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On
Friday, October 11, 2002, the leaders of the National Black United
Front, from around the country, began arriving in Kansas City, Missouri
for our Fall Central Committee Meeting. The meeting was scheduled to
begin Friday evening with a welcome reception and an all day meeting
for Saturday, October 12th.
As the Chicago contingency pulled into the parking lot of the W. E. B.
DuBois Learning Center, I immediately observed that many of the leaders
of NBUF had arrived and were outside the Center greeting and
interacting with each other. It was a beautiful day in Kansas City and
it was good to see that so many of the NBUF leadership had arrived
early in preparation for this important meeting.
About an hour after our arrival at the W.E.B. DuBois Learning Center, I
received a call on my cell phone from an activist in Chicago, and a
MATAH organizer informing me that our Brother, Kenneth Bridges had been
killed by a sniper (Beltway Sniper) at a gas station somewhere in
Virginia while refueling his vehicle. Needless to say, I found this
hard to believe and accept. Immediately, I began to call other MATAH
organizers, specifically Gaston Armour, the MATAH Regional Organizer
for the Chicago and Midwest area. Brother Gaston confirmed that our
friend and fellow worker in the Black Liberation Movement had become a
victim of this serial sniper.
Immediately, I asked everyone to assemble and I made the announcement.
Obviously, everyone was shocked. I asked that we pour libations for
Brother Ken and use his spirit to begin our meeting early. We dedicated
our NBUF Central Committee Meeting to Ken Bridges, the Co-Founder of
MATAH.
I had begun to work very closely with Brother Ken as we prepared for
the August 17, 2002 Millions For Reparations Mass Rally in Washington,
D.C. Brother Ken was very helpful in making this rally a “grand
success.”
I must admit, for a very long time I avoided meeting with any of the
representatives of MATAH who called NBUF Offices seeking to explain the
MATAH program. Personally, I had become somewhat turned off, over the
years, by people presenting a variety of economic schemes allegedly
aimed at helping solve the economic problems of African people in
America. I had become burned out from listening to these proposals.
So, I put up a barrier over the last two years and avoided meeting with
any MATAH representatives. But apparently, the Creative Forces of the
Universe did not want this to continue.
Without all of the lengthy background, Gaston Armour joined the NBUF
Chicago Chapter and in our meeting, the evening he joined, I discovered
I knew his family, specifically his aunt, who I’d worked with over the
years. It dawned on me that Gaston was a member of the Armour family in
Chicago who owned a very popular Black owned grocery store. The Armour
family has established a tradition in Chicago of being a family of
business people.
From that moment on, Brother Gaston began to lobby me to become a part
of MATAH. One of our members, Sister Iris Dunmore, had been attending
some of the local MATAH meetings on our behalf and suggested that we
should give the MATAH concept a chance.
Finally, I broke down and agreed to meet with Brother Ken at my home
earlier this year. The meeting was only to be for an hour, just to
touch base. However, Ken and I hit it off so well, we met in my living
room for over four hours. It was truly a meeting of the spirit of our
ancestors and from that day forward, Ken and I began talking every week
on a regular basis. It was out of that meeting that we made the linkage
between the demand for external reparations and its relationship to
what we must do to repair ourselves, which we began to call “internal
reparations.”
It became clear to me that Ken Bridges was as deep thinker, a brilliant
organizer who had committed his life to the liberation of Black people
by making his vision of MATAH become a reality.
MATAH, as Ken explained it to me, was a concept given to him by God.
Ken constantly made the point that “MATAH was an economic movement of
self determination for Africans in America and around the world.” Ken
always reminded his audiences when speaking that “MATAH emphasizes
African cultural development and therefore the products and services
that the organization represents would focus on the promotion of
African culture.”
Ken helped NBUF understand that by becoming a Network Business Center,
we could help finance the work of NBUF. We had begun working on
identifying one-hundred NBUF members who would be willing to purchase
$30.00 worth of MATAH products each month that would provide NBUF with
a profit of $600.00 a month. A simple but powerful formula if executed.
Ken and his friend, and business partner, Al Willington, had created a
vision for products made by African people to be purchased and
distributed by African people around the world. The key component of
the MATAH concept, as Ken taught, is not only should we purchase
products from each other that we produce, but we must also control the
distribution of these products.
In the name of Kenneth Bridges, we should carry the MATAH vision
forward by remembering that “MATAH are those people of African descent
who know that practicing a race-first philosophy is the key to
obtaining true freedom for people of African descent, and who refuse to
be crushed.”
Let us always honor the spirit of our Brother, Ken Bridges.
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BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman Emeritus of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Contact Dr. Worrill and BC.
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 is published every Thursday |
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD |
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield, MBA |
Publisher:
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