Category Archives: Self Help

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.

Walk With a Book

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I remember the first time I heard someone say, “If you want to hide something, hide it in a book.” The comment depressed me.

When you are a historian, you have books everywhere. You have to read all the time. I have not seen the top of my dining room table in nearly 15 years as it is covered with stacks of books. Books occupy every nook and cranny of my home.

With the United States ranking 36th in the world for literacy, with a 79% literacy rate, with only 25% of literate adults reading above the 6th grade level, we are already dumb. We can expect to see more decline in literacy with Felon 47 living on Pennsylvania Avenue.

So, I have a proposal. It might not change anything, but it is worth a try. Walk out of your door with a book in your hand or tucked under your arm everyday for at least a month.

Let kids and other adults see you walk with that book. And don’t say you can’t do this. You have carried books before when you were in grade school.

Make your book/s visible at your job, on a trip to a store. Hell, go for a walk with your book until someone asks you why you always have a book in your hand or under your arm. And then have the audacity to tell them why.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

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.

Enough Is Enough

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

I have more than a few favorite writers, journalists, and/or activists on Substack. One of them is Lorissa Rinehart. When she wrote that too many children are addicted to social media, I got the impression that she drew on scientific studies and her own observations.

She delivered a good hard punch to catch our attention. She wrote:

“If religion is the opium of the masses, then social media is the meth.” —©️Lorissa Rinehart

You should be aware that an addiction to substances like Crystal Meth are among the most difficult of all habits to kick. Rinehart waxed poetic about how the Zuckerbergs and the Musks of this world prey on the minds of our children in much the same way drug dealers pounce on entire communities.

Her statement reminded me that addiction to social media is one thing that aided and abetted our current political climate. She reminded me that our children are particularly vulnerable to social media propaganda pushed by the Far Right.

So, here are some family practices I suggest that I learned from a friend of mine over 15 years ago. My friend limited TV viewing to one night a week with the whole family watching together. Her kids were only allowed 3 days per week to surf the web at home for 1 hour each day with parental controls on.

The rest of the week she and her offspring discussed Art, Music, Current Events, School and Books at the dinner table. After dinner there was homework. After homework they would pick a topic to discuss or a book to read together over the coming week. I must say she now has some of the smartest young adults I have met in quite a while.

Now, before you say that all of this is too difficult to do; that your work schedule is too difficult to navigate around in order to do any of this; or that you are not sure if you can get your kids to participate in anything like this, answer a few questions for yourself.

When is the last time you read a book or visited a library? How often do you have face-to-face conversations with friends and family, with everyone’s cellphone silenced or turned off and put away out of sight?

If you have not done any of the above in quite some time or you have stopped doing most of it regularly, consider how social media has altered how you communicate with others. Come to think of it, social media has altered nearly everybody’s way of communicating.

Social media is not inherently evil nor inherently good. Social media’s information, however, is the easiest information to manipulate and the fastest to spread. Now think of how easy it can manipulate your children’s ideas about the world and themselves, often before you know anything about the ideas that have formed in their heads. Before I say anything else about Meth addiction, think about social drinking.

If you are a social drinker who is not an alcoholic, you tend to know your limit. You might feel a mild buzz, feel a bit relaxed, but not drunk. In your youth you probably learned the hard way when to say “I have had enough.” Long term Meth addicts don’t have any moments of “I have had enough.” They often suffer from everything from depression, psychotic episodes, an inability to sleep, and tooth decay.

Unlike addictions to controlled substances—legal and illegal—social media addiction has no noticeable physical symptoms. So, when it comes to social media, do you know when enough is enough for yourself? More importantly, do you know when enough is enough for your kids? Think about that for a while.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

(Stock drawing of kids on their cellphones)

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.

Pawns and Queens: Analogies For a New Era

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

We historians often find data in some file in an obscure archive, in letters written by someone’s grandmother, in photos, newspaper clippings, legal records. Our discipline demands that we dig, analyze, rethink and revise, constantly. I liken our work to studying the function of each piece in a Chess game. We get different perspectives about the same set of circumstances depending on which Chess piece we examine.

I was a mediocre Chess player. I had a few friends who played like champions. So, I often just watched them play. I remain, however, fascinated by the game’s objectives and, specifically, the roles of Pawns and Queens.

Pawns are the most numerous pieces in Chess; they are the foot soldiers. Each player has eight Pawns. A Pawn can move one or two squares forward if that move is its first move. After the first move, a Pawn can only move one square forward unless the square is blocked by some other piece. A Pawn can capture or attack another piece, however, by moving diagonally to the left or right.

The Pawn is the only piece in a Chess game that can change ranks. Depending on the skill of a Chess player, a Pawn can become a Bishop, a Rook or a Queen. In spite of a Pawn’s ability to advance to a higher rank, it is still considered the lowest ranking piece in the game. It is only worth one point.

The objective of the game is to capture your opponent’s King where that King has no way out, which means Checkmate. While the King is considered the most important piece in the game, it is the Queen that is considered the most powerful piece.

Queens are the only pieces that can move across the board in any manner as long as they are not successfully blocked by other pieces. If you lose, it is highly likely that you lost because your opponent’s Queen checkmated your King. Chess players feel much more confident when they have successfully captured or blocked her.

You can still win the game without capturing the Queen, but you have to be extremely strategic and precise to do so. You can also win without making good moves with your Pawns, but it is highly unlikely.

Chess is now over 1,500 years old. While there is some skepticism about its precise origins, many Chess historians believe that the Indian board game called “Chaturanga” was the earliest predecessor of Chess. There were many other versions that followed, but are too numerous to mention here.

In early versions of Chess, there was a piece called “Vizier” or “Advisor” for centuries. In the 1500s, in the era of great and powerful Queens in Europe, like Spain’s Isabella and England’s Elizabeth, “Viziers” or “Advisors” were redesigned and renamed “Queens.” You can learn an awful lot of world history just by examining Chess.

So here’s the deal: There is no such thing as a Chess game where Queens/Women Heads of State/Women in general are not powerful and flexible while the Kings/Men Heads of State/Men in general are highly important but who have or exercise fewer tactical moves.

There is also no such thing as a Chess game where Pawns/Foot Soldiers/Laborers are not essential to success, even while they are considered less important.

Apply any and all of the above to what you see happening in the United States and the world right now. I refuse to tell you how to analyze and interpret this history because there are so many interpretations and analogies that can be extrapolated from this board game.

All I will say is that nothing is going to change or be corrected without the skill of devoted Pawns, and the power and daring of Queens.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

Shutterstock photo of a Pawn and a Queen on a Chessboard.

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.

Parable of the Sower

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by ©️Leslye Joy Allen

“…the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

“God is your first and your last teacher. God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.” — Octavia Butler, (from “The Parable of the Sower, 1993)

I woke up before dawn annoyed that January 20, 2025 is inauguration day for Felon 47 and it is also the federal holiday celebrating the birth and life of Martin Luther King, Jr. I also could not help thinking about how our abuse of the earth has contributed to the fires in California.

A week ago, I re-read Octavia Spencer’s prescient novel “Parable of the Sower.” Butler’s protagonist Lauren, the daughter of a preacher, lives in a safe and comfortable, walled-up cul-de-sac. Outside those walls are desperately poor people, racial and economic inequality, and drug addicts that use a drug called “pyro” that makes its users want to set fires.

Lauren tries to convince others to accept that the world has changed and will continue to change. The others prefer to pretend nothing has happened to the earth and its inhabitants.

Butler predicted ecological disaster by fire coming over 30 years ago, and named her novel after a biblical parable. Right after I finished reading the book again, I thought about how M. L. got his name.

Many people do not know that M. L. (what we called him here in Atlanta) was born Michael King, Jr. I knew many elderly Black Atlanta citizens who called him “Mike” their entire lives.

His father, best known as “Daddy King,” attended a World Baptist Conference in Germany in 1934. Reborn and rejuvenated after he learned more about the philosophies of Protestant reformer Martin Luther, Daddy King soon renamed himself and his son “Martin Luther King, Sr. and Jr.”

In 1957, “Michael King, Jr.” was officially changed to “Martin Luther King, Jr.” on his birth certificate. There are other stories about why and when Daddy King changed their names, but I like this story the best.

I bring this up because another story goes that when the German Protestant leader Martin Luther was asked what he would do if he knew the world was going to end tomorrow, he allegedly answered, “I would plant an apple tree today.”

While I am a believer in Goddess/God, I am not particularly religious. I know too well how organized religion has failed us in so many ways. I am, however, a historian who finds truth and sustenance in some parts of the Christian Bible that the incoming administration and so many preachers and billionaires have totally corrupted.

In the Bible’s Parable of the Sower, Yeshu’a ben Yosef (bka Jesus) tells a story about a farmer who sows seeds in four different types of soil. It is not until the farmer’s seeds are sowed in good soil that he yields a good crop. In this parable, which has many lessons, Yeshu’a emphasized that we must pay attention to where we plant our seeds if we expect anything to grow. We yield a good harvest when we take responsibility for how and where we do our planting.

To place seeds in the ground is an act of faith. When you plant, you do so with the faith that you will yield something. You do it with the belief that you, or your loved ones, will live long enough to reap the reward, be it vegetables or fruits or flowers or justice or equality.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, may we go forward intentionally, reminded that we are obligated to be good stewards of the earth that we do not own. California’s fires are the result of our excess and failure to clean up the earth which is the only home we have.

May we plant in the best soil, in the best social and educational policies, in the best radicalism, in the truth. May we sow our seeds in our gardens and farms and tend them with a faith that tells us we will reap a good harvest and that we will have enough to sustain us in order to stave off the worst excesses of the incoming administration. May we humble ourselves, unlike Felon 47 and his underlings, and remember that we live on this earth that we did not create and will die whether we are paupers or billionaires. May we learn the life lessons of one of the best sowers, namely Martin Luther King, Jr.

©️Leslye Joy Allen

King’s Papers are located at the King Institute at Stanford University. I urge you to visit and explore: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/message-director

(Martin Luther King, Jr. photographed in 1964 by Dick DeMarsico for World Telegraph and Sun. Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

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.