The 'Sinners' Movie's Syllabus
Looks to be an incredible list of resources and things to further research into key areas of the movie, from Jim Crow and the Mississippi Delta, to the blues, the great migration, and more. Wow.
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Augustus Jackson (1808-1852)
Courtesy of my friend Lucas, who in turn got it from a coworker who sends out interesting profiles as part of Black History Month.
Ice cream innovator Augustus Jackson was born on April 16, 1808, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He began working at the White House in Washington D.C. when he was just nine years old and worked as a chef there for twenty years, from 1817 until 1837. Jackson cooked for Presidents James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. His presidential food preparation extended from cooking comfort food for the presidents’ families to preparing formal meals at state dinners for visiting dignitaries.
In 1837, Augustus Jackson left Washington D.C. and returned to his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he opened his own catering and confectioner business. A savvy businessman, over time Jackson became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Philadelphia, acquiring his fortune making ice cream. Although ice cream has been around since the 4th century B.C.E. originating from Persia (Iran), Jackson is known for his ice cream making technique and his inventive ice cream recipes.
That innovative ice cream manufacturing technique led to his unprecedented success. Most early ice cream recipes used eggs, but Jackson devised an eggless recipe. He also added salt to the ice, mixing it with his new flavors and cream. The salt made his delicious flavors taste better and lowered the temperature of the ice cream allowing it to be kept colder for a longer time. This helped with packaging and shipping. Jackson’s technique is still used today.
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Dan Rather discusses Florida's 'Stop WOKE Act'
Dan Rather discusses Florida's horrible decision to sanitize the nightmares that was America's history regarding slavery:
As much as we wish American history were different, tragedy is part of our reality. We do a grave disservice to future generations if we sanitize the truth. People can behave horribly. Societies that profess noble values can countenance violent bigotry. We can either look back from whence we have come with clarity, or we can try to muddy the roots of the present and weaken ourselves in the process.
This week, the Florida State Board of Education reworked its standards for teaching Black history. The changes come in response to the state’s so-called “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.” Passed last year, it limits training and education around issues of race, sex, and other criteria for systemic injustice. At its heart is a core belief that has animated right-wing culture warriors: that people alive today should not be made to feel bad or even uncomfortable by the sins of the past. The thinking goes, that was a long time ago.
But of course it really wasn’t. And the legacies of the past live on. And if we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.
George Takei also had a thought regarding this stupidity:
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A shorth thread about York, the sole black slave in the Lewis & Clark expedition
Everyone knows Lewis & Clark, but did you know that there was a black man who was also part of the expedition?
As he was enslaved by William Clark, he participated as a full member of the expedition & was present when the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean.
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Six black Americans discuss Dr. Cornel West's Presidential Candidacy
Highlighting perspectives and culture that I don't have, and giving their thoughts on Dr. West's candidacy and what it means, and their thoughts on him.
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Decoration Day - The first Memorial Day
Back in 1996, David Blight, a professor of American History at Yale University, was researching a book on the Civil War when he had one of those once-in-a-career eureka moments. A curator at Harvard's Houghton Library asked if he wanted to look through two boxes of unsorted material from Union veterans.
"There was a file labeled 'First Decoration Day,'" remembers Blight, still amazed at his good fortune. "And inside on a piece of cardboard was a narrative handwritten by an old veteran, plus a date referencing an article in The New York Tribune. That narrative told the essence of the story that I ended up telling in my book, of this march on the race track in 1865."
The race track in question was the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club in Charleston, South Carolina. In the late stages of the Civil War, the Confederate army transformed the formerly posh country club into a makeshift prison for Union captives. More than 260 Union soldiers died from disease and exposure while being held in the race track's open-air infield. Their bodies were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstands.
[...]
And then on May 1, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves with some white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track. Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.
If the news reports are accurate, the 1865 gathering at the Charleston race track would be the earliest Memorial Day commemoration on record.
The article goes on to highlight that he couldn't find any corroboration from other groups, but then later he gave a talk and had a woman come forward. The article explained there was an event,
After his book Race and Reunion was published in 2001, Blight gave a talk about Memorial Day at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and after it was finished, an older Black woman approached him.
"You mean that story is true?" the woman asked Blight. "I grew up in Charleston, and my granddaddy used to tell us this story of a parade at the old race track, and we never knew whether to believe him or not. You mean that's true?"
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A reminder about the true Dr. King
The King we are being presented is the corporate King, the creature of the white government who used this pacifist myth to beat down the Black freedom movement of the 1960's with blood, and of which he was one of the major casualties, along with Malcolm X, the other major leader of that period. We are fed this garbage every year at this time, which totally circumvents logic and perverts history about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement itself.
It is done to really remove him from his people, and put him in the hands of the White political establishment, and in that respect that is what has been done. They also want to give us a man they claim who was a sheer pacifist, and could not support the liberation movements which existed all during the revolutionary 1960's. That also was false since we know that Dr. King was opposed to the Vietnam war and reached a pointed where he began to criticize the political institutions of the capitalist government and economy itself. That is why they killed him.
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Last slave ship survivor lived until 1940
The last known survivor of the last U.S. slave ship died in 1940—75 years after the abolition of slavery. Her name was Matilda McCrear.
When she first arrived in Alabama in 1860, she was only two years old. By the time she died, Matilda had lived through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws, World War I, the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II in Europe.
To David's point, this is not some far off history as it can often feel in school. I had no idea that the last survivor of the slave trade had lived until just over 80 years ago.
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OTD: 190 years ago, the first hospital for African Americans
Chartered by the Georgia General Assembly in 1832, the Infirmary was established "for the relief and protection of afflicted and aged Africans" under the provisions of the last will and testament of Savannah merchant and minister Thomas F. Williams (1774-1816). Originally located south of the city, it was moved here in 1838. Its fourteen acres included several single-story buildings and small farm tracts for vegetable gardens. In 1904, the Infirmary became one of the earliest training schools for African-American nurses. In 1975, it became Georgia's first day center for stroke rehabilitation.
Along with this, I discovered hmdb.org which is the Historical Marker database.
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Netherlands apologizes for role in African slave trade
Prime Minister Mark Rutte has formally apologised on behalf of the Dutch state for its historical role in slavery, and for consequences that he acknowledged continue into the present day.
"Today I apologise," Rutte said on Monday, speaking at a nationally televised speech at the Dutch National Archives.
"For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives have enabled and stimulated slavery and have profited from it.
"It is true that nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery … [however] the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering that has been done to those that were enslaved and their descendants."
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A fascinating look at the intertwined history of the banjo and black history
Sadly the racism is not altogether surprising given the south's overt history, but I never thought of it in this particular lens. I particularly found the segment about the 'ring shout' tradition fascinating.
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Freedom House Ambulance Service on 99% Invisible Podcast
Today we think of paramedics as a service which has always existed. But that is far from true. Among the three emergency response groups they are, by far, the youngest. And this episode of the excellent 99% Invisible podcast delves into the history of the first paramedics. Young black men in Pittsburgh who were, up to then, considered unemployable.
Fascinating stuff which should definitely be known by more people.
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Seneca Village, the black community in NYC that was destroyed for Central Park
This tweet thread's first post led me to the linked article as I sought to learn more about Seneca Village.
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"America’s First Black Physician Sought to Heal a Nation’s Persistent Illness"
James McCune Smith was not just any physician. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree, educated at the University of Glasgow in the 1830s, when no American university would admit him. For this groundbreaking achievement alone, Smith warrants greater appreciation.
But Smith was also one of the nation’s leading abolitionists. In 1859, Frederick Douglass declared, "No man in this country more thoroughly understands the whole struggle between freedom and slavery than does Dr. Smith, and his heart is as broad as his understanding." A prolific writer, Smith was not only the first African American to publish peer-reviewed articles in medical journals; he also wrote essays and gave lectures refuting pseudoscientific claims of black inferiority and forecast the transformational impact African Americans were destined to make on world culture.
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The US officially has its first black Four-Star Marine General
Congratulations to Gen. Michael E. Langley!
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"Meet the Woman Preserving the History of Oregon's Black Loggers"
For almost 20 years, [Gwen Trice] has committed herself to documenting Maxville and Oregon’s Black logging history, eventually founding the Maxville Heritage Interpretive Center, located about 40 miles from the actual town site. With the recent purchase of 240 acres of land that includes Maxville, the center plans to add additional programs and outdoor tours.
Related:
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Quote from Toni Morrison on Racism
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
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Redditor /u/Hoyarugby delivers great insights and context about American black men volunteering to go fight in Ethiopia and defend it from Mussolini
Reddit title for this photo: "African Americans in Harlem volunteering to go to Ethiopia and fight to save Africa’s last uncolonized nation from fascist Italian dictator Mussolini. Almost all volunteers were blocked from leaving by the US government. Few managed to go to Ethiopia. Summer 1935."
The top comment, which I linked, is super interesting and yet another example of a moment in American history I had no awareness of.
The war that is being discussed is The Second Italo-Ethiopian War which I did know about (only at the highest level of awareness, no real in depth knowledge) but I was completely unaware of this aspect of it from the US history perspective.
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Mary Mcleod Bethune becomes first black American in National Statuary Hall
I am ashamed to admit that I had to go look her up. Her name was familiar as someone I learned about in school, and I believed she was taught as part of Black History and the Civil Rights, but I couldn't be more specific. Here's looking to celebrate as that hall is filled with more and more non-White Americans.
Here is a great biography on the Bethune-Cookman University website:
Bethune-Cookman University’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, is one of America’s most inspirational daughters. Educator. National civil rights pioneer and activist. Champion of African American women’s rights and advancement. Advisor to Presidents of the United States. The first in her family not to be born into slavery, she became one of the most influential women of her generation.
Dr. Bethune famously started the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training Institute for Negro Girls on October 3, 1904 with $1.50, vision, an entrepreneurial mindset, resilience and faith in God. She created “pencils” from charred wood, ink from elderberries, and mattresses from moss-stuffed corn sacks. Her first students were five little girls and her five-year-old son, Albert Jr. In less than two years, the school grew to 250 students. Recognizing the health disparities and lack of medical treatment available to African Americans in Daytona Beach, she also founded the Mary McLeod Hospital and Training School for Nurses, which at the time was the only school of its kind that served African American women on the east coast.
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Whoopi Goldberg, Dick Gregory and other black comedians impact told in 'Right To Offend'
This looks interesting, will definitely be planning to check it out.
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