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BLACK STUDENTS JOIN GAZA WAR PROTESTERS  
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Mandile Mpofu
February 21, 2024
The Bay State Banner
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_ At a Feb. 19 pro-Palestine rally in Cambridge, a crowd of
supporters held up signs and waved Palestinian flags. At one point, a
chant of “No justice. No peace” erupted, the same calls heard
during Black Lives Matter gatherings. _

Demonstrators wave signs and Palestinian flags at a Feb. 19 rally at
Cambridge Common, (Photo: Mandile Mpofu

 

Shea Thompson sees parallels between what is happening in Gaza and
what is happening in his own backyard.

“I look at how a lot of civil rights leaders from the past such as
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. tied their struggle for civil
rights in America to other fights for liberation,” he said.

The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel set off an ongoing, months-long war
in Gaza. AP News has reported more than 29,000 Palestinians and more
than 1,400 Israelis dead. The war has fired up college campuses with
rallies and demonstrations, as students publicly take pro-Palestine or
pro-Israel stances.

“I had no choice but to speak out,” said Thompson, a theological
studies master’s student at Boston University. He said that he views
the Palestinian experience similarly to his views on the experiences
of Black people and people of color in the U.S.

Black students like Thompson are part of a history of African
Americans identifying with Palestinians in Gaza, which began in the
1960s.

“They understand we’re in the same fight,” Thompson said.
“We’re [both] fighting for freedom. We’re fighting for peace,”
he said.

He said that in addition to joining protests, Black students are also
using social media to proclaim their support for the pro-Palestinian
movement on social media.

But the history of Black-Palestinian solidarity is complicated, said
Sam Klug, a history professor at Loyola University Maryland. Klug
studies the ways in which anti-colonial movements abroad influence
domestic American politics around race and inequality.

But the connection between African Americans and the Palestinians in
Gaza is a relatively new phenomenon. For roughly the first half of the
20th century, African American thinkers and activists favored the call
for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a movement known as Zionism. This
led to significant Black support for the 1948 founding of the State of
Israel.

Klug said this was due to a “lack of knowledge or understanding of
Palestinian dispossession that had gone along with the founding of the
State of Israel.” He added that Black activists viewed the Zionist
cause as a movement for “national self-determination of people that
had been subjected to discrimination and prejudice in the West.”

Later, significant Jewish-American participation in the civil rights
movement helped reinforce African American support for Zionism.

That changed in 1967. That year, as the State of Israel expanded,
displacing as many as 300,000 Palestinian people. Krug calls this “a
real turning point,” as people within the Black Power movement,
among others, identified more strongly with Palestinians. Noted
activists like Angela Davis began traveling to the Middle East to meet
with them.

“This was a moment in which a common idea in Black political
thinking was that African Americans represented the kind of
‘internal colony’ of the United States,” he said. “It was a
claim of coalition-building.”

At a Feb. 19 pro-Palestine rally in Cambridge, a crowd of supporters
held up signs and waved Palestinian flags. At one point, a chant of
“No justice. No peace” erupted, the same calls heard during Black
Lives Matter gatherings.

Safiyyah Ogundipe, a 20-year-old MIT student, was one of the few Black
people at the rally. She said that the solidarity between Black and
Palestinian liberation struggles is a mutual experience.

“As Black people, as African people, whether from Africa in the
diaspora, I think we’re acutely aware of the history of colonialism,
of genocide, of occupation in so many different forms,” said
Ogundipe, who is a member of MIT’s Coalition Against Apartheid.
“And I think we should see that our role in the fight for
Palestinian liberation is no different than our own fights.”

Hammond Samba, a student at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, said
he wants to use his voice to raise awareness for what is happening in
Gaza, especially as a person of color. Samba said he wrote letters to
Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons in support of passing the city’s
resolution calling for a ceasefire.

“Younger Americans of all racial identities are increasingly
supportive of the Palestinian cause,” Klug said.

Daniela, who would only give her first name, is a divinity graduate
student at Boston University. She said fear of retaliation or of being
labeled as antisemitic or racist has kept some people away. She
remains involved, however, supporting calls for a ceasefire.

This stems not only from her experiences as a Black woman, she said,
but also from her spiritual beliefs.

“As a theologian, I always stand on the side of the oppressed,”
Daniela said. “And how do we liberate the oppressed? And how do we
transform that pain into healing or resolution or the best next
step?”

_The Bay State Banner is an African American owned news weekly that
reports on the political, economic, social and cultural issues that
are of interest to African American and English speaking Latinos in
Boston and throughout New England. In addition to our weekly
newspaper, we have daily updated content on our digital platform, as
well as the specialty publication, Be Healthy, a national award winner
for excellence in health care coverage._

* Palestinian rights
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* Black Lives Matter
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* Gaza
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