BAMBOO MAGIC BLINDS

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Before the steamer left the Charleston wharf a number of Republican negroes gathered and they noisily demanded that they be permitted to take passage and threateningly declared that they wanted a chance to clean out those Democrats.


THESE BEGINNING-T0-END, SEQUENCED IMAGES ARE FROM THE LINKED TO VIDEO FOLLOWING THIS SCRIPT. THE SCRIPT'S TEXT IS COMPLETE AND IS BROKEN DOWN TO MATCH TO THE IMAGE SHOWN WITH IT DURING THE VIDEO. - JS



"Act in the Living Present - The Life of Martin Robison Delany" - by Jim Surkamp


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MD: “I leave you here and journey on and if I never more return, farewell”
NARRATOR: Martin Delany finally gave up on America.

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His expulsion with two others from Harvard Medical School just because of skin color convinced him that the power of reason and merit alone did not in fact determine the country’s esteemed leaders. So, scraping just a few hundred dollars,

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he rented a crew and ship back to Africa, where his grandfather Shango had returned several generations before.

MRD.vid1.4 SHIP

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His critics including Frederick Douglass, were legion. "You must stay here and fight for freedom," they told him.

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He certainly reflected on his already long life:

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the long road as one of five children in a freed family in Charles Town Virginia;


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and after that fleeing because they illegally learned how to read, followed by the many years as a physician’s assistant in Pittsburgh,

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and then editing two influential newspapers.


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Most of all he remembered as he perhaps gazed at the sperm whales that
wandered into those southern latitudes . . . Of the day he was walking

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the road to Pittsburgh in 1829 deciding - his head filled with
books and images of pharoahs and Africa - of making this pilgrimage in reverse back to Africa.

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“Land Ho!"

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NARRATOR: “The arrival of Martin Robison Delany in Liberia is an era in the history of African emigration, an event doubtless that will long be remembered by hundreds of thousands of Africa’s exiled children.


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Persons from all parts of the country came to Monrovia to see this great man.”

People cheering:
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Ridiculed and ignored in America for speaking -

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embraced by the thousands here for speaking - how strange.

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MD: “The regeneration of the African race can only be effected by its own efforts, the efforts of its own self and whatever aid may come from other sources; and it must, in this venture succeed, as God leads the movement and His hand guides the way.”


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“Face thine accusers, scorn the rack and rod and, if thou hast truth to utter,

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speak and leave the rest to God."

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But we pushed on to Abeokuta.


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Africa taught Martin Delany its mysteries.
MD: “The principle markets to see all the wonders

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is in the evening. As the shades of evening deepen,

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every woman lights her little lamp and, to the distant

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observer, presents the beautiful appearance of innumerable stars.”

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“But in the entire Aku country one is struck by the beautiful country which continually spreads out in every direction.”

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Africa also taught him its nightmares. . .
I read August 13th in the West African Herald:

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“King Dahomey is about to make the great Custom in honor of the late King Gezo.

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Determined to surpass all former monarchs, a great pit has been dug which is to

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contain human blood enough to float a canoe. Two thousand persons will be sacrificed on this occasion.

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The king has sent his army to make some excursions at the expense of some weaker tribes. The younger people will be sold into slavery. The older persons will be killed At the Grand Custom.”

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MD: “Whole villages are taken.”

“Farewell, farewell my loving friends, farewell. . .”

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The jasmine smells of Africa are tonight less fragrant than my scented memory of soft honey-suckled summer’s night breezes in Virginia long ago, and awaking to the mockingbird.

{MRD.5:37} END PART 1 TO BLACK

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NARRATOR: On April 10th, 1860 at Lagos, Martin Delany and Robert Campbell

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boarded ship for London and Birmingham

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to seek backers for a plan to build freedman’s cotton farms in the Niger
Valley.

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They would undersell, at the gold price of fourteen cents a pound, all the slave wrought cotton from the plantations back home.


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To make bales of cotton rot on the docks of Charleston and New Orleans as it were.


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MD: When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, my children’s age – I worked hours and hours inscribing with a fine needle the Lord Prayer –

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all of it – on the face of an English six

We have been renovating our house since before Christmas (thats why I haven't been posting many photos lately). Its been really hard and I'm hoping to get it finished before Easter (not the catholic easter this weekend but the Orthodox Easter next month).

Anyway here are some shots of me (well half of me) looking at things around the house.