Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[Free White & 21]

The Dozens

doz·en
ˈdəzən/
noun
plural noun: the dozens

1. 1.
   a group or set of twelve.
   "a dozen bottles of sherry"
2. 2.
   an exchange of insults engaged in as a game or ritual among black Americans.

Urban dictionary
dozens
Playing the dozens is an African American custom in which two competitors -- usually males -- go head to head in a competition of comedic trash talk. They take turns "cracking on," or insulting, one another, their adversary's mother or other family member until one of them has no comeback. In the U.S., the practice can be traced back to chattel slavery, when violence among slaves was a property crime with potentially draconian consequences. Verbal sparring became a substitute for physical contention. While the competition on its face is usually light-hearted, smiles sometimes mask real tensions.

The dozens can be a harmless game, or, if tempers flare, a prelude to physical violence. But in its purest form, the dozens is part of an African-American custom of verbal sparring, of "woofin'" (see wolf ticket) and "signifyin'," intended to defuse conflict amicably, descended from an oral tradition rooted in traditional West African cultures. The dozens is a contest of personal power -- of wit, self-control, verbal ability, mental agility and mental toughness. Defeat can be humiliating; but a skilled contender, win or lose, may gain respect.

"Yo' mama," a common, widely recognized argumentative rejoinder in African-Amercan vernacular speech, is a cryptic reference to the dozens.

The term "the dozens" refers to the devaluing on the auctionblock of slaves who were past their prime, who were aged or who, after years of back-breaking toil, no longer were capable of hard labor. These enslaved human beings often were sold by the dozen.

The Dozens - Wikipedia

It is also known as "blazing", "hiking", "roasting", "capping", "clowning", "ranking", "ragging", "rekking", "crumming", "sounding", "checkin", "joning", "woofing", "wolfing", "sigging", or "signifying",[1][2] while the insults themselves are known as "snaps".[3][4]

A variety of explanations have been offered for the popularity of the Dozens. Its development is intertwined with the oppression African Americans encountered, first as slaves and later as second class citizens. John Dollard viewed the Dozens as a manifestation of frustration aggression theory, a theory that he helped develop. He hypothesized that African Americans, as victims of racism, have been unable to respond in kind towards their oppressors, and instead shifted their anger to friends and neighbors, as displayed in the strings of insults.[12]

In 1962, folklorist Roger Abrahams explained the Dozens not only as a reaction to racism, but also as a mostly male behavior in a society dominated by women, hence the concentration on targeting opponents' mothers. Abrahams believed the Dozens to be exaggeratedly masculine behavior that is unable to be expressed except in short bursts where a participant attacks his opponent's mother in order to cause him to reply in kind and attack his own mother.[2]

Both Dollard's and Abraham's views have been criticized for not properly considering the context in which the Dozens is used. Folklorist Alan Dundes asserts that by basing their approach on psychoanalytic theory, neither Dollard nor Abrahams considers that the Dozens may be native to Africa, although Dollard does not rule it out. Dundes points out that, in addition to similar forms of verbal combat found in Nigeria and Ghana, where many African Americans have ancestral roots, Bantu and Kisii boys have been observed dueling verbally by attacking each other's mothers.[13]

The game is also viewed as a tool for preparing young African Americans to cope with verbal abuse without becoming enraged. The ability to remain composed during the Dozens is considered a hallmark of virtue among many African Americans. Two sociologists write, "In the deepest sense, the essence of the dozens lies not in the insults but in the response of the victim. To take umbrage is to be considered an infantile response. Maturity and sophistication bring the capability to suffer the vile talk with aplomb at least, and, hopefully, with grace and wit."[1]

Nonetheless, many such contests do end in fights. Roger Abrahams states that when African Americans reach a certain age, between 16 and 26, the game loses much of its appeal and attempts to enter into sparring contests often result in violence.[2] John Leland writes that the loser of the Dozens is the one who takes his opponent's words at face value, therefore ending his own performance in the back-and-forth exchange.[8]

Great post

 

[Black Lightning]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Carter G. Woodson

Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950)[1] was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1915, Woodson has been cited as the "father of black history".[2] In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month.[3]

Historian Carter G. Woodson was born to poor, yet land-owning, former slaves in New Canton, Virginia on December 19, 1875. During the 1890s, he hired himself out as a farm and manual laborer, drove a garbage truck, worked in coalmines, and attended high school and college in Berea College, Kentucky—from which he earned a B.L. degree in 1903. In the early 1900s, he taught black youth in West Virginia. From late 1903 until early 1907, Woodson worked in the Philippines under the auspices of the US War Department. Woodson then traveled to Africa, Asia, and Europe and briefly attended the Sorbonne in Paris, France. In 1908, he received an M.A. degree in History, Romance languages, and Literature from the University of Chicago in Illinois. In 1912, while teaching in Washington, D.C., he earned his doctorate in history from Harvard University.

In 1915, Woodson published his first book, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 and co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). In 1916, he singlehandedly launched The Journal of Negro History, now The Journal of African American History. In 1918, Woodson published A Century of Negro Migration and became the principal of Armstrong Manual Training School, Washington, D.C. From 1919 until 1920, he was the Dean of Howard University’s School of Liberal Arts and from 1920 until 1922 he served as a dean at West Virginia Collegiate Institute. In 1921, he published The History of the Negro Church and founded the Associated Publishers, Inc. After founding the ASNLH, he also became active in black organizations like the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Friends of Negro Freedom, and the Committee of 200.

In 1922, he published the first edition of his popular The Negro in Our History and decided to commit his life’s work, routinely laboring 18 hours per day, to the ASNLH and the early black history movement. On July 18, 1922, he purchased a three-story, late-nineteenth century Italianate style row house in Washington D.C. located at 1538 Ninth Street, NW that became his personal residence as well as the office for the Associated Publishers, Inc. and the national headquarters of the ASNLH. During the 1920s, Woodson received tens of thousands dollars from several white philanthropists to fund the ASNLH’s various activities. In 1926, he launched Negro History Week. By the early 1930s, Woodson relied upon black communities throughout the country to maintain his organization’s activities. In 1937, he created The Negro History Bulletin mainly for children and schoolteachers and throughout the 1930s and 1940s Woodson spoke at countless elementary and high schools, Negro History Week events, and at the graduation ceremonies for many HBCUs. Once in Detroit, Michigan in February 1935, he addressed “more than three thousand persons.” During the 1930s and 1940s, Woodson wrote several hundred essays in leading black newspapers such as the New York Age, the Pittsburgh Courier from Pennsylvania, the Afro-American from Baltimore, Maryland, and the Chicago Defender. In 1933, he published The Mis-Education of the Negro. Though he wrote, co-authored, and/or edited more than twenty books, this is his most famous and enduring book. Woodson died suddenly from a heart attack in his “office home” on April 3, 1950. He never married and had no children. Deservingly dubbed “The Father of Black History,” he was, simply put, a black history institution builder.

Writing 'Mis-Education of the Negro'

In 1915, Carter G. Woodson helped found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (which later became the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History), which had the goal of placing African-American historical contributions front and center. The next year he established the Journal of Negro History, a scholarly publication.

Woodson also formed the African-American-owned Associated Publishers Press in 1921 and would go on to write more than a dozen books over the years, including A Century of Negro Migration (1918), The History of the Negro Church (1921), The Negro in Our History (1922) and Mis-Education of the Negro (1933). Mis-Education—with its focus on the Western indoctrination system and African-American self-empowerment—is a particularly noted work and has become regularly course adopted by college institutions.

In addition to his writing pursuits, Woodson also worked in a number of educational positions, serving as a principal for Washington, D.C.'s Armstrong Manual Training School before working as a college dean at Howard University and the West Virginia Collegiate Institute.

Carter G. Woodson







The Mis-Education of the Negro

The most imperative and crucial element in Woodson's concept of mis-education hinged on the education system's failure to present authentic Negro History in schools and the bitter knowledge that there was a scarcity of literature available for such a purpose, because most history books gave little or no space to the black man's presence in America. Some of them contained casual references to Negroes but these generally depicted them in menial, subordinate roles, more or less sub-human. Such books stressed their good fortune at having been exposed, through slavery, to the higher (white man's) civilization. There were included derogatory statements relating to the primitive, heathenish quality of the African background, but nothing denoting skills, abilities, contributions or potential in the image of the Blacks, in Africa or America. Woodson considered this state of affairs deplorable, an American tragedy, dooming the Negro to a brain-washed acceptance of the inferior role assigned to him by the dominant race, and absorbed by him through his schooling.

Moreover, the neglect of Afro-American History and distortion of the facts concerning Negroes in most history books, deprived the black child and his whole race of a heritage, and relegated him to nothingness and nobodyness. This was Woodson's conviction as he stated it in this book and as he lived by it. In his Annual Report of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History for the year ending June 30, 1933, the publication period of Mis-Education, he stated:

Regarding the Negro race as a factor in world culture rather than as an element in a sequestered sphere, the Director (Woodson) has recently made two trips to Europe to extend the study of the notice taken of Negroes by European authors and artists, and to engage a larger number of Europeans and Africans in the study of the past of the Negro. 1

Thus it is evident that the stress which Dr. Woodson places on historical research, writing, and teaching in this volume was not theoretical jargon. It represented rather, a firm belief; also a judgement of the available type of education that was so strongly oriented as to warrant his complete and selfless dedication to its betterment. This devotion became a crusade which, in the above instance, carried him to Europe in an effort to open new avenues for recreating and writing of the black man's past. This was in line with his basic charges against the omission by most historians of such an important part of history.

The Mis-Education of the Negro

 

[Black Lightning]

Forgotten Black Women of Early Hollywood Take Center Stage at CAAM


Hollywood has long had a problem with representation and diversity, especially concerning anyone female and nonwhite. In the first half of the 20th century, black women were largely relegated to playing mammy and jezebel roles. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic “Birth of a Nation” even depicted African Americans as rapists and imbeciles, leading to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

The black woman’s unfortunate standing in Hollywood history is why the California African American Museum’s “Center Stage: African American Women in Silent Race Films,” which runs until October 15, is so significant. It reveals how as early as 100 years ago, independent black filmmakers presented complex portrayals of women of color that major studios never fathomed. These silent gems depict black women exploring their religious faith, fighting for the rights of African Americans and in loving relationships. They underscore how even today Hollywood has much ground to cover in its depiction of black women.

Iris Hall as Eve Mason in "The Symbol of the Unconquered" (1920). USA. Directed by Oscar Micheaux | Courtesy of the California African American Museum

Among the exhibit’s treasures is the 1920 film “Within Our Gates,” the oldest surviving feature by an African American director. In it, director Oscar Micheaux makes a plea for society to recognize African Americans as equals while highlighting the plight of black women in particular. The silent film asserts that “a woman, though a Negro, was a HUMAN BEING.”

Starring Evelyn Preer as an educated black woman trying to fund a school for sharecroppers’ children, “Within Our Gates” tackles a number of controversial social issues, including suffrage, lynching and miscegenation. It belongs to the cinematic canon known as race films, which featured black casts and were designed for black audiences. With its complex heroine — Sylvia Landry endures heartbreak, betrayal and predatory men —“Within Our Gates” is one of five films featured, including 1921’s “By Right of Birth” and 1920’s “The Symbol of the Unconquered.”

Evelyn Preer as Sylvia Landry in "Within Our Gates" (1920). USA. Directed by Oscar Micheaux | Library of Congress, Courtesy of the California African American Museum

Tyree Boyd-Pates, CAAM’s history curator and program manager, curated the exhibit, along with the UCLA Digital Humanities Department.

“I wanted to tackle some of the discussions about film and diversity contemporarily,” Boyd-Pates said. “The films feature nuanced and exemplary portrayals of black women that I felt would resonate with audiences today.”

The chance to introduce Evelyn Preer to a new generation, especially young black filmmakers, excited the curator. A Chicagoan by way of Vicksburg, Miss., Preer made her film debut in Micheaux’s 1919 film “The Homesteader.” Before her death from pneumonia at age 36, the actress starred in 16 films, including one opposite Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich in 1932’s “Blonde Venus.” Preer belonged to the Chicago theater troupe the Lafayette Players, and her theatrical training led to praise from white and black critics alike once she transitioned to film. “She moved very fluidly from stage to screen and became one of the most recognizable black actresses of her day,” Boyd-Pates said. “She was known [among blacks] as the ‘first lady of the screen.’”


Preer may have been the first black woman movie star, but film historians lament that today she lacks the name recognition of her white female contemporaries, such as Clara Bow or Mary Pickford.

“For my students, especially students of color, they find it really shocking that no one had told them there was a history of black women determined to be on film in a dignified way that stretched back more than 100 years,” said Miriam Posner, program coordinator and a core faculty member of UCLA’s Digital Humanities Department. “They felt really strongly that people should have told them about this. My students felt like they need to honor that work that had gone unrewarded.”

In “Within Our Gates,” Sylvia Landry not only works to uplift the black community while donning stylish clothing and accessories but also has a loving family and a caring man who courts her — a contradiction to prevalent notions of black women in early Hollywood.

In race films, African American characters counter harmful stereotypes while engaging in work to benefit the black community, Posner said.

“These are films for black people,” she continued. “In no way are they about the concerns of whites or what white people are going to think.”

For the past few years, Posner and her students have sorted through UCLA’s George P. Johnson Negro Film Collection of cinema created from 1916 to 1977. They organized a catalogue of race films because many of these works don’t appear in the Internet Movie Database, the popular online archive of film and television content. Posner and her team aimed to write down the names of every race film they could find. CAAM learned about their efforts and chose them as partners for “Center Stage.”

While the exhibit features two films by Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific black filmmaker of the period, it also features Frank Peregrini’s 1921 standout “Scar of Shame.” The film broaches the subject of sexual abuse and the class divisions in the black community. It stars Lucia Lynn Moses as Louise in a performance that moved CAAM curatorial intern Anastasia Gershman.

Lucia Lynn Moses as Louise and Norman Johnstone as Eddie Blake in "The Scar of Shame" (1929). USA. Directed by Frank Perugini | Courtesy of the California African American Museum


Gershman also belonged to the group of UCLA students who worked on the George P. Johnson collection.

“She rocks this role,” Gershman said of Moses. “She has this wonderful, beautiful round face, reminiscent of Clara Bow, deeply expressive eyes. She’s one of those actresses of the period who can really dig deep inside of themselves and access their emotions. This is just a remarkable performance.”

CAAM is also exhibiting 1941’s “Blood of Jesus.” Directed by Spencer Williams, the film stars Cathryn Caviness as Martha, a newly baptized woman who must choose between Christ or worldly temptations. Caviness’ delicate frame, wide eyes and heart-shaped face remind one of contemporary actress Thandie Newton. These traits illuminate Martha’s anguish as the battle for her soul unfolds. The film features old Negro spirituals such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and striking images of a black congregation in the rural South. Director Williams, who went on to star in controversial TV show “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” also appears in the film as Ras, Martha’s husband.

Filmmaker Julie Dash has cited “Blood of Jesus” as an inspiration for a scene in her 1991 film “Daughters of the Dust.” And a scene in Denzel Washington’s “Fences,” in which churchwomen in white pray over Viola Davis’ Rose, calls to mind the classic race film.

"The Blood of Jesus" (1941). USA. Directed by Spencer Williams. | Courtesy Sack Amusement Enterprises and the California African American Museum

While the actresses in these movies may have given noteworthy performances, little information exists about their lives, with the exception of Preer and Anita Thompson. Thompson starred in “By Right of Birth,” the story of a woman whose white adoptive parents hide her black ancestry from her. In addition to being an actress, Thompson was a model, dancer, nurse, teacher and psychologist. In 2014, Harvard University published her memoir, “American Cocktail: A ‘Colored Girl’ in the World.”

The fact that early black actresses have largely been forgotten doesn’t surprise Aminah Bakeer Abdul-Jabbaar, assistant professor in the Pan-African Studies Department of California State University, Los Angeles. Abdul-Jabbaar teaches early race films to her students.

“The industry as a whole devalues black labor and, of course, black women,” she said. “We’re the mules of America. Hollywood has a problem with gender, and we’re hit with double oppression.”

In fact, the first race films debuted simply due to the entrepreneurial efforts of black filmmakers such as Micheaux, who raised money to get his movies made. Once race films began to make money, the studios took notice and developed race films of their own.

As conversations about diversity and inclusion in Hollywood persist, Boyd-Pates said African Americans should know about the resourcefulness of early black filmmakers who told the stories they wanted to tell without studio backing. As early as 1916, brothers Noble and George Johnson’s Lincoln Motion Picture Company began releasing race films.

“The legacy it’s left us with is the spirit of entrepreneurship and upliftment from communities of color,” Boyd-Pates said. “They had the agency and autonomy to create the representation of blacks they wanted.”

Many early race films have disappeared or have been found just partially intact. That includes “Within Our Gates,” thought to be lost until a copy, titled “La Negra,” turned up in the Spanish Film Archive in Madrid in 1990. Just a handful of the original English intertitles remained, with Spanish intertitles replacing the rest.

CAAM’s exhibit “Gary Simmons: Fade to Black,” which opened July 12, will allude to the erasure of race films. The CalArts graduate will create a painting in the museum’s grand lobby featuring the titles of roughly 30 vintage films in the genre. Simmons’ work focuses on signature erasure techniques in which he draws in white chalk and then smudges the images. They take on a hazy, haunted cast as a result.

"Gary Simmons: Fade to Black" at the California African American Museum | Tito Molina/HRDWRKER

Gary Simmons works on his erasure process for "Gary Simmons: Fade to Black" at the California African American Museum | Tito Molina/HRDWRKER


“On one level, it’s kind of eerie, the erasure effect,” said Naima J. Keith, CAAM’s deputy director, of exhibitions and programs, and curator of the exhibit. “It’s also a kind of blurring of the drawing that makes it more mysterious. There’s this sense of movement, that time is fleeting, a sense of fading memory. It energizes the words.”

“Fade to Black” will be situated just 10 feet away from “Center Stage,” allowing museumgoers the chance to ponder the provocative names of race films and the woman-centered cinema in this canon.

“These films are really important,” Gershman said. “They offer a window into the black female experience that didn’t really exist elsewhere. It’s a struggle to find roles of black women without pejorative characterizations, and these women were fighting these stereotypes as much as black actresses are fighting these stereotypes now. And they’re doing it beautifully. There’s beauty in the struggle because they never give up.”

 

[Black Lightning]

4 Gold & 1 Bronze

 

[Black Lightning]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Weeksville, Brooklyn: The Remarkable Story of One of America's First Free Black Towns. The Inspiring Story of Weeksville, One of America’s First Free Black Communities

Imagine being told your entire life that you were not really a citizen of your town or country. Imagine being treated as an inferior, offered only the most menial of jobs, and told to be happy with your lot in life. Imagine being banned from churches, stores and theaters, even cemeteries, because they did not serve “your kind.”

Now imagine finding a town where you were accepted — a town where you were able to build your own home, worship in your own church, buy from stores owned by people like you, and raise and educate your children in a place where they would be welcome. A town where you could reach old age and pass on in dignity and equality.

For Brooklyn’s African-American population in the 19th century, some of whom were recently freed from slavery, this remarkable town was called Weeksville. And it survives today in bits and pieces, some of which now comprise a historic center in present-day Crown Heights. Here is its story.

Hunterfly Road houses with St. Mary’s Hospital in background, 1920s. Photo via Brooklyn Public Library

Slavery, Abolition and the Founding of Weeksville

By the time the Revolutionary War began, most of Central Brooklyn belonged to the Bedford branch of the Lefferts family, who were among the largest landowners — and slaveholders — in Kings County.

The Lefferts’ vast estate was farmed with the help of tenant farmers and, of course, slaves.

After much effort by abolitionists black and white, slavery was abolished in New York State in 1827. By the 1830s, the newly formed City of Brooklyn began laying out a comprehensive street grid, mapping areas that would long remain farmland.

1888 map showing Hunterfly Road houses. Photo via New York Public Library

Around the same time, John Lefferts began selling off parcels of his estate, starting with the 8th Ward, as far eastward as one could go and still be in Brooklyn. (Brownsville and East New York were then a part of Flatbush — still an independent town within Kings County.)

Henry C. Thompson, a leader in the African-American abolitionist movement, purchased 32 lots from the Lefferts holdings. He sold those lots to other African Americans, including two bought by longshoreman James Weeks, who built himself a house and started a community that would bear his name — Weeksville.

Black-owned businesses in Weeksville. Photo via Weeksville Heritage Center

The Growth and Decline of Weeksville

By the 1850s, Weeksville had become a successful community of more than 500 people, boasting more opportunity for homeownership, employment and success for its black residents than any other part of Brooklyn, and well beyond. It was a safe haven during the Draft Riots of 1863.

The town’s borders were approximately East New York, Ralph, Troy and Atlantic avenues. James Weeks’ home was located near Schenectady Avenue and Dean Street.

Weeksville had its own churches, schools and businesses. It supported the Zion Home for Colored Aged and the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum. It had its own cemetery and its own newspaper called The Freedman’s Torchlight.

Dr. Susan Smith McKinney-Steward. Photo via Wikipedia

Weeksville was home to many of Brooklyn’s black abolitionist leaders. Dr. Susan Smith McKinney, the state’s first African-American female doctor, was born here, and the town was home to New York City’s first African-American police officer.

By the 1880s, development began to catch up to Weeksville. The street grid was expanded east, often running through homes and farm stands. Weeksville’s cemetery was destroyed for Eastern Parkway.

1880s tintype found in a Weeksville home. Photo via Weeksville Heritage Center

Wood-framed houses were replaced by masonry row houses. The city of Brooklyn grew up, around and through the town. Weeksville slowly disappeared, as its residents adjusted or left.

By the 1930s, Weeksville had been almost totally absorbed by Brooklyn, and by the ’70s it was just another part of the huge neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant. Though Weeksville is now within Crown Heights’ borders, until the ’80s it was considered to be Bed Stuy.

But some people still remembered the small town.

Weeksville houses today. Photo by Suzanne Spellen

Weeksville’s Rediscovery and Rebirth

In 1968, historian James Hurley and local resident and pilot Joseph Haynes were doing a research project at Pratt, where they found references to Weeksville in 19th-century histories of Brooklyn.

They took to the air and saw what was left of Hunterfly Road, one of Weeksville’s streets, and the row of four forgotten houses on it, nestled amid the much larger neighborhood. It was like finding buried treasure.

But time was of the essence, as the city was preparing to tear down the entire area for new housing.

Their preservation efforts led to the Weeksville Project, and with the unflagging support of the community, archeologists and historians, the houses were saved and began the slow process of preservation and protection.

A 1970s archeological dig at the Hunterfly Road Site, in Weeksville. Photo via Weeksville Heritage Center

The Weeksville Project evolved into the Society for the Preservation of Weeksville and Bedford Stuyvesant History; its first president was Joan Maynard, who was already legend in the Bed Stuy community.

Maynard made the Weeksville houses her mission and secured city, state and national landmarking. She also was a tireless fundraiser for the site, and the Society purchased the houses in 1973.

By 2005, the site was renamed the Weeksville Heritage Center. The houses had suffered vandalism in the ’80s, and three were renovated to depict specific time periods. One house was remodeled as offices and a small exhibit space.

Photo: Cate Corcoran

A Modern New Building for the Weeksville Heritage Center

It was soon apparent that the Center needed a much larger building to expand its mission, which finally happened in 2014 after a huge fundraising campaign and years of financial delays.

Photo by Cate Corcoran

Caples Jefferson Architects designed a starkly modern L-shaped visitor’s center that hugs the outer edge of the property; in the center is a large meadow garden designed by Elizabeth Kennedy.

The mixture of old and new, modern and early-19th century, works. Caples Jefferson’s award-winning design includes subtle decorative elements evoking African design motifs, deftly referencing the distant past but not beating you over the head with it.

Photo by Cate Corcoran

Visiting the center is like stepping into the country in the middle of a city.

One can imagine the area’s agrarian past, when Weeksville’s residents raised chickens and grew vegetables on their land. It’s still happening today.

The Center maintains a market garden, run by local teens and volunteers. The produce, eggs and honey are sold at the center’s market, just as they were 160 years ago.





In 2016, the center provides valuable programs that educate visitors about life for African-American Brooklynites in the 19th century. They also have an impressive collection of artifacts and research materials for scholars.

Guided tours of the houses are offered on select weekday afternoons. The center also has frequent celebrations of historic and contemporary African-American culture, which may include dance, tours, live music, film screenings, food and face painting.

The increased funding and the new facilities will enable researchers, archeologists and historians to discover more of the depth and breadth of the town, as well as the rest of Brooklyn’s rich African-American history.

Weeksville is an important part of American history, and the center should be a must-see for everyone.

Weeksville, Brooklyn: The Remarkable Story of One of America's First Free Black Towns

Weeksville was a nineteenth century free black community located in what is now the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, New York. It is remembered today as a historic site for its community programs, urban employment opportunities, and the promotion of racial respectability. In 1838, only 11 years after slavery ended in New York, Weeksville was formed by a free black man named James Weeks when he purchased a substantial area of land from Henry C. Thompson, another free black man. Weeks then encouraged other blacks to settle on the property as he sold lots to the newcomers who named the community Weeksville.

Weeksville quickly became a self-sufficient and thriving free black community. It also became a refuge for southern blacks fleeing slavery and for northern blacks who desired to escape racial violence and draft riots in New York and other cities. By 1850, it was the second largest community for free blacks in pre-Civil War America.
The community was known for employing blacks in urban occupations and it was a community where black doctors, professionals, and entrepreneurs were able to practice skills and develop clientele. Weeksville residents established churches, schools, benevolent associations, an elderly home, and had an orphanage by the 1860s. In addition to housing a variety of black-owned businesses, Weeksville saw the creation of The Freedman’s Torchlight, of one of the country’s first African-American newspapers.

Weeksville not only provided opportunities for blacks to attain entrepreneurial success, but also offered political and intellectual freedoms and was a site for abolitionist action. Community members participated in a wide range of anti-slavery action and promoted equal rights for free blacks, including voting rights campaigns, the black convention movement, and resistance to the 1863 New York City Draft Riots. After the civil war it encouraged Freedmen’s schools in the South and supporting Black Nationalists aspirations across the North. By the post-Civil War era, Weeksville had become an emblem of community empowerment and racial pride. By 1900, the community was home to over 500 families comprised of doctors, ministers, tradesmen, teachers, and laborers.

Even though the community existed until the 1930s, it was overtaken by the growth of Brooklyn and almost forgotten amidst urban renewal plans of the 1950s when many of its old buildings were replaced by newer structures. In 1968, subway engineer James Hurley and pilot Joseph Haynes rediscovered and worked to save four wooden cottages, now known as the Hunterfly Road Houses, that are now the only existing remnants of 19th Century Weeksville. The homes were threatened by demolition plans shortly after their discovery but Joan Maynard, the first Executive Director of the Weeksville Society, was successful in leading youth groups and members of the community in a campaign to preserve the houses. Weeksville achieved landmark status in 1971. In 2005, the four homes were fully restored and open to the public.

 

[Guvnor]

My baby Alison Felix out here winning big

 

[Rhapscallion Démone]

Little Known Black History Fact: Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green

D.L. Chandler

Author Fawn Weaver learned about the story of a Black man that reportedly taught Jack Daniel the art of distilling in Lynchburg, Tennessee. With her research efforts, she uncovered that there was more to the man named Nathan “Nearest” Green and has created a foundation to honor his whiskey-making legacy.

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, the top-selling American Whiskey brand in the world, has long told the tale of its origin started with a white moonshine maker. However, the company revealed last year that a former slave might have been the actual mastermind behind the hard stuff.

The original story is that preacher and moonshine man Dan Call took in a young, orphaned Jack Daniels and taught him the family business. The pair reportedly went into business with one another in the late 1800s, with Daniels splitting from his mentor and found fame at the turn of the century.

Nearest Green or “Uncle Nearest,” was one of Call’s slaves. According to oral history, documents and other informational tidbits, Green actually taught Call how to make the hooch. Daniels, being a quick study, reportedly adopted what he learned from the men to make his own barrel-aged brand of spirits.

Weaver, who wrote the best-selling book “Happy Wives Club,” found that not only did Green pass on his knowledge but that he worked alongside Daniel after the Civil War ended. She also uncovered other truths such as the proper spelling of his nickname Nearest instead of Nearis, and also found his actual first name after months of research.

Across the Deep South, it is known that slaves worked in distilleries and helped improve or create several techniques for the production of liquor. Some historians allege that white moonshine men abused their authority and stole some of the slaves’ liquor-making recipes. In the case of Green and Daniel, there was a different dynamic as Daniel never owned slaves and considered Green his mentor.

Skeptics of the Green story say it is nothing more than a convenient tale and marketing tool, given that Jack Daniels was celebrating its 150th year in 2016. The brand gave a slight nod to Green but nothing to the level Weaver is undertaking.

Jack Daniel’s finally gave Green his proper title as its first master distiller because of Weaver’s efforts. Weaver’s Nathan Green Foundation will push to promote Green’s history and a planned memorial park in Lynchburg will be coming in the future. She also released her own brand of whiskey, Uncle Nearest 1856, with proceeds going towards the park and foundation.


Little Known Black History Fact: Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green

 

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What Labor Day should mean to black people

What Labor Day should mean to black people | theGrio

Labor Day is viewed as the last long weekend to enjoy the company of friends before the end of summer. Just like many other things that we take for granted now, Labor Day began as a holiday for American workers to gain relief from the harsh working conditions they lived under during the middle of the Industrial Revolution. As I reflect on Labor Day and the importance of black labor in building this country, two things come to mind. First, from a historical perspective, we are among one of the first generations of blacks that can do what they love and still make a living doing so. Second, people making up the “labor” have always been less valued than those individuals who are owners.

Make sure you are not only a laborer forever — set out to own valuable assets as well. My goal with this essay is to give a history of how black labor contributed to the early building of the United States, so we can appreciate where we came from; but let’s never forget the potential of where we can go as wealth builders — not just paid workers.

Slavery in America

Slavery can be traced back many thousands of years. Dr. David P. Forsythe states in one of his works that “at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom.” This is a startling number. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this free labor was America.

In a capitalist society, a few things need to occur to create the opportunity to generate profits. There needs to be a demand for what you are selling, infrastructure (resources) to produce the product, and labor to work the resources. In a free market, the price of labor is determined by competition between workers who gradually raise the price of their services until it hits its natural state, or market value. Furthermore, workers voluntarily choose to work for certain wages under difficult conditions, if they feel that the extra money outweighs the circumstances endured while laboring.

Through slavery, an entire race of people was systematically denied these abilities as wages for slaves were artificially kept at zero and slaves could not choose whether they wanted to work. And their owners — and thus the country — benefitted tremendously economically, without that wealth “trickling down” to the African-Americans who labored to physically create it.

Of course, the results of this can still be felt today. For centuries, blacks were paid below market value, which prevented them from investing in the resources needed for owning a piece of the pie. Whites were able to reinvest their profits for many generations, whether it be in property, human capital, or technology.

Blacks much more recently gained this luxury. Yet, the fact that whites had a 300-year head start in creating generational wealth is often ignored when discussing economic inequalities in this country today.

Labor Day certainly has a different meaning for African-Americans in this context. One day off can never compensate for the hundreds of years of unpaid work, and the chance, forever lost, to pass on the value of labor for generations.

Reconstruction and The Industrial Revolution

There was a glimmer of hope of equality for African-Americans during the years immediately following the Civil War called the Reconstruction. This was a time when numerous black officials were elected to public office while the south was occupied by Union soldiers. However, the majority of blacks were still suffering in all facets of life.

Sharecropping became the new way that people in power kept control. Instead of being directly forced to work, black sharecroppers’ options were greatly limited to the point that this farming system became de facto slavery. Former slave owners saw sharecropping as an opportunity to take advantage of the uneducated freed slaves by drawing up contracts that saw these workers give up as much as 70 percent of the crop harvested.

Being kept in ignorance meant remaining almost free labor. Another lesson for blacks on Labor Day.

But, African-Americans weren’t the only laborers who had conflicting interests with property owners at the end of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing at this time. There were laborers of all races working 16 hour days in sweatshops all around the nation. This was good for the total economic vitality of the country, but led to a situation in which very few people got rich at the expense of the masses. These conditions inspired some workers to organize labor unions to balance the power between the capitalist owners and labor.

 

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Nature of Ethnicity

Canadian women using
clothing to symbolize
their Greek ethnicity


All around the world, members of ethnic and so-called "racial" groups commonly use ethnic symbols as badges of identity to emphasize their distinctness from other groups. Language, religion, and style of dress are common ethnic symbols. In addition to such cultural traits, biological characteristics may be important at times as well. The Canadian women shown on the right are using their clothing to strongly communicate their Greek identity on a special occasion.

African Americans

African American ethnicity is usually defined by dark brown skin color. However, shared experience and dialect are often as important since the range of skin coloration is quite broad among African Americans today due to centuries of interbreeding with Europeans, Native Americans, and, more recently, Asians.

Ethnic group unity needs to be reinforced by a constant emphasis on what traits set the members apart from others, rather than what they share in common with the outsiders. This is a universal means ofboundary maintenance, or defense, between ethnic groups. Ethnic symbols are convenient markers for making "we-they" distinctions and are the focal points for racism and other unpleasant manifestations of ethnocentrism . They also mask in-group differences. In the United States. for instance, they help propagate the myth that there is a single, coherent American Indian ethnic group. The same goes for Hispanics, European Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders.

Whether or not individuals in minority ethnic or "racial" groups prominently emphasize their ethnic symbols may vary with the situation. They may not emphasize them if they are trying to identify with or join the dominant culture in their society. That is to say, they may de-emphasize the things that make them different if they wish to assimilate into the dominant ethnic group. For instance, the children of many immigrants to the United States prefer to speak in the local colloquial dialect of English rather than in their parents' native language. Likewise, they choose to dress and act like other Americans in their schools. This has the effect of making them less different from their neighbors while estranging them from their parents.

Assimilation can be speeded up by marriage across ethnic or "racial" boundaries. As intermarriage becomes common, ethnic/racial differences often are progressively blurred. Not surprisingly, many ethnic/racial group organizations are opposed to intermarriage--they see it as a tool of ethnocide .

The effect of intermarriage on reducing ethnic group identity can be seen in the reduction of discrimination against each of the European immigrant group in North America after several generations. In the case of Jews, discrimination lasted longer but has also reduced dramatically with the progressive increase in marriage to non-Jews. In the early 1960's, only 6% ofAmerican Jews married outsiders. By 1985, the rate had grown to nearly 25%. By the mid 1990's it was 52%. Over these four decades, discriminatory barriers to Jews largely disappeared. Of course, there were social changes in America that also contributed to the reduction in institutionalized discrimination.

"Interracial" marriage

African Americans have had a relatively low frequency of intermarriage, though this is beginning to change also. In 1970, only 2.6% of their marriages were with European Americans. By 1993, the rate had increased to 12.1%. The number of intermarriages by African American men has been 3½ times higher than those by African American women. However, the intermarriage rate for African American women is now growing at a relatively faster rate.

Asian and Latin Americans have a comparatively high intermarriage rate with other ethnic/racial groups. Among Asian Americans, 12% of the men and 25% of the women have intermarried with others, especially European Americans. The relatively high rate of intermarriage for Asian and Latin Americans likely is an indication of a lower resistance to assimilation in their communities and a greater acceptance of them by the dominant European American society. However, assimilation is not easy or even possible for members of some minority groups since they are subject to morepersistent stereotyping and discrimination. This is generally the case with African Americans today. Partly in response to this rejection, assimilation has ceased being a desirable goal of many African Americans.

When ethnic differences are strongly emphasized, as in the case of "black" and "white" Americans today, it inevitably leads to increased polarization. It also leads to false notions of biological and cultural homogeneity within these groups. In addition, it results in a selective blindness in looking at the past. Polarized people easily fall into the trap of justifying an interpretation of history that favors their own group and demonizes others. This occurred in a particularly sinister way in Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990's, after the breakup of Yugoslavia. Previously peaceful and overtly friendly Muslims, Croats, and Serbs living there brutally slaughtered each other to repay perceived past wrongs and to "ethnically cleanse" the land.

Filipino Americans

The American mass media and government historic preoccupation with black/white relations has tended to make other smaller ethnic groups relatively invisible and discountedtheir concerns. This is ethnic discrimination by not acknowledging the existence of people and not taking them into consideration. An example of a largely overlooked ethnic group is the unobtrusive Filipino population concentrated in Southern California. Few Americans realize that they are the 2nd largest recent immigrant group in the country.


Forms of Discrimination

Prejudice and discrimination based on presumed ethnic/racial differences are universal--they are found in various forms in all societies. Acts of prejudice range all the way from benign classification of people to cruel persecution. However, the term racism has come to be imprecisely applied to all of these behaviors. Kwame Appiah, a British and Ghanaian scholar of African American issues, has made a useful distinction between kinds of prejudicial behavior. He uses the term racialism for the more benign forms of discrimination such as categorizing people for reference purposes on the basis of age, gender, and ethnicity/race. He reserves the term racism for harmful discrimination such as not hiring someone because of their "race." This distinction will be followed here.

We are all racialists. It is normal to categorize people in our daily lives based on a number of traits. It can be a useful aid in predicting behavior. For instance, when you are lost in a strange city, you very likely approach an adult rather than a young child for help because you surmise that the adult will know more. Similarly, when you want to take an out-of-town guest to a good traditional Mexican restaurant, you may ask a Mexican American friend for recommendations. However, when categorizing leads to behavior that harms another person, it becomes racism.

Recent hotspots of severe racism
No one ethnic/racial group has the monopoly on racism. Even members of groups that are aggressively discriminated against by others may think and act in a vicious racist manner. Racism has been a common element in American history. However, the most pervasive racist acts are not being carried out in America today. Far from it. Over the last twodecades, they have been in such places as the former Yugoslavia, Israel, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Rwanda, South Africaand Sudan. In all of these countries, ethnic identities have been strongly emphasized as a government policy. The result has been the rise of tribalism and even genocide in some regions. Throughout history, there have been numerous atrocities carried out in the name of ethnic/racial purification. If racism and ethnic persecution are indeed as much a part of human nature as ethnocentrism, we can expect that such atrocities will occur in the future as well.

While racism is universal, its focus usually changes in the transition from Small-scale societies to large-scale ones. The smallest societies are almost always biologically and culturally homogenous without ethnic group distinctions. In such societies, the target of racism is other societies. Strangers are often thought of as being not quite human. In contrast, large societies are often heterogeneous and have many ethnic groups. The targets of racism are mostly other ethnic groups within the same society. In Italy, for instance, Northern Italians often look down upon Southern Italians and stereotype them as being ignorant, dishonest, and lazy. Southern Italians often view Northern Italians as being impersonal, dull, and not trustworthy. A similar north-south stereotyping occurs in China.

We have seen that prejudice in human interaction is a universal phenomenon. The results of prejudgment can range all the way from relatively harmless racialist categorizing to vicious racist acts. By strongly emphasizing ethnic symbols for boundary maintenance purposes, ethnic groups indirectly foster racism which, in turn, can become an effective tool in preserving and enhancing the distinctness of the groups. However, racism and other unpleasant products of heightened ethnic identity can also diminish as a result of increased communication and intermarriage between groups.



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Ethnicity and Race: Nature of Ethnicity

 

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The Influence Of African-American Culture On A Non African-American: Four Examples


The Influence Of African-American Culture On A Non African-American: Four Examples
POSTED BY GOMEZ COMES ALIVE!, FEBRUARY 19, 2012 11:31PM | POST A COMMENT

I grew up on black culture. For most Mexican-Americans like myself growing up in the seventies and eighties, we didn’t feel a part of dominant society nor of our Mexican heritage. Schools were devoid of Latin American studies and English as a second language courses were frowned upon. As a kid I was lost; I didn’t know anything about my own culture but felt distant from American or European culture. For many of us, African-American culture was our alternative. I believed our struggles were the same. We were occupied people. We were once a part of progressive society and then we were conquered and made slaves. Although we received some basic human rights over the years we were always looked as second-class citizens here in the U.S. We were looked as something to fear and exclude. As years went on, some blacks and Latinos started to feel that they were part of mainstream society. Perhaps wanting to forget the past, some blacks and Latinos forgot the oppression they once shared. We separated, made our own history and often competed against each other to get out of the racial cellar.

Even after becoming aware of my own cultural heritage, I never forgot the influence that African-American culture had on me. I find it strange to meet Mexican-Americans that have many European influences but no black cultural influences. I find it even stranger that many of them have the same fears of blacks as other members of dominant society.

I cannot shake the influence of the many African-American musicians, activists, athletes and artists had on me, even after discovering the many great Chicano/Latin American icons that influence me today. For that reason, I would like to pay tribute to some African American icons that have influenced my life in some way or another.

Malcolm X

Reading The Autobiography Of Malcolm X was like having a light turned on in a dark room. I could identify with almost ever aspect of the book. In the beginning, Malcolm's father is murdered and leads his family in poverty. After being displaced from his family, he is robbed of his culture and self-worth, which led to his self-destructive lifestyle. Take any child’s family, security and culture away and most likely the child will live a self-destructive lifestyle much like young Malcolm.

His days in prison showed that many of us end up there because we are in prison in our minds. We start to believe every horrible thing people say about us and feel that there is no other path than death or jail. Malcolm convergence was due to his Muslim faith but it was his need to educate himself that helped in his self-determination. His time with The Nation Of Islam led to examining every facet of dominant society and challenging it, even if it meant going against the very people who supported him. Once he left the Nation Of Islam and goes out on his own, he sees the struggle of the African-American as a world struggle. That people across the world share the same oppression and that need for basic human rights is a global struggle rather than a national struggle. This message ultimately leads to his murder, but not before he got his message to many like myself, who view his example as a way to fight for human rights for all people, everywhere.

Magic Johnson

The NBA was dead before Magic Johnson. When The Lakers won the championship in 1980, the game was delayed and played after the eleven o’clock news so that CBS would not have to preempt their mighty Friday TV line-up of The Incredible Hulk, Dukes of Hazard, and Dallas. Along with the emergence of Magic Johnson came his rivalry with Larry Bird of the Celtics, which led to a faster and more physical style of basketball. It was L.A. "flash" versus working-class Celtics and everyone was into it. Basketball ratings went up and every kid playing at the local park was throwing behind the back passes just like Magic. By the time Michael Jordan came into the NBA, the league was a different level, ready for someone like MJ to take it to new heights.

However, in 1991, Magic announced his retirement from the NBA after he found out he had the HIV virus. At the time, it seemed like a death sentence. The only thing people like myself knew about AIDS were pure misconception. The thought was that AIDS was strictly a disease that only gays and drug addicts contracted. By Magic coming out and telling the world he had HIV, it forced a homophobic society to look at the severity of AIDS and that everyone, gay straight, man, women, black or white, could get it. One could have understood if Magic kept his disease in the dark but he used the opportunity to become an activist for HIV prevention, both in the U.S. and abroad. Most recently, he has started a campaign to stop the spread of homophobia, saying, “you realize that homophobia is still an issue everywhere, but especially in the black community. When people are scared to talk about it, that's how the disease spreads.” You can easily use that same quote for all persons of color.

Magic Johnson’s Foundation has given many college scholarships to inner city youths as well as funding for various AIDS organizations. On top of that, Magic’s net worth is listed close to a billion dollars. His investments include businesses that cater to the betterment of inner cities. By putting a movie theater or a Starbucks in lower income neighborhoods, it kept money and jobs within the community. For someone like myself who grew up far from any entertainment, I would travel far outside my community to get it. I see Magic Johnson as an example for people that have grown up in lower-income communities who feel the need to leave once have made money. Most people who leave never put any of their fortune back into the communities. Magic did and made money doing it.

Wanda Coleman

You will not see Wanda Coleman name on many top lists of African-American writers, nor would you find her on lists of top female African American writers. Truth is told; I’ve read better writers since. However, there was nothing like the feeling of reading Wanda Coleman’s A War Of Eyes And Other Stories in high school. To me, Wanda’s strength wasn’t just that she was a female African-American writer, but that she was from South Los Angeles. Every story was from a neighborhood that I knew. The voices she gave to her characters were voices I heard all my life. The streets that she walked were the same that I’ve walked. The fast food joints she worked at reminded me of all the greasy spoons I ate at. Her feelings of isolation and rejection were far more real to me than anything my literary high school friends were reading. I couldn’t get down with Holden Caulfield, but I certainly could get down with Wanda Coleman.

Recently, I listened to a track off a poetry record she did with Exene Cervenka of X. It’s called “Silly bytches Institute," which was a story about being locked up in the Sybil Brand Institute For Women. That particular piece holds its own against some of the best African-American spoken word artists.

Miles Davis

There are three albums that I listened to as a teenager that I felt I had to hide from my parents. The first being Black Sabbath’s Paranoid album, because my family was Catholic and I didn’t want my parents to think I was worshiping the devil. The second was Black Flag’s Damaged, because Black Flag was in the news for starting riots. I didn’t want my parents to think I was a self-destructing punk. The third was Miles Davis’ bytches Brew; because I didn’t want my parents to think I was devil worshiping, self-destructing punk who took drugs

.

That album hurt to listen to at first. I couldn’t believe it was the same guy who did ‘Round About Midnight, a record I jacked from my father’s record collection. It was intense to say the least, but after repeated listings, it all made sense. Once I got into it, I loved it and I began to examine everything Miles did before and after bytches Brew. He was always on point it seemed. The more I listened to Jazz, the more I noticed that when he changed styles, everyone would follow.

In his autobiography, entitled, Miles, The Autobiography, Miles broke it down like a wise uncle. His story is as he saw it, with no apologizes or excuses. If he thought you were a terrible musician, he let you know. Likewise, if he thought you were great, he

https://www.amoeba.com/admin/uploads/blog/Gomez/bytches-brew.jpg​

gave much praise. His choice of musicians did not fall under color lines. He played with many non-black musicians if he thought they were a better fit for him. When black musicians questioned him about choosing a white musician over a black, he felt that they were weak and only making excuses for their own inabilities. He never relented. He loved being black. He didn’t like Free Jazz. He thought he should be paid top dollar and flaunted his wealth. He didn’t like musicians that did a lot of grinning. He hated cops. He liked the French. He liked all kinds of women. He was a terrible husband and a deadbeat dad. He had drug problems and many faults, but he was an excellent composer and musician.

His example is not one of integrity. His example is that in art, there is only art. If you stay loyal to friends, family and loved ones, your art will be compromised. The best artists are just that. They are not good friends, husbands, wives, father and mothers. Somewhere along the line, we started associating great art with good people. In some cases, perhaps, but most cases, never. To be a legend, one has to practice, create and not be afraid to get rid of dead weight, even if they show talent or dedication. What I got from Miles, as an artist is that it’s better to be honest with oneself and be a bad guy then to be liked and have mediocre art. Miles career lasted almost fifty years, with many milestones and his influence is still felt to this day.

RELEVANT TAGS
Magic Johnson (1), Malcolm X (7), Miles Davis (29), Black History Month 2012 (11), Wanda Coleman (1)









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Science Fiction, Afrofuturism and How African-Americans Are Creating Their Own Deep Space
By
D. Amari Jackson
-
March 2, 2017
0
6073

Afrofuturism Author Ytasha L. Womack
In a critically acclaimed 1998 episode of the future-based series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Captain Benjamin Sisko — portrayed by African-American actor Avery Brooks — experiences a vision where he sees himself as Benny Russell, a talented science fiction writer for a small magazine in 1950s New York. Simultaneously, Russell is haunted by futuristic visions of himself as spaceship commander Ben Sisko and, from them, pens a dramatic tale that he submits for publication. Though the staff loves his story, the magazine’s editor tells the passionate writer it cannot publish it since its readers would never accept a Black hero. An apparent compromise is reached and Russell celebrates with a night out with his fiancee before a close friend is gunned down by two white police officers who then brutally beat Russell when he protests at the scene. After recuperating for a month and now walking with a cane, Russell limps back to the magazine to find its owner has not only decided against publishing his story but is firing him. Distraught, Russell has a nervous breakdown and collapses while hysterically screaming these memorable words:

“I am a human being, dammit! You can deny me all you want, but you can’t deny Ben Sisko — he exists! That future, that space station, all those people, they exist in here [pointing to his head], in my mind. … You can pulp [trash] a story, but you cannot destroy an idea. Don’t you understand? That’s ancient knowledge. You cannot destroy an idea! That future, I created it and it’s real! Don’t you understand? It is REAL! It’s REAL!”

“You can’t limit my imagination,” science fiction lover Jarvis Sheffield says, recounting the tortured cries of the episode’s main character. A multimedia specialist, educator and founder of the popular site, blacksciencefictionsociety.com, Sheffield feels such episodes exemplify how “science fiction is a way to illustrate social ills and bring them to the forefront,” be it directly or “without saying it outright.”

Similar to the editorial leadership that dismissed Benny Russell’s futuristic tale with a Black hero, the mainstream science fiction community has traditionally depicted a future largely devoid of people of African descent. And though there has been recent progress in this area with the likes of John Boyega in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and a number of darker-hued superheroes in the Marvel universe, today’s growing Black science fiction community is not waiting for anyone’s permission to create its own future.

“Afrofuturism is a form of representation in that it asserts that people of African descent are in the future, were in the past and are very present,” says Ytasha L. Womack. The author of several books, including “Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy,” Womack is currently at work on the Afrofuturistic film “Bar Star City.” Though Afrofuturism and Black Science Fiction are “pretty interchangeable,” she describes Afrofuturism as “a way of looking at the future or alternate realities through a Black culture lens” that intersects with “the imagination, technology, liberation and mysticism.”

While Womack points to the artistic manifestations of the genre in film, music, wardrobe and literature — including those of Sun Ra, George Clinton, Samuel Delany, Flying Lotus, Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson and Grace Jones — Afrofuturism continues to represent in contemporary mainstream culture via the artistic and stylistic expressions of Beyonce, Rihanna, Erykah Badu, Janelle Monáe, Willow Smith, Solange Knowles and Andre 3000, as well as in Marvel characters Luke Cage and Black Panther.

Such representations are a symptom of a growing medium. Accordingly, the number of regional conventions — or “cons” as they are commonly called — devoted to Black science fiction has significantly increased over the past decade. “When I first started my site, there were only three Black cons, the Black Age of Comics Convention in Chicago, the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention and ONYXCON in Atlanta,” recalls Sheffield, adding, “Now, there are at least a dozen.” He also reports, in the past decade, his site has grown from 20 registered members to over 5,000, with 11,000 now in his Facebook group.

Pinning down the beginnings of this growing phenomena is no easy task. “I think it’s important to remember that the ideas within Afrofuturism existed before the notion of race was created,” Womack says. A more recent yet far from comprehensive accounting of the Black employment of science fiction as social advancement or critique could be traced back to Martin Delany’s 1859 novel, Blake or the Huts of America, depicting a Utopian rebellion of enslaved Africans. It would extend through 1903 and Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood, where a medical student discovers he’s descended from divine African kings and destined to rule, and then through W.E.B. DuBois’1920 post-apocalyptic race tale, The Comet.

Jump ahead to the 1960s and ’70s and such a thread would likely include the astral and visionary musical projections of John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament Funkadelic and Sun Ra, alongside the speculative and metaphysical writings of Delany, Butler, Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison. All these artists in their own ways incorporated futuristic, surrealist or alternate-universe themes within their art along with overt or veiled notions of racial progress. In doing so, they contributed to the foundations upon which Afrofuturism — first coined as a term in 1994 by social critic Mark Dery — would later find its footing.


“As a social critique, Afrofuturism recognizes that race is a technology,” says Womack, noting that, “race and the power imbalances associated with it was created to justify the transatlantic slave trade.” That said, she feels this recognition of race as a technology is “a reminder that it was created and the power imbalances can be dismantled.”

But, while science fiction has been used by Black artists historically for this dismantling process, there is no consensus on whether such critique should occur directly or indirectly. Or even if representation, in itself, is enough, given the tumultuous times we live in.

“There’s been a big push recently to use Afrofuturism as a tool to express and deal with issues of social justice,” says Milton Davis, author and owner of MVmedia, a publishing company specializing in science fiction, fantasy and sword and soul. How deep someone goes with this approach, Davis says, “depends on the individual. I’m the kind of person who feels that you deal with important issues like that directly, face to face, as opposed to expressing it in my fiction.”

“I see a lot of fiction coming out that is expressing what the issues are, but I haven’t seen any that really offer solutions to those problems,” continues Davis, who feels, “If you’re going to take on that task of writing social justice issues within your text, then you also need to offer some viable solutions.”

One solution, for Sheffield, suggests that whatever the Black sci-fi community decides to do, it should “continue to press for equal representation in the mainstream,” while simultaneously “building our own table.”

But, before you can build it, you must be able to imagine what your own table looks like.

“Many people in challenging situations looked to the realm of the imagination to experience their own humanity when others questioned their status as humans,” Womack says. “Afrofuturism encourages the use of the imagination to ultimately connect with ourselves.”
Science Fiction, Afrofuturism and How African-Americans Are Creating Their Own Deep Space - Atlanta Black Star

 

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African American Folklore, Magical Realism and Horror in Toni Morrison novels

By Sumiko Saulson



Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in 1931, eight-four year old Toni Morrison is one of the most prominent voices in African American literature. The bestselling author has won the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize, and earned such an enduring place in in American hearts and minds that she’s already a staple of many college English literature course curriculum in her own lifetime. Although her works often defy genre classification, the vagaries of genre politics have her firmly associated with the high-classed literary fiction genre. Literary fiction is the darling of critics and the academia alike.

Speculative fiction, and especially horror and the supernatural, are considered low-classed, tawdry genres. We sit in a dirty little niche corner, along with romance and erotica, as those genres that are just not prestigious enough for the so-called serious writers. Genre prejudice is so deeply ingrained that many do not recognize a horror story for what it is even when its nature is vastly apparent.

In essence, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a gothic horror story. It is a ghost story set against a backdrop of slavery and the post-Civil War restoration. It takes on the tone of gothic horror immediately at the outset of the story with the line “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom,” referring to 124 Bluestone Road, the address of the protagonist Sethe’s home. The use of a building, most commonly a house, is a trope commonly associated with the gothic fiction genre.

The story also utilizes many elements of the sub-genre American Gothic. English gothic horror took place in the Victorian era, the same period of time that the Civil War and the post war Restoration took place in the United States. The dark histories involving the African slave trade and the genocide of New World’s indigenous peoples were primary features of a guilt-ridden American conscience. Wronged native peoples and oppressed African slaves were some of the ghosts and bogeymen of American gothic. That is clearly the case in Beloved, which is about the petulant spirit of Sethe’s murdered two year old daughter, Beloved. Sethe killed her own child to protect her from slavery, and has been haunted ever since.

While Toni Morrison’s overall literary genre is American or African American literary fiction, Beloved is widely categorized as Magical Realism. Magical realism is a genre that involves the insertion of folklore and supernatural elements into otherwise realistic narratives. Beloved is not Toni Morrison’s only venture into magical realism. Song of Solomon, Sula, Jazz, and The Bluest Eye all use elements of the genre.

If it weren’t for the fact that Sula won a Nobel Prize for American literature, we might think of it as magical realism, as it certainly utilizes many elements of the genre. Many supernatural elements are used to illustrate the town of Bottom’s discomfort with and rejection of the unconventional protagonist Sula Peace. These magical elements are illustrations of the town’s scapegoating behavior. They clearly symbolize the tendency to demonize women for liberal and sexually unrepressed behavior. However, there is a more than superficial resemblance between Sula’s connection to the paranormal occurrences and witchcraft. Sula seems like a witch, and the town seems to be on a witch hunt.

In magical realism, these things are seen as symbolic, not necessarily to be taken literally, as in horror. There is an additional layer of psychological complexity in magical realism, as it is often unclear whether the supernatural is at play, or characters are just superstitious. That mystery is part of what keeps magical realism psychologically terrifying.

The strange appearance of a swarm of agitated birds in Sula is a great example of this. They arrive when she returns to town, and they occur in such unmanageable numbers that some townspeople are driven to sadism in an effort to get rid of them. They are so populous that the birds create a danger to themselves and others. However, the book never explains their mysterious arrival and disappearance. That is where magical realism differs from traditional horror: in horror, a cause, usually a diabolical one is assigned. In Sula, people superstitiously connect the appearance to the protagonist and her sexually loose moral behavior, which includes interracial relationships and sleeping with married men.

Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon opens up with some of the most horrifying scenes I’ve ever read. One involves the hunting of a runaway slave by a pack of dogs, and the other involves an extended analogy about leaping to suicide while attempting to fly away from enslavement. Song of Solomon uses several elements of magical realism. Many of these are directly or indirectly connected with a character named Pilate, a woman who was born without a belly button. She is guardian angel/earth mother figure in the life of the protagonist, Milkman.

Her lack of a navel suggests a supernatural origin, because bellybuttons are a sign of earthly birth. Created creatures, like angels or golem, wouldn’t need navels. Pilate shows other signs of supernatural knowledge or power, as does the ancient former slave Circe. Circe tells the protagonist Milkman of his great grandfather Solomon, who is the title character. Solomon was said to have literally flown to escape slavery. However, throughout the story, various attempts at flight are ambiguous and often seem more like suicide and less like escape.

There is the further complication of determining whether or not supernatural occurrences are real in magical realism. In Toni Morrison’s controversial debut novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a sexually molested young black girl, retreats into a fantasy world where she feels beautiful because she imagines she has blue eyes. The book has been banned multiple times because it deals with tough subjects like incest and child molestation. However, at the core of it is a deeper truth: our most terrifying monsters are the ones that are real.

Horror as a genre allows its readers to confront subjects that are too hard to look at directly. Like a filter that allows us to look at the sun without going blind, horror softens the impact of unimaginable subjects by replacing horrific human monsters with supernatural creatures. They are less upsetting than the idea that the real monsters are us.

There is a close synergy between magical realism and gothic horror. They are flip sides of the same coin. Magical realism is a genre label usually ascribed to people of color talking about ourselves, and integrating our own folklore, history, legends and mythology into stories that contain both realistic and fantastic elements. Gothic horror, especially American gothic, is written from a white person’s point of view and has to do with outsider fear and suspicion of the same folklore, history, legends and myths.

A novel like Beloved might have been considered gothic horror if it had been written from a white person’s perspective by a white author. A story like Bernard Rose and Clive Barker’s Candyman might have been mystical realism if it were written by a black author and from Candyman’s point of view. Both stories are about a tragic character that died unnecessarily as a result of racism and slavery who returns as an avenging spirit. The change in the point of view character is also key to the genre categorization here: Candyman is about how slavery impacted white people. Beloved is about how it impacted African Americans.

Toni Morrison’s forays into magical realism may not be universally considered horror for the same reason that not everyone considers Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein horror: the monster is so sympathetic that from time to time, human beings seem the real monsters. The monster is the one who has been wronged here. If we feel more sympathy for the monster than it persecutors, then we lose a lot of the fear we associate with the horror genre.

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Sumiko Saulson a horror, sci-fi and dark fantasy writer. Her novels include “Solitude,” “Warmth”, and “Happiness and Other Diseases.” She is the author of the Young Adult horror novella series “The Moon Cried Blood”, and short story anthology “Things That Go Bump in My Head.” Born to African-American and Russian-Jewish parents, she is a native Californian, and has spent most of her adult life in the Bay Area. She is a horror blogger and journalist
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