Leid Stories

Leid Stories—Nkrumah Envisions A United African World—02.14.18

On June 4, 1962—two years after a plebiscite ratified a new constitution and Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was elected the first prime minister and president of the Republic of Ghana, a Conference of African Freedom Fighters was held in Accra, the nation’s capital.
Nkrumah had led Ghana, formerly known as The Gold Coast, to independence from Britain in 1957. He titled his speech, “Step to Freedom.”
The aim of the conference was to bring together freedom fighters in independent and still-colonized states to map out strategies for a united Africa and avoid re-colonization by enemies who, he warned, would not let go of the African territories they controlled through imperialist and colonialist wars and other external pressures that would keep the continent politically divided and economically devastated.
Nkrumah, the acknowledged “Father of Pan-Africanism,” saw African unity as a global endeavor, consolidating the power, interests and wealth of all African nations.
Leid Stories shares Nkrumah’s powerful and prescient address.

Leid Stories—What Is Black History? (Part 2)—02.13.18

We delve deeper into yesterday’s question: What is the purpose of Black history? As callers discovered, it is a deceptively simple question.

Leid Stories—What Is Black History?—02.12.18

Seems like a simple question, but not the way Leid Stories asks it of listeners on today’s program.

Leid Stories—The Battle for Our Minds Rages On, But Give Them No Easy Victories!—02.09.18

No, you’re not imagining things. You know intuitively that Trump’s rosy picture of the “new” America simply is not squaring with what we’re seeing and experiencing every day. Even diehard Make-America-Great-Again believers are worrying about the growing distance between them and the goodies they were promised. They lost their minds to sweet talk.

We at Leid Stories don’t go for sweet talk. Instead, we like to think clearly and analytically and talk things through. We know the battle is for our minds. They’ll get no easy victories.

Call 888-874-4888 and join our free-wheeling ‘Free Your Mind Friday” open forum.

Leid Stories—Running Out of Options and Wiggle Room on Multiple Criminal Probes, the Clintons May Play Their Biggest ‘Trump’ Card: Barack Obama!—02.08.18

Bill and Hillary Clinton, veteran survivors of many personal and political battles and scandals, won’t come out of their current predicament unscathed. Their magic formula—deny everything, accuse their accusers, and feed fresh meat to the hounds at their heels—doesn’t seem to be working. They’re smack-dab at the center of multiple criminal investigations, any one of which could net them and their co-conspirators serious time.

The Clintons, fast running out of legal options and wiggle room on possible federal charges, may just play their biggest “Trump” card, says Leid Stories: Throw former President Barack Obama under the proverbial bus and unmask his alleged knowledge of and role in their unparalleled unlawful schemes.

Wall Street banker turned financial investigator Charles Ortel, whose own independent probe has led him to call the Clinton Foundation and its network of spinoff “nonprofit” organizations “the largest unprosecuted charity fraud in world history,” reports his latest findings.

Leid Stories—Dr. Jeffrey Perry Presents ‘Hubert Harrison, Father of Harlem Radicalism’ (Part 2)—02.07.18

Longtime union activist and independent scholar Dr. Jeffrey Perry presents Part 2 of his portrait of Hubert Harrison, “the father of Harlem radicalism,” whose political philosophies were far ahead of their time. Harrison influenced the thinking of many Black leaders of the day—both within the United States and the African diaspora—but is not widely known.

Perry preserved and inventoried the Hubert H. Harrison Papers (now at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library), and is the editor of A Hubert Harrison Reader (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and Harrison’s When Africa Awakes: The “Inside Story” of the Stirrings and Striving of the New Negro in the Western World (Diasporic Africa Press, 2014) and he is the author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press, 2008). He currently is working on Volume 2 of the Hubert Harrison biography.

Leid Stories—Dr. Jeffrey Perry Presents ‘Hubert Harrison, Father of Harlem Radicalism’—02.06.18

A mere shadow of its past, Harlem today gives almost no hint that it was the epicenter of the Black world. Segregationist, white-supremacist laws and policies rigidly controlled life in America, especially in its nonwhite communities, and the system thought it would permanently have the upper hand. It vastly underestimated the enduring impact of the Black church and radical Black political thought.

Longtime union activist and independent scholar Dr. Jeffrey Perry presents a portrait of Hubert Harrison, “the father of Harlem radicalism,” whose political philosophies were far ahead of their time. Harrison influenced the thinking of many Black leaders of the day—both within the United States and the African diaspora—but is not widely known.

Perry preserved and inventoried the Hubert H. Harrison Papers (now at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library), and is the editor of A Hubert Harrison Reader (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and Harrison’s When Africa Awakes: The “Inside Story” of the Stirrings and Striving of the New Negro in the Western World (Diasporic Africa Press, 2014) and he is the author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Columbia University Press, 2008). He currently is working on Volume 2 of the Hubert Harrison biography.

Leid Stories—Emptying Detroit: Trump’s Anti-Mexican Forced-Repatriation Policy; 36,000 New Foreclosure Notices Set to Rid the City of ‘Undesirables’—01.23.18

Fifty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference announced a nationwide mobilization to back up a demand for real justice and equality for all, a revived “Poor People’s Campaign” today issues the battle cry again, the Trump administration specifically in its crosshairs.

As Leid Stories reports, the Poor People’s Campaign may have lost momentum and wide grassroots support over the years, but pitched battles across the country nevertheless continued, even if erratically.

Leid Stories updates two significant, and ongoing, grassroots battles in the City of Detroit.

Elena Herrada, an elected member of Detroit’s “old” school board whose authority over local education unconstitutionally was overridden by the state during the state-imposed bankruptcy of the city, reports on a pushback by the Mexican community against the Trump administration’s racist, anti-immigrant policies, especially as they relate to forced repatriation.

The City of Detroit has stepped up its aggressive plan to “reclaim” property and vast tracts of land that would then be offered—mostly to speculators and the politically connected—at bargain-basement prices to help “resurrect” the beleaguered city.

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan-African News Wire and a Detroit organizer for the Workers World Party and Moratorium Now, reveals that the city has sent about 36,000 new notices to homeowners informing them of imminent foreclosure on their properties.

Leid Stories—Take Your Time and Free Your Mind—02.02.18

Add your voice to a historical work in progress, “Free Your Mind Friday” on Leid Stories.

It’s our weekly open forum, and your take on the issues we’ve covered this week, or anything you consider worthy of further discussion and/or debate, isn’t merely a feature of the program, it is the program. Imagine, in an hour we will have produced a historical document capturing an authentic sampling of American thought.

Call 888-874-4888 and add your entry to the historical record!

 

Leid Stories—Hillary’s Emailgate Compounds the Clintons’ Legal Woes with Foundation—02.01.18

An FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information via a private server installed in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home and other unsecured devices appears to have established a direct link between her Cabinet-level position and hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation (The Clinton Foundation) from “donors” seeking political favors and influence.

Sources are telling Leid Stories that the FBI probe has produced the most damaging evidence yet that the Clintons set up and used their eponymous foundation as a pay-to-play slush fund.

Wall Street banker turned financial investigator Charles Ortel, whose own independent probe has led him to call the Clinton Foundation and its network of spinoff “charitable” organizations “the largest unprosecuted fraud in U.S. history,” discusses the latest findings in his ongoing, self-initiated investigation and the likely impact of the FBI probe.