Left Communism and Trotskyism

Loren Goldner has published a four way debate between left communists on Left Communism and Trotskyism that is a very interesting read. And for those of you who read Le Revue Gauche, he begins his email looking at CLR James whom I blogged about in February for Black History Month.

Left Communism and Trotskyism: A Roundtable (2007)

The following is a round-table which took place in March 2007. The common thread is the question of whether the terms of the debate emerging from the years 1917-1923, codified today in different variants of "left communism" and "Trotskyism" have any practical meaning today. Three of the participants (Loren, Amiri and Will, live in the U.S.; the fourth, Yves, lives in France. We decided to make the proceedings public in hope that they are of use to others interested in these questions.

You are familiar with James's rather unusual take on the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, expounded here but actually stated better in his masterpiece Notes on Dialectics (which I highly recommend). For James, Lenin was almost a spontaneist, a party-builder yes, but after he bit the Hegelian apple in 1914, was in another universe from What Is To Be Done?, which he repudiated ca. 1909 (following the events of 1905). James sees TROTSKY as the problem, for having continued Lenin's pre-1917 conceptions into the new period in which they were superseded (all this is laid out in the two texts on James on my web site http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner). For James, bureaucratic capitalism after the defeat of the Russian Revolution teaches "everyone" the truth of capitalism, so the party is no longer necessary, as witnessed by Hungary '56, France '68 and Poland 80-81. It's so simple it's charming, I guess. But the Marxist organization, for reasons never explained well, is still necessary, not to organize the workers, mind you, but to organize the Marxists. This is (as I say in those two texts on my web site Break Their Haughty Power) where they lose me, namely saying on one hand that the "whole class has become (and therefore superceded) the party" but at the same it is necessary to organize the Marxists because the working class needs them. For what?

But again, I digress. What I really wanted to write you about is my inability, 90 years on, to shake free of the Russian Revolution. Symptoms: in Ulsan (South Korea) in December, the worker group there asked me to speak on the differences between Rosa and Lenin, which I did (not terribly well, and with a very mediocre interpreter). In no time we were deep into a two-hour discussion of what happened in Russia in the 20's (the agrarian question). And this was not some cadaverous nostalgia piece as might be served up at an Spartacist League meeting, but with intense back-and-forth and questions and furious note-taking. The point is that no matter where you start out, somehow the question of "what went wrong in Russia" comes front and center. (In January, the Kronstadt debate erupted in Korea. A leading member of the British SWP-affiliated All Together group published a large theoretical work with a defense of Trotsky. This resulted in more "hue and cry over Kronstadt" in the press.

Is this just me or is it still contemporary reality?

ALSO SEE

Trotskyist Cults

LaRouche Takes Over Vive le Canada

Fukuyama Denounces War In Iraq

IWD: Raya Dunayevskaya

Black History Month; C.L.R. James

Bureaucratic Collectivist Capitalism

State Capitalism in the USSR

Red Baiting Chomsky

Trotskyism

State Capitalism

Trotskyist

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Schactman, Burnham, neo-conservatives,, Fourth International, Trotsky, Trotskyists, Trotskyite, Trotskyism, neo-conservatives,
CLR James, Marxism, Trotskyism, Caribbean, Pan-Africanism, radicals, The Black Jacobin's, cricket, writers, Marxists, socialists, black, black history month,state capitalism, USSR, Russia, Trotsky, Fourth International, Lenin, Anarchism, Anarchist, Bureaucratic Collectivism, Schactman, CLR James, Rosa Luxemburg, Time, 1931, Soviet Union, Bolsheviks, OttoR uhle, Council Communists, Left Communists,

The 'Simpsonville Slaughter,' a Kentucky Civil War massacre we tried to ignore | Opinion


Berry Craig

The Courier Journal
Fri, June 17, 2022, 7:20 AM·3 min read

Editor's note: this story details historic violence that some may find upsetting. The author also quotes archived newspaper articles from a time period when "Negroes" was standard terminology instead of Black Americans.

"If a race has no history … it stands in danger of being exterminated," warned historian Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History" and the founder of Black History Month.

Confederate guerrillas exterminated approximately 22 Black U.S. soldiers near Simpsonville in Shelby County, Kentucky late in the Civil War. But the “Simpsonville Slaughter” isn’t in most history books because “until fairly recently the efforts — even the existence — of African American troops have been largely ignored,” according to Murray State University historian Bill Mulligan.

A state historical society roadside marker on U.S. 60 west of Simpsonville tells about the Jan. 25, 1865, massacre of the troopers, members of Company E, Fifth United States Colored Cavalry. (The Army designated Blacks as “United States Colored Troops.”)

Flanking the marker are 22 white marble military tombstones, rowed up soldierlike, with names of the fallen men. The Stars and Stripes fly over the site.

Opinion: Remembering Elisha Green's resilience in 1883 Kentucky for Black History Month

Some of the troopers may have been survivors of the October, 1864, Saltville Massacre in Virginia. After the battle of Saltville, some of the victorious Confederates murdered a number of wounded U.S. soldiers, most of them Fifth Cavalry troopers.

Historical marker, 22 tombstones along U.S. 60 mark the site of the Simpsonville Slaughter

“Armed Black men were a Southern white nightmare brought to life,” Mulligan added. "When Black units did engage in combat with rebel forces, very few prisoners were taken. Simpsonville, Saltville and Fort Pillow [Tenn.] are extensions of this killing. Black soldiers were part of the visceral fear of empowered Black men — they were to be slaughtered so as to erase their existence."

The outlaws, on horseback, struck while the horsemen, detailed as foot soldiers, were driving a herd of around 900 cattle to Louisville from Camp Nelson, their base near Nicholasville, the Jessamine County seat. Part of Camp Nelson, the largest recruiting station for African American troops in Kentucky, is preserved in a park, Camp Nelson National Monument.

“About 22 men killed and at least eight severely wounded,” says the olive green metal sign with gold letters. Most of the recruits were former slaves.

Several newspapers in Kentucky and other states reported the slayings, condemning the bloodshed as the “Simpsonville Slaughter.” The mass killings outraged the Louisville Journal. “It is presumed that the Negroes surrendered and were shot down in cold blood,” the paper reported on Jan. 26.

Fifteen guerrillas, armed with six-shot revolvers, surprised the 80 troopers just after they left Simpsonville on a bitterly cold winter day. Snow blanketed the ground.

About 40 soldiers were in front of the herd. A like number trailed the cattle. The men were largely on their own because "their officers stopped to warm at various houses along the road," the Journal said.

The Journal said the guerrillas surprised the rear group and stampeded the herd. “It was a horrible butchery, yet the scoundrels engaged in the bloody work shot down their victims with feelings of delight,” the Journal told its readers.

The paper described the massacre site as “a terrible scene" in which "the ground was stained with blood and the dead bodies of negro soldiers were stretched out along the road.” Local citizens helped tend the wounded and also bury the dead in a common grave. The surviving soldiers managed to escape to Louisville.

Opinion: Want to understand what it means to be anti-racist? Read these books.

“The massacre was largely forgotten in historical accounts until 2008, when the Kentucky African American Heritage Commission awarded a Lincoln Preservation Grant to the Shelby County Historical Society to investigate the Simpsonville Slaughter,” according to The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia. “Locals assumed that the victims of the attack had been buried in a mass grave in a nearby African American cemetery that had been abandoned for 40 years.”

The mass grave couldn’t be found, but the county historical society was able to fund the historical marker which was dedicated on the 144th anniversary of the massacre, says the encyclopedia.

Berry Craig is a professor emeritus of history at West Kentucky Community College in Paducah and an author of seven books and co-author of two more, all on Kentucky history.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: A Kentucky Civil War massacre we almost forgot | Opinion

Honoring Emmett Till Means Never Looking Away From the Horror of White Supremacy

Emmett Till’s murder exemplifies both anti-Black racism and the spirit of those who refuse to suffer it in silence.

By George Yancy ,

TRUTHOUT

February 26, 2024

A mural featuring a portrait of civil rights martyr Emmett Till looks out from an abandoned building front as volunteers gather nearby with family members of Tamiko Talbert-Fleming after passing out flyers in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood seeking information about her murder on January 19, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois.

SCOTT OLSON / GETTY IMAGES


Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

James Baldwin once said Black history is emboldening because “it testifies to nothing less than the perpetual achievement of the impossible.”

His use of the phrase “perpetual achievement” speaks to the processes of political and psychological endurance that have enabled our struggle to continue regardless of the hell that Black people have had to face within the context of an anti-Black world — a world that has conspired to make our very survival “impossible.”

In this way Baldwin invites us to reflect on what it means to be a people of deep vision, pride, dignity and resilience. On what it means to be a people who have engaged in forms of striving and surviving that speak to a spiritual indefatigability.

It is an idea that is also expressed in Maya Angelou’s poem, “And Still I Rise”:

“You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise”

It is against the backdrop of Black endurance that I want the world, and especially the United States, not to forget the horrors of anti-Black hatred and lynching, and not to confuse “Black endurance” with an exaggerated sense of “superhuman” physical and moral strength. Black people have had their bodies crushed, flayed, burned, broken, dismembered, raped, held in contempt and rendered abject.

It is within this context that I turned to philosopher A. Todd Franklin, who is professor of philosophy and Africana studies at Hamilton College, to reflect on 14-year-old Emmett Till who was brutally murdered by two white men in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after being falsely accused by a white woman of having “grabbed and verbally harassed her in a grocery store.”

In Honor of Emmett Till, Let’s Build a World Where Black Youth Aren’t Targets

The freedom to grow up without being viewed as a threat is a basic human right still being denied to Black youth. By Rotimi Kukoyi , TRUTHOUT August 28, 2023

George Yancy: We must tell our entire history. Could you talk about why remembering the murder of Emmett Till is so important during Black History Month?

A. Todd Franklin: I can think of no better way to begin a reflection on the significance of calling for remembrance than by calling attention to James Baldwin, who above all else saw himself as one who was called to bear witness to the trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs of Black people within a nation historically determined to deny their humanity and destroy all hope of their full and equal regard within society. Add to that Maya Angelou’s voice of defiance as she tells all the world that even still, I as a person, and we as a people, have the wherewithal to rise, and you have what I would consider the perfect context for pointing out the importance of taking Black History Month as an opportunity to remember the murder of Emmett Till.

Thank you, George — both for framing the importance of remembering the horrors of anti-Black hatred more broadly and for giving me an opportunity to speak to the importance of remembering this specific horror more particularly.

Bluntly put, it’s important to remember the heinous murder of Emmett Till because it speaks to and exemplifies both the depravity of anti-Black racism and the indominable spirit of those who rise up against it first and foremost by refusing to suffer it in silence.

In what ways have you integrated the tragic story of Emmett Till within the context of your classrooms? Philosophically and pedagogically, what is the aim? And what has the impact been on your students? For me, this integration of Till’s tragic story is your way of refusing to suffer in silence.

One of my primary goals as an educator is to foster critical consciousness in ways that compel students to recognize their agency and to use it to reckon with the realities of race within the social world.

In order to do so, I strive to force students to grapple with issues of race phenomenologically. Plainly put, I try to create a space in which students encounter others sharing stories of the lived experience of race in ways that force them to contend with the ways in which they too experience and play a role in the social realities of race.

Nothing in all my years of doing so has proven more poignant and powerful than taking them through the story of Emmett Till. Primarily, I use Stanley Nelson Jr.’s documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till. Nelson masterfully weaves together interviews and archival footage that introduce the audience to an array of figures and perspectives both directly and indirectly involved in and impacted by the murder of Emmett Till. In doing so, the documentary makes space for students to reflect upon how they themselves relate to the event and to think seriously about being as such. Ultimately, the documentary serves as a visceral focal element that allows me to provoke each student to see themselves as in some way personally connected to what transpired and what followed.

For most of my Black students and those who are situated similarly, what hits home is the juxtaposition of Black embodiment as a form of undue danger and Black agency, both that of others and potentially their own, as a potent force for demanding that society take steps to address their predicament.

For most of my white students, and those who are mostly regarded as white, what proves striking is the way in which the story of the murder of Emmett Till is in part the story of whites callously closing ranks when it comes to race and how whites today, themselves included, are faced with the challenge of actively breaking ranks with white supremacy or otherwise being complicit in the vicious and vile ways in which it continues to find expression.

Fortunately, most of my students emerge from the experience eager to play an active role in denouncing and eradicating the subtle and not so subtle forms of white supremacy that continue to plague our society and place many in peril.

How were you personally impacted once you found out about the killing of Emmett Till? How did that knowledge shape how you began to see yourself as a young Black male?

In many ways, it’s my own personal story that served as the basis for what I just described as my pedagogy. For many of my students, seeing the documentary serves as their first introduction to the murder of Emmett Till. For me, it was an old Jet magazine that I discovered when I was no more than 10 years old. At the time of the murder, Jet covered the event and its aftermath extensively; and in doing so, it published a host of images of Emmett as a happy young boy with his mother and of the horrific and grotesque state of his corpse as it lay on display just prior to and during his funeral. Like Emmett, I was a young Black boy who was his mother’s only child — and seeing someone who looked just like me and who was socially positioned just like me scared the hell out of me. It was right then and there that racism became real to me and much of my adult life has been devoted to addressing the ways in which racism proves so pernicious.

Discovering that picture of Emmett Till in Jet is telling. What you shared made me think of the poet Patricia Smith’s powerful poem, “That Chile Emmett in That Casket,” where that picture functions as what I would call a “mnemonic archive,” a site of remembering, mourning and a powerful warning for young Black people vis-à-vis anti-Black racism. In one of my co-edited books, Our Black Sons Matter: Mothers Talk about Fears, Sorrows and Hopes, mothers of Black sons discuss the pain and sorrow that they endure in the face of so many young Black boys and adult Black men who have been murdered in the U.S. by the state or by proxies of the state who see themselves as “protectors” of all things white, gated and “pure.” These mothers understood the emotional gravitas of what it would mean to lose their own sons. I’m thinking here of Emmett Till’s dear mother, Mamie Till. Discuss how you understand Mamie Till’s insistence that the world bear witness to the disfiguration of her precious son’s Black face. At this moment in history, what do you think Black people should take away from her insistence?

Years ago, I gave a talk on campus and the title of it was “Let the People See.” The posters I used to announce it were plain and simple: a black-and white image of me against a blue background with large black letters that said, “Let the People See” and smaller ones that indicated the date, time and location. Colleagues and students were baffled by the poster and clamored for me to tell them more about the talk — in reply, I told them that the only way that they would get a sense of what I had to say would be by showing up to see and hear me speak.

I deliberately scheduled the talk for one of my mother’s visits from out of town. In addition, I also made sure that my son would be there too. Well, as the day and time finally arrived, I stepped into a standing room-only auditorium and gave a little context for the occasion. More specifically, I told the audience that my talk was a deeply personal way of marking the occasion of my son’s 14th year, and with that, I touched a button on an A/V console and projected a screen-sized image of the horribly disfigured face of Emmett Till.

Standing against the backdrop of this image, I told the audience that as horrific and traumatic as seeing it might be, that placing it on display was the least I could do to pay homage to Mrs. Mamie Till and the countless other Black mothers forced to endure this and similar sights of their young sons. Moreover, I shared with the audience how Emmett’s mother courageously opened the casket containing her 14-year-old son’s remains and called upon the nation and the world to see the heinous handywork of white supremacy in action.

Turning off the image, I began to tell the audience how for me and many like me it’s an image that never goes way. I told them how as a young child it was an image that made me ever fearful for my own life, and how as a father it’s one that makes me ever fearful for the life of my son.

However, following in the footsteps of Mamie Till, I went on to talk about the importance of never turning away from the task of calling out the deeds and challenging the dangers of white supremacist figures and forces — a disposition exemplified by mothers like Mamie Till and instilled in me by my own. To wit, I turned to talk about how the horror and grief of the callous killing of a Black child in 1955 was compounded by the fact that it was done without consequence; and how more than 55 years later, the anti-Black sentiments born of white supremacy continue to result in the callous killing of young Black males with social and legal impunity.

At the time, I called on all who were present to step up and answer the call to see and address the existential threat of white supremacy. Moreover, at the time, I called on all who were present to see and respond to the visual evidence of anti-Black racism and hatred. Today, however, I think that Mamie Till would consider it vitally important for not only Black people but all people to insist that the nation and the world see and respond as well to the less obvious ways in which Black people and others suffer hatred and harm in virtue of their race.

In short, at this moment in history, I see the legacy of Mrs. Mamie Till as a legacy that calls on Black people and others to insist that we see and address not only the shocking expressions of racism and hatred that threaten the lives of those beyond the pale, but also the ones that are more subtle.

GEORGE YANCY is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery fellow at Dartmouth College. He is also the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural fellow in the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Program (2019-2020 academic year). He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 20 books, including Black Bodies, White Gazes; Look, A White; Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America; and Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020.

Students walk out after told to limit Black History program

Thu, February 9, 2023

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — More than 200 students walked out of class at an Alabama high school after they say they were told by school leaders to omit certain relevant events from an upcoming student-led Black History Month program.

However, school officials have denied the allegations even while acknowledging the need for students' concerns to be heard.

Students told WBMA-TV they were ordered to leave out major historical moments, including slavery and the civil rights movement, from the program scheduled for Feb. 22 at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa.

The students were told they “couldn’t talk about slavery and civil rights because one of our administrators felt uncomfortable,” said Black History Month Program board member J’Niyah Suttles, a senior who participated in Wednesday's walkout.

She said the the direction from a school administrator left her hurt.

“My protector from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. — for you to tell me I can’t talk about something that is dealing with my culture is very disturbing, it’s very confusing,” Suttles said.

Fellow Hillcrest senior Jada Holt expressed similar emotions.

“Why am I being censored about my culture, something that is rooted in me? Why can’t I talk about it? History is history and it’s already been made, and it can’t be erased,” she said.

Senior Jamiyah Brown, who helped put the program together, organized the walkout, which lasted about an hour.

“Without our history we are nothing. Without teaching our youth where we come from, how can we move forward?” Brown said.

Tuscaloosa County Superintendent Dr. Keri Johnson, in a statement, denied allegations that an administrator told the students to leave out historical elements.

“It is not true that faculty or staff told students that slavery or the civil rights movement could not be part of the program," Johnson said. “When several community members heard this and contacted Hillcrest High administration out of concern, administration explained to them that this was false information that was circulating.”

Johnson said the school system supports the students' right to peacefully demonstrate.

“A number of our Hillcrest High students have concerns about the culture within their school. We care deeply about our students, and it is important that their concerns are heard. We are putting together a plan to make sure our students feel heard, so that we know the right steps to put in place to ensure all students know that they are valued,” Johnson said.

The president of the Tuscaloosa Branch of the NAACP, Lisa Young, said the alleged direction was a disgrace.

“I don’t know how you can talk about Black history in this country without talking about slavery or the civil rights movement,” Young said.

She said she has asked to meet with Johnson but has yet to be given a date.

Young said she was “angry and part of me feels like we failed our students. We want to see what we can do to assist them, and make their school a safe place.”

'A white man's war': Calgary military museum focuses on Black Canadian soldiers

© Provided by The Canadian Press

CALGARY — Oral Virtue first met Newfoundland-based Canadian soldiers as a child growing up in Jamaica, never forgetting their friendliness, openness and the way they spoke this “funky foreign language.”

More than five decades later, Virtue, 61, recalls a lifetime of service as a soldier while viewing the Black History Month exhibition at the Military Museums in Calgary.

"It never left my heart. Up to this day, I can still remember seeing those first Canadians (in Jamaica),” Virtue said in an interview.

“They are so polite, so nice. But we can't understand a single word they're saying because they're speaking this funky, foreign language," he said with a laugh.

Memories of the Maple Leaf meshed with Virtue’s family history and his innate love of all things military.

His father served in the Second World War with Great Britain.

Virtue and his family moved to Ontario, and Virtue eventually joined the Canadian Armed Forces, serving on deployments in Cyprus, Bosnia and elsewhere in Europe before retiring in 2007 from the Lord Strathcona's Horse armoured regiment.

Virtue said while everyone was supposed to serve as equals, shoulder to shoulder, he signed up with his eyes wide open as a Black man.

"I wasn't blind to what was happening," Virtue said.

"I was definitely aware of the racism.

“When I joined, there were a couple of guys that were from the Caribbean, and they talked to me about what I should expect. Their experience paved the way for me."

Allan Ross, a volunteer researcher who curates the Black History Month exhibit, said the roots of military service for Black Canadians dates back two centuries — helping the British fight off the Americans in the War of 1812 and assisting in stopping the rebellion in Upper Canada in 1837.

Canada’s first Black physician, Anderson Abbott, served in the U.S. Civil War, he added. Abbott was also an attending physician to U.S. president Abraham Lincoln.

Ross said any underlying racism became glaringly obvious during the Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902 — a conflict that saw 7,000 Canadians volunteer for service alongside British forces.

Ethnic soldiers, said Ross, were eager to enlist but were turned away, given the prevailing sentiment that they would not fight or would falter when bullets started flying.

"We first hear the term, 'It's a white man's war' in the Boer War,” said Ross.

As Canada’s participation in conflict continued, discrimination marched in lockstep.

Many Black Canadians were turned away from serving in the First World War, although they were eventually allowed in — not to fight but to work in service roles.

An all-Black battalion, the No. 2 Construction Battalion, was formed in Nova Scotia and was dispatched to France in 1917 to provide lumber for trenches, roads and railways.

In the Second World War, air force and navy officials feared Black soldiers would struggle aboard ships and planes, said Ross.

"They thought the tight confines of an airplane or in a ship might cause conflict or disagreement with some of the other men."

Ross said acceptance was better in later conflicts in Korea, the Baltics and Afghanistan. The will of Black Canadians to serve has remained strong throughout.

"Why did these men want to fight?” said Ross.

"They wanted to say, ‘We're Canadians as well. We're all in this together and we want to prove we are part of this greater group.’”

Virtue said history, in some ways, still repeats itself.

Female soldiers later experienced what Black soldiers went through when it came to combat roles, he said.

"When I was in (CFB) Cornwallis, we had females in our platoons, and they were promised combat roles. Not a single one of them got it," he said.

"Years later, I went to Europe and I came back, and then we had the very first females inside our vehicles.

“They did end up having a very, very hard time,” he added.

“Discrimination is discrimination."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 25, 2024.

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

'Incredible and tragic' story of America's largest free Black settlement comes to Pensacola


Kamal Morgan, Pensacola News Journal
Thu, March 3, 2022

Leading up to the Highlights in Black exhibition in December, museum manager Mike Thomin and Pensacola City Councilwoman Teniadé Broughton were figuring out which significant archaeological sites featuring Black history they should focus on next.

The fort at Prospect Bluff was the first to come to mind.

Following the War of 1812, Prospect Bluff held the largest free Black settlement in the United States. The new exhibit details how the maroons, or free Black people who escaped slavery, worked hard to protect their beacon of freedom and how the fort's destruction showed the commitment the U.S. government had to maintaining the institution of slavery.

"One of the reasons why this settlement was so feared was because it was enslavers' in the American South's worst nightmare," said Thomin, museum manager of the Florida Public Archaeology Network. "It was a free community of formerly enslaved people who had emancipated themselves and were literally fighting back to maintain their freedom."

The Florida Public Archaeology Network is presenting a new exhibit called "The Maroon Marines: Archaeology at Prospect Bluff." It details the battle at Prospect Bluff, which held the largest free Black settlement in what is now the United States.

Highlights in Black: Show will spotlight 5 exhibits in Pensacola that illuminate Black history

Black Heritage Trail: Black History Month: 8 stops on Florida's Black Heritage Trail

The Florida Public Archaeology Network, with support from Broughton, will hold an opening reception of the new temporary exhibit, "The Maroon Marines: Archaeology at Prospect Bluff," from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday at the Destination Archaeology Resource Center at 207 E. Main St. in Pensacola.

Broughton said she is thankful to sponsor and highlight events that have shaped Pensacola's history.

"Exhibit openings welcome guests to ask questions and offer their opinions in a casual setting. More so, exhibits give a moment to reflect, to actually sit with the artifacts and connect objects to the people who created them," Broughton said. "We don't know all of the names and personal thoughts of freedom seekers at Negro Fort. But the material culture that survives them sends a power message from the past that says, 'We were here and we died for our freedom.'"

Part of a moat that once surrounded the fort that stood at Prospect Bluff remains in the Apalachicola National Forest in this April 2019 file photo. After the War of 1812, Prospect Bluff held the largest free Black settlement in the United States.

The fort was constructed during the War of 1812 when the United States and British were at odds. The British decided in 1814 to open up a front in the Gulf South. They constructed Prospect Bluff, which was also called the British Post or Negro Fort by the Americans, along the Apalachicola River in what is now the Apalachicola National Forest.

It was mainly built by the Corps of Colonial Marines, which consisted of fugitive slaves and Creek tribesman who the British recruited. Because fugitive slaves did not want to go back into slavery and the Indigenous communities were resisting changes to their native lifestyles and encroachment onto their lands, some members of both groups were willing to side with the British against the Americans.

When the War of 1812 ended in 1815, the British left Florida and left the 300 African Americans and Indigenous people with all their weapons hoping they would defend themselves from the United States. The fort garnered a reputation as a beacon of freedom for escaped slaves as eventually 800 fugitive slaves from the Pensacola region, Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi, came to settle in the surrounding areas.

Daniel Vasquez, an archaeologist with PaleoWest, digs out a layer of sediment April 17, 2019, from a test site as the U.S. Forest Service studies the land where the fort at Prospect Bluff was located. After the War of 1812, Prospect Bluff held the largest free Black settlement in the United States.

Escambia history: From 1821 to 2021: Creating a sense of place by linking the modern with the historic

"They didn't just hand these guys guns and they had to figure it out, they were highly trained Marines and there were hundreds of them," Thomin said of the fort's occupants. "And that guaranteed safety if you could get there and so that became, in the U.S. government's eyes and in slavers' eyes, a huge problem."

When Gen. Andrew Jackson heard about the fort, he came with the Army and Navy to destroy it. After a few skirmishes, Jackson ordered Maj. Gen. Edmund P. Gaines to destroy the fort. On July 27, 1816, Gaines fired a heated cannon ball to ignite gunpowder stored inside the fort.

The explosion killed over 270 men, women and children, and most survivors were executed or sent back into slavery. Those who did survive and escape went to Seminole towns nearby or to another free Black settlement called Angola in the vicinity of present-day Sarasota.

The Florida Public Archaeology Network is presenting a new exhibit called "The Maroon Marines: Archaeology at Prospect Bluff." It details the battle at Prospect Bluff, which held the largest free Black settlement in what is now the United States.

The upcoming Pensacola exhibit will feature many artifacts that were loaned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Forest Service. Some of these include brass straps that were probably from the exploded powder kegs that destroyed the fort in 1816, military items such as bayonets and ammunition and pottery fragments to showcase the daily life of people living in the fort.

Thomin and Broughton said they feel the exhibit demonstrates how Black and Indigenous history needs to also be told.

"The hope is that people, maybe if they're learning about it for the first time through the exhibit, that they'll then go and do more research and learn about it," Thomin said. "It's an amazing, incredible and tragic story, but it really shows the resilience and I think that's something that we can all really appreciate as human beings, is that resiliency."

For more information, visit the Destination Archaeology Resource Center's website at destinationarchaeology.org or its Facebook page.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola exhibit examines Prospect Bluff, large free Black settlement

Canada urged to open its eyes to systemic racism in wake of police violence

Amid the anger over brutality and injustice, a number of prominent Canadians have cast doubt on the idea that racism is entrenched

Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Sun 14 Jun 2020

Protesters in Calgary rally against police violence and racism. Activists and historians argue that before change can come, Canadians must first accept a tarnished history. Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP
After a string of violent incidents involving police officers, activists and ordinary people across Canada have joined the global chorus calling for a reckoning with racism, policing, inequality and the long reach of history.

In recent weeks, a Black woman fell to her death after police were called to her flat in Toronto; an Indigenous woman suffering a mental health crisis was shot dead by an officer in New Brunswick and footage emerged showing Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in Alberta forcing a First Nations chief to the ground and punching him in the head. On Friday evening, an Indigenous man was shot dead by the RCMP in New Brunswick.

Justin Trudeau takes a knee but is silent on reforms to policing

But amid the growing anger, a number of prominent Canadians – premiers, columnists and the head of the RCMP – have cast doubt on the idea that racism is entrenched in the country’s institutions.

“Thank God we’re different than the United States and we don’t have the systemic, deep roots they’ve had for years,” said Ontario premier Doug Ford, a view echoed by neighbouring Quebec premier François Legault.

RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki told the Globe and Mail on Wednesday: “I think that if systemic racism is meaning that racism is entrenched in our policies and procedures, I would say that we don’t have systemic racism.” On Friday, Lucki clarified her position in a statement. “I did acknowledge that we, like others, have racism in our organization, but I did not say definitively that systemic racism exists in the RCMP. I should have.” Hours later, Rodney Levi of the Metepenagiag Mi’kmaq Nation was shot dead by RCMP officers.

Activists and historians argue that before change can come, Canadians must first accept a tarnished history and the persistent structural inequities that it has bequeathed the nation.

The numbers are clear: Black and Indigenous peoples in Canada are disproportionately over-represented in prisons and jails across the country. As students, they face harsher discipline in schools and are suspended at a higher rate than white students. In Toronto, the country’s largest city, Black residents are 20 times more likely to be shot by police.

On Thursday, Justin Trudeau contradicted the RCMP chief’s comments, saying it was clear systemic racism was present in the country’s federal police force.

“As much as we admire and support the RCMP, we know we need to do better. It is not just the individual examples we have seen, it’s the issues faced by Canadians of diverse backgrounds over years, decades and generations,” the prime minister said.

On Friday, Lucki clarified her position, saying: “I did acknowledge that we, like others, have racism in our organization, but I did not say definitively that systemic racism exists in the RCMP. I should have.”

Some argue that Canada’s national police force is itself emblematic of racism.

“The RCMP was not created to protect Indigenous people. It was created to protect white settlers from Indigenous folks – while suppressing our ceremonies and implementing laws that sought to decimate us,” said Brooks Arcand-Paul, a Cree lawyer and executive on the Indigenous Bar Association.

“Even today, the police will always look at Indigenous people and Black folks in our territories as potentially requiring some kind of suppression.”

Protesters have highlighted the case of Chantel Moore, 26, who was fatally shot last month by officers during a mental health “wellness check” and Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell to her death after police responded to a mental health emergency. But Arcand-Paul said her death was only the latest in a litany of cases where Indigenous lives are lost and families denied justice. He points to the case of Gerald Stanley, a white farmer who shot Colten Boushie, an indigenous man, in the head – but was acquitted by an all-white jury.

“When we talk about systemic racism, we’re not just trying to lay the blame on the RCMP. It’s the entire structure that is causing continued violence against Black and Indigenous bodies in this country,” said Arcand-Paul.

Some police forces, including in Canada’s largest city, have acknowledged systemic racism exists and pledged to make change. Last week, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders knelt with protesters.

But such actions have also raised skepticism among activists.

“Police in Canada are trying to escape this moment of criticism by casting themselves compassionate forces that care about these issues. However, once you actually dig into the data, it shows this is not necessarily the case,” said Bashir Mohamed, a researcher and amateur historian whose work has highlighted the often-forgotten racist history of western Canada.

“I think it’s by design that police forces want this information hidden, because then it makes them less responsible for actually acknowledging this is a problem.”

 Allan Adam, who was injured by police forcing him to the ground in March. Photograph: Allan Adam/Reuters
Mohamed points to the practice of “carding” – Canada’s version of stop-and-frisk – in which police conduct street checks of residents with little or no cause. While agencies have defended the practice in the past, the limited available data shows the policy disproportionately impacts racialized communities.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/06/canada-overdue-reckoning-anti-black-racism

Canada is overdue for a reckoning with its anti-black racism
Tayo Bero

Ford, the Ontario premier, quickly walked back his remarks, suggesting his comments had been taken out of context. “Of course there’s systemic racism in Ontario, there’s systemic racism across this country,” Ford said the next day.

Quebec premier François Legault also suggested there was “no system in place that discriminate” in the province – and said the province had not experienced slavery.

But political leaders’ resistance to the idea that systemic racism exists within state institutions often comes from a poor understanding of the country’s past, says educator and historian Natasha Henry, president of the Ontario Black History Society.

“It’s part of the Canadian national narrative of positioning ourselves in juxtaposition to the United States. That’s how we get this ‘exceptional Canada’ of being welcoming and warm – and not paying attention to our own parallel history of racial exclusion and the dispossession.”

In addition to being factually inaccurate, this popular view speaks to a “refusal to take responsibility” for two centuries of slavery within the country’s history, says Henry.

For generations, Canadian history has concentrated on the country’s position as the last stop on the Underground Railroad – a place which meant freedom for those who escaped slavery in the US. But the same narrative omits the experiences of thousands of enslaved people within Canada, says Henry.

According to Henry’s research, the earliest record of African enslavement in colonial Canada was the sale of a young boy, named Olivier LeJeune in 1629.

Slavery was formally ended in the British empire in 1834, including British North America, but legislation was repeatedly passed that would weaken anti-slavery laws in the years leading up to abolition.
After emancipation, Black people in Canada still faced segregation, and the looming threat of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

“You have to decide – are you going to accept all of Canada or none of Canada?” said Henry. “Because you can’t parcel out you want. That’s not how history works.”

Indigenous peoples were also enslaved by colonial powers – a reality often forgotten in the country’s school textbooks. And by the end of the 1700s, as many as 2,000 Black people were enslaved in the Maritimes region. About 300 more people were enslaved in the area known as Lower Canada (what is now the province of Quebec) and as many as 700 in Upper Canada (Ontario).

Others argue that Canada needs a more comprehensive history.

“It’s important to incorporate anti-black racism into curricula, but also black history. Not just civil rights heroes, but also black artists,” said Mohamed. “This shows that my people existed in Canada. It shows that we have a long history of slavery over 200 years, but also have a long history of black arts and black culture.”


Canada police under scrutiny after two women die after encounters with officers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/canada-police-under-scrutiny-after-two-women-die-after-encounters-with-officers

Only in recent years has Canada grappled with the legacy of its residential schools – where many Indigenous students were sent against their will and experienced verbal, physical and sexual abuse – a period which schools have now started to teach.

“At the end of the day, there’s going to be some difficult conversations. Because it’s important to acknowledge that our experiences aren’t just a fabricated story. They are lived realities,” said Arcand-Paul, who has been pulled over and questioned on multiple occasions by police.

“And we’re not going to be able to achieve true understanding until, at last, we’re able to share our stories – frankly and candidly – to a receptive audience.”

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

First Black weather officers joined a segregated U.S. Air Force during WWII

Randi Mann - Friday
The Weather Network

On Monday, July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, colour, religion or national origin" in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of the U.S. military’s first Black pilots who fought in the Second World War. They were trained at the Tuskegee Institute, located near Tuskegee, Ala. These men fought in the segregated army air forces (now called the U.S. air force). So, with the first Black air force pilots came the first Black weather officers, dubbed the Tuskegee weathermen.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkThe first Black weather officers joined a segregated U.S. Air Force during WWII"Members of the 332nd Fighter Group in a mission briefing, Ramitelli, Italy, 1945." Courtesy of Toni Frissell Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZC4-4335)

But it wasn't so easy to just enlist the leading Black meteorologists because, at the time, there weren't any in the U.S. Weather Bureau.

The army recruited black men who had a background in science and trained them in meteorology.

Charles E. Anderson, who studied chemistry in college, was accepted to the army air forces. He wanted to fly, but his eyesight was too poor.

Archie Williams also wanted to be a pilot in the army air forces, considering he already knew how to fly a plane.

Williams was in great shape, winning the gold medal during the 400-metre event in the 1936 Olympics. But, at 27, he was too old for military flight training. So, Williams worked on weather forecasts, weather maps, and even taught intro to flying.

There were 14 Tuskegee meteorologists, about 0.2 per cent of all weather officers in the army air forces.

Black pilots were also few in numbers and were regarded with suspicion.

The Tuskegee Airmen and weathermen were a great team, which is evidenced by the results of their missions.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkFirst Black weather officers joined a segregated U.S. Air Force during WWII"Members of the 332nd Fighter Group preparing for a mission, Ramitelli, Italy, 1945." Courtesy of Toni Frissell Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-13259)

Air force historian Dan Haulman said, “Of the 179 bomber escort missions, they lost bombers to enemy aircraft on only seven of those missions,” adding that in total, they lost 27 bombers, while other groups lost 46 bombers on average.

Haulman said that “Just as the black pilots proved that they could fly military aircraft in combat as well as the white pilots, so did the black weather personnel prove that they could perform meteorological functions as well as the white officers."

The Tuskegee Airmen helped change the attitudes of their white counterparts. Williams saw this change occur, because at the beginning "...a lot of guys there were bigoted. The white guys didn’t want to fly with them and all, but they found out that these guys could fight, could shoot good and protect the bombers.”


© Provided by The Weather NetworkThe first Black weather officers joined a segregated U.S. Air Force during WWIIMemorial honouring the Tuskegee Airmen at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, Tuskegee, Ala. Courtesy of Staff Sgt. Christine Jones/U.S. Air Force

The Tuskegee weathermen had the same positive and progressive influence due to their success in weather forecasting.

Thumbnail image: Members of the 332nd Fighter Group, Ramitelli, Italy, in 1945. Courtesy of U.S. air force.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BLACK HISTORY MONTH 

LGBTQ Pride Month leaders, in show of solidarity, unite to support George Floyd protests: 'Stonewall was a riot'

 AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY 

IT WAS TWO BLACK QUEENS WHO LED THE PROTESTS
Beth Greenfield ·Senior Editor June 2, 2020, 12:23 PM MDT

The Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ equality movements must support each other, note activists at the start of LGBTQ Pride Month. Here, in a scene from San Francisco Pride 2017, the messages intermingled. (Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)More

June is LGBTQ Pride Month. But it’s starting out in a way that no one predicted: With Pride organizers shifting their focus to the current racial unrest, and LGBTQ organizations — over 100 at last count — signing on to an open letter pledging support to George Floyd protests across the nation, in a show of solidarity denouncing racism.

“‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’ Those words, written over 30 years ago by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, remind us that indifference can never bridge the divide of hate,” the letter begins. “And, today, they should serve as a call to action to all of us, and to the Movement for LGBTQ equality.”

The letter, which invokes not only Floyd’s name but of other victims of racist violence, including Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, has been signed by a fast-growing number of organizations — from major players such as GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign and the National LGBTQ Task Force to smaller groups including Louisiana Trans Activists, Out Boulder County and Project PRIDE Sarasota. It makes connections between the protests of today and the roots of the gay civil rights movement.

“We, the undersigned, recognize we cannot remain neutral, nor will awareness substitute for action. The LGBTQ community knows about the work of resisting police brutality and violence,” it notes. “We celebrate June as Pride Month, because it commemorates, in part, our resisting police harassment and brutality at Stonewall in New York City, and earlier in California, when such violence was common and expected. We remember it as a breakthrough moment when we refused to accept humiliation and fear as the price of living fully, freely, and authentically.”

While planned Pride Month celebrations have already been completely altered by being moved online because of the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing measures, the latest national events are further impacting the lens through which Pride is being viewed, both officially and through scores of social media posts.

This pride month, we remember the reason we have the rights we do today. We thank the black trans woman who rioted and protested for us. If you do not support Black Lives Matter, do not celebrate Pride. pic.twitter.com/zbhht1NLzk
— rimie rat🌸 (@naeclue) June 1, 2020


pride 51 years ago vs black lives matter today pic.twitter.com/efJrMRZQjn
— slo 🤠🇰🇭 (@slohjm) June 1, 2020


The Stonewall riots were lead by queer POC and were a massive catalyst to the LGBTQ rights movements. If u are queer but dont stand with the Black Lives Matter movement maybe opt out of celebrating pride this month n think about why we have the rights we have. pic.twitter.com/kQ4btTG7Pr

— 𝖗𝖊𝖉𝖗𝖚𝖒 (@prodbyredrum) June 1, 2020

In light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the beginning of Pride Month, let’s talk about the black trans woman that aided and led the LGBTQ+ community into gaining equal rights: Marsha P. Johnson pic.twitter.com/xqTFQp3VcZ
— 𝕔𝕣𝕚𝕤🥱 (@cristaystay) June 1, 2020

“There’s no way you can talk about our community without addressing race,” Julian Sanjivan, co-president of InterPride, tells Yahoo Life. As the former director of New York City’s Pride March, and now deeply involved with the international organization of global Pride events, including the upcoming virtual Global Pride, Sanjivan says they’ve realized “just how intersectional this community is.”

They add, “Within the LGBTQ+ community, at any given point of time, you could see a person who is trans and a person of color and an immigrant, and there are so many other layers to that… within our community and within a single person.”

That’s why kicking off the month with a powerful show of solidarity with protesters became a priority.

“I think people forget that Pride started off because of riots — Stonewall was a riot, after all. We may not have seen a lot of the progress with the LGBT community if that first brick was not thrown in 1969,” Sanjivan says. “So, it was an uprising and still is. It’s not like we’ve achieved equality… [Pride is] a celebration of who we are, loving whoever you love, celebrating your chosen family, and for some, coming out — but it’s also a protest to be recognized. And with the current administration we have, a lot of what we’ve achieved over the years has slowly been taken away. Pride is always a combination of celebration and protest.”

GLAAD’s president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis weighed in with a statement on the organization’s website. “Today marks the first day of Pride Month, and although it may look different this year, the spirit of Pride continues to live on in our community’s resilience in the fight for equality and acceptance for all,” she noted. “And at this very time in our country’s history, this fight has never been more significant… This Pride Month, we’ll be centering and lifting up the voices of Black LGBTQ people. There can be no Pride if it is not intersectional. We are Together in Pride. Black Lives Matter.”

The open letter also mentions Christian Cooper, the black gay man who was targeted by a white woman in Central Park. It also points out the unending rash of violence against trans individuals, particularly transgender women of color, citing the names of the dozen of trans people who have been murdered already this year — Dustin Parker, Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, Yampi Méndez Arocho, Monika Diamond, Lexi, Johanna Metzger, Serena Angelique Velázquez Ramos, Layla Pelaez Sánchez, Penélope Díaz Ramírez, Nina Pop, Helle Jae O’Regan and Tony McDade.



#TonyMcDade, we say your name. https://t.co/pfgzkfbJaI

— Out Magazine (@outmagazine) May 29, 2020

“It is no exaggeration to describe it as an epidemic of violence,” the letter points out.



if you are not supporting the black lives matter protests then i don’t want to see you celebrating pride month. remember your history pic.twitter.com/1yrJwg8cxm

— e (@fetishwasabi) June 1, 2020

Similar efforts to raise awareness around the killing of black trans women infused Pride events last year when the series of murders was often discussed in the context of irony, as it was people of color, including late activist Marsha P. Johnson, who played a major role at Stonewall and in the activism that followed.

Read more from Yahoo Life:


Prompted by calls to 'give grace' to cop who killed George Floyd, black activists question the rush to forgive


Why coronavirus mask-wearing orders leave black Americans facing a tough decision


Shuttered LGBTQ community centers feel shutdown fallout: ‘It’s been really hard’

Want daily lifestyle and wellness news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Life’s newsletter.





0:05
3:03





George Floyd Protesters Get Creative in Moments of Solidarity






TRENDING
1.
Should you form a COVID-19 'double bubble?'
2.

Opinion
‘History months’ celebrate those who were written out of the story

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Columnist|
March 5, 2023

How we see the past shapes how we see our present and future — even as our contemporary insights, biases and preoccupations affect our interpretation of what happened before we got here. That’s what makes history controversial. It is inevitably a revisionist enterprise that helps us understand how and why our society has changed.

“In each era, we see the past differently, according to how we see ourselves and our own experiences,” historian Benjamin Carter Hett wrote in his book on the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1930s Germany. “One era will notice things about the past that another will not. This is one reason why history is, and has to be, constantly rewritten.”

This ongoing revisionism is what leads to “history months” — Black History Month in February is followed by Women’s History Month in March. It also explains why the many fights we’re now having over school curriculums are understandable, even if efforts to censor books and repress ideas are counterproductive to learning and reasoned discussion.

The annual observance of these months is the fruit of egalitarian movements in the 1960s and 1970s that pushed new generations of historians to rebel against the exclusion of whole classes of people from our national story.
Follow

Admirers of what was seen as more traditional history grumbled over the lifting up of “race, class and gender” as Black and working-class Americans, women, and immigrants at long last became the subjects of extensive scholarship. Traditionalists asked: What happened to recounting the exploits and achievement of the leading political figures in our history, almost all of whom were White men?

Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, Lincoln and FDR never disappeared — and Lincoln has always been a special figure of fascination. By one count, made about a decade ago, some 15,000 books had been written about Lincoln. But it’s true that, for a while, political history lagged behind the new bottom-up social history.

In recent years, political history has made a comeback, but it’s a history far more mindful of the role of Black Americans, women and workers, and far more aware of racism, sexism and elitism.

As both a lover of political history and a sympathizer with the egalitarian impulse, I appreciate the new synthesis. Bringing the two together can help us notice the roots of political change and its extent. One example is the remarkable trajectory of women in our nation’s political life.

The change in the right direction is unmistakable, even as the process took way too long and still has a long way to go. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. A Republican from Montana, Rankin pushed for the 19th Amendment that enfranchised women across the country four years later.

In a Congress whose size is set at 535, it was not until 1961 that even 20 of the members of the House and Senate were women, and their numbers retreated for several elections. The 1990s were the first big breakthrough. The number of women in Congress rose from 33 to 54 after the “year of the woman” election of 1992. The numbers have steadily risen since, finally rising above 100 (to 101) in 2013.

The 2018 and 2020 elections were breakthroughs comparable to 1992. The number of women who are voting members in one of the chambers of Congress hit a new high of 149 after the 2022 elections — 106 Democrats, 42 Republicans and one independent, according to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.

We should celebrate the achievement — and also ask why our democracy still lags far behind many others in electing women. While 28 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress are women, women make up between 40 to 50 percent of the parliamentarians in such democracies as France, Iceland, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden and Switzerland. We’re definitely not No. 1.

The role of women in our public life is an excellent case study of how the questions we ask of history change over time. Precisely because the politically subordinate role of women was taken for granted by earlier generations of historians, it was not an issue they even thought of addressing. Examining the role of women in our history occurs to us now because of social and political changes that most of us welcome.

Does this mean that history has been “politicized?” The answer is “yes” only in the sense that political change always affects how we see history.

The better view is that history is more accurate and more complete when we ask new questions, include more people’s experiences and, as Hett says, notice things our forebears didn’t. It’s why everyone has an interest in celebrating months in honor of those who were once written out of history altogether.



Opinion by E.J. DionneE.J. Dionne Jr. writes a twice-weekly column for The Washington Post. He is a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His latest book, with Miles Rapoport, is “100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting.” Twitter

Black Herstory Month: Lucy Parsons

Forgotten in the pages of Black History is the unique voice of the 19th Century Afro-American, Immigrant, Native, Womens, Workers Struggle in the United States. I am speaking of the Anarchist and Wobbly Lucy Parsons, wife of the Haymarket Martyr Albert Parsons. An excellent article on her importance to modern day struggles for social justice is; Lucy was her name and a lifetime struggle was her game Nice to see someone else remembers Lucy.

I posted this at my bloglines site last year:

February is Black History Month and March is Womens History Month. While March 8 is International Womens Day.

To celebrate I give you one of the greatest overlooked African American Women: Lucy Parsons.

Wife of Haymarket Anarchist, Albert Parsons, Lucy went on to be a founding member of the IWW.

"Lucy Parsons was an African, Native and Mexican-American revolutionary anarchist labor activist from the late nineteenth and 20th century America. Emerging out of the Chicago Haymarket affair of 1886, in which eight anarchists were imprisoned or hung for their beliefs, Lucy Parsons led tens of thousands of workers into the streets in mass protests across the country. Defying both racial and gender discrimination, she was at the forefront of movements for social justice her entire life. She sparked rebellion and discontent among poor and exploited workers wherever she spoke, and her fiery, powerful orations invoked fear in authority nationwide."

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Lucy, Parsons, Feminist, Black, Activist, History, USA, Labor, IWW, Anarchist, Anarchism,

How Tarot & Astrology Became Black & Brown Women’s North Star

Stephanie Long 

© Provided by Refinery29

Amber Finney, known as Amber The Alchemist, is steeping a cup of tea when we connect over Google Hangouts. The soft smoke of what is likely sage, incense or palo santo languidly billows from the bottom of her screen. Behind her hangs a tapestry of planets and constellations, as well as a poster illustrating various crystals. Below that sits a table of bottles and oils. Even through a screen, it’s exactly the backdrop you’d expect from someone whose life’s work includes ancestral healing through rituals and magic.

“I am from Hackensack, New Jersey,” Finney, a tarot reader and spiritual practitioner, says. “My grandparents are from Georgia and South Carolina, so I’m a product of the Great Migration.” Her great-great-grandfather was likely born into slavery, she shares, and was a root worker and healer in the 1800s; her mother, Jeannell, has been practicing divination for decades. Together, Finney and her mother run Brown Girl Alchemy, an online community dedicated to the ascension and healing of Black womanhood. “[My spirituality has] always been within me,” she states with a smile. “The work that I’m doing and the work that my mom is doing is a continuation [of my great-great-grandfather’s work]. We’re bridging the gap and bringing that spiritualism back to our ancestral.”

Finney and her mother aren’t the only ones. In the last 10 years, and especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic when many have turned to divination as a means of solace and self-healing, Black and brown women have pivoted from Christianity and reconnected with spiritual practices rooted in African, Indigenous, and Latinx ancestry. Many of those practices — like tarot, astrology, and crystal healing — have become increasingly popular on social media, making conversation surrounding non-Christian Black and brown spirituality less taboo. In pop culture, superstars like Beyoncé have paid homage to figures like the Yoruba Orisha Oshun, goddess of female sensuality and fertility. Songs like Princess Nokia’s “Brujas” have become anthems for Black and brown witches everywhere. But before the age of Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, it was rare that you’d find Black and brown women speaking publicly of sacred practices. Until recently, much of the spiritual community represented online featured a more Eurocentric version of divination — “Black and Silver witchcraft,” a term The Hood Witch’s Bri Luna uses to describe the whitewashed “American Horror Story aesthetic” popular on Tumblr years ago — leaving little room for Black and brown women to feel seen or safe in an already stigmatized space. It’s why the spiritual resurgence happening amongst Black and brown women is more than a revival — it’s a reclamation.

“My grandmother practiced hoodoo. She’s from Louisiana and she lived in Texas,” Luna says. “I feel like most American Black families with Southern roots, there’s magic there, regardless of if they wanna call it that or not.” When she first launched The Hood Witch around 2014, the Los Angeles native — who is of Black and Mexican descent — was one of the only brujas representing Black and brown women in the online world of mysticism. “I was sharing metaphysical information; I was sharing tarot; I was sharing things that were already in my family, doing this visual storytelling [in my way]. I really think that opened doors for other women of color to connect back to their roots. This is something that was long overdue and very necessary.”

In order to understand where spirituality stands today, we look back at where Black spirituality was born, and how our relationship with it has evolved across generations.

The Roots Of Black Diasporic Religion

Provided by Refinery29

According to the Pew Research Center, Black Americans are more religious than the American public at-large. Because of this, many — particularly those of older generations — shy away from sharing their non-Christian spiritual practices, lest they risk condemnation from the community. Malorine Mathurin, for example, is a Brooklyn-based intuitive and hellenistic astrologer of Haitian descent, and says she kept her work “under wraps” during her early years as a diviner after being shunned by friends. “I had one friend who actually went and told everyone in junior high school that I was a witch,” she says. “It was very disturbing and very upsetting. People wouldn’t talk to me and would be very wary of me.”

This type of fear-driven response toward non-Christian spirituality is unfortunately typical from those who adhere to institutional Christianity. But, it didn’t have to be like this. As historical texts show, the word “religion” itself is fraught with a colonialist history. “In fact, the term gained popularity in the sixteenth century and was also imposed on native peoples and their practices during conquest and colonizing regimes,” says Khytie Brown, ethnographer and scholar of African diaspora religions and African American studies, and a research fellow at Princeton University. “‘Knowledge of God’ was often the Euro-Christian deployment of the term in which non-European peoples and their humanity were judged against,” she says. “That is, to ‘have religion’ meant that these cultures and peoples conformed to European notions of a belief in a higher power, usually a monotheistic one, with accompanying practices that they could approximate and compare with Christianity.”

Although Eurocentric Christianity has often been used as a tool of oppression, Black diasporic religion has long been a beacon in the Black community. Religion is both a spiritual and cultural anchor, as Brown describes, and its many forms offer identity and belonging. “In some sense, these practices predate the rupture caused by the TransAtlantic slave trade,” says Kijan Bloomfield, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. “Black religions also developed as a response to the violence of white supremacy. We often describe Black religion in the West as traditions that emerged in the ‘hush harbors’ or spaces that enslaved Blacks gathered in secret to worship and commune beyond the gaze of their white enslavers. However, Black religion also includes Islam and Judaism — both of which are part of a diverse tapestry of Black religious traditions.”

Bloomfield explains that when enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas, they came with their own set of indigenous spiritual and religious practices — including Christianity. As early as 1491, for example, the Kongo Kingdom in Central Africa had adopted Catholicism as its official religion. As a result, some of the people who were enslaved in places like Jamaica and Haiti — where large portions of the enslaved population came from Central Africa, and Kongo specifically — brought with them an African Christian background outside of the Christianity encountered in the new colonies. Conjure and hoodoo (U.S.), vodou (Haiti), and obeah (Jamaica) are all African diasporic religious practices that provided protection and healing. Back in the days of slavery, Black people looked to divination as a salve amid the terror and violence — both physical and psychological — inflicted upon them by entrapment and colonialism.

“Divination is part of this method of accessing knowledge and insight,” Bloomfield adds. “Living in an anti-Black world that continues to denigrate Black existence and ways of knowing, divination provides a powerful tool to ‘see’ and discern the answers to individual and communal problems that are personal and systemic.”

As for tarot and particularly astrology, which is perhaps the most mainstream and widely understood form of divination, Black women have used the stars as their guide for generations. Bloomfield points out that the old spiritual “Follow the Drinking Gourd” is a nod to Harriet Tubman, who used the North Star (the most prominent star in the Big Dipper constellation) to chart the path of the Underground Railroad. And in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Bloomfield adds, the protagonist, a Black teenager named Lauren Olamina, develops a belief system called Earthseed. “The ultimate destination, Lauren argues, is for humans to ‘take root amongst the stars’ — to develop a more liberating framework for community and care. Contemporary astrology, I believe, continues a tradition in which Black people have looked to the universe and it’s wonders to circumvent the kind of Enlightenment logic whose ultimate end led to our enslavement and denigration.”

The Seeding Of Stigma Surrounding Non-Christian Spirituality© Provided by Refinery29

The term occult — which is from the French word occulte and directly from the Latin occultus meaning “hidden, concealed, secret” — often carries with it a negative connotation. In the Black Christian community in particular, the word is typically used to describe something that is evil or “of the devil.” It’s synonymous with the terms “pagan” and “magic,” both of which were and still are looked down upon in Black religious spaces.

“I believe this is a common impulse and, in many ways, it is misguided,” says Bloomfield. “Religion practiced by Black people throughout the diaspora is syncretic — it draws on African worldviews about power, the spirit world, and the divine that is always in conversation with Christianity. After all, Christianity was a tool of colonialism which enslaved Africans interpolated with their traditional beliefs.”

In Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition, as Bloomfield notes, author Yvonne Chireau argues that alternative forms of Black religion such as conjure and hoodoo are a complement to African-American Christianity. Bloomfield believes that the suspicion and fear that often shroud divination and occult practices stems from the prominence Christianity achieved within Black diasporic communities, particularly in the U.S. and the Caribbean. “Aligning oneself with Christian values was a strategy to cope with the terror of enslavement and the precarity of Black life, and was also a cloak for more traditional African-derived practices that continued in the New World,” she says. “However, at the apex of the movement for civil rights, Christianity became the primary language to call out the hypocrisy of enslavers and demand justice.”

Finney describes herself and her mother as the “black sheep” of their family, sharing that it wasn’t until this past year when Finney began to receive public attention that she felt comfortable sharing her profession with her family, who are members of the church. “They were like, ‘Okay, somehow you’re accredited, so you must be doing something right,’” she says. “But even still, we don’t talk about it because it’s not for them.”

Afro-Puerto Rican Tarot reader, espiritista, and Ifa Orisha priestess Tatianna Morales — known as Tatianna Tarot — shares a similar story. Born to a Puerto Rican father and a Black mother, Morales says she was raised predominantly by the Puerto Rican side of her family, which is mostly religious with the exception of her father, who is a spiritual medium. “He has studied so many occult and metaphysical topics and is big on personal development, so he and I are like two peas in a pod. This is where I get my juju from.” Her mother’s side of the family, however, is composed of devout Christians, and is “very, very religious.”

“Unfortunately [my mother and I] don’t have a close relationship, but if I were to mention any of this she’d faint and die,” she continues with a laugh. “The irony is that a lot of my gifts come from my Black side of the family. My grandma and my great-great-grandma were practitioners and priestesses in their time in Brooklyn. They did a lot of work for the community [as hairdressers]. So they would essentially mask spiritual workings, spellcasting, and ceremonies that they would do under the guise of them being hairdressers.”

© Provided by Refinery29

Pandemic Revival & The Future Of Black Mysticism

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and many people spend more time indoors, the stigma associated with non-Christian, Black religious practices and belief systems is beginning to fade as Black diasporic traditions become more mainstream online. For some, it’s a homecoming. For others, dispelling the negative stereotypes of divination has become a tool of self-healing during a time of loss and trauma.

“The more widespread embrace of Black diasporic traditions I believe is an effort to reclaim ancestral ways of knowing and to assert Black personhood, particularly in the midst of the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism,” says Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s latest project, Lived Africana Religion in the Time of COVID-19, documents the many ways in which Black communities have sustained their religious practices during this turbulent time in history. “I have learned that communities marginalized by the mainstream Black church — namely Black queer people of faith and practitioners of African traditional religions — have creatively used social media and virtual meeting spaces to reach new audiences and provide opportunities for connection and healing,” Bloomfield says.

“I think, outside the pandemic, there was always a search for spirituality and wanting to connect spiritually, but there had to be a medium because that’s what we’re taught in religion,” says Finney. “The medium is to connect to Jesus or to go to church to connect to the divine, but I think because we are physically not able to step outside of ourselves, we literally had to step within ourselves and initiate our own healing.”

As accessibility to learning resources increases and the online spiritual community continues to grow, Finney says Black and brown women are realizing they never needed a medium. “We’re getting our spiritual swag back because we’re able to recognize that this is what we do. It’s within us. It’s not something that we ever had to seek.”

R29Unbothered continues its look at Black culture’s tangled history of Black identity, beauty, and contributions to the culture. In 2021, we’re giving wings to our roots, learning and unlearning our stories, and celebrating where Black past, present and future meet.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

How Black Women Can Win in 2021, Per Astrology

Black & Brown Women Reclaim Roller Skating Culture

A Letter From Unbothered On Black History Month