Drum roll, please....
AYA's 2019 Revolutionary Black Love Awardees are Mama Maimuna Ricksand Dada Mukasa Ricks. Of course, with Baba Mukasa, he's gonna rename it the Black Power Award! Baba is the originator of that slogan that defined a movement and many generations of organizers and freedom fighters. Less is known about Mama Maimuna who was also an organizer for the All African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) Even less is know about the love that has helped to sustain Black Power and Revolutionary struggle against European oppression, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation. Here is just snippet.
Read, enjoy, share and join on this Saturday to pay tribute to a revolutionary love that has touched us all. (www.blacklovedinner.com) Donate if you can't make it.
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"He's told that lie so many times for over 40 years that I sometimes don't know if it's true."
I knew I was in for a treat capturing this revolutionary love story. Neither bullets, car bombs or FBI harassment couldn't deter this love. It was 1974. Maimuna, a secretary of the SGA at Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS, was charged with introducing the Black History Month speaker from the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party (AAPRP). Brother Mukasa lit a flame on that campus that night. He also lit a fire in Maimuna. She was from Natchez, MS.
"I'd never heard these ideas before - Revolution, the Unification of Africa, Africa must be free, Black Power, " she said.
After a speech that brought the house down, young Maimuna presented him the SGA honorarium - a check for $25.00.
"That's one of those lies he's been telling, she says."
"It was $25.00," Mukasa retorts.
"It was $25.00," Mukasa retorts.
Maimuna concedes, “I don't exactly know what it was; it wasn't that much, but I believe it was more than $25.00.”
Adding insult to injury, Mukasa adds, "She thought I had money, so she's been running after me ever since." They laugh because both are clear that she didn't marry this man for his money.
When I asked how did a $25.00 speech to a 45-year-old love affair, she says: "He just kept on calling.
When asked why he kept calling, Mukasa denies that there were tremors in the force, insisting "She was interested in the movement, and they were organizing all kinds of demonstrations and protest on campus, so I kept calling about that, and she just ‘hooked in.’"
Maimuna had something to say about that:
"The truth is that Mukasa didn't know he was gonna be hooked; he thought he could just call when he was gonna be in town. He didn't know that 45 years later, he'd still be sitting here!"
Maimuna:
I was on a different path before I met Mukasa. My parents sent me to college to earn a degree, then come back to Natchez, get a job making $10K, and marry the preacher's son. What I brought home was the opposite! When he came into my family's house, my father reached out his hand and says, "Jesus," Mukasa shook his hand and responded, "Africa!"
I was on a different path before I met Mukasa. My parents sent me to college to earn a degree, then come back to Natchez, get a job making $10K, and marry the preacher's son. What I brought home was the opposite! When he came into my family's house, my father reached out his hand and says, "Jesus," Mukasa shook his hand and responded, "Africa!"
Mukasa jumps in, "Before I was done, I'd converted the entire family and the church." Maimuna confirms, "They all were preaching revolution, and all had taken African names." He even chose to get Baptised in my father's church. When you come up, you're supposed to say "Thank you, Jesus." Mukasa emerged from the water with both fists held high saying "Africa must be free."
But this wasn't Mukasa's first time in Natchez. Ten years earlier he, Kwame Toure (Stokley Carmichael at the time) and Dr. King were organizing in the community to protest the car bombing death of a Black man who a local plant had promoted over a white man. SNCC had organized there before. Now Mukasa, Kwame Toure, Dr. King, and others were mobilizing the community to stand against these racist acts in '63-64. It was a dangerous time with Klan night rides and nighttime curfews. It was an incredibly racist town. Maimuna would have been ten years old and doesn't remember these incidents.
Mukasa swore when he met her at Tugaloo in '74, that he recognized her from when he'd been organizing in her hometown ten years earlier. He embellishes the memory - saying that he told her then that she’d see him in about ten years. Maimuna smiles and says, "That's another one of those 40-year-old lies." They both laugh, and it's contagious.
It's such a joy seeing love and laughter after 45 years of struggle against oppression. At about the same time, they correct my slight suggestion that revolutionary struggle made the relationship a challenge." The struggle brought us together! That's been the anchor to our relationship. As a result of Mukasa's speech that night, "I joined AAPRP and started organizing all over the country," she says. "Sometimes we'd see each other at state and national organizing events. That's how we got to know each other." When I moved to Atlanta, he was still organizing, but every time I looked up, he was here, and it just evolved from there.
Later when I asked her about advice she'd give younger folks seeking a long love, she'd return to this period. "Take your time to get to know the person. That's what we did over this time when we were both organizing. I got to see him and know him as a principled man. He got to see me as also committed to the liberation of our people." That's the other piece of advice: “Make sure you agree on core principles and ideology; then everything else you can work out. We not only agree on the ideology, but we were also uncompromising on those principles.”
Several other ingredients make this revolutionary love stew taste good - even after all these years.
*Complementarity*
Maimuna:
"We were compliments. We had differences that we discovered made the relationship sweet! His strengths are my weaknesses, and my weaknesses are his strengths. I'm detailed and organized; he's not. I like to make flyers and arrange things. He loves to go into alleyways and talk to people."
"We were compliments. We had differences that we discovered made the relationship sweet! His strengths are my weaknesses, and my weaknesses are his strengths. I'm detailed and organized; he's not. I like to make flyers and arrange things. He loves to go into alleyways and talk to people."
*Marry The Family*
Mukasa:
We married - in the African way. We married each other’s family. We brought our families together. The reason I was able to organize was that I didn't let the ideology stop me from connecting to her entire family. I found some rooted African customs still alive in her family. Going there was like a taking little retreat to Afrika.
We married - in the African way. We married each other’s family. We brought our families together. The reason I was able to organize was that I didn't let the ideology stop me from connecting to her entire family. I found some rooted African customs still alive in her family. Going there was like a taking little retreat to Afrika.
*Consistency*
Maimuna:
My parents loved his consistency. My mother once said, "He's more consistent and principled than many Christians in our community. If he would just get saved, Christ would have a powerful servant."
Maimuna had also won the heart of Mukasa's family. So much so that when his father passed, he willed what money he had to his son's wife - Maimuna.
*Dependability*
Maimuna:
He could depend on me, and I could depend on him. I'd see him out there working, sweating, organizing, hungry, he would have had nothing to eat. Someone would come up to him and say "Brother here's $10; go and get you something to eat." Five hours later, he'd bring that $10 and lay it on the table. When I asked if he'd eaten, he'd say "No, I just figured that the house could use it better. "
*Deliver!*
Find out what's important to your mate, and deliver.
Maimuna:
"He didn't have much money, but he gave me many things that brothers with plenty of money couldn't have. Brothers with lots of money wouldn't and couldn't have me sitting in a tent with Muammar Gaddafi eating couscous and lamb. Brothers with plenty of money couldn't have me in Sekou Toure's personal library with him saying "Take any book that you want." Other brothers couldn't have me sitting with revolutionaries who worked with Amilcar Cabral and who shot down a Portuguese plane. Every country we travel to honored us. Another brother's diamond ring may have been lost, but those memories and many more are forever - that's what he gave me."
What did she give him? Stability.
Mukasa:
I'd been shot at, firebombed, faced the Klan and all that, but when she put my first child, Asantewa, in my hands, I trembled feeling fear and joy at the same time. When she had her first diaper rash, I couldn't stand it. From that day forward, if she made a sound, I was changing her diaper. Maimuna confirms, "when Asantewa was still nursing as an infant, I'd wake up to discover that he had changed her twice without me knowing anything about it."
While still organizing, he took care of the family. He carried his children and their friends to their practices, and somehow even got to his meetings. When schools tried to railroad his son, he stood against them. The movement was always first, but his children couldn't tell it. He prides himself in putting his son into Fidel Castro's hands for a world-class medical education.
*Keep laughing and Keep The Fires Burning*
When I asked how they kept it sweet, Mukasa started extolling the virtues of love in the desert of Senegal, of Gambia, in the thunder and lighting in ...
"Don't write that," Maimuna says.
Her answer to keeping the fires burning was less dramatic - at least on the surface: "We travel and always arrange for some time for us. That rejuvenates and rekindles our love.”
Of course, there are more stories. It's been 45 years and their love is stronger than ever. It's only matched by the strength of their commitment to Africa. It's like they just signed up yesterday!
Please join us in celebrating the revolutionary Black Power love of Comrades Mukasa and Maimuna Ricks.
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Please get your tickets now so you can hear more.
Please comment below to big up their love.
If you can't attend, donate a ticket to support this effort.
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