Remembering a Warrior-Queen
25th January 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
A major snowstorm headed to the Northeast this past weekend may have caused the cancellation of a Jan. 23 memorial service for African-centered scholar, noted psychiatrist and warrior-queen Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, but it could not dampen or chill the burning reverence, gratitude and regard millions around the world have for this phenomenal woman.
As an undergraduate at LSU, I often felt like I was treading water in an ocean of whiteness but it was Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s research and writings that gave me clarity, a sense of my place in history and the global community as well as a sense of purpose.
Even before The Isis Papers was published by Third World Press, it was Dr. Welsing’s insight about the origin and ultimate purpose of white supremacy that guided me as I served as president of Black United Students on campus. Thanks to her brilliant findings, I was able to better understand resistance to change from the white student populace and administration at LSU, apartheid-era politics in South Africa and divisions among Black people.
I was also able to forge powerful and lasting relationships with Africans from around the world including students from Ethiopia, Ghana, Angola, Ghana, Eritrea, Senegal, Tanzania, Gambia, Panama, Honduras, Argentina, Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba and Brazil. In addition to organizing Black students from the U.S., I relished the opportunity to hang out with and share information with members of the International Student Association because Welsing helped me to understand that Black people in the U.S. are by definition “international.” The international slave trade dispersed us to every corner of the global community but could not destroy the historical, cultural or spiritual binds that tie us to our brothers and sisters around the world.
She made me feel that connection and helped me to understand that I never had to apologize for being who the Creator made me to be.
For that and for more reasons than I could possibly ever list in this column, I am forever grateful to Warrior-Queen Frances.
Those who knew her best describe her as a revolutionary scholar, fearless freedom fighter and cultural warrior who spent every waking moment seeking to liberate the minds of people of African descent around the world. Those who knew Welsing, the former Howard University professor and author of the critically acclaimed The Isis Papers, also say that not even death can diminish the profundity and significance of her life’s work.
While there may never be a national holiday in her honor or a monument on the National Mall to commemorate her efforts to effect positive change in the world, she will remain a living, breathing testament to the indomitability of the human spirit in the hearts and minds of everyone familiar with her writings and observations about the system of racism/white supremacy.
Among those who were moved and inspired by her wisdom, insight and intellect was Chuck Siler, himself a cultural warrior and former curator for the Louisiana State Museum.
“Dr. Frances Cress Welsing was a disturbance in the force called racism,” Siler, who crafts insightful cartoons for The Louisiana Weekly, said recently. “She spoke out against its insidious continuity and used its own symbolic images to destroy its power.
“Her message to our people was to wake up, reclaim our history and become aware of the forces that confront us and threaten our existence,” Siler added.
In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly shortly after Welsing’s death, Professor James Small, a Black Studies professor at the City University of New York, talked about Welsing’s brilliance, courage, resilience and gentle spirit.
“The last time I spoke with her face to face was three years ago at the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations conference at Howard University,” Small told this writer. “We were discussing African spirituality and she was so up on it. She understood that we are God having a human experience. She understood that you can’t separate your spirituality from your reality.
“Any time you met Frances, she had a serious dialogue to engage in but she engaged in serious dialogue very softly. It wasn’t contentious. That was the beautiful thing about this brilliant African spirit that stayed among us 80 years teaching and never wavering. Totally committed and courageous, even though she was attacked and not allowed to practice her profession at many times the way she wanted to, She never capitulated – she stood her ground… When Eurocentric scholars pushed their philosophy of white supremacy around the world, she stood up by herself and took them on. She crushed them and silenced them. That’s extraordinary.”
Small, who was asked by Welsing’s loved ones to preside over her memorial service along with several others, said it is the single-greatest honor of his life to do so.
Small, who called Welsing his “friend, comrade and big sister,” added that Dr. Welsing will forever be held in the highest regard in this life and the Afterlife.
“A person like Frances is considered to be a revered ancestor because of her contributions to the people,” Small told The Louisiana Weekly. “She should never be forgotten and always remembered and constantly learned from.
“When we view ancestry as a necessary rite of passage, then we won’t view it in the text of sadness though there is some sadness there,” he added. “We’ll view it in a celebratory sense because she successfully made it back home to the Divine from which she began her journey in the first place. Hopefully, we can do as well as she did before we have to make that journey.”
Dr. Leonard Jeffries, a widely revered African-centered scholar, president of the World Africa Diaspora Union and past president of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, compared Welsing to other great women like Harriet Tubman, telling The Louisiana Weekly, “She was a Warrior-Queen in the best sense of the word..,. She stands with the best of them.”
Jeffries said the World Africa Diaspora Union honored Dr. Welsing several years ago at Howard University with the Ida B. Wells Award, named for the brilliant journalist and fearless freedom fighter who battled white supremacy and domestic terrorism in the 19th century.
“She really appreciated it because she grew up with Ida B. Wells’ daughter and her parents knew Ida B. Wells and were part of the Chicago African-American community,” Jeffries added.
Jeffries said Welsing was the third generation of her family to serve as medical doctor and took seriously her mission to heal the minds and spirits of Black people in America and throughout the global community. “Her paramount achievement was to serve our people,” he told this writer.
“I really appreciate the sister and had the pleasure of being alongside of her and in the struggle for 50 years,” Jeffries added. “It’s been a great and mighty victory trying to establish the African primacy of the human family. African primacy is the African victory and we are on a victorious path.
“She is certainly one of those great souls who had a mission to make a great contribution. Now she has joined the array of great leaders in the African village as she returns, but she will not be forgotten. She will be with us as a special spirit forever.”
There is a story in West African culture that says just before each of us is born, we are compelled to kneel down before the Most High so that the Creator can whisper our divine mission into our ears. But because of the trauma of the birthing process, we forget that divine mission and spend our lives on earth trying to rediscover and fulfill our divine missions. Those who successfully do so hold a special place of honor in the Village of the Ancestors.
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing is such a revolutionary spirit, an unrelenting, undeniable light that beckoned us to forge ahead through the darkness and despair that has threatened to destroy us since Africa, once known as the “Light of the World,” was first invaded by explorers, missionaries, marauders and conquerors seeking to rob us of our birthright as children of the Most High created in the image of the Creator to serve as stewards of the birthplace of both human life and civilization.
We salute you, Warrior-Queen Frances Cress Welsing for building upon the wisdom, ingenuity and intellect of those who came before you and humbly ask that you will continue to enlighten, empower, embolden and inspire us as follow the glowing example and blueprints you left us as heirs of an African legacy as old and as sacred as the flow of human blood in human veins.
Well done, Warrior-Queen, well done.
This article originally published in the January 25, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
