#Baptist Educational Association

[xtruss]

What Happened When a Fearless Group of Mississippi Sharecroppers Founded Their Own City

Strike City was born after one small community left the plantation to live on their own terms

— September 11, 2023 | NOVA—BPS

A tin sign demarcated the boundary of Strike City just outside Leland, Mississippi. Photo by Charlie Steiner

In 1965 in the Mississippi Delta, things were not all that different than they had been 100 years earlier. Cotton was still King—and somebody needed to pick it. After the abolition of slavery, much of the labor for the region’s cotton economy was provided by Black sharecroppers, who were not technically enslaved, but operated in much the same way: working the fields of white plantation owners for essentially no profit. To make matters worse, by 1965, mechanized agriculture began to push sharecroppers out of what little employment they had. Many in the Delta had reached their breaking point.

In April of that year, following months of organizing, 45 local farm workers founded the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union. The MFLU’s platform included demands for a minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, medical coverage and an end to plantation work for children under the age of 16, whose educations were severely compromised by the sharecropping system. Within weeks of its founding, strikes under the MFLU banner began to spread across the Delta.

Five miles outside the small town of Leland, Mississippi, a group of Black Tenant Farmers led by John Henry Sylvester voted to go on strike. Sylvester, a tractor driver and mechanic at the A.L. Andrews Plantation, wanted fair treatment and prospects for a better future for his family. “I don’t want my children to grow up dumb like I did,” he told a reporter, with characteristic humility. In fact it was Sylvester’s organizational prowess and vision that gave the strikers direction and resolve. They would need both. The Andrews workers were immediately evicted from their homes. Undeterred, they moved their families to a local building owned by a Baptist Educational Association, but were eventually evicted there as well.

After two months of striking, and now facing homelessness for a second time, the strikers made a bold move. With just 13 donated tents, the strikers bought five acres of land from a local Black Farmer and decided that they would remain there, on strike, for as long as it took. Strike City was born. Frank Smith was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee worker when he went to live with the strikers just outside Leland. “They wanted to stay within eyesight of the plantation,” said Smith, now Executive Director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. “They were not scared.”

Life in Strike City was difficult. Not only did the strikers have to deal with one of Missississippi’s coldest winters in history, they also had to endure the periodic gunshots fired by white agitators over their tents at night. Yet the strikers were determined. “We ain’t going out of the state of Mississippi. We gonna stay right here, fighting for what is ours,” one of them told a documentary film team, who captured the strikers’ daily experience in a short film called “Strike City.” “We decided we wouldn’t run,” another assented. “If we run now, we always will be running.”

But the strikers knew that if their city was going to survive, they would need more resources. In an effort to secure federal grants from the federal government’s Office of Economic Opportunity, the strikers, led by Sylvester and Smith, journeyed all the way to Washington D.C. “We’re here because Washington seems to run on a different schedule,” Smith told congressmen, stressing the urgency of the situation and the group’s needs for funds. “We have to get started right away. When you live in a tent and people shoot at you at night and your kids can’t take a bath and your wife has no privacy, a month can be a long time, even a day…Kids can’t grow up in Strike City and have any kind of a chance.” In a symbolic demonstration of their plight, the strikers set up a row of tents across the street from the White House.

John Henry Sylvester, left, stands outside one of the tents strikers erected in Washington, D.C. in April 1966. Photo by Rowland Sherman

“It was a good, dramatic, in-your-face presentation,” Smith told American Experience, nearly 60 years after the strikers camped out. “It didn’t do much to shake anything out of the Congress of the United States or the President and his Cabinet. But it gave us a feeling that we’d done something to help ourselves.” The protestors returned home empty-handed. Nevertheless, the residents of Strike City had secured enough funds from a Chicago-based organization to begin the construction of permanent brick homes; and to provide local Black children with a literacy program, which was held in a wood-and-cinder-block community center they erected.

The long-term sustainability of Strike City, however, depended on the creation of a self-sufficient economy. Early on, Strike City residents had earned money by handcrafting nativity scenes, but this proved inadequate. Soon, Strike City residents were planning on constructing a brick factory that would provide employment and building material for the settlement’s expansion. But the $25,000 price tag of the project proved to be too much, and with no employment, many strikers began to drift away. Strike City never recovered.

Still, its direct impact was apparent when, in 1965, Mississippi schools reluctantly complied with the 1964 Civil Rights Act by offering a freedom-of-choice period in which children were purportedly allowed to register at any school of their choice. In reality, however, most Black parents were too afraid to send their children to all-white schools—except for the parents living at Strike City who had already radically declared their independence . Once Leland’s public schools were legally open to them, Strike City kids were the first ones to register. Their parents’ determination to give them a better life had already begun to pay dividends.

Smith recalled driving Strike City’s children to their first day of school in the fall of 1970. “I remember when I dropped them off, they jumped out and ran in, and I said, ‘They don't have a clue what they were getting themselves into.’ But you know kids are innocent and they’re always braver than we think they are. And they went in there like it was their schoolhouse. Like they belonged there like everybody else.”

#The Harvest | Integrating Mississippi's Schools | Article #NOVA | PBS #American 🇺🇸 Experience #Mississippi Delta #Cotton | King #Abolition | Slavery #Black Sharecroppers #Mechanized Agriculture #Mississippi Freedom Labor Union (MFLU) #Leland | Mississippi #Black Tenant Farmers #John Henry Sylvester | Truck Driver | Mechanic #A.L. Andrews Plantation #Fair Treatment | Prospects #Baptist Educational Association #Frank Smith | Student | Nonviolent Coordinating Committee #Strike City #Executive Director | African American | Civil War Memorial & Museum | Washington D.C. #Federal Government | Office of Economic Opportunity #Congress of the United States | The President | Cabinet #Brick Homes | Black Children | Literacy Program #Wood-and-Cinder-Block | Community Center

[cartermagazine]

Today In History

Alfred L. Cralle was a Black businessman and inventor, who invented the ice cream scooper, patent #576,395 on this date February 2, 1897.

Alfred L. Cralle was born in Kenbridge, Lunenburg County, Virginia just after the end of the American Civil War. He attended local schools and worked with his father in the carpentry trade as a young man, becoming interested in mechanics. Cralle went to Washington, D.C., and attended Wayland Seminary, one of several schools founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to help educate Blacks after the American Civil War.

He settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he first served as a drug store and hotel porter. Alfred noticed that servers at the hotel had trouble with ice cream sticking to serving spoons, and he developed an ice cream scoop.

The patented “Ice Cream Mold and Disher” was an ice cream scoop with a built-in scraper to allow for one-handed operation. Cralle’s functional design is in modern ice cream scoops. He later became a general manager for the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise, and Business Association.

CARTER™️ Magazine

[moonshinemagpie]

btw, if you ever wanted a really quick glimpse of how the Dewey Decimal System is biased in favor of white Christian Europeans, just check out the 200s section:

200 Religion 201 Philosophy of Christianity 202 Miscellany of Christianity 203 Dictionaries of Christianity 204 Special topics 205 Serial publications of Christianity 206 Organizations of Christianity 207 Education, research in Christianity 208 Kinds of persons in Christianity 209 History & geography of Christianity 210 Natural theology 211 Concepts of God 212 Existence, attributes of God 213 Creation 214 Theodicy 215 Science & religion 216 Good & evil 217 Not assigned or no longer used 218 Humankind 219 Not assigned or no longer used 220 Bible 221 Old Testament 222 Historical books of Old Testament 223 Poetic books of Old Testament 224 Prophetic books of Old Testament 225 New Testament 226 Gospels & Acts 227 Epistles 228 Revelation (Apocalypse) 229 Apocrypha & pseudepigrapha 230 Christian theology 231 God 232 Jesus Christ & his family 233 Humankind 234 Salvation (Soteriology) & grace 235 Spiritual beings 236 Eschatology 237 Not assigned or no longer used 238 Creeds & catechisms 239 Apologetics & polemics 240 Christian moral & devotional theology 241 Moral theology 242 Devotional literature 243 Evangelistic writings for individuals 244 Not assigned or no longer used 245 Texts of hymns 246 Use of art in Christianity 247 Church furnishings & articles 248 Christian experience, practice, life 249 Christian observances in family life 250 Christian orders & local church 251 Preaching (Homiletics) 252 Texts of sermons 253 Pastoral office (Pastoral theology) 254 Parish government & administration 255 Religious congregations & orders 256 Not assigned or no longer used 257 Not assigned or no longer used 258 Not assigned or no longer used 259 Activities of the local church 260 Christian social theology 261 Social theology 262 Ecclesiology 263 Times, places of religious observance 264 Public worship 265 Sacraments, other rites & acts 266 Missions 267 Associations for religious work 268 Religious education 269 Spiritual renewal 270 Christian church history 271 Religious orders in church history 272 Persecutions in church history 273 Heresies in church history 274 Christian church in Europe 275 Christian church in Asia 276 Christian church in Africa 277 Christian church in North America 278 Christian church in South America 279 Christian church in other areas 280 Christian denominations & sects 281 Early church & Eastern churches 282 Roman Catholic Church 283 Anglican churches 284 Protestants of Continental origin 285 Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational 286 Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Adventist 287 Methodist & related churches 288 Not assigned or no longer used 289 Other denominations & sects 290 Other & comparative religions 291 Comparative religion 292 Classical (Greek & Roman) religion 293 Germanic religion 294 Religions of Indic origin 295 Zoroastrianism (Mazdaism, Parseeism) 296 Judaism 297 Islam & religions originating in it 298 Not assigned or no longer used 299 Other religions

(found here)

"Christian/Christianity": 25—with many other words and phrases, like "Anglican churches," "Protestants," "Baptist," and "Old Testament," also indicating Christian topics

Judaism: 1

Islam: 1

Most other world religions, clumped together: 1

#library #booklr #dewey decimal system #books #libraries

[spiralnaissance]

Masquerade

Mr.Keegan x Reader [Bullet to the Head](2012)

Summary: Keegan fucks you in the bathroom Baptiste’s costume party. canon compliant (somewhat). 

Warnings: Not beta-read, semi-public? , p in v sex (unprotected) teasing, slut as pet name (once), rough sex, creampie 

A/N: This is a fic for a movie barely anyone cares about so bare with me for being super self-indulgent LOL

---

The living room of Baptiste’s ivory mansion pulsed with a cacophony of noises, as drunk guests bustled about engaging in vacuous and meaningless conversations. The smooth jazz and the sounds of chattering muffled as Keegan has you pushed against the walls of the sage green bathroom, large hands on your bare middle as he burrowed his fat cock into you. 

Baptiste had arranged for this opulent gathering as a flaunt of his personal wealth to his peers of the underworld; much like a peacock spreading its magnificent feathers to gather attention for a mate.

You aren’t particularly close to Baptiste, or Morel, in fact. You are just one of the many brokers on Morel’s payroll who scurries around the country to run errands and deliver parcels for generous pay. What initially began as a side hustle to pay for your education years ago eventually bloomed into a full-time job that you have no way of getting out of. Though attendance wasn’t mandatory, you reckoned it would be courtesy as an associate to respond to the invite nevertheless. In reality, you feared what would happen if you decided to be a no-show; Morel certainly isn’t known for his compassion towards those he is suspicious of. 

The bathroom is silent--save for the low humming of the ventilation, a tranquil haven from the otherwise hedonistic chaos outside. Keegan wastes no time manhandling you; arm hooked and curled around your waist as his other toys and teases your clit. You suck in air through your gritted teeth, and huffed-- he takes you from behind with a feverish, brutal pace-- frustration and irritation apparent in his haste movements. 

He’s absolutely pissed off at you, for being such a enticing distraction when he has a job to do-- to make sure no uninvited guests loiter around. The way you were making eyes at him from across the room, face partially concealed by the white and ornate Colombina you bear upon. He has the audacity to be crossed with your shameless behaviour, as he maneuvers his way across the restless crowds towards you. When he reaches you, you playfully desist his advances, in which he had enough decency and respect to begin to leave you alone-- until he looked down at your covered face and sees you giving him that damned teasing look. 

He brings his face closer to you, the cheap plastic of the mask rubs against the side of your head and your cheeks as he goads you. 

“Fuck,” Keegan murmured, face so close to yours that you can feel his hot breath against your own. “So good for me, aren’t you? So nice and wet and tight--” he groaned as he bit his own lips as an attempt to shut himself up, abandoning his obscene comments as the pleasure of your sweet cunt wash over him like sunshine after a storm. 

He despises the fact that he is enjoying this lewd display of flagrant lust; sounds of lewd, wet squelches and the rhythmic slaps of his balls against your ass amplified by the silence and echoes of the bathroom.

He has your silver cocktail dress bunched up on the back, his proximity to your back held the bunch in place. “K---Keegan--” you gasped, breath quickening as he continued to use and take whatever he needed from you. He hummed lowly in acknowledgement, the guttural sounds coming from his throat spluttering with his fitful breathing.

“It’s no good,” you spurred through breathless moans, dripping cunt clenching around his cock, “You can do better than this sloppy-ass job, Keegan,” you murmured, urging him on. “C’mon, harder,” your lips twisted into a self-satisfied smile, as you sense him grit his teeth in further exasperation. 

“Fuck,” he spits venom at you, “Aren’t you such a fuckin’ slut? Taking me right here where anyone else who needs a quick piss can see you take my cock like an animal in heat.” Yet despite his less-than-graceful comments, he obeyed your whiny pleas, cock dragging along the wet walls of your cunt, and slamming back into you with unforgiving pace. Keegan bottoms out, his cock fills you up snuggly, and the pleasure he offers you have your eyelids fluttering and your legs shaking.

The passion in him that detested you for diverting him shifted to one of pure primal need, his lips attacking any bare surface he could find on your skin, marking you all over places where he knew everyone would see. Keegan knows, for certain, that when he passes, he will be condemned to hell for the blood that stained his very hands, yet in this current moment, he allows himself to believe he's in heaven. 

His well-tailored suit, once sat nicely on his broad frame, is now drenched in sweat from his persistent pounding. You feel your lower stomach twist itself into blissful knots, signifying a euphoric release. “I-I’m gonna,” you whined, moaning wantonly as you felt your brain melt into jelly as you chased your orgasm. Keegan shifts one of his hands over to your lower abdomen, holding you up while he chuckles.

“Cum for me, sweetheart,” He cooed, breathless and panting as he rolls his hips against you in spurs and uneven rhythm, signifying his own release. “I know you need to cum, baby, do it with me.” He pushes you further onto the wall-- as far and as close to you as he can get, as he grinds harshly against you. 

“Y-Yes--” your eyes rolled back, voice wavering, as Keegan fucks into you with shallow, rough thrusts while he pants and groans and growls. You feel your orgasm swell, as you milk Keegan’s cock for all he got-- every drop of his thick cum as he continues to pound into you with shorter and sporadic timing. 

He shifted positions again, removing his hand from your stomach and the wall as he steadied himself, making sure not to slip out of your spent cunt when he didn’t want to. He bunches up your creased dress further up and watches perversely as his softening cock slips out of you with his semen dripping slowly out of you. “Good girl,” he muttered, “You take me so well; your cunt is made just me, sweetheart.”

The embarrassment you once lacked suddenly fills your very being, and blood rushes to your face as you try to get your thoughts back together. Seeing this, Keegan chuckled darkly, as he pulled your panties back up--without cleaning you up, letting you wallow in the fullness of his cum inside of your pussy. 

“W-We should probably go,” you uttered, voice weaker and much more coarse than you’d like, as he took your hand, placing a kiss on your knuckles, and you felt his stubble graze your soft skin. Soon, he ushers you out of the bathroom with one hand around your hips. 

As the night slowly went on, you eventually parted ways with him, along with a hopeful promise of another meeting.

Keegam stood in a corner, gathering his thoughts, while he pulled something out of the pocket of his suit jacket. His cellphone. About fifteen different miscalls from various associates of Morel, and another one from Morel himself. A notification for a text popped up as he began to scroll through his ‘recent calls’ list, and when he checked the text, it was a surveillance camera footage of an unconscious Baptiste being carried off by two other men.

Oops. 

#bullet to the head #keegan #Mr.Keegan x reader #jason momoa #jason momoa x reader #smut

[mariacallous]

A wave of proposed legislation pushed by Republicans across the US at the state level is aimed at outlawing aspects of sexuality that could have a huge impact on Americans’ private lives and businesses.

Opponents to the laws before legislatures in various states say the planned new legislation could spawn prosecution of breast-pump companies in Texas for nipples on advertising, or a bookstore might be banned from selling romance novels in West Virginia, or South Carolina could imprison standup comics if a risque joke is heard by a young person.

The bills are part of a post-Roe nationwide strategy by the religious wing of the Republican party, now that federal abortion rights have fallen. They range from banning all businesses that sell sex-related goods to anti-drag queen bills. Tyler Dees, an Arkansas state senator who wrote an anti-porn bill said: “I would love to outlaw it all,” referring to porn.

The most prevalent bills relate to age verification of sex-related websites. Seventeen states drafted porn age-verification bills, many inspired by Louisiana’s law that went into effect in January. Louisiana’s law requires websites featuring 33.33% or more pornographic content to check government-issued ID to verify users are 18 and older. Websites that don’t comply face civil penalties. Parents can sue the site if kids access it.

In Texas, a new bill requiring age verification on websites with pornographic content defines images of the female breast “below the top of the areola” as porn, potentially hitting at business advertisements. In West Virginia, a bill outlawing all sexually oriented businesses is on the docket, with a definition that includes art studios with nude models and wrestling arenas. In South Carolina a bill would criminalize using “profane language” related to “sexual or excretory organs or activities” in front of minors during performances. The punishment? Up to a decade in prison.

Some bills define porn so broadly that anatomy textbooks or sex education websites would meet them.

“I don’t think such laws for the internet are constitutional,” said Eugene Volokh, a professor of Law at UCLA.

Laurie Schlegel, a Republican state senator who drafted the Louisiana law, is a sex-addiction therapist educated at Baptist seminary, who opposed transgender students from being on sports teams that align with their gender. Schlegel’s anti-LGBTQ+ views fit with the broader goal of the laws, according to Carolyn Bronstein, a professor of media studies at DePaul University.

“These laws are really not about controlling minors’ access to violent pornography … In the conservative world view, pornography is information about LGBTQ identity, abortion, gay marriage,” said Bronstein.

Eight states have justified their actions by saying that porn is “creating a public health crisis”. Louisiana’s bill claims that pornography “may lead to low self-esteem, body image disorders, an increase in problematic sexual activity at younger ages … impact brain development … shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulty in forming or maintaining positive, intimate relationships, as well as promoting problematic or harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”

Historian Whitney Strub, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University, doesn’t think these ideas are well-founded. “Framing pornography as a public health crisis is not driven by serious engagement with the social scientific literature,” he said. “They’ve even got fake peer-reviewed journals that give the imprimatur of scholarship … It’s been a very smart rebranding of evangelical Christian conservatism.”

Why are all these bills being proposed now? Strub thinks it’s partly because of the overturning of Roe v Wade. “Abortion gave a certain coherence to conservative politics in the United States. And it certainly still does … but they’re in the position of Ahab if he slayed the white whale … I mean, there’s no more Moby-Dick.”

There is hypocrisy on display also.

In many of the states where the anti-porn bills are being put forth, minors can legally have sex and get married. “In Louisiana, you can have sex when you’re 17 with a person in their 30s, but you can’t watch porn,” said Jason Kelley, associate director of digital strategy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, the age of consent is 16. With parental permission, Mississippi allows 15-year-olds to marry, Louisiana 16-year-olds, Arkansas 17-year-olds, and West Virginia kids of any age.

Dees, who wrote Arkansas’s age verification bill, a copycat of Louisiana’s, said porn causes depression and anxiety, divorce and “permissive sexual attitudes” and infidelity. “When I think about the children … I want to protect their innocence,” Dees said.

Strub said this is an old trope: “The political figure of the innocent and imperiled child just has a never-ending purchase on American politics … [it] essentially shuts down debate because it immediately creates a binary in which anybody who disagrees with you is [a] perverted groomer.”

Dees is also the co-author of anti-drag queen legislation in Arkansas, that classifies drag performances as the same category as pornography. “It’s not really a meaningful distinction to [conservatives]. They’re both sexual degeneracy in its different guises,” Strub said.

Dees claimed that his porn verification law “doesn’t have anything to do with any political messaging. It has to do with exposure to material that is harmful, period … There’s a clear enemy in the smut-peddling garbage that’s online.”

But measures already exist to prevent children accessing porn. “There’s a really easy way to keep kids from accessing adult content. And that’s a device-level filter” on mobile phones that block adult websites that are registered as Restricted to Adults, said Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition, which advocates for the rights of sex workers.

These laws, according to Stabile, aren’t going to stop kids from looking at porn. “Even if they were to block all sites, you’re still going to have adult content on Twitter and Reddit … kids will get VPNs,” he said.

Stabile thinks we’ll see up to two dozen age-verification bills introduced by the end of the year.

Dees hopes he is right and has eyes beyond the state level eventually. “My prayer is that enough states continue to push for this measure, and that we send a loud enough message where federal law can be put into place,” he said.

[vanilla-cigarillos]

The Pentagram: Let’s Talk

When you look up images of the Pentagram, I’m sure you’ll be coming across symbols of the damned and Christian imagery. It’s saddening to see such a genuinely harmless image be demonized to such an extreme extent, and in this post I’d like to elaborate on the actual usage of the Pentagram and how it’s become the image we know it to be today.

Origins

While detailed origins of the Pentagram isn’t well documented and known, what we do know states that it’s Celtic in its roots. It has a history of being used by Celtic Pagans. The star itself is meant to represent the five limbs of the human body, those being:

Arms

Legs

Head

The center of the star, of course, is meant to represent the chest of a human, as well as the center of energy within an individual. 

The Pentagram was used as a sign of peace by those who used it. It symbolized a harmony with nature, as the star represented the flow of energy within a human body in the way that it also flowed through nature.

Pentagrams have also been used in a variety of religious contexts outside of its (potential) Celtic origins. Among Muslims the pentagram is known as Solomon’s seal, and its five points are regarded in at least one tradition as representing love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice, respectively. Among Christians it has previously symbolized the five wounds of Christ; his hands and feet punctured by the Crucifixion and his side pierced by a soldier’s spear—as well as the Star of Bethlehem and Christ himself.

In the modern times we live in now the Pentagram is most often associated with Neo-Pagan religions, particularly Wicca. It is often depicted enclosed in a circle, a symbol known as a pentacle. Fun fact, the pentacle is the approved symbol of the Wiccan faith to be used on headstones in U.S. government cemeteries!

Sometimes the inverted figure of the Pentagram, with two points facing upward and one facing down, is associated with baneful magic and devil worship. The inverted pentagram figures in the sigil of Baphomet, one of the main symbols of the Church of Satan (an atheistic organization that evokes in its imagery the Devil as viewed in Christianity, however it does not worship any god or being or require that its members perform any rituals). 

My Feelings On The Pentagram

As someone who was raised not necessarily in a religious household, but rather surrounded by Baptist faith being from the Southern United States, the Pentagram is a symbol that still makes me anxious to this day. While I have logically dispelled the Christian indoctrination that seeped into my life through the influence of others, the demonization of such a symbol has stuck with me to this day.

Through education and freeing myself of indoctrination, I am hoping to accept this symbol as a piece of my Celtic history that has been demonized in Christianity’s pursuit to paint all signs of Paganism as a dark faith. It is a symbol that carries many meanings across many different religions and cultures; there is no monolith that dictates its meaning. I choose to associate this symbol with the peaceful, nature loving roots of Celtic society that it may have originated from.

#pagan #paganism #witchy #wicca #witchcraft #pentagram #history #culture #religion #kitchen witch #green witch #hearth witch

[kemetic-dreams]

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson ,unsung activist (April 17, 1912 – August 29, 1992) was a civil rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama.Known for initiating the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, AL, USA

Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a short time. Five years later, she went to Atlanta, where she earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University. After teaching in Texas she then accepted a position at Alabama State College in Montgomery. It was there she joined the Women's Political Council, which Mary Fair Burks had founded three years earlier. In 1949, Robinson was verbally attacked by a bus driver for sitting in the front "Whites only" section of the bus. Her response to the incident was to attempt to start a protest boycott. But, when she approached her fellow members of the Woman’s Political Council with her story and proposal, she was told that it was “a fact of life in Montgomery.” In late 1950, she succeeded Burks as president of the WPC and helped focus the group's efforts on bus abuses. Robinson was an outspoken critic of the treatment of African-Americans on public transportation. She was also active in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Women's Political Council had made complaints about the bus seating to the Montgomery City Commission and about abusive drivers, and achieved some concessions, including an undertaking that drivers would be courteous and having buses stopping at every corner in black neighborhoods, as they did in European areas. After Brown vs. Board of Education, Robinson had informed the mayor of the city that a boycott would come and then after Rosa Parks arrest, they seized the moment to plan the boycott of the buses in Montgomery.

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move from her seat in the African area of the bus she was travelling on to make way for a white passenger who was standing. Mrs. Parks, a civil rights organizer, had intended to instigate a reaction from white citizens and authorities. That night, with Mrs. Parks permission, Mrs. Robinson stayed up mimeographing 52,500 handbills calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was initially planned to be for just the following Monday. She passed out the leaflets at a Friday afternoon meeting of AME Zionist clergy among other places and Reverend L. Roy Bennett requested other ministers attend a meeting that Friday night and to urge their congregations to take part in the boycott. Robinson, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, two of her senior students and other Women's Council members then passed out the handbills to high school students leaving school that afternoon. After the success of the one-day boycott, African citizens decided to continue the boycott and established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected president. Jo Ann Robinson became a member of this group. She had denied an official position to the Montgomery Improvement Association because of her teaching position at Alabama State. She served on its executive board and edited their newsletter. In order to protect her position at Alabama State College and to protect her colleagues, Robinson purposely stayed out of the limelight even though she worked diligently with the MIA. Robinson and other WPC members also helped sustain the boycott by providing transportation for boy-cotters.

Robinson was the target of several acts of intimidation. In February 1956, a local police officer threw a stone through the window of her house. Then two weeks later, another police officer poured acid on her car. Then the governor of Alabama ordered the state police to guard the houses of the boycott leaders. The boycott lasted over a year because the bus company would not give in to the demands of the protesters. After a student sit-in in early 1960, Robinson and other teachers that had supported the students, resigned their positions at Alabama State College. Robinson left Alabama State College and moved out of Montgomery that year. She taught at Grambling College in Louisiana for one year and then moved to Los Angeles and taught English in the public school system. In Los Angeles she continued to be active in local women's organizations. She taught in the LA schools until she retired from teaching in 1976. Jo Ann Robinson was also a part of the bus boycott and was strongly against discrimination.

#african #kemetic dreams #afrakan #africans #afrakans #brown skin #brownskin #Jo Ann Robinson #alabama state college #macon #fort valley college

[3rdeyeblaque]

Today we venerate Ancestor Bishop C.H. Mason on his 157th birthday 🎉

Bishop C.H. Mason founded the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), THE largest Black American pentecostal church in the U.S. In doing so, he preserved and cultivated the religious culturesof our Afrikan ancestors while fighting for ourreligious freedom of expression and integration in the church house.

Brother Mason born to former slaves in Shelby County, TN. Due to his family's impoverished status, young Mason worked as a sharecropper and did not receive a formal education. Yet he still learned how to read and write. As a child, Mason was greatly influenced by the religion of his parents and other former slaves. He admired their prayer rituals, spontaneous singing, & shouting. At age 12, he embraced the Afro-Baptist faith and was later baptized in his older brother’s church.

In 1895, Brother Mason met Charles Price Jones, a popular Baptist preacher from Mississippi. Mason and Jones started preaching the doctrine of holiness and sanctification together in local Baptist churches, which led to their expulsion from the Baptist & Methodist churches. They, and others, established the Church of God and Church of Christ. Their movement consisted of both Black and White folk were grossly dissatisfied with mainstream denominations. From COGIC’s inception, Brother Mason ordained and allowed whites to join his denomination. He dreamed of an integrated church and believed that all races were entitled to equal rights and authority therein. Their principal belief was that being sanctified was an internal experience that resulted in external changes within individuals & their communities. They taught their followers to seek higher spiritual development and encouraged them to rekindle the dynamism of "slave religion".

In 1897, Brother Mason established St. Paul COGIC in an old cotton gin located in Lexington, Mississippi. He then started using the name “Church of God in Christ”, because, "God told him that if he used that name it would cause people to follow him". By 1904, Brother Mason established pastoring 4 churches: St. Paul in Lexington, Saints Home and Dyson Street in Memphis, and a COGIC church in Conway, AR.

In 1907, he attended an interracial service in Los Angeles, CA. After which, he declared that he'd experienced a spiritual metamorphosis and that he now believed in speaking in tongues. This is what spurred Jones and others to excommunicate him from their Holiness association. This ultimately led to Brother Mason and Jones’s 12yr partnership ending over theological differences, rights to church properties, ecclesiastical power, and the COGIC name itself. After 3 years of legal battles, in 1911, Mason’s legal victories catapulted him into historical prominence and placed COGIC in the Mid-South’s religious pantheon.

Brother Mason was also an outspoken conscientious objector. He was arrested in 1918 and probed by the FBI for teaching pacifism and encouraging Brothas to refuse being drafted into WW I and II.

By the early 20th century, the Black Christian middle class frowned upon any & everything associated with Mother Africa. They believed shouting, dancing, & especially speaking in tongues, were shameful & hindered Black progress. Defiantly, Brother bMason encouraged his followers to embrace their Afrikan heritage and gave them space to express themselves in church. He allowed the working classes to dance shout, testify, speak in tongues, string musical instruments, & sing gospel. His preservation of the Afrikan heritage, freedom of religious expression, & leadership spearheaded COGIC’s astronomical growth.

In the 1920s, COGIC had 30K members &, as a result of the Great Migration, 68.7% percent worshiped in urban cities. By the 1930s, COGIC was an urban phenomenon. During the Great Depression, Brother Mason’s churches fed and clothed poor Whites and Black Peoples across Memphis

Today, it has an estimated 6.5 million members and 12,000 congregations. COGIC is the largest African American denomination in the United States, with eight million members worldwide.

We pour libations & give him💐 today as we celebrate him for his passion & commitment to the preservation & cultivation of our Central/West Afrikan cosmologies, cultures, & belief systems via our religious of expression.

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️

Offering suggestions: COGIC bible/prayer offerings, water libations, gospel songs of praise/dance

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#hoodooheritage #ATR #ATRs #hoodootradition #TheHoodooCalendar #ancestors #veneration #theblackchurch #ancestorveneration #bishopchmason #cogic #cogicchurch #og #deepsouth

#bishop ch mason #cogic #cogicchurch #black America #black Christians #ancestor elevation #ancestor #hoodoo #hoodoos #atr #the hoodoo calendar #atrs #conjure

[gatheringbones]

[“The site of the fair in South Chicago was nicknamed the “White City” for the massive and glistening white fake-marble buildings constructed specifically for the fair, not meant to be permanent, but rather templates for how a future city should appear, grandiose and imposing, as well as symbolizing the triumph of capitalism. On the carnivalesque midway of the White City was the Ferris wheel, which was invented for the occasion. Not far away, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his thesis, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” to the American Historical Association, which had convened its annual meeting at the exposition. Nearby, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West performed.

Without mentioning the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, Turner chose the year 1890 as the demarcation of the end of the frontier, warning that the seemingly endless moving frontier of white settlement that had formed US wealth, character, and culture had closed, and the future was not clear without the frontier escape valve for the teeming landless masses. Buffalo Bill had the answer: fantasy, reenactment, premiering the soon-to-be-born western movies.

Self-identified Christian socialist and ordained Baptist minister Francis Bellamy wrote a pledge of allegiance to the US flag in 1892, which was a presidential election year in addition to being the quadricentenary of Columbus. Both presidential candidates, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland, urged the use of the new pledge as a way of honoring Columbus. Bellamy’s stated goal for the pledge was to advance patriotism by flying the flag in every school in the country along with mandatory reciting of the pledge. Bellamy led the way in organizing teachers to use a packaged Columbus Day educational kit he assembled. In an amazing feat, on October 21, 1892, Bellamy and his volunteers were able to involve twelve million schoolchildren around the country, including a hundred thousand Chicago schoolchildren, to simultaneously salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance.”]

roxanne dunbar-ortiz, from not a nation of immigrants: settler colonialism, white supremacy, and a history of erasure and exclusion, 2021

#roxanne dunbar ortiz #lesbian literature #history stuff #cw genocide #fantasy reenactment with the pledge of allegiance isnt that a marvel movie

[charleslebatman]

Can I just say everytime she comes out with him it's some ad for a brand associated with him. People said Charles is private he doesn't want everyone to know about his rs but acting weird in public with someone you love is not privacy. The privacy excuse is lame because why is she in a vlog that had Nahmias (don't forget she was wearing an inclusive pre fall 24' collection) and META promotion you're asking for that. She is using Charles followers for her account where she is sharing AI art. She's promoting APM all the time and Baptiste also follows her. She has already done a photoshoot for a swimwear brand. Everyone is saying Charles took Giada and Charlotte to the training camp as much as I remember Charlotte and Charles went there before new years for their private trip they do that every year. Charlotte was blamed for using Charles and following around but what about Alex she has no life and we have seen she had friends she went out with them and now nothing. She knows she will have to follow Charles around the whole year so why not be independent for some time and go out with friends or family. Her whole personality is Charles and if Charles decides she's not the one for him he will leave her so what's her plan because she left her education for him.

#conspiracy theories

[dostoyevsky-official]

In the Bolsheviks’ Marxist ideology, class divisions were paramount, and society was divided into so-called class-friendly and class-hostile elements as well as certain wavering or neutral classes. A large set of class-hostile elements were grouped together under the label of “former people” (in Russian, byvshie); that is, individuals who were associated intimately with the old regime: industrialists, landlords, clergy, Tsarist officials, policemen, army officers, White Army volunteers. These “former people” were deprived of their civil rights. They could not vote; they were denied ration cards, housing, access to education; and they were subject to a variety of formal and informal harassment. For the Mennonites, the most important of these categories was the clergy, who formed a crucial part of their leadership elite.

The part of Bolshevik class ideology of most direct relevance to the Mennonites was a three-fold division of the rural population into rich peasants (or kulaks), middle peasants, and poor peasants. The kulaks, who were estimated to make up between three and five percent of the rural population, were portrayed as terrible exploiters of their fellow villagers. It is difficult to convey how strongly the Bolsheviks stigmatized the kulaks, but the following quotation from Lenin in 1918 perhaps gives a good sense:

“Comrades! The uprising of the five kulak districts should be mercilessly suppressed. The interests of the entire revolution requires this, because now “the last decisive battle” with the kulaks is under way everywhere. One must give an example.” [emphasis in original]

Who exactly were these kulaks? Like most metaphysical enemies, they could not be clearly identified. Their most typical trait was the use of hired labor. There were no clear economic criteria for defining the kulak, but the possession of several horses, eight to ten head of cattle, and twenty to thirty acres would almost always be sufficient to qualify.

In other words, a substantial part of the Mennonite rural community before 1914 could have been characterized as kulak. In fact, among the local peasantry and local Bolsheviks in south Ukraine (and elsewhere) – many of whom came from the local peasantry and had supported or even participated in the Makhno movement – the Mennonites were seen as a kulak community. [...] Here, oddly, Bolshevik class ideology had a positive consequence for the Mennonites. For the Bolsheviks, there could be no kulak community as a whole. All communities were divided by the same class categories. Poor Mennonite peasants, therefore, just like poor Russian and Ukrainian peasants, were the Bolsheviks’ natural supporters; if they did not realize this immediately, they would eventually be convinced of it.

[...] A third prism through which the Bolshevik regime viewed the Mennonites was religion. Here one would have expected that the Mennonites’ intense religiosity, which the Bolsheviks did observe and lament, might have made them a special target for persecution. But due to a quirk of Bolshevik religious policy, it did not. However, their extreme religious hatred is better understood as resentment of the Russian Orthodox Church’s close alliance with the Tsarist state rather than a hatred of religion per se. The Bolsheviks were, for this reason, most hostile to state churches: the Orthodox church above all, but also Islam, Catholicism, Lutheranism. They had much more sympathy for the sectarians – Dukhobors, Molokans, Baptists, Evangelicals, Tolstoyans – who had been brutally repressed by the Tsarist regime and its state church. These sectarians were viewed by the Bolsheviks as potential allies, especially since many of the sects practiced some form of communal property. Thus in the 1920s, these religious groups were given state land to form agricultural communes.

[...] A still more important factor than religion was nationality. Bolshevik policy explicitly defined the Soviet Union as a multiethnic state. It condemned Russian chauvinism as a greater danger than non-Russian nationalism. It called for granting all nationalities, regardless of their size, their own national territories, the use of their national language, and the staffing of administrative and educational institutes with members of their own nationality. It did not allow for ethno-religious nationalities.

[...] A fifth and final prism through which the Bolsheviks viewed the Mennonites was their foreign ties, the fact that they were a diaspora community. In the long term, this would prove fatal for the Mennonites. [...] However, in the short term, foreign ties surely helped the Mennonites. The Soviets were eager for foreign financial help and concerned about potential foreign embarrassments. Mennonite famine relief efforts demonstrated their ability to direct financial assistance to the Soviet Union. Likewise, the Mennonites had foreign political connections who could publicize any persecution undertaken against them.

#nationalities policy #terry martin

[readyforevolution]

Black History Facts!!!

#Happy90th

#NAACP

Born Myrlie Louise Beasley on March 17, 1933, in her maternal grandmother’s home in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She was the daughter of James Van Dyke Beasley, a delivery man, and Mildred Washington Beasley, who was 16 years old. Myrlie’s parents separated when she was just a year old; her mother left Vicksburg but decided that Myrlie was too young to travel with her. Since her maternal grandmother worked all day in service, with no time to raise a child, Myrlie was raised by her paternal grandmother, Annie McCain Beasley, and an aunt, Myrlie Beasley Polk. Both women were respected school teachers and they inspired her to follow in their footsteps. Myrlie attended the Magnolia school, took piano lessons, and performed songs, piano pieces or recited poetry at school, in church, and at local clubs.

Myrlie graduated from Magnolia High School (Bowman High School) in 1950. During her years in high school, Myrlie was also a member of the Chansonettes, a girls’ vocal group from Mount Heroden Baptist Church in Vicksburg. In 1950, Myrlie enrolled at Alcorn A&M College, one of the few colleges in the state that accepted African American students, as an education major intending to minor in music. Myrlie is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. On her first day of school Myrlie met and fell in love with Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran eight years her senior. The meeting changed her college plans, and the couple later married on Christmas Eve of 1951. They later moved to Mound Bayou, and had three children, Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James Van Dyke. In Mound Bayou, Myrlie worked as a secretary at the Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company.

When Medgar Evers became the Mississippi field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1954, Myrlie worked alongside him. Myrlie became his secretary and together they organized voter registration drives and civil rights demonstrations. She assisted him as he struggled to end the practice of racial segregation in schools and other public facilities and as he campaigned for voting rights many African Americans were denied this right in the South. For more than a decade, the Everses fought for voting rights, equal access to public accommodations, the desegregation of the University of Mississippi, and for equal rights in general for Mississippi's African American population. As prominent civil rights leaders in Mississippi, the Everses became high-profile targets for pro-segregationist violence and terrorism.

In 1962, their home in Jackson, Mississippi, was firebombed in reaction to an organized boycott of downtown Jackson’s white merchants. The family had been threatened, and Evers targeted by the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1967, after Byron De La Beckwith's release in 1965, she moved with her children to Claremont, California, and emerged as a civil rights activist in her own right. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in sociology from Pomona College. She spoke on behalf of the NAACP and in 1967 she co-wrote For Us, the Living, which chronicled her late husband's life and work. She also made two unsuccessful bids for U.S. Congress. From 1968 to 1970, Evers was the director of planning at the center for Educational Opportunity for the Claremont Colleges.

From 1973 to 1975, Evers was the vice-president for advertising and publicity at the New York-based advertising firm, Seligman and Lapz. In 1975, she moved to Los Angeles to become the national director for community affairs for the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). At ARCO she was responsible for developing and managing all the corporate programs. This included overseeing funding for community projects, outreach programs, public and private partnership programs and staff development. She helped secure money for many organizations such as the National Woman’s Educational Fund, and worked with a group that provided meals to the poor and homeless.

Myrlie Evers-Williams continued to explore ways to serve her community and to work with the NAACP. Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley appointed her to the Board of Public Works as a commissioner in 1987. Evers-Williams was the first black woman to serve as a commissioner on the board, a position she held for 8 years. Evers-Williams also joined the board of the NAACP. By the mid-1990s, the prestigious organization was going through a difficult period marked by scandal and economic problems. Evers-Williams decided that the best way to help the organization was to run for chairperson of the board of directors. She won the position in 1995, just after her second husband’s death due to prostate cancer. As chairperson of the NAACP, Evers-Williams worked to restore the tarnished image of the organization. She also helped improve its financial status, raising enough funds to eliminate its debt. Evers-Williams received many honors for her work, including being named Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine. With the organization financially stable, she decided to not seek re-election as chairperson in 1998. In that same year, she was awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal.

Sources:

Padgett, John. "MWP: Myrlie Evers-Williams". University of Mississippi. Retrieved October 20, 2011

Goldsworthy, Joan. "Gale - Free Resources - Black History - Biographies - Myrlie Evers-Williams". Gale. Retrieved November 22, 2011.

Myrlie Evers-Williams Biography - Facts, Birthday, Life Story - Biography.com". Famous Biographies & TV Shows - Biography.com. A&E Television Networks. Retrieved November 22, 2011.

Davis, Merlene. "Merlene Davis: Myrlie Evers-Williams doesn't want us to forget". Kentucky.com. Retrieved November 22, 2011.

Jessie Carney Smith; VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft (1996). Notable Black American Women: book II. p. 208.

University of Virginia (June 24, 2013). "Speakers and Guests Bios". virginia.edu. Archived from the original on June 2, 2013.

#blacktumblr

[cartermagazine]

Today In History Alfred L. Cralle was a Black businessman and inventor, who invented the ice cream scooper, patent #576,395 on this date February 2, 1897. Alfred L. Cralle was born in Kenbridge, Lunenburg County, Virginia just after the end of the American Civil War. He attended local schools and worked with his father in the carpentry trade as a young man, becoming interested in mechanics. Cralle went to Washington, D.C., and attended Wayland Seminary, one of several schools founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to help educate Blacks after the American Civil War. He settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he first served as a drug store and hotel porter. Alfred noticed that servers at the hotel had trouble with ice cream sticking to serving spoons, and he developed an ice cream scoop. The patented "Ice Cream Mold and Disher" was an ice cream scoop with a built-in scraper to allow for one-handed operation. Cralle's functional design is in modern ice cream scoops. He later became a general manager for the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise, and Business Association. CARTER™️ Magazine carter-mag.com #wherehistoryandhiphopmeet #historyandhiphop365 #cartermagazine #carter #staywoke #alfredcralle #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory https://www.instagram.com/p/CoKOIYorJK8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#576 #wherehistoryandhiphopmeet #historyandhiphop365 #cartermagazine #carter #staywoke #alfredcralle #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory

[ausetkmt]

Her name was Julia Chinn, and her role in Richard Mentor Johnson’s life caused a furor when the Kentucky Democrat was chosen as Martin Van Buren’s running mate in 1836.

She was born enslaved and remained that way her entire life, even after she became Richard Mentor Johnson’s “bride.”

Johnson, a Kentucky congressman who eventually became the nation’s ninth vice president in 1837, couldn’t legally marry Julia Chinn. Instead the couple exchanged vows at a local church with a wedding celebration organized by the enslaved people at his family’s plantation in Great Crossing, according to Miriam Biskin, who wrote about Chinn decades ago.

Chinn died nearly four years before Johnson took office. But because of controversy over her, Johnson is the only vice president in American history who failed to receive enough electoral votes to be elected. The Senate voted him into office.

The couple’s story is complicated and fraught, historians say. As an enslaved woman, Chinn could not consent to a relationship, and there’s no record of how she regarded him. Though she wrote to Johnson during his lengthy absences from Kentucky, the letters didn’t survive.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, who is working on a book about Chinn, wrote about the hurdles in a blog post for the Association of Black Women Historians.

“While doing my research, I was struck by how Julia had been erased from the history books,” wrote Myers, a history professor at Indiana University. “Nobody knew who she was. The truth is that Julia (and Richard) are both victims of legacies of enslavement, interracial sex, and silence around black women’s histories.”

Johnson’s life is far better documented.

He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 1802 and to Congress in 1806. The folksy, handsome Kentuckian gained a reputation as a champion of the common man.

Back home in Great Crossing, he fathered a child with a local seamstress, but didn’t marry her when his parents objected, according to the biography “The Life and Times of Colonel Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky.” Then, in about 1811, Johnson, 31, turned to Chinn, 21, who had been enslaved at Blue Spring Plantation since childhood.

Johnson called Chinn “my bride.” His “great pleasure was to sit by the fireplace and listen to Julia as she played on the pianoforte,” Biskin wrote in her account.

The couple soon had two daughters, Imogene and Adaline. Johnson gave his daughters his last name and openly raised them as his children.

Johnson became a national hero during the War of 1812. At the Battle of the Thames in Canada, he led a horseback attack on the British and their Native American allies. He was shot five times but kept fighting. During the battle, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh was killed.

In 1819, “Colonel Dick” was elected to the U.S. Senate. When he was away in Washington for long periods, he left Chinn in charge of the 2,000-acre plantation and told his White employees that they should “act with the same propriety as if I were home.”

Chinn’s status was unique.

While enslaved women wore simple cotton dresses, Chinn’s wardrobe “included fancy dresses that turned heads when Richard hosted parties,” Christina Snyder wrote in her book “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers & Slaves in the Age of Jackson.”

In 1825, Chinn and Johnson hosted the Marquis de Lafayette during his return to America.

In the mid-1820s, Johnson opened on his plantation the Choctaw Academy, a federally funded boarding school for Native Americans. He hired a local Baptist minister as director. Chinn ran the academy’s medical ward.

“Julia is as good as one half the physicians, where the complaint is not dangerous,” Johnson wrote in a letter. He paid the academy’s director extra to educate their daughters “for a future as free women.”

Johnson tried to advance his daughters in local society, and both would later marry White men. But when he spoke at a local July Fourth celebration, the Lexington Observer reported, prominent White citizens wouldn’t let Adaline sit with them in the pavilion. Johnson sent his daughter to his carriage, rushed through his speech and then angrily drove away.

When Johnson’s father died, he willed ownership of Chinn to his son. He never freed his common-law wife.

“Whatever power Chinn had was dependent on the will and the whims of a White man who legally owned her,” Snyder wrote.

Then, in 1833, Chinn died of cholera. It’s unclear where she is buried.

Johnson went on to even greater national prominence.

In 1836, President Andrew Jackson backed Vice President Martin Van Buren as his successor. At Jackson’s urging, Van Buren — a fancy dresser who had never fought in war — picked war hero Johnson as his running mate. Nobody knew how the Shawnees’ chief was slain in the War of 1812, but Johnson’s campaign slogan was, “Rumpsey, Dumpsey. Johnson Killed Tecumseh.”

Johnson’s relationship with Chinn became a campaign issue. Southern newspapers denounced him as “the great Amalgamationist.” A mocking cartoon showed a distraught Johnson with a hand over his face bewailing “the scurrilous attacks on the Mother of my Children.”

This political cartoon was a racist attack on Johnson because of his relationship with Julia Chinn. (Library of Congress)

Van Buren won the election, but Johnson’s 147 electoral votes were one short of what he needed to be elected. Virginia’s electors refused to vote for him. It was the only time Congress chose a vice president.

When Van Buren ran for reelection in 1840, Democrats declined to nominate Johnson at their Baltimore convention. It is the only time a party didn’t pick any vice-presidential candidate. The spelling-challenged Jackson warned that Johnson would be a “dead wait” on the ticket.

“Old Dick” still ended up being the leading choice and campaigned around the country wearing his trademark red vest. But Van Buren lost to Johnson’s former commanding officer, Gen. William Henry Harrison.

Johnson never remarried, but he reportedly had sexual relationships with other enslaved women who couldn’t consent to them.

The former vice president won a final election to the Kentucky legislature in 1850, but died a short time later at the age of 70.

His brothers laid claim to his estate at the expense of his surviving daughter, Imogene, who was married to a White man named Daniel Pence.

“At some point in the early twentieth century,” Myers wrote, “perhaps because of heightened fears of racism during the Jim Crow era, members of Imogene Johnson Pence’s line, already living as white people, chose to stop telling their children that they were descended from Richard Mentor Johnson … and his black wife. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that younger Pences, by then already in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, began discovering the truth of their heritage.”

#He Became the Nation’s Ninth Vice President. She Was His Enslaved Wife. #enslaved people #Richard Johnson #Julia Chinn #Youtube

[thekotaroo]

Profiles of Pride: June 17th! 🏳️‍🌈Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark🏳️‍🌈

Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark (born 1938, in Pontiac, Michigan) is the main mover of the AIDS Education and Global Information System database, previously a pre-World Wide Web bulletin board system.

Clark was born in June 1938 in Pontiac, Michigan and assigned male at birth.

In 1957, she enlisted in the United States Navy and rose to the rank of chief petty officer (E-7), serving as an instructor in anti-submarine warfare. Clark had an 11-year marriage which produced a son, but ended acrimoniously.

She married again, and later revealed her gender dysphoria to her second wife, who helped her through self-identifying as female. Upon learning of her psychological evaluations, the Navy discharged her honorably. In 1975 she underwent a sex reassignment surgery and took the name Joanna Michelle Clark.

A U.S. Army Reserves recruiter who was aware that she was transgender enlisted her as a woman in the Army in 1976. A year and a half later, she was nominated for promotion to warrant officer. Her enlistment was voided when her transgender status became known to higher-ups. She brought suit against the Army and won a settlement of $25,000 and an honorable discharge.

During the 1970s, she was an activist for the rights of transsexual people and was instrumental in winning the right of Californians to have their gender changed on their birth certificates and driver licenses. In 1980, she founded and led the ACLU Transsexual Rights Committee.

She had been raised Southern Baptist, but left the church due to disillusionment with racism in its congregations. In the 1980s, she felt a religious calling and worked to become an Episcopal sister. Conflict with the Episcopal diocese over the validity of the order she sought to found led to her leaving the denomination shortly after she took her vows in 1988, and she later became a sister of the American Catholic Church, a small independent Christian denomination following Catholic rites.

Also in the 1980s she continued the work of the Erickson Educational Foundation, aiding transgender people.

In 1990, inspired by meeting an isolated young man with AIDS in rural Missouri, she returned to her family home in San Juan Capistrano, California, taking on the bulletin board system AEGIS begun by Jamie Jemison and eventually building it into the "most definitive – and perhaps the most accessible – source of information on" AIDS.

She is the recipient of the Award of Courage from the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights from the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care, the Crystal Heart award from the San Diego GLBT Center and the Joan of Arc award from the Orange County Community Foundation.

#Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark #Pride #Pride Month #Trans Pride #Trans Rights #Trans Rights Are Human Rights #LGBTQIA+ #June Pride #June 17th #Pride 2023 #Joanna Michelle Clark

[petervintonjr]

"The ballot, wisely used, will bring to her the respect and protection that she needs. It is her weapon of moral defense. Under present conditions, when she appears in court in defence of her virtue, she is looked upon with amused contempt. She needs the ballot to reckon with men who place no value upon her virtue, and to mould healthy public sentiment in favor of her own protection."

Say hello to D.C.'s own Nannie Helen Burroughs: teacher, suffragist, union advocate, and civil rights pioneer. Born in 1879/1880 Virginia to formerly enslaved parents, Burroughs later moved to D.C., graduating from M Street High School and making the acquaintance of comtemporaries like Mary Church Terrell (Lesson #29 in this series). Burroughs became deeply involved in the dual causes of womens' suffrage and civil rights, mentored by Walter Henderson Brooks (look for a future lesson in this Series about him), who was then a pastor at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church.

Later Burroughs founded the Womens' Convention of the National Baptist Convention and served as its director for 13 years. Burroughs and her fellow D.C. resident Mary McLeod Bethune (Lesson #49 in this series), also organized and formed the National Association of Wage Earners. Burroughs rose to prominence as an outspoken voice for Black women; arguing that they should have the same opportunities for education and for job training. Such was her gift for writing and for oration that she was appointed by President Herbert Hoover to chair a special committee on housing for African Americans.

Perhaps Burroughs' greatest accomplishment (certainly the one of which she was the proudest), was the funding and eventual founding of the National Training School for Women And Girls in 1909. Encouraged and advocated by key Washington figures such as historian Carter G. Woodson (look for a future lesson in this Series about him, as well), the school was notable for never having solicited money from white donors. Burroughs wanted each student to become "the fiber of a sturdy moral, industrious and intellectual woman," and over the course of the next 20 years, the school grew into a rigorous curriculum of academic and vocational courses; offering a unique combination of educational opportunities for Black young women and girls. At the time the school offered academic training equivalent to the upper grades of high school and community college, religious instruction, and training in domestic arts and vocations; and perhaps most importantly, the very first American institution to offer all of these opportunities within a single educational space.

#nacw #black history #black lives matter #nannie helen burroughs #washington dc