Harlem’s Native Son, Albert Morris
Born in Harlem, USA, July 28, 1921
To my ancestors, parents, family, friends,
and Weusi Artist for their spirit,
purpose and drive.
Albert Morris
To remember our Ancestors is to document and to honor them….
Albert Morris was a historian, scholar, activist, data collector on African achievements especially in the sciences, a researcher, an athletic coach, an author, and an educator. His dreams were to build a home in Africa and this mission was accomplished in 2010 when he completed the building of a beautiful home in Ghana, along with the writing of and the reissuing of his book ‘Creations and Recreations of the African Family in the U.S.A., Inventions, Science and Industry’. He self published and did a revision in 2003 and an earlier version in 1975.
I feel very fortunate to be a member of the Ghana Nkwanta Project, founded by Elder Adunni Oshupa Tabasi in 2004. We have elders in our organization and being in the mist of old Garveyites still active is a blessing and an environment that nurtures my sense of history. What a wonderful connection and link to our African Family and History. Even upon his death bed Albert Morris was in the struggle with the VA hospital establishment and with the experimental cancer med Gleevec, which was not working. I found out that the medication had been increased even thought the side effect was making him anemic. The Old Elder Warrior still had the fight in him, yelling at times about going home to Africa.
The GNP travelled to Ghana with our Elder Brother in November of 2008. I like calling him Elder Brother. He was still a brother even at 89. He was still actively with the movement to uplift our people focusing on community building and education. His live engulfs decades of Harlem history, us, and our Africa history. He was tireless in collecting facts about our achievements especially in science, engineering, physics, manufacturing, inventions, areas of study that many of us pay little attention to. He was alert X3 even on his way to the nursing home, a couple of weeks before he became an ancestor. He was happy to be riding in a van feeling the sun and seeing the outside world that he had not seen for weeks on our way from the VA hospital to Daughters of Jacobs Nursing Home in the Bronx.
Albert Morris played a pivotal role in Harlem’s development. I can say he was a professional champion of African people and deeply rooted in the teachings of Garvey. He was well educated and self educated. His references on his resume reads like a ‘Who was Who’ in championing for health care, the arts, recreation and athletics for Harlem and our global African community. His life reflects the importance role that Elders like Bro. Morris played in creating avenues for us to unleash our creativity, sense of recreation, scholarship, history, and genius.
He tutored math, science, coached boxing, basketball, baseball, and tennis. He is another fallen hero that married the African Family and worked tirelessly. To know ones’ history is an asset. Doing this research seeing the climate and environment that nurtured Albert Morris and the activities that he participated in is extremely gratifying. It is opening up vistas of understanding and reconnecting, reinforcing and giving me insights, while I revisit the past, the present, and look forward to the future.
Some folks told me that on their first encounters with Bro. Morris in the 80s he was gruff or cantankerous, but later they found out how knowledgeable he was, and his level of consciousness and insight in regards to our global predicament was phenomenal. He definitely wore a shield at times. I can remember him at some of the GNP meetings and his outbursts of ‘crackers’ - his favorites words blurted out like a choral line.
He lived during important and pivotal periods in African history in Africa and the Americas. He does not say African Americans. He makes it quite clear ‘the African Family’. He lived during a period of our history when we had strong and committed race men and women who cared for, nurtured, worked tirelessly, for the development of our community which made Harlem rich and a Mecca of African life? Sometimes I wonder if my dear brother stayed too long, and maybe he should have started to make the trek home to Africa sooner. He documented our development and sense of recreation, excellences in the arts and history. I think he saw the world around the Harlem that he grew up in being crushed along with the many positive incentives that he witnessed and participated in being crushed.
His apartment walls were full of works of art which from African artist probably by the Weusi Arts’ collective. The Weusi Artists were considered the progenitors of the Black Arts Movement of the 60s. Brother Morris dedicates his book to the Wesui Artist.
I was able to find Bro Morris and father and mother listed in the 1930s U.S. census, which gave me an incredible timeline. His father was 46 years old and Albert was 8 years old. His father was born in 1886 and born in the British West Indies. In those days where one was from in the Caribbean Islands was not noted. This is in light of the fact that most Caribbean countries did not have liberation struggles and nationhood until the 1960s. Prior to the struggles in the 60s the islands were colonial and plantation systems.
His book Creations and Recreations of the African Family in the U.S.A., Inventions, Science and Industry’ is a testimony which should be digested and memorized over and over again, till it is ones’ persona and in ones blood. It is our blood. . It should be consumed more than junk food or sweets are consumed. It is so insightful and done to uplift a mighty folk. It is a monumental book that defies what we were constantly told we ‘did not have a history’, or made a contribution to history. A people without a sense of history. When I was in grammar school I remember hearing over and over again that some how Black people and African people were outside of history. I found the statement very disturbing as a child and the message was a constant attempt at brainwashing me. The book demonstrates not only our intelligence and inventors, but that our creativity shaped changed and directed world history.
He was a child and adolescence during the Great Depression, which began with the crash on October 29, 1929 and lasting till the early 1940s prior to WWII. The Great Depression was immense and a tragedy whereas millions of Americans and folks around the world were out of work, it was the beginning of government involvement in the economy and society it undue the devastating suffering that was taking place.
Albert grew up in the mist of Harlem’s environment of political activism. He witnessed the Harlem Renaissance, its poets, writers. The days of James Baldwin the beauty of the best that was created by Harlemites and the many that migrated to Harlem to be a part of it all. Sports heroes, the Harlem Globetrotters, Althea Gibson who lived in Harlem during the 30s and 40s. He must have witnessed as children growing up the end of the era known as the Harlem Renaissance and saw the Harlem riot of 1935 being about 14 years of age where 600 stores were looted and 3 men dead. Growing up as a teenager in Harlem’s activisms had a lasting impact on his life. He never stopped. Harlem politics were not just local. They were also global. In the 1950s rallies and petitions were signed sending an appeal to the League of Nations before the UN in regards to Ethiopia. In 1956 in support of Nasser and against the invasion of the Suez Canal. He also probably witnessed the first American federally subsidized Housing project, the Harlem River Housing in 1937 at the tender age of 16. 1941 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. became a member of NYC City Council.
Harlem is vicious
Modernism. BangClash.
Vicious the way it's made,
Can you stand such beauty.
So violent and transforming.
- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones
Harlem ... Harlem
Black, black Harlem
Souls of Black Folk
Ask Du Bois
Little grey restless feet
Ask Claude McKay
City of Refuge
Ask Rudolph Fisher
Don't damn your body's itch
Ask Countee Cullen
Does the jazz band sob?
Ask Langston Hughes
Nigger Heaven
Ask Carl Van Vechten
Hey! ... Hey!
" ... Say it brother
Say it ..."
- Frank Horne, "Harlem"