We've Come A Long Way Baby
Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 08:25:11 PM PDT
The whole "race thing" has generated a lot of commentary. I am not a scholar but I enjoy reading and have always questioned the gaps in our education and the Real History.
Black History is not Black, it is American but shunted off into the corner peddled as an "other" story so you don't have to pay attention to it, because that is their story not yours. That is false, this is our story as Americans.
Maybe some of this is too ugly for us to comprehend today, but this is where we came from and "we've come a long way baby".
I am proud that this country has come this far. These songs ,images and incidents used to be commonplace and in 2008 we are now looking at electing Barack H. Obama.
MUSIC
One hundred and five black Americans are known to have been lynched in 1901 and COON COON COON was also the Hit Song of the year.
http://memory.loc.gov/...
http://www.newcoalition.org/...
http://www.pdmusic.org/...
Although it's not my color,
I'm feeling mighty blue;
I've got a lot of trouble,
I'll tell it all to you:
I'm cert'nly clean disgusted
With life, and that's a fact
Because my hair is wooly
And because my color's black.
My gal, she took a notion
Against the colored race.
She said if I would win her
I'd have to change my face;
She said if she should wed me,
That she'd regret it soon,
And now I'm shook, yes, good and hard,
Because I am a coon.
REFRAIN [sung twice after each verse]
Coon! Coon! Coon!
I wish my color would fade.
Coon! Coon! Coon!
I'd like a different shade.
Coon! Coon! Coon!
Morning, night and noon.
I wish I was a white man
'Stead of a Coon! Coon! Coon!
RELIGION
Since there has been a lot of discussion of the Black Church lately. Here is a small snippet on one of those early black preachers. The suspicion was there in the beginning.
http://www.gutenberg.org/...
http://www.africawithin.com/...
Andrew Bryan...was born in 1737 at Goose Creek, South Carolina, about sixteen miles from Charleston. His mother was a slave and died in the service of her master. His father, also a slave, became infirm with years, dying at the age of one hundred and five.
Andrew Bryan began to preach to whites and African Americans that would listen. Before long, he had an organized group of worshippers who erected a small church on the land of Edward Davis at Yamacraw outside of Savannah, Georgia. They were frequently interrupted by hostile whites who were upset that so many African Americans were fleeing to the British lines.
When this hostility resulted in Andrew Bryan and fifty of his followers being severely whipped, the group moved to a farm three miles outside of town, and worshipped for two years at Brampton's Barn. On January 10, 1788, a white minister, Rev. Abraham Marshall, certified the group as the Ethiopian Church of Jesus Christ. Eventually, the church became identified with Bryan. Thus, the first Bryan Baptist Church was formed. Its successor still stands in Savanna today, one of the oldest African American Institutions in the United States. This African American institutional base was a continuous threat to the plantation society in Georgia, and fear of a slave uprising subjected the church leaders and worshippers to constant persecution.
THE RACE QUESTION IN CHURCH.; NEGROES MAY NOT BECOME MEMBERS OF A SOUTHERN CONVENTION.
May 9, 1890, Wednesday
Page 3, 380 words
CHARLESTON, S.C., May 8. -- The question of the negro in the church was settled for some years to come in the diocesan convention here this morning. The only colored member of the convention was on the floor all through the proceedings, but refused to vote on the question affecting his status, and asserts boldly that he will remain in the convention until ejected.
The following is a sampling of headlines form the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com
BAPTISTS DRAW COLOR LINE.; Congregation and Pastor Differ Over Question of Giving Negro Worshippers Access to Church Pool.
November 21, 1898, Wednesday
Page 01, 237 words
NEGROES WORSHIP TOO NOISILY; Sensational Service Deprecated at Hampton Conference.
Special to The New York Times.
July 20, 1900, Wednesday
Page 2, 476 words
NEGRO CHURCH IS MILITANT.; Washington Colored Brethren Mix Warfare and Religion.
Special to The New York Times.
March 27, 1904, Sunday
Page 2, 206 words
URGES NEGROES TO ARM.; Audience Cheers Preacher's Denunciation of "New Slavery Era."
January 7, 1914, Wednesday
Page 1, 314 words
WASHINGTON, Jan. 6. -- Negroes were urged to stop buying musical instruments and sending their children to dancing schools, and advised to spend their money for guns and military education by the Rev. I.H. Ross, pastor of a Washington negro church, speaking to-night to a large crowd assembled to celebrate the birthday of Charles Sumner.
POLITICS IN 1901
Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House in 1901 earning him the title of the first African American to dine with a President at the White House. The Southerners were outraged.
Reactions from the South
Benjamin R. Tillman the Senator from South Carolina had this to say in response.
The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.
The Memphis Scimitar, Editorial, 1901 wrote it was
the most damnable outrage ever perpetrated by any citizen of the United States when he invited a nigger to dine with him at the White House.
What did President Roosevelt learn?
Dixie was unforgiving, however. Despite subsequently drawing attention to the fact that he had appointed fewer African Americans and more Democrats to federal positions in the South than any of his Republican predecessors, Roosevelt had to secure his future election against a South that remained solidly Democrat.
The lessons Roosevelt learned were not lost on his successors. Not for a quarter of a century would an African American again be entertained at the White House, and that invitation--to the wife of black politician Oscar De Priest--would also lead to howls of racial outrage.
We have a long way to go but we have come this far and there is no turning back. I am glad to be alive to see this part of history rather than living in 1901.
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