Out of Africa: Peace and More

The death this week of Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013), the man who became the face of South Africa and a voice of peace for the world, set me pondering the huge effect that individuals with ties to the vast continent of Africa have had on American culture in every aspect. Mandela was influential as a leader of conscience. It is a role shared across fields of endeavor, whether politics, religion, the sciences, the arts, and so forth. I think of Desmond Tutu, the Anglican bishop, another South African whose voice has extended far beyond that nation and that continent. Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984; Mandela in 1993.

But I also think of Africa’s “cultural ambassadors” whose work has touched the world’s conscience, such as Grammy-winning singer Miriam Makeba (1932 – 2008), whose activism for civil rights earned her the nickname Mama Africa. I hear echoes of her voice and passion in the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the all-male vocal group from South Africa that was brought to worldwide attention with their collaboration on Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland, some twenty-six years after the group’s formation. I also hear Makeba in the all-female a cappella African American group Sweet Honey in the Rock, which I had the pleasure of hearing live at a reception in Washington, D.C., about a decade ago.

From African to African American—a fraught transition in many ways. But how enriched our culture, and by turns world culture, has been by the many influential individuals and groups whose ancestors, for the most part, came to our shores unwillingly. These descendants of slaves and indentured servants might just as easily have turned their backs to the culture of their oppressors. Instead, they gave us their culture in every conceivable way, whether in the civil rights work of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968, Nobel Peace Prize 1964), the poetry of Maya Angelou, the enduring jazz of Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971), the photography of Gordon Parks (1912 – 2006), or the work of singer and actress Audra McDonald. The list goes on forever.

And at last we have an American president who identifies as black and traces distant roots to Africa. Barack Obama, another Nobel Peace Prize winner (2009), has faced an uphill battle, not only as an individual to seek the top political job in our nation, following 43 white predecessors, but also, and perhaps most significantly, to overcome our national legacy of racism—racism that is still all-too-alive among large segments of the population. Much of the political gridlock in contemporary times can be traced not merely to political differences but to the entrenched racism of rightwing America, however conservative politicos and pundits try to whitewash it.

African influences have enriched the collective life of the United States and the world in immeasurable ways. As I paused this week to reflect on the life of Nelson Mandela, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the recollection of many of the individuals coming out of Africa, whether historically or in the present day, who, in the words of Martin Luther King, “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” More and more Americans are achieving this ideal viewpoint, but for some it is still a challenge. That means we all simply must work harder for a quality of human connectedness that transcends place and race.