A graduate of Howard University and the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, Crenshaw currently serves as vice president for economic development of the Washington, D.C.-based Organization of Africans in the Americas (OAA). Founded nearly six years ago as a support group, OAA functions as a resource and referral center of data, service and empowerment of Africans in the Americas. Nevertheless, Franklin is eager to point an emerging Black movement across Latin America that is battling to become a part of the political and economic process of the region. "We are now working very hard to ensure that genuine changes are brought about, especially as they affect the lives of the millions of Blacks in Latin America," the OAA executive director said. Some of those changes include linking Black Latin students and other aspiring small entrepreneurs with the Howard University Small Business Center in northwest Washington, D.C. "We are working to develop sustainable linkages between Blacks in America and Blacks in Latin America," said Crenshaw, who noted that Howard already has a growing number of Black Latin American students.
"Cuba has represented metaphorically the ability of an oppressed people to challenge imperialism and colonialism," Marable explained. "In the political imagination of Black America, Cuba represents the radical possibility of fundamental social change. One of the key questions now is -- what does Cuba represent for Black America in this period of political transition?"
For [Heidi Rondon], the opportunity to express her African roots through music and dance was a calling. "In our veins we carry the African feeling," she explained. "We are direct descendants of slaves that cultivated cocoa and coffee in the central coast of Barlovento many years ago." "These Africans were Latin America's first liberators," says historian and activist Jorge Guerrero Valez accompanying the group. A dignified Venezuelan enormously conscious of his African heritage and history, Jorge spoke eloquently about the solidarity Afro-Venezuelans, as they call themselves, feel with their African American brothers and sisters in the United States and the need to enhance the relationship.
