The Dartmouth College class of 1968 is well into preparations for their 40th reunion in June of next year. As a member of that class, I am receiving all the relevant correspondence in connection with those ceremonies and celebrations in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Today the most famous member of the Dartmouth class of ’68 is Hank Paulsen, who is the Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury. Previous to Paulsen’s appointment earlier this year, the most well-known Dartmouth ’68 graduate was probably Bob Reich, who was a high ranking member of the Bill Clinton Cabinet during Clinton’s presidencies in the 1990’s.
In a school like Dartmouth, the vast majority of the graduates go on to graduate school in law, business, medicine, engineering and so on. As members of the so-called Ivy League, Dartmouth graduates are part of the academic and financial elite of the United States, which is by far the largest economy in the world and considered planet earth’s only superpower.
Although I graduated with the class of 1968 (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude), I really entered Dartmouth with the class of 1969, in September of 1965. I graduated in three years instead of the usual four, because I received a year’s worth of credits for the year and a half I spent at St. John’s College Sixth Form in Belize.
I was really, really glad to get out of Dartmouth a year early, so to speak. Not only did I want to come home in the worst kind of way (homesickness), the United States itself in the beginning of 1968 was at its most internally violent and unstable since the time of the Civil War (1861-1865). During the first few months of 1968, while I was finishing school, both civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and presidential candidate, Robert Kennedy, were assassinated, and the unprecedented violence in American cities was being sparked by two separate but related issues – black power and opposition to the Vietnam War.
It was during these same early months of 1968 that Bethuel Webster’s Seventeen Proposals were officially published, confirming what Philip Goldson had risked his freedom to expose two years earlier (the Thirteen Proposals) – the big people responsible for British Honduras wanted us to become a part of Guatemala!
At this graduation point, I’m twenty- one years old, and unlike the other 1968 Dartmouth graduates, I’m not applying to graduate school. In my mind, I am committed to returning home to wage war for the people and the country that I love. I’m staying on to finish Dartmouth, because I know if I return to Belize without graduating, they will put me in the crazy house.
Those of you who read North Amerikkkan Blues have to remember that I wrote this tale of my three years at Dartmouth in 1971 when everything had crumbled around me in Belize. I had been unemployed for two years, my marriage was on the rocks, and I had been tried twice in the Supreme Court on separate charges, in July 1970 and January 1971. I was not a “happy camper.”
In Blues, I would not have emphasized that I had friends at Dartmouth, more in the class of ’69 than ’68. My closest friend at Dartmouth died last year. Like me, he entered with the class of 1969 but graduated in 1968, because of Sixth Form credits in his native Malawi. Dr. Guy Mhone was a Ph.D. in economics who was a lecturer at a university in South Africa when he died. My African-American friends at Dartmouth included George Spivey ’68 and Dandre DeSandies ’69. My white friends included George Moore ’68, Richard Glogau ’69, Tom Peisch ’69, and Terry Mahoney ’69.
I’m telling you these things to set the stage for what happened to me in Belize in the years after my return home in 1968. I came close to jail. I took licks in the streets. My children, except for the last two, grew up poor, and four of them grew up very poor.
It was a rough road I trod, trust me, but, the Lord be praised, I survived and climbed back on to my feet. At this time of cheer and goodwill, I would like to express my gratitude to the people of Belize, on behalf of myself and my children. Four of my children ended up graduating from American universities –two from South Florida, and one each from LeMoyne and John Carroll. I’m very proud, and it is for sure these things would not have been possible without the support and loyalty of the Belizean people.
For this Christmas of 2007, I want to send my best wishes to Eddie “Mandingo” Gabourel, wherever he is. Dingo was one of the young Belizeans who joined UBAD and gave enduring support. It ended up that UBAD split into two factions in 1973, and Mandingo was a UBAD member who was on the faction opposed to mine. We look back today, and now that the FBI documents have been declassified, we know how the authorities conspired to divide the Panthers. So we have a good idea how UBAD split, that it was under pressure from forces larger than us.
The differences between us in 1973 were insignificant compared to the ties that bound us together. We all know that now.
On February 9, 2008, UBAD will be marking the 39th anniversary of its founding. I hope that we also can have a reunion, no matter how humble it may be.
43 years ago I was grateful for the sensational opportunity to attend Dartmouth College. I am still grateful for that opportunity, and I take this opportunity to congratulate the class of 1968 on its 40th reunion. To Forrester A. “Woody” Lee, now a surgeon in Connecticut, I send greetings. My brother, your calm and mature leadership during the George Wallace crisis of 1967, impressed me greatly. Best wishes from your brother in Belize.
Power to the people.
Re: this edition’s column. After thinking about it for a while, I’m fairly sure Dandre DeSandies, as well as Tom Peisch, would have been class of 1970 instead of 1969. Dandre visited Belize a few years ago, and we got together. He’s a professor at Stanford University.
Mustafa Toure, now living and working in Belize but originally from Houston, would have been Dartmouth class of 1971, I guess.
I was remiss in not mentioning a tall young (at the time) brother by the name of Wallace L. Ford. He was the III or IV, I’m not certain. Wally, an activist in Dartmouth’s Afro-American Society, made contact with me during the early UBAD days of 1969. I can’t remember how or why. Apprised of our situation, he solicited the rest of the money we needed to begin Amandala in August of 1969. A Dartmouth professor of Chinese by the name of Paul (or Jonathan) Mirsky gave Wally a check to complete the financing of the Gestetner machine on which we began Amandala.