#african-american history

[tomorrowusa]

Keeping people illiterate and ignorant makes book banning and censorship unnecessary.

#books #book banning #censorship #schools #libraries #african-american history #don't say gay #moms for liberty #john cole

[todaysdocument]

American Red Cross Segregated Rest Room Soldiers and Sailors

Record Group 165: Records of the War Department General and Special StaffsSeries: American Unofficial Collection of World War I PhotographsFile Unit: Colored Troops

165-WW-127-16 SUBJECT CN-10381 Number AU American Red Cross PHOTOGRAPHER 165-WW 127 16 REC'D Dec. 2, 1918 TAKEN PN 0447 DESCRIPTION: AMERICAN RED CROSS REST ROOM FOR COLORED SOLDIERS AND SAILORS. Colored sailors in the rest room of the Red Cross headquarters, Branch No. 6, of the New Orleans Chapter. This room has been fitted for the use of the colored sailors and soldiers by Louise J. Ross. ISSUED HS

This black and white photograph mounted on a card shows about a dozen African-American sailors sitting and standing around a table.  Several read books, one types at a typewriter and three are writing by hand.  There are three men who are not in Navy uniforms in the picture as well.  A framed photograph of President Woodrow Wilson hangs in the back of the room.

#archivesgov #December 2 #1918 #US Navy #sailors #African-American History #WWI #World War 1 #new orleans

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Beulah Woodard

Beulah Woodard was born in 1895 in Frankfort, Ohio. Woodard made sculptures across several media, including wood, bronze, and terracotta, and sculpted African and African-American subjects. In 1937, she became the first African-American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. That same year, Woodard founded the Los Angeles Negro Art Association.

Beulah Woodard died in 1955 at the age of 59.

Image source: Crisis 57, no. 5 (May 1950): page 282

#art #artists #art history #african-american history #black history #black women #black artists #sculptures #sculpture #sculptors

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Adam Clayton Powell at the Negro Freedom Rally, Madison Square Garden, June 26, 1944.

Photo: PM newspaper via Steven Kasher Gallery/CBS News

#vintage New York #1940s #Adam Clayton Powell #vintage NYC #June 26 #26 June #rally #Black history #African-American history

[lionofchaeronea]

Allegory of Freedom, unknown American artist, 1863 or later

#Juneteenth #Emancipation #African-American history #art #art history #folk art #American art #African-American art #American Civil War #19th century art #oil on canvas #National Gallery of Art

[thechildrensmuseum]

The book From Slave Ship to Freedom Road presents a series of paintings by Rob Brown that portray the story of slavery from its beginnings through the middle passage to hard-won freedom. Author Julius Lester not only reveals factual information about slavery to his readers, but challenges them to imagine the pain and grief through short exercises & questions.

#Slavery Remembrance Day #slavery #slave trade #black history #middle passage #Julius Lester #Rob Brown #American history #African-American history

[lightdancer1]

Voudoun is the first of the three major Yoruba-American religions:

Voudoun, or Voodoo, as it's also called, is a religion created by the Yoruba in their experiences with both French Catholicism and the hellish nightmares of the sugar islands of the Caribbean and the sugar plantations of Louisiana. Few industries have been rife with as much horror as sugar.

In the case of Voudoun the various Loa are the direct transformations of the Orishas, influenced by both Catholic saints

#lightdancer comments on history #black history month #african history #african-american history #haitian history #louisiana history #voodoo #voodoo in reality versus myth

[desdasiwrites]

– Sadeqa Johnson, The House of Eve

#book quote of the day #Sadeqa Johnson #the house of eve #two black girls growing up in the 1950’s #historical fiction #coming of age literature #poc representation #poc author #African-American history

[t0rschlusspan1k]

Fred Wilson, Untitled (Akua'ba), 2010, cast and blown glass, 88" x 43" x 14-1/2" (223.5 cm x 109.2 cm x 36.8 cm), overall installed © Fred Wilson

Since 2001, Wilson has worked alongside prominent American glass blower Dante Marioni with whom he first explored the possibilities of black-colored glass. During this time, Wilson produced his first black glass drips. The reflective surface of the blown glass and the teardrop-like forms suggest liquids such as ink, oil, blood and tar, and are blown from red glass so dense that it appears black. Wilson has continued to make drip works including Untitled (Akua'ba) (2010), a multi-piece installation topped with a black-glass sculpture cast from a traditional ritual fertility doll of the Asante people in Ghana. The glass doll extends from the wall looking down on a series of black drips that appear to cascade towards the floor—a nod to the fecundity associated with the African doll and the spread of the notion of the “Global African.” As Wilson explains, “Since the late 20th century the concept of the color black has shifted. Africans and those of the African Diaspora have embodied the color and flipped the negative meaning on its head and now view it as a powerful symbol of solidarity, born of our shared history and culture. My works in black are a mixture of positive affirmation, with a clear-eyed understanding of the racist tropes of the past.”

#art #Fred Wilson #Akua'ba #glassmaking #installation #2010 #2010s #Asante people #Ghana #Ghanaian culture #African Diaspora #black #solidarity #history #African-American history #American history #African history #racist tropes #African-American art #African-American artists #Pace Gallery

[aci25]

In the year 1899, two African-American brothers with albinism were forcibly taken and exploited as performers in a circus.

Renowned as "The Sheep-Headed Men," "The White Ecuadorian Cannibals Eko and Iko," and "The Ambassadors From Mars," George and Willie Muse gained worldwide fame as sideshow performers during the early 1900s. However, the true horrors of their story remained largely unknown to their predominantly white audiences.

Born with a rare form of albinism in the African-American community, the Muse brothers fell victim to a traveling "freak hunter" who targeted them when they were young boys and forcibly abducted them from their home in Virginia. Their distinctive appearance, characterized by African-American albinos with pale blue eyes and blond hair, coupled with their poor vision due to an eye condition often misunderstood as a mental impairment, made them easy targets for exploitation by a traveling circus.

Under the control of their captors, the brothers were compelled to grow out their hair and were sold to various traveling sideshows, including Ringling Bros. Circus. Despite being denied access to education and literacy, as well as being deprived of any financial compensation, George and Willie possessed remarkable musical talents. They could hear a song once and flawlessly reproduce it on any instrument they were handed, be it a guitar, banjo, harmonica, saxophone, or xylophone. Their handlers greatly underestimated their abilities.

Their years of enslavement finally came to an end in 1927 when Ringling Bros. Circus returned to Roanoke, and George recognized their mother among the crowd. Overwhelmed with emotion, George exclaimed, "There's our dear old mother. Look, Willie, she is not dead." This poignant reunion marked the turning point in their lives, bringing an end to their captivity and the beginning of a journey towards reclaiming their freedom and identity.

#african-american #1899 photo #1899 #photography #The Sheep-Headed Men #ringling bros circus #african-american history

[tomorrowusa]

Ron DeSantis and his Florida GOP machine want schools in the state to teach that slavery was beneficial.

The curriculum includes framing labor skills African Americans developed while enslaved as potentially ‘applied for their personal benefit.’ Florida’s newly adopted K-12 curriculum for African American history is drawing censure from community leaders, elected officials and the state’s largest education organization for what they complain is a glossing over of shameful chapters in America’s past. [ ... ] Critics, however, argued the curriculum — which includes framing labor skills slaves developed as potentially “applied for their personal benefit” and a disproportionate conflation of violence against Black citizens with violence by them — as a “big step backward.” “How can our students ever be equipped for the future if they don’t have a full, honest picture of where we’ve come from?” said Andrew Spar, President of the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest union with more than 150,000 members. “Florida’s students deserve a world-class education that equips them to be successful adults who can help heal our nation’s divisions rather than deepen them, (and they) deserve the full truth of American history, the good and the bad.”

According to DeSantis rubber stamp Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., slavery produced a lot of great skills in people.

For pre-Civil War lessons, middle school students must be taught “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” per a new benchmark clarification.

The new DeSantis curriculum partly blames the victims of past crimes.

The curriculum also notes that high school teachings about several instances of mass killings, including the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in which a White mob murdered at least 30 African Americans for attempting to vote, should include instruction on “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” “That’s blaming the victim,” said Orlando Democratic Sen. Geraldine Thompson, who worked to pass a 2020 law requiring instruction about the Ocoee Massacre.

Republicans apparently don't want the snowflake descendants of slaveholders and KKK sympathizers to feel sad.

The DeSantis whitewashing of history is part of his overall plan to pander to the far right in order to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. It tells us a lot about the current state of the Republican Party and the extremists whose opinions hold sway within the GOP.

#african-american history #florida #ron desantis #manny diaz jr #republicans #the gop #the far right #slavery #ocoee massacre #racist propaganda #whitewashing history #gop presidential nomination #election 2024

[thenewdemocratus]

Twre Flect: Video: NET: James Baldwin, Who is The Nigger?

. This post was originally posted at FRS Daily Post on WordPress James Baldwin was certainly not a nigger. Only ignorant people who do not know enough about the people they are afraid of regardless of race are niggers. What I believe Baldwin’s point about nigger, a word I hate and not even comfortable writing, let alone saying, but what I think he was saying is that nigger was something that…

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#African-American Community #African-American History #American Civil Rights Movement #American History #Civil Rights #James Baldwin #National Educational Television #NET #Nigger #Niggers #Youtube

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Hallie Quinn Brown

Suffragist and civil rights activist Hallie Quinn Brown was born in 1850 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brown served as dean of women at the Tuskegee Institute, and later became a professor at Wilberforce University. She was a key figure in the founding of the National Association of Colored Women, and served as the organization's president from 1920 until 1924. Brown also published five books.

Hallie Quinn Brown died in 1949 at the age of 99.

Image source: FS Biddle, obtained from the Library of Congress

#women's history #history #black history #african-american history #african-american

[goodblacknews]

IT'S BACK!! GBN's "A Year of Good Black News" Page-A-Day Calendar for 2023 Now Available for Pre-Order

IT’S BACK!! GBN’s “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day Calendar for 2023 Now Available for Pre-Order

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief Last fall GBN came out with its first physical product: the A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022, published by Workman Publishing. We are excited to announce that, with your support, its sequel is on the way — the  A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2023! Written by yours truly, the A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day…

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#"A Year of Good Black News" #African American music #African-American Artists #African-American History #black inventors #black music #Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar #Lori Lakin Hutcherson #“A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day® Calendar

[panafrocore]

Greenwood: The Rise and Fall of "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa, Oklahoma

The story of Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a poignant tale of triumph and tragedy. Established as a historic freedom colony, Greenwood flourished into one of the most notable centers of African-American enterprise in the early 20th century. Known as “Black Wall Street,” this community stood as a beacon of prosperity and resilience in the face of adversity. During its…

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#African-American #African-American history #Black American History #Black History #Black Wall Street #Greenwood #historic freedom colony #Tulsa #Tusla History

[thechildrensmuseum]

On this day in 1968 Hank Aaron hit his 500th career home run.

#On this day #Hank Aaron #baseball #home run king #home runs #African-American history #Black history