro History Week displays to be shown in an
Oakland department store window. A champion of voter rights, Albrier was a
prominent member of the National Council of Negro Women and the Citizenship
Education Project. In her later life, Albrier became a peace and disarmament
activist and a pioneer in fighting for the rights of senior citizens and people
with disabilities.
Maudelle Shirek (June
18, 1911 – April 11, 2013)[1] was an activist, former Vice Mayor and eight-term
City Council member in Berkeley, California. Shirek was born in Jefferson,
Arkansas[2] and grew up on a farm, the
granddaughter of slaves. Today is
her 100th birthday. She moved to Berkeley in the 1940s
and immediately gained a reputation for her dedication to civil rights issues.
She married Brownlee Shirek and worked as office manager for the Co-op Credit
Union.[3]
She was active in the anti-war movement, was a staunch union supporter, founded two Berkeley senior centers, championed HIV/AIDS awareness, and helped organize the Free Mandela movement. She was
one of the first elected officials in the United States to advocate for a needle exchange program.[4]
Thomas Berkeley, Oakland Post
Jerri Lange, maverick newswoman
[Carlotta Campbell, journalist, college professor]
Brother Cleophas Williams (June 12,
1923-June 24, 2016), first Black President of the International Longshoremen
and Workers Union, Local 10, SF. He served 4 terms.
Dr. Diane C. Howell, Black Business woman and educator; Black Expo founder
Habeebah Rahman, teacher, Sis. Clara Mohammed School
Elretha and Elmer Rashid, founding
members Temple then Mosque 26 in SF
Dhameerah Ahmad, Black Panther Party
Member, educator, revolutionary; Brother Mark Simon, Aṣe, Lateefah Simon’s
father (and aunt)
Hon. Richard Brown, Black Panther,
Jurist
Kiilu Nyasha, revolutionary journalist
@Freedom is a Constant Struggle
Reginald Major, writer, activist. “The
Panther is a Black Cat” (devorah major’s father)
Dr. Intisar Sharif, champion for early
childhood education
Dr. Julia Hare, pioneering Black
Psychologist
Ave Marie Montague, founder, SF
Black Film Festival, publicist
Kali O’Rey, SF Black Film
Festival director, graphic designer and artist (Juneteenth Film Festival. Since
he died unexpectedly in August 2020, his children, Cree, 30, and Kali Jr., 26,
have succeeded him and are presenting SFBFF this weekend.
Dr. Ruth Waddy, Pioneering Black
Artist. . . CA Arts Commissioner. She is the mother of Sister Maryom Ana
Al Wadi, San Francisco State University
(SFSU) pioneer in the establishment of the College of Ethnic Studies
(1966-1968)
Ray Taliaferro, maverick
journalist (KGO); civil rights activist, co-founder of the National Black
Journalism Association; President, SF NAACP; member, SF Art Commission;
musician
We call the names of the yet to be born.
Aṣe
We call the names of those who left here too soon. Their crime Black skin
My nephews: Carlton Lee Gatlain, killed at 17, in SF, no suspects
Obatiye Edwards, killed at 17, Oakland Policeman
Matthew "Peanut" Johnson was
the 16-year-old whose murder by SFPD set off the 1966 Hunters Point Uprising.
James Baldwin, author of “The
Fire Next Time,” came to Hunter’s Point to talk to the youth and community
leaders in 1966.
Mario Woods, 26, was in a mental
crisis holding a small knife when SFPD officers surrounded him and murdered him
firing squad-style in 2015 on Third Street.
Dr. Martin Luther King who marched for civil rights in San Francisco
Aṣe
El Hajj Malik El Shabazz or Malcolm X. Sister Betty Shabazz.
Aṣe
Kwame Ture or Stokely Carmichael
Aṣe
Dr. Huey P. Newton
Aṣe
Afeni Shakur
Tupac Amaru Shakur (6/16/1971—he would have been 50)
Aṣe
Nia Wilson (November 12,
1999 -
July 22, 2018)
Aṣe
Bonnie Pointer (June 9, 2020)
Aṣe
Ruth Williams, the mother of seven sons, taught
drama for many years at the Bayview Opera House to the children of Bayview
Hunters Point, including Danny Glover. The Opera House was at one point renamed
for her but later the honor was diminished so that now, only the theater inside
the opera house bears her name.
Aṣe
Paul Mooney, Black Panther of comedy, grew up in the East Bay and would bring
some of his best work home every year to the Black Rep in Berkeley and
Geoffrey's in Oakland and other Black-owned venues.
Aṣe
Yolanda Jones who headed the one
Black-owned construction company that has survived the lockout of Blacks from
construction during the last two decades, and her company continues to hire
workers from the neighborhood.
Earl Sanders, first Black SFPD chief, abhorred
the vulnerability of Black men to police racism and tried to change the culture
inside SFPD.
Rochelle Metcalf, a "woman about town"
whose newspaper columns covered the Black community, wrote a column for decades
in the Sun Reporter called I Heard That and later moved to the Bay View, where
her column was called Third Street Stroll.
Kenneth Harding, a 19-year-old who ran from
police when they demanded proof he'd paid his $2 Muni fare, was murdered, shot
in the back of his head, as he ran through Mendell Plaza at the main Bayview
Hunters Point intersection of Third and Palou and died in a pool of his own
blood with police guns pointed at both him and the crowd that begged to comfort
him.
Dr. Caesar Churchwell, a popular dentist, served as vice chair of the San Francisco African
American Chamber of Commerce and the driving force behind a travel boycott
called by the Chamber. African American business and civic
organization leaders around the country pledged not to hold their conventions
or other events in San Francisco until the City addressed the economic
exclusion of Black San Franciscans.
Ronnie Goodman was an artist who spent many years in prison and many more living on the
streets of San Francisco. In the early '90s, he drew a comic strip called J-Cat
and Bootzilla that he would mail twice a month from San Quentin to the SF Bay
View for inclusion in every paper, His art, when not about prison,
mostly focused on the hard lives of unhoused people. He also painted huge
outdoor murals that inspire the city.
Marie Harrison, mother, grandmother, writer and organizer, who would sit up all night with her grandson
as his nose bled and bled, figured the smoke pouring out of the largest and
oldest PG&E plant at the foot of the Hunters Point Hill was the
cause. She spent the rest of her life
organizing the community to shut it down and, once that was accomplished, fight against all
the environmental racism that plagues the community. She died of a breathing
problem caused by the pollution.
Aṣe to Marie Harrison.
Eugene E. White's love
of painting began in his childhood in Ozan, Arkansas, and scenes of everyday
life in the rural South were some of his lifelong favorite themes. Coming
to San Francisco in 1958, he opened the City's first Black-owned art gallery in
1962. He painted for the people, mainly in public spaces -- his "Juneteenth" mural at Ella
Hill Hutch Community Center is particularly beloved. A bench in Buchanan Mall Park dedicated to
him is a favorite place for his widow, Lynnette White, to give history lessons
to local young people. July 11, is Eugene E. White Day in the City of SF.
We
pour libations for the many people dying daily on the streets of this great
city and this great nation-- Aṣe. They live in us
Sister Beatrice X, Love Not Blood will
call names of other Black people who were killed by police
We say Aṣe
They live in us
Now is your time to call your names of your honored ancestors. Please call your
names—of your honored ancestors
Aṣe
They live in us
We pour libations for the yet to be born as we acknowledge the realms above (Aṣe)
Below (Aṣe)
Within (Aṣe)
Juneteenth is freedom day
We pour libations for James Weldon Johnson, whose birthday was yesterday, 6/17.
He would have been 150 years.
“Lift Ev'ry Voice” reminds us: the dead are not dead. Aṣe. Our honored
ancestors live in us. Aṣe. As long as we call their names, as long as we
continue the work of African liberation, as long as we lift their voices they
live.
Aṣe Aṣe. Aṣe. Aṣe-o
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