Category Archives: African Diaspora

The Black Study Group That Transformed a Generation: The Afro-American Association

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by © Leslye Joy Allen

The photo below of Don Warden is from the archives of Khalid and Jamila al Mansour. Don Warden was one of the founders of the Afro-American Association at the University of California at Berkeley. The other founding members were Donald Hopkins, Otho Green, and Henry Ramsey. 

This organization formed in late 1961 and began as a student study group in 1962 at the University of California at Berkeley when there were literally no identifiable Afro-American and African Studies programs on any U. S. college and university campus. The group devoured works by Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. DuBois and other Black scholars that were left out of many colleges curricula. Study meetings of its members initially began at the off-campus home of a UC Berkeley student, and grew from there. In fact, chapters of this organization appeared on hundreds of college campuses in the United States with members numbering in the thousands by the mid-1960s.

The objective of the group was to read and study about the Afro-American, African, and Afro-Diasporic past in order to confront the institutional racism, colonialism and bigotry found in the United States and throughout the world. 

Warden, a UC Berkeley law student, regularly went into Black neighborhoods and literally spoke to young Black citizens directly on street corners or wherever they were. He encouraged them to study about Afro-American and African history in order to fight against their feelings of worthlessness that often accompanied experiencing chronic racism. 

He listened to them tell him about their problems of unemployment, poor housing, you name it. He, like most of his members, espoused that in order to change all systems of oppression, one needed to study about the past in order to do so. Warden eventually became a lawyer for the Black Panther Party of Self-Defense as well as granting legal assistance to the Nation of Islam when Malcolm X was still a member of the group.

The Afro-American Association was heavily influenced by the ideologies of Black American activists Robert F. Williams and Malcolm X. The AAA understood that only sustained study of Black people/s would foster the kind of thinking and strategies for combating systems that sought to suppress and control Black and Brown communities all over the world. Only deep research would correct the far-too-often feelings of inadequacy that came with being Black and oppressed. 

In 1962 when this study group, that was soon named the Afro-American Association, began its study group meetings at UC Berkeley there were roughly only about 100 Black students out of 20,000 white students. And in 1962 there were only two members of the group that were not born in the United States. One was from Jamaica; the other was from India.

In 1962 this tall, skinny, young Black man from Orange Hill, Jamaica and this petite and short, very brown young woman from Chennai, Tamil Nadu (in Southern India) dressed in her Sari and sandals met in an AAA group meeting.

The young man from Jamaica gave a pristine evaluation of how Great Britain had created a rather stiff and proper group of elite Black Jamaicans that often mimicked the mores and habits of British society. It was done, he said, to shield the world from knowing how racist the British empire actually was. The young man was calm, studious with very edgy ideas about the colonization of Black people/s around the world. 

The young brown woman in her Sari and sandals was intrigued. She too had been a British subject in her native state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. She knew something about what this young man spoke of, but not all of it. Back then, the typical path for academically talented Indian and Jamaican students was to study in England, that is if they could secure a path to graduate school. 

She rejected that path because there was no major in Biochemistry in India or in the UK that would have been available to a female. The skinny guy from Jamaica also rejected the educational path to the UK. His decision was so unusual that the approval for his exit from Jamaica took so long that he arrived at UC Berkeley two weeks after the Fall 1961 semester begun.

He, Dr. Donald Harris became a leading economist and she, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan-Harris became a leading biomedical scientist, a contributor to the identification of the function of rMNA, which greatly improved treatments for breast cancer. 

The early members of the Afro-American Association described her as warm, funny, “down for the cause” of Civil Rights and an end to colonialism, and also a fiery debater. At first one member of the AAA noted that some of them thought she was royalty because of the way she carried herself. Yet, she fit right in, several members noted. He was described as professorial even though he was in his early 20s. While their eventual marriage didn’t last (they married roughly 10 months after meeting), their firstborn daughter Kamala noted that she knew they loved each other and felt that if they had been a bit older and a bit more emotionally mature they might have made it. 

She cited them both as activists, and remembers going to protest marches with her parents in a stroller. The blueprint for their activism and for the creation of Afro-American and African Studies as disciplines were rooted in the activities in the Afro-American Association. While at UC Berkeley, Shyamala met and influenced arguably, one of Afro-America’s most important philosophers, Cedric Robinson.

Robinson’s book Black Marxism, first published in 1983, remains one of the most brilliant critiques and reassessments of the Eurocentric theories of Marxism. It has become a must-read in the literary canons of both Afro-American and African Studies.

It was Robinson who coined the phrase “Racial Capitalism.” He argued that capitalism was always based on race and race came before capitalism. Importantly there never was a clean break from European feudalism. He was one of the first Black scholars to identify “race,” as a component that European empires used when feudalism morphed into capitalism. 

Any study he maintained had to be central to Black people/s’ lived experiences wherever they were in the world. When I first read him, it became apparent that European Marxist scholars either forgot or tried to ignore that the peoples of Europe were once considered “races,” races and national identities that were eventually erased in exchange for their being identified as “white” which served the interests of European countries in their quest to colonize and dominate large portions of the world.

In 1959, Shyamala Gopalan was standing in line behind Cedric Robinson while they were both registering for classes. Both became members of the Afro-American Association. In the first edition of Black Marxism, there was only one person who was not a Black American listed in his group of early friends that Robinson acknowledged as influential on the development of his ideas. That person was Dr. Shyamala Gopalan-Harris.

So here’s a brief mini-history of the continuing of the Afro-American Association of University of California at Berkeley. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale who founded the Black Panther Party became members. Huey dared to show up at a meeting of AAA without having read the book assigned for that session. The members sent him home. He never showed up again unprepared. 

Future Congressman Ron Dellums was a member of the AAA at one time as was Kenny Freeman, a contributor to the Black Panthers 10-Point Plan. The AAA literally laid the academic groundwork for Afro-American and African Studies programs throughout the nation as underscored by historian and author Donna Jean Murch who traced the evolution and development of the Black Panther Party from its roots in the Afro-American Association. None of it began without the required reading and research and the on-the-ground grassroots activism that met Black communities in the Oakland area where they were.

I could go on about how police monitored the group’s members particularly when they spoke on street corners, or visited high schools to encourage reading and research among members of the Black community. Yet, I will not do that mainly because well-meaning, good people have started to use the internet like an online set of Cliffnotes. 

If you’re old enough to remember Cliffnotes you also remember that occasionally they were used instead of reading the actual book or doing the actual research. Yet, your ass was grass when a teacher or professor asked you a highly specific question that Cliffnotes did not cover and you hadn’t bothered to read the whole book.

So there’s a small bibliography below with a list of books that are worth your time. The message is clear: Either you put in the time and read or you remain a dilettante on matters that you need to know both for your safety and your sanity.

© Leslye Joy Allen

This essay was previously posted on Substack on January 22, 2026.

I am an Independent Historian, Oral Historian and Dramaturge. Please consider supporting my work and research with a few bucks for Coffee and Eggs via my CashApp or become a paid subscriber to me on Substack to help me sustain my research.

Recommended Readings:

Living For the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California by Donna Jean Murch

Fanon for Beginners by Deborah Baker Wyrick

Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era by Ashley D. Farmer

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric Robinson

Oregon Police Department Surveillance Files on Donald Warden and the Afro-American Association which kept surveillance documents on Donald Warden when he visited Oregon to encourage students to read and research.

The Afro-American Association: Forerunner to the Panthers

“How Kamala Harris’ Immigrant Parents Found a Home, and Each Other, in a Black Study Group” by Ellen Barry, September 13, 2020, New York Times.

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris

Remembering Cedric Robinson: Humanistic Imaginaries and the Black Radical Tradition

All blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author.  Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers.  All Rights Reserved.

Revisit the French Resistance—The Maquis

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

In this current political climate in the United States, there is something that every member of the Left/Resistance needs to remember: People that only respect violence and who cheer violence will typically have to be dealt with violently. They don’t respond to reason or kindness or common sense. You will not write them away or blog them away. Calling them names won’t work either.

You’re going to have to accept that they are monsters. You don’t reason with monsters anymore than you reason with poisonous snakes. This is what you need to remember about MAGA supporters and those nuts that stormed the capital on January 6, 2021.

I am not going to teach a full history lesson in this blog. Yet, it would help you to review the French Revolution (1789-1799) where crops failed and the economy tanked while the nobility and the clergy paid almost no taxes as commoners bore the brunt of taxation and starvation while Louis XVI kept spending on himself.

You also would do well to study France’s Maquis (“the underbrush”) which was its underground guerilla movement that fought against the Nazis during World War II. In some instances they were successful; in others they were not. Yet, you better recognize that American insularity and that feeling we tend to embrace that says, “We will be okay as long as we protest and go through the courts,” will not necessarily save us.

In the next four years we may have no other choice but to get our hands dirty. Even worse, our obsession with the internet, and the attention we receive from it, may eventually work against us. Some strategies do not need publicity. We need more face-to-face private conversations whenever possible.

So, here’s a few good articles about the Maquis, including its African and Afro-Muslim participants, and the current research historians are still working on.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Overview of the French Resistance

France to Rename Streets after African WW2 Heroes

In the Footsteps of African Resistance Fighters

Addi Bâ Mamadou, called
“The Black Terrorist”
by the Nazis

All blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author.  Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers.  All Rights Reserved.

No Contradictions

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

When I started to hear negative commentary about Kamala Harris’ racial and ethnic background, I started reevaluating how “White Supremacy” works again.

Many people are completely unaware that when the Greek explorer Herodotus named the continent “Αἰθιοπία” (romanized as “Aithiopía”), his definition included the continents of Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Herodotus’ term literally means “Land of Burnt Faces.”

Those kinds of cross-cultural connections and collaborations do not help white supremacy to flourish which is why you rarely hear anything about them. The objective of white supremacy is to make certain that peoples of color look to white folk, and white men specifically, for acceptance, guidance, deliverance, and redemption, but not to each other. Sexism works exactly the same way. A man, not a woman, may rule you and grant you favor in some screwed up patriarchal world as sexists imagine it.

African-American scholar W. E. B. DuBois’ heir apparent Vijay Prashad noted that many Indian men arrived in the USA in the late 18th and 19th centuries, married Black American women and disappeared from most histories. Suraj Yengde, both in his books and in his portrayal of himself in Ava DuVernay’s masterpiece film “ORIGIN,” noted that we must find reconnections with each other. His research on Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar is fascinating.

Ambedkar was a Dalit, or as he was once called, an “Untouchable.” He wrote India’s constitution. He earned two doctorate degrees and when he came to the United States he wanted to meet his fellow American untouchables. So, he visited Harlem where the Black folks lived. (FYI: Martin Luther King, Jr. was introduced as a fellow “untouchable” when he visited India.)

This is exactly what Shyamala Gopolan-Harris did when she left India to go to school in the United States. She gravitated toward communities where she was less likely to be mistreated. So, she headed to Berkeley, California which was a hotbed of activism—there were Civil Rights protests, anti-Vietnam protests, the Free Speech Movement and the work of the Black Panther Party in nearby Oakland was the world that her daughter Kamala Harris grew up in.

I bring this up because we know so little about our early histories and connections. I don’t bring this up with any foolish idea that everyone is going to suddenly start singing “Kumbaya” and start getting along all the time. Yet, we know more about what Prashad accurately identified as white power structures that, during the late 20th century, deliberately created the myth that “Southeast Asians” were a model minority, a minority he emphasized that was designed as a weapon against Black Americans.

Felon 47 and his minions have lined up a small cadre of Southeast Asians to serve in his administration to do two things: 1) make the administration look less racist than it is and, 2) to also entice India, which now has a larger population than China, that its population is seen somehow as superior. South Africa did damned near the same thing during apartheid.

When Black Americans visited South Africa during its apartheid era, Black American visitors were given passes written in Afrikaans that translated into English as “Honorary White Person.”

Now, the fact that I personally know at least seven Southeast Asians who identify quite accurately as “Black,” does not matter. The fact that so many folks on the continents of Africa and Southeast Asia have near identical DNA doesn’t matter either. When I read the book “A Passage to India,” I noted that an Indian character in the book was described as a “little Black man.” It was the first time I ever saw such a description of anyone outside of a specifically African or African American context. My point, however, is much simpler.

We Black Americans can continue to roll our eyes at the brown guy wearing the turban at the local gas station and vice-versa OR we can recognize and identify our participation in upholding white supremacy while its foot remains situated on both our necks. Before you bother to tell me about the guy at the gas station that you don’t like, remember that he is an employee and all you are is someone pumping gas. White supremacy makes all of us its pawns.

If you are honest, you also remember that moment when you got bad service at a Black-owned business and thought to yourself that you got bad service because the business was Black-owned. The fact that there are, were, and will be folks who simply are not good at customer service regardless of their race or ethnicity or nationality did not enter your mind. That kind of thinking is white supremacy in action too.

Kamala Harris knows this better than anyone. She knows who she is and she didn’t need anyone to tell her who she is. The fact that anyone dared define her speaks not only to their arrogance, but also to their presumptions that they actually have such a right to do so.

She was perceived by some folks as a contradiction and by some folks as having split loyalties. The only thing that actually requires split loyalties is white supremacy. It cannot thrive or survive without its clear contradictions. Let me write that again—It cannot survive or thrive without its clear contradictions. It functions with the assistance of the people who it is designed to either oppress and/or control and/or regulate. Repeat that until you get it. So, no contradictions.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Dr. Suraj Yengde (as “himself”), Dr. Gaurav J. Pathania (as “Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar”) and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (as “Isabel Wilkerson”) in Ava DuVernay’s film “ORIGIN.”

All blogs written by Leslye Joy Allen are protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author.  Postings or blogs placed here by other writers should clearly reference those writers.  All Rights Reserved.

A Micro-History of Gender Variations in Ancient Africa, Asia, and North America

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by Leslye Joy Allen

Copyright © by Leslye Joy Allen.  All Rights Reserved.

This is an extremely tiny micro-history of Gender that is almost never covered in classrooms. While there is enough data available on this subject that fills thousands of libraries, it is particularly important information in light of the recent excessive violence and neglect of our/my transgender sisters and brothers.

It is important to remember that many ancient African, Asian, and Native American civiliations tended to identify and accept people who were not easily lumped into a single category defined strictly as male and female. There were (and always will be) a tiny minority of individuals who were/are best defined and/or recognized as not fitting into either of the two gender categories emphasized by the Western world.

As difficult as it may be to accept, gender is a social construct and has an entirely different meaning from biological sex. Western ideologies, which were largely dispersed through domination and conquest, have their value. Yet, Western colonization of parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas also replaced, altered, and in some cases, destroyed indigenous belief systems and cosmologies that were beneficial to the peoples that created them. Hopefully, the following 9 frames will provoke further study about this topic, gender dysphoria (a very real human status), and a greater understanding of people and peoples who do not neatly fit this very Western concept of being either one thing or the other.

Copyright © by Leslye Joy Allen.  All Rights Reserved.

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives-4.0 International License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.

#ImWithKap: A Lesson My Father Taught Me

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by Leslye Joy Allen

Copyright © by Leslye Joy Allen. All Rights Reserved

I did not watch Super Bowl LIII in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia largely in protest of the NFL’s mishandling and mistreatment of Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers who decided to kneel during the National Anthem in protest of continuing police brutality and murders of Black people and other peoples of color. Soon his friend NFL player Eric Reid joined him. Reid is back at work playing football, but Kaepernick is still without a job in the prime of his life.

Now, I don’t expect Kaepernick to be strapped for cash or without friends, even though he has been vilified by many people. The seven Atlanta artists that painted murals of him all over my beloved city of Atlanta in what artist Fabian Williams (aka @occasionalsuperstar) named #KaeperBowl, are certainly a testament that a lot of us think what Kaepernick did was right. (And the artwork of him is stunning, just visit: #KaeperBowlMurals.) Yet, I know that in many ways Kap is alone.  No one else has lost a job for doing something like kneeling during the National Anthem. In the midst of all that #ImWithKap hashtagging, I never forget that he’s really by himself in a lot of ways. So I will explain why I boycotted the Super Bowl and will continue to boycott the NFL.

I could say many things about the abuses heaped on my people, Black people, the historic abuses of slavery and rapes and beatings, as well as the abuses that seem to never end, such as police brutality. These certainly factor in my protest, but they really are not the reason why #ImWithKap.

Back in 1973 when I started Saint Joseph High School on Courtland Street, the boys’ varsity basketball team, The Hawks, lost a lot of games. It wasn’t until my second year that we saw improvement. My Dad always took me to these games and in many instances, Daddy was a lot of my classmates’ ride to and from the game. My father spent more time with me than the average soccer Moms of today spend with their children. He was always present and accounted for.

Well, I remember one night St. Joe’s boys’ varsity basketball team was just a few minutes away from actually winning a game.  We were going crazy in the bleachers. I don’t even remember the name of the school or the team we were playing, but I do recall that there wasn’t enough time on the clock in the fourth quarter for the opposing team to ever catch up and possibly force the game into overtime or win outright. Victory was ours; and then it happened. Daddy started cheering for the other team. “Come on now, you can do this!” “Let’s go! Let’s go!” I looked at him like he had lost his mind; and I prayed that none of my friends saw him give these pep talks and cheers to a team that was playing against us.

When we won, we all ran around screaming and jumping and shouting.  I headed back to the bleachers to ask Daddy what in the world was he thinking cheering for the other team. He stopped me from finishing the question and looked me dead in the eye and said this.  “Joy, look over there at how that team’s fans have left. No one is cheering for them. No one is in their corner. Never, ever forget that when someone or a group of people have done their best, have given their all, but it’s obvious they are not going to win and not going to prevail, that they still deserve to have someone standing with them always in their corner.” I’ve never forgotten that lesson. Daddy cheered for the underdog his entire life.

Colin Kaepernick had Eric Reid to join him in taking a knee against police brutality. My Daddy would have loved Eric Reid for that. As I trekked around Atlanta to take a look at all the murals painted of Colin Kaepernick by some of our most brilliant Atlanta artists, I knew that if Daddy was alive he would not have simply gone with me, he would have gone out ahead of schedule to watch these artists paint these murals. I know my Daddy. He was always ready for an adventure, and particularly one steeped in protest for the protection, respect and benefit of our people. So…

I’m not solely “with Kap” because, as a historian I can dredge up 400 plus years of offenses against Black people; nor am I specifically “with Kap” because there have been so many instances of police abuse against Black people in these last several years. I’m “with Kap” because my Daddy loved us as a people. #ILoveUs✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼. #ImWithKap simply out of respect for my father. Àṣẹ.

This blog was written by Leslye Joy Allen and is protected by U. S. Copyright Law and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Any partial or total reference to this or any blog authored by Leslye Joy Allen, or any total or partial excerpt of this or any blog by Leslye Joy Allen must contain a direct reference to this hyperlink: https://leslyejoyallen.com with Leslye Joy Allen clearly stated as the author. All Rights Reserved.