Archive through February 04, 2003
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TV ClubHouse: Archives: 2003 February: Black History Month: Archive through February 04, 2003

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:06 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
ive debated with myself as to whether or not to start this thread. as you can see i decided to do it. i will be posting different tidbits pertaining to African-American's in the United States. but to save keystrokes i may refer to us as black people, black americans, black folk, a/a's, etc. please bear(sp) with me. some of this information may be upsetting, but it pertains to black history, the good and the bad. here are a few items just to start off with. mods if you feel that this topic should be moved to a different area, please feel free. also if possible could you change the title colors to red, black, and green? thanks a bunch, even if you can't.

changed colors per your request

(cw)

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:07 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Middle Passage,

In the days of the African slave trade to the New World, the middle part of the slave's journey--i.e., the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. From about 1518 to the mid-19th century, millions of African men, women, and children made the 21-to-90-day voyage aboard grossly overcrowded sailing ships manned by crews mostly from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and France. Slaver captains anchored chiefly off the Guinea Coast for a month to a year to gather their cargoes of 150 to 600 persons. Then began a long period of continuous danger, with raids at port by hostile tribes, threats of slave mutiny, epidemics, attack by pirates or enemy ships, and bad weather. During the Middle Passage, male slaves were kept constantly shackled to each other or to the deck to prevent mutiny, of which 55 detailed accounts were recorded between 1699 and 1845 (see also slavery).

So that the largest possible cargo might be carried, the captives were wedged horizontally, chained to low-lying platforms stacked in tiers, with an average individual space allotment of 6 feet long by 16 inches wide (183 by 41 cm). Unable to stand erect or turn over, many slaves died in this position. If bad weather or equatorial calms prolonged the journey, the twice-daily ration of water plus either boiled rice, millet, cornmeal, or stewed yams was greatly reduced, resulting in near starvation and attendant illnesses. In the daytime, weather permitting, captives were brought on deck for exercise or for "dancing the slaves" (forced jumping up and down). At this time, conscientious captains insisted that the sleeping quarters be scraped and swabbed by the crew; but in bad weather the oppressive heat and noxious fumes in the unventilated and unsanitary holds caused fevers and dysentery, with a high mortality rate. Deaths during the Middle Passage, caused by epidemics, suicide, "fixed melancholy," and mutiny, have been estimated at 13 percent. So many bodies of dead or dying Africans were jettisoned into the ocean that sharks regularly followed the slave ships on their westward journey.

The Middle Passage supplied the New World with its major work force and brought enormous profits to international slave traders. At the same time, it exacted a terrible price in physical and emotional anguish on the part of the uprooted Africans; it was distinguished by the callousness to human suffering it developed among the traders.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:07 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
THE ORIGINS OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH

CARTER G. WOODSON
(1875-1950) was born to parents who had been slaves. Neither his Mother nor Father could read or write. Mr. Woodson had to work to earn money for the family and did not start school until later than most children. But, his motto was it is "never to late to learn." He became a high school teacher; and was sad to discover that none of the schools taught the history of Black Americans. He started the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to study the important things Black people had accomplished and on February 19, 1926 Woodson established "Negro History Week".

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:08 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
"To You"
©1993 by the Estate of Langston Hughes
To sit and dream, to sit and read,
To sit and learn about the world
Outside our world of here and now---
Our problem world---
To dream of vast horizons of the soul
Through dreams made whole,
Unfettered, free--- help me!
All you who are dreamers too,
Help me to make
Our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.

Car54

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:10 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
This is a great idea. Thanks Square for starting it off.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:22 pm EditMoveDeleteIP

Twiggyish

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:24 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
My favorite poet in the world!! I just love her work. So in honor of this month:


Still I Rise
Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:29 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
twiggy, that's one of my fav's too.

Hermione69

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 04:45 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
The mind does not take its complexion from the skin. ~ Frederick Douglass

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:05 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Black Code,

In the United States, any of numerous laws enacted in the states of the former Confederacy after the American Civil War, in 1865 and 1866, designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and to assure continuance of white supremacy.
The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly been in effect. The general philosophy supporting the institution of chattel slavery in America was based on the concept that slaves were property, not persons, and that the law must protect not only the property but also the property owner from the danger of violence. Slave rebellions were not unknown, and the possibility of uprisings was a constant source of anxiety in colonies and then states with large slave populations. (In Virginia during 1780-1864, 1,418 slaves were convicted of crimes; 91 of these convictions were for insurrection and 346 for murder.) Slaves also ran away. In the British possessions in the New World, the settlers were free to promulgate any regulations they saw fit to govern their labour supply. As early as the 17th century, a set of rules was in effect in Virginia and elsewhere; but the codes were constantly being altered to adapt to new needs, and they varied from one colony, and later one state, to another.

All the slave codes, however, had certain provisions in common. In all of them the colour line was firmly drawn, and any amount of Negro blood established the race of a person, whether slave or free, as Negro. The status of the offspring followed that of the mother, so that the child of a free father and a slave mother was a slave. Slaves had few legal rights: in court their testimony was inadmissible in any litigation involving whites; they could make no contract, nor could they own property; even if attacked, they could not strike a white person. There were numerous restrictions to enforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner's premises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, or transmit or possess "inflammatory" literature; they were not permitted to marry.

Obedience to the slave codes was exacted in a variety of ways. Such punishments as whipping, branding, and imprisonment were commonly used, but death (which meant destruction of property) was rarely called for except in such extreme cases as the rape or murder of a white person. White patrols kept the slaves under surveillance, especially at night. Slave codes were not always strictly enforced, but whenever any signs of unrest were detected the appropriate machinery of the state would be alerted and the laws more strictly enforced.

The black codes enacted immediately after the American Civil War, though varying from state to state, were all intended to secure a steady supply of cheap labour, and all continued to assume the inferiority of the freed slaves. There were vagrancy laws that declared a black to be vagrant if unemployed and without permanent residence; a person so defined could be arrested, fined, and bound out for a term of labour if unable to pay the fine. Apprentice laws provided for the "hiring out" of orphans and other young dependents to whites, who often turned out to be their former owners. Some states limited the type of property blacks could own, and in others blacks were excluded from certain businesses or from the skilled trades. Former slaves were forbidden to carry firearms or to testify in court, except in cases concerning other blacks. Legal marriage between blacks was provided for, but interracial marriage was prohibited.

It was Northern reaction to the black codes (as well as to the bloody antiblack riots in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866; see New Orleans Race Riot) that helped produce Radical Reconstruction (see Reconstruction) and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. The Freedmen's Bureau was created in 1865 to help the former slaves. Reconstruction did away with the black codes, but, after Reconstruction was over, many of their provisions were reenacted in the Jim Crow laws, which were not finally done away with until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:09 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Kitt, Eartha,

Kitt
UPI/Corbis-Bettmann
in full EARTHA MAE KITT (b. Jan. 26, 1928, North, S.C., U.S.), American singer and dancer noted for her sultry vocal style and slinky beauty who also achieved success as a dramatic stage and film actress.
The daughter of impoverished sharecroppers, Kitt from the age of eight grew up in an ethnically diverse section of Harlem, New York City. At 16 she joined Katherine Dunham's dance troupe, touring the United States, Mexico, South America, and Europe. When the Dunham company returned to the United States, the multilingual Kitt stayed in Paris, where she won immediate popularity as a nightclub singer. She made her acting debut as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an Orson Welles adaptation of Faust, in 1950. With her appearance in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1952 and with early 1950s recordings such as "C'est Si Bon," "Santa Baby," and "I Want to Be Evil," Kitt became a star.

Kitt's success continued in nightclubs, theatre works such as Mrs. Patterson (1954) and Shinbone Alley (1957), films including St. Louis Blues (1958) and Anna Lucasta (1959), and television appearances, including the role of Catwoman in the late 1960s series Batman. After she publicly criticized the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon in the presence of the first lady, Lady Bird (Claudia) Johnson, Kitt's career went into a severe decline; in the 1970s it began to recover after it was revealed that she had been subjected to U.S. Secret Service surveillance. She continued to appear in nightclubs, theatres, and films and on recordings into the 1990s. She wrote the autobiographies Thursday's Child (1956), Alone With Me (1976), and I'm Still Here

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:12 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Morgan State University,
public, coeducational institution of higher education in Baltimore, Md., U.S. It is a historically black institution with an emphasis on liberal arts and sciences, particularly urban studies. University-sponsored research and public service programs also focus on issues of urban life. The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest academic division. The school also includes the Institute of Architecture and Planning and schools of Business and Management, Education and Urban Studies, Engineering, and Graduate Studies. Morgan State offers about 45 bachelor's degree programs and almost 30 master's degree programs; a doctorate is awarded in urban education leadership. Campus facilities include a supercomputer, the Entrepreneur Center, and the Soper Library, which houses collections of African and African-American books and materials. There are approximately 5,000 students enrolled at the university.
The university dates to 1867, when the Methodist Episcopal Church established it in Baltimore as the Centenary Biblical Institute. In 1890 the school was given the nameMorgan College, in honour of donor Lyttleton F. Morgan. The Methodists continued to operate the school until it was purchased by the state of Maryland in 1939. The School of Graduate Studies was authorized in 1963. Morgan State was elevated to university status in 1975.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:49 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
thanks mods

no problem

(cw)

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:52 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Benjamin Banneker was a scientist, astronomer, inventor, writer and antislavery publicist. Banneker created the first American built striking clock, invented the first Farmers' Almanac and actively campaigned against slavery.

Benjamin Banneker was born on November 9, 1731, just outside of Baltimore, Maryland, in Ellicott's Mills. He was the son of a slave, however, Banneker was a freeman. Banneker's grandmother, Molly Walsh, was an English immigrant and an indentured servant who married an African slave named Banna Ka. That name was later changed to Bannaky. Walsh, after serving her seven years as an indentured servant, bought a small farm, where Banna Ka was a slave. Her daughter (born free) also married a slave. At that time, the law dictated that if your mother was a slave, then you were a slave and if she was a freewomen then you were not a slave.

Banneker was educated by Quakers and quickly revealed to the world his inventive nature. Benjamin Banneker first achieved national acclaim for his scientific work in the 1791 survey of the Federal Territory (now Washington, D.C.). In 1753, he built the first watch made in America, a wooden pocket watch. Twenty years later, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse. His estimate, made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.

This plan of the city of Washington, D.C., from 1791 shows Banneker's work as surveyor of America's capital

Banneker's mechanical and mathematical abilities impressed many, including Thomas Jefferson who recommended him for the surveying team that laid out Washington D.C. Banneker is best known for his six annual Farmer's Almanacs published between 1792 and 1797. In his free time, Banneker began compiling the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris. The almanac included information on medicines and medical treatment, and listed tides, astronomical information, and eclipses calculated by Banneker himself.

On August 19, 1791, Banneker sent a copy of his first almanac to secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. In an accompanying letter, he questioned the slave-holder's sincerity as a "friend to liberty." He urged Jefferson to help get rid of "absurd and false ideas" that one race is superior to another. He wished Jefferson's sentiments to be the same as his, that "one Universal Father . . . afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same faculties." Jefferson responded with praise for Banneker's accomplishments.

Benjamin Banneker died on October 25, 1806.

Hippyt

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:53 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I love to hear Maya Angelou recite that poem. It's so moving. I have a question,when did Black History Month become national,and what president enacted it?
Love this thread Squared,we can all learn from threads like this.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:58 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
hippyt, going to find out, back in a flash....

Ladytex

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 05:59 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
1721 - Onesimus, a slave in the household of Cotton Mather, tells the minister about medical inoculations performed in Africa by tribal healers. Mather informs Dr. Zabdiel Boylston of this practice, and the doctor performs the first smallpox inoculations in North America on his son and two slaves.
Timelines of African-American History, 500 years of Black Achievement by Tom Cowan, PhD and Jack Maguire

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:00 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Negro National Anthem
'Lift Every Voice and Sing'

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, Our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our GOD,
True to our native land.


still looking.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:12 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else.

—Historian Roger Wilkins

Ladytex

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:15 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Negro History Week was expanded to Black History Month in 1976.

Hippyt

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:16 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Here's a link. Harriet Tubman has always been one of my heroes. I read The Underground Railroad when I was young,and the story amazed me,still does. That woman must have had such guts and determination,not to mention courage!
Harriet Tubman

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:17 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Bakke and Beyond
A History and Timeline of Affirmative Action

by Borgna Brunner


IN ITS TUMULTUOUS 30-year history, affirmative action has been both praised and pilloried as an answer to racial inequality. The policy was introduced in 1965 by President Johnson as a method of redressing discrimination that had persisted in spite of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees. "This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights," Johnson asserted. "We seek… not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result."

A Temporary Measure to Level the Playing Field


FOCUSING in particular on education and jobs, affirmative action policies required that active measures be taken to ensure that blacks and other minorities enjoyed the same opportunities for promotions, salary increases, career advancement, school admissions, scholarships, and financial aid that had been the nearly exclusive province of whites. From the outset, affirmative action was envisioned as a temporary remedy that would end once there was a "level playing field" for all Americans.

Bakke and Reverse Discrimination


BY the late '70s, however, flaws in the policy began to show up amid its good intentions. Reverse discrimination became an issue, epitomized by the famous Bakke case in 1978. Allan Bakke, a white male, had been rejected two years in a row by a medical school that had accepted less qualified minority applicants— the school had a separate admissions policy for minorities and reserved 16 out of 100 places for minority students. The Supreme Court outlawed inflexible quota systems in affirmative action programs, which in this case had unfairly discriminated against a white applicant. In the same ruling, however, the Court upheld the legality of affirmative action per se.

A Zero-Sum Game for Conservatives


FUELED by "angry white men," a backlash against affirmative action began to mount. To conservatives, the system was a zero-sum game that opened the door for jobs, promotions, or education to minorities while it shut the door on whites. In a country that prized the values of self-reliance and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, conservatives resented the idea that some unqualified minorities were getting a free ride on the American system. "Preferential treatment" and "quotas" became expressions of contempt. Even more contentious was the accusation that some minorities enjoyed playing the role of professional victim. Why could some minorities who had also experienced terrible adversity and racism—Jews and Asians, in particular—manage to make the American way work for them without government handouts?

"Justice and Freedom for All" Still in Its Infancy


LIBERALS countered that "the land of opportunity" was a very different place for the European immigrants who landed on its shores than it was for those who arrived in the chains of slavery. As historian Roger Wilkins pointed out, "blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else."


Blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else.

—Historian Roger Wilkins


Considering that Jim Crow laws and lynching existed well into the '60s, and that myriad subtler forms of racism in housing, employment, and education persisted well beyond the civil rights movement, conservatives impatient for blacks to "get over" the legacy of slavery needed to realize that slavery was just the beginning of racism in America. Liberals also pointed out that another popular conservative argument—that because of affirmative action, minorities were threatening the jobs of whites—belied the reality that white men were still the undisputed rulers of the roost when it came to salaries, positions, and prestige.


The Supreme Court: Wary of "Abstractions Going Wrong"


THE SUPREME COURT justices have been divided in their opinions in affirmative action cases, partially because of opposing political ideologies but also because the issue is simply so complex. The Court has approached most of the cases in a piecemeal fashion, focusing on narrow aspects of policy rather than grappling with the whole.

Even in Bakke—the closest thing to a landmark affirmative action case— the Court was split 5-4, and the judges' various opinions were far more nuanced than most glosses of the case indicate. Sandra Day O'Connor, often characterized as the pivotal judge in such cases because she straddles conservative and liberal views about affirmative action, has been described by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein as "nervous about rules and abstractions going wrong. She's very alert to the need for the Court to depend on the details of each case."

Black-and-White Polemics Turn Gray


THE DEBATE about affirmative action has also grown more murky and difficult as the public has come to appreciate its complexity. Many liberals, for example, can understand the injustice of affirmative action in a case like Wygant (1986): black employees kept their jobs while white employees with seniority were laid off. And many conservatives would be hard pressed to come up with a better alternative to the imposition of a strict quota system in Paradise (1987), in which the defiantly racist Alabama Department of Public Safety refused to promote any black above entry level even after a full 12 years of court orders demanded they did.

No Airtight Answers


IN the last decade the tide has turned against affirmative action, and two states, California and Washington, have gone so far as to abolish it. Yet the questions of fairness and racial equality remain troubling for most of those not at the ideological poles of the issue. Even a once adamant opponent of affirmative action like John Bunzel, president of San Jose State University, has acknowledged that "perhaps the most important lesson I've learned is that there are no airtight, completely coherent, unassailable, and holistic answers on the question of affirmative action that are not only theoretically perfect, but instrumentally practical. Any intelligent person who wrestles with it is going to be vulnerable and subject to the twists and turns of unintended consequences." Serious advocates both for and against affirmative action could easily share such an estimation.

Squaredsc

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:18 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
thanks ladyt, i couldn't find anything other than black history week so far.

Cyn

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:29 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
George R. Carruthers - Astophysicist (1939 - ?)

He invented a camera and spectrograph imaging devices which use untrviolet light to capture images of both earth and space from the surface of the moon.

Myjohnhenry

Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:30 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Carter G. Woodson, (1875-1950) noted Black scholar and historian and son of former slaves, founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, which was later renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).He initiated Black History Week, February 12, 1926. For many years the 2nd week of February (chosen so as to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln) was celebrated by Black people in the United States. In 1976, as part of the nation's Bicentennial, it was expanded and became established as Black History Month, and is now celebrated all over North America.