The crucible of 1968, post RFK and MLK’s murder, Vietnam, oppression—and no mainstream US big media outlet’s given it any true coverage besides NPR. Not even “news sites” and contentious (pretentious) blogs…

I did not die at Harpers Ferry for this. I died for liberty, dignity, and for my wife. Why have so many of my people drained themselves of virtue, and the quiet contemplation of their freedom? Note the prisoner’s togs, proudly displayed. The females, prone. It is not immoral. It is worse: a silly waste. And now Professor Chambers tells me of a self-defacing television play featuring a failed rapper and his harem & illegitimate children. My wife and I are ashamed of all of you.

—D.N.

Professor Chambers queried me about the moving picture “Django Unchained,” it being said I had firsthand times ten the experience in this affair so chronicled, even to the point of taking up arms with Reverend Brown and dying so famously. My reply was thus:

“It was as the fables on the white man’s prim stage were, or the lurid stories around our cookfires— whimsy and adventure, profound and profane. I took neither umbrage or offense. As for what was real, we must bear witness to these simple truths of America at that setting. The West, whither settled at the red man’s elimination, or wild, was dirty and primitive. The East was dirty and modern. And slavery was much more terrifying than Maestro Tarantino’s vision, for it was banal in its evil, and steeped not in savage desire and appetites, but in the hypocrisy of America’s own stage play’s setting—that of freedom, of public policy, of private rights.”

—D.N.

auntada:

Children posed for a portrait on a porch, 1899 or 1900

From a disbound album entitled: Negro life in Georgia, U.S.A., compiled and prepared by W.E.B. Du Bois, v. 3, no. 289. Part of Dr. Du Bois’ albums of photographs of African Americans exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900.

Daniel Murray Collection, Library of Congress

I don’t need my Man Card “reissued.” I have a penis for that. And isn’t such lack of lead & power in the pencil, not the chamber, at the root of much gun culture in America, going back to arming in fear of the Indian brave, the surly & defiant male slave [like my friend Newby]?

[again, I yield space to Professor Christopher Chambers, as I cannot trust myself to be anything but brutal in my assessment of Rep. Tim Scott, another man of color who decries this state, and is thus annointed the way the Judas Goat Heyward Shepherd was feted, whilst I was devoured by hogs after Rev. John Brown surrendered in the Fire House.—D.N.]

The man in the old photo is Thomas E. Miller, Republican (as in post-Reconstruction, not Condi Rice ) member of the House of Representatives, 7th district, 1890-92. Like Joseph Rainey before him, he was defeated by Klan and “Red Shirt” violence, as well, as total black voter disenfranchisement that made GOP voter suppression tactics in 2008 and 2012 look like Kindergarten. He was a graduate of an HBCU, Lincoln University, and, with the ironic support of Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman, the archtype of white demagogic racism that swept out Reconstruction and swept in Jim Crow, organized South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, SC. Tillman is a predecessor of Nikki Haley as governor of South Carolina. He was also a US Senator, in DeMint’s and sadly, Fritz Hollings’ old chair. He was also, in a way, the man who laid the spikes to the rails that flung this choo-choo named Tim Scott into the limelight.

And by the way, Thomas E. Miller was my ancestor on my maternal grandmother’s side. He was a light skinned black man who defied the racists of his time, and loved his Palmetto State. Just as Rainey had. And as I talk to my gray haired, wax-paper skin relatives in Orangeburg and Beaufort, they tell me that Tim Scott is no Tom Miller, no Joseph Rainey. More kith and kin to DeMint…and Tillman’s legacy. Thank you, Nikki Haley.

This man Scott, who refuses to sit with the Congressional Black Caucus for the same reason Allen West did not, “because I am not about race” fits the narrative of DeMint’s, thus Tillman’s legacy beautifully. He is cipher and lapdog. He is “faithful slave,” as was Heyward Shepherd. His candidacy was vetted by the Tea Party, by James Dobson, who recently blamed the Sandy Hook/Newtown child massacre on gay marriage, no God in public schools and unions, and by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads campaign. He has shrugged away the bitter racist ploys used in 2012 against Barack Obama, even though his fellow Republican Colin Powell has called him out by name. No, he is not the circus clownshow that was Allen West. He’s more polished, savvy, sly. In fanboy nerd nomenclature, if West was a Klingon, then Scott’s a Romulan. And he’s certainly no Tom Miller, or Joseph Rainey. Would those men even look him in the eye if their spirits rose from history, as Mr. Newby’s has for this digital platform. Even a mere gloss of their writings, public and private, indicate—hell no. And they lived a century and more ago.

In my relatives’ view, one theme pervades all of the statements, and it’s embodied in the statement of my dad, ironically. He is Jamaican, and often didn’t relate to anything about my mother’s family heritage. But he did say this about such annointed black figureheads, vessels, Quislings. “Chris, even the Confederacy had it’s coons.”

Now the children of the Confederacy and the 1%, truly have a glittering coon to showcase, in the cradle of the South’s myth, the Palmetto. Home of Ben Tillman, home of Tom Miller. I’m so sorry, Tom. So damn sorry…

—CAC

futurejournalismproject:

theatlanticvideo:

The Making of a Radio Empire: A Fascinating Tour of NBC in the 1940s

Before television took over the airwaves, Rockefeller Center was home to the National Broadcasting Company during the golden age of radio. This promotional film from around 1948 chronicles the rise of the media company from a small collection of 20 affiliated stations, formed in 1926, to more than 170 stations two decades later. The 24-minute documentary, courtesy of the Prelinger Archive, introduces the network and goes behind the scenes at Rockefeller Center, peeking into the mail room, sound recording studios, and music library.

FJP: This is nice excuse to nerd out for 24 minutes and get your history on. We highly recommend exploring the archives too.

auntada:

Formation of black soldiers in the Spanish-American War, 1898

Photograph was originally titled “Some of our brave colored boys who helped to free Cuba.”

Library of Congress via LEARNNC.org

auntada:

Facsimile of the Marquis de Lafayette’s original certificate commending James Armistead Lafayette for his Revolutionary War service with portrait after John B. Martin.

James Armistead Lafayette was born into slavery in Virginia around 1748. He enlisted in the Revolutionary War, posing as a British spy. Armistead gained the trust of General Cornwallis and General Benedict Arnold, who believed he was a runaway slave. He provided intelligence that allowed American forces to prevail at the Battle of Yorktown, with few shots fired. Following the war, Armistead petitioned for and won his freedom. He died in 1830.

Image source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

auntada:

REBECCA HUGER was a slave in her father’s house in New Orleans. This portrait of her was taken by Charles Paxson, ca. 1864. Rebecca was eleven years old at the time.

Following emancipation, abolitionists launched a fundraising campaign to raise money for public education of freed black slaves. The premise: tug at the heartstrings of anti-slavery whites in the North with images of slave children who looked like their own. The photos, which featured mixed-race children like Rebecca Huger, were sold for 25 cents to one dollar each, depending on size. The proceeds were donated to freedman schools in Louisiana.

Photo: Gladstone Collection, Library of Congress