Ed Vaughn | |
---|---|
Member of the MichiganHouseofRepresentatives from the 4th district | |
In office January 11, 1995 –December 31, 2000 | |
Preceded by | Joseph F. Young Jr. |
Succeeded by | Mary D. Waters |
Member of the MichiganHouseofRepresentatives from the 8th district | |
In office January 10,1979 –December 31,1980 | |
Preceded by | Daisy Elliott |
Succeeded by | Daisy Elliott |
Personal details | |
Born | Edward Vaughn July 30,1934 Abbeville,Alabama |
Political party | Democratic |
Children | 6 |
Education | Fisk University (BA) |
Military service | |
Branch/service | ![]() |
Edward "Ed" Vaughn (born July 30,1934) is an American politician,businessman,and activist who served as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1995 to 2000. [1]
Vaughn was born in Abbeville,Alabama. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and government from Fisk University and attended the University of Illinois College of Law for one year. [2]
Vaughn moved to Detroit in 1956. He served in the United States Army and worked for the United States Postal Service. Vaughn also worked at local restaurants and sold books out of his car. Vaughn later opened a Black Power bookstore,supported by minister and writer Albert Cleage. [3] The store became a bastion of the Black Power movement,and was significantly damaged during the Long,hot summer of 1967. Vaughn has been called an "understated Black Power icon" by Literary Hub. [4]
Ed Vaughn co-founded the Pan-African Congress-USA in Detroit,an organization that was formed to establish ties with African countries and supported the liberation struggle against white minority rule on the continent. The organization also had a scholarship program and sponsored some students from Africa to go to college in Detroit.
One of them was Godfrey Mwakikagile from Tanzania who became a renowned African studies scholar and author of many non-fiction books on African history,economics and politics and on the African diaspora. He also briefly attended Malcolm X Liberation University in Greensboro,North Carolina. His books are found in university and public libraries around the world. They are primarily for scholars.
Ed Vaughn was also one of the main African American delegates to the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar es salaam,Tanzania,in June 1974,together with C.L.R. James,Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) Charlie Cobb and Howard Fuller (Owusu Sadaukai) who was the founder and president of Malcolm X Liberation University.
The conference was held in Nkrumah Hall on the campus of the University of Dar es Salaam and was the first of its kind to be held on African soil. President Julius Nyerere was the keynote speaker. The last one,the Fifth Pan-African Congress,was held in Manchester,England,in October 1945 and was attended by future African leaders including Kwame Nkrumah,Jomo Kenyatta and Hastings Kamuzu Banda who became the first presidents of their countries on attainment of independence.
Ed Vaughn was also one of the leading African American delegates to the Sixth Pan-African Congress who met with President Nyerere and had private conversations with him. C.L.R. James also had meetings with Nyerere.
Amiri Baraka also had private conversations with President Nyerere at Nyerere's residence and discussed,among other things,the fate of Tanzania's senior cabinet member Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu,Minister of Economic Planning,who was in detention accused of masterminding the assassination of Tanzania's First Vice President and president of Zanzibar,Abeid Karume,as Baraka stated in his book The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones.
He said Nyerere told him he refused to send Babu to Zanzibar to stand trial because he was afraid they were going to kill him,as they did in 1969 another union cabinet member Abdullah Kassim Hanga who was also a close friend of Guinea's President Ahmed Sékou Touré. Sékou Touréwas also a very close friend of Nyerere.
Babu was a very close friend of Amiri Baraka and Malcolm X. Ed Vaughn also knew Malcolm X. They first met in Detroit in 1963.
Ed Vaughn also taught history in Detroit from a black nationalist perspective and lectured for many years on a wide range of issues affecting the wellbeing of black people in the United States and Africa.
On November 7,1978,Vaughn was first elected to the Michigan House of Representatives,where he represented the 8th district from January 10,1979 to December 31,1980. On November 8,1994,Vaughn was again elected to in the state house where he represented the 4th district from January 11,1995 until he was term limited on December 31,2000. [5]
Vaughn unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Detroit in 1997. [6] He also served as executive assistant to Detroit's first black mayor Coleman Young and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Michigan Senate seat representing the 2nd district in 2001. [7]
In 2000,Vaugh participated in a forum hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus,in which he advocated for slavery reparations. [8]
In 2018,Vaughn's writings were collected and donated to the library of Wayne State University. [9]
Vaughn has six children.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian anti-colonial activist,politician and political theorist. He governed Tanganyika as prime minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as president from 1962 to 1964,after which he led its successor state,Tanzania,as president from 1964 to 1985. He was a founding member and chair of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party,and of its successor,Chama Cha Mapinduzi,from 1954 to 1990. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist,he promoted a political philosophy known as Ujamaa.
Ahmed Sékou Touré was a Guinean political leader and African statesman who became the first president of Guinea,serving from 1958 until his death in 1984. Touréwas among the primary Guinean nationalists involved in gaining independence of the country from France. He would later die in the United States in 1984.
African socialism or Afrosocialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a traditional African way,as distinct from classical socialism. Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support for African socialism,although definitions and interpretations of this term varied considerably. These politicians include Julius Nyerere of Tanzania,Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana,and Modibo Keita of Mali,among others.
The Pan-African Congress (PAC) was a series of eight meetings which took place on the back of the Pan-African Conference held in London in 1900. The Pan-African Congress gained a reputation as a peacemaker for decolonization in Africa and in the West Indies. It made a significant advance for the Pan-African cause. One of the group's major demands was to end colonial rule and racial discrimination. It stood against imperialism and it demanded human rights and equality of economic opportunity. The manifesto given by the Pan-African Congress included the political and economic demands of the Congress for a new world context of international cooperation and the need to address the issues facing Africa as a result of European colonization of most of the continent.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art,BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples and diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade,the movement extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the African diaspora in the Americas and Europe.
Dudley Randall was an African-American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit,Michigan. He founded a pioneering publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965,which published many leading African-American writers,among them Melvin Tolson,Sonia Sanchez,Audre Lorde,Gwendolyn Brooks,Etheridge Knight,Margaret Walker,and others.
Shirley Graham Du Bois was an American-Ghanaian writer,playwright,composer,and activist for African-American causes,among others. She won the Messner and the Anisfield-Wolf prizes for her works.
Amiri Baraka,previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka,was an American writer of poetry,drama,fiction,essays,and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities,including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Baraka's plays,poetry,and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.
Potlako Kitchener Leballo was an Africanist who led the Pan Africanist Congress until 1979. Leballo was co-founder of the Basutoland African Congress in 1952,a World War II veteran and primary school headmaster.
Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu was a Zanzibar-born Marxist and pan-Africanist nationalist who played an important role in the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution and served as a minister under Julius Nyerere after the island was merged with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania. He was jailed by Nyerere from 1972 and,after his release following an international campaign,remained a vocal critic of imperialism,authoritarian states and excessively statist development models.
The All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is a socialist political party founded by Kwame Nkrumah and organized in Conakry,Guinea in 1968. The party expanded to the United States in 1972 and claims to have recruited members from 33 countries. According to the party,global membership in the party is "in the hundreds".
Godfrey Mwakikagile is a Tanzanian scholar and author specialising in African studies. He was also a news reporter for The Standard —the oldest and largest English newspaper in Tanzania and one of the three largest in East Africa. Mwakikagile wrote Nyerere and Africa:End of an Era —a biographical book on the life of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere set in the backdrop of Africa's early post-colonial years and the liberation wars in the countries of southern Africa in which Nyerere played a major role.
Third World socialism is an umbrella term for many movements and governments of the 20th century—all variants of socialism—that have taken place in numerous less-developed countries. There have been many leaders of this practice and political philosophy which remained strong until at least the 1990s,including:Michel Aflaq,Salah al-Din al-Bitar,Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,Buddhadasa,Fidel Castro,Muammar Gaddafi,Saddam Hussein,Juan Domingo Perón,Modibo Keïta,Walter Lini,Gamal Abdel Nasser,Jawaharlal Nehru,Kwame Nkrumah,Julius Nyerere,Sukarno,Ahmed Sékou Touréand other socialist leaders of the Third World who saw socialism as the answer to a strong and developed nation.
Dani Wadada Nabudere was a Ugandan academic,Pan-Africanist,lawyer,politician,author,political scientist,and development specialist. At the time of his passing,he was a professor at the Islamic University and executive director of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute,Mbale,Uganda.
The Cricket,subtitled "Black Music in Evolution",was a magazine created in 1968 by Amiri Baraka,Larry Neal and A. B. Spellman. Baraka has said:"Larry Neal,AB and I realized the historical influence of music on African /Afro American Culture. I saw the magazine as a necessary dispenser of this influence as part of a continuum. And that attention to the culture was a way of drawing attention to the people's needs and struggle." The headquarters was in New York City.
Askia Muhammad Touré is an African-American poet,essayist,political editor,and leading voice of the Black Arts Movement. Toure helped to define a new generation of black consciousness by creating a triumphal identity for the purpose of uplifting the African heritage beyond the oppressive ideas that dominated the time.
Mamadi Keïta was a leading Guinean politician and member of the Politburo of the First Republic of Guinea.
"Balozi" Robert Zayd Muhammad Harvey was an American diplomat,community organizer,activist and executive director,based in New Jersey and New York. Balozi worked both domestically and internationally toward the growth and betterment of African-American communities in the U.S. while fostering relationships with Caribbean and African Nations. Harvey was given the title "Balozi". Tanzania by President Julius K. "Mwalimu" Nyerere in 1964.
Amina Baraka is an American poet,actress,author,community organizer,singer,dancer,and activist. Her poetic themes are about social justice,family,and women. Her poetry has been featured in anthologies including Unsettling America (1994). She was active in the 1960s Black Arts Movement,as an artist.