Dope thread
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Notable Alumni:
Alex Haley - acclaimed journalist and novelist (Roots) as well as Malcolm X autobiographer
Medgar Evers - assassinated NAACP leader
Steve McNair - former Titans and Ravens QB
Joseph Dunbar - diabetes researcher
Had to add this vid on here
I remember when this aired, and the Reconstruction pbs special they mention.
Mentors of ours had us watch snippets of Birth of a Nation when we were teens. Told us that we would understand it later.
That film was the biggest piece of propaganda bullshyt, and appealed to different things that whites feared: armed Black men, and Black men holding political office. That CBS clip shows the scene from the film depicting them as drunks and buffoons.
Since becoming an adult, have remembered this when seeing/reading about white people trying to undermine and question Blacks in leadership positions.
That film plays into this thread discussion in another way. Racist southerners were humiliated during Reconstruction, so BOAN revising history on screen encouraged them to revise History in real life. Making up shyt and adding fictionalized account of slavery, the Civil war and Reconstruction to books and school curricula. Putting up statues of confederate military leaders, and such.
Some of my mentors said that the end of Reconstruction/beginning of jim crow era turned the clock back so much that even with the CRM victories that AAs hadn't regained ground since then. And these were men who were Southern born and Northern raised.
The thoughts of what could have been makes covering that period of time complicated, so it's avoided sometimes.
Didn't fully understand when they were saying this to us, but I get it as an adult.
cool thread. ive seen his name before but i need to do a deep dive, this should get me started