Official Black History Month Thread (2015)

[Poitier]

 

[TRY GOD]

 

[mson]

I hope you're all watching the Oscars right now.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Joshua Colas the youngest black chess master in history.

It takes a real chess master to be able to win a game without even looking at the board. That type of achievement takes a talent that Joshua Colas mastered at a young age. On top of that, at 12 years old, Colas became the youngest black chess master in history.

“My dad is really passionate about chess and he passed on this appetite to me when he first taught me the game at 7 years old,” he said on his Indiegogo campaign page. “The days when my dad could beat me in a game are far gone and that’s what he wanted. Now, the next step is for me to accomplish my goal of becoming the youngest African-American chess grandmaster in history.”

As of February, the ranks him No. 201 out of 57,000 players of all ages. For five straight years, Colas was selected to represent Team USA at the World Youth Chess Championships in Greece, Brazil, Slovenia, United Arab Emirates and South Africa. This year, Colas plans to play at the Chicago Open, World Open, D.C. International, U.S. Master Championship and several other tournaments.

In 2014, honored Colas on the New York Senate floor for his outstanding achievements in chess. And colleges have taken notice of his talents, too. Webster University in St. Louis and the University of Maryland have already offered full-tuition scholarships. But with two years left in high school, he’s holding out for MIT.

When he’s not dominating his latest opponent, he also loves to play the piano, basketball and video games. He’s a fan of Drake and says he sometimes listens to his music before a big match.

 

[Deadpool1986]

February 26: This Day in Black History

Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ album reached number 1 on this day and stayed there for 37 weeks and selling more than 40 million copies.

Thriller is the sixth [URL='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_album']studio album by the American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was released on November 30, 1982, by Epic Records, as the follow-up to Jackson's critically and commercially successful 1979 album Off the Wall. Thriller explores similar genres to those of Off the Wall, including pop, R&B, rock, post-disco, funk, and adult contemporary music.[1][2][3] Recording sessions took place between April and November 1982 at Westlake Recording Studios in Los Angeles, California, with a production budget of $750,000, assisted by producer Quincy Jones.

Of the album's nine tracks, four were written by Jackson. Seven singles were released from the album, all of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Three of the singles had music videos released. "Baby Be Mine" and "The Lady in My Life" were the only tracks that were not released as singles. In just over a year, Thriller became—and currently remains—the best-selling album of all time, with sales over 65 million copies worldwide according to various sources.[4][5][6]T In the United States, it also tied with the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) as the best-selling album at 29 million units shipped.[7] The album won a record-breaking eight Grammy Awards in 1984, including for Album of the Year.

Thriller enabled Jackson to break down racial barriers in pop music via his appearances on MTV and meeting with President of the United States Ronald Reagan at the White House. The album was one of the first to use music videos as successful promotional tools—the videos for "Thriller", "Billie Jean", and "Beat It" all received regular rotation on MTV. In 2001, a special edition issue of the album was released, which contains additional audio interviews, demo recordings and the song "Someone in the Dark", which was a Grammy-winning track from the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial storybook.[8] In 2008, the album was reissued again as Thriller 25, containing re-mixes that feature contemporary artists, a previously unreleased song, and a DVD, which features the short films from the album and the Motown 25 performance of "Billie Jean". That same year the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame along with Jackson's Off The Wall LP.

Thriller was ranked number 20 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003,[9] and was listed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers at number three in its "Definitive 200" albums of all time. The Thriller album was included in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of culturally significant recordings, and the Thriller video was included in the National Film Preservation Board's National Film Registry of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films". In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number one on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980s".[10]
[/URL]

 

[Deadpool1986]

Little Known Black History Fact: Jacqie Carpenter

The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, better known as the CIAA, is the oldest African-American athletic conference in the United States. In 2012, the CIAA named Jacqie Carpenter as its commissioner and is the first Black woman to hold the post.
Carpenter, a graduate of Hampton University in 1991 and later Temple University, was a basketball and volleyball player in the collegiate years. For several years, she coached both sports before embarking on a career as an executive for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. For over nine years, Carpenter served in directorial posts for the NCAA and oversaw events related to the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships.
The CIAA was founded in 1912 at Hampton Institute, now Hampton University and still based in the Virginia city. It was formerly known as the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association, but that was changed in 1950.

Some of the schools in the conference include Bowie State University, Chowan University, Lincoln University, Virginia State University, Fayetteville State University, and Winston-Salem State University.

A Division II conference, several of its former member schools have evolved to Division I status including Hampton University, Howard University, Morgan State University, and Norfolk State University, among several others.

Most major college sports, including golf, are represented in the CIAA.

 

[loyola llothta]

When poets meet: Jacques Roumain and Langston Hughes

In 1931, American poet Langston Hughes was on his way to Haiti from Cuba. While he possessed formal letters of introduction given to him by people such as James Weldon Johnson, who had himself visited the Caribbean island a bit more than a decade before in hopes of conducting an investigation for the NAACP, Hughes chose to enjoy his time in Haiti by avoiding most of the “polite élite” (Renda 2001, 261). Similarly to most Americans of his day, Hughes viewed Haiti as this exotic location few miles away from Miami and sought out adventures. He was particularly interested in the infamous “Vodou dances” that many American Marines had popularize with autobiographies relating to their experiences in Haiti (Renda 2001, 262). After two months of amusement in the country and while on his way back to the United States, he meet with Jacques Roumain, the great Haitian poet who had already established himself in his country as one of the most important literary and political figures of his day (Fowler 1981, 85). While their meeting was brief, and Roumain regretted that such a central black poet had not been given a proper reception for his visit (given that few knew that he was in Haiti), the two men still managed to form a lasting friendship.

It was perhaps Roumain’s activism that helped shape his friendship with Hughes. Like many Americans before him, Hughes recounted his experience in Haiti in the written form. In the August edition of the New York Amsterdam News, he strongly criticized the Haitian élite for being a “delightful but futile handful of intellectuals” (Cited from Fowler 1981, 85). While children of the élites indeed enjoyed the benefits of the best schools in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere, few were eager to apply their knowledge in practical ways that could impact the fate of what Hughes called the “people without shoes.” This criticism of the Haitian élite, at this time, must have injured many. Only three years before (1928), Jean-Price Mars, one of the most influential scholars of the country, published Ainsi Parla l’Oncle (So Spoke the Uncle) in which he criticized the Haitian élite for its lack of social usefulness. In Jacques Roumain however, Hughes saw one of the few individuals of the more privileged classes who had a real interest in the faith of poorer Haitians. Not only had Roumain espoused the Indigénisme movement, which sought to reclaim folk culture and Haiti’s African origins, his criticism of various Haitian political administrations made him the target of state repression which in turn gained him many trips to jail (where his health greatly deteriorated).

Hughes and Roumain meet at least two more times after their gathering in Haiti. In June of 1937, they were together in Paris. Both men spoke at the Second International Writers’ Congress held the same year (Fowler 1981, 86). The following year, Roumain communist activities materialized in yet another conviction, this time in Paris, but thanks friends he had made there, he was able to avoid jail. By September 1938, he was in New York (Fowler 1981, 86). In November 1939, Hughes and Roumain meet at banquet given in Roumain’s honour by the WYCM of Harlem (Fowler 1981, 86).

In 1944, with his health greatly weakened by his numerous imprisonments, Jacques Roumain died in Port-au-Prince. He was thirty-seven. While his death sent shock waves to many young Haitian radicals who felt they had lost an important leader, his passing also moved intellectuals and artists in and out of Haiti. Before his passing, Roumain had completed the manuscript for his seminal work Gouverneurs de la rosée (Masters of the Dew). With help from Roumain’s widow and in cooperation with Mercer Cook from Howard University, Langston Hughes worked on the first English translation of the novel.

While Hughes and Roumain untimely came from vastly different background and each evolved with its own particular artistic considerations, as stated by Fowler they “shared a vision of the function of art as the articulation of a people’s condition, as a reflection of the culture which that people develops to cope creatively and to express their hope for the fulfillment of universal human aspirations” (Fowler 1981, 88).

This last poem was written by Langston Hughes to pay tribute to the Haitian author following his death:

Always

You will be

Man

Finding out about

The ever bigger world

Before him.

Always you will be

…

Hand that links

Erzulie to the Pope

Damballa to Lenin,

Haiti to the universe

Bread and fish

To fisherman

To man

To me.

 

[loyola llothta]

Black Internationalism in the interwar period - James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP and the occupation of Haiti



“The overthrow of Guillaume and its attending consequences did not constitute the cause of American intervention in Haiti, but merely furnished the awaited opportunity. Since July 28, 1915, American military forces have been in control of Haiti. These forces have been increased until there are now somewhere near three thousand Americans under arms in the republic. From the very first, the attitude of the Occupation has been that it was dealing with a conquered territory. Haitian forces were disarmed, military posts and barracks were occupied, and the National Palace was taken as headquarters for the Occupation.” (Project Gutenberg’s Self-Determining Haiti, by James Weldon Johnson)

In July 1915, following the gory assassination of the Haitian President Guillaume Sam, American Marines headed by Admiral William Banks Caperton, occupied Port-au-Prince and finally took control of the entire country. Citing anarchy (as only between 1913 and 1915, four different administrations had taken the lead of the country) — but also, the possibility that American lives might be injured by the chronic instability in Haiti, Washington finally decided to take control of the situation by sending its troops. While most elements of the American press originally welcomed the occupation as an act of benevolence to the revolution-prove Caribbean island, as the years progressed and the closure of World War I brought about a new logic for “self-determinism” imbedded in Woodrow Wilson post-war world logic, many began to question Washington’s policy towards Latin America and most notably Haiti.

One of the first organizations to openly criticize U.S. Marine conduct in Haiti was the NAACP. In March of 1920, just a few months after being named field secretary of the association, James Weldon Johnson toured the island as a special envoy to conduct an investigation. While there, he meet with people of various social conditions, but most notably with Georges Sylvain,[ii] a famed Haitian poet and former diplomat whom he convinced to revitalize L’Union Patriotique, an organization formed to denounce the U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915. When Johnson came back to the United States, he recounted his findings in a series of articles for the liberal journal The Nation and for the NAACP’s own Crisis edited by WEB DuBois. As the passage quoted above illustrates, by the time of his investigation, Johnson was convinced the United States occupation of Haiti constituted both a continuation of American politics in the region but also a persistence of U.S. unequal bilateral relations with Haiti. The assassination of Guillaume Sam, as grotesque as it was, provided only an excuse to execute what “formal” diplomacy had not been able to achieve. As Johnson himself observers later in his analysis, Washington’s plans to occupy Haiti can, at the very least, be traced back to the previous year, when the Wilsonian administration was drawing plans with the Navy Department to that effect.

Johnson, James Weldon December 1, 1932. Courtesy of Brandeis University.

Following the publication of Johnson’s articles, public opinion about the occupation began to evolve. While some were still convinced the gesture was imperative to bring much needed technological innovations to Haiti, others like the editors of the New York Times, which up to that point, had largely supported of Washington’s policy in Haiti, began to express some signs of doubt and confusion.

That the NAACP’s interest for Haiti should have arisen at this time is not completely surprising. For many scholars, more than coinciding with a moment in history when, for the first time, an African-American was appointed field secretary of the organization, the association’s particular attention to Haiti can also be seen as part of a changing “global sensibility” towards blackness and Black Internationalism. Whether in Harlem, Paris, London or elsewhere, Black individuals from across the globe began to view their destinies as interconnected because of a worldwide race prejudice that, unlike what many believed before, had not been eliminated by the Great War. Though this new Black Internationalism should not be romanticized to the point of obscuring the fact that linguistic, political, social and educational barriers still alienated what would now be termed the “Black” or “African” Diaspora, nor should it assist to sanitizing major disagreements between those same individuals, this period stillconstitute an important moment for unforeseen solidarity.

Georges Sylvain, 1909. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France – Gallica.

When seen through in a framework of transnational Black commonality, Johnson analysis becomes easier to appreciate in its historical incidence. While to be sure, as noted by Mark Robert Schneider, the campaign against the Marine occupation did bring the NAACP much publicity inside the United States, Brenda Gayle Plummer maintains that:

“The spirit of the times made Haiti an important issue to blacks. The timing of the occupation was especially significant. The Bloody Summers of 1918 and 1919, the agitation for a federal anti-lynching bill, and the rise of miltant nationalism put racial matters at the forefront. Black Americans perceived the Haitians as related to themselves, and increasingly admired the Haitian tradition of resistance to servitude and fierce independence. It is therefore not surprising that the Haitian issue was featured prominently by the NAACP.”

Hence, in many ways, James Weldon Johnson and other prominent Black Americans began to perceive the occupation of Haiti of a dissemination of American racism.[x] While in Haiti, U.S. Marines soon began to segregate public spaces such as clubs, hotels and restaurants.Consequently, denouncing the occupation of Haiti not only became a matter of criticizing a violent feature of U.S. foreign policy; it was also part of recognizing that the same racial intolerance plaguing the life of American Blacks in the United States was now suffocating Haitians in their country.

In the end, while the Haitian question lost predominance by late 1920s and did not bring an end to the Marine occupation of Haiti, in many ways, the organization can be credited for embarrassing Wilson’s administration with their articles and for encouraging President Harding to call an investigation in 1921-1922. Moreover, this episode represents an important moment in the history of the association and on the development of twentieth century relations between African-Americans and Haitians.

 

[We Ready]

*edit


Not the proper place

 

[J-Nice]

Delete

 

[We Ready]

Why? In this thread of all places?

The klansman is sad about Black Hisory Month and the positivity in this thread. It was with a sheet on.


Wasn't meant to be disrespectful.....but if you feel it is then I will delete it. Delete your quote of me too.

 

[loyola llothta]

The black code

 

[loyola llothta]

Pinkster, the forgotten holiday

Africans lost much of their culture during slavery, but remnants of harvest celebrations remain in Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and Trinidad. New York once had its own spring festival celebrating life and filled with wild abandon.

Pinkster was rooted in the Christian celebration of Pentecost, or Whitsunday. It marked the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples after his Ascension. The Dutch colonists of 17th-century New Amsterdam—New York’s predecessor—imported the holiday from Europe, but it was New Amsterdam’s enslaved African population that, by the 19th century, would combine the holiday with traditional African celebrations, creating one of the city’s most popular faith-based festivals. Pinkster was well known between New York City and Albany, along stretches of New Jersey and out on Staten and Long Islands.

Pinkster is a forgotten holiday because it was outlawed. In 1811 in Albany, the state legislature passed the “Pinkster Law,” which prohibited any person from “march[ing] or parad[ing], with or without any kind of music” on any public street in that city during Pinkster.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1906 reflections on his youth paint a picture of Pinkster. “Another Dutch festival of universal observance was Pinkster, held in the springtide,” he wrote. “It grew to be especially the negroes’ day, all of the blacks of the city and neighboring country gathering to celebrate it. There was a great fair, with merrymaking and games of all kinds on the Common, where the City Hall park now is; while the whites also assembled to look on, and sometimes to take part in the fun.”

 

[loyola llothta]

Black Cowboys

- Cattle herding has existed in Africa for thousands of years
- Historians believe 1 in 4 Texan cowboys was African American (the number of Mexican cowboys was greater)
- Black cowboys were often expected to do more than their white colleagues
- Despite the hard work, being a black cowboy was better than being a slave
- They were often the first to cross dangerous rivers and got the horses ready to ride in the morning
- Hollywood played a major part in dismissing the roles of blacks in the west
- Some famous black Cowboys and girls: Stagecoach Mary, William Bill Pickett, Nat Love, Bass Reeves

Source: http://bit.ly/18iLkF0

 

[loyola llothta]

"What on earth is whiteness that one should desire it?" Read The Souls of White Folks here.