From Accra to Kalamazoo

Part 13 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo    
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)

I am still convinced that nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice.  There is power and real power in this method. First it has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses. It weakens his morale and at the same time it works on his conscience. He just doesn't know how to handle it. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Western Michigan University, Dec. 18, 1963

In the summer of 1963, during the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Youth Council summer job campaign, three African-American teenagers walked into a white owned pharmacy hoping to find summer employment. David Johnson, president of the local NAACP youth chapter, Walter Jones III, the group's vice president, and Lois James, the group's secretary, each requested a job application from the store Owner's wife, Mary Jean Van Avery. They were refused. They would be the only store to refuse to take applications.

The Van Avery Pharmacy was opened in 1935, which at that time was a solidly Dutch neighborhood, but by the early 1960s, the neighborhood's population was being transformed into majority African-American. As a Kalamazoo native, Donald Van Avery had never refuse to serve his Black customers, however, he had also never hired one. After visits from adult NAACP officials, Mr. Van Avery refused to change his position.

The picket lines went up on June 17, 1963.

The Civil rights movement had reached Kalamazoo, Michigan. After three weeks of picketing, the pharmacist signed an agreement with the NAACP. The boycott however continued until Van Avery hired his first African-American employee.

Van Avery Pharmacy (1951)

The store was sold a year later, but reverted to the Van Avery's after the death of the buyer. It closed permanently in 1967. The building was later occupied by the Powell Branch Library, which stayed there until it moved in 1985. The site is now the home of the Northside Ecumenical Senior Center.

But back in 1963, the same year as the boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on December 18, would make an historic speech at Kalamazoo's Western Michigan University. The topic of his speech was appropriately titled "Social Justice."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Memorial in Kalamazoo, MI

In 1989, to commemorate his visit, a statue of Dr. King was erected in Kalamazoo's MLK park. Sculpted by Lisa Reinertson, the monument animates a slightly larger than real life Dr. King by depicting him striding, his eyes fixed forward, in a long flowing robe. The robe is adorned with scenes from the civil rights struggle. A black slave laboring in a field, a Montgomery city bus and a portrait of Rosa Parks, the Selma to Montgomery march, the bars of the Birmingham jail and a North Carolina lunch counter to name a few. As written by art historian Michael Panhorst, "The monument is an appropriate reflection of the man and the struggle for civil rights that was his life's work. King wore the mantle of the movement in life and his bronze posthumous portrait is shrouded with scenes of that struggle."

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Memorial
in Accra, Ghana

In a park named Independence Square, within the heart of the city of Accra, Ghana, another bronze statue stands in memorial to a man Dr. King would meet in his only trip to Africa in 1957. The occasion was the inauguration of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as Ghana's (formerly the Gold Coast) first black African prime minister. The first African nation to declare its independence from British Colonial rule, Dr. Nkrumah would be the first to lead the new nation.

I can remember when Mrs. King and I first journeyed to Africa to attend the independence celebration of the new nation of Ghana. We were very happy about the fact there were now eight independent countries in Africa. But since that night in March, 1957, some twenty-seven new independent nations have come into being in Africa. This reveals to us that the old order of colonialism is passing away, and the new order of freedom and human dignity is coming into being. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Western Michigan University, Dec. 18, 1963

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

At midnight on March 6, 1957, on the same spot that his memorial now stands, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah announced Ghana's independence from colonial power. He would be a leading advocate of Pan-Africanism, a movement seeking to unify African people into a unified community. He would be a founding member of the Organization of African Unity. He would remain in power until a coup in 1966 forced his flight to Guinea. He would never return to Ghana dying in exile in 1972.

Dr. Nkrumah Memorial

That same year, a young Ghanaian architect named Don Arthur was in London, on break from his doctorate studies in Moscow. The idea of creating a memorial park was born when a letter authored by the African Students Union in London was sent to Guinea requesting that the body of the late president be returned to Ghana. It would take 24 years for the idea to come to fruition.

Dr. Nkrumah Tomb

The park attempts to blend the design elements of six monuments: India's Taj Mahal, France's Eiffel Tower, Egypt's pyramids, Babylon's Hanging Gardens, Berlin's Alexander Tower and Moscow's Mausoleum for Lenin.

One enters the park flanked by two reflecting pools, fed by kneeling pipers that entertain you as one paces 100 steps to a bronze statue of Dr. Nkrumah. Just beyond the statue sits the mausoleum which rises five stories in the shape of a truncated tree stump and symbolizes Dr. Nkrumah's incomplete vision for Ghana. Within the marble clad mausoleum, one finds the tombs of Dr. Nkrumah and his wife, Fathia.

Dr. Nkrumah Museum Frieze

Beyond the mausoleum, one passes over a drawbridge to arrive at a semi-subterranean museum faced with a white frieze dedicated to Fathia. The frieze incorporates traditional Ashanti symbols known as Adinkra. The museum exhibits a collection of photos, capturing moments in Dr. Nkrumah's political life. In the pictures of Dr. King and Dr. Nkrumah meeting, the symbolic connection between the struggles of African-Americans and Africans takes physical form.



University President James W. Miller
& Dr. King speaking a Western
Michigan University (Dec. 18, 1963)

During Dr. King's speech in 1963, he recognized the world was becoming flat. He repeated comedian Bob Hope's joke that in flight from Los Angeles to New York City, one could "hic" in LA and "cup" in New York. But more importantly, he spoke about living in a world where the diminishment of one man diminishes the achievement of mankind.
 

Dr. King and Dr. Nkrumah
meet in Ghana (1957)

As I look at pictures of Dr. Nkrumah, I can't help but see myself. I can't help but literally see his physical features in myself. And it makes me wonder if, by reading about his struggles, if his intellect and spiritual strength is also within me. There is a confidence to be found in seeing people that look like me achieving. And it generates a strength to find the best within me.
  
In Dr. King's words on that night in 1963 at Western Michigan University,

It is simply this, that through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood. Now through our ethical and moral commitment, we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools. This is the great challenge of the hour. This is true of individuals. It is true of nations. No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone.

This is why I believe it's important to shed light on African history, especially to young African-Americans, for there is strength to be found this history. And through this strength, not only an individual, but a people, a nation and mankind can be uplifted.