poemsofthedead:

Patricia Stephens Due Dies at 72; Campaigned for Civil Rights

Patricia Stephens Due, whose belief that, as she put it, “ordinary people can do extraordinary things” propelled her to leadership in the civil rights movement — but at a price, including 49 days in a stark Florida jail — died on Tuesday in Smyrna, Ga. She was 72.

The cause was thyroid cancer, her daughter Johnita Due said. She had moved to Smyrna, an Atlanta suburb, to be near her family after living in Miami.

At 13, Patricia Stephens challenged Jim Crow orthodoxy by trying to use the “whites only” window at a Dairy Queen. As a college student, she led demonstrations to integrate lunch counters, theaters and swimming pools and was repeatedly arrested.

As a young mother, she pushed two children in a stroller while campaigning for the rights of poor people. As a veteran of integration and voting rights battles, she went on to fight for economic rights, once obstructing a garbage truck in support of striking workers. As an elder stateswoman of the movement, she wrote a memoir to honor “unsung foot soldiers.”

She fought beside John D. Due Jr., a civil rights lawyer, whom she married in 1963. For their honeymoon, they rode the Freedom Train to Washington to hear the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. give his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Mrs. Due paid a price for this devotion. She wore large, dark glasses day and night because her eyes were damaged when a hissing tear gas canister hit her in the face. She took a decade to graduate from Florida A&M University because of suspensions for her activism.

Her F.B.I. file ran more than 400 pages. Her stepfather urged her to give up civil rights, to protect her and his own job. She was kicked and threatened with dogs, including a German shepherd whose police handlers gave it a racial slur for a name.

More at link. Found via navigatethestream on FB

racismfreeontario:

DID YOU MISS ANY?

Starting December 10th, 2011 we began profiling 100 People of Colour activists and organizations. Follow our facebook fanpage, tumblr, twitter and website for daily updates. We will also be taking suggestions, so please feel free to submit an activist or organization of your choice.

List updated weekly.

• 1. Mary Ann Shadd
• 2. Ali Kazimi
• 3. Lawrence Hill
• 4. Zanana Akande
• 5. Sherene Razack
• 6. Dr. Marjorie “Maggie” Hodgson
• 7. Roland Coloma
• 8. Avvy Go
• 9.  Deena Ladd
• 10. Izumi Sakamoto
• 11. Rinaldo Walcott
• 12. Sunera Thobani
• 13. Grace-Edward Galabuzi
• 14. Martha Kumsa
• 15. Angela Robertson
• 16. Alok Mukherjee
• 17. Ceta Ramkhalawansingh
• 18. Debbie Douglas 
• 19. Gary Pieters
• 20. George Dei
• 21. Uzma Shakir
• 22. Tania Das Gupta
• 23. Vicki Bismilla
• 24. Nigel Barriffe
• 25. Krisna Saravanamuttu
• 26. Nene Kwasi Kafele
• 27. Tam Goossen
• 28. Winnie Ng
• 29. Loly Rico
• 30. Adrienne Shadd
• 31. JoJo Geronimo
• 32. The Colour of Poverty
• 33. Adrienne Clarkson
• 34. Rukhsana Khan
• 35. Scadding Court Community Centre (SCCC)
• 36. The Immigrant Women’s Health Centre (IWHC)
• 37. Leroy Hibbert
• 38. Alan Li
• 39. Afua Cooper
• 40. Dionne Brand
• 41. Lee Maracle 
• 42. Amanda Parris
• 43. Kimberley Tavares-Carter
• 44. Danielle Sandhu
• 45. Nayani Thiyagarajah
• 46. Donna Cardoza
• 47. Carl James
• 48. Patrick Solomon
• 49. Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment
• 50. Kim Crosby
• 51. African Canadian Heritage Association
• 52. Jeff Perera
• 53. Karl Flecker
• 54. Lillian Allen
• 55. Rakhi Mutta
• 56. Aemilius (Milo) Ramirez
• 57. Lali Mohamed 
• 58. Sandy Hudson
• 59. Roxana Ng
• 60. Florence Li
• 61. George Elliott Clarke
• 62. Arnold Minors
• 63. Sylvia D. Hamilton

Follow our facebook fanpage , tumblr, twitter and website for daily updates.

via Daily Spotlight: 100 People of Colour Anti-Racist Activists – Racism Free Ontario Initiative

mimorena:

Bass Reeves (July 1838 – 12 January 1910) was one of the first African Americans (possibly the first) to receive a commission as a Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi River.

Reeves was born a slave in 1838 in Crawford County, Arkansas, and was given the surname of his owner, George Reeves, a farmer and politician. He moved to Paris, Texas with George Reeves. During the American Civil War, Bass Reeves fled north into the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and lived with the Seminole and Creek Indians.

Reeves became a crack shot with a pistol. Later Reeves moved to Arkansas and homesteaded near Van Buren.He married Nellie Jennie from Texas. They had ten children – five boys and five girls.

Reeves and his family farmed until 1875 when the legendary Isaac Parker was appointed federal judge for the Indian Territory. Judge Parker appointedJames F. Fagan as U.S. Marshal, and directed him to hire 200 deputy U.S. Marshals. Fagan heard about Bass Reeves, who knew the Indian Territory and could speak several Indian languages, and recruited him as a deputy U.S. Marshal.

Reeves worked a total of thirty-two years as a Federal peace officer in the Indian Territory. He was one of Judge Parker’s most valued deputies. He arrested some of the most dangerous criminals of the time, but was never shot (despite having his hat and belt shot off on separate occasions). He had to arrest his own son for murder.

Reeves was an expert with rifle and pistol. During his long career he developed superior detective skills. When he retired from Federal service in 1907, Reeves had arrested over 3,000 felons.

When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Reeves, then 68, became an officer of the Muskogee, Oklahoma police department.

Reeves was himself once charged with murdering a posse cook. At his trial (before Judge Parker), Reeves was represented by former United States Attorney W. H. H. Clayton, who had been his colleague and good friend, and was acquitted.^[3]

Reeves’ health failed in 1910, and he died of Bright’s disease on 12 January. He was the uncle of Paul L. Brady, the first African-American appointed aFederal Administrative Law Judge (in 1972).

sourcedumal:

“To My Old Master”

This letter is one of THE BEST THINGS I HAVE EVER READ!

This is the response letter to a white man asking his former slave to return and work for him….

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

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thespunkywallflower:

J. Marion Sims is called “the Father of Gynecology” due to his experiments on enslaved women in Alabama who were often submitted as guinea pigs by their plantation owners who could not use them for sexual pleasure. 

He kept seven women as subjects for four years, but left a trail of death and permanently traumatized black women. 

Anarcha was one of the women Sims experimented upon. A detailed history of this monster is in Harriet Washington’s book, Medical Apartheid.

Sims believed that Africans were numb to pain and operated on the women without anesthesia or antiseptic. The procedures usually happened this way. 

Black female slaves who were guinea pigs would hold one subject down as Sims performed hysterectomies, tubal ligation, and other procedures to examine various female disorders.

Sims also performed a host of operations on other slave populations. The following excerpt details his “practice” on enslaved infants.

Sims began to exercise his freedom to experiment on his captives. He took custody of slave infants and, with a shoemaker’s awl, tried to pry the bones of their skulls into proper alignment.

 

You guys should really google him. 

(if you click the link, I did it for you)

fyeahblackhistory:

The History channel - Ancient Aliens and Lalibela churches in Ethiopia.

Researchers claim the art, building techniques and technology used to build these churches in the 12th century cannot be only from humans and are scientifically inexplicable or impossible to explain.

Egypt is not the only place in Africa where there are astonishing examples of human development and achievement, there are numerous examples of this all throughout Africa.

It’s always aliens! People with melanin clearly aren’t smart enough to do awesome stuff. 

:|

fyeahblackhistory:

cartermagazine:

Today In History

‘Arturo Schomburg was born.  Arturo Schomburg was a Puerto Rican historian, writer, and activist in the United States who researched and raised awareness of the great contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society. Aurthur was known as the “Sherlock Holmes” of Black History.’ He was an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

(photo: Arturo Schomburg)

- CARTER Magazine

Arturo Alfonso (January 24, 1874 –June 8, 1938) Schomburg was born in Puerto Rico on January 24, 1874. He began his education in a primary school in San Juan, where he studied reading, penmanship, sacred history, church history, arithmetic, Spanish grammar, history, agriculture and commerce. Arturo’s fifth-grade teacher is said to have told him that “Black people have no history, no heroes, no great moments.” Because of this and his participation in a history club, Schomburg developed a thirst for knowledge about people of African descent and began his lifelong quest studying the history and collecting the books and artifacts that made up the core of his unique and extensive library. 

He came to New York in April 1891 and lived on the Lower East Side. He was involved in the revolutionary movements of the immigrant Cubans and Puerto Ricans living in that area, regularly attending meetings and working at odd jobs while attending night school at Manhattan Central High School. Schomburg became a Mason and met bibliophile and journalist John Edward Bruce. “Bruce Grit” introduced Schomburg to the African-American intellectual community and encouraged him to write about African world history and continue to increase his knowledge.

Arturo Schomburg would look everywhere for books by and about African people. He also collected letters, manuscripts, prints, playbills and paintings. He was especially proud of his collection of Benjamin Banneker’s Almanacs. In fact, his library contained many rare and unusual items from all over the world. The history of the Caribbean and Latin America and the lives of heroic people in that region was also an area of special interest to Schomburg. And he actively sought any material relative to that subject.

 Schomburg’s collection became the cornerstone of The New York Public Library’s Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints. He frequently loaned objects from his personal library to the 135th Street Branch of The New York Public Library, which was a center of intellectual and cultural activity in Harlem. In 1926 his collection of 10,000 items was purchased by the Library with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation. He was later invited to be the curator of the new division which included his collections. He became involved in the social and literary movement that started in Harlem, known as the “Harlem Renaissance.” which spread to African-American communities throughout the country. Schomburg fully shared his knowledge of the history of peoples of African descent with the young scholars and writers of the New Negro movement. One of his primary motivations was to combat racial prejudice by providing proof of the extraordinary contributions of peoples of African descent to world history. Schomburg wrote, “I depart now on a mission of love to recapture my lost heritage.”

For more follow the source below:

http://www.africawithin.com/schomburg/schomburg.htm

lebanesepoppyseed:

MLK Jr. didn’t ask for rights, he wasn’t pandering or sweet to the forces that oppressed him. He was a threat to whiteness through and through.

MLK Jr. wasn’t violent not because he wanted to gain some brownie points from whitedom but because he KNEW, FIRSTHAND, what violence does to a people, both those who are abusing and those who are being abused. 

MLK Jr. didn’t dress in his Sunday best and speak clearly with diction so as to pander or kiss up to white folk. He did it for himself and for his people, to show what form his black identity took. That we in this society read speaking fearlessly and intelligently with passion and power in the face of oppression as “white” is beyond me, because that’s a black attribute through and through.

MLK Jr. didn’t have a problem with individual white people, but with their racism and ignorance on a whole, with their white supremacist society, and with their complacency and willingness to see it perpetuated at the detriment of him and his people. He knew that those who were quiet, who made excuses, who willfully stayed staunch in their ignorance and hatred were just as much a part of the problem as those who were more blatant and aggressive in their hatred. Any compassion coming from him was borne from himself, NOT from anything white people did, not something they at all merited or deserved.

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