Patrice Lumumba Essay

Lumumba plays an important role in not only the Congo, but also within the Price family. As a part of the Congo, Lumumba symbolizes hope for the people under oppression, as one character points out, “Reverend, I do not think the people here are looking for your kind of salvation. I think they are looking for Patrice Lumumba, the new soul of Africa,” (122). This shows that people didn’t want CHristianity imposed on them but rather they were looking for a leader that had their best interests at heart. This also shows what an important role Lumumba played in the Congo and within the Congolese people.

In “Notes of a Native Son”, James Baldwin exceptionally conveys the burdens associated with being African American in New Jersey after the departure of his father. The relationship of father and son was negatively impacted by racial discrimination. Baldwin, for example, resisted frequent interactions with his father due to his hatred of the White American Society. However, after the loss of the father, Baldwin explored locations where a waitress denied him service due to the color of his skin, forcing him to convey his exasperation by throwing water on her. Consequently, sparking the same hatred he once despised in his father. As Baldwin matured, he was able to comprehend that his father's spiteful behavior sprung from the limitations blacks

Unlike the slave traders who came before him, King Leopold managed to take possession of and exploit the indigenous people of Congo, their land, and their resources on an unprecedented scale. He obtained a network of valuable raw materials and millions free laborers to extract them. At the hands of King Leopold II’s workers, the people of Congo suffered horrific travesties. Not only did they suffer the loss of their land, the people of Congo were the victims of a hostile militant take over, who’s main purpose was to become a profitable service to the King’s ever-growing greed. His beloved pet project would later prove to be an efficient murder machine. In order to gather resources and labor for the King’s projects, workers acted mercilessly. They swindled land from local Congo tribes, held women hostage, and forced children into work.(109)(111)”(119). George Washington Williams best penned King Leopold II’s cruelty in his detailed documentation. His account contrasted the lies that King Leopold fed the public while simultaneously addressing the barbaric methods employed such as chain gangs, capturing women, forced laborers, and shooting for sport. (Pages 110-111) The result of this barbaric approach to harvest raw materials was the loss of people estimating to be half of the total population of Congo(page 233 )

Hatred for white society was a strong theme among the African American community during the 1950s. These emotions were conveyed through different platforms of the time, ranging from art and music, to articles and books. But James Baldwin, a popular African American writer during this time period, does not obsess over this subject that was so passionately conveyed by so many people like him. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his story of his childhood as well as his early adulthood to illustrate the destructive nature of the African Americans society’s hatred for white society in the very well known essay, “Notes of a Native Son.”

The text continues with Baldwin warning his nephew about the struggle he is going to endure for just being born black and nothing else. Also telling him that he must survive for his children and his children’s children. He warns him, telling him that this country will set him up for failure and that they will try to control where he could go, what he could do, and how he could do it. He continues to articulate that he must stay true to himself because no matter how much he tries to resemble white people they will never accept him. He later states how corrupt the white mind is, for example, he says, “They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for so many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they

Baldwin, however, describes his father as being a very black-like “African tribal chieftain” (64) who was proud of his heritage despite the chains it locked upon him. He is shown to be one with good intentions, but one who never achieved the positive outcome intended. His ultimate downfall was his paranoia such that “the disease of his mind allowed the disease of his body to destroy him” (66). Baldwin relates the story of a white teacher with good intentions and his father’s objection to her involvement in their lives because of his lack of trust for any white woman. His father’s paranoia even extended to Baldwin’s white high school friends. These friends, although they could be kind, “would do anything to keep a Negro down” (68), and they believed that the “best thing to do was to have as little to do with them as possible” (68). Thus, Baldwin leaves the reader with the image of his father as an unreasonable man who struggled to blockade white America from his life and the lives of his children to the greatest extent of his power. Baldwin then turns his story to focus on his own experience in the world his father loathed and on his realization that he was very much like his father.

1909, over one hundred years ago, was the death of King Leopold of Belgium the sole owner of the Congo. Even years after he has left this earth and is no longer in the reign, the long-lasting effects he has had on the people and the land has forever changed the Congo. The memories left behind from the atrocities that occurred and the diminished resources due to extreme exploitation has prompted the author Adam Hochschild to write the novel, King Leopold’s Ghost. Using an Afrocentric point of view Hochschild describes how the events that took place under Leopold’s orders were acts of true terror and inhumanity.

There have been many cases of social injustice on a number of occasions in the expansive history of the United States. The oppressions of the early movements for women’s suffrage and the relocation and encampment of Native Americans are two of many occurrences. Around the middle of the 20th century, a movement for equality and civil liberties for African Americans among citizens began. In this essay, Notes of a Native son James Baldwin, a black man living in this time, recalls experiences from within the heart of said movement. Baldwin conveys a sense of immediacy throughout his passage by making his writing approachable and estimating an enormous amount of ethos.

Baldwin gives the impression that no white man has ever had to walk a mile in a black man?s shoes. While the Negro was getting shipped to America without a pot to piss in, the white man remained hiding behind beliefs in ?white supremacy? (Baldwin 133). The concept of white supremacy has separated two different races for years. For Americans, whose heritage came from Europe, acceptance of the Negro was not considered due to the ?jeopardy? it could cause among their status as men (Baldwin 133). Baldwin knows his rage must have limitations so he begins to question how this type of ignorance could have evolved. Baldwin tries to associate this stupid form of hate with the Swiss village but cannot because he feels that the villagers remain innocent by their ignorance to anything that does not affect them, in their village, directly.

Baldwin opens his argument acknowledging the distortion of segregation for the segregationists. According to Baldwin, people who, since birth, have been taught to think a certain way towards the African American race. “The white South African or Mississippi sharecropper or Alabama sheriff has at bottom a system of reality which compels them really to believe when they face the Negro that this

The anger and amusement that James Baldwin feels throughout his visit to a Swiss village develop into deeper thoughts about the history of African Americans. The unintentional racism that he faced in the small village led to his awareness of how degrading thoughts of non-whites occur in parts of the world outside of the U.S. “Stranger in the Village” ends with the strong statement, “This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”(8) This essay shows how much history can affect the way people treat other races and other

“King Leopold’s Ghost- a story of greer, terror and heroism in colonial africa” written by Adam Hochschild, reveals the hidden horror in the Congo. Hochschild conveys the exploitation of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium from 1885 to 1908, as well as the revolting brutality during that period. Hochschild discloses how King Leopold II’s unpleasant and atrocious capacity of maliciousness is shown through mass killings and colonization of Congolese land. The Ghost of King Leopold II still plagues the world while he is celebrated as a great humanitarian. (use own words).

James Baldwin, an African American author born in Harlem, was raised by his violent step-father, David. His father was a lay preacher who hated whites and felt that all whites would be judged as they deserve by a vengeful God. Usually, the father's anger was directed toward his son through violence. Baldwin's history, in part, aids him in his insight of racism within the family. He understands that racists are not born, but rather racist attitudes and behaviors are learned in the early stages of childhood. Baldwin's Going to Meet the Man is a perfect example of his capability to analyze the growth of a innocent child to a racist.

Patrice Lumumba was said to have arrived on the political scene of Zaire fifty years

In June of 1960, at the height of the Cold War, Congo received its independence from King Leopold II’s Belgium. Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of Congo, was instrumental in the Congolese bid for independence, and played a similar role in the early stages of postcolonial Congo, known as the “Congo Crisis”. In the new Congolese nation, Lumumba was faced with the challenge of unifying a large African nation with difficulties arising from Cold war influences and geopolitical tensions. As Prime Minister, Lumumba’s primary goal was to build a functioning Congolese state, with the Cold War being irrelevant save its ability to help in the process of state-building.