White American History - A receipt of pressedness and denial from ‘89

NY Times | Published Sept. 27, 1989

To the Editor:

”Afro-American kids are taught white American history, while our own heritage is blatantly ignored,” says KRS-One (Op-Ed, Sept. 9).

Hogwash!

Our school, an average urban high school, has offered and given a complete course devoted to black history for more than 20 years. Most other New York City schools do the same.

They also celebrate February as black history month; organize and run Afro-American clubs; participate in essay, poetry and art contests celebrating black America; display black culture bulletin boards, and use curriculum material on such subjects as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and apartheid.

The second term of New York State’s Regents course of study in American history has a unit called ”Who Are We? - What Is an American?” It includes contributions by black Americans to American society. JOSEPH M. PEREZ Ozone Park, Queens, Sept. 11, 1989 The writer teaches social studies at John Adams High School.

Receipt

Fast forward. People still pretend like these white American history textbooks and lessons don’t exist.

Walmart’s Salutes History Makers Commercial

Performed by Tony McClendon. I find myself singing this song at the most random moments


Little-Known Black History Fact (No. 83)

afro-art-chick:

 Harriet E. Wilson, a mulatto woman from New Hampshire published a novel on September 5, 1859 with the stated hope of earning sufficient money simply to survive. Instead, her novel Our Nig; or Sketches From the Life of A Free Black, became a powerful and controversial narrative that continues to touch and unsettle readers around the world.

This was the first known American publication by any black person.

(Source: harrietwilsonproject.org)

redbikeandgreen:

Major Taylor. 1st African American World Champion.

(via streetetiquette)

collective-history:

“Standing Tall Amid the Glares” by Paul Schutzer.

Lewis Cousins, age 15, the only African American student in the newly desegregated Maury High School, standing alone. 1959, Norfolk, VA. 

(via theuncommonthief)

"In 1936 a Harlem postal worker and activist named Victor H. Green decided to develop a guide that would help African Americans travel throughout the country in a safe and comfortable manner. The Negro Motorist Green Book (also called The Negro Travelers’ Green Book), often simply known as The Green Book, identified places that welcomed black people during an era when Jim Crow laws and de facto segregation made it difficult for them to travel domestically without fear of racial backlash."

� Black History Road Trip: Negro Motorist Green Book Destinations

(via truealma)

burnedshoes:

© Howard Sochurek, May 1960, Petersburg, VA / USA

African-American student Virginius B. Thornton receiving tolerance training before picketing.

In 1960, UVA’s black students Wesley Harris and Virginius B. Thornton had entered the University. Harris was an undergraduate striving to attain his degree in aeronautical engineering. Virginius Thornton was a graduate student, the first black graduate student to enter the doctoral program at the University. These two men were activists around Grounds and greater Charlottesville. Together they picketed such places as Buddy’s Restaurant on the Corner and the Holiday Inn because they would not serve blacks. They served on the Thomas Jefferson Council on Human Relations, which worked to promote interracial equality in Charlottesville and the University.

Graduate student Virginius B. Thornton made a statement through his loud activism and aptitude for staging sit-ins. Another door was blown open when the first black student, Leroy Willis was allowed to enter the College, in 1960. To that time, the blacks at the University were only allowed to attend specialty schools like the School of Engineering. UVA still operated under the old letter law of “seperate but equal”. Being able to attend the College of Arts & Sciences had been denied to black students, in spite of the 1954 ruling of the Supreme Court all schools were to desegregate “with all deliberate speed”.

(…) By the late 1960s, the University finally came alive with activism that was infecting many a college campus. UVA students participated in many demonstrations, black and white alike. (…) The University was finally embracing changing, and slowly detaching from the tradition that had made it so hostile an environment. There was the March at UVA supporting the Selma March in Alabama, in 1965, to several hundred UVA students attending Martin Luther King’s speech at Old Cabell in 1963 before King’s famous March On Washington later that year. UVA students also protested Vietnam and the exclusion of women in the undergraduate class. Indeed, like Bob Dylan’s famous song, the times were a changing. (read more)

I hope they keep on changing, it’s still a long way to go…

» find a similar photo by Eve Arnold here « (thanks to firsttimeuser)

(Source: burnedshoes)

500 Years Later (full documentary)

Crime, drugs, HIV/AIDS, poor education, inferiority complex, low expectation, poverty, corruption, poor health, and underdevelopment plagues people of African descent globally. 500 years later from the onset of slavery and subsequent colonialism, Africans are still struggling for basic freedom. Filmed in five continents, and over twenty countries, this documentary engages the retrospective voice, told from the African vantage-point.

(Source: thechanelmuse)

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (full documentary)

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the synopsis:

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish journalists who came to the US drawn by stories of urban unrest and revolution. Gaining access to many of the leaders of the Black Power Movement—Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver among them—the filmmakers captured them in intimate moments and remarkably unguarded interviews. Thirty years later, this collection was found languishing in the basement of Swedish Television. Director Göran Olsson and co-producer Danny Glover bring this footage to light in a mosaic of images, music and narration chronicling the evolution one of our nation’s most indelible turning points, the Black Power movement. Music by Questlove and Om’Mas Keith, and commentary from prominent African- American artists and activists who were influenced by the struggle — including Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, and Melvin Van Peebles — give the historical footage a fresh, contemporary resonance and makes the film an exhilarating, unprecedented account of an American revolution.

(Source: thechanelmuse)

"Did you know that there was a branch of the Garvey Movement in Australia during the 1920s? Did you know that Aboriginal Australians had their own version of the Civil Rights movement? Did you know that it was not until January 1967 that Aboriginal Australians were regarded as human beings by the white Australian government? Did you that in 1975 Aboriginal Australians established a branch of the Aboriginal Australian Black Panther Party in Brisbane, Australia? Our freedom struggle is global in nature sisters and brothers!"

� Runoko Rashidi (via ‘exposing black truth’ on facebook)

(Source: kemetically-afrolatino, via slimlion)

cercletucker:

These are all lies. http://tightrope.cc/Black-Invention-Myths.htm

Well somebody is pressed ^

(Source: jay-spillz)

sadiiqsunra89:

queerhairyvag:

alwaystheoviereya:

kyssthis16:

icaruscalling:

Can we bring back this video of this racial argument between a Black man and Jewish woman? He tells her that she doesn’t respect anyone’s humanity but hers and how she doesn’t understand how she is cruel. 

And then she cries ~you’re so horrible, #whitetears, so beautiful.

“You know why your heart’s broke? Because I’m telling you the truth for the first time in your whole life”

hmm why do I love this man? because truthhhhhh

I sat through this whole thing wide-eyed. *shivers*

(via sadiiqsunra)