BAVUAL The African Heritage Magazine Winter 2025 Issue

ROLE MODELS ISSUE

THE AFRICAN HERITAGE MAGAZINE

BAVUAL ®

CRYPTO FEVER! SEE PAGE 74

INSIDE YASUKE

THE BLACK SAMURAI

WHY WHITE PEOPLE NEED TO LEARN BLACK HISTORY

THE IRONY OF

F.A.F.O.

THE REAL SUPER HEROES! HOW BLACK PEOPLE HAVE INFLUENCED EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN

WINTER 2025

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IN THIS ISSUE

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My Take

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Should we fear the “final” journey?

The Drift

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The rapid rise of F.A.F.O.

True Grit Texas Congressman Jasmine Crockett, the Democrats’ fiery rising star

Famous Winters February 28, 1984: “Thriller” Michael Jackson wins seven Grammy Awards and becomes the King of Pop

The Times Election 2024 Post-Mortem: white women and latin men vote against their own best interest; racism and misogyny are “in” again; Diddy gets busted by “Five-0”; Republicans back reparations - for white men; the first black American Catholic saint?

The Culture Gentry and Ghetto: black economic and class divisions explode; BAVUAL Recommends two classic blaxploitation films, circa 1970s

Destinations Modern Africans who are coming to America - this time voluntarily; a photo tour inside Washington, DC’s National Museum of African American History

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IN THIS ISSUE

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74 86 Saint Bavual’s Return Congressman Bavual Adisa and other progressive rebels battle the Dark GOP Empire for the future

COVER: The Real Super Heroes!

The African people have influenced everything imaginable

Educate Yourself The story of Yasuke, the black samurai; 16 facts that will make you re-think what you know about black history

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66

The Hustle

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Jocks

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Bitcoin: is it the Fool’s Gold of the early 21st century?; Maggie Walker, black woman banker during Jim Crow

Harlem Globetrotters, basketball’s clown princes

Roll of Honor

8 honored men and women, lions and lionesses in winter

Benediction Why white people need to learn black history

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THIRD ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

BAVUAL

THE AFRICAN HERITAGE MAGAZINE

Bavual Vol. 4 Issue 1 Winter 2025

Editorial Earl A. Birkett Editor Stephen G. Hall, PhD Special Editor Associate Editor Kristen Jones

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My Take Should We Fear

The “Final” Journey?

“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.” Japanese writer Harold Murakami They call it many things, among them: Deceased, Expired, Passing Away, Eternal Rest, The Big Sleep, Dirt Nap and the latest one, Deleted. Whatever you call Death, it’s meaning is inescapable: your life in physical form is at an end in this world. You are no more.

However, it doesn’t end there, not in this world, nor conceivably in the next. Unlike most living things, we are sentient human beings, fully aware that we exist. With that comes all of the traits of life, good and bad. Love, hate, generosity, greed, passivity, violence, courage, cowardice and, in the case of Death, fear. We are afraid of what we don’t know and cannot know because there is a another dimension where our soul, that amorphous thing which makes us who we are, goes when it leaves the body, and no one alive has ever crossed it and returned to tell us. Yes, I know there are those who will tell you that they did just that, and I will get to them in a sec. The two prevailing theories is that there is life after Death, called eternity, or there is nothing at all, just non-existence.

If you are one who believes that we just blink in and blink out of existence as sort of a cosmic accident, you need not fear Death beyond perhaps its prospective physical pain.

One the other hand, if you believe that Death is merely a gateway to yet another plane of existence, there is reason to be concerned, even fearful - at first. By the way, I will not promote one point of view or the other on a particular religious sect or philosophy in this writing.

Like most people, you learn to cope with life by adopting a set of beliefs, whether they are rational or insane. They give us meaning to what seems haphazard and without any purpose whatsoever. We think these beliefs come from our conscience, an inexplicable control valve within our soul that somehow tells us right from wrong. It’s where our basic sense of morality comes from. It’s innate, but it can be manipulated by our various traits as well as outside influencers. The conditions of our birth, our parents and family, our level of intelligence and sources of information, our economic and social status, our teachers, spouses, friends and strangers and especially our leaders in religion and politics. Our fears come from these influences and they determine how we will survive in this world and what we hope to experience in the next.

The basis of the fear is “will we experience great joy or great suffering in this “afterlife”? Most major religions more or less adhere to the basic concept of a Heaven, where your soul (and often your “new” body) continues on in eternal bliss, or a Hell, where your soul suffers in eternal physical and emotional pain.

Whether you believe in the Supreme Being or Savior of choice and/or were a good or evil person in this life will determine which place you wind up inhabiting.

What do I believe? Well, I do believe in an afterlife, mainly do to a scarce feeling that it exists, but I have mixed feelings on how one gets to Paradise or Damnation. Part of me says you only have to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, while the other part believes that eternal peace is earned by the good works that you do. Obviously I will see if I’m right someday.

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The Drift

AFTER THE ELECTION COMES...

THE EPIPHANY OF F.A.F.O. It’s as clear cut and inescapable as 2+2=4. The consequences you suffer - or not - are the direct result of prior actions that you choose take and/or decisions that you make of your own free will. In others words: Fuck Around and Find Out.

When applied to the 77,303,428* souls who cast their vote for Donald John Trump, the 78-year-old defeated 45th president, convicted felon and civilly liable sex abuser (we can’t use the “r” word because we might get sued) and business fraud, over second-place finisher Kamala Harris to gain yet another - and hopefully final - term as the 47th president (putting Trump in a rarefied league with Grover Cleveland, the only other man elected to two non-consecutive terms), the ink on their ballot wasn’t dry before the buyer’s remorse started rolling in.

Right after the November 5th election winner was declared early the next day, two search questions overwhelmed Google: 1) “what is a tariff?” and 2) “Can I change my vote”? Aside from the second question being painfully naive, stupid and frustrating to the 50.2% majority that voted against the prevailing minority candidate, both questions reveal the lack of education in civics that plague many citizens in the mid-2020s.

The sizable Make America Great Again (MAGA) glassy-eyed cult that will take as gospel anything that Dear Leader says, that are a lost cause does not explain the greater number of voters who aren’t necessarily taken in by Trump’s hypnotic bullshit and gross bigotry but were convinced by Republican propaganda - and lack of a clear message and defense of a largely impressive economic record from Democrats - that economic and cultural conditions are so dire (they’re not) that they just rolled the dice for change.

Problem is they gave power back to the guy who put them behind the eight ball in the first place during his first term.

Sadly, those who Fooled Around and voted for Trump - white women facing the possibility of a national abortion ban without exceptions and a repeal of no-fault divorce, undocumented (and legal) latino immigrants who may be deported or rounded up in World War II-style detention camps, black males shut out of DEI programs and staring at more discrimination and police brutality, the middle-class and the working poor finding out that their wallets, already light with money because they can’t keep up with high prices and static wages, will get significantly lighter - are in the Find Out Phase. Adding salt to the wound is the prospect that they may not have even voted for Trump, but rather for Elon Musk, a South African plutocrat who appears to be as cruel as he is a megalomaniac. His goals are diametrically opposed to that of MAGA and most Americans.

It’s not that comforting to visit these Trumpers on YouTube as they whine pathetically about how family and friends have disinvited them from Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year affairs and in general have disowned them going forward and even spouses have divorced them and employers have fired them. These woes are not entirely fair as society has remained intact over past political differences even more intense than the return of Trump - McCarthyism and the turmoil of the 1960s comes to mind - but one would have to even further back to witness the current polarization of America’s political, economic and social order. Worse, some people see it as irreversible. No one is comforted by or celebrating that. *as of early January 2005

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True Grit

Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett Is She The Democrats’ Answer to MAGA?

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By Stephen G. Hall PhD “Bad Built Bleach Blond Butch Body.”

While not exactly on the level of “I have a dream” or other great orations from history, those stinging six words uttered by freshman Democratic congressperson Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a black woman, completely deflated her Republican colleague Margaret Taylor Greene, loopy water carrier for Donald Trump’s mammoth MAGA/QAnon political and cultural cult. At that moment, Crockett demonstrated the way to successfully attack Republican bullies while simultaneously making herself a force to be reckoned with in the U.S. House of Representatives, newly controlled by a narrow GOP majority after the 2022 midterm election.

Unlike former First Lady Michelle Obama, who famously admonished, “when they [Republicans] go low we go high,” Crockett’s rallying cry appears to be “when they go low we hit them where it really hurts.”

Crockett delivered her famous diss of Greene, who started the verbal fracas with her own nasty put-down of Crockett, while both House members - who had been assigned to the House Oversight Committee -sat during a routine hearing of the committee held on May 16, 2024. The committee was to decide on whether to hold Merrick Garland, the sitting attorney general in the Biden Administration, in contempt of Congress.

(Garland eventually was held in contempt by a partisan Republican majority on June 12 or refusing to turn over audio related to President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.)

Greene had just begun her second term representing Georgia’s 14th congressional district, which has been gerrymandered to favor the election of a Republican. She quickly gained a reputation in the House for espousing white supremist-based conspiracy theories so extreme that the entire House, in a bipartisan act, voted to remove Greene from all committee roles in response to her endorsements of political violence on February 4, 2021 - barely a month after she began her maiden term. (The Republicans returned her to committees after their victory in 2022.)

The verbal altercation started when the 50-yearold Greene, who was responding to a barb from Crockett, said, "I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading." Committee chairman James Comer ruled that her remark did not violate House protocol. To clarify the limits on personal comments, Crockett asked "If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?" Comer responded with "... a what, now?"

As Greene reeled in humiliation and Republicans were aghast at Crockett’s brashness, the exchange quickly went viral across social media, with many relishing in the entertainment value of seeing the two lawmakers in a verbal spat, almost more akin to something usually seen on reality television - but with Crockett clearly coming out on top. Her feisty, quickwitted verbal jiu-jitsu made her an instant internet star and a Democrat to be reckoned with on Republican-dominated Capitol Hill.

Jasmine Felicia Crockett appears to have the smarts to back up the sass. She was born March 29, 1981, in St. Louis, Missouri. and graduated from Rhodes College in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in business administration. As an undergraduate, Crockett decided to attend law school due to experiencing a series of hate crimes while attending college and subsequently being represented by the Cochran Law Firm.

When Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson announced her retirement in November 2021, Crockett announced her candidacy in the Democratic primary to replace her in the 30th congressional district. Johnson simultaneously announced that she was backing Crockett. In a controversial development, Crockett received extensive financial support from Super PACs aligned with the cryptocurrency industry. One donor from the industry, Sam Bankman-Fried, gave her campaign $1 million from his Protect Our Future PAC . In November 2023 Bankman-Fried was convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering related to trading cryptocurrency. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion.

In the primary runoff election, Crockett defeated Jane Hope Hamilton. Crockett then won the general election to the 118th Congress in November. She was re-elected in November 2024.

Crockett earned her J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center in 2006 . She was a public defender for Bowie County, before formed a law firm, which was notable for taking pro bono cases for Black Lives Matter activists.

Although Crockett is a member of the Congressional Caucus, she has cast votes that are not popular with progressives. such as her vote to provide military aid to Israel in its war with Hamas following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

Crockett cut her teeth in politics in 2020 by narrowly defeating incumbent Lorraine Birabi in the Democratic primary for state representative from Texas’ 100th district. She won unopposed in the November election.

Thus far, Crockett’s main accomplishment is her willingness to take the progressive fight to rightwing Republicans by giving as good as she gets, a lesson that she undoubtedly hopes her fellow Democrats will duplicate.

CROCKETT’S B6 IS NOW A CLASSIC INTERNET MEME

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Famous Winters fEBRUARY 28, 1984

By Kristen Jones

Michael Jackson Wins Eight Grammys

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Talk about a Night to Remember at the Grammys!

On the evening of February 28, 1984, nearly 52 million viewers - a record for a Grammy Awards telecast that will likely never be broken - tuned into CBS to witness an equally historic record that has yet to be broken. Michael Jackson, the former lead singer of the legendary Jackson 5 all-family musical group who had gone solo and rose to become the biggest musical sensation of the 1980s, won an astonishing seven Grammy Wards.

The producers of the 1984 Grammys knew they needed to book a performance by Jackson, who in 1983-84 was hotter than anyone had been in pop music since The Beatles in 1964-65. The need was made even clearer when the Grammy nominations were announced in early January, and Jackson set a new record with 12 nods.

THE KING OF POP’S SIGNATURE MOVE

There was just one problem: Jackson didn’t want to do it. As Ken Ehrlich, who was producing the show for the fifth year (of a remarkable 40-year run) put it in his 2007 book At the Grammys!, “Even after his record nominations, Michael hadn’t said yes to performing, and without him, it could be wildly embarrassing.”

Ehrlich had allies who were trying to convince Jackson to do it. As Ehrlich wrote: “The people at Epic Records, Michael’s label, wanted him to perform.

His father wanted him to perform. [His sister] Janet, with whom I was then working at [the TV series] Fame, talked to him about performing. But no matter what kind of pressure was applied, there was no budging Michael.

He wasn’t going to do it. … Even Quincy Jones, a great friend of the Grammys, was unable to sway him, and we went into the Grammy show Michael-less.”

John Denver hosted the show that year, promising “a show so hot it’s going to pop if we don’t get right into it.” A Jackson performance would have lifted the show even higher, but it did phenomenally well as it was. The show was seen by more than 51.67 million viewers – an all-time record for the Grammys that is unlikely to ever be broken.

Why was Jackson so resistant to performing on what was clearly shaping up to be his big night?

For one thing, he probably knew he didn’t need to perform to dominate the night. So, why take the risks that are in inherent in a live TV performance?

(Taylor Swift may have made the same calculation when she declined to perform at the 2024 ceremony.)

Though Jackson didn’t perform on Grammy night, there were many cutaways to him, as he sat in the front row, accompanied by his date for the night, actress Brooke Shields; Emmanuel Lewis, the 12-year-old star of the hit sitcom Webster; and the legendary Jones, who produced Thriller (with Jackson credited as co-producer of three tracks). Lewis’ presence was an unspoken reminder that Jackson had also been a child star, landing his first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 at age 11, fronting The Jackson 5.

Jackson dressed regally, as if seeking to live up to his preferred appellation, the King of Pop. (Writing in Rolling Stone decades later, Andy Greene took a less respectful tone, saying he looked like “the captain of the disco navy.”)

Also, Jackson may have been spooked by a widely reported accident that happened when he was filming a Pepsi commercial at the Shrine a month prior. During a simulated concert, pyrotechnics accidentally set Jackson’s hair on fire, causing second-degree burns to his scalp.

Near the top of the show, Denver explained that the big buzzwords of the past year had been “videos, Boy George and Michael…” Denver didn’t even need to finish the sentence. Fans in the audience screamed out the star’s last name.

In his book, Ehrlich suggested another reason: “And then we discovered that, as with other artists, he had felt mistreated in the past by the Grammy voting process, and this was his way of getting back.”

Without a Jackson performance to trumpet, the producers had to get creative. They booked performances by all five of the nominees for best pop female vocal performance. That smart decision gave the show a thematic element that Jackson was not part of, which helped to broaden the show’s focus. It helped that the nominees in that category that year - Donna Summer, Bonnie Tyler, Linda Ronstadt, Sheena Easton and Irene Cara - were exceptionally strong and varied.

Jackson had indeed been underrecognized by Grammy voters. The Jackson 5 (and later The Jacksons) never won a Grammy. Jackson had never previously been nominated in a “Big Four” category – album, record and song of the year plus best new artist. Even the blockbuster Off the Wall was passed over for an album of the year nod. Jackson’s only Grammy victory to that point was a 1980 win for best R&B vocal performance, male for “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” So, he had a right to feel he hadn’t gotten his due from the Academy.

Jackson had also opted not to perform at the American Music Awards, which were also held at the Shrine (his home away from home that year) .

However, he had performed on the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever special which was taped on March 25, 1983. That was the show where Jackson moonwalked publicly for the first time during “Billie Jean” – a performance that brought him a Primetime Emmy nomination.

Jackson, who was 25 at the time – and as it turned out, halfway through his life – could not have been hotter than he was in 1984. His every move made news. The way it is with Swift now, it was with MJ back then, and he didn’t have a high-profile romance fanning the publicity flames.

Jackson won a record eight Grammys that night, seven for his work on Thriller and one for narrating a children’s recording, E.T. The ExtraTerrestrial. That’s one more than Paul Simon had won in 1971, the year of the first live Grammy telecast. Jackson made five glorious trips to the podium to accept his awards during the three-hour telecast, whose length would set a tradition in future telecasts. It was also the night that Academy president Mike Melvoin introduced the then-new compact disc (CD), destined to replace the long-playing album (LP) by 1987.

Michael Jackson, who had come a long way from his birth and youth in the Midwestern industrial town of Gary, Indiana, would continue to dazzle the world as the King of Pop for the next 26 years, until his death in 2010 at age 58. He even married Priscilla Pressley , the daughter of the King of Rock, Elvis Pressley. Jackson also led a life of controversy over his business affairs and personal life, but that night at the Grammys in 1984 can never be taken away from him.

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The Times ELECTION 2024 POST-MORTEM AFTER PROMISES, WHITE WOMEN AND LATINO MEN JUST COULDN’T MARK THEIR BALLOT FOR THE BEST CANDIDATE We’re Going Back - Way Back What was described by political pundits and partisans as the last election that America would ever hold, the Big One that would determine whether the country keeps its democracy or turns authoritarian fascist, turned out to be largely oversold. The U.S. is still a democracy, there will be many future elections, and the Constitution’s checks and balances, though imperfect and considerably weakened, appear to prevent even the dictator fantasies of Donald Trump from fully being realized. That said, much of the results of the 2024 election were not cheerful.

Kamala Harris, the 60-year-old vice president who replaced a politically wounded President Joe Biden at the head of the Democratic ticket in mid-July, and her likable running mate, Minnesota’s governor Mike Walz, ran a short, vigorous - some would say remarkable given the time limit - campaign that came up short by 1.5 percent of the popular vote and in the determinative Electoral College, 312-226.

Neither was a blowout for Trump, a deeply flawed and disgraced ex-president who ran a campaign of such racism, misogyny, xenophobia and transgender hate that it would make George Wallace and Theodore Bilbo blush. Added latestage to the mix was support for Trump from Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent $250 million-plus on anti-trans ads to rally a fairly close victory, after the election, double his fortune by more than $200 million and buy de facto control, at least for now, of the 47th President of the United States.

The polls showed that white women, fearing the total nationwide erasure of abortion and maternal healthcare, and latino men, offended

by Trump’s insults of their Puerto Rican, Mexican and Latin and South American heritage, would get Harris-Walz over the hump. On Election Day, that promise in the polls turned out to be fool’s gold, as both constituencies delivered majorities to Trump and, thus, the presidency. Not even Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s pre-Civil War political and personal views dissuaded Trump

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KAMALA HARRIS CONCEDES AT HER ALMA MATER HOWARD UNIVERSITY, NOVEMBER 6, 2024

voters. Overall, voters were more persuaded than not by false GOP tropes that the nation was in a deep recession (the economy is in fact greatly prospering), suffering a migrant invasion at the southern border (immigration is down and deportations are up sharply) that has led to a crime wave (crime is at a 50-year low) that includes foreigners eating your pets (ridiculously untrue) and a culture of communism and debauchery (from a party that chose a sex assaulter as their nominee). They picked Trump as seemingly the lesser of two evils - which they are quickly coming to regret (see THE DRIFT, page 9).

As for Congress, the Republicans managed to flip the Senate from the Democrats, 53-47, picking up four seats in Montana, Ohio, West Virginia (all three expected) and Pennsylvania (unexpected).

The election of two black women senators, Delaware’s Lisa Blunt Rochester and Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks, set a positive precedent.

Trump started out with two setbacks in that body: his choice for majority leader, Florida’s Rick Scott, was rejected for the more moderate John Thune of South Dakota, and his pick for

THEY MADE THE DIFFERENCE FOR TRUMP SOURCE: PBS

White Women Latino Men Non-college Educated Black Men

53% 48% 56% 25%

attorney general, discredited ex-congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, removed himself from contention before his confirmation hearing.

In the House, the election results are worse for Trump and the Republicans. The GOP margin for the 119th Congress was reduced, 220 (217 after resignations) to 215. Speaker Mike Johnson has one or two votes to spare to pass Trump’s very unpopular legislative proposals or lose his job.

He’s already lost an attempt in December by Trump and Musk to vote down the Federal budget and force a damaging government shutdown over the holidays. The skill and agility that Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries demonstrated in the initial budget skirmish has signaled to Republicans that they have a worthy opponent.

Other results were positive for Democrats.

Progressive congresspersons in California, Arizona and Michigan were elevated to the Senate. North Carolinians defeated two Republican crackpots, Mark Robinson, the African American lieutenant governor, and Michele Morrow, a home schooler, were defeated for governor by a landslide and state superintendent of schools by a narrow margin, respectively.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, scene of the notorious 1921 race massacre, state Representative Monroe Nichols was elected to be the first black mayor of the state’s second-largest city.

WELCOME BACK, HATE, WE DIDN’T MISS YOU Black Americans quickly take the brunt of the New Racism

Almost immediately after Donald Trump was declared the victor by the news outlets on the morning of November 6, the hate incidents against blacks and others not white, male and Christian sprouted.

ELNATHAN HALL AT KNOXVILLE COLLEGE, A HISTORICALLY BLACK UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOL, BURNS ON NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Several federal and state agencies in the United States are investigating how racist mass texts invoking slavery were sent to black men, women and children across the country in the wake of the presidential election. The anonymously sent messages were reported in several states, including New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee.

A social media post on X, formerly Twitter, from Nick Fuentes, a far-right political instigator proclaiming "your body, my choice. Forever" went viral, as women reported a rise in online abuse following the election.The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) tracked the comments, as well as other misogynistic remarks including "get back to the kitchen" and "repeal the 19th", referring to the right to vote.

A young black man wearing a red MAGA hat got his 15 minutes when he stated in a YouTube video that a fellow MAGA said that all that was wanted from him was his vote for Trump. He also said that none of his fellow Trumpers invited him over for the holidays.

SEAN COMBS’ MUGSHOTS

The most suspicious and sinister incident occurred on November 4, a day before the election. Elnathan Hall at Knoxville College, the only historically black college in East Tennessee and one of the oldest historically black colleges in the state, was destroyed in a fire on Nov. 4. Built in 1898 following the destruction by fire of the original Elnathan Hall, the building was altered in 1905 and 1971. It has served variously as a women's dorm, administration building, and classroom building. The unused structure was ruled a total loss.

Knoxville College is a small unaccredited HBCU campus in the Mechanicsville neighborhood, near downtown Knoxville.

After struggling for decades with debt, loss of

accreditation, low enrollment and aging buildings, the college now only offers online classes. The campus is vacant, though several of its buildings, including Elnathan Hall, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Knoxville College is searching for a new president and trying to regain accreditation.

The Knoxville Fire Department released new information about the fire at the Elnathan building on Knoxville College's campus later in November. According to KFD, the fire could have been a cooking fire or someone could have intentionally set the fire, but there are no answers at this time. They have no leads on potential suspects. Beyond anonymous threats, no similar incidents have been reported.

DIDDY SCREWS UP BIGTIME Sean John Combs had it all. The 55-year-old hip hop impresario and entrepreneur aka “Diddy” rose from humble and somewhat shady origins (his father, an Air Force veteran, worked with Harlem mobster Frank Lucas) in Harlem and Mount Vernon, New York, in the early 1990s, to acquire great wealth and influence in the rap music world, earning three Grammy Awards and mentoring rap artists Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, and Usher. But apparently that wasn’t enough. Combs threw “freak offs,” celebrity parties known for their Jeffrey Epstein-style debauchery. Numerous lawsuits regarding sexual assault and abuse were filed against him since 2023. In September 2024, Combs was charged with sex trafficking and racketeering. He pleaded not guilty and was denied bail three times. As of December 2024, he is detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center, and his trial is set to start on May 5, 2025

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THESE AND THOSE AND THIS AND THAT

Reparations For WHITES? Are you kidding me?!

President Donald Trump, elected in November to a second non-consecutive term, suggested that white Americans receive reparations as "victims" of racial discrimination in education.

In a video widely shared on social media, Trump promised to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that “continue to engage in racial discrimination” and “unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity.”

The president threatened to tax endowments and issue fines against colleges who engage in the so-called "discrimination" against white Americans.

“A portion of the seized funds will then be used as restitution for victims of these illegal and unjust policies, policies that hurt our country so badly,” Trump said.

“Colleges have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars from hardworking taxpayers, and now we are going to get this antiAmerican insanity out of our institutions once and for all. We are going to have real education in America.”

“We will drain the government education swamp and stop the abuse of your taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s youth with all sorts of things that you don’t want to have our youth hearing,” he added.

It's unclear how Trump would handle shutting down the Department of Education, but the move would have reverberating effects on funding, oversight, and student protections against discrimination.

Trump's comments come amid his plans to eliminate the Department of Education.

See how social media users reacted to Trump suggesting restitution for white Americans below.

“I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,” Trump previously said.

Now imagine you’re one of the 12% of black voters who fixed their fingers to vote for Trump Lmao fools all of them HarlemJ11@bsky.social

The second season of this reality show just scares me minute by minute Olga Nesterova Biden’s investments in HBCU’s will be gone.

Pell grants, gone, grants to schools to fund special need services, gone. And white people are stupid if they think they’ll get reparations money will be going into Trumps pockets. ℳ𝓈𝒢𝓇𝓊𝓂𝓅𝓎ℬ𝓊𝓃𝓃𝓎 You didn’t read that part in project 2025? 6th chapter paragraph 7.b MyMonkeyDoesntStink

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BALTIMORE’S BLACK CATHOLICS PUSH FOR THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN SAINT

THE SIX AFRICAN AMERICANS PROPOSED FOR SAINTHOOD

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The Catholic Church is considering the recognition of a black American saint as a form of atonement1. The Social Justice Committee of St. Ann Catholic Church in Baltimore has advocated for six African Americans on the path to sainthood4. While there are at least 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, none of them are African American. The six Black American candidates in the sainthood process are Pierre Toussaint, Mother Henriette Delille, Julia Greeley, Mother Mary Lange, Sister Thea Bowman and the Rev. Augustus Tolton (left to right in picture).

The Culture

Between Gentry and Ghetto Black Economic and Class Divisions Explode

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In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois, the leading scholar of the first half of the 20th century, defined the urgency of black social responsibility in his famous essay “The Talented Tenth” — 10 being the percentage of the African-American demographic needed to lead the race into an integrated, equal America. In “The Talented Tenth,” Du Bois called for “intelligent leadership” directed by “college-trained men” devoted to a “thorough understanding of the mass of Negroes and their problems” for the purpose of solving these problems, still so deeply entrenched a half century after the abolition of slavery.

Forty-five years later, Du Bois would lament, this call had been largely ignored. He worried aloud about the growing class divide within Black America and how the consequences of that divide might affect the task of “lifting as we climb,” the motto of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, describing the privilege and burden of the middle class to facilitate black upward mobility.

Indeed, by 1948 Du Bois felt that the new black middle class had forgotten this noble calling.

There had been, even during his college days at Fisk, troublesome warning signs: “sharp young persons, who received the education given very cheaply at Fisk University, with the distinct and single-minded idea, of seeing how much they could make out of it for themselves, and nobody else.”

Du Bois knew, of course, that any black person at that time had to struggle to tear down barriers just to lift oneself and one’s family. But that was not enough: Successful black people, he said, must recognize that their place in life was merely a matter of opportunity. “If such opportunity were extended and broadened, a thousand times as many Negroes could join the ranks of the educated and able, instead of sinking into poverty, disease, and crime.”

Du Bois also knew that Black America had never consisted of one social or economic class. Even before the outbreak of the Civil War, about 11 percent of Black America was free, some born into families that had been free for generations.

And in 1899, when Du Bois published his seminal sociological study, “The Philadelphia Negro,” he was already noting that these two classes had morphed into four: the middle class and above, working people (“fair to comfortable”), the poor and, in terms his Victorian contemporaries would have approved of, the “vicious and criminal classes.”

Du Bois would probably be astonished to see how these classes have fared, especially since the

death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, just as new affirmative action programs were beginning to expand drastically the ranks of black students on white campuses and thus to affect the class structure of Black America.

The Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson calls the remarkable gains in black income “the most significant change” since Dr. King’s passing. When adjusted for inflation to 2014 dollars, the percentage of African-Americans making at least $75,000 more than doubled from 1970 to 2014, to 21 percent. Those making $100,000 or more nearly quadrupled, to 13 percent (in contrast, white Americans saw a less impressive increase, from 11 to 26 percent). Du Bois’s “talented 10th” has become the “prosperous 13 percent.”

But, Dr. Wilson is quick to note, the percentage of Black America with income below $15,000 declined by only four percentage points, to 22 percent.

In other words, there are really two nations within Black America. The problem of income inequality, Dr. Wilson concludes, is not between Black America and White America but between black haves and have-nots, something we don’t often discuss in public in an era dominated by a narrative of fear and failure and the claim that racism impacts 42 million people in all the same ways.

What effect, many of us have worried, would this unprecedented rise in prosperity have on the New Millennials? Would they heed Du Bois’s call, as students like John Lewis and Julian Bond, Charlayne Hunter and Diane Nash did under the leadership of the “Negro Gandhi” presciently predicted by Du Bois back in 1948?

The class divide is, in my opinion, one of the most important and overlooked factors in the rise of Black Lives Matter, led by a new generation of college graduates and students. I hear about it from my students at Harvard, about the pressure they feel to rise, yes, but also the necessity to then look back to lift others.

UPWARD MOBILITY

the black communities we represent through our presence at places like Harvard.”

That is, the college campus is a microcosm of practices at work in the larger society, something of a laboratory in which America’s racial experiment might be altered.

Unlike the way they are framed in so many opeds, modern-day activists, Ms. Matsuda-Lawrence says, are anything but “a bunch of oversensitive, privileged and coddled black college students complaining and whining that they don’t feel safe because of building names and house master titles.”

Consider them, instead, the grandchildren of Du Bois’s “talented 10th,” taking their cues, wittingly or unwittingly, from the challenge that he and the civil rights activists of the ’60s issued to black leadership. Many of today’s black activists are the children of middle- and upper-middle-class parents — the affirmative action generation — and may be realizing, as Charlayne Hunter-Gault put it to me, “that privilege doesn’t always translate as they thought it would.”

Despite the highs — the escalating successes in finance, business, public service, education and

STREET

I asked Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence, a senior, what was behind the racial unrest on campus.

Ms. Matsuda-Lawrence is co-founder of “I, Too, Am Harvard,” a multiplatform campaign that gives voice to students who often go unheard and that brought the concept of microaggressions into the light. She described the motivation as “our sense of responsibility to the black communities who do not have access to the universities we attend.” The goal: “to call out the ways our own institutions participate in and perpetuate structures of racism that affect

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entertainment (think beyond President Obama and sports figures to the American Express C.E.O. Kenneth Chenault, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, and the queen of Thursday-night TV, Shonda Rhimes) — there have been far too many lows, too many moments in which we as a country have come face to face with the deprivation, disenfranchisement, marginalization and flatout abuse of African-Americans at the socioeconomic bottom.

The disparity of opportunity plagues Black America perhaps even more starkly now, given its extremes, than the economic reality that motivated Dr. King to transfer the focus of his movement from civil rights to economic justice, as exemplified in his last, tragically aborted effort to mount a “Poor People’s Campaign.”

The childhood poverty rate for AfricanAmericans remains stubbornly close to what it was the day Dr. King was assassinated; unemployment for black Americans runs nearly double that of the national average; and the distrust between impoverished communities and the police continues to spiral (helped in no small part by the fact that blacks make up more than a third of the prison population, compared to only 13 percent of the overall population).

And we still confront the question that arose the moment the first slave ships arrived: Do black lives matter?

It is into this whiplash environment of economic inequality that college students have come of age. They were youngsters when Hurricane Katrina engulfed New Orleans — for a time the ultimate symbol of inequality of income and opportunity — and teenagers when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. They have been consumed by a roster of recorded police killings of unarmed black men and boys since August 2014, when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., followed by similar assaults in Staten Island, Cleveland, Chicago and North Charleston, S.C. Black women and girls haven’t escaped injustices, either. We need think only of the young girl in the Mall of America who was restrained by a security guard or the teenager in South Carolina who was thrown from her desk by a school resource officer, or the 13 black women who testified against the former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who was convicted of rape.

The nation’s African-American students are searching profoundly and visibly for a definitive end to racial injustice. College campuses, Du Bois’s proving grounds for the training and

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testing of social responsibility and leadership, have once again become a primary front in the battle against inequality — from “I, Too, Am Harvard,” a concept that has spread from Berkeley to New York University, to the principled protest of football players at the University of Missouri against racial insensitivity, to demonstrations at Brown and Brandeis, Princeton and Yale.

$21,030

A number of administrators have voiced strong support for these protests as well as an institutional will to change, be it renaming buildings or re-evaluating the makeup of their student body and faculty.

Across the country, the research found that black millennials fared better than its black Gen Xers.

Individuals born in 1978 to low-income families (with earnings in the 25th percentile or lower) averaged $19,420 per year in early adulthood compared to an inflation-adjusted $21,030 for poorer members of the 1992 cohort. Outcomes also improved slightly for children born to highincome black families, though researchers noted “noisier,” or less reliable, estimates for this population due to a small sample size.

Change, even at the symbolic level, is difficult, of course, and it remains to be seen what this current wave of protests will accomplish. Will the fight against police brutality, symbols of the Confederacy and society’s plethora of microaggressions become the basis of a broader movement for the improvement of underfunded public school education, for the right to a job with decent wages, and for the end of residential segregation that relegates the poor to neighborhoods with murder rates as alarming as those on the South Side of Chicago?

What is certain is that the outrage that led to Black Lives Matter and its spinoffs will be with us for years to come unless these legacies of slavery and Jim Crow become remnants of a racist past.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Published at nytimes.com February 1, 2016 ADDENDUM Economic prospects brighten for children of low-income black Americans Economic prospects have improved in recent years for black Americans born poor, according to new research from Opportunity Insights. At the same time, earnings have fallen for white Americans from low-income families.

The analysis, drawn from 40 years of tax and Census records, finds a dramatic narrowing of the economic divide between the poorest black and white Americans. But it also reveals a widening gap between low- and high-income white people, driven by shifts in the geography of employment.

“This is the first big data study to look at recent changes in economic opportunity within the same place over time,” said study co-author Benny Goldman, M.A. ’21, Ph.D. ’24, a research affiliate with Opportunity Insights. “And what we see are shrinking race gaps and growing class gaps.”

Inflation-adjusted average income for black millennials at age 27 (vs. $19,420 for Black Gen Xers at same age)

Outcomes showed wide variation by region, with black Americans making the biggest strides in the Southeast and Midwest — areas traditionally associated with high rates of black poverty.

Meanwhile, white Gen Xers from poorer families averaged $27,680 per year versus $26,150 for millennial peers. The gap between the poorest and richest white people ballooned by 28 percent over the same period, as those born at the top watched their fortunes climb.

Results were particularly stark in a few regions of the country known for prosperity. “Outcomes for low-income white children born in the ’90s from parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, rural New York, and California started to look like Appalachia, the Southeast, and the industrial Midwest did for low-income white children born in the late ’70s,” noted Goldman, now a newly installed assistant professor of economics and public policy at Cornell University.

“This work reinforces the importance of childhood communities for outcomes in adulthood, consistent with our prior findings,” Chetty wrote in an email. “But it shows that it is possible for these communities to change rapidly — within a decade — in a way that has significant causal effects on children’s long-term outcomes.”

Above all, the research appears to disprove the stereotype that a black person who is born in poverty will remain destitute as not necessarily true when compared to his upper income black and low-income white counterparts. Many factors - innate ability, region, educational drive, role models, among others - can influence a more equitable outcome.

BAVUAL RECOMMENDS 2 BLAXPLOITATION CLASSIC FILMS SOURCE: RottenTomatoes.com

AUDIENCE Considering its budget, the production is outstanding. One of the "stars" of the film that's not given proper billing is the Eldo "pimpmobile." - Audience Member

SELECTED REVIEWS CRITICS Jack Hill directs for maximal suspense, violence, and voyeuristic appeal (which Grier certainly embodies).- Don Druker, Chicago Reader

One of the most iconic films of early 70's American cinema. The Curtis Mayfield music is outstanding and helps keep the film moving.

Although criticized for its stereotypical blacks of urban environments, it's place is solidified in film history because it was part of a new movement in Black film - known primarily as Blaxploitation but perhaps ore accurately described as Soul Cinema. Well worth the time invested.. - David K.

Throw in a frenetic soundtrack, wonderful fashions, ample servings of sex, Sid Haig as a snarling henchman, and a fistful of moustaches and afros, then you have a classic of its time. - Andrew Pollard, Starburst

Jack Hill... elevates Grier to leading lady status in these down and dirty urban action pictures. They are at times slapdash and sloppy but carry a visceral punch at their best. - Sean Axmaker, Stream on Demand

SUPER FLY Released August 4, 1972, by Warner Bros. . Sig Shore International. Directed by Gordon Parks Jr. Running time 96 minutes. Buy or rent on YouTube.

Peak Grier, Coffy is a sobering story kept at street level, and while Hill keeps the film in the realm of pulp fantasy, the stakes are high. - Noel Murray, The Dissolve

Priest (Ron O'Neal), a suave top-rung New York City drug dealer, decides that he wants to get out of his dangerous trade. Working with his reluctant friend, Eddie (Carl Lee), Priest devises a scheme that will allow him make a big deal and then retire. When a desperate street dealer informs the police of Priest's activities, Priest is forced into an uncomfortable arrangement with corrupt narcotics officers. Setting his plan in motion, he aims to both leave the business and stick it to the man.

AUDIENCE Trashy, exciting 1970's style grindhouse fun, as Pam Grier exerts her ultra violent revenge on the pushers, pimps, mobsters, corrupt cops, and politicians, who she blames for her sister's drug addiction. One of Pam's best roles - she's tough, street wise, charming, and sexy. - Cody Zamboni

SELECTED REVIEWS CRITICS Curtis Mayfield's sizzling score may be the most enduringly superfly aspect of this blaxploitation classic. - Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle

COFFY Released June 13, 1973, by American International Pictures. Directed by Jack Hill.

Running time 91 minutes. Buy or rent on YouTube.

[Superfly] deals with a segment of life as it really exists, despite the wishes of many who would rather suppress or overlook it.- Jimi lawrence, Call and Post Cleveland

As a nurse, Coffy (Pam Grier) has seen the ill effects of drugs up close, but it isn't until her little sister becomes addicted to heroin that she finally decides to wage a one-woman battle. Disguised as a prostitute, Coffy goes on a killing rampage, at first going after street dealers and pimps such as sleazy King George (Robert DoQui), then gradually working her way up to bigger honchos.

She's shocked, however, when she discovers that her politician boyfriend (Booker Bradshaw) is involved.

Ron O'Neal Is supported by a good but uneven cast. There is a great deal of overacting. Acting on film requires a subtlety that, give experience, these new faces will soon master. But Parks' first effort is almost actor-proof and is well worth a trip..- Samuel A. Hay , Baltimore Afro-American

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Its real power comes from Hill's potent pulp storytelling and up-front style as well as the novelty of a female hero who takes charge and controls her own destiny. - Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid

One of the most famous and beloved Blaxploitation films ever made, featuring genre stalwart Pam Grier, Coffy is, in essence, a fairly standard revenge film, with a nurse looking to avenge her sister, who's been ravaged by drug addiction. If it was made nowadays, the lead would likely mow down waves of unscrupulous men with barely a hair falling out of place. But our heroine does struggle, she fails, and she ultimately uses her wit and cunning to overcome the baddies. I liked how the film didn't feel retrained. Full of sex, violence, drug abuse and prostitution, it isn't shying away from the issues its addressing, only wanting to tell the truth and expose the harsh realities that its target audience was living through at the time. It's fun to watch, with a great soundtrack and villains who are realistic rather than cartoonish. Aside from being a standout in its genre, it's a satisfying revenge story that, while it didn't knock me back or anything, still entertained me for all of its 90-minute runtime. - Wayne K.

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Destinations

Modern-Day Africans Who Are

Coming to America

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The young men from Guinea had decided it was time to leave their impoverished homeland in West Africa. But instead of seeking a new life in Europe, where so many African migrants have settled, they set out for what has become a far safer bet of late: the United States.

are going to migrate because economic opportunities at home are insufficient.”

“Getting into the United States is certain compared to European countries, and so I came,” said Sekuba Keita, 30, who was at a migrant center in San Diego on a recent afternoon after an odyssey that took him by plane to Turkey, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua, then by land to the Mexico-U.S. border.

The swelling number of migrants from Africa has exacerbated the crisis at the Mexico-U.S. border, as they join legions of migrants from Central and South America, as well as from China, India and other nations in making their way north.

Mr. Keita, who spoke in French, was at a cellphone charging station at the center among dozens more Africans, from Angola, Mauritania, Senegal and elsewhere, who had made the same calculus.

While migrants from African nations still represent a small share of the people crossing the southern border, their numbers have been surging, as smuggling networks in the Americas open new markets and capitalize on intensifying anti-immigrant sentiment in some corners of Europe.

Historically, the number of migrants from Africa’s 54 countries has been so low that U.S. authorities classified them as “other,” a category that has grown exponentially, driven recently, officials say, by fast-rising numbers from the continent.

According to government data, the number of Africans apprehended at the southern border jumped to 58,462 in the fiscal year 2023 from 13,406 in 2022. The top African countries in 2023 were Mauritania, at 15,263; Senegal, at 13,526; and Angola and Guinea, which each had more than 4,000.

A record number of people are on the move worldwide, according to the United Nations, fleeing climate change, authoritarian states and economic instability.

Nearly 2.5 million migrants crossed the U.S.Mexico border in the 2023 fiscal year, and about 300,000 migrants were processed by the U.S. Border Patrol in December, the most of any month, stretching resources to the limit. Most people will apply for asylum, which allows them to remain in the United States until the outcome of their cases, issued years down the road.

President Biden was facing pressure from Republicans in Washington and from some mayors and governors to stanch the flow of migrants into the country and into cities and towns struggling to absorb the new arrivals.

For decades, Congress has failed to reach a consensus on comprehensive changes to the immigration system, and that has compounded the challenges of responding to the surge.

As of 2024, Republicans in Congress have demanded the Biden administration accelerate deportations and restrict asylum in exchange for support for wartime aid to Ukraine and Israel.

The surge of migrants from African nations can be noticeable even before they arrive in

the Americas. After a flight from Senegal landed in Morocco on a recent morning, an airport employee called for anyone headed to the Nicaraguan capital Managua. A few dozen Senegalese travelers followed her.

The Nicaraguan government, led by longtime president Daniel Ortega, does not restrict entry of Africans, and by starting their overland journey there, migrants are spared the perilous trek through the Darien Gap, a dense jungle between Colombia and Panama.

The African migrants continue through Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico until they arrive at the southern U.S. border. Between January and September, nearly 28,000 Africans passed through Honduras, a sixfold increase over the corresponding period in 2022, according to the Honduran government. Guinea, Senegal and Mauritania are among the top 10 countries of those migrants; only a couple dozen people from each of those countries traveled through Honduras in 2020.

While the United States has ramped up deportation flights, it has had to keep releasing many more people into the country because immigration detention centers are full and families cannot be locked up for extended periods. It is also extremely difficult to deport people to countries in Asia and Africa, because of the long distance and lack of consent from many nations.

Across the Atlantic, immigration has stirred concern in many countries. Right-leaning candidates with anti-immigration platforms prevailed in a few national elections last year, most recently in the Netherlands.

France, Germany and Spain have struck deals with Tunisia and Morocco to intercept migrants who transit through them. And on

Nonprofits that work on the border said that the trend has continued, with the absolute number and share of migrants from Africa climbing in recent months as potential destinations in Europe narrow.

“You have countries that are less and less welcoming,” said Camille Le Coz, a senior policy analyst at Migration Policy Institute Europe. “When new routes open up, people

Encampments like this one in Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., serve as way stations for migrant families waiting to be transported by the Border Patrol to processing facilities.

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And in December 2023, the European Union signed a pact to facilitate the deportation of asylum seekers and limit migration to the bloc.

Migrants heading to the United States share tips and success stories on social media, and smugglers masquerading as travel guides tout their services. Friends and relatives relay that they obtain U.S. work authorization after filing asylum claims.

And while the migrants are unlikely to win their cases, it typically takes years for a decision because of a massive backlog in immigration court.

“In the past, migrating across the U.S. border was very mysterious to people,” said John Modlin, the chief of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, which has been seeing large numbers of Africans crossing in remote areas.

“The greatest danger right now is the global reach of the smuggling organizations,” aided by social media, he said in a recent interview.

The route from West Africa and through Central America emerged a few years ago, according to Aly Tandian, a professor specializing in migration studies at the University Gaston Berger in Senegal. But departures soared in 2023 as more migrants began flying through Morocco and Turkey en route to Nicaragua.

“I saw people had made it to the United States,” Ousman Camara, 27, a college student from Mauritania now in the United States, said in an interview. “Morocco controls the seas, making it harder to reach Europe.”

Mr. Camara said that he no longer felt safe in Mauritania, where human rights groups have documented widespread abuses against Black minorities, and that he planned to apply for asylum in the United States.

He borrowed about $8,000 from a friend to make the journey, which Mr. Camara said he would repay once he has steady work in the United States.

Unlike many of the migrants from countries in the Americas, many migrants from Africa and Asia had families or friends who could help pay for the air travel to Nicaragua.

Mr. Keita, from Guinea, said that he had sold his small laundry-detergent factory in Kankanto afford the trip. “Working here, I will be able to better myself and provide for us,” he said.

Mohammed Aram, 33, of Sudan, where civil war broke out in April, said that the United States was the best place to start a new life.

“Entry to Europe is difficult,” said Mr. Aram, who planned to go to Chicago.

More than a dozen migrants interviewed for this article said that they had surrendered at the border to U.S. agents, who bused them to a processing facility.

There, the migrants spent two or three nights waiting their turn to provide personal information to authorities. They were released with documents that indicated they were in deportation proceedings and must go to court on a specific date in the city where they reported they will live.

Finally, the migrants were released to the San Diego center, where they received meals and assistance contacting friends or relatives around the country who typically paid for airline tickets to their U.S. destination.

Having made it to the United States, many expressed optimism about making fresh starts in cities across the country. But some who traveled to the United States said that social media posts had omitted mention of the danger they might encounter on their journeys, especially through Central America and Mexico.

Paulo Kando, 20, and M’bome Joao, 22, from Angola, an oil-rich nation on the West African coast, said that bandits had robbed their cellphones and all their money at the Guatemala-Mexico border. They got jobs piling charcoal into carts to earn some pesos in Mexico. By the time they reached California, they had nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Now they were stranded in San Diego. An Angolan friend in Portland, Oregon, had promised to receive them but was not answering his phone, and they could not afford the bus fare to get there. They knew no one else in the United States, they said.

Still, they did not regret coming.

Mr. Kando, speaking in his native Portuguese, said his goal had not changed.

“We’re trusting in God that a miracle will happen,” he said, “and we will reach Portland.”

It is extremely difficult to deport people to countries in Asia and Africa, because of the long distance and lack of consent from many nations..

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- Miriam Jordan Published at nyt.com January 4, 2024

“They’re Coming to Eat Our Dogs And Cats!”

Trump And Vance Seek A Final Solution to the Haitian “Problem” Former President (since elected to a second term and inaugurated) Donald Trump's false and provocative claims about Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, have cast a national spotlight on the small midwestern city and its migrant population.

The unsubstantiated rumors initially spread widely online -- and were magnified by some right-wing politicians and Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance -- after a series of social media posts went viral.

A spokesperson for the city of Springfield [said] these claims are false, and there have been "no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community."

Still, a firestorm brought on by the Republican presidential candidate's comments has eclipsed the complexities of the American immigration system and the geopolitical dynamics that have contributed to the rising number of Haitians seeking refuge in the United States -- including the thousands who have settled in Springfield over the last roughly three years.

While Trump has vowed to conduct "large deportations in Springfield," most of the estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians in the city are legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. And many of them -- and many Haitian migrants who have settled elsewhere in the country -- are protected from expulsion by law.

Hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants hold Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, a designation created by Congress in 1990 that allows migrants in the U.S. to stay for a limited amount of time if the executive branch determines conditions in their home country prevent them from returning safely.

Haitian nationals were first granted TPS in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake decimated the Caribbean nation, claiming more than 100,000 lives and overwhelming its government.

Those protections were renewed multiple times during the Obama era and then extended by six months during Trump's time in the White House before the former president moved to sunset the provision in 2019.

However, that decision was met with multiple legal challenges that effectively ran out the clock on his administration.

Shortly after President Joe Biden took office, he moved to reinstate TPS for Haiti, sharply increasing the number of Haitians eligible to apply for the status.

This past June, Biden expanded protections for Haitians again, ruling that the more than 300,000 migrants from the country who arrived in the U.S. after November 2022 were eligible to apply for TPS while allowing more than 200,000 Haitians whose protections were expiring to apply for an 18month extension.

Although Trump describes towns like Springfield as being "overrun" by migrants, the vast majority of Haitians in the U.S. reside in Florida and the northeast, not the Midwest, according to the American Community Survey, which is run by the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to immigration advocates, many Haitians who relocate to Springfield are drawn by its relatively low cost of living and ample employment opportunities, including manufacturing jobs the city's chamber of commerce has worked to create.

But Springfield's relatively small population size -- just over 58,000 in 2022 -- means the influx of newcomers has been more noticeable, especially when it comes to strain on the city's resources.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced in September 2024 that he would send $2.5 million to Springfield over the next two years to provide more health care options for the city's residents.

"What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They're very happy to have them there, and frankly, that's helped the economy. Now, are there problems connected? Well, sure. When you go from a population of 58,000 and add 15,000 people onto that, you're going to have some challenges and some problems. And we're addressing those," he added.

-Shannon K. Kingston Published ar abcnews.go.com September 17, 2024

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National Museum of African American History & Culture

THE CONTEMPLATIVE COURT

An Unofficial Guide

14 Constitution Avenue NW Washington, DC 20560 TO SCHEDULE A VISIT: (201) 547-5262 nmaahc.si.edu

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DESCRIPTION AND ORIGIN The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), colloquially known as the Blacksonian, is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in 2003 and opened its permanent home in 2016 with a ceremony led by President Barack Obama.

Early efforts to establish a federally owned museum featuring AfricanAmerican history and culture can be traced to 1915 and the National Memorial Association, although the modern push for such an organization did not begin until the 1970s. After years of little success, a legislative push began in 1988 that led to authorization of the museum in 2003. A site was selected in 2006, and a design submitted by Freelon Group/Adjaye Associates/Davis Brody Bond was chosen in 2009. Construction began in 2012 and the museum completed in 2016.

The NMAAHC is the world's largest museum dedicated to African-American history and culture.[5] In 2022 it welcomed 1,092,552 visitors, and was the second-most visited Smithsonian Museum and eighth-most visited museum in the United States.

The museum has more than 40,000 objects in its collection, although only about 3,500 items are on display. The 350,000square-foot, 10 story building (five above and five below ground) and its exhibits have won critical praise.

Vista of the Museum from Constitution Avenue, looking across the north lawn to the Washington Monument.

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MISSION There are four pillars upon which the NMAAHC stands:

1 explore and revel in this history through interactive exhibitions

It provides an opportunity for those who are interested in African American culture to

It helps all Americans see how their stories, their histories, and their cultures are

2 shaped and informed by global influences

explores what it means to be an American and share how American values like 3 Itresiliency, optimism, and spirituality are reflected in African American history and culture

4 new audiences and to work with the myriad of museums and educational institutions

It serves as a place of collaboration that reaches beyond Washington, D.C. to engage that have explored and preserved this important history well before this museum was created.

This Museum will tell the American story through the lens of African American history and culture. This is America’s Story and this museum is for all Americans.

Lonnie G. Bunch, III Founding Director, NMAAHC

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MUSEUM DESIGN The Museum building is African American history and culture writ large on the National Mall of the United States. Its location and its design represent the past, present, and future of the African American experience in ways tangible and symbolic.

Looking north from the building, visitors can see the White House, which made history in 2008 with the election of the country's 44th president, Barack Obama. Rising to the east beyond the National Mall and other Smithsonian museums is the U.S. Capitol, seat of the nation’s legislature. To the south and west are monuments and memorials to Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, whose contributions to African American history and culture are told in the museum.

From one perspective, the building’s architecture follows classical Greco-Roman form in its use of a base and shaft, topped by a capital or corona. For our Museum, the corona is inspired by the three-tiered crowns used in Yoruban art from West Africa. Moreover, the building’s main entrance is a welcoming porch, which has architectural roots in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora, especially the American South and Caribbean. Finally, by wrapping the entire building in an ornamental bronze-colored metal lattice, Adjaye pays homage to the intricate ironwork crafted by enslaved African Americans in Louisiana, South Carolina, and elsewhere.

From one perspective, the building’s architecture follows classical Greco-Roman form in its use of a base and shaft, topped by a capital or corona. For our Museum, the corona is inspired by the three-tiered crowns used in Yoruban art from West Africa. Moreover, the building’s main entrance is a welcoming porch, which has architectural roots in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora, especially the American South and Caribbean. Finally, by wrapping the entire building in an ornamental bronze-colored metal lattice, lead designer David Adjaye pays homage to the intricate ironwork crafted by enslaved African Americans in Louisiana, South Carolina, and elsewhere.

The enveloping lattice also opens the building to exterior daylight, which can be modulated according to the season. The openness to light is symbolic for a museum that seeks to stimulate open dialogue about race and help promote reconciliation and healing. From the topmost corona, the view reaches ever upward, reminding visitors the Museum is an inspiration, open to all as a place of meaning, memory, reflection, laughter, and hope. This design is also architecturally practical and sustainable. This building is the first museum on the Mall designed to sustainability standards, serving as the Smithsonian’s 'Green Flag.' In 2018, the museum was officially awarded LEED Gold Certification.

Many of the world’s great buildings have integrated their architectural form with their function or purpose. The Museum follows this principle in the sense the building embraces its content—the American story told through the lens of African American history and culture.

Fulfilling a decades-long dream, the Museum building is a community resource that helps visitors learn about themselves, their histories, and their common cultures. The light reflected from the bronze-colored lattice serves as a beacon that reminds us of what we were, what challenges we still face, and what we may hope to become. As Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Museum's founding director has described it, “this building will sing for all of us.”

SEE PAGE 30

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EXHIBITS New Exhibition "In Slavery's Wake" Opening December 13, 2024, "In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World" immerses visitors in the freedom-making practices of Black communities navigating both the histories and the legacies of racial slavery and colonialism.

L4 - Culture Galleries “Cultural Expressions” Culture shapes lives. It’s in the food people eat, the languages they speak, the art they create, and many other ways they express themselves. These traditions reflect the history and creative spirit of African American and other cultures of the African diaspora.

L4 - Culture Galleries “Musical Crossroads” African American musical creativity has generated and enriched a vast array of musical styles, from folk and blues, to classical and spiritual, to jazz and hip-hop. These musical creations are a soundtrack to stories of African American history, culture, and community.

L4 - Culture Galleries “Taking the Stage” Through their achievements on the stage and screen, African Americans have expressed creative visions, enriched American culture, and inspired audiences around the world.

They have also used the power of performance to fuel social change.

L4 - Culture Galleries “Reckoning” Visual art has long provided its own protest, commentary, escape and perspective for African Americans. The Black painters, sculptors, photographers and textile artists featured exemplify the tradition of exhibiting resilience in times of conflict, as well as the ritual of creation, and the defiant pleasure of healing.

L4 - Culture Galleries “Reclaiming My Time” "Reclaiming My Time" features work by contemporary Black designers that engages ideas about cultural heritage, bodies at rest, and histories of labor and leisure.

L3 - Community Galleries “Making a Way Out of No Way” Through education, religious institutions, businesses, the press, and voluntary associations, African Americans created ways to serve and strengthen their communities.

They also developed a tradition of activism that paved the way for broader social change.

L3 - Community Galleries “Double Victory” From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, African Americans have served in the United States military. In defending their country, they hoped to earn freedom and citizenship and contribute to a changed America where racial equality was possible.

L3 - Community Galleries “Power of Place” African American communities have formed in all corners of the country and influenced the regions around them. Their stories reflect the resiliency of African Americans in making places for themselves and overcoming the challenges they faced.

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L3 - Community Galleries “Sports” Sports matter far beyond the playing fields. Though historically denied opportunities to compete at the highest levels, African American athletes have recorded impressive achievements and also utilized sports to fight for greater rights and freedoms.

L2 – Explore More!

“Explore More!”

Explore More! is an interactive, multifaceted educational space dedicated to helping visitors connect and engage with African American history and culture in ways that expand perspectives, spark curiosity and creativity, and increase knowledge.

L2 – Explore More!

“Spirit in the Dark” Sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, at times in the shadows —but always somewhere in the frame—religion is essential to the story of Black America.

C – Concourse “A Century in the Making” The journey to open this museum took many attempts and numerous steps to realize.

It involved the activism of private citizens and organizations, passage of federal legislation, construction of an inspiring new building, and collecting thousands of artifacts.

C – Concourse “In Slavery's Wake” Opening December 2024, "In Slavery’s Wake" is a project and international exhibition on the history and afterlives of slavery.

C1 – Concourse “A Changing America” While the modern Civil Rights Movement achieved many victories, it did not end the struggle for freedom. As African Americans have continued to pursue goals of equity and justice, the definition of African American identity has also continued to evolve.

C2 – Concourse “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” With the end of slavery, African Americans had hoped to attain full citizenship.

Instead they confronted a new form of oppression—segregation. Through their century-long struggle for civil rights, they challenged the nation to live up to its ideals of freedom and equality.

C3 – Concourse “Slavery and Freedom” Five hundred years ago, the emergence of the Transatlantic Slave Trade transformed Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The United States was created in this context, forged by slavery as well as a radical new concept, freedom.

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PHOTO GALLERY

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1. Interior gallery with steel staircase.

2. Plaza around the Oculus, which filters light into the belowground Contemplative Court.

3. Looking down from the Washington Monument onto the Museum’s roof.

4. A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands in front of a stack of bricks marked with the names of people he owned.

5. A slave cabin from the Point of Pines Plantation.

6. The dress Rosa Parks was making when she was arrested at her home in 1955.

7. A biplane flown by the Tuskegee Airmen.

8. A display featuring the Hope Rosenwald School, also known as Hope School which served rural African-American children in the early 20th century.

9. David Adjaye, lead architect of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, weeks before its opening in Washington, Sept. 8, 2016.

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Article compiled from multiple sources, including the museum website, nmaahc.si.edu BAVUAL WINTER 2025 | 33

Saint Bavual’s Return IN HIS MAIDEN SPEECH ON THE HOUSE FLOOR BAVUAL INTRODUCES HIS FIRST BILL -

AND IT’S WILD!

I was elected to produce results As the new Democratic U.S. representative from a district in Newark, New Jersey, Saint Bavual and The Squad banded together to introduce a broad range of progressive legislative proposals in the right-wing Republican-majority House of Representatives. The sweeoing bill covered everything from ending price gouging to building more affordable housing to child and senior care tax credits to battling climate change to requiring the rich to pay their fair share in taxes - and so much more.

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and I will do just that!

THE FUTURE STARTS WITH US - LET’S STOP THE LIES KNOW!!!

THE YOUNG CONGRESSMAN SPEAKS OF TRUTH AND CHANGE BEFORE A LARGE CROWD AT A RALLY iN D.C. AFTERWARD

NEVER SURRENDER TO TYRANNY

BAVUAL WINTER 2025 | 35

MEANWHILE, RUTHLESS AND CORRUPT MEN IN HIGH PLACES WERE PLOTTING TO BRING BAVUAL AND THE SQUAD DOWN! i KNOW, HE’S F*^%ING EVERYTHING UP FOR US. WE MUST STOP HIM, ELON!

DONALD, THAT NEW GUY FROM NEW JERSEY, BAVUAL - HE’S A THREAT TO US.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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YOUR AD SHOULD BE HERE CONTACT EARL A. BIRKETT 212-419-5831 eab@bavual.com

THE REAL SUPER HEROES!

HOW BLACK PEOPLE HAVE INFLUENCED EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN Whether it’s the food that you eat, the quality of the air that you breathe, the ground that you walk on, the conveniences that you use in your home, the way that you drive and travel, the entertainment that you enjoy, the depth and completeness of your education, the fervor and moral purpose of your worship and politics, the wealth that brings you ease and luxury, the pleasure and beauty of your body and the companionship that gives your soul comfort and well-being, from birth to death, it is likely that they all involve the blood, sweat, toil and tears of black people and their ancestors.

Mother Africa is the cradle of civilization, for it is on the dark continent that humankind was born between 730 and 1200 centuries ago and branched out to form the three great races - negroid, caucasian and mongoloid - that populate the Earth. The negroid, or black race were the first hunter-gatherers and the first to amass great wealth and huge empires. In turn, they created effective means to govern, educate and improve the populace . Black Africans formed alliances with the two other races in what became Europe and Asia to promote world order and progress. Those alliances led to

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Those alliances led to integration in may cases, as in England, where blacks of African origin were at one time more or less of equal status with white Anglo-Saxons. Libyan-born African Septimius Severus was emperor of Roman Empire, ruling from AD 193 to 211.

The founders of two of the great religions Jesus Christ and Muhammad - had direct roots in Africa, while the third, Buddha, indirectly resulted from the original migration out of Africa. Early Catholicism was heavily influenced by Africa; three black Africans even served as pope. A black African penetrated the most Japan’s most elite and secretive society, the samurai (see “Black Samurai,” page 66).

The greatest of Africa’s empires, Mali (still a country in West Africa but far from its wealthy heritage), was ruled by its sovereign Mansa Musa during its golden age, from 1312-1337 (BAVUAL Winter 2022). Musa, regarded by many historians to be the richest person in human history - his actual wealth is incalculable - once controlled the world’s gold supply. Under his reign, Mali was the center of culture and education in sub-Saharan Africa. Musa’s trek by caravan to Mecca spread Malian culture to the Middle East and made him perhaps the first African celebrity in the then-known world.

Africa’s once-great empires fell, like all empires eventually do, due to the human desires for greed, envy, revenge and conquest. Tribes fought each other for dominance. To the victors went the spoils. Defeated tribesmen were captured and sold into slavery, namely to Europeans who traded them to empires in Asia and South America and the burgeoning British colonies in North America. Native Africans arrived in America as captive indentured servants in 1619 that subsequently became the bondage of slavery that lasted for more than two centuries.

Since 1865, when enslaved blacks were freed, and 1868, when they were granted full citizenship, black Americans , while struggling to achieve the still unmet goal of economic and social equality and respect, have continued their success, begun in 1619, in influencing and enhancing the fortunes of the United States of America to the point where it remains the number-one world power, despite its many flaws. America attained that status not just because of its free, forced African labor but because of the ingenuity and moral purpose of those Africans. They tilled the farms into plantations, designed and built the early architecture, maintained a civil society at a business and personal level and enriched everyone with their fantastic scientific and cultural achievements. This is their story.

By Earl A. Birkett from Multiple Sources

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THE COLONIAL ERA 1619-1775

AUGUST 1619: THE FIRST ENSLAVED AFRICANS ARRIVE AT jAMESTOWN, VIRGINIA

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The imprint that black people stamped on colonial America began with the 20 captive Africans, originally indentured servants, who stepped off the English privateer The White Lion at Jamestown, Virginia, on August 20, 1619, and ended with the 500,000, now either enslaved or free, who populated England’s colonies at the start of the War for Independence at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19, 1775.

RE-ENACTMENT OF PREREVOLUTION SLAVERY AT COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA

Although sold into bondage and given very limited rights if they had rights at all, and given almost no privileges compared to that of Slaves Made The Colonies Prosperous whites, the first black Africans in the colonies While Africans in colonial America held very nevertheless found a way, by dint of talent, little social or political power, their energy and the human spirit, to lay as much of contributions not only supported the a claim to colonial America as their new Southern colonies but led to their eventual homeland as much as their white enslavers. prosperity.

It seems that Africans wouldn’t have had it any better in America had the Pilgrims (and later the Puritans), who ironically were themselves victims of religious persecution in England, brought blacks with them to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony. After all, slavery was made legal in the colony in 1641 for Africans and indigenous tribes. There were those in the northern colonies - notably the Society of Friends, or Quakers - that spearhead efforts to abolish slavery in all the colonies and, post-Revolution, the United States itself. The northern colonial settlers had a somewhat more enlightened approach to universal education and keeping one’s culture, which might have helped Africans better assimilate without losing their heritage, but it was not a huge benefit for them in any event as will be seen.

While slavery existed in every colony at one time or another, it was the economic structure of farming in the South that depended on slave labor to prosper. A large labor force was needed to work the large plantations that grew labor-intensive crops like tobacco and rice. That labor demand was filled by the forced labor of Africans.

While most enslaved people worked in the field, others were used in the enslavers’ homes, assisting the owners in running the plantation and household as manservants, maids, cooks, and nannies. As enslaved people became more and more in demand in the South, the slave trade that spanned from Africa to the colonies became a source of economic wealth as well.

Working long hours, living in crude conditions, and suffering abuses from their As it turned out, the need for free menial labor owners, African captives faced harsh to plant and gather crops proved essential to conditions in colonial America. Families the prosperity of southern colonial planters. In were often broken apart, with husbands and their mind, Africans, rather than, say, wives sold to different owners than their indigenous tribes (later Native Americans or children. For those enslaved during this Indians), were easier to control, albeit not time, there was little hope of escape from without brute force, once their language and slave life. None of the colonies outlawed culture had been stripped from them, and slavery prior to the Revolutionary War, so replaced with their version of Christianity, running away to freedom was extremely which taught African captives to be docile and difficult. There was a small chance a captive accepting of their status as slaves. would be freed when their enslaver died, but it was equally likely that their family would Despite the lack of rights and privilege, be split up to surviving family members. Still, Africans still found ways to influence white the enslaved resisted their bondage, with culture. uprisings like the Stono Rebellion in 1739.

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The Early Struggle For Freedom The Africans' status in the United States slowly deteriorated over the course of the century, as colonies slowly added laws to permit slavery and restrict the rights of Africans. These decisions laid the legal foundation for lifetime servitude. More laws followed, including one in 1662 that said children were born into slavery if their mothers were enslaved, and one in 1705 that declared all non-Christian servants brought to the colonies would automatically be enslaved.

However, Africans may have been forcibly enslaved but they were not stupid. There are examples of the will to fight for their liberty within the British-American colonies.

John Punch was a black indentured servant who ran away from his boss along with two white indentured servants in 1640. All were captured. While the white indentured servants had their terms extended by four years each, Punch had his term of service extended to the rest of his life.

JOHN PUNCH (A.I. IMAGE)

John Casor was an indentured servant who had fled from his boss, Anthony Johnson (who, ironically, had also been among those first African captives brought to the 13 colonies until he earned his freedom and bought his own piece of land). In 1654, Johnson took Casor to court to force him back into servitude. Casor claimed he had earned his freedom, but the court did not agree—and went a step further to declare that Casor would be Johnson’s property for the rest of his life.

A.I. IMAGE, NOT CASOR

Born in Africa, Anthony Johnson was kidnapped and brought to Virginia against his will around 1621, either as an enslaved laborer or as an indentured servant. By around 1651, Johnson had won his freedom and owned a large plantation. In a legal dispute, one of Johnson’s indentured African American servants, John Casor, was declared Johnson’s slave for life as the Virginia colony started to institutionalize slavery. Ironically, when Johnson died in 1670, his plantation did not pass on to his children, but went instead to a white farmer —Virginia by that time had declared that black men were not citizens of the colony and thus had no rights to property.

Kidnapped in Africa as a very young girl, Lucy Terry was sold into slavery and brought GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER to Deerfield, Massachusetts. After a raid on Deerfield, Terry composed a poem about the events, called “The Bars Fight.” Terry’s poem is considered the first one composed by an African American. Her poem was passed on orally for generations before it was first printed in 1855. After marrying Abijiah Prince, a free African American, in 1756, Lucy Terry Prince gained her freedom. Lucy Terry Prince also won wide acclaim for her skills as a speaker and legal thinker as she successfully defended her family’s rights and property in court several times.

LUCY TERRY PRINCE

ANTHONY JOHNSON

Elizabeth Key Grinstead’s father was a white Virginia tobacco planter; her mother one of his African indentured servants. When Key was claimed as a slave later in her adult life —rather than freed as an indentured servant who had served her contract—she brought one of the earliest lawsuits—a freedom suit—to win her freedom in court.

In 1656, Key won her case, mainly because her father was a freeman and because she had been baptized in the Christian faith as a child. However, by the late 1660s, the Virginia colony passed laws that required a child’s slave status be determined by the status of the child’s mother and that being baptized in the Christian faith could not free a person from enslavement. These laws institutionalized slavery in the Virginia colony; one result of which was to have enslaved labor for Virginia’s tobacco plantations.

ELIZABETH KEY GRINSTEAD

Despite these hardships, Africans in colonial America developed a vibrant culture that embodied a combination of resistance against their enslavers, adopted Christian worship, and customs from their native Africa. Storytelling was an art form as well as a means of sharing critical information about survival for the enslaved, and since they were not allowed to read or write, it was the primary way African-American history was passed down.

Music and dance, which was central to African life, became sustenance for slaves’ emotional lives in America, especially in their prayer and worship practices. Many cultural elements from colonial America still exists in African-American culture today.

Taken from her home in West Africa when she was a young girl, Phyllis Wheatley was not considered strong enough to work in the island or southern colonies. She ended up enslaved in Boston, where she worked at domestic tasks, but also learned to read and write. Wheatley’s first poem was likely published in 1767, when she was just 13 or 14 years old. She continued to write poetry and her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was published in 1773.

Wheatley’s book became the first book of poems published by an African American and only the second book of poems ever published in America by a woman. After Wheatley gained her freedom, she struggled economically, especially as the Revolutionary War raged on and an economic depression followed.

PHYLLIS WHEATLEY (A.I. IMAGE)

At least two black women born in the colonial era managed to create significant and long-lasting additions to American culture during this time. Without them, the respect and admiration accorded to women’s literature, from Emily Dickenson to Maya Angelou, may have been delayed.

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Crispus Attucks America’s First Martyr

There would likely still be a Revolutionary War without Crispus Attucks but it may have occurred much later and at a more disadvantageous time without him. His death on March 5, 1770 during the Boston Massacre - an act of which alone solidified the status of all blacks as Americans rather than Africans - created the groundswell of ire against King George III of England that led to the outbreak of war . After all, Attucks, regardless of his race and social status, was the first American to be killed during the Massacre and the first American to be killed at the start of the Revolution.* Historians disagree on whether Attucks, a 47year-old whaler, sailor and stevedore, was a free man or an escaped slave, but most agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent. Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre published in 1770 did not refer to him as black or as a Negro; it appears he was instead viewed by Bostonians as being of mixed *Although he is widely remembered as the first American casualty of the American Revolutionary War, 11-year-old Christopher Seider was shot a few weeks earlier by customs officer Ebenezer Richardson on February 22, 1770.

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ethnicity. According to a contemporaneous account in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he was a "Mulattoe man, named Crispus Attucks, who was born in Framingham, but lately belonged to New Providence, and was here in order to go for North Carolina.”

Attucks became an icon of the anti-slavery movement in the mid-19th century.

Supporters of the abolition movement lauded him for playing a heroic role in the history of the United States.

FROM

INDEPENDENCE TO

CIVIL WAR 1776-1865

ENSLAVED COUPLE ON AN ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION

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Even before the Revolutionary War started in 1775 and more than a year before the 13 colonies formally separated from Britain and declared themselves a new nation, the United States of America, on July 4, 1776, black Americans were in the thick of the Revolution from its very first minutes.

Whether we want to point to Crispus Attucks being the first man shot down at the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, or the actions of minutemen assembling from the hills around Lexington and Concord, the evidence is plain and clear that black citizens rallied to defend their mixed communities from the British army. Individuals like Peter Salem, Lemuel Hayes, Barzillai Lew, and Salem Poor, among other noted participants, were eyewitness to events because they were fighting in them.

The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, is of specific importance because Salem Poor was officially recognized by his superiors for mortally wounding British LieutenantColonel James Abercrombie, the highestranking officer to die in the battle.

Did any enslaved blacks serve in the Why did George Washington, commanding Continental Army? Absolutely. Despite the general of the Continental Army and a Virginia slave holder, give arms to black men, ban of enlisting slaves into the army, a many of whom were chattel slaves and had sizable amount, particularly those who were no reason to fight to remain a slave? Frankly, enslaved, were signed up by their masters to he was desperate. At first his army was vastly serve in their place and gratefully taken. It was not uncommon for wealthy people to outnumbered by the King’s army, until the pay an individual to be their substitute if Declaration of Independence was signed, drafted into service, as was the case later in giving both free men and slaves at least a somewhat logical reason to fight the British. the Civil War. In some instances, it was Until then, Washington had to contend with difficult to find white Americans willing to Massachusetts enlistees, many of whom were enlist; it was also far more common that farmers but many more were sailors and port black Americans did not own property to tend to, making them more suited for the workers accustomed to interracial military. We also know that many who employment and cooperation, who were escaped their plantations also passed as fighting alongside soldiers from the South free black Americans. There was some who were likely enslaved. New army rules that went into effect on July 10, 1775, which suspicion of this going on, and some states demanded that black enlistees showed barred both free and enslaved black proof of their legal status upon registering.

Americans from enlistment, were circumvented when it came to free blacks in Except for one instance in Rhode Island the North, but not to slaves in the South (which was not for pure racist reasons but (although attempts were made to form armies in South Carolina and Georgia, which the desire to see blacks stand out in battle on faced resistence from the ruling plantation their own without help from white troops), black soldiers were not segregated from gentry). Senior officers like John Laurens, white soldiers, although most black Alexander Hamilton and the Marques de enlistees were not armed recruits; they were Lafayette convinced Washington that cooks, laborers, craftsman, drummers, flagenlisting free blacks in the cause was bearers, couriers and medical assistants. essential.

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FREE BLACK SOLDIER IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY (A.I. IMAGE)

Despite this reality, some black infantrymen did become war heroes. Signing on as an 18year-old in the fight for American independence, the freeborn Agrippa Hull survived the brutal winter of 1777-78 in Valley Forge and fought in many key battles, including Saratoga and the Siege of Charleston, while mainly serving under the Polish general Taddeusz Kosciuszko. (After the war, Hull became a major landowner and prominent citizen in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.)

In some cases, regiments did have more black soldiers than others, making them a visible presence for eyewitnesses to account for. This is where we’ve gotten the assumption that onefifth of the Continental army at Yorktown was black, the observation made by a visiting European officer. Records show that only about 5,000 black soldiers fought for American independence with the army over the eight years of war. That said, the Continental Army was never larger than 15,000 strong at any given time ( the army became divided into four separate entities by 1780: northern, main, southern, and western). Having a detachment of three hundred men with less than fifty of whom were black is neither insignificant nor done for purely racial reasons.

Black Americans also joined the Continental Navy. Whereas the sight of armed black soldiers held a menacing position with many white Americans, no such thought was given to black sailors aboard merchant vessels. Between centuries of employment on the high seas, and the noted presence of black workers in shipyards throughout the continent, it was simply a far more accepted position for them to be in. And the navy, more desperate for men than even the Continental army, literally could not say no.

The British royal government did try to coerce enslaved black s, particularly in the South, to join the British army. Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, issued a proclamation in 1775 that stipulated all enslaved persons of rebel owners in Virginia who escaped and joined up with the British/Loyalist forces would thereby be legally freed. Made as a way of creating chaos among the Virginian and southern plantation owners, who constantly feared slave rebellions, than as an act of abolitionism, the proclamation was ultimately unsuccessful. Hundreds of enslaved black men did join the British side in support of fighting for their freedom, but many black troops fell victim to smallpox while others who expected to be armed were in fact given laborer positions aiding the British army.

AMONG HIS MANY OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN DIVERSE FIELDS, BENJAMIN BANNEKER assistED Major Andrew Ellicott in a survey that established the original borders of WHAT BECAME WASHINGTON, D.C., THE U.S. CAPITOL CITY.

Rather than collapse rebel support in the South, the proclamation inspired upwards of 100,000 enslaved black Americans to flee their plantations. Throughout the revolution, most black Americans, free and enslaved, believed the British held a better argument for liberty than the Americans did, which explains why so many risked all to flee to them. By war’s end, the British had the logistical nightmare of trying to transport not just their defeated army, but also loyalist citizens who wished to leave the United States, and now freed slaves looking for a new life out of bondage in America.

Black Influence Between Wars After the War for Independence ended in 1783, black Americans continued to strive for freedom and acceptance while continuing to influence American society and culture for the better, aided greatly by white support in some quarters, all of whom struggled to make the American experiment in self-government succeed.

Both free and enslaved men fought for American independence and for the British attempt to squash the rebellion. Many served with the Continental Army because they believed in what the revolution

presumably stood for. Some decided to serve for personal reasons, detached from skin color while others served precisely for the color of their skin. The lack of simplicity leaves many to fumble for the truth. Among even those men fighting for liberty, it became difficult to explain how some people were destined for freedom and others were destined for bondage. For many African Americans, the choice has always been freedom, and the many who served during the American Revolution is further proof of how much they were willing to sacrifice to obtain it. The contradiction between slavery and freedom posed by the war led to the undoing of slavery’s legitimacy within the United States four generations years later.

for others, which ultimately led to the abolishment of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783. Once the first colony to legalize slavery, Massachusetts became one of the first states to abolish it—as a result of Freeman’s efforts.

Olauda Equiano spent much of his life at sea, as an enslaved sailor and then after having bought his freedom as a free man. His voyages took him all over the world and included one that explored the Arctic, hoping to find the elusive Northwest Passage. In 1786, he settled down in London, England, and married. Equiano became active in the abolitionist movement and wrote an autobiography to support the efforts to end slavery. His book also became a best-seller, earning him great fame and wealth.

Born into slavery as "Mum Bett,” Bett lived in Western Massachusetts and believed that she had a strong legal case for freedom after ratification of the state constitution of Massachusetts in 1780. She enlisted legal help and brought a lawsuit against her owner in a Massachusetts court. After the hearing, the jury decided that Bett should indeed be free. Upon winning her freedom, Bett changed her name to Elizabeth Freeman. Her “freedom suit” paved the way

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Perhaps the most influential figure of the time, considering the generations-long battle over slavery that was to come was Benjamin Banneker. He was born into a free African American family in Baltimore County, Maryland. Mostly self-taught, he became an accomplished mathematician, scientist, and inventor. Banneker was a key member of the team that surveyed and laid out the plans for the creation of Washington, D.C., to serve as our nation’s capital. He also published a popular almanac and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson (as the author of the Declaration of Independence), urging equal treatment for all African Americans. This contact may have persuaded Jefferson to include a clause in the Declaration of Independence blaming George III for the transatlantic slave trade (which Jefferson essentially considered to be a crime against humanity) and later, at the constitutional convention of 1787 and advocate for slavery’s abolition in the Constitution. Both were voted down by southern white plantation owners who had become wealthy from owning slaves.

These twin moral and social justice setbacks lit the slowing-burning fuse that would divide the nation and lead to civil war and modernday racism.

Slavery, despite being lucrative for some southern (and northern) whites, might have died out naturally but for two advents: 1) the dawn of the industrial age, which kickstarted America’s rapid growth and 2) the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1794, which introduced mass productivity that made plantation owners mega-rich. Both required free or, in the case of indentured servants, near-free labor.

Without slave labor, the building of great cities like New York City and the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C., would have taken much longer and been far more expensive to a young nation struggling to get on its feet after the Revolutionary War and subsequent wars against Britain again (1812-15) and Mexico (1846-48), among smaller regional skirmishes.

Black enslavement was cruel and extremely degrading. Slaves were often mistreated and subjected to brutal beatings and other tortures.

ENSLAVED BLACKS BUILT THE U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING (UPPER TOP), THE WHITE HOUSE (LEFT) AND QUITE POSSIBLY THE START TO THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT (LOWER TOP). WE KNOW THIS BECAUSE RECORDS DISCOVERED SHOWED THAT THEIR WHITE OWNERS RECEIVED THEIR $5 weekly PAY, a large sum before the civil war.

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Remarkably, enslaved and free blacks were able not only to survive but thrive under these conditions and continue to have an even deeper impact of America’s fortunes than ever before through the Civil War.

THE VAST PROSPERITY ENJOYED BY SOUTHERN WHITE PLANTATION OWNERS WAS ONLY ATTAINABLE DUE TO NEW TECHNOLOGY LIKE THE COTTEN GIN AND THE LABOR OF SLAVES, WHOSE PRESENCE WAS VITAL TO A FUNCTIONING BUSINESS AND PERSONAL LIFE FOR THEM.

Excluded from white churches, blacks formed their own Protestant sect, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. The spirited church services, often led by the fiery sermons of a vocally gifted black preacherpastor and highly inspirational gospel singing, changed how white churches and sects worshipped. The black church also helped introduce religious revivalism and Christian evangelicalism in 1800s America.

However, black influence in this period was greatest on southern plantations. Before the Civil War, the South was one of the wealthiest regions globally, following Britain and the Northern states. Over half of the richest one percent of Americans were Southerners, highlighting the immense wealth concentrated in the hands of the Southern plantation owners, who treated themselves like British nobles.

“MAMMY” TYPES HAVE ALWAYS HAD ENORMOUS INFLUENCE IN SOUTHERN WHITE HOUSEHOLDS AND OFTEN SERVED AS CONFIDANTES AND DE FACTO MANAGERS OF THE HOUSE

Despite the constant (justified ) fear of rebellion, white slave holders relied on a few trusted male and female slaves to help manage such a vast estate. On each plantation there was a slave hierarchy: the male head servant who lived in master’s Big House and was given some education and liberal but still limited freedoms; the female maid, usually called “Mammy,” who also helped raise master’s children; a midwife to assist in births; and a black field foreman who would keep the other slaves in line. Gradually, these slaves would come to be seen as and treated like surrogate family (some critics would say pets).

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the four million enslaved blacks in the South and the 500,000 free blacks in the rest of the U.S. faced the same conundrum they had faced in the Revolutionary War. Dissatisfied with their cold treatment in both the Union and the Confederacy, 179,000 black soldiers and 19,000 black sailors nevertheless enlisted in the U.S. Army and Navy respectively, comprising 10 percent of Union forces. Nearly 40,000 of them died, but they turned the tide of war to a Union victory and earned freedom for black Americans in 1865 and full citizenship in 1868.

painting of the 54 Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. THE UNIT, organized in the Northern states during the Civil War, saw extensive service in the Union Army during the War.

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DRED SCOTT THE BLACK MAN WHOSE COURT CASE LED TO SLAVERY’S DEATH KNELL Had Dred Scott the man never existed, black Americans might not have been freed and granted full citizenship in their own country after nearly 250 years - nor might there have been a Civil War fought to achieve their freedom at all. Imagine: two nations, one slave and one free, co-existing on the same continent and no Emancipation Proclamation. So who was this pivotal man who changed the course of history?

Dred Scott was born into slavery c. 1799 in Southampton County, Virginia. It is not clear whether Dred was his given name or a shortened form of Etheldred. For the next 58 of the 59 years of his life he would remain in bondage.

In 1818, Dred was taken by Peter Blow and his family, with their five other slaves, to Alabama, where the family ran an unsuccessful farm in a location near Huntsville. The Blows gave up farming in 1830 and moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

Early in the 1830s Scott was sold by Blow to Dr. John Emerson, a U.S. Army surgeon who frequently moved to different posts. Scott did not like Emerson and ran away but was eventually recaptured. During one of Emerson’s postings, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, a slave owned by Lawrence Taliaferro. But Taliaferro transferred ownership of Harriet to Emerson, who treated the Scotts as his slaves. The couple had two surviving children, Eliza and Lizzie.

After Emerson died in the Iowa Territory in 1843, his widow Irene inherited his estate, including the Scotts. For three years after Emerson's death, she continued to lease out the Scotts as hired slaves. In 1846, Scott attempted to purchase his and his family's freedom, offering $300 ($10,173 adjusted for inflation). Irene Emerson refused the offer.

Scott and his wife separately filed

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freedom suits to try to gain their freedom and that of their daughters. The cases were later combined by the courts. The Scotts initially won their cases in Missouri circuit, however, they were overruled on appeal by the Missouri Supreme Court, whereupon the Scotts appealed to the federal courts, and eventually their cases where heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (the Scotts had since been transferred to Irene Emerson’s brother, John F.A. Sandford), popularly known as the “Dred Scott decision,” the high court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules.

Scott's temporary residence in free territory outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation, because the Missouri Compromise, which made that territory free

by prohibiting slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel, was unconstitutional because it "deprives citizens of their [slave] property without due process of law".

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had hoped to settle issues related to slavery and congressional authority by this decision. Instead, it aroused public outrage, deepened sectional tensions between the northern and southern states, and hastened the eventual explosion of their differences into the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments—the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments—nullified the decision.

The Scotts were manumitted by private arrangement in May 1857. Dred Scott, who became a porter, died of tuberculosis in September 1858, less than 16 months after obtaining his freedom. Harriet Scott died in 1876.

EX-SLAVE AS NEWLY FREE CARPETBAGGER ROAMING THE AMERICAN SOUTH

THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM:

RECONSTRUCTION 1866-1876

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For ten straight years, it seemed as if life had turned topsy-turvy for black Americans, from bad to often good - at times, even great literally overnight. Blacks went from being the property of white owners and subject to the whims of their masters to owning property, acquiring wealth and governing their former overlords! My how the worm turned.

Unfortunately, the experiment in interracial democracy only lasted for one decade, and the event that ended it was the election of 1876, a thoroughly corrupt affair that turned out to be the most tragic exercise in democracy for black Americans in U.S. history. The election’s grim outcome made blacks second-class citizens, even de facto slaves again in many cases, for nearly 90 years at the least and in current times at the most. Yet through almost impossible obstacles, they continued to survive and prosper as never before, often spectacularly.

Freedom And Retaliation After the Civil War ended in April 1865, it took Texas’ 250,000 blacks, the last to be enslaved, over two months to get the news from the U.S. Army that they had in fact been free since the Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation more than two years prior. (The reason why can be attributed to more than the slow travel of news or bureaucracy at the time.) Like the other 3.25 million blacks in the South, they had to contend with the fact that they were now more or less on an equal footing with 5.5 million whites. It meant that they could unite with their families, form and govern their own communities, start businesses and build wealth and pursue an education without being controlled by whites. As America was the only country they had ever known, going back to Africa, by now an alien land to them, was not an option.

The immediate reaction from white southerners, especially among the small slave-owning class, was bewilderment quickly followed by hostility toward blacks and the North. Plantation owners had lost all their property and vast wealth. Union troops that had defeated the Confederacy on its own land remained as an occupying force for the next 12 years. Most vexing to them is that ex-slaves were given the vote after 52 | BAVUAL WINTER 2025

passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, which made them American citizens. It meant that blacks , comprising one-third of the population of nine million southerners, would not only have the power to govern themselves but their former white owners as well. The temporary condition of blacks and northern Republicans being on top while white Democrats were at the bottom ingrained a seething hatred of both groups that has endured to this day, except the political allegiance in the region has reversed from Democrat to Republican.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a secretive vigilante group of ex-Confederates, was formed in late 1865. Their self-appointed mission was to terrorize free blacks and Republican “carpetbaggers” who migrated from the North and regain the regional supremacy of white Democrats, by using a violent campaign of beatings, lynchings and intimidating cross burnings. Because they were outlaws - especially after Federal passage of the anti-Klan Enforcement Act of 1871, which criminalized membership - they covered their bodies with (usually white) hoods and sheets. The KKK faded away soon after the Enforcement Act was enforced and would not revive itself until 1915.

Because slavery was the only life they had known, these ex-slaves, largely denied an education and skilled only in farming and menial and semi-skilled labor, continued to work on the plantations as “sharecroppers” for little or no pay, as the war had left white landowners impoverished. Moreover, southern state governments, controlled by whites, adopted strict black codes that made their freedom a literal crime. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans—including the right to buy and own property, marry (but not interracially), make contracts and testify in court (only in cases involving people of their own race)— their primary purpose was to restrict black peoples’ labor and activity.

Depending on the state, blacks were limited on the type of property that they could own, while they were burdened with strict vagrancy and labor contract laws, as well as so-called “anti-enticement” measures designed to punish anyone who offered higher wages to a black laborer already under contract. Apprenticeship laws forced many minors (either orphans or those whose parents were deemed unable to support them by a judge) into unpaid labor for white planters. Violators were subject to arrest, beating and forced labor enforced by allwhite police and state militia forces—often made up of Confederate veterans of the Civil War—across the South.

The restrictive nature of the codes and widespread black resistance to their enforcement enraged many in the North, who argued that the codes violated the fundamental principles of free labor ideology.

THE KU KLUX KLAN WAS FOUNDED IN 1865 TO TERRORIZE FREE BLACKS AND MIGRATING NORTHERN REPUBLICANS

At first blacks were protected from white retaliation by U.S. military occupation and Federal restrictions placed on former Confederate states as they were gradually re-integrated back into the Union. They were largely unrestricted to go about living and working. While many chose to move to the Western U.S. to start over on the frontier as the first “cowboys,” the majority opted to remain in the South on or near land owned by their former white owners.

The Federal Government Intervenes The unprecedented period of black progress that is associated with Reconstruction began with congressional passage - over President Andrew Johnson’s veto - of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the forerunner to the decisive 14th and 15th Amendments that respectively defined citizenship and affirmed that all citizens are equally protected by the law.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a

U.S. government agency assisting freedmen (i.e., former slaves) in the South. It was established in 1865 to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children. Between 1865 and 1869, the Bureau distributed 15 million rations of food to freed African Americans and 5 million rations to impoverished whites, and set up a system by which planters could borrow rations in order to feed freedmen they employed.

A ravaged southern economy provided fertile opportunity for :carpetbaggers,” Northerners - some of whom were Union army veterans and blacks - who moved to the South after the Civil War (their belongings were rolled up in handmade rug suitcases, hence their nickname) to participate in Reconstruction. They formed a coalition with African Americans and scalawags (white Southerners who supported Reconstruction) to gain control of southern state legislatures for the Republican Party. They had some success: 16 African Americans served in Congress, including two black senators from Mississippi, Hiram R. Revels (the first black senator) and Blanche K. Bruce (the first to serve a full term). By 1870, black men held three Congressional seats in South Carolina and a seat on the state Supreme Court held

by Jonathan J. Wright. Over 600 Black men served in state legislators during the Reconstruction period. P.B.S. Pinchback served as acting governor of Louisiana for 35 days in 1872-73. He was the first black man to serve as governor of a state.

HIRAM R. REVELS

BLANCHE K. BRUCE

the mid-1960s, which many in the GOP opposed as the result of the party’s swing to the right.

The greatest gains and influence that black Americans achieved during Reconstruction was in the area of education. Carpetbaggerled governments worked to establish a public education system in every Southern State - a significant achievement because only North Carolina had a public school system before the war. Well before the Civil War, blacks who were refused an education at white colleges and universities founded their own undergraduate schools in what has become Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).

1876 Election: Blacks Betrayed Southern white anger with black gains and influence over their lives during Reconstruction boiled over to the controversial 1876 presidential election. In this election, Samuel Tilden ran for the Democratic Party, and Rutherford B. Hayes ran for the Republican Party. The results of the election were disputed in four states. As a result, no candidate received the 185 electoral votes needed to win the election.

An independent commission was created to

resolve the dispute, but it failed to do so.

Eventually, a compromise was reached known as the Compromise of 1877. In the compromise, Hayes received the electoral votes in the states where the results were disputed. This gave Hayes the presidency. In return, the federal troops that were enforcing Reconstruction were removed from the South.

Once the federal troops left the South, Reconstruction ended. The improvements that had been made for the African Americans were eventually undone.

The 1876 election also demonstrated the enormous potential power of the black vote once it is exercised and the need by whites of ill-will to suppress it. Court records tell horrific stories of murder, rape, assault, and terrifying night-time raids, all intended to intimidate men who had been enslaved and white southern Republicans from voting and then, due to gerrymandering and fraud, having their votes counted. In 1876, a free and fair election probably would have resulted in Republican victories in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina, and maybe Georgia. As it was, all of those states went to Tilden the Democrat.

P.B.S. PINCHBACK

However, some carpetbaggers were also corrupt and exploitative, and the term became a derogatory label for any outsider who meddles in an area's political affairs.

Republicans as a party would be outcasts in the South until the civil rights movement in

IN ORDER TO WIN THE DISPUTED (POSSIBLY STOLEN) ELECTION IN 1876, THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE, RUTHERFORD B. HAYES, WAS AWARDED THE ELECTORAL VOTES NEEDED TO DEFEAT DEMOCRAT SAMUEL J. TILDEN IN EXCHANGE FOR WITHDRAWAL OF FEDERAL TROOPS FROM THE SOUTH IN 1877 - WHICH SPELLED DOOM FOR BLACK CITIZENS.

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Frederick Douglass

The First Black American Dreamer In his journey from captive slave to internationally renowned activist, Frederick Douglass has been a source of inspiration and hope for millions. His brilliant words and brave actions continue to shape the ways that we think about race, democracy, and the meaning of freedom. His life story is the connector between America’s flawed past and it hopeful future. Douglass, the most impassioned orator of his time, was the precursor and role model to every black intellectual, spiritual and political leader who followed: Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. He also affected leaders from other races and genders, in America and abroad.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in February 1818. He barely knew his mother, who lived on a different plantation and died when he was a young child. He never discovered the identity of his father was separated from his grandmother and spent his early live as a slave on Maryland plantations. He rebelled intensely.

At an early age, Frederick realized there was a connection between literacy and freedom. Not allowed to attend school, he taught himself to read and write in the streets of Baltimore. At 12, he bought a book called The Columbian Orator. It was a collection of revolutionary speeches, debates, and writings on natural rights.

Douglass educated other slaves, physically fought back against a "slave-breaker," and plotted an escape with a young free black woman he met named Anna Murray, who would become his wife.

On September 3, 1838, he disguised himself as a sailor and boarded a northbound train, using money from Anna to pay for his ticket. In less than 24 hours, after traveling by train, ferry boat, and on foot, Frederick arrived in New York City and declared himself free. He had successfully escaped from slavery.

After escaping from slavery, Frederick and Anna settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There, they adopted the last name "Douglass" and they started their family, which would eventually grow to include five children.

Frederick found work as a laborer and attended abolitionist meetings and spoke about his experiences in slavery. He soon gained a reputation as an orator, landing a job as an agent for the

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Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The job took him on speaking tours across the North and Midwest. His fame as an orator increased as he traveled.

In 1845, he published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which gave a clear record of names and places from his enslavement.To avoid being captured and reenslaved, Douglass traveled overseas, to England, Ireland, and Scotland. When abolitionists offered to purchase his freedom, Douglass accepted and returned home to the United States legally free. He relocated Anna and their children to Rochester, New York. In Rochester, Douglass took his work in new directions. He embraced the women's rights movement, helped people on the Underground Railroad, and supported anti-slavery political parties. Once an ally of William Lloyd Garrison and his followers, Douglass started to work more closely with Gerrit Smith and John Brown. He bought a printing press and ran his own newspaper, The North Star. In 1855, he published his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, which expanded on his first autobiography and challenged racial segregation in the North.

including two of his own sons,who served in the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

In 1872, the Douglasses moved to Washington, D.C. ; they remained in the city for the rest of their lives. A widely known public figure during and after Reconstruction, Douglass held prestigious offices in D.C. government and business. Among the most prominent were U.S. Marshal for D.C.; Recorder of Deeds for D.C.; Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti and board member of Howard University and president of the Freedman's Bank. Significantly, he held these positions at a time when violence and fraud severely restricted African American political activism.

On top of his federal work, Douglass kept a vigorous speaking tour schedule. His speeches continued to agitate for racial equality and women's rights. In 1881, Douglass published his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which took a long view of his life's work, the nation's progress, and the work left to do. Although the nation had made great strides during Reconstruction, there was still injustice and a basic lack of freedom for many Americans.

Douglass’ wife Anna died of a stroke in 1882. Two Early in the Civil War, Douglass was a tireless years later, he remarried to Helen Pitts, a white supporter for emancipation. He recruited African- woman 20 years his junior. On February 20, 1895, American men to fight in the U.S. Army, Douglass died of a heart attack. He was 77.

A BURST OF

CREATIVE GENIUS WHILE

FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO LIVE 1877-1999

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The heightened oppression after the end of Reconstruction amidst their new-found freedom and citizenship was a mixed blessing for the nation’s six million black Americans. It wasn’t slavery, sure, but it was no paradise, either. The rocky and at times perilous road to true equality and respect had to be walked another 122 years.

Even twenty-five years into the 21st century, they still have not been fully achieved.

After Reconstruction ended, the Republican Party in the South splintered and lost support, leading to the conservatives (calling themselves "Redeemers") taking control of all the Southern states. 'Jim Crow' segregation began somewhat later, in the 1880s. Disfranchisement of black people began in the 1890s. Although the Republican Party had championed AfricanAmerican rights during the Civil War and had become a platform for black political influence Apartheid In The South during Reconstruction, a backlash among white First, the obstacles. Without U.S. troops to protect Republicans led to the rise of the lily-white them any longer, southern blacks were at the movement to remove African Americans from mercy of a vengeful white supremacist society leadership positions in the party and to incite which took every opportunity to punish and riots to divide the party, with the ultimate goal of destroy them. Far from any progress they could eliminating black influence. By 1910, make, black people’s survival was at risk. segregation was firmly established across the South and most of the border region, and only a Having spent generations as enslaved small number of black leaders were allowed to southerners, black homesteaders lacked the vote across the Deep South. desire to trek to the West, as some blacks did, in search of fortune and a better life (as the first The Federal government didn’t just neglect its cowboys), neither of which were guaranteed. So black citizens in the South but reduced them to they endured the hardship and indignities on second-class status by institutionalizing their native turf. southern apartheid. The legitimacy of laws requiring segregation of black people was Black sharecroppers, the heart of the southern upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1896 black community and still vital to the southern case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which sustained the economy, found themselves as virtual slaves constitutionality of a Louisiana statute that again. As with Reconstruction, black codes required railroad companies to provide enacted by local and state government made it "separate but equal" accommodations for white virtually impossible to earn a living as a farmer, and black passengers and prohibited white much less prosper. Not only that, unfair contracts people and black people from using railroad entered into with white landlords and enforced cars that were not assigned to their race. Plessy by white courts left black tenant farmers in thus allowed segregation, which became perpetual debt and generational poverty standard throughout the southern United States, running well into the 1950s and 1960s. Those and represented the institutionalization of the who couldn’t pay wound up ordered to work the Jim Crow period. land for free until the debt is paid or do time in prison chain gangs. Today such inhumane conditions would face condemnation from world human rights organizations, if not outlawed altogether.

What little joy black southerners had was found in socializing and worshipping in church on Sunday., two traditions that have more or less endured to this day. The Baptist church especially was a refuge from troubles and the pastor was upheld as their religious, community and political leader. Indeed, being a church pastor was the single most prestigious, well-paid and powerful position that a black man could hold in America until very late in the 20th century. The pastor’s ability to deliver his segregated flock’s votes to white political candidates often made him more influential than the white politicians themselves. His power was greatly diluted when laws designed to restrict blacks from voting were enacted across the South.

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THE “JIM CROW” SOUTH

Everyone was supposed to receive the same public services (schools, hospitals, prisons, etc.), but with separate facilities for each race. In practice, the services and facilities reserved for African Americans were almost always of lower quality than those reserved for white people, if they existed at all; for example, most African American schools received less public funding per student than nearby white schools. Segregation was not mandated by law in the Northern states, but a de facto system grew for schools, in which nearly all black students attended schools that were nearly all-black. In the South, white schools had only white pupils and teachers, while black schools had only black teachers and black students.

Hardly any U.S. president had the desire to help African Americans nor did they show a shred of interest in their plight. The lone exception until the New Deal era was President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1901 invited a black man, Booker T. Washington (also his advisor on African American Affairs), to dine with him and his family at the White House - scandalous at the time.

The reaction to the Plessy decision was alarming among black Americans and white Americans of good will. It kicked off a black civil rights movement that, in varying degrees of intensity over the decades, continues in 2025.

First to be established was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in 1909. It is the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S. The NAACP played a key role in overturning segregation through the courts, political persuasion and organized protest.

Its greatest victory occurred in 1954, when the

CREATORS BAVUAL identifies 12 African Americans, ten men and two women, from Reconstruction until the end of the 20th century who have made life better and more fun for all of us with their groundbreaking inventions. However, there are many more such tinkerers in African heritage, including the ones tinkering at the kitchen table or in the garage on their new idea right now. We salute you as well. So, hats off to the Creators.

They are the best.

1 ELIJAH MCCOY (1844-1929) McCoy, who ran away from slavery in Kentucky, invented lubrication systems for steam engines and the ironing board. He is the ubject of the phrase “the real McCoy,” or the real thing.

2 GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER (1864-1943) Born into slavery, the noted Tuskegee agricultural scientist and environmentalist promoted alternative crops to cotton, like peanuts, pecans, sweet potatoes and soybeans, and methods to prevent soil depletion.

3 LEWIS LATIMER (1848-1928) Latimer’s inventions included an evaporative air conditioner, the first practical carbon filament light bulb, and an improved toilet system for railroad cars. Also a draftsman and associate of Thomas Edison, both his parents ran away from slavery in the South and settled in Massachusetts.

4 JAN ERNST MATZELIGER (1852-1889) Matzeliger, of Dutch, Germn and African descent, invented the automated lasting machine, which brought significant change to the manufacturing of shoes. The United Shoe Machinery Corporation company was founded to make his shoe making devices.

5 GARRETT MORGAN (1877-1963) His most notable inventions were a type of threeway traffic light, and a protective 'smoke hood', the forerunner of the protective gas mark .

6 CHARLES RICHARD DREW (1904-1950) Drew, a surgeon, researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, large-scale blood banks allowed doctors to save countless lives during and since World War II. 7 FREDERICK MCKINLEY JONES (1893-1961) Jones innovated mobile refrigeration technology.

He received 61 patents, including 40 for refrigeration technology, and is called the "Father of Refrigerated Transportation" and the "King of Cool".

8 EARL BIRKETT (1922-2014) Birkett (father of BAVUAL’s founder and editor Earl A. Birkett) invented the world’s first machine to automatically assemble ballpoint pens in 1955.

9 MARIE VAN BRITTAN BROWN (1922-1999) Brown was a nurse who, along with her husband Albert L. Brown, an electronics technician. invented an audio-visual home security system in 1966. Their application for a patent for their security system was granted three years later in 1969.

10 MARK DEAN (BORN 1957) Dean, a computer engineer, developed the ISA bus with his partner Dennis Moeller, and he led a design team for making a one-gigahertz computer processor chip. He holds three of nine PC patents for being the co-creator of the IBM personal computer released in 1981. In 1995, Dean was named the first ever African-American IBM Fellow.

11 PATRICIA BATH (1942-2019) Bath, an ophthalmologist and humanitarian, developed the laser phaco probe, a medical device that improves on the use of lasers to remove cataracts, and "for ablating and removing cataract lenses". She coined the term "laser phaco" for the process. She was the first African American woman to be granted a patent for a medical device.

12 LONNIE JOHNSON (BORN 1949) Johnson, an aerospace engineer and entrepreneur, is best known for inventing the bestselling Super Soaker water gun in 1989. He was formerly employed at the U.S. Air Force and NASA, where he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

top, from left to right: lonnie johnson, patricia bath, mark dean, Marie van Brittan Brown, earl birkett, Frederick McKinley Jones bottom, left to right: charles drew, Garrett Morgan, jan ernst matzeliger, lewis latimer, george washington carver, elijah mccoy

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group’s legal arm, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (since 1957 an independent group called the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund) successfully argued for public school desegregation before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Brown v. Board of Education. The NAACP’s lead attorney for Brown, Thurgood Marshall, later became the first black associate justice of the Supreme Court, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967.

Reaction to the NAACP and other black rights groups by white supremacists was massively negative and brutal. A split of the Republican Party, which was then sympathetic to civil rights, between its its conservative and Progressive factions in the 1912 presidential election, led to the election of New Jersey’s Democratic governor Woodrow Wilson, a southern-born segregationist and staunch racist. Wilson’s election led to the revival of a much larger and more influential revival of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. Now a nationwide organization instead of a regional southern group, the KKK launched a reign of terror that included lynchings, cross burnings and other threats to blacks, as well as Catholics and Jews. At its height in 1925, the Klan had up to six million members , which included many Democratic and Republican politicians. Scandal, public revilement over its mission and tactics and ridicule ended the KKK’s attraction. Today it is virtually non-existent, replaced by more contemporary hate groups.

The NAACP organized opposition to President Wilson's introduction of racial segregation into federal government policy, workplaces, and hiring, but to little avail. It organized a nationwide protest, with marches in numerous cities, against D. W. Griffith's silent movie The Birth of a Nation, a film that glamorized the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, several cities refused to allow the film to open.

In the build-up to World War I, the NAACP was influential in winning the right of African Americans to serve as military officers in World War I. Six hundred African-American officers were commissioned and 700,000 men registered for the draft.

Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932, out of dissatisfaction with the Republican response to the Great Depression, resulted in many pluses and minuses for the black community going forward. On the plus side, black Americans had the support of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a social liberal, who advocated for civil rights. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) put many black men to work at government programs; the Federal government remains a key employer of blacks today. President Roosevelt’s support of labor was a boon to black unions like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), whose able president, A. Phillip Randolph, not only extracted increased pay and better working conditions for porters and maids of the Pullman train line, but forced Roosevelt on the eve of U.tS. entry into World War II o ban ban discrimination by defense contractors and establish the Fair Employment Practices Committee to enforce that order. Randolph persuaded President Harry S. Truman, FDR’s successor, to legally segregate the military in 1948. Since then, the Department of Defense has provided more opportunities for career advancement to black men and women than any other key public or private organization. Other major corporations, universities and foundations would follow suit.

As for minuses, Roosevelt was responsible for redlining, which prevented blacks from buying houses in white neighborhoods and obtaining fair mortgages terms and the building of public

housing projects, well-meaning but their cold sterility resembled a prison.

It was while Roosevelt and Truman held the presidency that Mary McLeod Bethune, the educator and activist who formed FDR’s Black Cabinet, and Ralph Bunche, the Nobel Prizewinning diplomat who brokered the first peace in the Middle East, became household names.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, which influenced passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and promotion of affirmative action under the Nixon Administration, was a joint effort of a number of civil rights groups: NAACP, BSCP, National Urban League (NUL), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, Rev. Jesse Jackson , founder and head of Rainbow/PUSH, became the dominant civil rights group in the U.S. for the remainder of the century.

The presidential candidacies of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in 1972 and Jackson in 1984 and 1988 (when he finished second in the Democratic primary) solidified black and progressive support for the once-segregated Democratic Party.

Beginning in the 1970s and 80s, Hollywood discovered the advantages of featuring black actors in more diverse and dignified roles in movies and TV. The Jeffersons, about a black New York businessman who becomes newly rich, and The Cosby Show, which showcased an upscale black family headed by professional parents, are two prime examples. Bill Cosby himself was accepted as America’s Dad - long before his reputation and career collapsed in public disgrace.

By the 1990s, black Americans proved that they could be conflicted and unified at the same time.

Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court justice confirmation in 1991 was nearly derailed by Anita Hill’s alleged charges of sexual discrimination, while in 1995 the black Muslimled Million Man March congregated in Washington, D.C.

TELEVISION’S UNIVERSALLY POPULAR THE COSBY SHOW, WHICH RAN ON NBC FROM 1984 TO 1992, WAS THE FICTIONAL EPITOME OF WHAT GENERATIONS OF BLACK AMERICANS HAD BEEN STRIVING FOR: PROSPERITY AND RESPECT.

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At the close of the 20th century, the civil rights movement gradually spread increased its scope to petition for rights for all laborers, women, latinos, Asians, non-Protestant religious sects and atheists alike, gays, the transgender community and anyone else facing discrimination.

CRUSADERS

BAVUAL selects ten men and three women, The Crusaders, who’ve led the fight for social justice and human progress in the 122 years between the end of Reconstruction and the eve of the 21st century . With maybe one exception, they did not stand alone, they had the support of millions of people of good will, of all races and backgrounds, who together changed America and the world. These 13, however, led the way by setting the goal and the strategy to get there, deploying their charisma and occupying the moral high ground . Most of all, they had courage. We applaud them all.

1 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON ((1856-1915) In 1881 Washington, born into slavery, was appointed the first head of the new Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama, an HBCU, and build it into a leading academic center. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite.

2 W.E.B. DUBOIS (1868-1963) DuBois, the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard, co-founded the NAACP in 1909. He insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite, whom he referred to as the talented tenth,and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.

3 MARCUS GARVEY (1887-1940) Garvey, a Jamaican black nationalist and PanAfricanist, founded and led the Back to Africa movement among blacks in the 1920s. Convicted of fraud under controversial circumstances, he was posthumously pardoned by President Joe Biden in 2025.

4 MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE (1875-1955) A leading advocate of black women’s rights, Bethune formed the Black Cabinet, a group of black advisors to President Franklin Roosevelt .

5 A. PHILLIP RANDOLPH Randolph, a union leader, founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1935, successfully lobbied to desegregate the military and headed the March on Washington in August 1963.

6 RALPH BUNCHE The United NAtions (UN) diplomat received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. Bunche played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous UN peacekeeping operations.

7 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. King was the moral leader of the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 to 1968 and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. He was assassinated in 1968.

8 MALCOLM X (1925-1965) The controversial Black Muslim minister, who was assassinated in 1965, was a vocal advocate for black

empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the black community. He was celebrated among blacks and Muslims for his pursuit of racial justice.

9 THURGOOD MARSHALL As head NAACP lawyer, Marshall successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court. President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the Court as associate justice in 1967.

10 SHIRLEY CHISHOLM Chisholm, a Democrat, is the first black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968 and the first such to seek a major party presidential nomination in 1972.

11 JESSE JACKSON Jackson founded the Rainbow PUSH Coalition after King’s assassination and ran in 1984 and 1988 for the Democratic presidential nomination. He finished second in 1988.

12 COLIN POWELL The former Joint Chiefs chairman spearheaded the ouster of Iraq from Kuwait in Desert Storm in 1991 and served as the first black secretary of state under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005.

13 ANITA HILL Hill, an attorney, courageously accused her former boss, U.S. Supreme Court nomineeeClarence Thomas, , of sexual harassment while working for him at EEOC. Thomas was confirmed but Hill became a symbol for women’s empowerment.

top, from left to right:MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., MALCOLM X, THURGOOD MARSHALL, SHIRLEY CHISHOLM, JESSE JACKSON, COLIN POWELL, ANITA HILL bottom, left to right: RALPH BUNCHE, A. PHILLLIP RANDOLPH, MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE, MARCUS GARVEY, W.E.B. DUBOIS, BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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Paul Robeson Modern America’s First Renaissance Man The enormous changes and challenges that black Americans and all Americans faced at the end of the 19th century and all of the 20th century can be epitomized in the life and times of one very remarkable man: Paul Robeson.

Robeson was much more than a hugely talented singer and actor. He was what we once called a Renaissance Man, someone who was gifted at many things and able to do everything, much of it very well. He is what all Americans but especially black Americans once aspired to be: the ideal person, the superman of Greek myth.

The list of accomplishments is seemingly endless. Valedictorian of Rutgers University class of 1919, elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Cap and Skull. College football All-American who briefly played in the pros. Columbia Law School-educated attorney. Acting sensation on Broadway, especially as Othello. Toast of New York society during the Harlem Renaissance.

Celebrated bass-baritone in Broadway musicals (his rendition of the song “Ol’ Man River” in Show Boat set the standard) and the concert circuit. The first black Hollywood leading man with Emperor Jones. Flamboyant (and controversial) international figure.

Paul Leroy Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898 and died in Philadelphia in 1976. During his 77 years, he benefitted and suffered from the bright promise and grim reality that America has always been.

By the Depression-era 1930s, Robeson had become self-aware of his status as an American of African heritage , having experienced racism in his life and career up to that. He took to vigorous study of African history and its influence on culture, as well as the Swahili language, and wrote an essay "I Want to be African", wherein he expressed his desire to embrace his ancestry.

Robeson lived in an age where unfettered capitalism combined with industrialization to produce vast wealth and power for a tiny group of greedy businessmen derisively as “Robber Barons” at first. Political and economic reform in the early 20th century spread much of that wealth to the workers, white and black, and

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created a middle class. Prosperity allowed social justice warriors to fight to alleviate poverty, ignorance, bigotry and greed.

As someone who had attained great privilege, despite his race, only by virtue of his ability and work ethic, Robeson identified with the oppressed and actively pursued the goal of humanism and egalitarianism.

Robeson's political activities began with his involvement with unemployed workers and anti-imperialist students in Britain, and it continued with his support for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War and his involvement in the Council on African Affairs (CAA). Although he supported the American and Allied war efforts during World War II, Robeson’s history of supporting civil rights

causes and Soviet policies, however, brought scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). After the war ended, the CAA was placed on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. Robeson was investigated during the McCarthy era. When he refused to recant his public advocacy of his political beliefs, the U.S. State Department withdrew his passport and his income plummeted. He moved to Harlem and published a periodical called Freedom, which was critical of United States policies, from 1950 to 1955. Robeson's right to travel was eventually restored as a result of the 1958 United States Supreme Court decision Kent v.

Dulles.

Win or lose, Robeson always kept his dignity and integrity intact. A modern lesson for us all.

THE MILLENNIALS

MANY CHOICES TO MAKE 2000-TODAY

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African Americans as a whole began the new millennia in America under better conditions than they have ever been in at any point in the past. No longer Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, black men and women were finally noticed - and in some quarters feared - for their accomplishments and now had the freedom to go anywhere they like and do anything they want.

The Long March to Inclusion Once confined to the segregated South, the Great Migration to the North and West 90 years ago set black people on the road to greater equality and inclusion. No longer restricted to sharecropping and other farm-related work, they had an opportunity in the North and West to get an education, earn a decent income and develop their talents and put them on display. African Americans also learned the value of strategic planning.

Blacks have always been a diverse people. Like other racial and ethnic groups, they harbor their own long-held prejudices. For instance, West Indian and African immigrants do not always get along with native-born blacks, nor do blacks from the South relate entirely to those from the North or West. Despite the differences, African Americans learned the value of a united front against racism discrimination. Thus, they supported their own colleges and universities like Howard and Fisk, their own houses of worship, usually Baptist and A.M.E., and their own small businesses like soul food restaurants and repair shops and social groups like the Freemasons and Eastern Star.

Most importantly, African Americans woke up to discover that they had four invaluable assets in a capitalist democracy: 1) the right to spend their money wherever and however they please; 2) the right to petition the courts for legal redress; 3) the right to public protest of their grievances; and 4) the right to vote for whomever and whatever they want. The history of America since Reconstruction is the attempt by white politicians to suppress the black vote.

Black voters were a central part of the Republican Party’s coalition from 1872 to 1928, largely because it was a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and fought the Civil War to abolish slavery, and successive Republican politicians at least gave lip service to advocating for black rights, although in fact they did little to nothing for African Americans. The Great Depression compelled blacks to vote for Democrats in large numbers for the first time in 1932. Blacks were among the prime beneficiaries of President Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation and the prominent support of First Lady Eleanor

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BARACK OBAMA

Roosevelt for civil rights, as well as the desegregation of the military by his successor, Harry Truman. Both presidents were prodded by black activists Mary McLeod Bethune and A. Phillip Randolph.

During the 1950s and 1960s blacks strategically allocated their votes to extract concessions from both Democrats and Republicans. President Dwight Eisenhower loosened restrictive mortgage and zoning regulations against blacks, allowing them to buy homes in white suburbia, and sent Federal troops to protect black students entering Little Rock High School. John F. Kennedy’s narrow election in 1960 was the result of the black vote, and also backed President Johnson, whose Great Society transformed the racial landscape of America to the advantage of black people.

With two exceptions - Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 - black voters have almost exclusively cast their ballots for the Democratic Party, especially after rules changes in 1972 gave effective control of the party to racial and ethnic minority groups. Their support led to further gains under President Bill Clinton, whose deregulation of Wall Street and bank lending practices led to a housing and stock investment boom for blacks. Finally, black votes ensured the election of the first black president, Barack Obama, in 2008 and his re-election in 2012, the election of Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris, a woman of color, in 2020.

Although votes from black men waned in 2024, Harris did win 83 percent of votes from blacks as a whole in her campaign, which she narrowly lost.

KAMALA HARRIS

Since World War II, blacks have learned how to effectively use the court system to advance justice and equality. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund was extremely effective in desegregating the nation’s public and professional schools, right up to desegregation of the last public school, Ozark High School in Arkansas, in 2020. Black attorneys and judges have played a key role in reforming the criminal justice system. Criminal defense lawyers like Johnnie Cochran, Bryan Stevenson and Ben Crump, prosecutors like Loretta Lynch and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and jurists like Damon Keith and Amalya Kearse have all fought to uphold the rule of law when it encroaches on the rights of black Americans and all Americans.

In the modern era, blacks have exercised their influence in business and financial affairs through protest and spending choices. The first nonviolent protest of the Civil Rights Movement the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, that began in 1955 - ended because the bus company and the city were losing too much revenue. Future boycotts by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as self-serving as they sometimes were, did end in hiring and vendor concessions from major corporations. Network TV, record companies, leading fashion magazines, Madison Avenue ad agencies and sports teams all discovered that featuring more black actors, filmmakers, music performers, models and athletes in their products and as spokespersons

republicans’ voter suppression at work

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Beyoncé AND JAY-Z, THE ULTIMATE POWER COUPLE

was very good for the bottom line for both sides.

Red Lobster, McDonald’s, JC Penney, RE/Max, Greyhound, AT&T, the U.S. Postal Service, top universities and the defunct TimeWarner media complex are among the corporations that discovered early the mutual benefits of offering job opportunities to blacks.

In American society as a whole, blacks have offered heightened ability, flair, energy, excitement and attitude that often cannot be found in white-dominated culture. Jay-Z (née Shawn Corey Carter), the hip-hop mogul and his wife, superstar singer/songwriter Beyoncé Knowles, are exemplars of the celebrity and opulent lifestyle that many blacks aspire to.

Beyoncé is the eighth most famous person in the world (per legit.ng) and Jay-Z is the wealthiest musical artist in the world. The couple have a combined net worth of $3.3 billion.

The first black CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation was Clifton R. Wharton Jr., who was named head of TIAA-CREF, the pension and financial services company. He has been followed by 18 other black CEOS on the list, of whom five, or one percent, are currently running these top 500 companies.

CLIFTON R. WHARTON JR.

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White Resistance Accelerates Many whites have not been happy with the advancement of African Americans since the 1930s and have actively tried to slow their progress or stop it altogether, and perhaps turn the clock back to a time when black people had little or no rights at all. They’ve tried lynching, beatings, fire bombings, cross burnings, verbal and written harassment and ultimately assassination of black leaders. The practice of redlining, begun in th 1930s, prohibited blacks from buying real estate in black neighborhoods and receiving mortgage loans from banks. When various attempts at maintaining segregation collapsed in the 1960s, whites moved away when black families moved in to their neighborhood.

“White flight” would asl mean fewer jobs, neglect of public schools and other governments along with the stigma attached to living in blighted communities.

Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was especially galling. Republicans, who have grown anti-black since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, have gotten even more extreme after Obama was elected president. With the Supreme Court diluting a major provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, Republican attempts largely at the southern state and local government level to suppress the black vote was gone into overdrive.

Thus far the attempts have met with failure, as black voters turned out in droves to elect Joe Biden president in 2020 and a black candidate, Raphael Warnock, to the U.S. Senate from Georgia in 2021 and 2022. Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ defeated presidential nominee in 2024, still got the same percentage of the black vote - 12 percent - as Biden received in 2020, even though black men had a higher rate of defection to Trump

than in 2020. What that augers for the future is anyone’s guess at this point.

The Choices Gen Z and Millennials Must Make There are more than 35.1 million African Americans in the U.S. - 11,26 percent - who have a proud legacy passed down to them by dint of the blood, sweat, toil and tears of their forebears over 406 years. Of the four existing generations, the Greatest Generation that survived the Great Depression and World War II and engaged in the civil rights struggle under fifteen presidents has nearly faded into history. Following them are their children, ranging in age from 61 to 79, who are also entering the twilight of the struggle.

That leaves the two generation born after 1982, the Gen Z, those 24-to-42 year old, and the millennials, the oldest of whom reached voting age in 2020 and 2024, left to carry the banner for the remainder of the 21st century. The choices they make will decide whether their birthright prospers or whether it stagnates and dies - not just as a race but as Americans. There appears to be three roads to take: 1) acquiesce to the status quo by believing the falsehoods of the new president, Donald Trump, and have all of your rights and hard-won gains of your forebears instantly taken away; 2) move out of the U.S. and seek a hopefully better life in another country; 3) fight like hell like your ancestors to keep your right to the American Dream and a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The combined efforts of scores of black men and women have brought the current two generations of African Americans to the edge of the Promised Land of justice and equality. It is now up to them to cross into it.

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Booker T. Washinton vs. W.E.B. DuBois

Two Divergent Views of Black American Aspiration Two great leaders of the black community in the late 19th and 20th century were W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

However, they sharply disagreed on strategies for black social and economic progress. Their opposing philosophies can be found in much of today’s discussions over how to end class and racial injustice, what is the role of black leadership, and what do the ‘haves’ owe the ‘have-nots’ in the black community.

Booker T. Washington, educator, reformer and the most influentional black leader of his time preached a philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity and accomodation. He urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed in education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. This, he said, would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated into all strata of society.

W.E.B. Du Bois, a towering black intellectual, scholar and political thinker said no–Washington’s strategy would serve only to perpetuate white oppression. Du Bois advocated political action and a civil rights agenda (he helped found the NAACP).

In addition, he argued that social change could be accomplished by developing the small group of college-educated blacks he called “the Talented Tenth:”

DuBois Washington and his ‘radical’ critics. The Du Bois philosophy of agitation and protest for civil rights flowed directly into the Civil Rights movement which began to develop in the 1950’s and exploded in the 1960’s. Booker T. today is associated, perhaps unfairly, with the self-help/colorblind/Republican/Clarence Thomas/Thomas Sowell wing of the black community and its leaders. The Nation of Islam and Maulana Karenga’s Afrocentrism derive too from this strand out of Booker T.’s philosophy. However, the latter advocated withdrawal from the mainstream in the name of economic advancement.

Today, with the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, the divergent viewpoints have been blurred or blended “The Negro Race, like all races, is going to be together. Black men largely under age 50, saved by its exceptional men. The problem some of whom are well-educated but most of of education then, among Negroes, must whom have only a high school education, first of all deal with the “Talented Tenth.” It whether they graduated or not, are is the problem of developing the best of this increasingly allowing themselves to be race that they may guide the Mass away tempted by the whiff of material success at any from the contamination and death of the cost. They have been brainwashed by social worst.” media to believe the MAGA Republican mantra that facts are not facts, all science is wrong, At the time, the Washington/Du Bois dispute education is indoctrination, meanness is polarized African American leaders into two liberating and even pleasurable, the rule of the wings–the ‘conservative’ supporters of wealthy elite supersedes the rule of law and

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WASHINGTON

that Christianity is synonymous with and affirms white male supremacy and toxicity backed up by wealth and armed might.

Washington and DuBois differed on whether labor or intellect will lead blacks to true success and acceptance in a white America, but they both agreed that hard work, ability and skill will lead their people to a happy and fulfilled life, as long as opportunity was relatively equal. What they did not foresee is that America is not necessarily on an upward trajectory regarding race and that any hardwon advancement could be rescinded and that the playing field, despite a century-plus of some progress, would still remain separate and unequal.

If they were still alive, Washington would applaud the gains that blacks have made in union labor, the civil service and small business formation - though not in farming as well as employment in government, while DuBois would the achievements of blacks as professionals and top political and corporate leaders. What neither would have liked is the compromises that have been made along the way, most of all the ceding of the moral high ground that had always tipped in their favor and been the keys to success.

Educate Yourself

Black Samurai The Story of Yasuke, African Servant Turned Japanese Warrior Described by Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman as “one of history’s best-kept secrets,” Yasuke is believed to be the only person of African ancestry to have reached the rank of samurai. He originally arrived on Japanese shores in 1579 as a bodyguard to Alessandro Valignano who’d been appointed to inspect the Jesuit missions in the Indies. A mysterious, muscular, six-foot-plus man from Africa, Yasuke earned celebrity-like status in Japan due to his unique appearance.

One of a kind While African people had been coming to Japan since the 1540s, they all tended to stay out west.

Accompanying Valignano, Yasuke was the first to head for the then capital Kyoto and his presence in the city caused quite a furor. Locals, who on average would have been more than a foot smaller, desperately tried to get a peek at the gigantic figure. Riots ensued with some reportedly even being crushed to death.

Hearing about these incidents, an intrigued Oda Nobunaga called for a meeting with Yasuke. The powerful warlord, known as the first great unifier of Japan, allegedly scrubbed Yasuke to check whether his skin color was real as he suspected it was black ink. After discovering it was genuine, a banquet was thrown in the African man’s honor and he was handed a significant wad of cash.

Impressed by this individual who appeared to “have the strength of 10 men,” Nobunaga allowed him into his service and granted him the honor of being his sword-bearer. The pair fought in at least two battles together.

Yasuke’s existence was documented in Jesuit letters as well as Ota Gyuichi’s Shincho Koki, a chronicle of Nobunaga published during the Edo period, and Francois Solier’s 17th-century book, Histoire Ecclesiastique Des Isles Et Royaumes Du Japon. After that, the African samurai’s remarkable story was largely forgotten about until 1968 when he was depicted as a heroic character in Yoshio Kurusu’s prize-winning children’s historical fiction novel, Kuro-suke. Two years later, he featured again as a hero in Shusaku Endo’s novel Kuronbo (a derogatory Japanese word meaning black person).

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Rising popularity: Yasuke in contemporary research More recently, characters loosely based on Yasuke have appeared in various computer games, manga and anime series and he is reported to be the subject of two upcoming Hollywood films, one of which is expected to star Boseman. The most comprehensive study in English on his life can be found in the book African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard that was released in 2019.

“Some creative license was required here and there, but as much as possible it’s a factual book that reads like fiction because Yasuke’s story is so incredible,” Lockley tells Tokyo Weekender.

“It has an immediate appeal to anyone who reads it and for me it was inspirational. While his tale is mind-bogglingly different to mine, being an immigrant in Japan, I felt a personal connection there. I think we’ve always had this idea of Japan being a very closed, racially homogenous society during the Edo period, but researching for this book I discovered it was more diverse than I anticipated with hundreds of Africans living here at that time.

“A mysterious, muscular, six-foot-plus man from Africa, Yasuke earned celebrity-like status in Japan due to his unique appearance.”

Another reason I wanted to write it was because I love swashbuckling narratives, something that comes up and bites you in the face,” continues Lockley. “To go from being someone who was probably abducted as a child in Africa and then trafficked through the Indian Ocean to then being promoted as a bodyguard of an extremely important European before becoming a key member of the court of arguably the most infamous person in Japanese history, it’s just so romantic and unique. I don’t think there have been many stories like this in history.”

Lockley, an academic at Nihon University, first stumbled across the name Yasuke in 2009 while researching William Adams, a British samurai who became a key advisor to shogun Tokugawa

Ieyasu. Though there wasn’t nearly as much information online about him then, Lockley saw big potential in the story so decided to start writing a novel that he says “included lots of material that was made up surrounded by things based on factual evidence.” That project was left unfinished, though, following the birth of his first child. He resurrected the idea a few years later as a farewell journal to a retiring colleague.

“Students are usually good barometers of what’s good or not and there was always positive feedback about Yasuke when I taught about him for my content language integrated learning course,” recalls Lockley. “Preparing something for a colleague, it seemed a more interesting topic than what I usually wrote about. By that stage [around 2016], I was more of an academic than a teacher so I knew it would be a factual research endeavor rather than something creative. I became fixated on facts and soon realized it had the legs to be much bigger than I originally planned.”

Yasuke: A mysterious figure of many talents Co-writing the book alongside author Girard, one of the biggest challenges for the two men was trying to find information on the protagonist before he arrived in Japan and after Nobunaga’s death. His real name remains unknown and there’s uncertainty over his date and place of birth. Writing in 1627, Solier suggested he came from Mozambique; however, many historians question this assumption as his account came more than half a century after the event. According to Lockley, who interviewed the deputy ambassador of Mozambique in Tokyo, Yasuke was more likely to have been born further north, probably in what is now South Sudan as part of the Dinka tribe.

“During that period, thousands of people were transported from Northern Africa to either India or the Arab world annually,” says Lockely. “Some were slaves, others were mercenaries. Indian rulers in particular loved hiring African warriors and I suspect that’s what Yasuke was before he arrived here. Valignano, who was the most important Jesuit in all of Asia, was heading into a war zone in Japan so he would have been looking for a threatening figure to be alongside.

GRAVES HALL, BUILT IN 1889, IS THE MAIN BUILDING ON CAMPUS. IT IS named in honor of Samuel T. Graves, the second president of the college.

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I imagine Yasuke may have been seconded to him from a warlord of some kind in India.”

More than just an imposing presence, Yasuke was a polyglot who impressed Nobunaga with his command of Japanese and tales from abroad.

The two appeared to spend quite a bit of time in each other’s company and were in close proximity during the Battle of Tenmokuzan.

Yasuke was also there at the famous Honno-ji Incident when Akechi Mitsuhide’s forces surrounded the temple in an attempted coup.

Rather than surrender, the great daimyo committed seppuku and Yasuke immediately went to fight alongside his commander’s heir, Oda Nobutada, before being captured. As for what happened next, things are not so clear, which only adds to his mystique.

“I don’t think there have been many stories like this in history.”

More than just an imposing presence, Yasuke was a polyglot who impressed Nobunaga with his command of Japanese and tales from abroad.

The two appeared to spend quite a bit of time in each other’s company and were in close proximity during the Battle of Tenmokuzan.

Yasuke was also there at the famous Honno-ji Incident when Akechi Mitsuhide’s forces surrounded the temple in an attempted coup.

Rather than surrender, the great daimyo committed seppuku and Yasuke immediately went to fight alongside his commander’s heir, Oda Nobutada, before being captured. As for what happened next, things are not so clear, which only adds to his mystique.

that all black people were slaves back then. As he discovered while researching the book, there were many people of African descent who rose to positions of power around the globe in the past, yet there’s still something extraordinary about this particular tale, and the British academic makes no apologies for writing about it.

“Do I have to be a black person to be inspired by a black person?” queried Lockley after he was asked by someone on the YouTube channel “The Black Experience Japan” why a Caucasian person would take up the task of writing the book. “That’s ghettoizing. Why can’t we all have black heroes, white heroes, Chinese heroes, Japanese heroes? I know that is a legitimate question to ask, but I say isn’t it better that we know about this guy even if it happens to be me that’s done it? The world’s going to be a better place for knowing about Yasuke’s story.”

Toward a more balanced view of history It’s no surprise Yasuke’s story has been picked up by Hollywood producers. In Lockley’s opinion, it’s an

JAPANESE PAGODA AND SURROUNDING GROUNDS, SIMILAR TO THE ONE WHERE YASUKE MIGHT HAVE RESIDED

Toward a more balanced view of history It’s no surprise Yasuke’s story has been picked up

by Hollywood producers. In Lockley’s opinion, it’s an opportunity to give a more balanced view of history rather than sticking with the stereotype

POP CULTURE HERO Yasuke’s unique story has been loosely told in the 2021 Netflix animated TV series Yasuke , with the title character voiced by acclaimed actorLaKeith Stanfield and indirectly in the 1977 film Black Samurai starring Jim Kelly. Kelly is one of many black martial artists, like actors Michael Jai White (Mortal Kombat: Legacy) and Wesley Snipes (Blade) and Tai Bo star Billy Blanks, who have followed in the wake of the samurai legend.

Yasuke has also been immortalized in a Japanese children’s book and novel, Japanese manga and anime, martial arts-themed video games and in musical performance. Kubi, a 2023 Japanese historical samurai film, features Yasuke. Two other films are in the works.

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opportunity to give a more balanced view of history rather than sticking with the stereotype that all black people were slaves back then. As he discovered while researching the book, there were many people of African descent who rose to positions of power around the globe in the past, yet there’s still something extraordinary about this particular tale, and the British academic makes no apologies for writing about it.

“Do I have to be a black person to be inspired by a black person?” queried Lockley after he was asked by someone on the YouTube channel “The Black Experience Japan” why a Caucasian person would take up the task of writing the book. “That’s ghettoizing. Why can’t we all have black heroes, white heroes, Chinese heroes, Japanese heroes? I know that is a legitimate question to ask, but I say isn’t it better that we know about this guy even if it happens to be me that’s done it? The world’s going to be a better place for knowing about Yasuke’s story.”

By Matthew Hernon Published in tokyoweekender.com September 17, 2020 Updated On March 26, 2024

THE SAMURAI

A Closed Culture As a powerful social group, the Samurai replaced the aristocracy in medieval Japan between 1185 and 1603 CE. In the Middle Ages, Japan was characterized by a feudal system. Their emergence was a product of socioeconomic and political upheavals. They arose to protect their land. Land was their most valuable asset. During that period, the armies grew in size.

Samurai were more of a social class than soldiers. They were a hereditary military aristocracy. Originally, the name “Samurai” was used to refer to fighters from the upper classes (also known as “bushi”, historical warriors, or “buke”, meaning “military family”). Eventually, the phrase came to refer to every warrior who gained power during the Kamakura period (1185– 1333) and ruled Japan until the restoration of the Meiji in 1868. Some argue that the year of its abolition was 1876. In their period of decline, they suffered from poverty. Samurai were particularly proficient in the use of the bow and sword. Their appearance was particularly distinctive. Their armor was made of elaborately stitched leather and metal. Furthermore, they were shaved on the front of their heads. In terms of population, they made up 5%. Among them, they had developed a code of honor known as “bushido” (the way of the warrior), which espoused ideals such as loyalty, courage, self-discipline, martial virtues, indifference to pain, and participation in many battles. They were expected to defend the interests and honor of their master. They would ritually end their lives when they were unable to do so. This practice was called “seppuku” or “hara-kiri” and was institutionalized as a respected alternative to disgrace or defeat. They would plunge a short sword into the left side of their abdomen, draw the blade sideways to the right, and then turn it upwards. In this way, they released their spirit. In the same context, women also performed a ritual suicide called “jigai”. Unlike men, they cut their throats and not their abdomens. Samurai had high status and special privileges. One such privilege was to wear two swords. Another privilege was the “Kiri-sute gomen” i.e., the right to kill anyone who was a member of a lower class.

Although they had a variety of weapons at their disposal, including guns, spears, and bows and arrows, the sword was their most recognizable item.

games, festivals, museums, and music. There are places to visit that are associated with them, like castles, old houses, museums, historical theme parks, and dress-up tours. Their memory and weapons remain prominent in Japanese popular culture.

The tea ritual, flower arrangement (“ikebana”), monochrome ink drawing, rock gardens, and poetry are examples of cultural traditions connected to the samurai. All of this was a result of their growing Zen Buddhist influence and Confucian nature. Their stoicism developed a disciplined culture. In general, they were very educated as a social group. Some had “buke bunko” or a “warrior library”. They had personal libraries that contained texts on strategy, the art of war, and other records that have proven helpful for that period. They combined one kanji from their father or grandfather with one new kanji to create their name. Usually, they would only use a piece of their whole name. Regarding marriage, they had rranged marriages and married people of the same or higher class. They had the right to divorce, although this was not common because, after a divorce, samurai had to return the money from the engagement. They could still have concubines, but first, they had to check their backgrounds.

Maintaining the household was the main duty of women who belonged to the samurai class. The most significant duty of a samurai's daughter was civil marriage. For diplomatic purposes, they married members of their families' enemy tribes. They have been the subject of legends, folktales, theater productions, literature, films, anime, TV shows, manga, video

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Is This Really True?

16 facts that will make you re-think what you know about black history Black history is full of powerful stories that have shaped America, but many of these stories are not well-known. Some events and people in Black history have been overlooked or forgotten, even though they played a substantial role in the country’s growth. From the hidden struggles and triumphs to the moments of cultural change, these lesser-known facts will surprise you.

These facts illustrate the contributions and struggles of black people throughout history.

1 Juneteenth

Celebrated on June 19th, Juneteenth is a special day that marks the moment in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas were told they were free. This happened two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

2 Black Inventors

Many things we use today were created by Black inventors. Garrett Morgan invented the traffic light.

George Washington Carver found new uses for peanuts, helping farmers. Madam C.J. Walker became one of the first Black female millionaires with her hair care products.

3 Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement

Black women played important roles in the fight for civil rights. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer fought for voting rights. Ella Baker helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.

4 The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an important law that ended segregation and made it illegal to treat people unfairly based on their race, color, religion, or gender. This law helped end discrimination in schools, jobs, and public places.

5 Obama Is Still… the First Black President

The claim that John Hanson was the first Black president of the United States is incorrect. The confusion comes from John Hanson, a Black man from Liberia, who lived in the 19th century. He played a key role in resettling freed slaves in Africa, but he had no connection to the American Continental Congress​. Therefore, John Hanson was not the first Black president of the U.S.

6 Millions of Black Soldiers Enlisted in World War II

During World War II, over one million Black soldiers served in the U.S. military. They fought bravely in Europe and the Pacific, but they faced discrimination both in the military and back home. The Tuskegee Airmen were a famous group of Black pilots who protected bombers during missions, proving that Black soldiers were just as capable as any others.

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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a dark chapter in history. From 1932 to 1972, doctors studied the effects of untreated syphilis in Black men without telling them. The men thought they were getting treatment but weren’t. This study caused a lot of pain and mistrust in the Black community towards the medical system.

8 The Great Migration

The Great Migration happened between 1916 and 1970 when millions of Black people moved from the South to the North and West. They were looking for better jobs and less racism. Cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York saw significant increases in their Black populations, which changed the culture and economy of those cities.

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9 The Reconstruction Era (1865-1877)

After the Civil War, the Reconstruction era aimed to rebuild the South and help freed slaves integrate into society. Some progress was made, like the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that ended slavery and gave Black men the right to vote. However, many White people in the South fought against these changes, and after Reconstruction ended, they put Jim Crow laws in place to limit Black people’s rights.

10 Tulsa Race Massacre

The Tulsa Race Massacre happened in 1921 in a wealthy Black neighborhood called Greenwood, also known as Black Wall Street, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A White mob destroyed homes, businesses, and killed hundreds of Black residents. The attack lasted two days and left the community in ruins, with over 35 city blocks burned down.

11 Redlining among Black Americans

Redlining was a practice where banks and the government refused to give mortgages or insurance to Black Americans in certain neighborhoods. It started in the 1930s and made it hard for Black families to buy homes or build wealth. This led to long-term housing discrimination and segregation.

12 The Black Panthers’ Community Programs

The Black Panthers were a group that fought for Black rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Besides their activism, they created community programs like free breakfast for children, health clinics, and educational programs. These programs helped thousands of people in poor Black communities.

13 COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a secret program run by the FBI to disrupt and spy on groups they saw as threats, including the Black Panthers, civil rights groups, and activists like Martin Luther King Jr. It aimed to stop these movements by creating conflict and spreading false information.

14 Government Crackdown on Drugs

The War on Drugs began in the 1980s, with the government cracking down on illegal drug use and distribution. This led to more arrests and harsh sentences, especially for Black Americans. Many people were imprisoned for small drug offenses, which caused a lot of damage to Black communities and families.

15 The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s.

Black artists, writers, and musicians created beautiful works that celebrated Black life. Famous people from this time included poet Langston Hughes and musician Duke Ellington. It was a time when Black culture was in the spotlight.

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Freedom Rides The Freedom Rides were a pivotal civil rights movement in 1961, where interracial groups of activists, known as Freedom Riders, challenged segregation in public transportation. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and later supported by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), these activists rode buses through the southern United States to test a Supreme Court ruling that banned segregation in interstate bus travel. The rides were met with violent resistance, including attacks by mobs and police, but they drew national attention to the injustices of segregation.

HONORABLE MENTION Immigration The xenophobic myth that the U.S. southern border is “open” and that hordes of largely young male invading to rape and pillage has been rampant ever since Donald Trump and his demagoguery arrived on the scene in 2015. It has only metastasized now that he has been elected to a second term as president.

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The Hustle

CRYPTO! THERE’S GOLD IN THEM THAR HARD DRIVES

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CRYPTO Q&A The popularity of cryptocurrency as an investment and purchasing vehicle has surged in the United States. According to an in-depth survey of 1,400 Americans coordinated by Chainplay and Storable, a gaming and blockchain website (chainplay.gg), 68% of Americans now own crypto. This finding underscores the rapid rise of digital assets and their growing role in the financial portfolios of U.S. residents. With political shifts and market events influencing investor behavior, the survey highlights key trends in crypto ownership and sentiment for 2025. Key findings: 52 percent of Americans sold stocks or gold to purchase bitcoin; Donald Trump’s election to a second term as president in November 2024 prompted 38 percent of Americans to increase their crypto investment s; in 2025, 77percent of Americans plan to increase their crypto investments.

In light of this survey and the mood of Americans, BAVUAL asks the questions and provide the answers of what people want to know about the digital currency that will likely affect life in the U.S. and around the world for many years into the future.

Q. What Is Cryptocurrency?

A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency secured by cryptography, which makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Most cryptocurrencies exist on decentralized networks using blockchain technology—a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers.

A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.

Types of cryptocurrency Most of the time, when you hear about cryptocurrency types, you hear the coin's name. However, coin names differ from coin types. Here are some of the types you'll find with some of the names of tokens in that category: Utility: XRP and ETH are two examples of utility tokens. They serve specific functions on their respective blockchains.

Transactional: Tokens designed to be used as a payment method.

Bitcoin is the most well-known of these.5 Governance: These tokens represent voting or other rights on a blockchain, such as Uniswap.6 Platform: These tokens support applications built to use a blockchain, such as Solana.7 Security tokens: Tokens representing ownership of an asset, such as a stock that has been tokenized (value transferred to the blockchain). MS Token is an example of a securitized token. If you can find one of these for sale, you can gain partial ownership of the Millennium Sapphire.8

?

If you find a cryptocurrency that doesn't fall into one of these categories, you've found a new category or something that needs to be investigated to be sure it's legitimate.

KEY TAKEAWAYS A cryptocurrency is a form of digital asset based on a network that is distributed across a large number of computers. This decentralized structure allows them to exist outside the control of governments and central authorities.

Some experts believe blockchain and related technologies will disrupt many industries, including finance and law.

The advantages of cryptocurrencies include cheaper and faster money transfers and decentralized systems that do not collapse at a single point of failure.

The disadvantages of cryptocurrencies include their price volatility, high energy consumption for mining activities, and use in criminal activities.

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Q. How Did Cryptocurrency Originate?

Although Bitcoin was the first established cryptocurrency, there had been previous attempts at creating online currencies with ledgers secured by encryption. Two examples of these were B-Money and Bit Gold, which were formulated but never fully developed.

2008 – The Mysterious Mr Nakamoto A paper called Bitcoin – A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a mailing list discussion on cryptography. It was posted by someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, whose real identity remains a mystery to this day.

2009 – Bitcoin begins The Bitcoin software is made available to the public for the first time and mining – the process through which new Bitcoins are created and transactions are recorded and verified on the blockchain – begins.

2010 – Bitcoin is valued for the first time As it had never been traded, only mined, it was impossible to assign a monetary value to the units of the emerging cryptocurrency. In 2010, someone decided to sell theirs for the first time – swapping 10,000 of them for two pizzas. If the buyer had hung onto those Bitcoins, at 2025 prices they would be worth more than $1 billion.

2011 – Rival cryptocurrencies emerge As Bitcoin increases in popularity and the idea of decentralized and encrypted currencies catch on, the first alternative cryptocurrencies appear. These are sometimes known as altcoin and generally try to improve on the original Bitcoin design by offering greater speed, anonymity or some other advantage. Among the first to emerge were Namecoin and Litecoin (later followed by Peercoin). Currently there are over 10,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation with new ones frequently appearing.

2013 – Bitcoin price crashes.

Shortly after the price of one Bitcoin reaches $1,000 for the first time, the price quickly begins to decline. Many who invested money at this point will have suffered losses as the price plummeted to around $300 – it would be more than two years before it reached $1,000 again.

2014 – Scams and theft Perhaps unsurprisingly for a currency designed with anonymity and lack of control in mind, Bitcoin has proven to be an attractive and lucrative target for criminals. In January 2014, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox went offline, and the owners of 850,000Bitcoins never saw them again.

Investigations are still trying to get to the bottom of exactly what happened but whatever the story, someone dishonestly got their hands on a haul which at the time was valued at $450 million dollars. At today’s prices, those missing coins would be worth $4.4 billion.

2016 – Ethereum and ICOs. One cryptocurrency came close to stealing Bitcoin’s thunder this year, as enthusiasm grew around the Ethereum platform. This platform uses cryptocurrency known as Ether to facilitate blockchain-based smart contracts and apps. Ethereum’s arrival was marked by the emergence of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). These are fundraising platforms which offer investors the chance to trade what are often essentially stocks or shares in startup ventures, in the same manner that they can invest and trade cryptocurrencies. In the US the SEC warned investors that due to the lack of oversight ICOs could easily be scams or ponzi schemes disguised as legitimate investments. The Chinese government went one further, by banning them outright.

2017 –Bitcoin reaches $10,000 and continues to grow A gradual increase in the places where Bitcoin could be spent contributed to its continued growth in popularity, during a period where it’s value remained below previous peaks. Gradually as more and more uses emerged, it became clear that more money was flowing into the Bitcoin and cryptocoin ecosystem. During this period the market cap of all cryptocoins rose from $11 billion to a height of over $300 billion. Banks including Barclays, Citi Bank, Deutsche Bankand BNP Paribas started investigating ways they might be able to work with Bitcoin. Meanwhile the technology behind Bitcoin – blockchain – sparked a revolution in the fintech industry (and beyond).

2018-Present The popularity of cryptocurrency started to boom toward the late 2010s.

Several financial institutions adopted crypto, leading to some governments assessing whether regulation is needed to protect users.

In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to formally classify Bitcoin as legal tender after its parliament passed with 62 out of 84 votes. This event, known as Resolution 215, was remarkable in the history of cryptocurrency as it made Bitcoin a legitimate form of currency for transactions, payments, and other financial activities within the country. In the same year, Cuba followed El Salvador’s Resolution 215 to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.

Disagreements within the Bitcoin community over how to scale the network to accommodate increasing transaction volumes and reduce fees resulted in the creation of a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Cash (BCH) .

Bitcoin holders at this point in cryptocurrency history received an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash tokens in their wallets.

Decentralized Finance (DeFi), a movement that aims to transform traditional financial services using blockchain technology and smart contracts, started to gain traction as a significant trend throughout the history of cryptocurrency in 2019. Unlike traditional finance, which relies on centralized intermediaries such as banks and financial institutions, DeFi platforms operate on decentralized networks. As a result, users can access financial services directly without intermediaries. It offers a wide range of financial services, including lending, borrowing, trading, asset management, and insurance, all within a decentralized and permissionless environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2023 sparked increased interest in the digital currency market, leading to a surge in trading volumes and prices.

The economic uncertainty in traditional financial markets due to the lockdowns prompted many investors to turn to cryptocurrencies as a safeguard against inflation and currency devaluation. A major beneficiary was the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) , which allowed many in person events, including art exhibitions, concerts, and conferences, to offer a way to create and monetize virtual events and experiences, such as virtual art galleries, digital concerts, and VR exhibitions. Investors could also make a profit from the booming digital collectibles, which can be bought, sold, and traded using cryptocurrencies as payment, typically using Ethereum (ETH).

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Q. What Are The Benefits of Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrencies represent a new, decentralized paradigm for money. In this system, centralized intermediaries, such as banks and monetary institutions, are not necessary to enforce trust and police transactions between two parties.

Thus, a system with cryptocurrencies eliminates the possibility of a single point of failure—such as a large financial institution setting off a cascade of global crises, such as the one triggered in 2008 by the failure of large investment banks in the U.S.

PAYOR

Cryptocurrencies promise to make transferring funds directly between two parties easier without needing a trusted third party like a bank or a credit card company. Such decentralized transfers are secured by the use of public keys and private keys and different forms of incentive systems, such as proof of work or proof of stake.

Because they do not use third-party intermediaries, cryptocurrency transfers between two transacting parties can be faster than standard money transfers.

Flash loans in decentralized finance are an excellent example of such decentralized transfers. These loans, which are processed without requiring collateral, can be executed within seconds and are mostly used in trading.

INTERMEDIARY

The remittance economy is testing one of cryptocurrency's most prominent use cases. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin serve as intermediate currencies to streamline money transfers across borders. Thus, a fiat currency is converted to Bitcoin (or another cryptocurrency), transferred across borders, and subsequently converted to the destination fiat currency without third-party involvement.

CRYPTOCURRENCY BENEFITS Adaptability Dynamic networks

Portfolio Diversification Non-correlated assets

Easy Transactions Quick and low-cost

Potential Inflation Hedge Scarce digital gold

Relatively Secure Blockchain protection

Cross-Border Payments Global transactions

Short Settlement Times and Low Fees Efficient transactions

A More Inclusive Financial System Broader access

Exponential Industry Growth Rapid expansion Possibility of Outsized Returns High reward potential

PAYEE

Transactional Freedom Independent exchanges Always Open Markets 24/7 trading Specialization Tailored coins

More Private Transactions Pseudonymous transfers

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Q. What Are The Drawbacks Of Cryptocurrency?

Though they claim to be an anonymous form of transaction, cryptocurrencies are pseudonymous. They leave a digital trail that agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) can follow. This opens up the possibility for governments, authorities, and others to track financial transactions.

Cryptocurrencies have become a popular tool with criminals for nefarious activities such as money laundering and illicit purchases. The case of Dread Pirate Roberts, who ran a marketplace to sell drugs on the dark web, is already well known. Cryptocurrencies have also become a favorite of hackers who use them for ransomware activities.

Though cryptocurrency blockchains are highly secure, off-chain cryptorelated key storage repositories, such as exchanges and wallets, can be hacked. Many cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets have been hacked over the years, sometimes resulting in the theft of millions of dollars in coins.

Cryptocurrencies traded in public markets suffer from price volatility, so investments require accurate price monitoring. For example, Bitcoin has experienced rapid surges and crashes in its value, climbing to nearly $65,000 in November 2021 before dropping to just over $20,000 a year and a half later. Bitcoin prices had roared back by mid-2024. As a result of this vast range of volatility, many people consider cryptocurrencies a speculative bubble.

In theory, cryptocurrencies are meant to be decentralized, their wealth distributed between many parties on a blockchain. Ownership is becoming more concentrated, as witnessed by companies purchasing and holding them for price appreciation and investment fund managers buying them to hold in their funds.

One of the conceits of cryptocurrencies is that anyone can mine them using a computer with an Internet connection. However, mining popular cryptocurrencies requires considerable energy, sometimes as much energy as entire countries consume. The expensive energy costs and the unpredictability of mining have concentrated mining among large firms whose revenues run into billions of dollars.

CRYPTOCURRENCY DRAWBACKS Lack of Awareness/Knowledge Use of Complex Technique Not Accepted Everywhere Victim of Theft and Scam No Reverse of Payment or Recovery Black Market Scaling Issue May Not Be Exchanged with Fiat Currency

FAST FACT: Only 61 (1%) of the 4,568 Bitcoin blocks opened from May 15, 2024, to June 15, 2024, were opened by unknown addresses. The other 99% were opened by mining pools.

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Q. Is Cryptocurrency Legitimate Or A Scam?

Unlike fiat currencies that derive their authority from the government or monetary authorities, cryptocurrencies are not issued by any public or private entities. For example, the U.S. dollar is recognized and issued by the government as the official currency of the United States and is "legal tender." With crypto, t has been difficult to make a case for their legal status in different financial jurisdictions throughout the world. It doesn't help matters that cryptocurrencies have primarily functioned outside most existing financial infrastructure.

Legality Is Not Universal Different countries have set up their own rules on crypto. In the United States, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommended that wire transfers of cryptocurrencies should be subject to the requirements of its Travel Rule, which requires AML compliance.10 Although cryptocurrencies are considered a form of money, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) treats them as financial assets or property for tax purposes. And, as with most other investments, if you reap capital gains selling or trading cryptocurrencies, the government wants a piece of the profits. How exactly the IRS taxes digital assets—either as capital gains or ordinary income— depends on how long the taxpayer held the cryptocurrency and how they used it. In July 2023, courts ruled that cryptocurrencies are considered securities when purchased by institutional buyers but not by retail investors purchased on exchanges. So, crypto is legal in the U.S., but regulatory agencies are slowly gaining ground in the industry.

FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was once the “poster boy” for crypto, but when evidence of potential fraud was uncovered in late 2022, depositors quickly withdrew their assets, forcing the company into bankruptcy. Soon thereafter, Bankman-Fried , once listed as the 41strichest American on the Forbes 400, was indicted on seven criminal charges, including wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance law violations. He was convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, and on March 28, 2024, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion.

To date the most egregious exploiter of cryptomania has been Donald Trump. The ex-president who was elected to a second term in 2024 used his popularity among his rabid MAGA flock to launch the memecoin (a fad cryptocurrency with zero intrinsic value), $TRUMP. On the eve of his second inauguration, January 20, 2025, $TRUMP gave Trump a virtual worth as much as $58 billion on paper, enough – with his other assets – to make him one of the world's 25 richest people,” according to Axios.

However, the memecoin’s hype quickly collapsed, and insiders quickly dumped their coins, leaving naive investors holding a worthless bag and facing ruin. $TRUMP is a prime example of the riskiness of investing in potential scams like fad memecoins without value.

As of June 2024, El Salvador is the only country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender for monetary transactions. In the rest of the world, cryptocurrency regulation varies by jurisdiction. Japan's Payment Services Act defines Bitcoin as legal property, and cryptocurrency exchanges are regulated.

China has banned cryptocurrency exchanges, transactions, and mining within its borders, but has a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). India was reported to be formulating a framework for cryptocurrencies, but until it is enacted, crypto is not yet illegal. Exchanges are free to offer cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are legal in the European Union.

Derivatives and other products that use cryptocurrencies must qualify as "financial instruments." In June 2023, the European Commission's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation went into effect. This law sets safeguards and establishes rules for companies or vendors providing financial services using cryptocurrencies.

Vulnerability To Market Fluctuation, Exploitation and Scams Because regulation of Bitcoin is relatively loose and different in each country, cryptocurrency is wide open to fluctuating markets, manipulators, exploiters and con artists out for a quick score.

A period of decline in 2022 known as a “crypto winter,” caused significant price drops in popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), and XRP (XRP). The declines, which were initiated by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive raising of interest rates in response to U.S. inflation, prompted investors to sell off risky assets such as cryptocurrencies and stocks. FTX, a popular global cryptocurrency exchange at that time, also faced a downfall due to liquidity problems.

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Q. Is Cryptocurrency A Good Investment?

Cryptocurrencies have attracted a reputation as unstable investments due to high investor losses from scams, hacks, bugs, and volatility. Although the underlying cryptography and blockchain are generally secure, the technical complexity of using and storing crypto assets can be a significant hazard to new users.

In addition to the market risks associated with speculative assets, cryptocurrency investors should be aware of the following risks: User risk: Unlike traditional finance, there is no way to reverse or cancel a cryptocurrency transaction after it has already been sent. By some estimates, about one-fifth of all bitcoins are now inaccessible due to lost passwords or incorrect sending addresses.

Regulatory risks: The regulatory status of some cryptocurrencies is still unclear in many areas, with some governments seeking to regulate them as securities, currencies, or both. A sudden regulatory crackdown could make it challenging to sell cryptocurrencies or cause a market-wide price drop.

Counterparty risks: Many investors and merchants rely on exchanges or other custodians to store their cryptocurrency.

Theft or loss by one of these third parties could result in losing one's entire investment.

Management risks: Due to the lack of coherent regulations, there are few protections against deceptive or unethical management practices. Many investors have lost large sums to management teams that failed to deliver a product.

Programming risks: Many investment and lending platforms use automated smart contracts to control the movement of user deposits. An investor using one of these platforms assumes the risk that a bug or exploit in these programs could cause them to lose their investment.

Market Manipulation: Market manipulation remains a substantial problem in cryptocurrency, with influential people, organizations, and exchanges acting unethically.

Crypto can be a good investment for someone who enjoys speculating and can financially tolerate losing everything invested. However, it is not a wise investment for someone seeking to grow their retirement portfolio or for placing savings into it for growth. For that there are far less risky financial instruments that the typical investor. It is always best to consult an expert financial advisor before making any significant investments. They can help plan a wise investment strategy.

As of late January 2025, the price of one Bitcoin is valued at nearly $105,000 in U.S. currency.

TOP 5 BTC MILLIONAIRES AS OF 2024 Michael Saylor and his company MicroStrategy together hold Bitcoins worth over $7 billion.

Elon Musk’s crypto holdings include Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin.

Winklevoss Twins’ early bet on Bitcoin paid dividends.

Jack Dorsey holds only Bitcoin Justin Sun’s Bitcoin holdings are not as big as his altcoin holdings.

At the time of writing on January 25 with Bitcoin trading at $104,320, an individual is required to own just about 9.6 BTC to become a Bitcoin millionaire.

Despite these risks, cryptocurrencies have seen a significant price leap, with the total market capitalization rising to a high of roughly $3.9 trillion in 2024. Despite the asset's speculative nature, some have created substantial fortunes by taking on the risk of investing in early-stage cryptocurrencies.

TOP 5 BTC LOSERS Changpeng Zhao (CZ) lost around $82 billion. Reason: crypto winter 2022.

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) lost $23 billion. Reason: collapse of FTX Brian Armstrong lost $4.7 billion. Reason: crypto winter 2022 Gary Wang lost $1.7 billion. Reason: collapse of FTX Chris Larsen lost $1.3 billion. Reason: crypto winter 2022

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Q. Why Is Cryptocurrency So Popular, Especially With People Of Color?

Cryptocurrency is increasingly seen by people of color as an alternative financial system for those who have historically faced discriminatory banking practices, in spite of its volatility. Social media is rife with comments and ads from blacks and other economically disempowered racial and ethnic groups espousing the possibilities for attaining quick and vast wealth from crypto.

Worries about the volatile cryptocurrency market also leave some wondering whether turning to digital currency could financially hurt people of color, who generally have less net worth and generational wealth than white people, rather than help them.

Prejudice in banking Black and brown people have a history of being "underbanked" and discriminated against by traditional financial institutions.

Many low-income Hispanic and Black households have little-to-no bank access, according to research from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). At least 40% of Black Americans are under or unbanked – 13% are without a bank account and 27% rely primarily on other financial services that do not fully meet their financial needs, according to the Federal Reserve. And several investigations about discrimination by several banks, have shown that people of color have been charged more for banking fees or higher interest rates than their white counterparts. “Banking while Black" is a phrase used to describe discriminatory banking practices. Many Black Americans simply feel unwelcome when they walk into most national bank branches. Even blackowned banks have struggled for adequate investment funding and don't have access to the same resources as large banks.

Cryptocurrency became a space where communities of color could support and connect with one another without having the red tape of financial systems, according to Olayinka Odeniran, the founder of the Black Women Blockchain Council.

"Everybody always felt that we don't really care about investing or budgeting," said Odeniran, who is also a cybersecurity expert. "But in essence, we do. It's just that historically, we have not had resources that allow us to tap in beyond risk, gaining some monetary freedom that's beyond paycheck to paycheck."

A report from the Pew Research Center found that Black, Asian and Hispanic people are more likely to say they have invested in, traded or used a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ether.

Cleve Mesidor, the executive director of the Blockchain Foundation, said that people of color are using crypto as "an alternative financial system to operate" without discrimination.

Enthusiasts contend the benefits of managing money on blockchain technology outweigh the risks for many people of color, and they're sticking with it.

When using crypto, it can cost almost nothing and takes almost no time to transfer money to anyone in the world at any time, although it depends on the type of crypto.

For crypto-backed loans, borrowers can be given money from an exchange or lending agency without having to worry about racial discrimination.

According to one enthusiast, "If you are on chain, and you have a wallet address, you're a wallet address -- that's it. Crypto doesn't care about color, race, sexual orientation."

Enthusiasts say they like that anyone with a smartphone can access cryptocurrency, without the red tape of banks or government institutions in which it takes days and costs fees or interest rates to do the same.

They also say crypto can be used to fund businesses and organizations directly without donations being penalized by a third-party to transfer the money.

However, for the wave of people of color working within the market, using cryptocurrency is bound to come with risks and challenges. Constant price fluctuations, which at times can lead to market crashes, can and does erase entire savings and send investors into a tailspin.

Even cryptocurrency's most enthusiastic cheerleaders acknowledge the potential risks and instability that cryptocurrency can have. Its volatile marketplace and the prices of coins can change quickly and regularly, putting one's money at stake. The market is also rife with scammers like the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX and memecoin hucksters who are eager to take advantage of users.

Still, some say it's not much different than the ebbs and flows of the stock market. That comparison, however, is disingenuous: crypto is so volatile because it isn't backed by anything intrinsically valuable besides the public interest in it, whereas the U.S. dollar is backed by the government.

Teri Williams, the president, COO and owner of OneUnited Bank, one of the nation's largest Black-owned banks, reminds potentials users that "crypto is not a competitor to traditional banking, but a complement. There will continue to be a need for traditional banking services, but crypto, in moderation, can provide opportunities for wealth building and opportunities to develop new services – such as remittance services – that can better meet the needs of the black community."

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Q. How Does One Buy Cryptocurrancy?

If you want to use cryptocurrency to buy products and services, you will need to visit a cryptocurrency exchange. These are businesses that allow you to buy or sell cryptocurrencies from other users at the current market price, similar to a stock. After buying the coins, you will need to transfer them to a digital wallet or use a third-party service like Coinbase to store your coins.

If you only want to buy cryptocurrency as an investment, you may be able to do so through your brokerage. For example, Robinhood allows users to invest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, although you cannot withdraw them from the platform for purchases. In addition, there are several crypto ETFs that provide exposure to the crypto asset class without requiring the investors to maintain their own wallets. For instance, as of May 2024, investors may choose to hold Bitcoin futures ETF shares. The SEC has also approved the listing and trading of Ether spot shares.

BEST CRYPTO EXCHANGES AND APPS FOR JANUARY 2025 SOURCE: Investopedia.com

Kraken best low-fee exchange, most experienced traders

Coinbase best crypto exchange for beginners, easy-to-use platform

Crypto.com best mobile crypto exchange app, easy access from smartphone

Gemini best security, sleek and easy to use

BitMart best for the altcoins category, allows users in 160+ countries to buy and sell over 1,500 cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin Futures ETF Bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are pools of bitcoin-related assets offered on traditional exchanges by brokerages to be traded as ETFs. The intent behind these ETFs is to give retail and other investors exposure to cryptocurrencies without needing to own them.

An exchange-traded fund—a type of exchange-traded product (ETP)—is an investment fund that holds assets and issues securities as shares of the fund which trade on an exchange. ETFs are traded on stock exchanges, providing investors with diversified exposure to various asset classes and the flexibility to buy or sell shares throughout the trading day at market prices. Instead of holding a bunch of different stocks, an investor can simply own shares of one ETF that is invested in those companies.

A futures contract is a standardized contract where two parties agree to exchange a specific quantity of a standardized asset on a specific day for a particular price. Bitcoin futures contracts are traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. So, a bitcoin futures ETF is an exchange-traded fund that holds bitcoin futures contracts and sells shares of the fund to investors. These shares are bought and sold on a mainstream exchange.1 These ETFs are created by purchasing futures contracts from the CME Group and bundling them into a fund. Next, the company offers shares of the fund to investors. The futures contracts in the fund are then actively managed while the shares are trading. So, instead of trading bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange, investors can trade these shares on a traditional exchange and gain exposure.

HIGHLIGHTS OF BITCOIN FUTURES ETF Bitcoin futures ETFs are exchange-traded funds that aim to offer exposure to bitcoin's price movements.

The ETFs use futures contracts to achieve this goal.

Fund managers purchase these contracts and bundle them into a fund.

These funds gained popularity when first introduced, in part because the SEC initially blocked ETFs that directly held bitcoin before approving them in 2024.

Cash App best Bitcoin-only exchange, allows seamless and secure Bitcoin transactions from a smartphone

Bisq best decentralized exchange, allows users anywhere in the world to securely and privately buy and sell Bitcoin and a range of other cryptocurrencies Crypto Is Real Money* One definition of money is something that is generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure or store of value, and a unit of account. By this definition, cryptocurrency is real money.

Crypto Can Make You Money BUT...

There are several ways cryptocurrency can make money for you.

Decentralized finance applications let you loan your crypto with interest; you can stake a compatible one on a blockchain or at certain exchanges for rewards, or you can hold on to it and hope its market value increases.

None of these methods are guaranteed to make money, but many people have benefitted from them.

*but non paper and coinage that you can hold in your hand

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“GIMME

“

Q. What Is Cryptocurrency’s Track Record?

Q. What Does Cryptocurrency’s Future Hold?

Ever since the birth of Bitcoin back in 2009, the rise of the cryptocurrency market has been marked by turbulence, with both major advances and setbacks.

Looking at the history of cryptocurrency, we can expect crypto usage in everyday transactions as payment gateways and merchant adoption to expand. This trend aligns with the growing acceptance of digital currencies as alternatives to traditional payment methods.

Growth has gone through the roof in recent years, rising from only a few hundred virtual currencies at the end of 2014 to nearly 20,000 at the end of May this year. This explosion, particularly seen in the past three years, can be partly attributed to the fact that creating a new cryptocurrency costs nothing and can be carried out in a few clicks. The digital assets must, however, meet certain criteria, such as being available on an exchange platform (which helps to exclude fraudulent cases and less serious contenders).

Yet while their number is increasing almost exponentially, the same can’t be said of their value. With an annualized volatility that often amounts to more than 100 percent, cryptocurrencies experience huge fluctuations and remain high-risk investments. All currencies rose from nearly $746 million in December 2020 to an all-time high of $3 trillion reached in November 2021. Market capitalization collapsed to under $850 million in December 2022 before soaring to a record $3.9 trillion at the end of 2024.

The importance of Bitcoin, once ultra-dominant in this market, is starting to decline in the face of the rise of other digital assets such as Ethereum.

Today, Bitcoin represents between 40 percent and 50 percent of the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, compared to around 80 percent in 2014.

We can anticipate that more industries will explore and implement cryptocurrency solutions. From real estate to healthcare, sectors across the economy are recognizing the potential benefits of blockchain technology and digital currencies for streamlining processes, enhancing security, and reducing costs.

Statista even mentioned that the crypto market's revenue is expected to have an annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2028) of 8.62%, resulting in a projected total amount of $71.7 billion by 2028.

In the future, it's likely that we'll also see more innovations in mining technology that consume less energy, along with the emergence of ecofriendly cryptocurrencies.

Current environmental concerns related to cryptocurrency primarily come from the energy-intensive nature of certain mining processes, particularly those associated with the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanisms.

PoW mining, as used by Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies, requires significant computational power, leading to high electricity consumption and carbon emissions.

Also, as the cryptocurrency market matures, we can expect clearer regulatory frameworks. This might help provide much-needed stability and legitimacy to the industry, encouraging more investors and institutions to participate.

AVERAGE CLOSING PRICE OF BITCOIN 2019-2024 Price 2019

$7,395

$11,116.38

2020

$47,436.93

2021

2022

$21,197.75

2023

$28,859.45

$65,964.12

2024 0

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20000

30000

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The Lady Is The Bank

Maggie Walker, First Black Woman Bank Owner In The U.S. At the turn of the century, Maggie Lena Walker was one of the foremost female business leaders in the United States. She gained national prominence when she became the first woman to own a bank in the United States. Walker’s entrepreneurial skills transformed black business practices while also inspiring other women to enter the field.

Walker was born to enslaved parents on July 15, 1864 in Richmond, Virginia. After the Civil War, her mother worked as a laundress and her father as a butler in a popular Richmond hotel. Walker’s father was killed and she had to help her mother financially by working. Although his death was ruled a suicide, Walker later revealed that she believed he had been murdered. She attended a local school in Richmond and upon graduation, began teaching. She stepped down from teaching after she married a successful brick maker.

When Walker was 14, she joined the Independent Order of St. Luke’s, an African American benevolent organization that helped the sick and elderly in Richmond. Within the organization, Walker held many high-ranking positions. In 1902, she began publishing the organization’s newspaper, The St. Luke Herald. She encouraged African Americans in Richmond to harness their economic power by establishing their own institutions through the newspaper.

Walker had always focused her efforts on accounting and math. Her first business endeavor was a community insurance company for women. From there she continued her entrepreneurial pursuits. In 1903, she founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. Walker was the first woman of any race to charter a bank in the United States. The bank was a powerful representation of black self-help in the segregated South. The Penny Savings Bank not only attracted adults but Walker worked to appeal to children by passing out banks which encouraged them to save their money.

In 1915, Walker’s husband was killed by her son, after he mistook him for a burglar. Her husband’s passing left her in charge of a large estate. She continued working for the Order of St. Luke's but also held leadership positions in other civic organizations, including National Association of Colored Women (NACW). She also served as the Vice President of the Richmond chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

By 1924, the Penny Savings Bank had spread to other parts of Virginia and included more than 50,000 members. While other banks collapsed during the Great Depression St. Luke’s Penny Saving survived. The bank eventually consolidated with two other large bank and moved to downtown Richmond. It is still in operation today.

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After an illness in 1928, Walker was forced to use a wheelchair. Although limited in movement, Walker remained a leader in the Richmond African American community. She fought arduously for women’s rights as well. For much of her life Walker served as board member of the Virginia Industrial School for Girls.

On December 15, 1934, Walker died from complications due to diabetes.

Walker’s house in Richmond has since been designated a National Historic Site by the National Park Service.

Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow Published at .womenshistory.org

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Jocks

Harlem Globetrotters Basketball’s Clown Princes

The Harlem Globetrotters are worldwide icons, synonymous with family entertainment and great basketball skills. The Globetrotters represent 90plus years of breaking down barriers, acts of goodwill and a commitment to fans that goes beyond the game.

GREAT MOMENTS IN TROTTER HISTORY

The Globetrotters have entertained more than 148 million fans in 123 countries and territories worldwide, introducing many to the sport of basketball. The team are pioneers in popularizing the slam dunk, the fast break, the forward and point guard positions, and the figure-eight weave.

1948-1949 The Globetrotters stunned the world by twice defeating the World Champion Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA. The Globetrotters were socially influential and quickly became recognized as the world’s best basketball team, showing that African-Americans could excel on a professional level.

Originating in Chicago in 1926, the Globetrotters began as a team of African-American players that played exhibitions before dances. Harlem was selected as the team’s hometown by Abe Saperstein.

A neighborhood in New York City, Harlem was considered the center of African-American culture at the time. The Globetrotters quickly became recognized as the world’s best basketball team.

The Globetrotters gradually worked comic routines into their act and eventually became known more for entertainment than sports. The Globetrotters’ acts feature incredible coordination and skillful handling of one or more basketballs, such as passing or juggling balls between players, balancing or spinning balls on their fingertips, and making unusual, difficult shots.

While parts of a modern exhibition game are preplanned, the games themselves are not fixed. And though their opponents do not interfere with the Globetrotters’ hijinks while on defense, they play a serious game when in possession of the ball. About 20 to 30 percent of a game is “real”. In 1948 and 1949, the Globetrotters stunned the world by twice defeating the World Champion Minneapolis Lakers.

In 1985, Olympic Gold Medalist Lynette Woodard joined the Trotters, becoming the first female to ever play on a men’s pro basketball team and helping to blaze a path for the WNBA. Globetrotter stars Big Easy Lofton and Flight Time Lang have competed three times on reality show “The Amazing Race.” The team has also had guest spots on “The Tonight Show,” “American Ninja Warrior” and “Sesame Street”, not to mention starring in their own cartoon show in the ‘70s and ‘80s – “The Harlem Globetrotters”.

From harlemglobetrotters.com

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1926 Abe Saperstein founded The Original Harlem Globetrotters.

1927 The Original Harlem Globetrotters played their first road game in Hinckley, Illinois, on Jan. 7, 1927.

1940 The Globetrotters won their first World Basketball Championship, defeating the Chicago Bruins.

1951 Harlem Globetrotters played before their largest crowd ever – 75,000 – at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium.

Following their trip to Berlin, the Globetrotters picked up the moniker Ambassadors of Goodwill from a letter written by the U.S. State Department to Abe Saperstein, which named the team “ambassadors of extraordinary goodwill.” Since then, the Globetrotters have earned the accolades of many world leaders, including special acknowledgment from Presidents Eisenhower and Ford for their ability to serve mankind around the world.

1958-1959 The legendary Wilt Chamberlain was part of that historic Soviet Union tour, as the Hall of Famer played a full season with the Globetrotters in . After starting his NBA career, he still played parts of several other seasons with the Globetrotters, joining the team when he could between NBA seasons. Chamberlain said that some of the most pleasant days of his life were playing for the Harlem Globetrotters.

1970-1980 The Globetrotters continued to enjoy immense popularity in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The Harlem Globetrotters cartoon show on CBS earned some of the highest ratings in the history of Saturday morning television, and the team also had their own live action Saturday morning variety show, The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine, while appearing numerous times on the popular and long-running ABC's Wide World of Sports.

1985 Olympic Gold Medalist Lynette Woodard joined the Globetrotters, becoming the first female to ever play on a men’s pro basketball team and helping to blaze a path for the WNBA. 1993 Former Globetrotters player Mannie Jackson purchased the team, becoming the first African-American to own a major international sports and entertainment organization. He tripled the team’s revenue in three years and quadrupled its size in five. The team was also active in philanthropic efforts, with charitable contributions totaling more than $11 million under Jackson’s guidance.

2000 Globetrotter Michael "Wild Thing" Wilson set a world record by dunking on a 12-foot hoop at Final Four Weekend, a record that stands to this day, and one of 35 world records currently held by Globetrotters players.

2002 The team cemented their standing as one of the world’s most influential basketball teams, receiving the sport's highest honor with induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame - the only team to have ever been inducted into the HOF, in addition to 13 players with ties.

2013 The Globetrotters were purchased by Herschend Family Entertainment, the largest family-owned themed attractions company in the U.S., marking an expansion for the company into new media, audiences and markets.

PRESENT DAY The Globetrotters continue to bring their entertainment to millions of fans around the world with 400+ games a year in 25+ countries. Each Globetrotters game features some of the best athletes on the planet, unmatched fan interaction, incredible ball handling wizardry, the famous HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS 4 POINTS® SHOT, rim-rattling dunks, and side-splitting comedy. In all, close to 750 men and women have played for the world famous team, a team which has entertained popes, kings, queens, and presidents around the globe. Off the court, the organization remains steadfast in its commitment to the "Ambassadors of Goodwill" and goes beyond its vibrant live events. They proactively foster alliances with global partners, curate a diverse line of licensed products, implement a dynamic multimedia strategy to gain global prominence, and uphold the brand's enduring legacy of deep social engagement in local communities. Notably, they have returned triumphantly to television after a remarkable 40-year hiatus.

9 OF 42 ACTIVE PLAYERS ON THE 2025 ROSTER

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Gallery of Globetrotters Super Stars

Meadowlark Lemon

Marques Haynes

Clarence Wilson

Reece “Goose” Tatum

Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain

Herb “Geese” Ausbie

Lynette Woodard

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WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY MAY 23, 2025

Dr. J Says the ABA Was Better

If Anyone Knows The Game of Basketball, He Should The ABA was known for its flashy and innovative style of play. It also housed vibrant personalities such as Julius Erving, George Gervin, and Connie Hawkins. Back then, the ABA players were encouraged to express themselves creatively, leading to a more freewheeling and entertaining brand of basketball.

"My five years in the ABA was probably the most fun I had playing basketball," Erving reflected. "Part of it was my teammates, but the competition was different. It felt like it was all for one and one for all. When one guy did something great or received recognition, the whole league reveled in it because we were like outlaws. (Laughs.)

We weren't the traditional league. For me, it had to do with being between the ages of 21 and 25 too."

The ABA was known for its flashy and innovative style of play. It also housed vibrant personalities such as Julius Erving, George Gervin, and Connie Hawkins. Back then, the ABA players were encouraged to Some people forget Dr. J's ABA legacy express themselves creatively, leading to a more freewheeling and Erving indeed left a lasting impact on both the ABA and the NBA. entertaining brand of basketball.

That said, another sentiment The Doctor often shares about his time with both leagues is that his ABA accomplishments are being By contrast, the NBA was more regimented and severe as the league overshadowed by his NBA legacy. was focused on traditional fundamentals and a more structured style of play. As one of the most entertaining players of all time, Dr. J once While many remember him for his illustrious NBA career, Dr. J feels confided that he enjoyed the ABA more than the NBA. that some people forget about his ABA legacy. For Erving, it's not "I made multiple adjustments to both my play and leadership style. I hate to say the seriousness of it made it less fun, but the NBA was less footloose and fancy-free. I did rework my approach to offense and did tone down my style of play," the Hall of Famer told Forbes in 2018.

The ABA wasn't a traditional league While Erving excelled and achieved great success in the NBA, part of him missed the sense of fun and excitement he experienced in the ABA. Aside from the fun, Dr. J also mentioned that the ABA's entire culture also holds a special place in his heart.

It may sound a bit ironic, considering the NBA was more serious. Still, Erving said ABA teams upheld unity more than NBA teams did. On the other hand, 'The Doctor' also acknowledged that he enjoyed the ABA more because he was younger at the time.

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like he is biased towards it but fans cannot just act like it didn't happen.

In conclusion, Erving's preference for the ABA highlighted the importance of individuality and creativity in basketball. His candid admission reminds us that while winning is always the main goal, sometimes it's the moments and experiences along the way that matter most.

By John Jefferson Tan Published on BasketballNetwork.net

Roll of Honor

DO YOU HAVE A NOMINEE FOR THE ROLL OF HONOR? LET US KNOW: EAB@BAVUAL.COM

Dedicated to the Memory of Earl Birkett, 1922-2014 Queenie Birkett, 1923-2023

Lions In Winter James Edwards

JAMES JOHNSON EDWARDS (1918-1970) Actor / USA

ACHIEVEMENTS Pioneering character actor who had prominent roles in major films from the post-World War II 1940s to the late 1960s.

Major films include: Home of the Brave (1949), in which he portrayed a black soldier experiencing racial prejudice while serving in the South Pacific during World War II; The Steel Helmet (1951), Bright Victory (1951), Battle Hymn (1957), Men in War (1957), Blood and Steel (1959), Pork Chop Hill (1959) ; The Caine Mutiny (1954); The Killing (1956) ; The Manchurian Candidate (1962); and Patton (1970).

BACKGROUND Born in Muncie, Indiana Majored in psychology at Knoxville College in Tennessee Received a master’s degree in drama from Northwestern UniversityParticipated in the Federal Theatre Project Commissioned as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War II Appeared on the New York stage when he assumed the role of the war hero in the touring play Deep Are the Roots

Patrick Francis Healy PATRICK FRANCIS HEALY (1834-1910) Jesuit Educator and University President / USA ACHIEVEMENTS Influential president of Georgetown University, becoming known as its "second founder" for his major improvements to the institution 1st black person to become president of a predominantly white university (Georgetown) 1st black American to earn a PhD 1st black American to enter the Jesuit order BACKGROUND Born in Macon, Georgia His father was a Georgia plantation owner and his mother was a purchased slave who became his common law wife Refused schooling in the South because he was considered black, he attended Northern and European Catholic schools: Holy Cross College; Saint-Sulpice Seminary; and Catholic University of Louvain, where he earned his PhD Ordained as a Catholic priest and joined the Jesuit order Considered himself and was widely accepted as white, though he is still honored by BAVUAL because of his achievements under his true black race

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Franklin A. Thomas

FRANKLIN AUGUSTINE THOMAS (1934-2021) Foundation CEO / USA

1st black president and CEO, Ford Foundation, a major U.S.-based philanthropy, 1979-1996, chosen from among 300 candidates Lifetime spent in social and public improvement Board member of the TFF Study Group, a nonprofit institution assisting development in South Africa Chairman of the nonprofit organization September 11th Fund, 20012004 Involved in the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, having served as the manager of its American office.

BACKGROUND Born in Brooklyn, New York City Graduated from Columbia University, B.A., 1956, L.L.B.,1963; 1st black captain of an Ivy League basketball team Served in Strategic Air Command, U.S. Air Force, 1956-1960 Assistant U.S. Attorney, New York’s Southern District, 1964 1st black Deputy Commissioner for Legal Affairs, New York Police Department (NYPD), 1965-1967 president and CEO, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC), founded by Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) to improve urban living conditions in Thomas’ native Brooklyn neighborhood Headed a study of US policy toward South Africa for the Rockefeller Foundation recommending peaceful change. Alan J. Pifer, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, considered Thomas's direction of the study "brilliant."

Osceola McCarty

OSCEOLA McCARTY (1908-1999) Housekeeper and Benefactor / USA

ACHIEVEMENTS The University of Southern Mississippi's (USM) most famous benefactor Drew global attention after it was announced in July 1995 that she had established a $150,000 trust through which at her death, a portion of her life's savings would be left to the university to provide scholarships for deserving students in need of financial assistance Funds were earned through a lifetime of frugality, self-sacrifice and savings as a low-paid domestic servant In 1998, she was awarded an honorary degree from USM, the first such degree awarded by the university received scores of awards and other honors recognizing her selfless spirit, including a U.S. Presidential Citizens Award and an honorary doctorate from Harvard University BACKGROUND Born in Shubuta, Mississippi and moved to Hattiesburg as a child In her sixth grade, her aunt (who had no children of her own) was hospitalized and later needed homecare, so McCarty quit school, never to return Became a washerwoman, like her grandmother, a trade that she continued until arthritis forced her to quit in 1994 Taught to save money by her mother and lived an extremely frugal life Worshipped as a Southern Baptist Never married or had children.

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Marcus Samuelsson

MARCUS SAMUELSSON (BORN KASSAHUN TSEGIE; AMHARIC: ካሳሁን ፅጌ, 1971) Celebrity Chef and Restaurateur / USA

ACHIEVEMENTS Head chef of Red Rooster in Harlem, New York 30-year career spans multiple restaurant openings, stellar reviews, culinary awards, cookbooks, food preparation for VIPs such as President Obama and TV shows such as Chopped In 2003, he was named "Best Chef: New York City" by the James Beard Foundation.

BACKGROUND Born in Ethiopia Father is an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church priest.

Mother died in a tuberculosis epidemic when he was 3 years old He and his elder sister, Fantaye, were separated from their family during the turmoil of the Ethiopian Civil War that began in 1974. Subsequently, the siblings were adopted by Anne-Marie and Lennart Samuelsson, a homemaker and a geologist, respectively, who lived in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The siblings' names were changed to Marcus and Linda Samuelsson. They also have an adopted sister, Anna Samuelsson.

His biological father, Tsegie, the father of eight others (the chef's halfsiblings), still resides in the Ethiopian village where Samuelsson was born Studied at the Culinary Institute in Göteborg (Gothenburg) where he was raised.

Apprenticed in Switzerland and Austria then came to the United States in 1994 as an apprentice at Restaurant Aquavit

Helen Williams

HELEN MARIE WILLIAMS JACKSON (1935-2023) Pioneering Fashion Model / USA

ACHIEVEMENTS One of the 1st African American models to be featured in mainstream publications of her time Her career began as an exclusive model for magazines such as Ebony and Jet. However, the discrimination she faced in the United States as an African-American led her to relocate to France in 1960, where she found success modeling for designers such as Christian Dior and Jean Dessès.She returned to the U.S. in 1961 and despite initial roadblocks went on to be the face of major ad campaigns by brands such as Budweiser and Sears.

She was one of the first clients of Ophelia DeVore's Grace De Marco modeling agency.

Credited with helping to break down racial barriers in modeling In 2004, she was the recipient of the Trailblazer Award by the Fashion & Arts Xchange organization at a ceremony at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology Played a pivotal role in debunking the stereotype that dark skinned black women were not beautiful, an unfortunate stereotype that still lingers around today. Williams forced the modeling industry to diversify its narrow standard of beauty. retired from modeling in 1970, but continued her career in fashion as a stylist BACKGROUND Born in Burlington County, New Jersey Working as a stylist in a New York photographer's studio, Williams was discovered at age 17 by celebrity clients such as Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr.

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Vernon Baker

VERNON JOSEPH BAKER (1919-2010) Soldier and World War II Hero / USA

ACHIEVEMENTS United States Army first lieutenant who was an infantry company platoon leader during World War II and a paratrooper during the Korean War. I n 1997, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration for valor, for his actions on April 5–6, 1945, near Viareggio, Italy.

Baker and six other black Americans who served in World War II were formally awarded the Medal of Honor on January 12, 1997. A day later, Baker (the only living recipient) and representatives for the six other men were given the awards by President Bill Clinton at a ceremony in the White House in Washington, D.C. The seven recipients were the first (and only) Black Americans to be awarded the Medal of Honor for World War II. (Black soldiers had been denied consideration for the Medal of Honor (MOH) in World War II because of their race.)

BACKGROUND Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming After his parents died in a car accident, he was raised by his grandparents and the Boys Town orphanage in Nebraska Worked at various menial jobs Enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1941 after being rejected multiple times due to his race Commissioned as a second lieutenant after completing Officer Candidate School and sent with the 370th Regiment to fight in Italy in 1944

Cathy Hughes

CATHERINE LIGGINS HUGHES (BORN CATHERINE ELIZABETH WOODS; 1947) Media Entrepreneur / USA ACHIEVEMENTS Founded the media company Radio One (Urban One), and when the company went public in 1999, she became the first African-American woman to head a publicly traded (listed on Nasdaq) corporation Considered the second-richest black woman in the United States, after Oprah Winfrey; current estimated net worth $460 million In the 1970s, Hughes created the urban radio format called "The Quiet Storm" on Howard University's radio station WHUR with disc jockey and fellow Howard student Melvin Lindsey In 2004, Radio One launched TV One, a national cable and satellite television network which bills itself as the "lifestyle and entertainment network for African-American adults." Hughes interviews prominent personalities, usually in the entertainment industry, for the network's talk program TV One on One. Life story is featured on the documentary series Profiles of AfricanAmerican Success.

Inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, 2016 Joined the Board of Trustees at Creighton University in Omaha, 2020 BACKGROUND Born in Omaha, Nebraska In her early life, her parents did not have much money. She struggled to eat. In fact, she lied about her age to get her first job at the age of 14.

Attended the University of Nebraska Omaha and Creighton University taking Business Administration courses, but was not able to complete and receive a degree Successful General Sales Manager at Howard University's radio station, WHUR-FM

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Benediction

WHITE PEOPLE NEED TO LEARN BLACK HISTORY

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By Jeff Raikes

Reprinted from forbes.com, February 24, 2020

Imagine waking up the day after the election to the news that the voters of South Carolina had elected so many African Americans to its house of representatives that they now constituted a governing majority. Or that the state of Mississippi sent a Black man to the United States Senate. Not in our lifetime? True (at least as of today). But this did happen – about 150 years ago.

To better understand and reckon with our nation’s racial history, I spoke to historian Eric Foner about Reconstruction, an era glossed over in our history classes, but essential to understanding the America we live in now.

Foner estimates that as many as 2,000 African American men held elected office by the time the Reconstruction era ended in the late 1870s. Foner’s most recent book, The Second Founding, examines the reckoning, advocacy, leadership, and compromise that led to the adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution during Reconstruction.

Foner reminds us of a stubborn truth – that the United States had never been a true democracy in the nearly 100 years after our founding. White Americans enslaved black Americans. Women could not vote and lacked other basic rights. And while Indigenous Americans were considered members of sovereign tribes, there was a full-on assault on Indigenous lands, peoples, and cultural traditions. It was not until the ratification of the 14th Amendment that we as a nation achieved a uniform definition of citizenship.

The Reconstruction amendments promised a new start – a “second founding.” But sadly, the promise of a true multi-racial democracy was short-lived. And the backlash to it was long and damaging. After a period of serious legislating, Congress failed to enforce the gains made during Reconstruction. Time after time the Supreme Court narrowed what it meant to have citizenship, equal protection, and due process under the Constitution.

Leaders looked away from the rise of the Jim Crow South. It took a multi-decade Civil Rights Movement – nearly 100 years later – to begin to undo some of the damage inflicted during the backlash to Reconstruction.

Now, in [2024], as we recognize...Black History Month, African Americans, among others, are

facing persistent strategies designed to prevent them from even voting, much less from holding office in large numbers. More than twenty states have imposed barriers to voting – barriers that harm all Americans, but especially people of color. This was enabled by a Supreme Court that in 2013 gutted the bipartisan Voting Rights Act and made it easier to walk back the gains of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement. Since then, we’ve seen voter purges, poll sites closed, long lines, overly restrictive voter ID laws, and repeated false claims of widespread voter fraud. Some of these restrictions are so blatant that a federal appeals court ruled in North Carolina that they, “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” Meanwhile, just in a last few years, openly racist figures have been awarded a Presidential pardon and the Presidential Medal of Freedom against a backdrop of white nationalists marching regularly in the streets of American cities and towns.

We cannot hide from the fact that white Americans have used the law, politics, business, and, at times, terrorism, to maintain control and power. That’s our history. And I’m hardly the first to call this out. We owe it to each other to confront what former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has called this “searing truth.” And we know that the backlash to the gains made by African Americans, Indigenous Americans, women, and immigrants continues today. Perhaps resistance to inclusion has become less obvious; its language slightly more veiled and its policies more sophisticated. But the desire to deny power to people of color and women remains rooted in the misguided (and often unstated) premise that America must primarily be a country for and by white men.

What about President Obama? Certainly, his election (twice) demonstrated growth as a nation – a sign of racial progress. But the work of creating a sustained period of racial progress extends beyond one president and one generation of Americans. It is the work we inherit today.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. urged us to believe that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” For me, and I suspect many white people who draw strength from this outlook, there is a hope and belief that justice will inevitably arrive for our fellow Americans. Our country has always improved and therefore it will continue to do so. Or so the

thinking goes. But any honest accounting of our history reveals that these gains are always contested – rights can be earned and lost in a generation.

So, what would a “third founding” of renewed citizenship for all Americans look like to you?

It will take all of us – especially white people with power – to break out of our zero-sum thinking and work to bring about the real, sustained commitment to progress for communities of color, those whose identities are marginalized, and those who have been left behind by the global economy (and sometimes all three at once). This is essential to our shared prosperity as nation.

As white people, we have a duty to ensure that history does not repeat itself. So, during this Black History Month and in the months that follow, I encourage you, especially my fellow citizens who are white, to seek out and understand black history – not just the progress, but the pain. To acknowledge basic truths about our shared history. To dig beyond the myths we tell ourselves. To confront the suffering of generations past and present. And to understand the ways in which this history shapes the experience of African Americans today.

Through listening and openness to change, we have an opportunity to work alongside African Americans toward a new birth of freedom that our nation so desperately needs.

About the Author I am a co-founder of the Raikes Foundation with my wife, Tricia. Through this work, we noticed patterns in how systems treated people differently based on their identity — perpetuating unequal and unfair outcomes based on race. We want to do our part to make these systems work for everyone and ensure that in America, everyone matters and has an opportunity to thrive. I am the former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where I led the foundation’s efforts to promote equity for people around the world.

Before joining the foundation, I was president of Microsoft’s Business Division and served as a member of the company’s senior leadership team that set the overall strategy and direction for the firm. Currently, I am part of the ownership group of the Seattle Mariners and serve on its board. I also serve on the board of Costco Wholesale Corporation, the Raikes School at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Green Diamond Resource Company, and Hudl. After ten years of board service, I am a Chair Emeritus at Stanford University.

Website:. raikesfoundation.org

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