I think it’s wrong for us to play the oppression Olympics on which skin tone had it “worse”. All of us have been through some fukked up shyt by way of just being “Negro”.
But I do want to address the idea that “dark skin” had it historically worse.
The Wilmington Coup, the first and only successfull coup in United States history, was instigated by a white woman named Rebecca Felton, a journalist with the Atlanta Constitution, and the wife of a Georgia populist politician, who had this to say on the matter of the wives of white farmers:
“When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue — if it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts — then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary.”
Alexander Manly (pictured above), the editor of the Wilmington Daily Record, the largest black daily publication at the time, published this in response to Felton....
.....We suggest that the whites guard their women more closely, as Mrs. Felton says, thus giving no opportunity for the human fiend, be he white or black. You leave your goods out of doors and then complain because they are taken away. Poor white men are careless in the matter of protecting their women, especially on the farms. They are careless of their conduct toward them and our experience teaches us that the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman’s infatuation, or the man’s boldness, bring attention to them, and the man is lynched for rape. Every Negro lynched is called a “big burly, black brute,” when in fact many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for their fathers, and were not only not “black” and “burly” but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them as is very well known to all.
Mrs. Felton must begin at the fountain head if she wishes to purify the stream.
Teach your men purity. Let virtue be something more than an excuse for them to intimidate and torture a helpless people. Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman than for the white man to be intimate with a colored woman.
You set yourselves down as a lot of carping hypocrites in fact you cry aloud for the virtue of your women while you seek to destroy the morality of ours. Don’t ever think that your women will remain pure while you are debauching ours. You sow the seed — the harvest will come in due time.
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I don’t want to even touch upon the entirety of this soul burning ether Manly delivered to white southerners, but it was so soul burning that the white men of Wilmington’s Democratic Party used it as ammo to commence a coup against the city’s black Republican office holders.
What I do want to highlight is the prevailing thought that most of the black men being lynched at the time under accusations of rape were light skin men.
Every Negro lynched is called a “big burly, black brute,” when in fact many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for their fathers, and were not only not “black” and “burly” but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them as is very well known to all.
So I don’t think it’s fair for us to play this oppression Olympics as we all have felt the pains of white supremacy. I’m not claiming that light skin people had it worse either, but that they suffered along with their darker skin brethren.
What happened to Manly? The black business leaders rejected him for his stinging response citing him as the reason for the Wilmington Coup and the violence that befell the city. Manly had no backing from the black community and was ran out of town while his business was burned to the ground.
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no business born rat soup eatin mfs
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