Classic Black America (1919-1968) Mega Thread

[GoAggieGo.]

These threads are always my favorite. They don’t pop without appearances or drops from @IllmaticDelta @Supper @xoxodede @HarlemHottie @K.O.N.Y

 

[IllmaticDelta]

THE NEGRO RENAISSANCE FROM AMERICA BACK TO AFRICA: A STUDY OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AS A BLACK AND AFRICAN MOVEMENT

The Negro Renaissance (1920-1930) also known as the Harlem Renaissance was a notable historical phase and a cultural and political development of great significance in the making and maturation of a Black Personality in the United States. Worthy of a genuine renaissance as the name implied, the movement in spite of some weaknesses, laid the foundations for what is known as black culture, or precisely Negro culture, in the United States. Synchronically and diachronically it marked one of the highest points, and perhaps an unsurpassed apex of Negro American nationalism since the Emancipation of the African slaves. Profoundly negro was the Harlem Renaissance and powerful was the movement to the extent that it developed beyond the American boundary to reach Europe and Africa. African Renaissance which commenced in the 1930's and the most articulate and best expressions of which were Negritude and Pan-Africanism owed its emergence in part to the Harlem Renaissance.^ The investigation in this study has been focused around three major areas of interest: (1) Afro-American influence upon African literature, (2) Afro-American impact on the awakening of African consciousness, and (3) Afro-American contribution to the rehabilitation of African history and civilization. Afro-American influence on African literature came from the Negro ethnic literature which was produced by the Negro Renaissance, its major contributors being Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay. Afro-American political influence from the Renaissance period came from W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey through their writings and militancy.^ The study was conducted using historical research methodology and causal-comparative research methodology. The first methodology enabled us to bring together and closely examine the diverse historical elements which pertained to the awakening of African consciousness and the rehabilitation of African history and civilization. The causal-comparative methodology was mainly used to establish causal relationships between the literature of the Negro Renaissance and African literature.^ The study shows that Negritude and Pan-Africanism, and through them, African Renaissance, owed much to the Negro Renaissance, thus attesting to the evident contribution of Afro-Americans in the making of modern African consciousness. ^

"THE NEGRO RENAISSANCE FROM AMERICA BACK TO AFRICA: A STUDY OF THE HAR" by CODJO ACHODE

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Black Arts Movement (or BAM) was an African American-led art movement, active during the 1960s and 1970s.[3] Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride.[4]

Famously referred to by Larry Neal as the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of Black Power,"[5] BAM applied these same political ideas to art and literature.[6] The movement resisted traditional Western influences and found new ways to present the black experience.

The poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is widely recognized as the founder of BAM.[7] In 1965, he established the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School (BART/S) in Harlem.[8] Baraka's example inspired many others to create organizations across the United States.[4] While these organizations were short-lived, their work has had a lasting influence.

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[George's Dilemma]

You know little man on the right was a pistol to deal with.

 

[K.O.N.Y]

You know little man on the right was a pistol to deal with.

dude was a sergeant(looking at his insignia) so he was ready for that static


edit-didnt even peep lil bro swagging with the on the right lol

 

[Rell84shots]

at all those respectability politic c00ns. These pictures continue to prove that it doesn't matter how we dress, speak, or act they'll never see us as human.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Motown aka Hitsville

Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on January 12, 1959,[2][3] and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960.[4] Its name, a portmanteau of motor and town, has become a nickname for Detroit, where the label was originally headquartered.

Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned label that achieved crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels (including Tamla Motown, the brand used outside the US) were the most successful proponents of the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop appeal. Motown was the most successful soul music label, with a net worth of $61 million. During the 1960s, Motown achieved 79 records in the top-ten of the Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969.


Motown, or the Motown sound, is a style of rhythm and blues music[2] named after the record company Motown in Detroit, where teams of songwriters and musicians produced material for girl groups, boy bands, and solo singers during the 1960s and early 1970s. The music of Motown helped a small record company become the largest Black American-owned enterprise in the country and a national music industry competitor in the United States.[3]


The sound, a sophisticated strain of R&B and pop, is known for its polished songwriting with "candid" vocal delivery.[2] Musicians involved in the production of a Motown track constituted a mix of eclectic musical backgrounds, such as jazz[7] and rhythm and blues.[3] It had a crossover[4] appeal it was called "clean R&B that sounded as white as it did black."[7] Productions featured a strong rhythm, layered instrumental sound, and memorable hooks,[8] utilizing large bands, strings, and organs.[3] Motown producers adhered to the "KISS principle" (keep it simple, stupid).[9]

Principal architects of the style were the songwriting trio Holland–Dozier–Holland and record producer Berry Gordy.[4] Their series of hits produced for solo singers as well as groups dominated the American and British charts in the late 1960s and exerted an influence on music in the United Kingdom.[5] Some of the components of the music, such as the "gospel break"[10] and four-on-the-top beat (inverted), survived in disco later in the 1970s.[11]

Smokey Robinson describes the style in the following way:

People would listen to it, and they'd say, 'Aha, they use more bass. Or they use more drums.' Bullshyt. When we were first successful with it, people were coming from Germany, France, Italy, Mobile, Alabama. From New York, Chicago, California. From everywhere. Just to record in Detroit. They figured it was in the air, that if they came to Detroit and recorded on the freeway, they'd get the Motown sound. Listen, the Motown sound to me is not an audible sound. It's spiritual, and it comes from the people that make it happen. What other people didn't realize is that we just had one studio there, but we recorded in Chicago, Nashville, New York, L.A.—almost every big city. And we still got the sound.[12]

 

[Dynamite James]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[tuckgod]

 

[cole phelps]

A little-known episode in American history has been snatched from oblivion by Tulane University Professor Lance Hill. He has documented the pivotal events of the civil rights movement in his book, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Hill makes it clear that the civil rights movement would have been wiped out in the south by the Ku Klux Klan if it had not been for the Deacons. Before the rise of the Deacons for Defense and Justice (their full name), the prevailing ideology of the movement was a product of the white liberals in the north who had no concept of the terrorism the Klan could unleash.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Campaign (SCLC -- Martin Luther King's organization) were all proponents of meeting violence with pacifism. Jesse Jackson, then an aide to King, drank so deeply from this pacifistic well, that he is still (along with most of the black leadership in the US) anti self-defense and a supporter of gun control.

Some argued that if Ghandi could throw off British colonialism in India with a pacifistic strategy, it should work in the U.S. Hill points out that the British were ruling from afar and the English working class had no direct investment in maintenance of the empire. But in the south, everything was up close and personal. The Klan was part of a community, many of whom felt directly threatened by the elimination of segregation's two sets of laws -- one for blacks, the other for whites.

By the way, although Hill does not deal with the biblical aspect of segregation, it was very clearly a set of laws in conflict with Scripture. Exodus 12:49 requires that the same law apply to everybody alike. And in spite of the name, Deacons, the black self-defense group did not engage in any theological debates over whether the use of lethal force in self defense is biblical.

The Deacons first emerged as a visible self-defense force in Jonesboro, LA. From the very beginning the Deacons represented a new force in the civil rights movement -- leadership had passed from white northern liberals (and blacks who bought into that liberalism) to southern working class blacks who lived in the very communities where the Deacons were active.

The spring and summer of 1964 was a time of growing anti-segregation demonstrations in Jonesboro. The Klan responded at one point with a menacing parade through the black section of town – led by the chief of police. The Deacons informed the chief that if that happened again, "there would be some killing going on." The Klan never did that again.

Cross burning ended suddenly the night that a cross was set on fire in front of a clergyman's house. Shots rang out aimed at the Klan as the torch touched the cross. The Klan departed and never repeated that trick.

Hill found that the Deacons did not take just anybody into their ranks for this rather "high octane" volunteer work. They screened the applicants to make sure they were getting men who could handle the pressure and not go off half cocked.

During a desegregation effort at the Jonesboro High School, the authorities brought up fire trucks and prepared to hose the black students attempting to enter the school. The Deacons pulled up and four men publicly loaded shotguns and then made it plain that the lead was for the firemen if they turned the hoses on. The firemen wisely beat a retreat.

This was a very significant event. This was a self-defense effort in the spirit of the American War for Independence. The government was attempting to exercise illegitimate power (enforcing an unbiblical law which by this time also violated federal law) and it was repulsed by the use of community force -- by the militia, if you will.

The Deacons were in the great tradition of American freedom -- liberty is not given by tyrants and thugs, it is wrested from their hands by force.

Jonesboro saw one more exercise of defensive force before the Klan was finally convinced that they could not intimidate the black community. When Deacon Elmo Jacobs was driving a carload of white civil rights workers, they were fired upon and took a load of buckshot in the door of Jacobs' car. Jacobs returned fire and the Klan attack ended immediately -- and for good.

In Bogalusa, LA, Hill found that the police made no attempt to stop the attacks and in fact took pains to arrest blacks who had armed themselves in self defense. In other words, gun control was simply a tool of people control and had nothing to do with fighting crime. Had crime control been the concern, plenty of opportunities had come and gone to arrest the Klan.

FBI agent Frank Hicks warned Bogalusa blacks that any self-defense shooting by a black -- of a white -- would result in an arrest for murder. He did not explain where the FBI had any legal or constitutional authority for such a move, but the Deacons were not interested in a scholarly debate. They simply told Hicks that self defense is a constitutional right. Hicks got the message.

A lethal moment in Bogalusa shocked the Klan into the realization that blacks were no longer chattel punching bags. During a 1965 summer desegregation demonstration, white hecklers turned violent and threw a brick which struck Hattie Mae Hill. The white mob surrounded the car the Deacons were using to attempt an evacuation of the terrified girl.

As the mob threatened to break into the car, Deacon Henry Austin shouted that he had a gun. Then he fired a warning shot from his .38 into the air. The mob kept closing in. Austin then fired almost point blank into the chest of Alton Crowe who was in the front of the mob. While Crowe survived, the fun of beating up on blacks died that afternoon in Bogalusa.

All the white liberals in the north and their black allies, with all their clucking that defensive violence would only provoke more violence, had failed to get the feds to enforce their civil rights laws. Henry Austin and the Deacons succeeded. After all, if the police and the National Guard had not been mobilized, there might have been harm to Klansmen.

The battle raged for another year or so, but the Jonesboro and Bogalusa resistance efforts proved to be the turning point. Klan meetings became more likely to involve admiration of a colleague's tooth than to plot a terrorist act that might get Klansmen killed.

Addendum:

Second Amendment attorney Don Kates showed this column to a friend of his who is a Yale law professor in 2005. In the 1960's, he was an eye witness to the effectiveness of the Deacons for Defense, as this note to Don Kates states.

Don:

I was in New Orleans in August 1965, working as a just-graduated law student with the black law firm (Collins, Douglas, & Elie) who represented CORE. When I and a few other whites went to Bogalusa to help the bogalusa Voters League stage a protest march there, we were met outside of town by the Deacons and escorted to the BVL staging area by a black man in a pickup truck equipped with a shotgun prominently displayed, and although we were followed by whites who knew what we were there for, they did not stop our truck, presumably because they knew we were armed. We proceeded with the march amid much heckling, threats, and verbal abuse by the crowds of whites lining the route but the Deacons maintained order while the local police stood by brandishing weapons that could have been used against us rather than against the mob. I shall never forget the pride, courage, and hospitality displayed by the black community there, threatened by their townsmen but protected by their own Deacons. I have no doubt that their weapons had something to do with it

 

[cole phelps]

double

 

[Splakavellie504]

 

[cole phelps]

 

[cole phelps]