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Michael Anthony Donald (1961-1981)

Michael Anthony Donald was a nineteen-year-old African American man who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama. His killing was one of the last known lynchings in the United States. Donald was born on July 24, 1961, in Mobile to Beullah Mae Donald and David Donald. He was the youngest of six children. In 1981, Josephus Anderson, an African American, was charged with the murder of a white police officer in Birmingham, Alabama while committing a robbery. Anderson’s case was moved from Birmingham to Mobile, Alabama in a change of venue. While the jury was struggling to reach a verdict on Anderson, members of the United Klan of America complained that the jury had not convicted Anderson because it had African American members.  One Klansman, Bennie Jack Hays, announced to his fellow Klan members that “if a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.” On March 20, 1981, a mistrial was declared in An...

FOOD STAMP MAJORITY ARE NOT POOR UNEMPLOYED BLACK PEOPLE

THERE IS A GRAVE MISCONCEPTION OF THE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF RACE AND SOCIAL WELFARE HISTORY- KEY LEGISLATION Following are some key events of racism in the history of social welfare. Unless otherwise cited, this history is drawn from Neubeck and Cazanave's (2001)  Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor. Mother’s Pensions in the early 1900s. In the early 1900s, state legislatures began to pass bills that supported single mothers called "Mother‟s Pensions.‟ While African Americans were more deeply impoverished, the aid was given almost solely to white women with Anglo ancestry. Because benefits were administered locally, rules frequently were created explicitly to exclude women of color. One common requirement was that a mother maintained a "suitable home‟ for her children. The term „suitable‟, which was not clearly defined, was frequently used to exclude African-American women due to negative stereotypes of African American...

369th Infantry Regiment “Harlem Hellfighters”

First organized in 1916 as the 15th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment and manned by black enlisted soldiers with both black and white officers, the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” was the best known African American unit of World War I. The regiment was nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, the Black Rattlers, which was given to the regiment by the French. The nickname "Hell Fighters" was given to them by the Germans due to their toughness and that they never lost a man through capture, lost a trench or a foot of ground to the enemy. The "Harlem Hellfighters" were the first all black regiment that helped change the American public's opinion on African American soldiers and helped pave the way for future African American soldiers.  Federalized in 1917, the 369th prepared for service in Europe and arrived in Brest, France in December.  The next month, the regiment became part of the 93rd Division (Provisio...

Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971)

Ralph Johnson Bunche, American political scientist, scholar, Nobel Prize winner, and diplomat.   Bunche was born on August 7, 1904 in Detroit, Michigan. His father Fred was a barber who owned a racially segregated barber shop that catered solely to white customers. His mother, Olive Agnes Johnson, was an amateur musician. Young Ralph spent his early years in Michigan. However, due to the relatively poor health of his mother, the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico when he was ten years old. The family believed the dry climate of the region would be more conducive to his  mother's ’ health. Upon his mother's death, Ralph and his two sisters were resettled in Los Angeles, California where they joined their grandmother who raised them in a South Central neighborhood that was then predominantly white. It was during his teenage years in Los Angeles where Bunche proved to be a brilliant student. He excelled in all of his high school courses and graduated ...

Dick Gregory

Richard Claxton  " Dick "  Gregory  (born October 12, 1932) is an American comedian,  civil rights  activist, social critic, conspiracy theorist, writer and entrepreneur. Gregory is an influential American comedian who has used his performance skills to convey to both white and black audiences his political message on civil rights. His social satire helped change the way white Americans perceived black American comedians since he first performed in public.  As a poor student who excelled at running, Gregory was aided by teachers at  Sumner High School , among them Warren St. James. Gregory earned a track scholarship to   Southern Illinois University Carbondale   There he set school records as a half-miler and miler. His college career was interrupted for two years in 1954 when he was drafted into the   U.S. Army . The army was where he got his start in comedy, entering and winning several Army talent shows at the urging of hi...

Shadrach Minkins

(1814? - December 13, 1875) He was an African-American  fugitive slave  from Virginia who escaped in 1850 and reached Boston. He is known for being freed from a courtroom in Boston after being captured by United States marshals under the  Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 . White and black members of the  Boston Vigilance Committee  freed and hid him, helping him get to Canada via the  Underground Railroad . Minkins settled in  Montreal  where he raised a family. Two men were prosecuted in Boston for helping free him, but they were acquitted by the jury. Minkins was born into slavery about 1814 in  Norfolk, Virginia .  He escaped from slavery as a young man in 1850 and reached  Boston, Massachusetts , where he became a waiter.   Later that year, Congress enacted the   Fugitive Slave Law , which allowed federal agents to seize escaped slaves living in   free states   and return them to their owners. It required la...

Internalized Racism & White Supremacy

Within sociology there isn’t a unique term for when white people enact white supremacy; we might just call it “white racism”. However we use the term Internalized Racism to denote the ways people of color adopt white supremacy. The idea here is that when people of color internalize white supremacy this often whittles at their self-esteem and may lead them to dislike the aspects of themselves that they feel are part of their non-white raci al-ethnic identity. Many people of color can easily think of times in their life where they felt shame or felt shamed by others for the non-white aspects of their identity. For instance an African American student recently said to me, “I hate my name [because it sounds Afrocentric], people hear it and immediately assume I’m loud or… you know, ’stereotypically black’.” People of color are also just as capable of using white supremacy to stereotype or discriminate against other people of color and themselves. Nathan Palmer

John S. Rock

John S. Rock was born to free black parents in Salem, New Jersey in 1825. He attended public schools in New Jersey until he was 19 and then worked as a teacher between 1844 and 1848.  During this period Rock began his medical studies with two white doctors. Although he was initially denied entry, Rock was finally accepted into the American Medical College in Philadelphia.  He graduated in 1852 with a medical degree. While in medical school Rock practiced dentistry and taught classes at a night school for African Americans.  In 1851 he received a silver medal for the creation of an improved variety of artificial teeth and another for a prize essay on temperance.    At the age of 27, Rock, a teacher, doctor and dentist, moved to Boston in 1852 to open a medical and dental office. He was commissioned by the Vigilance Committee, an organization of abolitionists, to treat fugitive slaves’ medical needs. During this period Dr. Rock increasingly identified with t...

The Black community

One of the Black community's biggest problems is that it has been inbred into us during slavery that upward mobility means distancing ourselves from everything Black. Other cultures don't suffer from that disability. Black people are the products of the very same racist environment as White people, so some of us are just as racist toward other Black people as any racist Hillbilly. So we've got to educate ourselves out of that mind-set just to get up to speed to where other cultures walk through the door. So yes, other cultures have issues that they need to overcome too, but Black people have a whole lot more issues to deal with than others. That makes it imperative that Black people begin a crash course in education NOW, because the way things are going, there's not much time left. .  I live in California, and as I'm sure you know, California is an entrance point for illegal immigrants from South of the border. So one would think that these people who come he...

Barbary Pirates

The problem of slavery received a new meaning when white American sailors were enslaved by the so-called Barbary pirates of North Africa. In 1785, the American schooner Maria, sailing off the coast of Portugal, was boarded by Algerian pirates. Its captain and five crew members were taken prisoner. Then a second American ship, the brig Dauphin, was captured, and its 15-member crew was taken to Algiers and enslaved. Several Americans were put to work as domestic servants; another was forced to care for the Dey of Algiers's lion. Much of the time the hostages were kept in leg irons, chained to pillars, or locked in a rat-infested prison. Six American captives died of bubonic plague. One went insane. During the late eighteenth century, three small North African states--Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis--preyed on merchant ships sailing in the Mediterranean, seizing their crews and cargoes and holding both for ransom. Many European countries paid tribute to the Barbary States to ensure...

ON RACISM

Art Blair shared Bev Collier's note: On Racism. Bev Collier wrote a new note: ON RACISM. Because racism does not affect us white folk in the same way as it does people of color, it is easy to underestimate the pain and suffering that they endure on a daily basis. Our white privilege allows us to place it back on a remote shelf at anytime and ignore it. White folks don't have to talk about racism. It does not directly affect us. We don't have to fear that our sons will be arr ested, sent to prison or even killed for a minor action. Our character is not judged by the color of our skin. White people need to look beyond our privilege and learn to listen to and strive to understand those most affected by racism. We have no business judging or instructing people of color on racism. They know full well what racism is and how it affects their lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren! If we sincerely care about racism in this country we need to accept that...