Commentary: Black Scientists, Explorers, and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Paul Cuffe, also known as Paul Cuffee (January 17, 1759 – September 7, 1817) was a successful 18th century sea captain and businessman. He had all African-American crews that served the Atlantic Coast and sailed to Europe and Africa. Paul Cuffe is best known for his work in assisting free blacks who wanted to emigrate to Sierra Leone. He helped the British effort to resettle freed African-American slaves after the American Revolution. He wrote the Memoir of Captain Paul Cuffee (1811).
Cuffe was born free on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts (near New Bedford) sometime around 1759. The exact date of his birth is unknown. He was the youngest of ten children. His father, Kofi (also known as Cuffe Slocum), was from the Ashanti Empire in West Africa. Kofi was captured, enslaved and brought to New England at the age of 10. Paul’s mother, Ruth Moses, was a Native American of the Wampanoag people of New England. Kofi, a skilled tradesman who was able to earn his freedom, but died when Paul Cuffe was a teenager. The younger Cuffe refused to use the name Slocum, which his father had been given by his owner, and instead took his father’s first name.
In 1773, the year after his father's death and again in 1775, Paul Cuffe sailed on whaling ships, getting a chance to learn navigation. In his journal, he identified as a marineer (mariner). In 1776 after the start of the Revolutionary War, he sailed on a whaler but it was captured by the British. He and the rest of the crew were held as prisoners of war for three months in New York City before being released. Cuffe returned to his family in what is now Westport, Massachusetts. In 1779, he and his brother David borrowed a small sailboat to reach the nearby islands. Although his brother was afraid to sail in dangerous seas, Cuffe set forth, probably with a friend as his crewmate in 1779 to deliver cargo to Nantucket. He was waylaid by pirates on this and several subsequent voyages. Finally, he made a trip to Nantucket that turned a profit, and he reportedly continued to make these trips to Nantucket throughout the war.
Cuffe was keenly aware of the inequities and difficulties faced by blacks in the US. Cuffe became politically active in his early 20s. In 1780, against the backdrop of the American Revolution, Paul and his brother John Cuffe refused to pay taxes, arguing that, despite being free blacks, they were denied the right to vote. The two were briefly jailed, and in 1780 Cuffe and several other free blacks petitioned the Massachusetts General Court, requesting that they be exempted from taxation because they were denied the benefits of citizenship. Although the petition failed to sway the Massachusetts General Court (legislature) the campaign helped pave the way for creation of a new Constitution in 1783 which granted equality to all Massachusetts citizens. The result was that Massachusetts made “all free persons of color liable to taxation, according to the ratio established for white men and granting them the privileges belonging to the other citizens.”
After the war’s end, Cuffe and his brother-in-law, Michael Wainer, opened a shipyard, and they soon had three small ships. Cuffe would later build a number of larger vessels, including the Hero and the Alpha. He and various relatives manned the ships and went on long whaling expeditions and trading voyages to Europe and other parts of the Americas. In addition to his maritime ventures, Cuffe was a prosperous merchant as well as the owner of a grist mill and a farm. As a result of his labors, Cuffe was perhaps the wealthiest African American of his time.
In 1808 Cuffe became a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and he joined the Friends Meeting in nearby Westport, Massachusetts, where he bought a farm. By 1811 he was reputedly the wealthiest African American in the United States and the largest employer of free African Americans. Despite his commercial success, Cuffe became increasingly disillusioned with the racial status of African Americans, and believed the creation of an independent African nation led by returnees from the United States offered the best prospects for free blacks and for African modernization.
Asked by the Society to assist in the resettlement of free blacks to the British colony of Sierra Leone, Cuffe became interested in the possibility of freed slaves’ returning to Africa. Inspired by British abolitionists who had established Sierra Leone, Cuffe began to recruit blacks to emigrate to the fledgling colony. On January 2, 1811, he launched his first expedition to Sierra Leone, sailing with an all-African American crew to Freetown. While there Cuffe helped to establish “The Friendly Society of Sierra Leone,” a trading organization run by African Americans who had returned to West Africa. Cuffe and others hoped the success of this enterprise would generate a mass emigration of free blacks to West Africa who, once there, would evangelize the Africans, establish business enterprises, and work to abolish slavery.
Later that year he journeyed to England, where he met with British abolitionists and sought support for his resettlement plans; he eventually secured a land grant. In 1812 Cuffe returned to the United States, at which time his cargo was seized on charges that he broke the 1807 Embargo Act, which restricted imports from Great Britain. Cuffe traveled to Washington, DC, where he met with U.S. President James Madison, who ordered the release of his cargo.
Cuffe continued to advocate for his colonization plans, and he initially gained support from a number of African American leaders. On his last trip in 1815–16, he transported nine families of free blacks from Massachusetts to Sierra Leone to assist and work with the former slaves and other local residents to develop their economy. Some historians relate Cuffe's work to the "Back to Africa" movement being promoted by the newly organized American Colonization Society (ACS). A group made up of both Northerners and Southerners, it was focused on resettling free blacks from the United States to Africa - eventually resulting in development of Liberia. The leaders of the ACS had sought Paul Cuffe's advice and support for their effort. After some hesitation, and given the strong objections by free blacks in Philadelphia and New York City to the ACS proposal, Cuffe chose not to support the ACS. He believed his efforts in providing training, machinery and ships to the people of Africa would enable them to improve their lives and rise in the world.
Cuff returned to the United States in late 1816 and sought backing for another voyage. However, his health soon began to decline, and he died the following year.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Hawaii enacted its law in 2023 in response to New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a 2022 Supreme Court case that created a new test for determining the constitutionality of gun control laws. Under Bruen, laws that regulate “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” violate the Second Amendment unless there is a “well-established and representative historical analogue.” This rigid standard calls on courts to invalidate all gun laws unless, in a judge’s estimation, people in the Founding era imposed similar restrictions for similar reasons.
Bruen immediately caused chaos in the lower courts, as it called the legality of previously uncontroversial gun laws into question. And in July 2024, after a federal appeals court ruled that laws disarming domestic violence offenders are unconstitutional because the country did not historically disarm domestic abusers, the Court began to backpedal. Writing for the eight-justice majority in United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that lower courts had “misunderstood” Bruen, and that modern gun safety laws need only a historical “analogue,” not a historical “twin.” (For what it’s worth, the author of Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented in Rahimi to say that the lower court had understood his opinion just fine.)
Wolford v. Lopez is the Court’s second confrontation with the absurdities produced by Bruen’s embrace of originalism, the idea that the Constitution has one true, historically discoverable meaning. At oral argument on Tuesday, the Republican justices were deeply disturbed that Hawaii defended its statute in part by pointing to an 1865 Louisiana law that prohibited people from entering private property with guns “without the consent of the owner or proprietor”—a statute that lawmakers originally adopted in order to disarm Black people. Nodding to the genesis of the “vampire rule” nickname, Justice Neil Gorsuch marveled at the fact that “a lot of people” who would normally react to historical anti-Black laws like “garlic in front of a vampire” are now citing them to promote gun restrictions. “I’m really interested in why,” he said.
The Bruen opinion, which Gorsuch joined, contains the answer to his question. State lawmakers digging up historical gun regulations to justify modern gun regulations are simply doing what the Court told them to do. It is not their fault that many historical gun regulations are racist.
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The ’90s and early 2000s were a time like no other. From Baby Phat jeans to chunky sandals, hip-hop beats and rhymes that actually made you think, to Black films and magazines that represented us in all our diverse glory, it’s understandable if you want to take a trip back.
If I Ruled the World, the debut novel from award-winning media executive and author Amy DuBois Barnett, takes readers on a grand, sizzling, and fun ride down memory lane to the golden age of that era through the eyes of protagonist Nikki Rose, a young Black magazine editor trying to get hers in a world that would rather she play small. After a stressful and adventurous climb through the ranks of a mainstream, mostly white publishing company in Manhattan, Rose trades the big leagues of magazines for a shot at being the boss at Sugar, a fledgling urban brand with serious potential.
Right out the gate, If I Ruled the World snatches readers up and flips them onto the proverbial bed with a spicy storyline that launches a journey centered on revenge and redemption. Ms. Rose may have crossed the wrong powerful man in the media industry just as she was on the come-up. While her love life may recover with the introduction of other men and relationships, there’s a lingering discomfort she must work through as she dodges her ex-boss at every turn.
One of the most engaging storylines in If I Ruled the World centers on Nikki Rose and her boyfriend Joseph, a dashing Wall Street prototype of a “high-value” Black man. Although she is a Harlem native and a proud HBCU alumna, there are days when the fullness of who she is seems to be minimized in Joseph’s presence. The book challenges readers to look beyond the surface in both love and life to better understand what truly drives our attachments.
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For Black people sensitive to cruel ironies, this week requires a lot of deep breaths.
Monday was the federal holiday dedicated to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the larger struggle for equality and freedom his name represents to most of us. But Tuesday, Jan. 20, marked the one-year anniversary of the large-scale attack on everything he embodied and stood for. It’s the day President Trump was inaugurated for a second time and almost immediately signed an Executive Order aimed at punishing anyone and anything that had to do with advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in our country. (Months later, he also attacked the foundation of the Civil Rights Act, another attempt at making anti-Black discrimination legal again.)
In December, the top anti-discrimination authority in the country, the EEOC, issued this message by video: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the E.E.O.C. as soon as possible.” The video linked to a fact sheet on “DEI-related discrimination.”
Trump’s Executive Order was cleverly designed to take aim first at civil servants. In the months following this oppressive EO, around 300,000 Black women lost their jobs. The Department of Education, which had a majority non-white staff, saw a 46% reduction in staff. More than one-hundred years after Woodrow Wilson did something eerily similar, here we are.
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The Oscar nominations 2026 are finally here—and after months of speculation and predictions and chatter, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has emerged as the belle of the ball. His auteur-driven vampire flick just got a staggering 16 Oscar nominations, breaking the record for most nods ever received by a single film. (That title previously belonged to a trio of films that each got 14 noominations: All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land.)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, the film previously believed to be this year’s best picture frontrunner, is nipping at Sinners’s heels with 12 nominations of its own. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a sentimental favorite from Norway, nabbed nine, while Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme—home of likely best actor winner Timothée Chalamet—got eight nods.
The nominees in all 24 Academy Award categories—including the brand-new best casting category—were revealed Thursday by actors Danielle Brooks (who was nominated for an Oscar herself in 2024) and Lewis Pullman at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills via livestream. Beyond Sentimental Value, several other non-English-language films also had a big morning; that film and Brazil’s The Secret Agent were nominated in the main best picture category as well as for best international feature, while Trier nabbed a best director nomination as well. The Secret Agent star Wagner Moura also made it into the best actor category, following his triumph at the Golden Globes.
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