by Herb Boyd
April 23, 2024
Amsterdam News
“Whatever Happened to the Politics of Black Liberation?” Dr. William Strickland asked in the October 1975 edition of the Black Scholar. “The American political system today is a fraudulent relic, bluffing its way through everyday life,” he declared. “Only inertia, ritual, and the absence of ‘Opposition’ enable it even to maintain the pretense of functioning.”
That question and his answer are just as pertinent now as it was then. Dr. Strickland’s scholarship was impeccable, his conclusions and analysis were always timely and we will miss his invaluable contributions to our struggle for total liberation. We are still waiting for the date and cause of his transition, and whatever those facts his intellectual legacy is assured.
“William Strickland embraced the challenge of the writing of Malcolm’s life and he did so in spite of the numerous scheduling constraints placed upon a project whose release must coincide with a broadcast date. We owe him a debt of thanks for his patience, persistence, and willingness to cooperate. Bill’s perspectives helped us all on the film and book teams to understand better what it was we were trying to accomplish,” wrote Henry Hampton, Executive Producer of “Eyes on the Prize” and Malcolm X: Make it Plain.
What Hampton had to say about Dr. William Strickland provides a compelling aperture to a life dedicated to Black scholarship and its importance to American history. Word of his passing has been prominently displayed on social media platforms but we still await the specifics of his death. Meanwhile, the specifics of his life are well known and he is held in high esteem in academic and activist circles.
A native of Boston, Bill was a graduate of Boston Latin School and Harvard University. After fulfilling his military obligations as a Marine, he became active in the civil rights movement and the Black liberation struggle. His leadership skills were applied in several political and educational organizations, including serving as Executive Director of the Northern Student Movement, working for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and then as Northern Coordinator of the Party’s Congressional Challenge.
Dr. Strickland was a founding member of the OAAU (Organization of Afro-American Unity) in 1964 and 1969. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta. He was widely heralded for his research skills, writing ability, and his general commitment to accuracy and thoroughness in scholarship. These proclivities were effectively utilized as a faculty member in the Afro-American Studies department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A tireless administrator and teacher, his expertise on the life and legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois was acclaimed, and for many years he was director of the esteemed scholar’s papers, a position he held until his retirement in 2013.
The vast collection of papers are indicative of his commitments during his time at UMass and elsewhere. Included in the collection is the time he spent working with the Rev. Jesse Jackson during his presidential campaign as well as his efforts in commemorating the life of baseball immortal Jackie Robinson in 1996-97. This endeavor is highlighted on the day of my writing this tribute, April 15, as major league baseball salutes Robinson’s memory and achievements.
A good example of his scholarship and interests was published in the Black World in 1975, where his extended essay on Black intellectuals and the social scene aroused considerable attention. “Black America does not exist in a vacuum, he wrote. “Analyzing the condition of Black people in America, therefore, cannot be separated from the task of analyzing America itself. And the American condition, some 10 years before George Orwell’s prophetic 1984, is one of brooding apocalypse. Indeed, the smell of apocalypse rises, like a stench, from every corner of the land. The cities teeter on the edge of bankruptcy; the hospitals maim and kill rather than heal and cure; the schools no longer even pretend to teach; and the economy feeds, like some Bela Lugosi vampire, on the ever-shrinking income of the citizenry. Politically, the so-called ‘two-party system’ reveals itself to be little more than a second-rate Abbott and Costello comedy, while administrations past and present surface daily as skin-tight accomplices of the Mafia, the CIA, or both. Like Humpty Dumpty, the American social order is tumbling down. This breakdown in the American social order poses a particular challenge to Black intellectuals because it reveals, at the same time, a parallel breakdown of American intellectual life.
“Most American intellectuals,” he continued, “having dedicated their lives and their careers to huckstering for ‘the greatest system the world has ever known,’ are totally unprepared to admit the meaning of the deep and searing faults which now bubble up in scandal after scandal from the nation’s democratic’ depths. So, at precisely the moment when new social answers are required, American intellectuals, because of their blood-knot commitment to already failed political, economic, and cultural systems, and their inability to conceive of structures, forms, modes of thought and action outside of those. systems are unable even to pose the proper questions. They are trapped in the fabrications of yesteryear, enmeshed in a time which shall not come again. Black intellectuals, on the other hand, have a different legacy to draw upon, one which makes it impossible for most of us to join the anvil chorus of self-celebration which is the substance of the American intellectual tradition. We belong to the tradition of America’s victims, a tradition which has given us a particular angle of vision largely at odds with America, a tradition which has led to the repudiation, ridicule, exile and assassination of our prophets by a society determined to deny the validity of their vision and the truth of our history.”
Dr. Robert L. Allen (1942-2024)
July 19, 2024
The Black Scholar
It is with heavy heart that we mark the passing of Black Scholar
Senior Editor Robert L. Allen, on July 10, 2024. Dr. Allen joined the
journal in 1971. He and Robert Chrisman—close friends as well as
colleagues—worked together on the journal for over 40 years. We share a
photo of the two during an early trip to Cuba, in 1973, and a poem that
Robert Chrisman wrote for Robert Allen in Cuba, which gives lyrical
voice to Robert Allen’s lifelong visionary work. Herb Boyd’s obituary
for Allen, written for Amsterdam News, is also published here.
PHOTO: (Left to Right) Robert L. Allen and Robert Chrisman
Photo and poem courtesy of Laura Chrisman
Robert L. Allen:
A Black Scholar in Every Sense of the Word
by Herb Boyd
Special to the Amsterdam News
News that the U.S. Navy had exonerated 256 Black sailors who were unjustly court-martialed in 1944 following the Port Chicago explosion in California was all the alert I needed to contact my friend and co-author Robert Allen. I wanted to chat with him about the news since it was his book, The Port Chicago Mutiny (1989), that enlightened me about the incident. I was curious if the news reports would mention his account and ask him for a quote. It was merely by chance that in seeking that information I learned Robert had died on July 10, a week before the sailors were exonerated. One piece of good news led me to some bad news. He was 82.
Long before our lives intersected, I knew of him through his activist journalism in his richly informative book Black Awakening in Capitalist America (1969), and his articles in the National Guardian, a radical newsweekly. When I began submitting articles to the Black Scholar journal, where he was among the founding editors, our relationship blossomed. Nearly a generation went by before we began our collaboration on the anthology Brotherman–The Odyssey of Black Men in America (1995). A shared division of labor on the project brought us closer together and I learned what a skilled editor he was and how self-effacing he could be. It was also during a time when his relationship with Alice Walker was coming to an end.
Robert was born on May 29, 1942, in Atlanta, Georgia, at Harris Memorial Hospital on Hunter Street. His parents were community activists and it wasn’t long before he too was involved in social and political fights for equal justice. He attended the E.R. Carter Elementary School and Booker T. Washington High School, both in Atlanta. His academic journey continued at Morehouse College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He spent an undergraduate year studying in Vienna, Austria, as a Merrill Scholar. In New York City he did graduate work at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research.
He completed his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. His doctoral research on racial dynamics within labor movements led him to broader scholarly endeavors, including civil and human rights. Black Awakening in Capitalist America was the culmination of his study and participation in various political formations, particularly those involved in the anti-war movement.
Robert’s book on Black militants and their organizations was widely reviewed and required reading and accompanied the rise of Black Studies.
“The fact of black America as a semi-colony, or what has been termed domestic colonialism, lies at the heart of this study,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. It is at one and the same time the most profound conclusion to be drawn from a survey of the black experience in America, and also the basic premise upon which an interpretation of black history can be constructed.”
When he wasn’t on the ramparts or chasing behind activists, charting their movements and struggles, he was in the classroom and he taught at several colleges, including the San Jose State University and Mills College in Oakland. In 1963, he married Pam Allen, and The Reluctant Reformers: The Impact of Racism on Social Movement in the U.S. (1983) was one of their publications. During his companionship with Alice Walker, they founded
Wild Trees Press, publishing As Wonderful As All That, the memoir of Henry Crowder’s affair with Nancy Cunard; he the gifted Black pianist, she the white shipping line heiress.
His legacy of excellence in academia and activism was often highlighted in the classroom at the University of California, Berkeley. And I was often privy to some of his lectures as we worked on Brotherman. He was more than a worthy constituent, but a soul brother in every way and he will be missed by a community of scholars and activists nurtured by his extensive and passionate research. It’s a shame that he didn’t live to see the Black sailors exonerated, but there is every indication in his study of the incident that he knew one day the men would have their day in the court on high.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/22/us/robert-l-allen-dead.
html
Robert L. Allen, Who Recounted a Naval Mutiny Trial, Dies at 82
He wrote of how 50 Black sailors were court-martialed for refusing to keep loading munitions onto cargo ships in 1944 after explosions had killed hundreds. They were exonerated this month.
Listen to this article:
8:32 min
by Richard Sandomir
July 22, 2024
New York Times
Robert L. Allen, who definitively told the story of 50 Black sailors who were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny for refusing to continue to load munitions onto cargo ships after explosions had blown apart two ships at a California port during World War II, killing hundreds, died on July 10 at his home in Benicia, in Northern California. He was 82.
Mr. Allen, a writer, activist and academic, died a week before the Navy exonerated the men.
His former wife Janet Carter said the cause was kidney failure.
“The secretary of the Navy called to offer condolences,” Ms. Carter said in an interview, referring to Carlos Del Toro. “And he said, ‘I’m going to do more than that — I’m going to exonerate these sailors.’”
Ms. Carter, who remained close to her former husband, a writer, activist and academic, added, “I cried in part because Robert wasn’t here to see it.”
On the night of July 17, 1944, hundreds of sailors were loading ordnance and ammunition onto the E.A. Bryan at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, northeast of San Francisco. Suddenly, the munitions in the holds detonated, destroying the ship, the pier and structures within a 1,000-foot radius. Another ship, the Quinault Victory, blew apart and sank nearby in Suisun Bay.
The blasts killed 320 sailors, civilians and Coast Guard personnel, most of them Black. Nearly 400 were injured, most of them also Black.
White officers were given leave to recover, but Black sailors were soon ordered to continue their dangerous work loading munitions at a nearby port. They did not know why the ships had exploded — a cause has never been determined — and 258 refused to keep working, Mr. Allen said, leading an admiral to threaten to execute them by firing squad.
The Black sailors were arrested and taken to the hold of a barge that had room for 75 men. “The scene conjured up images of a slave ship,” Mr. Allen told The Sacramento Bee in 1997.
Of the 258 men, 208 returned to work, but they were still court-martialed for disobeying orders. The 50 others, in a summary court-martial, were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny and sentenced to eight to 15 years of confinement.
One of the sailors, Martin Bordenave, told Mr. Allen: “How could it be a mutiny? I didn’t talk to nobody. I didn’t conspire with nobody. I just made up my mind, I was tired of it, you know. I wanted to be a sailor.”
In early 1946, 47 of the 50 men were released from prison under pressure from the National Negro Council and the Urban League, as well as from Eleanor Roosevelt and Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice who was chief counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. at the time and had attended the trial.
In an appeal, Mr. Marshall argued before the judge advocate general in 1945 that the men had at worst disobeyed an order but had not mutinied, and that they should be exonerated. “I can’t understand why, whenever more than one Negro disobeys an order, it is mutiny,” he said.
Their convictions were upheld, but the publicity over the episode was a catalyst for the desegregation of the Navy in 1946.
In clearing 256 of the 258 men (the convictions of the others had been previously set aside, one for mental incompetency, the other for insufficient evidence), Secretary Del Toro said that the defendants had been denied a meaningful right to counsel and that they had been improperly tried together despite conflicting interests.
Mr. Allen was a professor of ethnic studies at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., when he first heard about the Port Chicago case. In the late 1970s, he discovered a faded pamphlet in a library in San Francisco with a picture of Black sailors on its cover under the title “Mutiny?” (The pamphlet had been written by a reporter for a left-wing newspaper at Mr. Marshall’s request.)
Over the next decade, Mr. Allen traveled by bus to interview survivors, some of whom were too ashamed of their mutiny convictions to have told their families. He obtained the transcript of the mutiny trial, scoured documents in federal archives for information on Port Chicago and found Mr. Marshall’s paperwork on the case. He received a Guggenheim fellowship, which helped finance his research.
“The Port Chicago Mutiny” (1989) was among several books that Mr. Allen wrote or edited. Credit: Grand Central Publishing
His book on the episode, “The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in U.S. Naval History,” was published in 1989.
“I don’t think you can overstate the significance of the interviews that he did,” Regina Akers, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command, said in an interview.
She added, “He gave them a chance to capture their perspective in that season of their lives, about what happened to them and what it was like to be in the Navy — the work they did loading ammunition and the discrimination they faced.”
Robert Lee Allen Jr. was born on May 29, 1942, in Atlanta. His mother, Sadie (Sims) Allen, was a teacher at Spelman College. His father was a mechanic. Both were community activists.
Robert, who grew up in segregated Atlanta, was 13 when Emmett Till, then only 14, was tortured and murdered by white men in Mississippi in 1955. Robert learned about the killing through an article in Jet magazine and the horrifying pictures that accompanied it.
“This is when I realized that the white people were not only dangerous, but they were dangerous to all of us, including me, because he was my age,” Mr. Allen said, referring to Emmett Till, in an oral history interview in 2019 with the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught.
After graduating from Morehouse College in Atlanta with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1963, Mr. Allen moved to New York City, where he was a welfare caseworker and then a reporter for The National Guardian, a left-wing newsweekly. He earned a master’s degree from the New School for Social Research in 1967.
He began teaching in 1969, first in the Black studies department of San Jose State University and then at Mills, where he was chairman of the ethnic studies department. He joined Berkeley in 1994 as a professor of ethnic studies and African American studies. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, in 1983.
Mr. Allen was a longtime editor of The Black Scholar, a Black studies and research journal, which he joined in 1971. He and the novelist Alice Walker, his companion at the time, founded Wild Tree Press, a feminist publishing company, in 1984.
Mr. Allen’s book “Black Awakening in Capitalist America” (1969) detailed the rise of Black activism. Credit: Doubleday Anchor
His book “Black Awakening in Capitalist America” (1969) detailed the rise of Black activism. His other books included “A Guide to Black Power in America: An Historical Analysis” (1970) and “Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: C.L. Dellums and the Fight for Fair Treatment and Civil Rights” (2014).
Mr. Allen is survived by his wife, Zelia Bora; his son, Casey Allen, from his marriage to Pamela Parker, which ended in divorce; his sisters, Damaris Kirschhofer, Teresa Coughanour and Rebecca Allen; and three grandchildren.
After publishing his book about the Port Chicago episode, Mr. Allen remained active in campaigns seeking exoneration of the 50 sailors and in the naming of two parks to honor them, one of them, the Port Chicago Naval Magazine National Memorial, in Concord, Calif.
Even as the Navy considered clearing the sailors, the Port Chicago Alliance, a nonprofit group, persuaded the State of California and cities, counties and organizations in the state to pass resolutions supporting the exoneration. It also organized an inaugural four-day Port Chicago Weekend, a festival in the Bay Area, which began on July 18 and was able to celebrate the exoneration.
Yulie Padmore, the alliance’s executive director, credited Mr. Allen with being a significant champion of justice for the Black sailors.
“Without his work, we wouldn’t know what we know today,” she said in an interview. “We wouldn’t be here without him talking to the men and hearing what they wanted to say all along.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Richard Sandomir, an obituaries reporter, has been writing for The Times for more than three decades.
A version of this article appears in print on July 24, 2024, Section B, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Robert L. Allen, Writer Who Helped Vindicate Black Sailors, Dies at 82. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
Bibliography
- Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (1969)
- A Guide to Black Power in America: An Historical Analysis (1970)
- Reluctant Reformers: The Impact of Racism on Social Movement in the U.S. (1983)[7]
- Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America (co-edited with Herb Boyd,[8] reprinted 1996)
- Strong in the Struggle: My Life as a Black Labor Activist (with ILWU militant Lee Brown, 2001)
- Honoring Sergeant Carter: A Family's Journey to Uncover the Truth About an American Hero[9] (with Allene G. Carter, 2004)
- The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in U.S. Naval History[10][11] (Heyday Books, 1989, republished 2006).
Awards
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1977)[12]
- American Book Award (1995, with Herb Boyd[13]) for Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America[14]
- The Joseph Small Legacy Award[10] (1998) of the Black Hollywood Education and Research Center.[15] The award honors Port Chicago disaster survivor Joseph R. Small Jr.,[16] a member of The Port Chicago 50,[17] who provided the narrative for the first chapter of The Port Chicago Mutiny.
- One of 12 honorees of the San Francisco Public Library's Long Walk to Freedom living-history exhibition[18](2003)
Volume 1, 1969 – Issue 2: Black Politics
We are saddened to learn that Dr. Nathan Hare transitioned on June 10, 2024. He was one of the founders of The Black Scholar journal, and its publisher until 1975. In his honor, we share his first “From the Publisher” column, “Behind Everything Under the Sun“, from the December 1969 issue.**click view pdf for access
