Selma Attorney and activist Rose Sanders says she is upset with a brief that was published in the June 2, 2002, edition of the Birmingham News.

The brief, published in the Montgomery Notebook section of the News, discusses Sanders, who recently changed her name to Faya Ora Rose Toure.

According to the brief, Toure told the Montgomery Advertiser that her last name was from the late Sekou Toure, the longtime leader of the West African nation of Guinea.

The brief further states that “while Sanders said the change was designed to remove slave owner names from her past, Sekou Toure is generally viewed as having spent most of his 26 years in power enslaving his own people.”

The Times-Journal, after examining several sites on the Internet, found that Toure, who died in 1984 while in power, had committed human rights abuses.

According to one site published by the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, Toure’s “regime purged or forced into exile members of other ethnic groups, while others were killed, tortured, disappeared or imprisoned under the Preventive Detention Laws.”

Faya Toure, when asked to respond to the brief, said that the brief was

not only racist in its connotations, but she also criticized the media for wasting its time on something so unimportant.

“Why should my name change make this much of a difference?” she asked. “Don’t they have anything else to report on.”

Toure added that she had not read any documentation describing human rights abuses in New Guinea.

However, she said even if there were abuses, these abuses were no different from the abuses that George Washington, the first President of the United States, committed against his own people when becoming president, after America officially gained its independence from Britain.

“Should everyone who uses the name Washington in America be accused of enslaving their own people,” Toure said. “It is absolutely ridiculous.”

Toure became the leader of Guinea in 1958, and is often cited as the person who liberated Guinea from its rule under France, which was ruled by Charles De Gaulle at the time.

Faya Toure said she considers Sekou Toure a hero, who liberated Guinea from the exploitation of France, which had ruled Guinea for a over hundred years.

“If I changed my name to Rose De Gaulle, no one would have said anything,” Toure said. “It just shows how racist these people are.”

Faya Toure added that Sekou Toure is a name associated with Africa, the place where she says she is one of a minority of African Americans to acknowledge as the place of her roots.

Amiliar Shabazz, a professor of American Studies and the Chairman of the African American Studies program at the University of Alabama, said Sander’s name change is something, which should be viewed positively.

“Toure really was a hero,” Shabazz said. “It is true that he did commit human rights abuses,” he said. “But that is no different than what George Washington did when he became the first President of the United States.”

Shabazz said that when Washington became president after American Independence, many loyalists to Britain were either jailed, tortured or asked to leave the country.

“Really what happened in America at that time is the same thing as what happened in Guinea,” Shabazz said. “But nobody ever discusses that.”

Shabazz added that many of the people who did suffer human rights abuses in Guinea were those who were loyal to France, after Guinea declared its independence.

“Compared to many other regimes, that existed after gaining independence, the abuses in Guinea were not as severe,” Shabazz said. “Toure was a charismatic leader, a poet, and was a very well respected leader. I would say changing her name to Toure was a good thing, and I would look favorably on it.”