Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2015

John Arthur "Jack" Johnson (March 31, 1878 – June 10, 1946)

Jack Johnson's was nicknamed the "Galveston Giant."   He was an American  boxer , who—at the height of the  Jim Crow era —became the first  African American   world heavyweight boxing champion  (1908–1915). Johnson was faced with much controversy when he was charged with violating the  Mann Act  in 1912, even though there was an obvious lack of evidence and the charge was largely racially biased. In a documentary about his life,  Ken Burns  notes that "for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth". Johnson was born the third child of nine, and the first son, of Henry and Tina "Tiny" Johnson, two former slaves who worked blue collar jobs as a janitor and a dishwasher to support their children and put them through school. His father Henry served as a civilian teamster of the Union’s 38th Colored Infantry, and was a role model for his son. As Jack once said, his father was "T

Henri Caesar aka Black Caesar (1791-1830)

Black Caesar was allegedly a 19th-century  Haitian  revolutionary and pirate. Efforts to find historical evidence of his existence have been unsuccessful. According to works of fiction, he was a participant in the  Haitian Revolution  under  Dutty Boukman  and  Toussaint Louverture  as well as active in piracy for nearly a 30-year period during the early 19th century. Henri Caesar was allegedly born to a slave family kept by a French plantation owner known as Arnaut. He worked as a houseboy on the estate and, as a young man, worked in the lumberyard. He was apparently mistreated by the supervisor and later killed the man during the  slave insurrection , torturing him with a  saw . Joining the rebel forces led by Dutty Boukman  and  Toussaint Louverture , he remained with the revolution until its independence from  France  in 1804, when he left to try his luck at sea. Based in  Port-de-Paix , he captured a Spanish ship in 1805 and soon began attacking small villages and lone ve

Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696 – May 14, 1781)

He was an  Afro-Russian   nobleman ,  military engineer  and  general . Kidnapped as a child and presented as a gift to  Peter the Great , he was raised in the Emperor's household, and eventually rose to become a prominent member of the imperial court in the reign of Peter's daughter  Elizabeth . He is the great-grandfather of the author and poet  Alexander Pushkin . The main reliable accounts of Gannibal's life come from  Peter the Great's Negro , Pushkin's unfinished biography of his great-grandfather, published after Pushkin's death in 1837. Scholars argue that Pushkin's account may be inaccurate due to the author’s desire to elevate the status of his ancestors and family. There are a number of contradictions between the biographies of Pushkin and the German novel,  The Blackamoor of Peter the Great . One such a historical biography by Gannibal's son-in-law Rotkirkh was largely responsible for the myth, propagated by some earlier historians,

Assata Olugbala Shakur (born JoAnne Deborah Byron on July 16, 1947)

Her  married name  was  Chesimard. She is  an  African-American  activist and member of the former  Black Panther Party  (BPP) and  Black Liberation Army  (BLA). Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur was accused of several crimes and was the subject of a multi-state  manhunt . In May 1973, Shakur was involved in a shootout on the  New Jersey Turnpike , in which she was accused of killing  New Jersey State Trooper   Werner Foerster  and grievously assaulting Trooper James Harper. BLA member Zayd Malik Shakur was also killed in the incident, and Shakur was wounded. Between 1973 and 1977, Shakur was  indicted  in relation to six other incidents—charged with  murder ,  attempted murder ,  armed robbery ,  bank robbery , and  kidnapping —resulting in three  acquittals  and three  dismissals . In 1977, she was convicted of the  first-degree murder  of Foerster and of seven other felonies related to the shootout. In 2013, the  Federal Bureau of Investigation  (FBI) announced it had made Shakur

Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005)

Richard Pryor was an American comedian, actor, film director,  social critic , satirist, writer, and  MC . Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities and profanity, as well as  racial epithets . He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and story telling style. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time:  Jerry Seinfeld  called Pryor "The  Picasso  of our profession", and  Bob Newhart  has called Pryor "the seminal comedian of the last 50 years". This legacy can be attributed, in part, to the unusual degree of intimacy Pryor brought to bear on his comedy. As  Bill Cosby  reportedly once said, "Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it." Pryor's body of work includes the concert movies and recordings:  Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin'

Body Politic

Body politic  is a  metaphor  in which a nation is considered to be a  corporate entity ,  being likened to a  human body . The word "politic" in this phrase is a  post positive adjective ; so it is "a body of a  politic  nature" rather than "a politic of a bodily nature". A body politic comprises all the people in a particular country considered as a single group. The  analogy  is typically continued by reference to the type of government as the  head of state ,  but may be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of the  Aesop's fable , " The Belly and the Members ". The metaphor appears in the French language as the  corps-état .  The metaphor developed in  Renaissance  times, as the medical knowledge based upon the classical work of  Galen  was being challenged by new thinkers such as  William Harvey . Analogies were made between the supposed causes of disease and disorder and their equivalents in the political fie

The Words of A Master Teacher

Taj Terik Bey What so-called "black", "negro", "colored", "African-American" (Moors) have not been taught is that they are native, indigenous and aboriginal to the Americas. That fact is not speculation. Forget what you have "heard" or been "taught" by European/Christian-based books, in public/private (catholic/protestant) schools and "churches". Researchers and scientists, both Moorish AND European, have verified documents, artifacts and antiquities that unquestionably prove that Moors originally inhabited the continent of the Americas. Moors, did not first arrive to the Americas on slave boats. They (your ancestors) were already here. (Ask any "Mason" who Hiram Abiff is and what it means, and see what he does or says - if anything.) Cristos Columbo (Christopher Columbus) did NOT "discover America". As a matter of fact, Columbus never made it past Barbados and never even saw the land that

Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake (1841–1925)

Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake, born in Missouri in 1841, was one of six children of Robin and Polly Holmes. From 1852 to 1853 Mary Jane was the subject of a fifteen-month legal battle known as Holmes v. Ford to obtain her freedom.  That battle also helped determine the status of slavery in the Oregon Territory.   The Holmes family was owned by Missouri farmer Nathaniel Ford.  In 1844 Ford brought the family west on the Oregon Trail, promising Robin and Polly their freedom if they would help him establish a farm in the Oregon Territory.   Ford refused to honor his promise for five years after their arrival, finally relenting in 1849.  He freed the parents and their new born son but refused to release nine-year-old Mary Jane and her other siblings including two who had been born in Oregon Territory.  Ford intended to sell each of the four children when they reached adulthood. Ford’s refusal to release Mary Jane Holmes and her siblings prompted Robin and Polly Holmes to file suit