Efunṣetán Adekemi Aníwúrà (c. 1790– 1874): Iyalode of Ibadan Land

Efunṣetán Adekemi Aníwúrà (c. 1790– 1874) - Iyalode of Ibadan

She was one of the wealthiest and most influential Yoruba women that ever lived. Her power extended around the political, military, economic and religious spheres of Ibadan.

Her father Ogunrin was a native of Egba Oke-Ona and her mother hailed from Ile-Ife. She was brought up in Abeokuta. She moved to Ibadan in 1860. She was the first woman to set up a flourishing agrarian economy that employed no fewer than 2000 men and women. Her workers mainly worked on multiple farmlands. They produced cash crops, cotton, groundnuts, maize and beef. She also had a vast dairy farm. Around 1850, in reaction to the spread of war and combat in Yorubaland, she introduced infantry military training into the midst of her workers and developed her own private army.

She was a shrewd business woman. Her Efunsetan’s trading exploits saw her export some of her manufactured goods like Kijipa cloths, mats, and traditional cosmetics to America. She also sold slaves and tobacco. Because of Efunsetan’s huge involvement in agriculture, the city depended on her for food. However, this was not the only major contribution Efunsetan brought to the city of Ibadan, she was a huge trader in weapons and ammunition. These helped the Ibadan War effort in the mid to late 19th Century.

Efunsetan became the second Iyalode(Chief of the Womenfolk)of Ibadan in 1867. She was married multiple times and lost her only child during childbirth. This loss caused her to be depressed and made her emotionally unstable later on in life.  She became a ruthless despotic leader who was very hard on her slaves. 

In May 1874, Aare Ona Kakanfo Latoosa deposed her as Iyalode of Ibadan for politically motivated reasons. It is widely believed that Latoosa felt threatened by Aniwura’s increasing wealth and power, so, on June 30, 1874, he arranged with Kumuyilo — Aniwura’s adopted son and two other slaves to assassinate Aniwura in her sleep.

African American History: THEODORE “TIGER”FLOWERS (1895-1927)

 

     20th Century (1900-1999), United States - Georgia, Gender - Men, United States  NewYork,Occupation-Boxer

Theodore “Tiger” Flowers was born on August 5, 1895 in Camille, Georgia. Often referred to as the Georgia Deacon because of his religious devotion, Flowers was a southpaw who began boxing professionally in 1918 at the age of 22. He quickly reeled off 21 straight victories before suffering his first loss to Panama Joe Gans. Like many other African American boxers of that period of time, Flowers found it difficult to obtain fights with white fighters, and often had to fight a number of men of his own race many times over in order to make a living. Overall he compiled an impressive record of 132 wins, 17 losses, 8 draws, and 4 no-contests over the course a nine year career highlighted by two wins over the great Harry Greb. 

His initial victory over Greb on February 26, 1926 in New York’s Madison Square Garden earned him the title of Middleweight Champion of the World, the first black man to capture the title for that particular weight class. Proving the victory was no fluke, Flowers defeated Greb in a rematch 7 months later. It’s notable to point out that Greb was only defeated five times during a career comprised of approximately 290 bouts, and that Flowers was the only middleweight to accomplish that feat.

Flowers lost his title to future Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, Mickey Walker, in December of 1926 on a controversial ruling by the referee. The decision was immediately investigated, but ultimately upheld.

 Flowers tried in vain to obtain a rematch, but Walker, who was managed by Jack “Doc” Kerns, refused to grant it to him. Unable to gain another shot at the middleweight crown, Flowers challenged many of the quality light heavyweights of that time period, losing only to Leo Lomski by points in 10 rounds on January 22, 1927. In November of that same year, Flowers underwent an operation to remove scar tissue from around his eye, but died as a result of the procedure. He was only 32 years old at the time of his death.

SOURCE 

Moyle, C. (2007, January 22). BlackPast

African American History: THEOPHILUS GOULD STEWARD (1843-1924)

 Theophilus G. Steward, African Methodist Episcopal minister, U.S. Army chaplain, and historian, was born April 17, 1843 in Bridgeton, New Jersey.  Publicly educated, he entered the ministry in 1864 and immediately sought to “go South.”  His wishes were granted in May 1865 and he departed for South Carolina where he married Elizabeth Gadsen after a short courtship.  Under the direction of Bishop Daniel Payne, Steward assisted in the establishment of AME churches in South Carolina and Georgia for the next seven years.  Between 1882 and 1891, Steward performed missionary work in Haiti and served as a pastor in Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania.

In 1891, Reverend Steward joined the U.S. Army, becoming one of what remained at the time a very small number of African American regular officers.  For some sixteen years, the entirety of his military service, Steward was a member of the 25th Infantry Regiment.  Entrusted not only with the soldier’s spiritual well-being, chaplains in the “colored” regiments of the time were expected to facilitate their education.  These responsibilities Steward discharged faithfully at several posts in the American West and in the Philippines, although he missed the regiment’s deployment to Cuba while on recruiting duty.  In 1893 his wife Elizabeth died; he married the widow Doctor Susan McKinney three years later in 1896.  He was not present for the 1906 debacle at Brownsville, Texas, but was called on to testify in the long investigations that followed.

Chaplain Captain Steward retired from the Army in 1907 at age 64.  After touring Europe, he and his wife settled in Ohio where Reverend Steward became a professor of history, French, and logic at Wilberforce University.  Steward died on January 11, 1924 at age 80.  He was survived by a large family and a noteworthy literary legacy that included religious works, scholarly papers, histories, a novel, and an autobiography.  Although confronted with discrimination throughout his life, Steward was anything but bitter.  His writings, reflecting deep religious convictions and a consistent optimism, remain a valuable resource for historians of African American culture, the buffalo soldiers, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

SOURCE 

Mikkelsen Jr., E. (2007, January 22.BlackPast.)

Frank N Schubert, (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004); Steward, Fifty Years in the Gospel Ministry (electronic edition hosted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001. Steward,(New York, New York: Arno Press, 1969).

African American History: THE OMAHA COURTHOUSE LYNCHING OF 1919

 

The infamous Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919 was part of the wave of racial and labor violence that swept the United States during the “Red Summer” of 1919. It was witnessed by an estimated 20,000 people, making it one of the largest individual spectacles of racial violence in the nation’s history.

The Great Migration brought tens of thousands of African Americans to northern industrial cities—including Omaha, Nebraska, which saw its black population double from 4,426 to 10,315 in the second decade of the 20th Century. The growing black population and resentment over job competition by white ethnic groups helped fuel racial tension in Omaha as it did in other cities across the North.

Following a national pattern, the Omaha Bee exploited this tension by the summer of 1919 carrying daily newspaper accounts of attacks by African American males on white women, without similar coverage concerning assaults on African American women, by either black or white males. Although the other major Omaha newspapers carried similar stories, the Bee sensationalized the news the most, blaming in particular Mayor Edward P. Smith and his hand-picked police chief, Marshall Eberstein.

One particularly provocative story in September, 1919 described Will Brown, a 40-year-old African American meat-packinghouse worker who was accused of raping a 19-year-old white woman, Agnes Lobeck. Prior to Brown’s arrest, the Beecarried detailed accounts of the story along with pictures of Brown and Lobeck. When police went to Brown’s residence to arrest him, a mob tried and failed to seize him. He was arrested and held for a few hours in the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. Largely due to the newspaper story, a mob of 250 men and women gathered in the while working class area of South Omaha and marched north into downtown, gathering outside of the Courthouse in the late afternoon of Sunday, September 28.

Mayor Edward P. Smith arrived on the scene and attempted to persuade the rioters to leave. He was struck on the head from behind, a rope was placed around his neck, and his unconscious body was strung up to a lamppost. He was cut down before he succumbed, but the mob then broke into the courthouse, tore off Brown’s clothing as he was being dragged out, hanged him from a lamppost, and riddled his already dead body with bullets. His body was then tied to a police car, dragged to a major downtown intersection, and then burned. Fragments of the rope used to lynch him were sold as souvenirs for 10 cents apiece. Numerous photographs were taken, including one which shows some of the lynchers proudly posing behind Brown’s charred body. That photo became known around the world as the iconic image of Red Summer violence.

After Brown had been killed, US Army units arrived on the scene and set up one command post at the intersection of 24th and Lake Streets, which remains the heart of Omaha’s black community to this day, and another in South Omaha, the neighborhood from which most of the rioters had come. The official announcement was that the 24th and Lake Street post was there to protect African Americans from further violence, but oral legend in the black community holds that its purpose was to prevent retaliation by black Omahans who were waiting on the rooftops of 24th Street with guns.

One of the witnesses to the lynching was young future actor Henry Fonda, who later remembered, “It was the most horrendous sight I’d ever seen… My hands were wet and there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man dangling at the end of a rope.”

SOURCE 

Smith, A. (2007, January 22. BlackPast)

Orville D. Menard, “Lest We Forget: The Lynching of Will Brown, Omaha’s 1919 Race Riot, Nebraska History 91 (2010); Bertha W. Calloway and Alonzo Nelson Smith, (Marceline, Missouri: Walsworth Publishing Company, 1998); Lawrence H. Larsen and Barbara J. Cottrell, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).

PUBLICATION 

Omotoso Ibukunoluwa 

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA SR. (1936-1982)

 

Barack Obama Sr., father of the 43rd President of the United States, was born in the Rachuonyo District, in the then British colony of Kenya, on June 18, 1936, to Onyango Obama and Habiba Akumu Nyanjango. He was raised in the Nyang’oma Kogelo village, Siaya District of the Nyanza Province. Obama converted from Islam to Anglicanism at the age of six while attending a Christian missionary school and changed his name from Baraka to Barak. His parents separated when he was nine years old, and he was raised by his stepmother, Sarah Ogwel. He attended Gendia Primary School, Ng’iya Intermediate school, and later Maseno National School, an exclusive Anglican boarding school. Later in life he became an atheist and believed that religion was just superstition.

Obama married his first wife Kezia Aoko in 1954, and the couple had two children, Malik and Auma. In 1959 he was selected for a special academic program and traveled to the United States to enroll as the first African foreign student to study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu. He graduated in 1963 with a BA in Economics and while there was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Also, while in Honolulu he met and married 18-year-old Stanley Ann Dunham in 1961. The couple had one child together, future U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama Jr. They divorced three years later in 1964.

In June of 1962, Obama left Hawaii, and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend Harvard University, where he met Ruth Beatrice Baker. After graduation in 1964, Obama returned to Kenya, with Baker in tow, and they married later that year. The couple had two sons, Mark and David, and divorced in 1973.

Obama began to work for an oil company as an economist in Kenya. He was promoted to the economist for the Kenyan Ministry of Transport, and eventually senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance. He also reunited with his first wife Kezia and had two additional children, Abo and Bernard. Obama wrote an entry for the East Africa Journal which appeared in July 1965 titled “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” that set his at odds with then Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta and much of the nation’s political establishment. When Tom Mboya, Minister of Economic Planning and Development, was assassinated in 1969, Obama came under suspicion. He believed he was now a target of the government. He was fired and blacklisted in Kenya and found it difficult to find and hold down a job.

In 1970 Obama was hit by a car in 1970, an incident that left him in the hospital for almost a year. Obama then traveled back to Hawaii and stayed for the month of December in 1971. It was then that he visited his son Barack, who was ten years old, giving him a basketball and taking him to a jazz concert. The two never saw each other again.

Upon his return to Kenya, Obama was involved in a second car accident that claimed both of his legs. He met Jael Otinyo, with who he had a son named George. The couple never married but just six months after the child’s birth, Obama was in a third car accident in Nairobi on November 24, 1982 and died of his injuries at the age of 46.

SOURCE:

20th Century (1900-1999), Gender - Men, United States - Massachusetts, United States - Hawaii, Africa - Kenya, Occupation-Economist.

Nielsen, E. (2020, September 12. BlackPast)

Sally Jacobs, (New York City, New York: Perseus Books Groups, July 2011); Gardy Chacha, “The car in which Barack Obama Sr. died”, July 25, 2015.

PUBLICATION 

Omotoso Ibukunoluwa 

19TH CENTURY: THE FIREBURN LABOR RIOT, UNITED STATES VIRGIN ISLANDS (1878)

 

Chattel slavery was practiced in the Danish West Indies from around 1650 until July 3, 1848, when Colonial Governor Peter von Scholten issued an emancipation proclamation. The Danish government, however, then enacted rules that kept people enslaved by contracts for another two years. In 1847, a year before the governor’s decree, the government instituted a gradual emancipation plan stating that henceforth children born to enslaved laborers would be free. In addition, all forms of slavery would cease entirely in 1859.

Given the confusion and uncertainty around emancipation, sugar plantation owners made sure that the lives of former slaves changed little after emancipation. Many ex-slaves were hired at the plantations where they were previously enslaved and offered one-year working contracts that included a small hut, a plot of land, and a little money. Unlike during slavery, these free workers did not receive food or any care from their employers, prompting some of them to declare that the new conditions were worse that enslavement.

Each October 1 (Contract Day) workers were allowed to leave their plantations and enter into contracts with new plantation owners. On October 1, 1878, workers gathered on the island of St. Croix to protest low wages and harsh living conditions. This gathering turned into a riot. Participants threw stones at Danish soldiers, who soon barricaded themselves in the town fort on the island. The riots were said to be organized and led by three women: Mary Thomas, Axeline Elizabeth Salomon, and Mathilda McBean.

On October 4, 1878, British, French, and American warships arrived at St. Croix help stop the riots but were turned away by local Danish authorities. The next day, Governor von Scholten issued a declaration that all laborers should return to their plantations or be declared “rebels.” The uprising continued, but after two weeks many workers had returned to their plantations and the revolt ended. During the unrest nearly 100 people were killed and 50 houses were burned. Almost 900 acres of sugar were destroyed.

The Danes arrested approximately 400 people. Twelve were sentenced to death and immediately executed. Another thirty-nine were sentenced, but thirty-four had their sentences commuted to shorter terms. Among the last group were Thomas, Salomon, and McBean, who were sent to the women’s prison, Christianshavn, in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1882. They returned to Christiansted, St. Croix in 1887, to serve out the remainder of their sentences. These three women became known as “The Three Queens.”

In 2004, historian Wayne James discovered historical documents that suggested the role of a fourth Queen, Susanna Abramsen, also known as Bottom Belly. St. Croix has a Queen Mary Highway in her honor. The Three Queens Fountain was commissioned by the St. Thomas Historical Trust and unveiled in 2005. Each woman in the statue holds a tool used in the revolt, a flaming torch, a sugarcane knife, and a lantern. In 2018, artist Jeanette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle created the I Am Queen Marymonument in the port of Copenhagen. The statue is twenty-three feet tall and is Denmark’s first public monument to a black woman.

SOURCE 

Nielsen, E. (2020, September 12. BlackPast)

Martin Sorensen, “Denmark Gets First Public Statue of a Black Woman, a ‘Rebel Queen,” March 31, 2018.

PUBLICATION 

Omotoso Ibukunoluwa 

HISTORY: RUSSIA - UKRAINE RELATIONS

 

Russia and Ukraine have had no formal diplomatic relations since 24 February 2022. The Russian Federation and Ukraine are currently in a state of war: the Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014 following the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine across a broad front.

After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the successor states' bilateral relations have undergone periods of ties, tensions, and outright hostility. In the early 1990s, Ukraine's policy was dominated by aspirations to ensure its sovereignty and independence, followed by a foreign policy that balanced cooperation with the EU, Russia, and other powerful polities.

Relations between the two countries have been hostile since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which toppled Ukraine's elected president Viktor Yanukovych and his supporters, because he refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union that enjoyed majority support in Ukraine's parliament. Ukraine's post-revolutionary government wished to commit the country to a future within the EU and NATO, rather than continue to play the delicate diplomatic game of balancing its own economic and security interests with those of Russia, the EU, and NATO members. In 2004 the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia had joined the EU, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 (see Member state of the European Union). The Russian government feared that Ukraine's membership of the EU and NATO would complete a western wall of allied countries by restricting Russia's access to the Black Sea. With South Korea and Japan being allied to the US, the Russian government was concerned that Russia was being ring-fenced by potentially hostile powers. In the wake of the Revolution of Dignity, Russia backed separatist militias in the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic in a war in Ukraine's economically important Donbas region, on its eastern border with Russia. This region has a Russian ethnic majority. By early 2022 the Russo-Ukrainian War had killed more than 13,000 people, and brought some Western sanctions on Russia.

In 2019, amendments were made to the Constitution of Ukraine, which enshrined the irreversibility of the country's strategic course towards EU and NATO membership. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Russian military buildup on the border of Ukraine has escalated tensions between the two countries and strained bilateral relations, with the United States sending a strong message that invasion would be met with dire consequences for Russia's economy. On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which prompted Ukraine to break diplomatic ties with its eastern neighbour.

History of relations

Both Russia and Ukraine claim their heritage from the Rus (also known as Kyivan Rus or Ancient Rus), a polity that united several tribes and clans of different ethnicities under the Byzantine church in the 10th century. According to old Russian chronicles, Kyiv, the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the mother of Rus (Russian/Ruthenian) cities as it was the capital of the powerful late Medieval state of Rus.

Muscovy and the Russian Empire

After the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus', the histories of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples diverged. The former, having successfully united all remnants of Rus's northern provinces, evolved into the Russian state. The latter came under the domination of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Within the Commonwealth, the militant Zaporozhian Cossacks refused polonization, and often clashed with the Commonwealth government which was controlled by the Polish nobility.

Unrest among the Cossacks caused them to rebel against the Commonwealth and seek union with Russia, with which they shared much of their culture, language and religion. This was eventually formalized through the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654. Starting in the mid-17th century, Ukraine was gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire, which entirely absorbed into Russia by the late 18th century with the partition of Poland. Soon after the Cossack host was forcibly disbanded by the Russian Empire and most Cossacks were relocated to the Kuban region on the southern edge of the Russian Empire.

The Russian Empire considered Ukrainians(and Belarusians) to be ethnically Russian, and referred to them as "Little Russians". Until the end of World War I this view was only opposed by a small group of Ukrainian nationalists. Nevertheless, a perceived threat of "Ukrainian separatism" set in motion a set of measures aimed at the russification of the "Little Russians". In 1804, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools as a subject and language of instruction. In 1876 Alexander II's secretary Ems Ukaz prohibited the publication and importation of most Ukrainian language books, public performances and lectures in the Ukrainian language, and even the printing of Ukrainian texts accompanying musical scores.

Ukrainian People's Republic

The February Revolution saw establishment of official relations between the Russian Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada (Central Council of Ukraine) that was represented at the Russian government by its commissar Petro Stebnytsky. At the same time Dmitry Odinets was appointed the representative of Russian Affairs in the Ukrainian government. After the Soviet military aggression by the Soviet government at the beginning of 1918, Ukraine declared its full independence from the Russian Republic on 22 January 1918, as the Ukrainian People's Republic which existed from 1917 to 1922. The two treaties of Brest-Litovsk that Ukraine and Russia signed separately with the Central Powers calmed the military conflict between them, and peace negotiations were initiated the same year.

After the end of World War I, Ukraine became a battleground in the Ukrainian War of Independence, linked to the Russian Civil War. Both Russians and Ukrainians fought in nearly all armies based on personal political beliefs.

In 1922, Ukraine and Russia were two of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and were the signatories of the treaty that terminated the union in December 1991.

The end of the Russian Empire also ended the ban on the Ukrainian language. This was followed by a period of korenizatsiya that promoted the cultures of the different Soviet Republics.

Holodomor

In 1932–1933 Ukraine experienced the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор, "Extermination by hunger" or "Hunger-extermination"; derived from 'Морити голодом', "Killing by Starvation") which was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. During the famine, which is also known as the "Terror-Famine in Ukraine" and "Famine-Genocide in Ukraine", millions of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR, the majority being ethnically Ukrainian, died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. Scholars disagree on the relative importance of natural factors and bad economic policies as causes of the famine, and the degree to which the destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry was premeditated by Soviet leaders.

The Holodomor famine extended to many Soviet republics, including Russia and Kazakhstan. In the absence of documentary proof of intent, scholars have also argued that the Holodomor was caused by the economic problems associated with the radical changes implemented during the period of liquidation of private property and Soviet industrialization, combined with the widespread drought of the early 1930s. However, on 13 January 2010, Kyiv Appellate Court posthumously found Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and the Ukrainian Soviet leaders Kosior and Chubar, amongst other functionaries, guilty of genocide against Ukrainians during the Holodomor famine.

SOURCE 

1.  Shyrokykh, Karina (June 2018). "The Evolution of the Foreign Policy of Ukraine: External Actors and Domestic Factors". Stockholm University. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
2. ^ Ukraine sticks to positions on Russia but leaves room for "compromises" Archived2020-04-05 at the Wayback Machine, Reuters(12 February 2020)
3. ^ "Russia is stoking tension with Ukraine and the EU". The Economist. 14 November 2021. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 14 December 2021. Rumours of wars: Russia is stoking tension with Ukraine and the EU: Destabilisation rather than invasion is probably its goal, but that leaves plenty of room for miscalculation
4. ^ Crowley, Michael (10 December 2021). "Biden Delivers a Warning to Putin Over Ukraine". The New York Times.
5. Gumilyov, Lev (2005). Ot Rusi k Rossii От Руси к России [From Rus' to Russia]. AST. Moscow. p. ^{[page needed]}. ISBN 5-17-012201-2
6.  Shambarov, Valery (2007). Kazachestvo: istoriya volnoy Rusi Казачество: история вольной Руси [The Cossacks: History of a Free Rus']. Algorithm Expo. Moscow. p. ^{[page needed]}. ISBN 978-5-699-20121-1.
7. Abdelal, Rawi (2005). National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective. Cornell University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-8014-8977-8. Archived from the original on 2021-04-10. Retrieved 2017-09-11
8.  Bassin, Mark; Glebov, Sergey; Laruelle, Marlene, eds. (2015). Between Europe & Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism. University of Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-8229-8091-9. Archived from the original on 2021-04-10. Retrieved 2017-09-11.

PUBLICATION 

Omotoso Ibukunoluwa