We’re in the month designated as a time to remember and celebrate Black History, particularly in America. Today I’d like to say a little bit about Zora Neal’s Hurston, woman novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. Zora was born in Alabama in the 1890s and spent her productive career years in Harlem, NYC. All of her work is in some way or other involved in documenting the life and culture of poor blacks in the south. I know her best from her most remembered novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I also have a minor connection through a close friend in Connecticut who is Zora’s niece. Below are links to two sources I think provide good information about her. http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1512 Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an author, folklorist, journalist, dramatist, and influential member of the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novels, particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). A complex and controversial figure, Hurston was an ardent promoter of African American culture. Although criticized by her peers, who were interested in using literature and art as vehicles for overcoming stereotypes and promoting integration, assimilation, and equality, Hurston refused to concentrate on racism in her writing. Hurston's short stories, plays, and novels reflect her interest in anthropology and make use of the material she collected while working on various funded expeditions around the South and in Haiti and Jamaica. https://www.city-journal.org/html/thus-spake-zora-13216.html Thus Spake Zora Legions of writers would be content to produce just one book on the level of Eyes, of course, but overall, Hurston’s light burned brightest in her lovingly rendered folk documentation. Her soulful rendition of black folk speech was unprecedentedly accurate, embodying a kind of standing character in itself. Mules and Men is among her most resonant works, and The Great Day was, by all accounts, a theatrical treasure. In a time when many of the black literati sought legitimacy in mimicking white artistic forms, Hurston was an educated, cosmopolitan soul who joyously rooted herself in the folkways of the poorest of her people. That alone required a rigorous equipoise, a manner of standing at the same time within and outside herself that was unfamiliar in her time.
https://medicine.buffalo.edu/about/...istory-month-profiles/joseph-love.detail.html Joseph Robert Love, Black Graduate of University at Buffalo Medical School, 1880 "Joseph Robert Love, UB’s first Black graduate, received his medical degree on Feb. 25, 1880. Love was born in the Bahamas in 1839 and moved to the United States in 1866, relocating to Buffalo in 1876 from Savannah, Ga. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1876 and was named rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Buffalo, which is today one of the oldest African-American Episcopal congregations in the county. Love enrolled in UB’s Medical Department in 1877 and graduated with the Class of 1880. A thesis was a requirement in those years; his was titled “Philosophy of Practical Medicine Versus Empiricism.” As described by Christopher Densmore in a 1996 unpublished paper (“A Heritage of Diversity: Notes from the History of the University of Buffalo”), Love responded to a toast offered at the graduation dinner to “Our Colored Fellow Citizens” with the hope that “the time was fast coming…when the colored American citizen would emerge from his social ostracism of the past and meet his white brothers on the equal plain of education and merit.” From its founding in 1846, UB never has had a policy of exclusion on the basis of race, gender or religion. As Densmore stated, UB “educated African-American doctors and lawyers, in an era when few such people were educated in predominately white institutions. However, the university’s contribution was to be open, that is not to erect barriers, which is not the same as having policies to recruit and support a diverse student body. The university’s business was to make education accessible…however, until the 1960s, there were few black students at the university.” In 1881, Love moved to the Episcopal mission in Haiti and then settled in Kingston, Jamaica, where he published the Jamaica Advocate and championed the ideas of Henry Sylvester-Williams and Pan-African unity. Today, scholars consider Love to be one of the important Pan-African nationalists of the later 19th century and an inspiration to black nationalist Marcus Garvey. He also may have practiced medicine in both Haiti and Jamaica. He died in 1919."
Harriet Tubman, runaway black slave who became an influential abolitionist and Underground Railroad conducted helping other slaves escape to freedom in the north. She lived the last 50+ years of her life in Auburn New York in a property purchased from Senator William Seward. She is one of many abolitionist activists living in the Finger Lakes region of New York State at the time, “Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is considered the first African American woman to serve in the military. Tubman’s exact birth date is unknown, but estimates place it between 1820 and 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, the daughter of Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross, Tubman had eight siblings. By age five, Tubman’s owners rented her out to neighbors as a domestic servant. Early signs of her resistance to slavery and its abuses came at age twelve when she intervened to keep her master from beating an enslaved man who tried to escape. She was hit in the head with a two-pound weight, leaving her with a lifetime of severe headaches and narcolepsy. Although slaves were not legally allowed to marry, Tubman entered a marital union with John Tubman, a free black man, in 1844. She took his name and dubbed herself Harriet. Contrary to legend, Tubman did not create the Underground Railroad; it was established in the late eighteenth century by black and white abolitionists. Tubman likely benefitted from this network of escape routes and safe houses in 1849, when she and two brothers escaped north. Her husband refused to join her, and by 1851 he had married a free black woman. Tubman returned to the South several times and helped dozens of people escape. Her success led slaveowners to post a $40,000 reward for her capture or death. Through the Underground Railroad, Tubman learned the towns and transportation routes characterizing the South—information that made her important to Union military commanders during the Civil War. As a Union spy and scout, Tubman often transformed herself into an aging woman. She would wander the streets under Confederate control and learn from the enslaved population about Confederate troop placements and supply lines. Tubman helped many of these individuals find food, shelter, and even jobs in the North. She also became a respected guerrilla operative. As a nurse, Tubman dispensed herbal remedies to black and white soldiers dying from infection and disease. After the war, Tubman raised funds to aid freedmen, joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their quest for women’s suffrage, cared for her aging parents, and worked with white writer Sarah Bradford on her autobiography as a potential source of income. She married a Union soldier Nelson Davis, also born into slavery, who was more than twenty years her junior. Residing in Auburn, New York, she cared for the elderly in her home and in 1874, the Davises adopted a daughter. After an extensive campaign for a military pension, she was finally awarded $8 per month in 1895 as Davis’s widow (he died in 188 and $20 in 1899 for her service. In 1896, she established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged on land near her home. Tubman died in 1913 and was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.”
A hall that played a role in Black history in Portland, Maine, just got a million bucks to finish restoration. "The Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland, one of the country’s oldest Black churches, just received $1.7 million in funds. That money will allow the church to be restored. The people behind preserving such an important part of Maine history are thrilled they’ll finally be able to finish restoring the building. The Abyssinian Meeting House became a real center for the community,” Knox said. “It was a stalwart part of the Underground Railroad here in Portland.” The building was built in 1828, and in 2013 was recognized as one of Maine’s Most Endangered Historic Places." https://bangordailynews.com/2022/03...ore-than-1m-in-federal-funds-for-renovations/
I agree, get government out of the race business. And, get racial identity politics out of America. American lives matter, all lives matter.
Such a broad brushed and false allegation only serves to further the divide and advance hatred. Congratulations you're advancing that which you profess to rail out against. @Starcastle this is just the sort of rhetoric that inspires acts of hate like the Salvation army killer that you brought to our attention.
If one was to actually study racism, one would learn that it is a constant. Any differences come from when it is suppressed. Unfortunately, things are getting worse, have been for a long time.
Instead of your false justifications I'm more interested in hearing your answer this question in detail.... And if you actually want to study the history of racism you belong to the party that invented Jim Crow. And yes things will seem to get worse as long as people like you keep throwing gas on the fire
It's a process, just as it was in the 1800s, before the terrorism started. Voter suppression, a growing White Power movement, and a Supreme Court that does things like eviscerate the VRA. On the entirely laughable assumption you want to know, it's not hard to find, all you have to do is pay attention. Start with the New Jim Crow. Ideally, you should learn the history first, can't see what's coming back if you don't know what that is.. https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow...96859&sprefix=the+new+jim+crow,aps,124&sr=8-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/boo...age-of-colorblindness-by-michelle-alexander-2 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/a-reading-list-on-issues-of-race/ There's a one in a million chance that someone will work their way through that pile of BS, so I am expecting less than zero here.
So the belief of 'racial segregation is still occurring is proven by...what? If one pays attention, there are things like Black Caucus, Black Entertainment to name a couple. I guess if one wants to define segregation, those might be examples. Voter suppression. Please clarify what that suppression is, when the exact same laws apply regardless of race, color or gender. If you are trying to claim that it's harder for some people to obtain IDs, or a place to vote, I call BS. I have repeatedly supplied information that those claims are false, yet some people continue to propagate the falsehoods. As to incarceration, while there is some unbalance regarding sentences received for same or similar crimes, one must also look at and acknowledge the percentage of a particular population committing the crimes. As to the 'White Power' movement, one only has to read up on statistics and known 'hate groups' to clarify that. • United States - active hate groups 2020 | Statista
Desegregation stopped in 1989, and then reversed. The funny thing about racism is that you can miss it easily. I had a history prof that did her PHD on slavery and racism. I linked you to a bunch of books, none of which you will read. There is far too much to post here, and if I provided you with an example, you will blow it off or make a lame excuse. As I said, less than zero.
Posting a list of books is not proof of anything, it is people's thoughts on a subject. But having provided you with statistics, ie, facts, and you pick one line from my post that you claim is happening, with no support. When you actually can discuss the subject, rather then throwing acorns in the path and claim they are trees, get back to me.
Sigh, they were posted as sources, not proof. They provide facts. You added one stat, it was a joke: "The number of active hate groups in the U.S. has declined, according an annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But unfortunately – and not surprisingly to anyone who has read the news — it found no accompanying decline in hate and extremism. Instead the law center, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., said that new white nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations have become more diffuse in their membership. "The far-right remains highly mobilized and extremely dangerous," with the number of threats from the far-right as high as in the years before the Oklahoma City bombing, says SPLC senior research analyst Cassie Miller. And other trends impacted the number of hate groups it counted: First was the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant that some groups didn't gather in person and didn't seem to do anything online. "Many extremist ideologues are not formal members of any organization," the report's authors write. "Online platforms allow individuals to interact with hate and antigovernment groups without joining them, as well as to form connections and talk with like minded people." https://www.npr.org/2021/02/01/9629...te-groups-declined-last-year-but-hate-did-not I added to the discussion, what I am seeing is denial and ignorance. And, as I predicted, a complete inability to deal with the reality of the situation.
When I first became aware of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the 70s I liked their stated goals and contributed to them for several years. Unfortunately they gradually morphed into just another progressive propaganda machine. Their true nature has been exposed many times in media including the Wall Street Journal, USAToday, the Washington Post, and others. I stopped contributing long ago and no longer respect a word they write. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...aw-center-hate-groups-scam-column/2022301001/ The Southern Poverty Law Center is a hate-based scam that nearly caused me to be murdered
There's a lot of baloney in that sandwich. They have made mistakes, but you need a counter-argument, not a whine. And that's where our real problem is, isn't it? There's several hundred hate groups, and they have a history of violence, and attempts to overthrow the government (which is why they were there on Jan 6)..
What percentage of the population are members of said hate groups? Last count that I recall, was less then 10,000. So, add another 10% for margin or error. Just as there are a number of Blacks who 'hate' Whites, counts can be evasive. But we'll bypass that for the moment, since the focus is the idea that White people are trying to 'return to Jim Crow' laws. You still haven't supported YOUR statement. Posting links to other people's books doesn't provide facts to support your statement. This seems to be a problem for you. Ignorance of what? I haven't said there is no racism, because there is. There are Whites who believe that we should return to segregation and slavery. What I am arguing is how many people support that idea, and what threat is it to treating all humans as individuals on an equal level. By everything I've read, the number is NOT a threat. They make a lot of idiot noise, hold a rally or three, and the media addresses it like these people matter. I know a person who supports the White Supremecist ideal. If he is an example of their membership, they are a rather sad bunch. Try actually discussing the topic, instead of painting in corners of what you think someone's position is, eh?
My 'real problem' is with people who accept the SPLC propaganda without reservation. Sites like the SPLC have long since given up objectivity, they don't even try to be truthful anymore.
