Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: Black Brazilians are dying by the tens of thousands from Covid-19, and from police bullets on the streets. Slavery was all about money, and insurance companies collected their share of the profits in human flesh. And, a Black scholar says mid-wives can help reduce the high rates of death among birth-mothers and their babies.

But first – activists around the country are commemorating “Black August,” in honor of the political prisoners who are still incarcerated, half a century after the crushing of the Black Liberation Movement.  We spoke with Jihad Abdulmumit, the chairperson of the Jericho Movement, and a former Black Panther Party political prisoner who spent 23 years behind bars. The Jericho Movement is part of the Black Is Back Coalition, which this weekend holds its national conference – where Jihad Abdulmumit will speak on the significance of “Black August.”

Brazil has the largest Black population outside of Africa, and is among the top three Covid-19 hotspots on the planet, along with the United States.  Brazilian social anthropologist Jaime Amparo Alves teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He’s written a book on Brazilian police terror against Blacks, and is busy raising funds for Black families caught in the coronavirus epidemic.

Dr. Amparo Alves notes that Blacks in Brazil and the U.S. have another thing in common: white supremacist presidents.

To send money to help Black Brazilian families survive the Coronavirus onslaught, Google UNEAFRO [OOH-Knee-Afro] Brazil. That’s U-N-E-A-F-R-O Brazil.  https://benfeitoria.com/Covid19Brazil

Slavery in the United States was the nation’s biggest business by far, and all of the financial sectors got their cut of the profits. Dr. Michael Ralph, director of Africana Studies at New York University, says the insurance industry was central to how white masters measured the value of their human property. 

Most people in the United States were born under the care of professional doctors and nurses. But mid-wives played a huge role in child-bearing, not so long ago. Dr. Sasha Turner, a professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, has written a book on mid-wives and the role they played in helping Black mothers give birth, during and after slavery in the Americas. Turner says mid-wife-ing – or mid-wiffery [whiff-ery] – was the norm before professional medicine took over.