black historee month

[blugiant]

Slave Trade


1. During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, 90% of those enslaved, were sent to the Caribbean and the South America.


2. The Atlantic slave trade carried about two to three men for every woman.


3. The slave trade reduced the adult male population by about 20 percent, dramatically altering the ratio of working adults to dependents and of adult men to adult women.


4. One result of unbalanced sex ratios was to further encourage polygyny.


5. Another result was to reduce traditional male forms of work, such as hunting, fishing, livestock rearing, the clearing of fields, the chopping down of trees, and the digging up of roots. The result was a less protein rich diet and a reduction in agricultural productivity.


6. About 14 percent of slaves sent to the New World were children under 14; 56 percent were male adults; and 30 percent were female adults.

Myths About Slave Trade and Slavery



Myth: Not all African women were forced to sleep with the slave masters (raped).
Fact: Rape is not only grabbing someone and throwing them in the bush and forcing sex on them against their will—that is violent rape. But there is another kind of rape that went on during all oppressions placed on African people. There was also a process of fear, which persuaded African women to lay with their oppressors and give into the masters wants or suffered a life of misery: Exposed to the lash of an overseer in the hot sun, or had your entire family split up to the abyss by the speculators. Another form of what is a social rape is to create a society so oppressed that it seeks from the enslaved some way to lighten the color of its children so they might escape the whip of slavery and the taboo of "blackness." The implanting of the notion of a helpless African man, contrasted against the power and security—and hence superiority of the White man—was also a mental form of oppression imposed on African women. See "Incidents of a slave girl" Harriet Jacobs.

Myth: Slavery is a product of capitalism.
Fact: The transatlantic slave trade is in direct relationship with modern concepts of exploitive capitalism. Capitalism was the driver behind the transatlantic slave trade (see Eric Williams)


Myth: Slavery is a product of Western Civilization.
Fact: Slavery is virtually a universal institution. However the industrialized chattel slavery the race base nature and the duration are peculiar to the transatlantic slave trade.


Myth: Slavery in the non-western world was a mild, benign, and non-economic institution.
Fact: Slaves were always subject to torture, sexual exploitation, and arbitrary death. However the scale of the brutality and the institutionalization of people as chattel was unique in type and proliferation in the Western slave models.


Myth: Slavery was an economically backward and inefficient institution.
Fact: Many of the most progressive societies in the world had slaves. Forms of slavery allowed the building of many of the world’s empires. Today the low wage lower classes and machines fill the roles slaves traditionally did in society. So still the wealthy today exist because of some form of exploitation of the majority.


Myth: Slavery was always based on race.
Fact: Not until the 15th century was slavery associated primarily with people of African descent. Race became a factor which justified enslavement once it became the mainstay of Western economies. (see Black Codes)


Enslavement and the Slave Trade


Myth: New World slaves came exclusively from West Africa.
Fact: Half of all New World slaves came from central Africa.


Myth: Europeans physically enslaved Africans or hired mercenaries who captured people for export or that African rulers were "Holocaust abettors" who were themselves to blame for the slave trade.
Fact: Europeans did engage in some slave raiding; the majority of people who were transported to the Americas were enslaved by Africans in Africa. Europeans politically created anarchy in Africa feeding greed and putting others in a dilemma “sell or be sold.” With the destruction of the economy and the absences of the most virile in African societies slavery became a mono-economy feeding the cycle of destruction. Europeans created mechanisms which ensured conflict and the push-pull demand for slaves.


Myth: Many slaves were captured with nets.
Fact: There is no evidence that slaves were captured with nets; war was the most important source of enslavement.


Myth: Kidnapping was the usual means of enslavement.
Fact: War was the most important source of enslavement; it would be incorrect to reduce all of these wars to slave raids.


Myth: The Middle Passage stripped enslaved Africans of their cultural heritage and transformed them into docile, passive figures wholly receptive to the cultural inputs of their masters.
Fact: Slaves engaged in at least 250 documented shipboard rebellions. The destruction of African culture happen not on the slave ships but via the plantation system where Christianity and terror were used to mentally enslave African people. Evidence shows that in areas where new African slaves were constantly being introduced (such as Jamaica) had more incidences of rebellion due to the resistance of the new arrivals.

[blugiant]

Slavery in the Americas


Myth: Most slaves were imported into what is now the United States
Fact: Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South America


Myth: Slavery played a marginal role in the history of the Americas
Fact: African slaves were the only remedy for the labor shortages that plagued Europe's New World dominions. Fact: Slave labor made it profitable to mine for precious metal and to harvest sugar, indigo, and tobacco; slaves taught whites how to raise such crops as rice and indigo.


Myth: Europeans arrived in the New World in far larger numbers than did Africans.

Fact: Before 1820, the number of Africans outstripped the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of 3, 4, or 5 to 1.
Myth: The first slaves arrived in what is now the U.S. in 1619
Fact: Slaves arrived in Spanish Florida at least a century before 1619 and a recently uncovered census shows that blacks were present in Virginia before 1619.


Slave Culture


Myth: The slave trade permanently broke slaves' bonds with Africa.
Fact: Slaves were able to draw upon their African cultural background and experiences and use them as a basis for life in the New World. The drum and the Griot tradition are still alive in the music of the Diaspora. The food and elements of the language, the social structure, the “cool” still are defining characteristics of the African Diaspora. The greatest disconnection with Africa may have actually happened post-emancipation where being American or being more integrated allowed cultural drift into a more Eurocentric identity.


Myth: Plantation life with its harsh labor, unstable families, and high mortality, made it difficult for Africans to construct social ties
Fact: African nations persisted in America well into the 18th century and even the early 19th century despite the overt destruction of the family the denouncement of religious and marital values.


Myth: Masters assigned names to slaves or slaves imitated masters' systems of naming.
Fact: In fact, slaves were rarely named for owners. Naming patterns appear to have reflected African practices, such as the custom of giving children "day names" (after the day they were born) and "name-saking," such as naming children after grandparents.


Myth: Slaveholders sought to deculturate slaves by forbidding African names and languages and obliterating African culture.
Fact: While deculturation was part of the "project" of slavery, in fact African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound, ongoing influence on American culture.
Fact: Slaves adapted religious rites and perpetuated a rich tradition of folklore.

Economics of Slavery
Myth: Slaveholders lost money and were more interested in status than moneymaking; slaves did little productive work
Fact: Slaves worked longer days, more days, and more of their life. The life expectancy of enslaved Africans in places like Barbados was a few decades due to the strain of labor.


Myth: Slavery was incompatible with urban life and factory technology
Fact: Sugar mills were the first true factories in the world; slaves were widely used in cities and in various kinds of manufacturing and crafts.


Myth: Slaves engaged almost exclusively in unskilled brutish field labor.
Fact: Much of the labor performed by slaves required high skill levels and careful, painstaking effort.
Fact: Masters relied on slaves for skilled craftsmanship.

[Blackstar*]

Jamaican-Born Motorcycle Queen - Part I

I wish I had known about Bessie Stringfield growing up. I was in love with motorcycles and wanted a Harley or Triumph bike.
————————————



Bessie Stringfield’s life is the stuff of which legends are made. Bessie has been mentioned in books, magazines, newspapers and television documentaries. In 1990, when the American Motorcyclist Association opened its Motorcycle Heritage Museum, Bessie featured in its inaugural exhibit on Women in Motorcycling. A decade later the AMA created the Bessie Stringfield Award to honor women who are leaders in motorcycling. In 2002, she was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. Bessie, or BB as she was known among friends, described over 60 years of motorcycling: “I was somethin’! What I did was fun and I loved it.”

In the 1930s and 1940s Bessie made eight long-distance, solo rides across the United States. Speaking to a reporter, she dismissed the idea that “nice girls didn’t ride motorcycles in those days.” She was also seemingly fearless about riding through the Deep South when racial prejudice was a tangible threat.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1911, she was brought to Boston as a young child but was orphaned by the age of 5. “An Irish lady raised me,” she recalled. “I’m not allowed to use her name. She gave me whatever I wanted. When I was in high school I wanted a motorcycle. And even though good girls didn’t ride motorcycles, I got one.” She was 16 when she climbed aboard her first motorbike, a 1928 Indian Scout, and, despite having no prior knowledge of how to operate it whatsoever, Bessie proved to be a natural. She insisted God gave her the skills. ”My [Irish] mother said if I wanted anything I had to ask Our Lord Jesus Christ, and so I did,” she said. “He taught me and He’s with me at all times, even now. When I get on the motorcycle I put the Man Upstairs on the front. I’m very happy on two wheels.” She was especially happy on Milwaukee iron. Her one Indian notwithstanding, Bessie said of the 27 Harleys she owned in her lifetime, “To me, a Harley is the only motorcycle ever made.”

At the age of 19 Bessie Stringfield began tossing a penny onto a map and then riding to wherever it landed. She covered all of the 48 lower states. Bessie’s faith got her through many nights. ”If you had black skin you couldn’t get a place to stay,” she said. “I knew the Lord would take care of me and He did. If I found black folks, I’d stay with them. If not, I’d sleep at filling stations on my motorcycle.” Bessie folded her jacket on the handlebars as a pillow and rested her feet on the rear mudguard. Using her skills and can-do attitude, she also performed trick riding in carnival stunt shows.

Between her travels, Bessie wed and divorced six times, declaring, “If you kissed, you got married.” She and her first husband were deeply saddened by the loss of three babies and Bessie had no more children. On divorcing her third husband, Arthur Stringfield, she said, “He asked me to keep his name because I’d made it famous!”

[Blackstar*]

Jamaican-Born Motorcycle Queen - Part II



During the Second World War, Bessie worked for the army as a civilian motorcycle dispatch rider. The only woman in her unit, she completed rigorous training maneuvers. She learned how to weave a makeshift bridge from rope and tree limbs to cross swamps, although she never had to do so in the line of duty. With a military crest on the front of her own blue Harley, a “61,” she carried documents between domestic U.S. bases. Bessie encountered racial prejudice on the road. On one occasion she was followed by a man in a pickup truck who ran her off the road, knocking her off her bike. She played down her courage in coping with such incidents. “I had my ups and downs,” she shrugged.

In the 1950s, Bessie bought a house in Miami, Florida. She became a licensed practical nurse and founded the Iron Horse Motorcycle Club. Disguised as a man, Bessie won a flat track race but was denied the prize money after she took off her helmet. Her other antics, such as riding while standing in the saddle of her Harley, attracted the attention of the local press. Reporters nicknamed her the “Negro Motorcycle Queen” and later the “Motorcycle Queen of Miami.”

Late in life, Bessie suffered from symptoms caused by an enlarged heart. “Years ago the doctor wanted to stop me from riding,” she recalled. “I told him if I don’t ride, I won’t live long. And so I never did quit.” Before she died in 1993, at the age of 82, Bessie said, “They tell me my heart is three times the size it’s supposed to be.” An apt metaphor for this unconventional woman whose heart and spirited determination have touched so many lives.

[Wahalla]

this came out a while back i posted it and dont think it got much of a look in...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/11/385217013/whats-it-like-to-be-black-and-have-a-famous-nazi-grandfather?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150212

What's It Like To Be Black And Have A Famous Nazi Grandfather?


FEBRUARY 11, 201510:58 AM ET
NPR STAFF








i
Nigerian-German author Jennifer Teege discovered her grandfather was Nazi concentration camp commander Amon Goeth. The English version of her book, Amon: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, will be available in April.

Oliver Hardt/AFP/Getty Images

Jennifer Teege is a German-born black woman who — during her quest to learn more about her birth family — uncovered a surprising connection to the Holocaust and Amon Goeth, the Nazi commander famously portrayed in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. The following article appeared on the website of the Jewish newspaperHaaretz, which has made the story available to NPR readers as a courtesy.
In the mid-1990s, near the end of the period during which she lived in Israel, Jennifer Teege watched Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. She hadn't seen the film in a movie theater, and watched it in her rented room in Tel Aviv when it was broadcast on television.
"It was a moving experience for me, but I didn't learn much about the Holocaust from it," she tells me by phone from her home in Hamburg, mostly in English with a sprinkling of Hebrew. "I'd learned and read a great deal about the Holocaust before that. At the time I thought the film was important mainly because it heightened international awareness of the Holocaust, but I didn't think I had a personal connection to it."
Indeed, it was not until years later that Teege, a German-born black woman who was given up for adoption as a child, discovered that one of the central characters in the film, Amon Goeth, was her grandfather. Many viewers recall the figure of Goeth, the brutal commander of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland — played in the film by Ralph Fiennes — from the scenes in which he shoots Jewish inmates from the porch of his home. But Teege, who had not been in touch with either her biological mother or biological grandmother for years, had no idea about the identity of her grandfather.
Check out the rest of the story — without a paywall — by using this link.

[Wahalla]

a more indepth article....


When a black German woman discovered her grandfather was the Nazi villain of 'Schindler's List'

An odd series of events led Jennifer Teege to discover that her grandfather was none other than the notorious Nazi Amon Goeth.

By Avner Shapira | Feb. 6, 2015 | 7:05 PM

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Jennifer Teege / Amon Goeth







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Amon Goeth.












Jennifer Teege. Photo by Sven Hoppe/DPA







In the mid-1990s, near the end of the period during which she lived in Israel, Jennifer Teege watched Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List.” She hadn’t seen the film in a movie theater, and watched it in her rented room in Tel Aviv when it was broadcast on television.
“It was a moving experience for me, but I didn’t learn much about the Holocaust from it,” she tells me by phone from her home in Hamburg, mostly in English with a sprinkling of Hebrew. “I’d learned and read a great deal about the Holocaust before that. At the time I thought the film was important mainly because it heightened international awareness of the Holocaust, but I didn’t think I had a personal connection to it.”
Indeed, it was not until years later that Teege, a German-born black woman who was given up for adoption as a child, discovered that one of the central characters in the film, Amon Goeth, was her grandfather. Many viewers recall the figure of Goeth, the brutal commander of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland – played in the film by Ralph Fiennes – from the scenes in which he shoots Jewish inmates from the porch of his home. But Teege, who had not been in touch with either her biological mother or biological grandmother for years, had no idea about the identity of her grandfather.
The discovery came like a bolt from the blue in the summer of 2008, when she was 38 years old, as she relates in the memoir “Amon,” which was published in German in 2013 (co-authored with the German journalist Nikola Sellmair), and is due out in English this April under the title “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past.”
Teege is scheduled to visit Israel next week to take part in events marking the book’s publication in Hebrew (from Sifriat Poalim), at the International Book Fair in Jerusalem, the University of Haifa and the Goethe Institute in Tel Aviv.
She opens her book by describing the 2008 visit to a library in Hamburg to look for material on coping with depression. While there, she happened to notice a book with a cover photograph of a familiar figure: her biological mother, Monika Hertwig (née Goeth). She immediately withdrew the book, titled “I Have to Love My Father, Right?,” and which was based on an interview with her mother.
“The first shock was the sheer discovery of a book about my mother and my family, which had information about me and my identity that had been kept hidden from me,” Teege says. “I knew almost nothing about the life of my biological mother, nor did my adoptive family. I hoped to find answers to questions that had disturbed me and to the depression I had suffered from. The second shock was the information about my grandfather’s deeds.”

Thus Teege embarked on a long personal journey in the wake of the unknown family heritage. But in the first half year after the discovery at the library, she relates, “I lapsed into silence, I slept a lot and I wasn’t really functioning. Only afterward did I begin to analyze the situation and try to understand the characters of my mother and my grandmother. I only started to learn more about my grandmother at the end. Today I understand that I went through the process step by step, peeling away layer after layer. But in the first months I had no idea what to do.”


Teege was born on June 29, 1970, in Munich, the offspring of a brief affair between her mother and a Nigerian man. At the age of one month, she was placed in a Catholic children’s home, and when she was three, she was transferred to a foster family, which adopted her formally when she was seven. That also marked the end of the loose ties she had had until then with her mother and her grandmother.
The only black girl in the Munich neighborhood where she grew up, she was often the butt of insulting remarks about her skin color. In 1990, after graduating from high school, Teege went to Paris, where she became friends with a young Israeli woman, Noa Berman-Herzberg, now a screenwriter. Teege arrived in Israel the following year, toured around worked on a tourist boat in Eilat and had a brief affair with an Israeli man. After they broke up, she decided to remain in Tel Aviv. She learned Hebrew, received a B.A. from the Middle Eastern and African Studies Department of Tel Aviv University, and worked in the city’s Goethe Institute. She left the country in 1995.
“Germans who come to Israel never know what kind of reception they will get,” she says. “I was welcomed with open arms. My German origin generated interest – not because of the Holocaust or Nazism, but mainly because of [then] recent events, such as the toppling of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany. In any event, I didn’t represent the German stereotype.”
Her skin color served as camouflage, even if Teege didn’t yet know for what. Years later, when she discovered her actual roots, she recalled the many Holocaust survivors she had met at the Goethe Institute. They came because they wanted to speak and hear German, the language of their old homeland, she notes in her book. When she saw the numbers tattooed on their arms in the camps, she felt for the first time that there was something disadvantageous about belonging to the German nation – something that demanded an apology.
Teege shared her rented apartment in Tel Aviv with the actor and director Tzachi Grad, then at the start of his professional career.
“Jennifer seemed to me special and beautiful, a woman with European class,” he recalls now. “We got along very well in the apartment, we became friends and talked about many different subjects. The fact that it turned out years later that her grandfather was a sadistic Nazi is no reflection on her, even if some of the genetic matter and traits came from him. I do not attribute to the Nazis’ descendants the wrongs perpetrated by their forebears.”
Therapist in tears
After leaving Israel, Teege moved to Hamburg and started to work in an ad agency, where she met her partner, Goetz Teege. They have two children. When she found out that Amon Goeth was her grandfather, she entered psychotherapy. The therapist himself burst into tears when he heard her story at their first meeting, but afterward helped her cope with the questions that hounded her.
Digging into the past brought her face to face with many of the atrocities perpetrated by her grandfather, who was known as the “butcher of Plaszow.” He shot inmates from his porch every morning and had two dogs that were trained to attack prisoners at his command.
After the war, Goeth faced trial in Krakow on after being accused of genocide, including responsibility for the death of 8,000 people in Plaszow and the murder of some 2,000 more during the evacuation of the Krakow Ghetto. He denied responsibility for the crimes, and said he had only been following orders. He was hanged in September 1946. His last words were “Heil Hitler.”
Goeth never saw Monika, the daughter he had fathered a year earlier during an extramarital affair he had with Ruth Irene Kalder, a young German woman who worked as a secretary in the Wehrmacht; Goeth's wife had remained behind in Austria.
The couple were introduced by Oskar Schindler – who needed to have good ties with Goeth so as to obtain Jewish workers for his factory – at a dinner in Goeth’s villa. Kalder became Goeth’s lover, moved in, raised two dogs of her own and lived a life of wanton luxury. His plan to divorce his wife and marry Kalder was dashed when he was arrested and executed.
Teege, who remembers her grandmother as a central figure in her early childhood, who showed her more warmth and love than her mother, also delves into her grandmother’s attitude toward Goeth’s deeds. For years Kalder denied his crimes and claimed she knew nothing about them; she and Teege never discussed the subject.
In a conversation in 1975 with the Israeli journalist and historian Tom Segev (who spoke to her while he was reporting his 1988 book “Soldiers of Evil”), she said, “It was a beautiful time. We enjoyed being together. My Goeth was the king, and I was the queen. Who wouldn’t have traded places with us?”
In 1983, when Teege was 13, her adoptive parents told her they had seen mourning notices in the paper for her biological grandmother. They did not know that Ruth Irene Goeth (she had changed her surname after the war) had committed suicide in the wake of a serious illness – and also, apparently, because of belated regret for her moral blindness during the Holocaust.
After learning about Goeth’s deeds and the life her grandmother led in Krakow during the war, Teege decided to go see the place where her grandfather had murdered people – to get very close to him in order to distance herself from him afterward, as she writes in the book. I ask her whether she succeeded in her mission.
“At the beginning I didn’t know that it was important to be close to Amon,” she replies. “I felt a powerful need to be done with this part, and I decided to visit Krakow and the memorial monument for the Plaszow camp, to place flowers there and honor the victims, so that I could resume a normal life. When I returned to Germany after the visit, I felt a certain release. I wanted to let go of the past but not to make it disappear. I didn’t want to be like my mother, who felt so tied to the family past and couldn’t disconnect herself from it. I managed to achieve distance.”
Closing the circle
In her book, Teege describes her quest to learn about her grandparents, mother and biological father (whom she did not meet until adulthood). She also talks about the difficulty she had sharing her life story with her Israeli girlfriends. She remembered that relatives of two of her friends had perished in the Holocaust, although she did not know whether they had relatives in the ghettos and camps where her grandfather had served.
One of Teege’s Israeli friends, Anat Ben Moshe, now a nurse at Yoseftal Hospital in Eilat, recalls that she and Noa Berman-Herzberg had stayed in touch with Teege after she left Israel, and had even attended her wedding, but that suddenly, and over a period of two years, she stopped responding to their emails.
In 2011, when the Israeli film “The Flood” (for which Berman-Herzberg wrote the screenplay, together with the director, Guy Nativ, and which stars the former roommate, Tzachi Grad) was accepted by the Berlin Film Festival, Teege was invited to the screening. With some apprehension, she renewed the connection with her friends, and told Berman-Herzberg the whole story.
Later that year, Teege visited Israel, and she and Ben Moshe met for a long talk.
“I wanted to understand all the details and to know that she was seeing the picture properly and coping with it. I supported her when she decided to make the story public,” Ben Moshe says. Later, she invited Teege to accompany her son’s high-school class on a visit to the Plaszow camp. Teege accepted the invitation, told the students her story and replied to their stunned questions.
Her book ends with an account of the extraordinary ceremony that the teenagers from Israel conducted together with her, in memory of the victims in the camp of which her grandfather was commandant.
Teege is very excited about her upcoming visit to Israel. “I very much wanted the book to be translated into Hebrew, and I am looking forward to seeing how it’s received,” she says. “People ask me if I’m not afraid of the visit, but I have no fears. I lived in Israel for five years, I have friends there and I know the mentality a little.
“I am first of all Jennifer and not first of all Amon Goeth’s granddaughter. I am coming as a private person, even though I know that I am more than that. The survivors who were in contact with me see me differently. I am so different from the figure of my grandfather. Some of them, who were in touch with me after the book came out in German, responded very warmly and said that reading my story was a kind of closing of the circle for them.”
‘Drop of humanity’
One of the survivors who contacted Teege was Rena Birnhack, 88, from Haifa, one of the Schindler’s list survivors.She expects to meet with the younger woman during her visit here next week.
“Goeth was even worse than he is described in Teege’s book, but it was important for me to contact her, because I am perhaps the only Jew who was left alive and survived because of her grandfather,” Birnhack says, in an interview with Haaretz.
She was born in Krakow and sent to the city’s ghetto with her family as a girl. She relates that she took the family’s dog with her to the ghetto. The dog gave birth to two puppies, and when the ghetto was liquidated, in March 1943, and the residents were summoned for a “selection” process – to decide who would be deported to Auschwitz and Belzec, and who would do forced labor in the Plaszow camp – Birnhack had to abandon the older dog but took the two puppies, wrapped in a small coat.
“It was the first time I saw Amon, a huge, frightening person,” Birnhack recalls. “In the selection he indicated with a finger movement who should go to which side. When he saw me holding the coat, he shouted, ‘What do you have there?’ But when he saw the two puppies, a drop of humanity came into his eyes for a few seconds. He asked me what I intended to do with them, and I offered them to him as a present. He ordered one of the soldiers to take the puppies, and sent me to the side with those who would remain alive.”
From reading Teege’s book, Birnhack learned that Goeth gave the puppies to Irene, who raised them in the villa. During her time in Plaszow, Birnhack saw Goeth only at camp roll-calls – or when he shot inmates from the porch. She, her sister and her parents were among the Schindler survivors.

[blugiant]

‘Father of Anthropathology,’ Julian H. Lewis, To Be Honored In Chicago For Work That Dispelled Myth of A Superior Race



Not even during Black History Month has Julian H. Lewis received the acknowledgment deserving of someone who was heralded as the “father of anthropathology,” a discipline that examines racial differences in the expression of disease, and who wrote the book that essentially squashed the primitive notion of a superior race.

Throw in that Lewis also was the first African-American professor at the University of Chicago, and all the reasons are evident why the college on Saturday will host a program honoring Lewis, highlighted with the unveiling of a specially commissioned oil painting of this man of so much history.

The piece will be donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. in 2016.

“He is virtually unknown, not just within the University (of Chicago), but to the whole world,” said Robert L. Branch II, an independent scholar who has studied the history of Lewis’ life and who will speak at the event. “That’s why I wanted to be part of this, to finally give him his recognition. This is the greatest unknown story of the greatest unknown medical and African-American pioneer of the 20th century.”

Lewis is considered to be one of the first African-Americans in history to hold both an MD and a PhD. His groundbreaking research on race and blood typing led to his equally path-breaking book, Biology of the Negro, published in 1942.

“It was the first book of its kind to objectively use science to dispel the myth of a superior race,” said Branch. “It literally changed people’s perspectives on race.”

It was 100 years ago that Lewis, the son of educator parents who were born into slavery and later liberated from it, earned his PhD in physiology and pathology from the University of Chicago, graduating magna cum laude in just a year and a half.

He then earned his MD from Rush Medical College and joined the UChicago faculty in 1917, as an instructor in pathology. In 1923, he became an assistant professor.

The network of support Lewis created at a time when many students were confronting racism was vast.

“While he was never tenured, and that remains a question,” Branch said, “Lewis became a catalyst for promoting diversity at UChicago. His achievements had a far-reaching impact.”

As an activist and mentor, Lewis supported and championed the early careers of a number of prominent African Americans at UChicago, from dancer Katherine Dunham to the late Prof. James E. Bowman, father of Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to President Barack Obama.

“I would be hard pressed to name any prominent Black student or faculty member of his era who didn’t benefit from Lewis’ support,” said Bart Schultz, director of the Civic Knowledge Project, sponsor of the event. “He had a terrific impact as a scientist, but he also was a remarkable person.”

While teaching at UChicago, Lewis became the “bridge” between the University and Provident Hospital, the first Black-owned hospital in the country. Said Christopher Crenner, the Ralph Major and Robert Hudson professor and chair of history and philosophy of medicine, at the University of Kansas School of Medicine: “He was a pioneer in many respects.”

http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/02/17/julian-h-lewis-changed-perspectives-race-honored-chicago

[blugiant]

Pervasive Myths About the Underground Railroad That Have Been Debunked



It Was the Right-Thinking Quakers Who Led It

The Quakers and other Caucasians were active in the abolition movement and with the Underground Railroad. However, it was predominantly run by free Black people from the North, especially in its earliest years. William Still from Philadelphia was at the forefront of the movement, with Harriet Tubman, Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett, Calvin Fairbank and Charles Torrey. They were the true heroes of the Underground Railroad. Still rescued 649 fugitives sheltered in Philadelphia, including 16 who arrived on one day alone, June 1, 1855, according to historian David Blight.





The Railroad Ran Throughout the South






The Underground Railroad was primarily a Northern phenomenon. It operated mainly in the free states, which only makes sense, according to “Pathways to Freedom,” an extensive study on the Underground Railroad. Fugitive enslaved people were largely on their own until they crossed the Ohio River or the Mason-Dixon Line, where they reached the so-called free states. It was then that the Underground Railroad and its “conductors” or “engineers” could take effect







There Were Underground Tunnels

Sounds intriguing, but not true. Most fugitive enslaved people seeking freedom escaped during the deep, dark night, and not through tunnels, which would have taken years to build and cost way too much to construct, according to the documentary Many Rivers on PBS. A few homes in the North had secret passageways or hidden rooms in which the enslaved could be concealed, but no tunnels.









Freedom Quilts?

Legend goes that the enslaved family had the forward-thinking to craft a quilt that they used to send messages about supposed routes on the Underground Railroad in the North, places they had never traveled. Not logical — or true, according to quilthistory.com. There were times when messages were delivered at Black church gatherings and prayer meetings, but not about the day and time that Tubman would be coming to town, according to the Many Rivers documentary. The risk of betrayal about individual escapes and collective rebellions was too great.





Around 25,000 Used the Railroad

Some scholars estimate that 25,000 is a little low, that more like 40,000 enslaved people traveled via the Underground Railroad to freedom, maybe even 50,000. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati says the number could be as high as 100,000, according to Elizabeth Pierce, an official there.




Families Escaped

According to John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, scholars of the Underground Railroad, families rarely stayed together when escaping through the Underground Railroad. Eighty percent of the escapees were young males in their teens and 20s who generally absconded alone, they said, and between 1838 and 1860, 95 percent of the enslaved fled alone. Young enslaved women were much less likely to run away because of their family and child-rearing responsibilities. Entire families with children did attempt flights to freedom, but such instances were rare, Franklin and Schweninger say.




Code Language

Many believe that enslaved Africans invented their own language to communicate in front of plantation owners about escape attempts without them knowing. This was a myth, however. Reality, according to Many Rivers, was that, for reasons of safety, privacy, security and protection, most enslaved people ran seeking freedom on their own. They did not inform many outside their families about their plans for fear of betrayal.

http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/02/10/7-pervasive-myths-about-the-underground-railroad-that-have-been-debunked/7/

[Wahalla]

Thanks Blu... this is the best article i have ever read that you posted, many kudos. ...It does agree with my thoughts on the underground railroad.... Quakers had a role... since they we not supposed to keep slaves..But African freed them selves on their own initiative...Very often on an individual basis...



Each time i have made comments that comply with the trust of the tat article AA 's tend to get defensive. Like the freedom quilt... Even heard a lecture that claimed it was a language!

one intriguing thing on the map is the line that goes to Texas....the way to mexico and freedom....(u did post an article a while back on a Africn escape to mexico i beleive !) Traditionally the railway a has always headed north..ignoring the most basic fact of geography and politics...

Here is the thing Mexico abolished slavery in 1811.... and it was enshrined in the mexican consitution in 1830...Texas was part of Mexico till 1836... But because the Texicans were southern yankis they refused aboltion it was enforce in 1830. This was part of the reasons the Republic of Texas was born. (in 1824 the Texicans took the yanki step by declaring their slaves indentured servants)...

So to me it seems logical that Africans ran south to cross the into Mexico...Much shorter route than North and less population... This would defray the standard model!

Then the Texas became independent and Slavery was again legal.....Where did the Africans in Texas run to ????? To the hell that is Kanada ....Seems logical Mexico....

In Michener door stopper of a novel "Texas" the population in the 1850's was a near equal three way split between Africnas, Anglos and Hispanics......There were vast plantations on the southern coast growing cotton, tobbacco and sugar in texas... and yes they were slave factopries

So good article....

and remember Wahalla is a uneducated sell out....!!!!!!

Pervasive Myths About the Underground Railroad That Have Been Debunked



It Was the Right-Thinking Quakers Who Led It

The Quakers and other Caucasians were active in the abolition movement and with the Underground Railroad. However, it was predominantly run by free Black people from the North, especially in its earliest years. William Still from Philadelphia was at the forefront of the movement, with Harriet Tubman, Levi Coffin, Thomas Garrett, Calvin Fairbank and Charles Torrey. They were the true heroes of the Underground Railroad. Still rescued 649 fugitives sheltered in Philadelphia, including 16 who arrived on one day alone, June 1, 1855, according to historian David Blight.





The Railroad Ran Throughout the South






The Underground Railroad was primarily a Northern phenomenon. It operated mainly in the free states, which only makes sense, according to “Pathways to Freedom,” an extensive study on the Underground Railroad. Fugitive enslaved people were largely on their own until they crossed the Ohio River or the Mason-Dixon Line, where they reached the so-called free states. It was then that the Underground Railroad and its “conductors” or “engineers” could take effect







There Were Underground Tunnels

Sounds intriguing, but not true. Most fugitive enslaved people seeking freedom escaped during the deep, dark night, and not through tunnels, which would have taken years to build and cost way too much to construct, according to the documentary Many Rivers on PBS. A few homes in the North had secret passageways or hidden rooms in which the enslaved could be concealed, but no tunnels.









Freedom Quilts?

Legend goes that the enslaved family had the forward-thinking to craft a quilt that they used to send messages about supposed routes on the Underground Railroad in the North, places they had never traveled. Not logical — or true, according to quilthistory.com. There were times when messages were delivered at Black church gatherings and prayer meetings, but not about the day and time that Tubman would be coming to town, according to the Many Rivers documentary. The risk of betrayal about individual escapes and collective rebellions was too great.





Around 25,000 Used the Railroad

Some scholars estimate that 25,000 is a little low, that more like 40,000 enslaved people traveled via the Underground Railroad to freedom, maybe even 50,000. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati says the number could be as high as 100,000, according to Elizabeth Pierce, an official there.




Families Escaped

According to John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, scholars of the Underground Railroad, families rarely stayed together when escaping through the Underground Railroad. Eighty percent of the escapees were young males in their teens and 20s who generally absconded alone, they said, and between 1838 and 1860, 95 percent of the enslaved fled alone. Young enslaved women were much less likely to run away because of their family and child-rearing responsibilities. Entire families with children did attempt flights to freedom, but such instances were rare, Franklin and Schweninger say.




Code Language

Many believe that enslaved Africans invented their own language to communicate in front of plantation owners about escape attempts without them knowing. This was a myth, however. Reality, according to Many Rivers, was that, for reasons of safety, privacy, security and protection, most enslaved people ran seeking freedom on their own. They did not inform many outside their families about their plans for fear of betrayal.


http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/02/...en-debunked/7/

[Wahalla]

the other arrow out of Arizona heading north..... Given that Arizona... is next to mexico....

[blugiant]

5 Things You Didn’t Know About the Murder and Mistreatment of Black People During Nazi Germany




While much of the historical focus on Nazism has concentrated on the treatment of the Jews, in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories between 1933 and 1945, Black people also suffered a grim fate. Their treatment ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality and murder, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia website, operated by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.



Africans Killed by Racist German Government

Both before and after World War I, many Africans came to Germany as students, artisans, entertainers, former soldiers or low-level colonial officials who had worked for the imperial colonial government. Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, a dancer by profession, was murdered by the Nazi SS in 1933, most likely because he was Black, according to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. After World War II, the German government paid restitution to Gilges’ German wife for his murder by the Nazis.









Africans and African-Americans Victimized by Nazis

Some African-Americans who were caught in German-occupied Europe during World War II were also victimized by the Nazi regime. Many, such as female jazz artist Valaida Snow, were imprisoned in internment camps. Some Blacks from Europe and Africa were also interned in the Nazi concentration camp system, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Lionel Romney, a sailor in the U.S. Merchant Marine, was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Bayume Mohamed Hussein from Tanganyika (today Tanzania) died in the Sachsenhausen camp near Berlin.








Nazis Violated Geneva Convention by Imprisoning and Killing Black Soldiers

Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (an international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). For instance, Lt. Darwin Nichols, an African-American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. The Holocaust Memorial Museum said Black soldiers of the American, French and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.






The Growth of Anti-Black Racism in Germany

Following World War I and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Rhineland in western Germany was occupied by the victorious Allies, which included Black soldiers as part of the French colonial troops. Racist propaganda against these Black soldiers depicted them as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Separation of whites and Blacks was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.







Mixed-Race German Children Faced Discrimination

African-German children of mixed race were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military, according to documents from the Holocaust Museum.

The children of Black soldiers and German women were called “Rhineland Bastards,” viewed by the growing Nazi party as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, said in Mein Kampf that “the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardization.”

By 1937, after the Nazis rose to power, the Gestapo (German secret state police) had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many mixed-race Blacks. Some were subjected to medical experiments, while others mysteriously “disappeared,” according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/02/03/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-murder-and-mistreatment-of-black-people-during-nazi-germany/3/

[blugiant]

the other arrow out of Arizona heading north..... Given that Arizona... is next to mexico....

doan figgit da alamo was reallee bout slavery ann forcing mexico fe sell sum da lands like new mexico and arizona.

haitian revolution played and intaresting roles widd regards to black in mexico. slave masters running fram da haitian revolution brought sum aff dem enslaved africans to merikka. da enslaved afrikkans use wat dem learned in haiti fe fite dem enslavers ann sum aff de enslaved blakks escaped fram louisana thru texas inna mexico ann settle on da mexican coast.

[blugiant]

Hans Massaquoi wrote of growing up black in Nazi Germany



Hans Massaquoi, a former managing editor of Ebony magazine who wrote a distinctive memoir about his unusual childhood growing up black in Nazi Germany, died in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday, his 87th birthday.

He had been hospitalized over the Christmas holidays, said his son, Hans J. Massaquoi Jr.

Inspired by the late Alex Haley, the author of "Roots," Massaquoi decided to share his experience of being "both an insider in Nazi Germany and, paradoxically, an endangered outsider." His autobiography, "Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany," was published in the U.S. in 1999, followed by a German translation.

Massaquoi was born Jan. 19, 1926, in the port city of Hamburg. His mother was a German nurse and his father the son of a Liberian diplomat. When his grandfather was recalled to Liberia, Massaquoi's father decided to return to Africa too, but his mother insisted on staying behind.

Living with his mother, Massaquoi grew up in working-class neighborhoods of Hamburg. There were other black Germans, but not many; some were offspring of European colonial troops who occupied the Rhineland after World War I.

In his book, he recounted a story from 1933, when he was in second grade. Wanting to show what a good German he was, Massaquoi said he cajoled his baby-sitter into sewing a swastika onto his sweater. When his mother spotted it that evening, she snipped it off, but a teacher had already taken a snapshot. Massaquoi, the only dark-skinned child in the photo, is also the only one wearing a swastika.

He wrote that one of his saddest moments as a child was when his homeroom teacher told him he couldn't join the Hitler Youth.

"Of course I wanted to join. I was a kid and most of my friends were joining," he said. "They had cool uniforms and they did exciting things — camping, parades, playing drums."

Germany was at war by the time he was a teenager, and he describes in the book the near-destruction of Hamburg during the Operation Gomorrah bombing attack in the summer of 1943.

Massaquoi had a theory to explain why he avoided deportation to concentration camps during the Nazi reign.

"Unlike Jews, blacks were so few in numbers that they were relegated to low-priority status in the Nazis' lineup for extermination," he said in a 2001 interview with London's Independent newspaper.

After the collapse of Germany at the end of the war, he played saxophone in clubs that catered to the American Merchant Marine and worked as a translator for the British occupying forces.

Eventually he left Germany, first joining his father's family in Liberia, before moving to Chicago on a student visa to attend an aviation mechanics school. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951 and served stateside during the Korean War. Afterward, he became a U.S. citizen, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois and began a career as a journalist.

He worked first for Jet magazine before moving to Chicago-based Ebony, where he rose to managing editor of the magazine aimed at African American readers.

Chicago author Studs Terkel interviewed Massaquoi for his 1984 book, "The Good War: An Oral History of World War II." By the late 1990s, approaching retirement, Massaquoi decided to tell his own story in an autobiography.

He was surprised by its reception in Germany.

"I had expected some interest there, but this has surpassed all my expectations," he told the Contra Costa Times in 2000. "I think the Germans want to get some closure about those years."

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/22/local/la-me-hans-massaquoi-20130123

[blugiant]

January 30, 1933

The Nazis seized power on January 30, of that year with Adolph
Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Following the Reichstag fire on
February 27 basic civil rights were suspended. On February 28 the
Nazis took control of the state apparatus. Leftist political parties were
banned, Germany is declared a one-party state, Jews and leftists
including Blacks are eliminated from the bureaucracy, and trade
unions are dissolved and replaced with Nazi organizations.

Police rounded up thousands of political opponents, detaining them
without trial in concentration camps. The Nazi regime also put into
practice racial policies that aimed to "purify" and strengthen the
Germanic "Aryan" population. Hitler had a vision of a Master Race of
Aryans that would control Europe. He used powerful propaganda
techniques to convince not only the German people, but countless
others, that if they eliminated the people who stood in their way and
the degenerates and racially inferior, they "the great Germans" would
prosper. This included mandatory Sterilization for Black Youth.

Prior to World War I, there were very few dark-skinned people of
African descent in Germany. But, during World War I, the French
brought in Black African soldiers during the Allied occupation. Most
of the Germans, who were very race conscious, despised the
dark-skinned "invasion". Some of these Black soldiers married White
German women that bore children referred to as "Rhineland
Bastards" or the "Black Disgrace". On May 13, 1931, the International
Olympic Committee, headed by Count Henri Baillet-Latour of
Belgium, awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. The choice
signaled Germany's return to the world community after defeat in
World War I.

In the months and years that followed, Germany proceeded to oppress
and murder Blacks and other non-Aryans. On July 14th 1933, they
enacted a new law providing a basis for forced sterilization of
handicapped persons, Gypsies, and Blacks. After the International
Olympic Committee put concerns about the safety of Black athletes in
Nazi Germany to rest, most African American newspapers opposed a
boycott of the 1936 Olympics. Black journalists often underscored the
hypocrisy of pro-boycotters who did not first address the problem of
discrimination against Black athletes in the United States. Writers for
such papers as The Philadelphia Tribune and The Chicago Defender
argued that athletic victories by Blacks would undermine Nazi racial
views of "Aryan" supremacy and foster a new sense of Black pride at
home.

In the end, 18 African Americans 16 men and 2 women went to Berlin;
triple the number who had competed for the United States in the 1932
Los Angeles Games. That all of these athletes came from
predominantly white universities demonstrated to many Black
journalists the inferiority of training equipment and facilities at Black
colleges where the vast majority of African American students were
educated in the 1930s. In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that he
would eliminate all the children born of African-German descent
because he considered them an "insult" to the German nation. "The
mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a
whore," Hitler wrote. "In both cases, there is not the slightest moral
duty regarding these offspring of a foreign race."

The Nazis set up a secret group, Commission Number 3, to organize
the sterilization of these offspring to keep intact the purity of the
Aryan race. In 1937, all local authorities in Germany were to submit a
list of all the children of African descent. Then, these children were
taken from their homes or schools without parental permission and
put before the commission. Once a child was decided to be of Black
descent, the child was taken immediately to a hospital and sterilized.
About 400 children were medically sterilized many times without their
parents' knowledge.

The Black experience during the Third Reich is a missing one, mainly
due to the comparatively small number of casualties compared to the
Jewish loss. Many stories of what happened during the Nazi regime
are brought out by author Hans Massaquoi (Child photo shown) in his
book Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany 1999.
Yet the Black history of these times also includes the brutal treatment
of the Herero people before WW II in the (then) German colony of
southwest Namibia.

Additionally when African-American allied soldiers were caught
behind enemy lines during the war racial abuse was inflicted on top of
their prisoner-of-war status. In 1937, nearly 385 Black German children
disappeared with out a trace. In Europe the memory of the Third
Reich still induces pain. Annually on Veterans Day millions of families
all over Europe still mourn lost loved ones, many of whom were Black.

Reference:
Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
by Hans Massaquoi
Copyright February 1, 2001

[Blackstar*]

How Pittsburgh's Freedom House Pioneered Paramedic Treatment


Freedom House paramedics, who first were deployed in the 1960s, provided a crucial service for Pittsburgh residents. The program became a national model for emergency medical transport and care.

In the 1960s, Pittsburgh, like most cities, was segregated by race. But people of all colors suffered from lack of ambulance care. Police were the ones who responded to medical emergency calls.
"Back in those days, you had to hope and pray you had nothing serious," recalls filmmaker and Hollywood paramedic Gene Starzenski, who grew up in Pittsburgh. "Because basically, the only thing they did was pick you up and threw you in the back like a sack of potatoes, and they took off for the hospital. They didn't even sit in the back with you."

Ambulances existed, but they were privatized and didn't offer emergency care or go everywhere.
That changed with the start of the Freedom House Ambulance Service, the city's first mobile emergency medicine program. Starzenski tells the story in his documentary Freedom House Street Saviors.

The service became the national model, but it started out by serving Pittsburgh's mostly black Hill District.

<snip>

It wasn't long before everyone was benefiting from Freedom House. In 1969, a car hit Sue Schilling as she crossed a boulevard that separated her predominantly white neighborhood from the Hill District.

Freedom House responded. When the city erected a plaque commemorating Freedom House last year, Schilling wrote a letter thanking the ambulance technicians.

"I don't think the men got enough credit for what they did, because it was a different time," she says.

Freedom House became so successful that it attracted the city's attention, and in the mid-1970s, the city took it over. Pittsburgh has since become a healthcare hub.

Full Story