plantations of the South, comes this record of mass slayings on the basis
of race, of lives deliberately warped and distorted by the willful crea
tion of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease. It
is a record that calls aloud for condemnation, for an end to these terrible
injustices that constitute a daily and ever-increasing violation of the
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide."
"We Charge Genocide" is the title of the book-length petition presented by Paul Robeson & William Patterson to The United Nations, demanding relief from the almost 100 years of terrorism that Black People in america were being forced to endure. The petition documents hundreds of the lynchings that had taken place each year since the end of slavery. The document charges that more than 10,000 Blacks had been lynched since 1965 (the true number will never be known;) and that the American government had played a role in allowing these crimes to happen without consequence. Eloquently written, meticulously detailed, and covering many bases, this document provided an undeniable case on behalf of the Black Man, Woman & Child in america & abroad. Not wanting to let any momentum to be allowed from this movement, the various elements of the U.S. Government (FBI, Congress, etc) did all that the could to make life difficult for Paul robeson and William Patterson. And while there is a wealth of information out there on Paul robeson, most discussions on the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement conveniently leave the work of these men out of the discussion. Learn More, and carry on the fight.
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
For more information on Paul Robeson:
http://www.cpsr.cs.uchicago.edu/robeson/bio.html
To view and/or download the actual document (Note: for some reason it begins on page 16) click below.
we_charge_genocide.pdf |