Comrades: Black American anti-racist leader, Ray Winbush; Black American political leader, Angela Davis; and Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Many organic intellectuals have inspired and enabled those of us who struggle for freedom and human dignity around the world. These three exemplars have been my political comrades for many years.

Ray Winbush was the Director of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University when I met him through a mutual acquaintance. He invited me to a conference at Fisk, and later, to be a Board member of the Institute. During my tenure on the Board, our delegation attended the 2001 World Conference Against Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa. After the conference, our delegation did a political tour of Robben Island, and Soweto. This photograph was taken during our visit to a home in Soweto. The poverty of this township is criminal. The family in the photo has nine children, and occupies a two-room mud and cardboard hovel without electricity, in an area of thousands of equally impoverished people. Soweto—which is an abbreviation of “Southwest Township”--is a living legacy of the apartheid era.

I have known and admired author, professor, and revolutionary, Angela Davis for many years. During my years in college, Angela’s well-known integrity as a political leader inspired students across the United States. I invited her to visit with us in the mid-‘90s while I was Director of the Center for Hawaiian Studies. Over a thousand people came to her talk. She spoke on the “prison-industrial complex” across the United States and on the resulting incarceration of people of color at an alarming rate. Pictured with Angela and I are leader and indigenous United Nations Permanent Forum representative, Mililani Trask, my younger sister; and Angela's sister, Fania.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o also graced us with his presence during my directorship, speaking on literature and revolutionary praxis. Ngugi’s writing has had a tremendous influence across the Third and Fourth worlds, particularly his collection of essays, “De-Colonizing the Mind.” Here, I am introducing him to an audience of Native Hawaiians and African-Americans at his talk in our Hawaiian Studies Building.