Traveling Truth Civilization Banner Displayed In Chicago
Traveling Truth Civilization Banner Displayed In Chicago
BY KATHERINE NEWMAN
A long-time Chicago activist known as EvAngel Mamadee Yhwhnewbn (Mama Dee) recently unveiled the Traveling Truth Civilization Banner in front of the DuSable Museum of African American History. The banner depicts centuries of global African history and the unveiling was hosted to commemorate the 400 year anniversary of the first group of enslaved Africans arriving in North America in 1619.
Mama Dee received the banner as a gift from Rabbi Kohain Halevi, executive director of the Panafest Foundation, when she was visiting Ghana last month. The banner features images that represent significant moments in worldwide African history from the times of Ancient Kemet, known today as Egypt, to present day and highlights African heroes like the Great Kings and Queens of Africa to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I was having lunch at a restaurant in Ghana and I saw this huge banner on the wall and I was so captivated by it. I had never seen anything like it in my life. When you roll it out it is longer than 6 feet and its about 5 feet tall and it starts by talking about early Africans and the evidence proving that we were the first people to walk upright and then it goes on to show all these great kings of Africa and Cleopatra and Haile Selassie, Marcus Garvey, Master Farid Muhammed, Dr. King, and Fannie Lou Hamer. I was just in awe, my jaw had dropped open. The banner covers not just the 400-year slavery incident but it’s from biblical time in Kemet all the way to during and after and beyond slavery,” said Mama Dee.
Some significant and more modern points of interest on the banner were four different covers of Ebony Magazine that each pointed to significant African Americans who were both celebrities and civil rights activists throughout their careers.
“One thing I found very interesting and very clever was that the banner shows four front-page stories from Ebony Magazine. The front covers are Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, and Aretha Franklin so they had that there and it represented all four of them who were all very significant during the American Civil Rights Renaissance during the 1960s,” said Mama Dee.
The DuSable Museum of African American History was selected as the location to first unveil the Traveling Truth Civilization Banner in Chicago because Jean Baptist-Point DuSable, who the museum is named after, was a Haitian immigrant and explorer who founded the city and DuSable is part of the significant history that is on the banner, according to Mama Dee.
While the banner shows a great wealth of worldwide elements of African history over many centuries, Mama Dee noticed a few people that were missing and chose to add to the display with her own banner.
“Everybody and everything is on the banner, but they did not have Barak Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Jesse Owens, or Harold Washington on there so I had another banner that featured those trailblazers and we added that to the Traveling Truth Civilization Banner so now they are all on there and it’s complete,” said Mama Dee.
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