the deskrat chronicles: happy father's day ...to all my Fathers --spiritual and biological

Happy Father's Day to my father who fed , loved , raised and put up with me--especially those times when i wasn't too cool--i love you dad .

And Happy Father's Day to my spiritual father-- Malcolm X and to his spiritual father --Marcus Garvey --the Pan-African Father of us all . Peace be upon you my fathers --we love you and will continue your legacy by building the Fourth Golden Age of Mother Africa and her children . Peace .

My spiritual father .

When i was 13 there was on public tv , a special tribute to malcolm x .

the program was called "black journal" then , later the name would be changed to "tony brown's journal" . but anyway , they aired footage of old tv interviews with malcolm .

i was in the kitchen and heard a blackman speak words like no other blackman i had
ever heard before.

i ran from the kitchen to the room where the tv was to see who this man was that my
mother was watching . She explained to me who he was and when she saw how
stunned i was watching malcolm speak , i guess she saw something .

later that week she went to the book store of the community college where she was working on her nursing RN and bought me a copy of the autobiography and a copy of his speeches .

she instructed me to read the autobiography first and then the speeches . she said ,
" if there are any words you don't understand , look them up in the dictionary ."

it was a thursday evening .

i know i went to school that next day , but i don't remember anything about it or the
next three days except reading around the clock and being totally absorbed in those books .

by sunday evening , i had finished and in the process had been transformed from a negro into a black man .

i would read those books about a total of seven times --those books were food to a starving young man .

before malcolm , i was being groomed by my white teachers at school to be some disgusting "negro first " -- as in "first negro to do this ...first negro to do that ..."

"first negro to be brainwashed against himself while reading latin upside down "

reading Malcolm was almost like meeting him , he lives in me , in my thoughts and in my heart .

my father taught me to be a man , but malcolm taught me to be a black man and he is my spiritual father .

looking back now , i think my mother sensed this ,
and that malcolm could help provide for me what my own father as a young man , had
never been provided with .

through dialogues with my dad --he rapidly changed too and , became a "race man" , a union activist and in his own way a political activist and i'm am very proud of him .

i thank my late mother for this , for giving me malcolm .
i thank her also for helping my father to grow .
i thank her also for teaching me to express my thoughts in writing . and i thank her for adding to all the boxing skills that my father taught me by funding my early martial arts
explorations .

malcolm had no sons of his own , but i believe he has many spiritual sons and daughters--like the beautiful scene in the spike lee movie where nelson mandela and all the children say ,
" i am malcolm x " .

"when we started the black panther party in october 1966 we saw ourselves as continuing the work that malcolm x had begun " huey p. newton and bobby seale

Posted by diallo sekou --the deskRat chronicles on May 20, 2007 - Sunday at 9:07 AM

" UP YOU MIGHTY RACE --YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL !"

influence of marcus garvey part one