Blacks were not Cowards during Slavery

“His mistake is also a thorough misrepresentation of the fortitude — the mental toughness and will to survive — required to survive slavery, individually and collectively, for centuries.” – By Blair L.M. Kelley I’m not understanding how people can say, “slaves were cowards” or what #Kanye said, about how “slaves were enslaved as if it were a…

Mary McLeod Bethune: Bethune-Cookman University and her other Legacies

“The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.” ― Mary McLeod Bethune   “I was born and reared in the South and no southerner has greater love for the land of his…

America’s Lies: I Am Not Your NEGRO

Last Friday (February 3, 2017), I was privileged to watch the documentary called, I am not your Negro featuring James Baldwin and directed by Raoul Peck.  Baldwin was just getting into a new book titled, Remember This House in 1979 on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr….

LEADers on Inequality, Race, Ethnic Politics, and African American History

Special treat for African American History Month Netflix will stream 22 hard to find films from Black Cinema’s Earliest Pioneers. In 2015, Kino Lorber released a treasure trove from American history in a DVD box set, Pioneers of African-American Cinema. Hours upon hours of feature-length and short films spanning the 1910s to the 1940s were…

The Price of a Ticket as a Black Woman: Inspired by James Baldwin

For so long I was invisible in this country we call America.  Some call it Amerikkka because it hasn’t always been kind to us…even now. The price of my ticket is very expensive and I still have yet to feel the FREEDOM of this journey. I am an American with limited liberties that were added…

Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave…(July 5, 1852) Full Speech

Source: American Civil War: The Essential Reference Guide Written By: Arnold, James;Wiener, Roberta; MIL EAN/ISBN: 9781283173179; Pub e-EAN/ISBN: 9781598849066; Subject (LC Class): E468 – The Civil War, 1861-1865

June 2016: African American Mentions, News, and Highlights

In Native Son, Wright writes: “Goddammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in jail.” Vince Staples reminds us that the inner city still imprisons many. We should never forget that for some…

Black History 1: Art, Psychology, Law, and Sports

The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was a Marxist communist and black nationalist organization that emerged in response to the violent race riots of the Red Summer of 1919. Founded in 1919 in Harlem by Cyril V. Briggs, a West Indian immigrant, the organization was structured as a secret fraternal society…

The Defenders of King Leopold II: Genocide in the Congo

Since the attack on Brussels there have been a number of people sending prayers up and hoping for peace, solidarity, and justice for the victims.  There are also some people that have been extremely heartless towards the plight of those people because of Brussels history towards minorities, specifically African Americans.  I get both sides and…

Race & Crime: The Ku Klux Klan’s Hostile and Deadly Reign in America

At the time of the killings, the police special agent in charge of the Klan informant was at the back of the caravan, having trailed it to the site. He did not intervene, or radio for help, or trip a siren, or pursue the killers as nine of their vehicles got away. Arrests occurred only…

Milly Swan Price: Freedom, Kinship, and Property

Milly Swan Price (1824 – 1880) Her story reveals how free black women negotiated racial, gender, and familial relationships in the antebellum and post– Civil War South. On March 2, 1840, sixteen year-old Milly Swan— along with her three brothers (Nick, eighteen; Jim, seven; and Addison, about three) and four sisters (Peggy, twelve; Charity, about…

Part Two: The Black Marriage – Power, Media, the Black Church, and Solutions

The elite groups with the power to control definitions of marriage were, it may seem to go without saying, not just men, but White men. The “authority to define societal values” associated with marriage “is a major expression of upper class white male power” (Collins, 1990, p. 76). Thus, the roles of husband and wife that were created, and the…