FANNIE LOU HAMER: ONE OF THE DEFIANT ONES

In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote.

Think of Hamer whenever you see
Oprah in Ava DuVernay's "Selma"

When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."

When Hamer and others went to the courthouse, they were jailed and beaten by the police.

Hamer's courageous act got her thrown off the plantation where she was a sharecropper. She also began to receive constant death threats and was even shot at. Still, Hamer would not be discouraged. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote.

She made national headlines after she formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and confronted the all white delegates from Mississippi on national television. During that confrontation, she exposed how black people were kept from voting and her speech was broadcast world wide.

In post World War II United States, in a post Hitler world, the United States claim that "All Men Are Created Equal" was being shown as a falsehood and hypocrisy with every image of dogs being sicced on peaceful protesters. White violence and speeches like Hamer's were a national embarrassment.

Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcom X, and a whole host of others knew that exposing the United States' hypocrisy again and again would secure the right of black people to be citizens and to vote in reality instead of just on paper.

Read More

https://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/hamer.html

  * * * * * * * * *

A WORLD WITHOUT BLACK HISTORY

Feeling Rebloggy


FRANCHESCA IS KINDA AWESOME

I had to relisten to that part about the Louisiana Purchase
where France winds up owning most of the United States
and everybody, in the here and now,
winds up speaking French instead of English
IF NOT FOR
ye olde blacken folke being here.


                                          by Franchesca Ramsey

10 BLACK WOMEN YOU DIDN'T HEAR ABOUT IN SCHOOL

10 Black Women Activists You Didn't Learn About In High School
These queens deserve recognition.
Posted by HuffPost Black Voices on Tuesday, February 9, 2016

ANGELA DAVIS: ALL LIVES MATTER versus ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL 

didn't include black people then

&

ALL LIVES MATTER 

doesn't include black people now

BLACK LIVES MATTER

doesn't always included black women

so
BLACK WOMEN'S LIVES MATTER

becomes necessary

We have to resist

THE TYRANNY OF THE UNIVERSAL

and become specific

THE GENEROSITY OF BLACK PEOPLE

Like most people, my heart almost broke into when I saw the body of a little boy that had washed up on a beach in Turkey after his Syrian mother and father took him out in a tiny boat on the ocean trying to escape to someplace where they could create a life.  His mother make it either. His father told the story of them having no choice but to take their chances with a mule, a man that promised to take them to safety, but jumped off the boat when the water became to rough.

You have to understand. Nobody puts their children in a boat unless they are safer in the water than they are on land

This was probably one of the stories that made the Syrian refugee crisis real for many leaders of many countries. Suddenly there were leaders of countries stepping up to say how many thousands they would take in. There were anti-immigration debates and disturbances in a few countries. 

Here in the U.S. it was just the talk that got ugly over Syrian Refugees. And I was proud to see President Obama and various other black people talk about our obligation to take in those who need help. 

Then people started justifying the acceptance of refugees based on the United States would benefit eventually,  and I tried to turn away. But I wasn't fast enought. People trotted out Steve Jobs, the deceased creator of Apple Brand products, and my heart took a hard-hearted turn.

And I know perfectly damn well I wasn't the only person of color to feel this turning take place inside.

Many of us know that these pale Syrians will be here half a generation before they are accepted into whiteness, so long as they don't clump together in communities.

And that seems to be Milana Vayntrub's story.

I read about how unwelcome Milana Vayntrub,  famous due to her stint in AT&T commercials, felt when she first came to this country. I read about how moved she was by the Syrian's plight, and I understood her empathy. But I also understood something else. As I looked at the photographs of her as a model and saw how young she is, I understood that her feeling of acceptance probably moved forward at an equal pace along side her acceptance into white privilege --- just like Steve Jobs, whose company, Apple, has earned a solid reputation for fighting diversity. 

This knowledge of ancient and recent history leaves my head and heart, both of them, split in two.

Yes, I want to save everybody too. Yes, I know helping the Syrian refugees is the right thing to do. Yes, I know my prayers will be answered with "Do The Right Thing Anyway."  Yes, I intellectually understand Milana Vayntrub's identifying with the Syrian refugees because she was once a refugee from Russia. But part of me still wants to make the Syrian Refugees safe then ship them somewhere else to build a life.

The logical part of me just doesn't see the need to import oppressors. 

The pale folk notoriously selective about reading their own history with black and brown this will think I'm making assumptions. The black and brown folk that do know their own history will look back over time and understand that this has happened to us over and over again for hundreds of years
I don't know what to do other than provide the support I can to refugees who are running for their lives and then hope for the best.

I mean, how can I demand reciprocation? 

Then again, maybe I should demand reciprocation.

I suppose I could.

Maybe I could write to, not the Syrian refugees but to a refugee that's made it. I could write to Milana Vayntrub  and say, "Yeah I'll support your cause if you support the black people in inner-cities being treated like unwanted refugees inside their own country, shot at will by policeman that look like you. I'll support your cause if you stand up for #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName." 

Everybody doesn't have to be focus on every cause, right? We'd be so scattered if we all focused on every cause equally. We can pick and choose. Still, maybe some causes come along and demand everyone's attention like the Syrian Refugee Crisis has recently and the Black Lives Matter campaign should have a while ago.

Maybe I found my answer.

I have the right to pick and choose which causes mean most to me. Maybe I can decide that Black Lives Matter means more to me. Maybe I can decide that #SayHerName means even more than #BlackLivesMatter too if  #SayHerName cannot be absorbed back into #BlackLivesMatter.  (It makes me mad that so many black people do not know Gynnya McMillen's name, that they don't care about her story as much as they did Tamir Rice's. She was a child that didn't deserve to die either.) 

Everybody chooses the causes closest to their hearts

Black women can choose too.

I can choose

It is right for me to choose. 

I've been taught to put others before self, and as a woman to put a lot of others before me and mine. I want to stop doing that. I want to put black women first. And I want that to be my habit. I want putting black women first to be so ingrained a habit that I have to force myself to remember others.

I will learn to choose us. In that choosing me and mine I can say, 'Yeah I'll support your cause if you show me you will reciprocate.' I don't expect the Syrian Refugees to reciprocate now. But I  do expect the Vayntrubs to reciprocate now because she, and people like her, owe us. 

If people were requesting money for the poor refugees coming here with nothing got anywhere near a black church, I know they walked away with something.

Jimmy Carter once put together a list of states and cities and counties in the United States that donate the highest percentage of their income to the poor. Do you know where the most generous people lived? They lived in the poorest and blackest cities in this nation.

I know the pale and the smattering of dark refugees allowed in took black donations and survived on them during their earliest days in this country. And I, for one, expect them reciprocate a hell of a lot better than Steve Jobs did.

P.S. Please do not come at me with how much Jobs donated here and there. I care about that about as much as I do Bill Cosby donations. Jobs generosity over here or over there don't decrease his company's support of racial stratification (at the very least) Bill Cosby's donations don't remove the facts of his admitted behavior. We know that folks like Cosby and Jobs take away with two hands under the table while giving back with one hand on top the table,  
********************

ELLA BAKER GIVES BIRTH TO SNCC

Ella Baker was a founding member of the SCLC, the Southern Leadership Conference. After that Ella Baker organized the SNCC, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
* * * * *

ELLA BAKER BIRTH'S THE SNCC
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had been denied service. 

Having difficulties with competitive, authoritarian leadership (sexist too, according to Septima Clarke) at the SCLC Baker left organization after these Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist these new student activists as she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. 

Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born.

Having run a voter registration campaign called the "Crusade for Citizenship" earlier in her civil rights career, she incorporated the voter registration of rural blacks as one of SNCC's goals. Students from SNCC went out into black communities that had never really been tapped into before by more middle class groups like N.A.A.C.P. and the SCLC. Many black people in these areas had to be told they had the right to vote in the first place. And one of those black people that SNCC made aware of their own voting rights was Fannie Lou Hamer. 
Hamer would go on to speak at a televised democratic convention. And millions of people around the world would hear her tell the story of white efforts to keep black people from the polls.

Adopting the Gandhian theory of nonviolent direct action, SNCC members joined with activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to organize in the 1961 Freedom Rides.
In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to focus national attention on Mississippi’s racism and to register black voters. Baker, and many of her contemporaries, believed that voting was one key to freedom.

With Ella Baker’s guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country.

Her influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: “Fundi,” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation. Baker continued to be a respected and influential leader in the fight for human and civil rights until her death on her 83rd birthday.

http://zinnedproject.org/materials/baker-ella/

http://www.ellabakerschool.net/…/about-ell…/ella-bakers-life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Baker


Can't believe you haven't heard of her everyday of your life, can ya?  

KENDRICK LAMAR'S GRAMMY PERFORMANCE

A LITTLE SNIPPET
FULL VIDEO HERE

ELLA BAKER AND THE FORMATION OF THE SCLC

Ella Baker was a founding member of the SCLC, the Southern Leadership Conference. And Ella Baker actually gave birth SNCC, The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
----------------------

Ella Baker's civil right's history is a long one. She joined the NAACP in 1940, and eventually served as Director of Branches from 1943 until 1946.

In 1955, Ella Baker "co-founded the organization "In Friendship" with Baynard Rustin and Stanley Levinson. The group's purpose was to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South. In Friendship would eventually thousands of dollars to support the 13 months long Montgomery Bus Boycott begun by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson's Women's Political Council, the same boycott that would eventually make Rosa Parks famous and Martin Luther King a respected leader

By January 1957, Baker and Rustin had gone to Atlanta, Georgia to attend a conference aimed at developing a new regional organization to build on the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Ella Baker's aim was to start a movement that would fight for the rights of Black Americans throughout the South. In her opinion the organization would have to be a southern one so that its members wouldn’t be labeled “northern troublemakers or agitators.” 

While King, also at this conference initially thought that people needed a rest after the long 13 month battle, Ella Baker disagreed. She was afraid that momentum created by the success of the boycott and other actions would be lost if not expanded to other areas of segregation immediately.
Bayard Rustin (in New York City), having conceived of the idea of this effort, first sought Rev. C. K. Steele to take the lead role in this new organization. But Ella Baker wanted King. She acknowledged the objections of others, those being King's youth and inexperience. But she knew many people knew him and knew of him. She knew that the momentum of the bus boycott was still attached to this charismatic leader.
 

C. K. Steele eventually declined Rustin's invitation to lead the new organization, but told him he would be glad to work right beside him if he sought Dr. King in Montgomery, for the role

After a second conference in February of 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed with Martin Luther King as it's leader.

Once the SCLC was well established, Baker's eyes turned toward increasing the size of the organized movement with student protestors.


Read More on Ella Baker Tomorrow

Sources

http://zinnedproject.org/materials/baker-ella/

http://www.ellabakerschool.net/…/about-ell…/ella-bakers-life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Baker

THE DAY BEYONCE TURNED BLACK

JIM CROW, WORSE THAN SLAVERY THROUGH THE 1960s

ESPECIALLY FOR POOR BLACKS

During the times of slavery, white people knew that black people knew their place, knew the pecking order. Blacks and whites moved one another freely. The white beatings and killings of blacks was limited by white fear of economic loss....up to a point.

Once slavery was over, white people were afraid of revenge and competition. Immoral laws and the terrorism of lynching were used by white people to keep black people in their place. Black and white worlds became very separate under Jim Crow.

However, whenever white people needed free labor during this period, black people would be arrested for things like not having a job or loitering, put into the prison system, then the prisoners would be hired out to work on white plantations come crop gathering time.

The Big House at"Parchman Farm"
another name for
The Mississippi State Penitentiary 

A prison famous for running just like a plantation was called Parchman Farm. And it continued to be run just that way through the early 1970s.

Some of the Freedom Riders wound up at Parchman Farm during The Civil Rights Movement

PRISON WORK SONG
FROM THE MOVIE OF THE AUGUST WILSON PLAY
"THE PIANO LESSON"

SNIPPET OF A REAL PRISON WORK SONG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WzZqlN1h4

HISTORY BOOK: 

Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice 

I ONLY HAVE ONE SCALIA QUESTION LEFT AT THIS POINT

That was actually question 3. Other questions were answered earlier today.

 * * * * *
Question 1 was: 
Will Obama be in office long enough to see a new Justice Confirmed?

Answer: 
Yes. The longest it has taken to replace a Supreme Court Justice is 125 or 126 days, depending on who you ask. President Obama has 345 to 361 days left in office.

(Could be the answer should be "probably yes" This President was called a "liar" on the floor of the House by a white man. Unprecedented. So the answer is modified to "probably yes")

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511225828

 * * * * *

Question 2 was:
What cases have instantly been decided by Scalia's death? 

Answer:
Mother Jones says there are six court cases that have been instantly decided. Read about them here:   http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/6-cases-now-decided-justice-scalias-death


* * * * *


Son of Baldwin On Scalia's Death: 
http://sonofbaldwin.tumblr.com/post/139255783595/they-say-you-shouldnt-say-nothin-about-the-dead

U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA DIES AT 79

I was writing about the possibility of President Obama getting replace a Supreme Court Justice (or three) before he leaves office either late yesterday or early this morning. I wrote and re-wrote the line over and over again trying to make it sound tasteful

...before I gave up.

And, I wrote and edited so many blog posts yesterday, I have no idea which blog post I wrote it in. I supposed it could be in the Black Suffrage Timeline I've been writing on for a while --probably won't be done until the very end of the month.

I can't believe it. 




I been puttin the whammy on Texas  today too. The textbooks, including history books, written and/or edited and influenced there -- are no bueno

I can't believe it. 


Read Morehttp://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35571868

DID JIM CROW BEGIN ON JULY 4 1876?

feeling rebloggy

On July 4, 1876 a Black militia gathered in Hamburg, South Carolina, a center of Reconstruction and Black power, to celebrate the nation's centennial. A white farmer arrived on the scene and ordered the militia to move aside for their carriage. 

Although the militia eventually opened ranks, the next day the farmer demanded to a state justice that the leader of the militia, Dock Adams, be arrested for obstructing “my road." 

Meanwhile, the Black militia again gathered in Hamburg, but this time there was also a large group of white men. The outnumbered Blacks attempted to flee, but 25 men were captured and five were murdered in cold blood. African American shops and homes were also ransacked. The Hamburg Massacre launched the 1876 Democratic campaign for South Carolina's “Redemption,” inaugurating single-party white supremacist rule, and leading to nearly a century of "Jim Crow" denial of civil rights. 

-Zinn Education Project


 

Hmmm...Maybe not so much born as conceived on that July 4th?



Read more about the Hamburg massacre and other July 4 people's history stories from throughout U.S. history here: http://bit.ly/1JDtrkk

NESTLE ADMITS USING SLAVES IN THAILAND,

AND THEY ARE FIGHTING
SIMILAR ACCUSATIONS
ON THE IVORY COAST



It’s hard to think of an issue that you would less like your company to be associated with than modern slavery. Yet last November Nestlé, the world’s largest foodmaker and one of the most recognisable household brands, went public with the news it had found forced labour in its supply chains in Thailand and that its customers were buying products tainted with the blood and sweat of poor, unpaid and abused migrant workers.

By independently disclosing that Nestlé customers had unwittingly bought products contaminated by the very worst labour abuses, the company said it was moving into a new era of self-policing of its own supply chains. A year-long investigation by the company confirmed media reports that the seafood industry in Thailand is riddled with forced labour and human trafficking and that slave labour was involved in the production of its Fancy Feast catfood brand. 

Read More: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/02/nestle-admits-use-of-slave-labor-in-thailand-while-fighting-similar-claims-in-ivory-coast/




-------------------------

ZORA NEALE HURSTON ON BLACK LIFE

"Actually I think all the time that I write, I am writing about love or its absence... which is how people relate to one another and miss or hang on to it ... or are tenacious about love."

~Zora Neale Hurston (Bakerman 60)

In “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston explores the effects of race and gender on developing one’s identity.

There is often a discrepancy between personal identity and the identity formed exogenously by members of society, which makes it difficult to develop a true understanding of oneself. In Hurston’s novel, Janie is able to move past the opinions others have of her and become the woman she wants to be, but not before she is subjected to the limitations placed on her as a result of being a black woman. Hurston’s symbolic use of the mule, a pear tree in blossom, and Janie’s hair illustrate the development of Janie’s womanhood and independence, as well as her ultimate triumph over her domineering husbands and the constrained society in which she lives.

Normally, when one thinks of race and discrimination, the focus is on one race putting another [race] down. However, in some cases, members of the same race can be just as discriminatory and unsupportive of one another. Hurston explores this idea of inner-race discrimination in her fictional depiction of Eatonville, Florida.

Eatonville serves as a way for black people to escape from the racism present in the rest of the United States (Patterson 34). However, this enclave of racial separateness is not lacking in discrimination.

In "Their Eyes Were Watching God" Hurston explores the re-creation of white racism by blacks against other blacks, and black women specifically sexism, and patriarchy. If you didn't notice that when you were reading, then "feminism" is just common sense to you. Congratulations. Give it another readRead More:
http://www.ericrettberg.com/modernamericanauthors/?p=760

                                             

* * * *
HISTORICAL FICTION:
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
       

 * * * * * * * * * * * *  

THROWING OFF THE OPPRESSOR IN BLACK AND WHITE, A COMPARISON

As slavery in the Americas was ending, in 1884, at the request of Portugal, German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark called together the major western powers of the Europe to negotiate.....(wait for it)...the control of Africa
.
At the time, 80% of Africa remained under traditional and local control. But none of the black leaders of African countries were invited to attend the meeting.
.
The Berlin Conference was Africa's undoing in more ways than one.
"The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African continent. Independence wouldn't begin to return to Africa until 1950 (because WWII broke them financially?) By that time the Africa "had acquired a legacy of political, fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily"

You know what? I'm thinking Africa, and Black Americans for that matter,  are functioning just fine because because compared to white Americans in the United States. Blacks here and abroad in Africa have only recently thrown off its oppressors if you think about it



SOME THINGS TO COMPARE
.
WHITE AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES

The core of The United States declared Independence from England in 1776

This country was unstable and had a civil war as a result, followed by a reconstruction. All of this instability didn't end until approximately 100 years later ( in 1877)

And then it wasn't common for white people to be able to read until 1900 or so.

That's a gap of 124 years between white people getting their "freedom" and just beginning to do things like read.

BLACK AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES

Black people in the United States escaped slavery, part 1, on January 31, 1865.

Debt Peonage, in a sharecropping disguise, came along to re-enslave black people again despite being outlawed in 1867.   

Sharecropping, when whites and blacks were involved in it together, was very nearly another form of ownership via the creation of debt.  A black person  basically rents land and tools at an unknown or a changing price. The black person uses the land and tools to grow crops. But he or she can be paid a lot less than white people for the same tobacco crop then wind up owing the white land owner (former slave owner) more money than he or she took in on the a good crop of tobacco.   

 Black people in the United States escaped slavery Part 2 (Jim Crow-official and unofficial) after The Civil Rights Movement ended in 1968. Jim Crow deserves the identity "slavery part 2" because blacks could be arrested almost anything. Almost any behavior not subservient could get a person killed. And in the south,  one could be arrested for things like loitering, put in prison, then hired out to work for free on the plantations nearby. 

So, black Americans have NOT had 100 years worth of "freedom" and "equality" yet. We can already read though 124 years haven't passed yet despite the fact that it was illegal for us to for a very long time. Maybe our communities will be stable after 100 years has passed too, in 2068  --just as long as it took for white people.

Who knows what 124 years of freedom and equality will look like for black people in 2092. I already know it'll look better than it did for white people. Like I said, we can all, for the most part, read. 

And keep in mind that our oppressor is still here, with us, not across an entire ocean like the were for early white Americans.

In other words, we as black Americans, are moving at a GREAT PACE as compared to the pace of white Americans.

BLACK AFRICANS IN AFRICA

.As I understand it, white European folks didn't start letting go of their ill gotten gains, via The Berlin Conference, until about the 1950s. And that's probably because Hitler broke the bank. 

Black Africans have NOT had 100 years to stabilize yet either. And they won't have had 124 years worth of "official" freedom until 2074.

So, I don't think white Americans or Europeans have any room to feel superior here either.

CONCLUSIONS:

1) SUCCESS TAKES TIME. 

2) OPPRESSION TO SUCCESS TAKES A LOT OF TIME

3) SUPERIORITY IS AN ILLUSION. 

WE BE STRONG.

LIKE ERNESTINE SHEPARD, WE ROCK.

DON'T YOU EVER FORGET IT
Who is Ernestine Shepard? The answer is here:
https://www.new-you.me/2014/04/10/ask-ernestine-shepherd-worlds-oldest-female-bodybuilder-guinness-world-records-new-you-magazine-dubai/










.

MUSIC: SEINABO SEY

SEINABO SEY 



HER MUSIC

IS ON THE RISE








SONG: PRETEND

SONG: HARD TIME




SONG: YOUNGER 
(The beauty and rareness of black/brown imagery gets me in this one)

WHEN YOU THOUGHT HE WAS WOKE BUT....

LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING

Amazing Gospel Edition of The Black National Anthem

Lift Every Voice!
Posted by DaZone Radioshow on Wednesday, February 3, 2016

 Lift Every Voice and Sing
James Weldon Johnson, 1871 - 1928

 Lift every voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,

True to our native land.

James Weldon Johnson


---------------------------------------------

FEARLESS ANGELA DAVIS ON OUR INHERITED FEARS

“We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to
 our being consumed by it.

As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.”



---

Do you remember the popular phrase, from a James Brown song entitled, “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud?  How about the four black brothers, from the Olympics, who saluted Black Americans, with clinched fists only to have their medals snatched away? What about the bombing of the 16^th Street Church, in Birmingham that left four innocent little black girls dead?

I can fondly remember a time when Flagg Brother shoes and Eleganza Pants donned the bodies, of most young black males, as they sported huge Afros called “bushes”, that were accompanied by peace-sign picks. When the city, of Nashville, Tennessee hosted its annual Black Expo at the Municipal Auditorium, and the general public was allowed to mix and mingle with those in the know.  The celebrities, singers, activists, dancers and entertainers of a generation gathering to support the struggle for the generations that followed.

When Jessie Jackson and Operation Push were the voice of hope for civil obedience, which proceeds a time when Black America had witnessed the assassinations, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Meagar Evers and Malcolm X. I remember the vivid image, of a young intelligent black woman who was sought by the FBI, and listed on their Top Ten Most Wanted List, after the failed prisoner break to free the Soledad Brothers.  The woman named, Angela Yvonne Davis....

Read More Of This Black Girl's Magic Biography
http://www.jayepurplewolf.com/PASSION/ANGELADAVIS/