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July 19, 2012

  • Florida A&M Names Interim President

    Florida A&M Names Interim President by Frederick H. Lowe During an emergency meeting on Monday, Florida A&M University’s board of trustees named Provost Larry Robinson interim president, replacing James H.

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  • The NorthStar's Books

    The NorthStar's Books Hurston/Wright Announces Nominees for Its Annual Book Awards The Hurston/Wright Foundation recently announced nominees for its 11th annual Legacy award, which honors exemplary works of literature by black writers.

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  • Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay $175 Million to Mortgage-Bias Victims

    Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay $175 Million to Mortgage-Bias Victims By Frederick H. Lowe Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

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  • Black Ex-Cons Are Free But Usually Not to Vote

    Black Ex-Cons Are Free But Usually Not to Vote By Frederick H. Lowe More than 2.2 million African Americans had felony convictions in 2010, which most likely will prevent them from voting in this year's presidential election, depending on what state they call home.

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  • It’s the Jobs Act, Stupid!

    It’s the Jobs Act, Stupid! By Julianne Malveaux TriceEdneyWire.com - The unemployment rate has hovered above 8 percent for several months, most recently holding ground at 8.2 percent, the same as last month.

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  • Institute of the Black World Schedules Conference

    The Institute of the Black World 21st Century will hold its State of the Black World Conference III Nov. 14-18, 2012, at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

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  • The NorthStar's Obituaries

    The NorthStar's Obituaries William Raspberry William Raspberry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington, D.C. Mr.

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  • Health Care Act Will Erase Inequities for People of Color

    Health Care Act Will Erase Inequities for People of Color By Brian Smedley TriceEdneyWire.com - The U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents a significant advancement in the effort to repair the deeply broken U.S.

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  • N.C. Senate Republicans Block Payments to Sterilization Victims

    TriceEdneyWire.com – By passing a budget June 20 without funds to compensate victims, the North Carolina Senate dashed the hopes of those harmed by a government program that, for nearly 50 years, sterilized mostly poor and black residents. Senate Republicans refused to support a measure cleared by state House members to earmark $10 million in the state budget that would have awarded sterilization victims $50,000 each, according to NewsObserver.com.

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  • Nelson Mandela Marks His 94th Birthday

    Nelson Mandela Marks His 94th Birthday Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who devoted his life to ending apartheid in his native country, celebrated his 94th birthday on Wednesday, July 18.

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  • The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

    The NorthStar’s Week in Black History July 19 through July 25 July 19 1941 ----- The first U. S. Army flight-training school for black cadets was dedicated in Tuskegee, Ala., on this date.

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  • The Motown Sound is Broadway Bound

    The Motown Sound is Broadway Bound Motown: The Musical, which will chronicle the life of the company founder, Berry Gordy, Jr., is scheduled to open in the spring of 2013 on Broadway in New York.

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  • Actor Michael Clarke Duncan Suffers a Heart Attack; Omarosa Saves His Life

    Actor Michael Clarke Duncan Suffers a Heart Attack; Omarosa Saves His Life Asiaone Showbiz is reporting that actor Michael Clarke Duncan suffered a heart attack, but quick work by his girlfriend, Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, saved his life.

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  • Witness: George Zimmerman Did Not Like Blacks

    Witness: George Zimmerman Did Not Like Blacks Attorneys for George Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, filed a motion to block release of a statement by an individual identified as witness 9.

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  • Oprah Interviews Mitt Romney

    Oprah Interviews Mitt Romney Oprah Winfrey interviewed Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican Party nominee for president, and his wife, Ann, recently in Wolfeboro, N.H. The interview was not filmed, but it will be published in Winfrey's O Magazine, according to news reports.

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Cameroon Plans Restoration of Notorious Slave-Trade Port

Cameroon Plans Restoration of Notorious Slave-Trade Port

By Frederick H. Lowe
A Cameroon port that was one of the busiest slave-ship departure points on Africa’s Atlantic Coast to plantations in North and South America during the 18th century will become a cultural heritage site for tourists and for scholars to study the brutal realities of slavery.

Cameroon, a country of more than 15 million located in West Central Africa, will begin restoration of the Port of Bimbia after officials received $76,400, or 40 million Cameroonian francs, from the U.S. Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, the U.S. Embassy in Yaoundé, the country’s capital, announced on Friday. The bureau is part of the U.S. State Department. Bimbia, which is located in the Southwest part of the country, is an administrative capital of the Limbe III municipality.

“The Bimbia Port project is part of the ambassador’s fund for cultural preservation that was announced on July 9, 2012,” U.S. embassy officials said. “The project is expected to take 12 months to complete, following the official launch sometime in September.”

At one time, the Port of Bimbia was one of the busiest on the West Coast of Africa as the departure point for tens of thousands of men and women bound for sale into slavery in the Americas, said Eric Chinje, advisor to Avline Ava, president of ARK (Acts of Random Kindness Jammers, a Baltimore-based company that operates the Ancestry Reconnection Program (ARP). Since 2010, the program has connected nearly 150 African Americans to their Cameroon heritage through DNA testing. African-American visitors have visited the Port of Bimbia, drawing attention to the area.

“The research is ongoing to determine the number of ships that left Bimbia in the late 1700s and the number of people the ships carried and where the vessels were bound,” Chinje said.  “We have discovered some [ships’] manifests with the names of men and women that left Bimbia. We do know that many landed off the North Carolina coast and others in Brazil, Guyana, and Jamaica.”

Slaves also were sold to plantation owners located on the islands of Tome, Pincipe and Fernando Po, which is now Equatorial Guinea.

At one time, Portugal dominated Cameroon slave trade.

Cameroon has an interesting place in later world history. After World War 1, Britain and France disarmed Germany. France deployed troops from Cameroon to occupy Germany’s Rhineland, which includes the large cities of Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Koblenz, Krefeld, Leverkusen and Trier.

Bimbia’s port was once shrouded in mystery bolstered by local superstition, Chinje added.

“The Bimbia port was hidden from human view when the slave trade ended and was engulfed by the tropical rainforest,” he said. “People of the village would not talk about it or visit the port because, in their view, the place was cursed. The popular view at the time soon became myth that no one who went to the port ever returned.

“Some of the resources, along with other funds that ARK Jammers is working to raise, will be used to reconstitute the cruel history of that period,” said Chinje, adding that Cameroon’s government and ARK Jammers will work archeologists, historians, sociologists and architects to restore the Port of Bimbia as world cultural site where students and others can visit and historians can study.

In its news release, the U.S. Embassy said the site is not well documented and that it is currently overgrown with bamboo and bush.

“The remains of the slave cells are fast deteriorating and are in urgent need of stabilization,” embassy officials noted. “Once completed, the project will be a major addition to country’s efforts to preserve its collective cultural memory.”

The documentation and restoration of the 18th century slave trade Port of Bimbia is one of nine projects in Sub Saharan Africa selected for funding through the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation.

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