Family, friends, and colleagues took part in a birthday celebration for famed educator/activist Sam Anderson on Saturday, Aug. 19.
Anderson recently turned 80, and several people came to celebrate that milestone at a party on the block in front of his house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
The day featured music from a hired deejay, food catered by Just Soul Catering, and speeches from guests who have known Anderson and his wife, the journalist/activist Rosemari Mealy, for years. Many were able to talk about the years of camaraderie and the efforts they have all made to make changes in the world.
Anderson was a founding member of Harlem’s Black Panther Party, which prioritized the struggle for community control over schools. He was the founding chair of Sarah Lawrence College’s Black studies department in 1969; worked with other progressive educators to design the formation of SUNY Old Westbury in 1970; and has taught at Brooklyn College, City College of New York, New York University, and Rutgers University.
He was a founding member of the Coalition for Public Education and the National Black Education Agenda, and remains active with the NYC Coalition to Finally End Mayoral Control of Schools.
Those attending the party took time out to recognize his life’s work.
Bronx-based poet Mariposa Fernández and Sister Lisa Muhammad delivered spoken-word presentations. San Francisco State University’s Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi recalled Anderson signing on to a statement condemning racism in Israel—and losing his chairmanship at Sarah Lawrence University for his bravery. “The toll that it takes on people who speak up for truth and justice: Some people get assassinated, people lose their jobs, but they continue,” said Abdulhadi. “Sam Anderson continued. But that statement is one of the most important statements that doesn’t even get noted about the history of Black-Palestinian solidarity, but we’re speaking about it.”
Syracuse University African American studies scholar Horace G. Campbell said he met Anderson 55 years ago at the Montreal Congress of Black Writers. “Sam had the wind behind him, coming out of the struggles for freedom,” Campbell reflected. “In this conference, the Black writers’ conference, Sam said to me, ‘We’re going to civilize the United States of America.’
“Those words stuck with me, from then until now. Because as a young man coming and going to university, [it was striking] to meet someone so supremely confident about their ability to change society. It is this confidence that Sam has carried for the past 50 years that I’ve known him and I want to wish [him] a happy 80th birthday.”
Carmen Santana said it was Anderson who made her aware of the historical archivist Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. “Sam taught me who Arturo Alfonso Schomburg is. And, to this day, I will not give up the fight…to see him posthumously honored, not because he’s a Puerto Rican, but because he’s a Black Puerto Rican that put history on the map,” Santana said.
Dr. Shadidi Chase Kinsey, vice chair of National Association of Kawaida Organizations, presented Anderson and Mealy with plaques from this year’s 54th annual Malcolm X Black Unity awards program. Dr. Kinsey said they were being awarded “for all the work and the love and the struggle that they have given to our people.”
Anderson recognized all those who took time out to attend his party: “I’d like to thank all of my comrades who were in the Black Panther Party who are here. It’s important that [we] who have survived that struggle and laid the foundation for the movements that we see today––not just the Black movements but liberation movements in general––be acknowledged.”
Anderson told the AmNews that he has never separated his work as an activist from his calling as an educator. When he was a student at Lincoln University in the 1960s, he became an activist on campus. He helped desegregate the Wilmington movie theater in the early 1960s and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), all while majoring in math and looking forward to a future of becoming a math teacher.
“I began to think more in terms of, ‘Okay, I’m majoring in math, and we need teachers, Black teachers, so my plan was I’m going to teach at the university level and try to encourage other students coming into college to go into the math and science fields. I thought it would be a breeze, you know? But there’s so many people who are just afraid: they have this internalized, inferiority complex in terms of, ‘I don’t have the intellectual capabilities to do math,’ and so on, so on.
“That was a whole new learning process for me, and I had to eventually develop an approach to detoxify Black minds in terms of our being able to do math. And so, you know, that became a central part of my ‘professional work.’”
One of Anderson’s most revered works is his 2007 book, “The Black Holocaust for Beginners.” The book documents the origins and treatment of enslaved Africans in the Americas from the 1500s up until 1865.
Now retired as a teacher, Anderson is still part of efforts to end mayoral control of New York City’s public schools. He and his wife also remain fierce advocates for ending the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Those interested in saluting Sam Anderson for his 80th birthday may consider donating to IFCO/Pastors for Peace, the organization that sponsors Friendshipment caravans to Cuba at ifconews.org/donate (tax-exempt). “There are things that they need that are on the world market, that, if they could negotiate for it, they would be able to do that,” Rosemari Mealy told those attending the party. “We encourage you to go to Cuba with IFCO/ Pastors for Peace and any of the other organizations and see for yourself what is going on there.”