GUEST COMMENTARY: BY GODFREY ENEAS
NASSAU, Bahamas, January 18, 2021 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day should not only be perceived as a US holiday because it has meaning to all of us in the African Diaspora as it is another link to progress the African has made in the Americas. The African has been in the Americas, specifically the Caribbean as slaves, since 1501. Nine years after Columbus landed in The Bahamas as the first European landfall in the then New World, Europeans were engaged in the trafficking of Africans from the African continent to the Americas via the Middle Passage. Dr King is not only an American hero, but he has become a global figure transcending race, nationality and creed.
Most people have heard Dr. King’s voice but most of them have never seen him in the flesh. I have had the opportunity to experience both simultaneously. The first time I saw Dr King was in Montgomery, Alabama in March 1965 at the end of the Selma to Montgomery March. It was a five-day, 54-mile trek comprising the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Dr King was the keynote speaker at the rally celebrating with the thousands of Freedom Fighters the campaign for voting rights with these words:
“There never was a moment in American history more honourable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.”
The second and final time was at my alma mater Tuskegee Institute (now University), where he was the Commencement Speaker at my graduation in May of 1965.On this occasion his address was electrifying; however, I have contacted several sources, including Tuskegee and the King Centre, for a copy of this address but without success. For me his lofty words are lost to me. As a 21-year-old graduate, one recognized that Dr King was a pioneering force in articulating the demands for racial equality for the African-American. At the time I was unaware of the role he played in the march to Majority Rule in The Bahamas and the stimulus his message provided to the Independence Movement in the Caribbean. His philosophy of non-violence resonated around the world.
Dr King stressed the need to eradicate poverty, which today is an issue that impacts mankind, as the United Nations has identified it as one of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, of which it is number one. In a 1967 interview on NBC, Dr King stated that integrating a lunch counter, a school or a neighbourhood was a lot easier than eliminating poverty which still confronted the Negro in 1967 and is still prevalent today in the Black community some 54 years after Dr. King’s 1967 remarks.
One of the primary reflectors of inequality is poverty which has haunted the African throughout his existence in the Americas, whether in the US, the Caribbean, Brazil and, yes, even in the metropole which gained its wealth from slave labour provided by Africans.
Dr. Eric Williams, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, startled the academic world in 1944 with the publication of his book, Capitalism and Slavery, which noted that slavery helped to finance Europe’s Industrial Revolution. Dr Williams’ ground-breaking work provided the foundation for studies on colonialism and economic development.
When one distills Dr. King’s legacy, there is a global or universal connectivity to the struggle for equality of the African in the Americas and, by extension, his presence in the metropole — i.e. France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and England — all slave trading nations. Hence, this is the reason that the Black Lives Matter Movement was relevant in those countries.
The poverty in the Caribbean and Africa is rooted in slavery and colonialism. In America, the African is a victim of slavery, Jim Crowism and segregation. It is this combination of elements that spawned the inequality Black people face. Martin Luther King Jr Day is important to Black people everywhere.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Godfrey Eneas is a Bahamian Agricultural Economist who served as Director of Agriculture, President of The Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute(BAMSI) and Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He has authored two books, Agriculture In The Bahamas: Its Historical Development(1492-2012) and the New Caribbean: A Region In Transition. He is also a regular contributor to The Bahama Journal Newspaper and Radio and Television Programmes on Jones Communications.)
