Things I Didn’t Know About Black History (Until Recently)
Commentary by Chitown Kev
A few years ago, I was rereading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and I happened to take particular note of the sheer rage that Edward Covey held for Douglass, in particular, even given Covey’s reputation as a slave-breaker. (At other times, I have been fascinated with the story of Douglass’ uses of “a certain root” over a hundred years before anyone was described as using a literary device called “magic realism”...but I digress...). To be sure, in the beatings of other slaves and Douglass himself, Covey was certainly sadistic (an essayist in the anthology Erotique Noire/Black Erotica pointed out the sexual tensions implicit in some of the slave beatings in the Narrative in the early 90’s...a reading that has stuck with me all these years). On rereading the Narrative, I didn’t get the impression that Covey’s rage at Douglass was sexual, but it did seem...out of proportion even for a man with “a very high reputation of breaking young slaves.”
Douglass describes Covey as “a poor man, a farm-renter” (economic anxiety!) as well as “a professor of religion—a pious soul— a member and class-leader in the Methodist church.” And here was the 16-year old Frederick Douglass: long-time city dweller, obviously highly intelligent and quite literate.
I wondered if Covey was jealous of what he saw in the young Frederick Douglass; particularly the literacy part. After all, I had always been taught that there were laws against slaves learning or being taught to read write and here, in front of Covey, is this obviously intelligent and highly literate teenage slave, I thought. For some reason, I decided to look up the Wikipedia page on anti-literacy laws in the United States and discovered...well the issue of slave literacy is a bit more complicated than what I knew.
In Frederick Douglass’ case, there was no legal prohibition in attaining literacy nor was it illegal for Sophia Auld to teach him. There were never any laws prohibiting slave literacy laws in Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
(Granted, most slaveowners did not want their slaves to learn reading and especially writing but it wasn’t always explicitly prohibited by law.)
In fact, Antonio L. Bly points out in his essay, “Slave Literacy and Education in Virginia,” that some slaveowners thought that, for religious purposes, teaching slaves to read (not so much to write) was a part of their Christian duty. (in the course completing this essay, this link broke...CK) [Link is live again...CK 2/17/21 437am CST]
At the time Virginia had fifty-four parishes; responses from twenty-eight have survived. They suggest that only a modest number of slaves received an education; that most who did were born in America; that their instruction was connected to religious conversion; and that reading was an essential part of that instruction. Indeed, extant birth and baptism records suggest that slaves mastered reading before receiving the rite of baptism.
Jared Hardesty writes at Black Perspectives about slave literacy in colonial New England.
Acquiring literacy was, at least in the case of New England, available for enslaved and free men and women. Certainly some masters resisted, such as when Boston slave and later literary figure Chloe Spear attempted to learn to read and her master threatened to punish her, exclaiming reading “made Negroes saucy.”1 Nevertheless, there were cultural imperatives overriding the hesitancy of individual masters. Religion was one of the most important factors. In Puritan Boston, being able to read the Bible was paramount to one’s salvation and having a true religious experience. Ministers exhorted their parishioners to teach their slaves how to read the Bible and other Christian texts. Leading minister Cotton Mather even published tracts on Christianizing slaves, although he was ambivalent about teaching slaves how to write. Likewise, many artisans and merchants taught their slaves at least basic literacy and numeracy to make them more effective workers. Whether reading religious texts or keeping accounts, this utilitarian literacy opened a whole new world to slaves, or to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, it gave them the inch that allowed them to take the ell.
Most legal prohibitions against slave literacy (especially the stricter ones) were a reaction to the rebellion of Nat Turner in 1831.
So while it is factual to say that it was illegal for slaves to read and write, that was not the case for much of colonial history and even immediately following the founding of the United States...and even then, not in all of the states.
Which is a much more interesting reading (at least to me) than a flat “Slaves were prohibited from reading and writing.”
True...but not at all times, in all places, and conditions changed. (And The United States remains the only country that ever passed anti-literacy laws for slaves.)
Another brief example: I’ve known of the “one drop rule’ for most of my life and I always assumed that the “one drop rule” was a product of the antebellum South; actually, it was not codified as law until the early 20th century.
Yes, I learned early in life that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in protest of segregationist public accommodations laws. I didn’t learn that there were many cases like Ms. Parks going back to attempts enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1875; cases that Black historian John Hope Franklin documented.
Those examples will suffice.
February is Black History Month and I am a history geek and always have been.
And yes, in any study of history, in any attempt to teach history, certain facts must be learned and taught and attested to (quaint as that may seem nowadays).
But in the “passing it on” of Black history nowadays (as with most other academic subjects, to be honest) there’s a certain...blandness to it; an overriding need to “teach for the test.”
The need to know the facts presented, sometimes without text and frequently without context.
In his famous appendix to the Narrative denouncing the “slaveholding religion,” Douglass says that, “He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me.” Douglass isn’t even writing about his own past or, to a certain extent (depending on time and place) the past of the American slaveholder; he’s writing about the present (1845) conditions of the slave and the utter decay of slaveholder American Christianity even from what it once was (it being a Christian duty to teach slaves to read, at one time...for some slaveholders).
I would not know that if I did not know the timeline of slave literacy in the American colonies and in early United States.
Ms. Rosa Parks, a longtime civil rights activist, knew that she stood on the shoulders of many others that came before her even as she simply said “no” when asked to change seats on a bus in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.
For a longtime I didn’t know that.
The public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was directly adapted from the same provisions Civil Rights Act of 1875; no new ideas there...but I didn’t know that for a long time.
Facts. Texts. Contexts.
And most importantly, the willingness to investigate, is needed to keep Black history alive, vibrant, and meaningful for ourselves and the future.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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The second Jennifer Bates walks away from her post at the Amazon warehouse where she works, the clock starts ticking.
She has precisely 30 minutes to get to the cafeteria and back for her lunch break. That means traversing a warehouse the size of 14 football fields, which eats up precious time. She avoids bringing food from home because warming it up in the microwave would cost her even more minutes. Instead she opts for $4 cold sandwiches from the vending machine and hurries back to her post.
If she makes it, she’s lucky. If she doesn’t, Amazon could cut her pay, or worse, fire her.
It’s that kind of pressure that has led some Amazon workers to organize the biggest unionization push at the company since it was founded in 1995. And it’s happening in the unlikeliest of places: Bessemer, Alabama, a state with laws that don’t favor unions.
The stakes are high. If organizers succeed in Bessemer, it could set off a chain reaction across Amazon’s operations nationwide, with thousands more workers rising up and demanding better working conditions. But they face an uphill battle against the second-largest employer in the country with a history of crushing unionizing efforts at its warehouses and its Whole Foods grocery stores.
Attempts by Amazon to delay the vote in Bessemer have failed. So too have the company’s efforts to require in-person voting, which organizers argue would be unsafe during the pandemic. Mail-in voting started this week and will go on until the end of March. A majority of the 6,000 employees have to vote “yes” in order to unionize.
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The 1997 TV adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, starring Brandy Norwood and Whitney Houston, landed on Disney+ on Friday, February 12. The release marks the first time the movie has ever been available on streaming — a huge milestone for a film whose cultural reception has long outlived its initial critical appraisal.
While critics at the time of its release were polite but chilly — “this is a cobbled-together ‘Cinderella’ for the moment, not the ages,” the New York Times declared — Brandy’s Cinderella has held massive sway over the hearts of the ’90s kids who watched it, as well as subsequent generations who grew up with the film on DVD. In fact, it’s been dubbed by some “one of the most important movies of the ’90s.” And with many people drawing comparisons between “The Brandy Cinderella” and other recent attempts to do colorblind casting, there’s no better time to revisit what made this film a cultural phenomenon.
In the years since it aired, “The Brandy Cinderella,” as it would henceforth be informally known, has become renowned in particular for its casting. Executive produced by Houston, who hand-picked teen pop artist Brandy for the lead role, the movie featured a fantastical, “colorblind” multicultural cast. Bernadette Peters played Cinderella’s stepmother; the king and queen were played by Victor Garber and Whoopi Goldberg, while their son, Brandy’s prince, was played by Filipino American actor Paolo Montalbán.
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Clayton Johnston was excited to join other ninth-graders on a field trip down the QEW to Buffalo, N.Y., the weekend following Victoria Day in 1959. In addition to seeing the sites, the friendly and outgoing 15-year-old Malvern Collegiate student and 45 of his schoolmates were scheduled to appear on the television show Dance Party.
Dance Party broadcast live Saturday afternoons from WGR-Z’s Westside Studios. Back in Toronto, viewers of the popular show, including Leonard and Gwen Johnston, Clayton’s parents, were glued to their TVs.
Cameras rolled at one o’clock. Girls in colourful poodle skirts and boys in dark blazers and ties surrounded host Pat Fagan. The music began, and excited teens swarmed the floor.
Behind the scenes, the studio hummed with activity. The producer queued Fagan up for a live commercial promoting the show’s sponsor, Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, preparations for the spotlight dance segment were arranged. Five couples were selected to pair off on the dance floor.
Coca-Cola spot complete, Fagan stood in the centre of the studio, and mic in hand introduced the spotlight segment. Handsome youth dancing together having a swell time filled TV screens across western New York and the Golden Horseshoe.
The camera panned the dance floor, focusing on Clayton Johnston partnered with 15-year-old classmate Patty Banks. That’s when things degenerated. Western New York viewers were appalled at the sight of Clayton, one of the few Black students in his high school, dancing with a white girl.
WGR-TV’s phone lines lit up. Irate callers demanded the couple be separated. Cameras continued rolling as a student, instructed by Fagan, hesitantly strolled into the mix, tapping Clayton on the shoulder and urging him to leave the dance floor.
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Ivan freeman runs a 20-hectare rose farm at the foot of Mount Kenya right by the equator, where the soil is fertile and the sun shines all the year round. His business, Uhuru Flowers, exports to some 49 countries, including China, Nigeria and parts of eastern Europe. Some of his buds reach the shop window within four days of being cut.
That finely tuned business came to a halt when the pandemic struck. Celebrations were cancelled, florists shut and aeroplanes were grounded. Uhuru halved workers’ hours and destroyed 1.2m unsold stems, about a month’s harvest. Supply chains have slowly been rebuilt since then, and the 350 staff are back full-time. Now Mr Freeman, like many farmers, is speeding up production, hoping to recoup last year’s losses with sales on February 14th. “Valentine’s Day for most farms is a huge deal,” he says. “Everyone is feeling positive and ready to take advantage of it.”
After the initial disruption, countries have reopened their borders. Florists have gone online and Kenya’s flower industry has come up roses. The sector employed more people last month than before covid-19 began to spread, according to a survey of producers in the Rift Valley by Kenya’s central bank. Production and exports are at 90% and 95% of their levels in February last year, respectively.
Farmers say demand has recovered surprisingly well. The global economy may have wilted and consumers may be penny-pinching, says Anna Barker at the Fairtrade Foundation, but “a bunch of flowers on the table does wonders when you’re in lockdown.”
That is good news for Kenya’s economy. The flower industry usually contributes around 1% of gdp and is a source of foreign exchange. It employs more than 500,000 people, including 100,000 directly in farms. Debate about flower farms once focused on poor conditions for workers, who are on their feet all day and exposed to all sorts of chemicals. The focus now is on keeping these workers, including lots of unskilled women, in jobs.
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On Nov. 28, 2020, Ethiopia’s military took control of Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, after a month long fight with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front(TPLF).Before the conflict, the Tigray region under TPLF rule was edging toward de facto independence. After the TPLF lost its hegemonic position in Addis Ababa in 2015—where it had dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for decades—it relocated political and bureaucratic personnel to Mekele. When national elections were postponed due to COVID-19, the TPLF rejected the constitutionality of the decision and went ahead with its own regional election, which it won handily.
Then, it declared that it no longer recognized the federal government as legitimate, and it successfully thwarted the appointment of a new head to the Ethiopian army’ sNorthern Command, effectively apportioning to itself the most heavily armed section of the National Defense Force. This was followed by a coordinated, preemptive attack on the Ethiopian army’s Northern Command in the early hours of Nov. 4 that enabled the TPLF to take control of the army headquarters in Mekele and several other bases. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed quickly appeared on TV to launch a military operation to dislodge the TPLF from Tigray.
The conflict in Tigray is not merely a political squabble between the TPLF and Abiy’s Prosperity Party, but a struggle for sovereignty between the federal government and a regional state. This is also not the first time the federal government went to war to reclaim control of an intransigent regional state. In August 2018, the federal government undertook an armed operation to dislodge Abdi Mohamoud Omar (also known as Abdi Ilay), the then-president of the Somali regional state—leading to many deaths and the displacement of civilians, especially ethnic minorities. Ethiopia’s constitution, which was ratified in 1994 under the auspices of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, which was dominated by the TPLF, is unique in endowing sovereignty upon the country’s nations and nationalities. Its position is also radical because it allows an unqualified right for self-determination, up to secession, to Ethiopia’s more than 80 ethnic groups. This has raised the stakes in federal-regional disagreements, and potentially increased the risk of conflict by allowing secession to be a bargaining chip in political disputes.
For its supporters, the ethnic-based federal system represents a triumph for the age-old quest of Ethiopia’s disenfranchised ethnic groups for autonomy and self-rule. The federal system is seen as the answer to the “question of nations and nationalities”—a school of political thought that critiqued and rejected sociopolitical domination by Ethiopia’s northern Christian elites, mainly ethnic Amharas and, to a lesser degree, Tigrayans. Ethnic federalism was intended to create a new dispensation that ensured that the political, cultural, and economic rights of all ethnic and religious groups are equally respected.
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When Chris Coy became Calgary’s first Black firefighter 25 years ago, his heroic vision of the profession was almost immediately upended.
First, he said, during training he was hazed more than his colleagues, strapped to a stretcher against his will and repeatedly doused with a fire hose. Then there were the co-workers who ostracized him at lunch. Throughout his career, he said, fellow firefighters used a racial slur directed at Black people.
For years, Mr. Coy said he suffered in silence as he feared speaking out would mean dismissal, or, worse, other firefighters not shielding him from danger in the field.
But since retiring in December, Mr. Coy has begun speaking publicly about what he said was decades of racially motived physical and verbal abuse, joining a group of current and former firefighters who have been voicing similar grievances. The city’s mayor and fire chief have acknowledged the racism within the department and pledged to address it.
“Here in Canada we are proud and sometimes smug about our commitment to diversity,” Naheed Nenshi, Calgary’s mayor, said in an interview. “I don’t want anyone who gets a paycheck I sign to feel that they aren’t valued because of the color of their skin.”
In Canada, a country that prides itself on its liberal humanism and multiculturalism, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made reconciling with Indigenous peoples an early priority of his premiership. Now, the country has been undergoing a national reckoning about institutional racism in its city halls, law enforcement and cultural institutions, particularly since the global uprising for Black rights spurred by last year’s police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
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