February 12, 2019

Florida's Prisoners Are Getting Screwed Out of $11 Million of Music They Purchased

Florida's Prisoners Are Getting Screwed Out of $11 Million of Music They Purchased

A new multimedia tablet program means that inmates will be unable to keep the mp3s and players they purchased under a previous for-profit program.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/pawmjn/floridas-prisoners-are-getting-screwed-out-of-dollar11-million-of-music-they-purchased

There are precious few comforts available to those trapped within the American prison industrial complex, and the Department of Corrections' continuing push towards privatization means that even the scarce options currently available are becoming untenable for most folks behind the walls. In just one example, New Yorkers saw this happen in our own backyard earlier this year, when Gov. Cuomo attempted to implement a pilot program to privatize prison care packages—only to rescind it after a massive public outcry against the cruel proposal.


Further South, inmates in Florida—whose sprawling prison system is notoriously violent, and plagued by reports of racism—are being adversely affected by the state DOC's efforts to "modernize" their cages by striking a profit-driven deal with private company JPay to introduce multimedia tablets. Inmates there had had access to entertainment technology since 2011, when the DOC partnered with another private company, Access Corrections, to sell various models of mp3 players which incarcerated people could use to download songs (for $1.70 a pop). Now, they’ll have the opportunity to try out something new—but that opportunity comes at a hefty price.

As Ben Conarck of the Florida Times-Union reports, the main problem with these new tablets—besides the fact that they are going to be used to generate profit off the backs of the incarcerated and their loved ones—is that, in order to participate in the new tablet program, inmates will be forced to return the mp3 players that they had already bought, and will be unable to transfer over the mp3s they've already purchased to the new tablets. Sales of the Access Corrections mp3 players ended back in August 2017. Patrick Manderfield, spokesman for the DOC explained that the songs cannot be transferred because the “devices/services are provided by two different vendors.” Perhaps more interestingly, according Timothy Hoey, the assistant warden at Homestead Correctional Institution, “the download of content purchased from one vendor to another vendor’s device would negate the new vendor’s ability to be compensated for their services.”
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The Florida DOC is effectively robbing its incarcerated population of music that they and their loved ones have already paid for, to the tune of $11.3 million ($1.4 million of which in commissions on song downloads and related sales has been collected by the DOC and sent to the state’s General Revenue fund since July 2011). (This number reflects the total amount of music purchased since the program's implementation in 2011.) Hundreds of incarcerated folks have flooded the DOC with complaints about the new system, but the DOC's response to the kerfuffle has been less than generous.

The Department suggests that inmates send their devices and music home if they want to keep them (after paying an additional $25 fee to unlock the mp3 player and download their music onto a CD), and points to a deal they'd made with Access Corrections to allow inmates to keep their devices if they choose not to participate in the tablet program. Bearing in mind that said tablet program is being touted as offering "educational opportunities" and a way to connect with their families, that's a difficult choice to make— between keeping one's possessions but being deprived of potentially useful technology, or giving up one of one's only sources of entertainment (and abandoning a significant financial investment) in favor of an unknown, profit-driven program.

The Department told inmates that they are “aware that family members over the years have provided funds to their loved ones to add music to their current MP3 player. It is unfortunate that the music cannot be transferred, however, we hope that overtime [sic] the family and the inmate will see the added value of the new program.”
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"Unfortunate" is certainly one way to describe it. "Predatory and inhumane" is another, but welcome to another day in mass incarcerated America. With the upcoming August 21 national prison strike looming and this year’s Operation PUSH Florida prison strike fresh in their minds, one wonders how the incarcerated workers of Florida are feeling about this latest slight.

February 12, 2019

Black history: day 12 - Robert Smalls, desperate times/desperate measures

Robert Smalls (April 5, 1839 – Feb. 23, 1915)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls

17 battles including

Battle of Simmon's Bluff
Second Battle of Pocotaligo
Second Battle of Fort Sumter

Sherman's March to the Sea

Robert Smalls (April 5, 1839 – February 23, 1915) was an American who escaped slavery to freedom and became a ship's pilot, sea captain, and politician. He freed himself, his crew and their families from slavery during the American Civil War by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, on May 13, 1862, and sailing it from Confederate-controlled waters of the harbour to the U.S. blockade that surrounded it. His example and persuasion helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the Union Army and the Navy.

Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. After the American Civil War, he returned there and became a politician, winning election as a Republican to the South Carolina State legislature and the United States House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. Smalls authored state legislation providing for South Carolina to have the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He founded the Republican Party of South Carolina. Smalls was the last Republican to represent South Carolina's 5th congressional district until 2010.
Contents


Early life

Robert Smalls was born in 1839 to Lydia Polite, a woman enslaved by Henry McKee, who was most likely Smalls' father.[1] She gave birth to him in a cabin behind McKee's house, on 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina.[2] He grew up in the city under the influence of the Lowcountry Gullah culture of his mother. His mother lived as a servant in the house but grew up in the fields. Robert was favored over other slaves, so his mother worried that he might grow up not understanding the plight of field slaves, and asked for him to be made to work in the fields and to witness whipping.[3]

When he was 12, at the request of his mother, Smalls' master sent him to Charleston to hire out as a laborer for one dollar a week, with the rest of the wage being paid to his master. The youth first worked in a hotel, then became a lamplighter on Charleston's streets. In his teen years, his love of the sea led him to find work on Charleston's docks and wharves. Smalls worked as a longshoreman, a rigger, a sail maker, and eventually worked his way up to become a wheelman, more or less a pilot, though slaves were not honored by that title. As a result, he was very knowledgeable about Charleston harbor.[4]

At age 17, Smalls married Hannah Jones, an enslaved hotel maid, in Charleston on December 24, 1856. She was five years his senior and already had two daughters. Their own first child, Elizabeth Lydia Smalls, was born in February 1858. Three years later they had a son, Robert Jr., who later died aged two.[5] Robert aimed to pay for their freedom by purchasing them outright, but the price was steep, $800 (equivalent to $22,308 in 2018). He had managed to save up only $100. It could take decades for him to reach $800.[3]

Escape from slavery

In April 1861, the American Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter in nearby Charleston Harbor. In the fall of 1861, Smalls was assigned to steer the CSS Planter, a lightly armed Confederate military transport under the command of Charleston's District Commander Brigadier General Roswell S. Ripley.[6] Planter's duties were to deliver dispatches, troops and supplies, to survey waterways, and to lay mines. Smalls piloted the Planter throughout Charleston harbor and beyond, on area rivers and along the South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts.[7][8] From Charleston harbor, Smalls and the Planter's crew could see the line of Federal blockade ships in the outer harbor, seven miles away.[9] Smalls appeared content and had the confidence of the Planter's crew and owners, and at some time in April 1862, Smalls began to plan an escape. He discussed the matter with the other slaves in the crew except one, whom he did not trust.[2]


The day of May 12, 1862, the Planter traveled ten miles southwest of Charleston to stop at Coles Island, a Confederate post on the Stono River that was being dismantled.[10] There the ship picked up four large guns to transport to a fort in Charleston harbor. Back in Charleston, the crew loaded 200 pounds of ammunition and 20 cords of firewood onto the Planter.[7] At some point family members hid aboard another steamer docked at the North Atlantic wharf.[11][12]

On the evening of May 12, Planter was docked as usual at the wharf below General Ripley's headquarters.[2] Her three white officers disembarked to spend the night ashore, leaving Smalls and the crew on board, "as was their custom."[13] (Afterward, the three Confederate officers were court-martialed and two convicted, but the verdicts were later overturned.[2]) About 3 a.m. May 13, Smalls and seven of the eight slave crewmen made their previously planned escape to the Union blockade ships. Smalls put on the captain's uniform and wore a straw hat similar to the captain's. He sailed the Planter past what was then called Southern Wharf, and stopped at another wharf to pick up his wife and children, and the families of other crewmen.

Smalls guided the ship past the five Confederate harbor forts without incident, as he gave the correct signals at checkpoints. The Planter had been commanded by a Captain Charles C.J. Relyea and Smalls copied Relyea’s manners and straw hat on deck to fool Confederate onlookers from shore and the forts.[14] The Planter sailed past Fort Sumter at about 4:30 a.m. The alarm was only raised by the time they were out of gun range. Smalls headed straight for the Union Navy fleet, replacing the rebel flags with a white bed sheet his wife had brought aboard. The Planter had been seen by the USS Onward, which was about to fire until a crewman spotted the white flag.[4] In the dark, the sheet was hard to see, but the sunrise came just in time.[3]

Witness account:

"Just as No. 3 port gun was being elevated, someone cried out, 'I see something that looks like a white flag'; and true enough there was something flying on the steamer that would have been white by application of soap and water. As she neared us, we looked in vain for the face of a white man. When they discovered that we would not fire on them, there was a rush of contrabands out on her deck, some dancing, some singing, whistling, jumping; and others stood looking towards Fort Sumter, and muttering all sorts of maledictions against it, and 'de heart of de Souf,' generally. As the steamer came near, and under the stern of the Onward, one of the Colored men stepped forward, and taking off his hat, shouted, 'Good morning, sir! I've brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!'" That man was Robert Smalls.[3]

The Onward's captain, John Frederick Nickels,[14] boarded the Planter, and Smalls asked for a United States flag to display. He surrendered the Planter and her cargo to the United States Navy.[4] Smalls' escape plan had succeeded.

The Planter and description of Smalls' actions were forwarded by Lt. Nickels to his commander, Capt. E.G. Parrott. In addition to her own light guns, Planter carried the four loose artillery pieces from Coles Island and the 200 pounds of ammunition. Most valuable, however, were the captain's code book containing the Confederate signals, and a map of the mines and torpedoes that had been laid in Charleston's harbor. Smalls' own extensive knowledge of the Charleston region's waterways and military configurations proved highly valuable. Parrott again forwarded the Planter to flag officer Du Pont at Port Royal, describing Smalls as very intelligent. Smalls gave detailed information about Charleston's defenses to Du Pont, commander of the blockading fleet. Federal officers were surprised to learn from Smalls that contrary to their calculations, only a few thousand troops remained to protect the area, the rest having been sent to Tennessee and Virginia. They also learned that the Coles Island fortifications on Charleston's southern flank were being abandoned and were without protection.[7] This intelligence allowed Union forces to capture Coles Island and its string of batteries without a fight on May 20, a week after Smalls' escape. The Union would hold the Stono inlet as a base for the remaining three-years of the war.[2] Du Pont was impressed, and wrote the following to the Navy secretary in Washington: "Robert, the intelligent slave and pilot of the boat, who performed this bold feet so skillfully, informed me of [the capture of the Sumter gun], presuming it would be a matter of interest." He "is superior to any who have come into our lines — intelligent as many of them have been."[3]
Service to the Union

Smalls, having just turned 23, quickly became known in the North as a hero for his daring exploit. Newspapers and magazines reported his actions. The U.S. Congress passed a bill awarding Smalls and his crewmen the prize money for the Planter (valuable not only for its guns but low draft in Charleston bay); Southern newspapers demanded harsh discipline for the Confederate officers whose joint shore leave had allowed the slaves to steal the boat.[15] Smalls's share of the prize money came to US$1,500 (equivalent to $37,645 in 2018). Immediately after the capture, Smalls was invited to travel to New York to help raise money for ex-slaves, but Admiral DuPont vetoed the proposal and Smalls began to serve the Union Navy, especially with his detailed knowledge of mines laid near Charleston. However, with the encouragement of Major General David Hunter, the Union commander at Port Royal, Smalls went to Washington, D.C., in August 1862 with Rev. Mansfield French, a Methodist minister who had helped found Wilberforce University in Ohio and had been sent by the American Missionary Association to help former slaves at Port Royal.[16] They wanted to persuade Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to permit black men to fight for the Union. Although Lincoln had previously rescinded orders by Hunter and Generals Fremont and Sherman to mobilize black troops,[16] Stanton soon signed an order permitting up to 5,000 African Americans to enlist in the Union forces at Port Royal. Those who did were organized as the 1st and 2nd South Carolina Regiments (Colored). Smalls worked as a civilian with the Navy until March 1863, when he was transferred to the Army. By his own account, Smalls was present at 17 major battles and engagements in the Civil War.[2]

After capture, the Planter required some repairs, which were performed locally, and went into Union service near Fort Pulaski. The boat was valued for its shallow draft, compared to other boats in the fleet.[17] Smalls was made pilot of the Crusader under Captain Alexander Rhind. In June of that year, Smalls was piloting the Crusader on Edisto in Wadmalaw Sound when the Planter returned to service, and an infantry regiment engaged in the Battle of Simmon's Bluff at the head of the Edisto River. He continued to pilot the Crusader and the Planter. As a slave, he had assisted in laying mines (then called "torpedoes&quot along the coast and river. Now, as a pilot, he helped find and remove them, and serviced the blockade between Charleston and Beaufort. He was also present when the Planter was fired upon at several fights at Adam's Run on the Dawho River, and at battles at Rockville, at John's Island, and at the Second Battle of Pocotaligo.[14]

He was made pilot of the ironclad USS Keokuk, again under captain Rhind, and took part in the attack on Fort Sumter on April 7, 1863, which was a preamble to the Second Battle of Fort Sumter later that fall. The Keokuk took 96 hits and retired for the night, sinking the next morning. Smalls and much of the crew moved to the Ironside and the fleet returned to Hilton Head.[14]

In June 1863, David Hunter was replaced as commander of the Department of the South by Quincy Adams Gillmore. With Gillmore's arrival, Smalls was transferred to the quartermaster's department. Smalls was pilot of the USS Isaac Smith, later recommissioned in the Confederate Navy the Stono in the expedition on Morris Island. When Union troops took the south end of the Island, Smalls was put in charge of the Light House Inlet as pilot.[14]

On December 1, 1863, Smalls was piloting the Planter under Captain James Nickerson on Folly Island Creek when Confederate batteries at Secessionville opened. Nickerson fled the pilot house for the coal-bunker. Smalls refused to surrender, fearing that the black crewmen would not be treated as prisoners of war and might be summarily killed. Smalls entered the pilothouse and took command of the boat and piloted her to safety. For this, he was reportedly promoted by Gillmore to the rank of captain and made acting captain of the Planter.[14][4]

In May 1864, he was voted an unofficial delegate to the Republican National Convention in Baltimore. Later that spring, Smalls piloted the Planter to Philadelphia for an overhaul. In Philadelphia, he supported what was known as the Port Royal Experiment, an effort to raise money to support the education and development of ex-slaves. At the outset of the civil war, Smalls could not read or write, but he achieved literacy in Philadelphia. In 1864, Smalls was in a streetcar in Philadelphia and was ordered to give his seat to a white passenger. Rather than ride on the open overflow platform, Smalls left the car. This incident of humiliating a heroic veteran was cited in the debate that resulted in the legislature's passing a bill to integrate public transportation in Pennsylvania in 1867.[2]

In December 1864, Smalls and the Planter moved to support William T. Sherman's army in Savannah, Georgia, at the destination point of his March to the Sea. Smalls returned with the Planter to Charleston harbor in April 1865 for the ceremonial raising of the American flag again at Fort Sumter.[2] Smalls was discharged on June 11, 1865. Other vessels Smalls piloted during the war include the Huron and the Paul Jones.[18] He continued to pilot the Planter, serving a humanitarian mission of taking food and supplies to freedmen who lost their homes and livelihoods during the war. On September 30, the Planter entered the service of the Freedmen's Bureau.[19]

Commission and prize money

Smalls' position in the Union Army and Navy has been disputed and Smalls' reward for the capture of the Planter has been criticized. During Smalls' life, articles about Smalls state that when he was assigned to pilot the Planter, the Navy did not allow him to hold the rank of pilot because he was not a graduate of a naval academy, a requirement at that time. To assure he received proper pay for a captain, he was commissioned second lieutenant of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers (later re-designated as the 33rd US Colored Infantry) and detailed to act as pilot. Many sources also state that General Gillmore promoted Smalls to captain in December 1863 when he saved the Planter when it was under attack near Secessionville.[20] Later sources state that Smalls did receive a commission either in the Army or the Navy, but he was likely officially a civilian throughout the war.[2]

Later in his life, when Smalls sought a Navy pension, he learned that he had not been officially commissioned. He claimed he had received an official commission from Gillmore but had lost it. In 1883, a bill passed committee to put him on the Navy retired list, but in the end was halted, allegedly due to Smalls' being black.[21] In 1897, a special act of congress granted Smalls a pension of $30 per month, equal to the pension for a Navy captain.[2]

In 1883, during discussion of the bill to put Smalls on the Navy retired list, a report stated that the 1862 appraisal of the Planter was "absurdly low" and that a fair valuation would have been over $60,000. However, Smalls received no further payment until 1900. That year, Congress passed a statute paying Smalls $5,000 less the amount paid to him in 1862 ($1,500) for his capture of the steamship. Many still felt that this was less than his due.[2]

After the Civil War

Immediately following the war, Smalls returned to his native Beaufort, where he purchased his former master's house at 511 Prince St, which Union tax authorities had seized in 1863 for refusal to pay taxes. Later, the former owner sued to regain the property, but Smalls retained ownership in the court case. The case became an important precedent in other, similar cases.[2] His mother, Lydia, lived with him for the remainder of her life. He allowed his former master's wife, the elderly Jane Bond McKee, to move into her former home prior to her death. Smalls spent nine months learning to read and write. He purchased a two-story Beaumont building to use as a school for African-American children.[19]

Business ventures

In 1866 Smalls went into business in Beaufort with Richard Howell Gleaves, a businessman from Philadelphia. They opened a store to serve the needs of freedmen. Smalls also hired a teacher to help him study.[18] That April, the Radical Republicans who controlled Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's vetoes and passed a Civil Rights Act. In 1868, they passed the 14th Amendment, which was ratified by the states to extend full citizenship to all Americans regardless of race.

Smalls invested significantly in the economic development of the Charleston-Beaufort region. In 1870, in anticipation of a Reconstruction-based prosperity, Smalls, with fellow representatives Joseph Rainey, Alonzo Ransier and others, formed the Enterprise Railroad, an 18-mile horse-drawn railway line that carried cargo and passengers between the Charleston wharves and inland depots.[22] Except for one white director,[23] the railroad's board of directors was entirely African American. Richard H. Cain was its first president. Author Bernard E. Powers describes it as "the most impressive commercial venture by members of Charleston's black elite."[24][25] He owned and helped publish a black-owned newspaper, the Beaufort Southern Standard starting in 1872.[19]

Political affiliation

Smalls was a loyal Republican. On August 22, 1912, he wrote to U.S. Senator Knute Nelson, "I never lose sight of the fact that had it not been for the Republican Party, I never would have been an office-holder of any kind—from 1862 to the present."[26] In words that became famous, he described his party as "the party of Lincoln ... which unshackled the necks of four million human beings". He wrote this line on September 12, 1912, in a letter expressing his anxiety over the looming presidential election.[27] He concluded that letter, "I ask that every colored man in the North who has a vote to cast, would cast that vote for the regular Republican Party and thus bury the Democratic Party so deep that there will not be seen even a bubble coming from the spot where the burial took place."[28]
State politics

Smalls was a delegate at the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention where he was a part of the effort to make free, compulsory schooling available to all South Carolina children.[19] He also served as a delegate at several Republican National Conventions; he also participated in the South Carolina Republican State conventions.

In 1868, Smalls was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. He was very effective, and introduced the Homestead Act and introduced and worked to pass the Civil Rights bill. In 1870, Jonathan Jasper Wright was elected judge of the South Carolina Supreme Court and Smalls was elected to fill his unexpired time in the Senate. He continued in the Senate, winning the 1872 election against W. J. Whipper. In the senate he was considered a very good speaker and debater. He was on the Finance Committee and chairman of the Public Printing Committee.[29][19]

He was a delegate to the National Republican Conventions in 1872 in Philadelphia, which nominated Grant for president; and in 1876 in Cincinnati, which nominated Hayes; and in 1884 in Chicago, which nominated Blaine[29]—and then continuously to all conventions until 1896.[30] He was also elected vice-president of the South Carolina Republican Party at their 1872 state convention.

In 1873, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Third Regiment, South Carolina State Militia. He was later promoted to brigadier-general of the Second Brigade, South Carolina Militia, and the major-general of the Second Division, South Carolina State Militia. He held this position until 1877, when Democrats took control of the state government.[29][19]

National politics

In 1874, Smalls was elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served two terms from 1875 to 1879. From 1882 to 1883 he represented South Carolina's 5th congressional district in the House. The state legislature gerrymandered to change the district boundaries, including Beaufort and other heavily black, coastal areas in South Carolina's 7th congressional district, giving the others substantial white majorities. Smalls was elected from the 7th district and served from 1884 to 1887. He was a member of the 44th, 45th, 47th, 48th, 49th U.S. Congresses.[2]

In 1875, he opposed the transfer of troops out of the South, fearing the effect of such a move on the safety of blacks in the South.[18] During consideration of a bill to reduce and restructure the United States Army, Smalls introduced an amendment that "Hereafter in the enlistment of men in the Army ... no distinction whatsoever shall be made on account of race or color." However, the amendment was not considered by Congress. He was the last Republican elected from the 5th district until 2010 when Mick Mulvaney took office. He was the second-longest serving African-American member of Congress (behind his contemporary Joseph Rainey) until the mid-20th century.[2]

After the Compromise of 1877, the U.S. government withdrew its remaining forces from South Carolina and other Southern states. Conservative Southern Bourbon Democrats, who called themselves the Redeemers, had resorted to violence and election fraud to regain control of the state legislature. As part of wide-ranging white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years earlier in connection with the awarding of a printing contract. He was pardoned as part of an agreement by which charges were also dropped against Democrats accused of election fraud.[30]

The scandal took a political toll, and he was defeated by Democrat George D. Tillman in the senate election in 1878, and again, narrowly, in 1880. He successfully contested the 1880 result and regained the seat in 1882. In 1884 he was elected to fill a seat in a different district. He was nominated for Senate but defeated by Wade Hampton in 1886. During this period in Congress he supported racial integration legislation, supported a pension for the widow of his former Major General, David Hunter, and advised South Carolina blacks to refrain from emigrating to the North and Midwest or to Liberia.[18]

In 1890 he was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as collector of the Port of Beaufort, which he held until 1913 except during Democrat Grover Cleveland's second term.[2] Smalls was active into the twentieth century. He was a delegate to the 1895 South Carolina constitutional convention. Together with five other black politicians, he strongly opposed white Democratic efforts that year to disfranchise black citizens. They wrote an article for the New York World to publicize the issues, but the state constitution was ratified. It and similar constitutions across the South for some time passed challenges that reached the US Supreme Court, resulting in the exclusion of African Americans from politics across the South and crippling of the Republican Party in the region.

In the late 1890s he began to suffer from diabetes. He turned down an offer of a colonelcy of a black regiment in the Spanish–American War and to the post of minister to Liberia.
Local politics

Though Smalls was not officially involved with politics on the local level, he did, nevertheless have some influence. In 1913, in one of his final actions as community leader, he played an important role in stopping a lynch mob from killing two black suspects in the murder of a white man. He pressured the mayor, saying that blacks he had sent throughout the city would burn the town down if the mob was not stopped. The mayor and sheriff stopped the mob.[18]

Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75.[19] He was buried in his family's plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort. The monument to Smalls in this churchyard is inscribed with a statement he made to the South Carolina legislature in 1895: "My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life."[32][33

February 11, 2019

Gov. Ralph Northam Calls Slaves 'Indentured Servants' In Interview, Gets Corrected

Gov. Ralph Northam Calls Slaves ‘Indentured Servants’ In Interview, Gets Corrected
Northam was swiftly corrected by “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King.

By Amy Russo and Hayley Miller

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ralph-northam-indentured-servants_us_5c61151ae4b0f9e1b17f0417

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was corrected mid-interview for calling slaves “indentured servants.”

While speaking with “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King, the scandal-plagued Democrat was prompted to discuss his experience in dealing with his own public admission to having worn blackface in 1984.

“We are now at the 400-year anniversary — just 90 miles from here in 1619, the first indentured servants from Africa landed on our shores in Old Point Comfort, what we call now Fort Monroe ― ” Northam began before he was swiftly corrected by King.

“Also known as slavery,” she interrupted.

Northam, nodding in agreement, responded, “Yes.”

<snip>

Indentured servants were men and women who signed a contract that stipulated they would come to America and work for a certain number of years in exchange for passage, room, board and freedom dues. Slaves were brought here ― against their will ― and forced to work without any hope of gaining freedom. Those slaves who chose to flee their “masters” were beaten, starved or killed.

Northam responded to his “indentured servants” remark with a statement saying he was “still learning and committed to getting it right.”

<snip>

“Virginia needs someone that can heal,” he told King. “There’s no better person to do that than a doctor. Virginia also needs someone who is strong, who has empathy, who has courage and who has a moral compass. And that’s why I’m not going anywhere.”

Northam said he’s learned several things since the controversy began unfolding, including that he was “born into white privilege” and that the use of blackface is offensive.

“Yes, I knew it in the past,” he said. “But reality has really set in.”

King pressed him on his apparent revelation about blackface. “You didn’t know the history, know that it was offensive before?” she asked.

?We’re all on a learning curve,” Northam responded. “Certainly, Ms. King, I’m not the same person now at age 59 that I was back in my early 20s.”

He added: “I don’t have any excuses for what I did in my early life.” But I can just tell you that I have learned. I have a lot more to learn. I’m a better person.”

<snip>

Northam’s tenure took a turn at the beginning of February, when an image surfaced from his medical school yearbook showing two men side by side ― one in blackface and the other in a Ku Klux Klan uniform. The governor initially admitted to being one of the individuals pictured, then changed his story, claiming he wasn’t in that particular photo but wore blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume in a dance competition that same year.

<snip>


It just gets deeper and he's doing all the digging.

February 11, 2019

Back History: day 11 - We can do it!

Every share makes Black Voice louder!

https://blackmattersus.com/34074-black-history-detroit-housewives-league/

The 3rd Sunday in May is a special day in Black history when we celebrate the founder of the Detroit Housewives League, Fannie Peck.

“It was an attempt by African-American women to essentially try to expand the job market for all African Americans in Detroit by boosting the businesses, Black-owned businesses, and pressuring white-owned businesses to hire African American workers,” Victoria Wolcott, the author of Remaking Respectability: African-American Women in Interwar Detroit said.

Hear @VWidgeon discuss the Detroit Housewives League, 1930s community-based response to unemployment, discriminationhttps://t.co/JaHpKmw5Ye

— Todd Michney (@ToddMichney) May 27, 2017

In the beginning of the twentieth century, African-Americans arrived at Detroit’s Michigan Central Station in huge numbers. It was a part of the Great Migration of Blacks who escaped the South in search of improved economic and political conditions in the urban North. The most significant of these migrants have been the male industrial workers who found jobs in city car production. African-American women have largely been absent from usual stories concerning the Great Migration because they didn’t work at the plants and thus go unnoticed. telling the stories of these women, Victoria Wolcott reveals their vital role in shaping life in interwar Detroit.

“Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work: 1932 Housewives’ League of Detroithttps://t.co/vXQh2Z4eEp@NAACP @Essence

— Jerome Reide (@JeromeReide) March 29, 2017

In 1930s Black women couldn’t afford to stay at home and wait for their husbands. Too many businesses would sell goods and services to Black people but wouldn’t hire them. So in 1930 Detroit women led by Fannie Peck formed a group called the “Detroit Housewives’ League.” It educated women on their buying power and encouraged them to only shop at African-American owned businesses. The group was also initiating big protests and boycotts.

In 1935 they set a huge packing warehouse on fire protesting against high prices, and later joined thousands of Chicago housewives in a march that shut down the city’s entire meat industry.

Black Meatpackers: The Detroit Housewives’ League took on the meat packing industry itself. In 1935, they burned a huge packinghouse. pic.twitter.com/83c8pWaS1M

— The Gist Of Freedom (@Gistoffreedom) December 17, 2016

The initiative became popular and similar groups started to appear all across the country as local chapters a National Housewives’ League of America.

Over the years the Detroit group helped to create over 70,000 jobs for Blacks, both men and women and started to patronize the White businesses that employed African-Americans.

“Real Detroit Housewives League" 9,000+ members: Shut The Meat Industry Down in 1935! | Created 70,000 jobs for Blacks. pic.twitter.com/NisNlr3Yxf

— The Gist Of Freedom (@Gistoffreedom) July 9, 2016

However, the 3rd Sunday in May was a special day in Black history, it was set aside to celebrate the founder of the organization Fannie Peck.

February 10, 2019

Ivanka Trump: Father 'Had No Involvement' In Security Clearances

Source: Huffpo


Ivanka Trump: Father ‘Had No Involvement’ In Security Clearances For Her, Kushner
Trump said the president had nothing to do with the matter.

By Amy Russo


<snip>

In an ABC News interview released Friday, Trump told the network’s Abby Huntsman there were “absolutely not” any special considerations granted to her.

“There were anonymous leaks about there being issues, but the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance, zero,” she said.

Trump and Kushner previously held temporary clearances for more than a year and a half while waiting for background checks to wrap up. In May, top clearance was approved for Trump and Kushner’s was restored.

<snip>

Meanwhile the clearances have been the target of criticism from Democrats, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) who has launched an investigation into the handling of classified information by President Donald Trump’s transition team and the White House.

Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ivanka-trump-kushner-security-clearances_us_5c5fe99de4b0f9e1b17dff28

---

Lies as well a cheetolini.

February 10, 2019

Black History: Day 10 - On Staten Island, one of NYC's oldest African American enclaves is preserved

On Staten Island, one of NYC's oldest African American enclaves is preserved
Remnants of Sandy Ground, a community for free blacks on the island’s south shore, can be found to this day

By Lisa M. Santoro Feb 22, 2017, 3:00pm EST

https://ny.curbed.com/2017/2/22/14700782/staten-island-sandy-ground-history
The cemetery of Rossville’s AME Zion Church is a New York City landmark Nathan Kensinger

New York City has always been a collection of diverse communities—and while many have since been paved over or transformed into new neighborhoods, in some places, visible remnants of the past remain. One such place is Staten Island’s Sandy Ground, which—along with Seneca Village, established in 1825 and located in Manhattan, and Weeksville, established in 1838 and located in present-day Crown Heights—was one of three prominent communities that free blacks called home in New York in the pre-Civil War era.

Located on the Staten Island’s south shore, Sandy Ground first appeared on records dating back to 1799, its name referring to the rich soil found throughout the area. Land ownership records show that the first African American residents purchased land in the area as early as 1828. The first documented owner, John Jackson, purchased 2.5 acres; he would later go ont to operate the Lewis Columbia, a ferry that provided service between Rossville and Manhattan—the only direct mode of transportation at that time.

Beginning in the 1840s, several African American families migrated to Sandy Ground from Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay area. Although a slave state, Maryland’s population did include free blacks, many of whom were involved in the area’s oyster trade. But laws passed in the 1830s imposed harsh restrictions that limited—and in some cases prohibited—their activities. As a result, they relocated to oyster-rich Staten Island.

One of the community’s greatest assets was the Rossville AME Zion Church, founded in 1850 and later housed in a “plain wooden structure” that erected in 1854 on Crabtree Avenue. It was one of several AME Zion Churches in the city at the time—members of its various congregations included Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth—and the Rossville AME had its share of notable members, including Reverend Thomas James, famed abolitionist and civil rights leader. It also, most famously, served as a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War.
Image via Landmarks Preservation Commission

The church’s most prominent pastor, Reverend Florence Spearing Randolph, was a minister, missionary, suffragist, lecturer, organizer, and temperance worker. In addition Sunday services, the church also hosted myriad fundraising and social events, summer camp meetings, concerts, and dances. It was more than just a church; it was the hub around which the entire community was centered.

As the congregation expanded, a larger church was needed. The new AME Zion Church was built in 1897 by the local Swedish-born builder-developer Andrew Abrams at a total cost of $5,000 (including furnishings). The building was a “simple vernacular gable-roofed frame structure” with a front porch, an angled bay at the rear, and “a no longer extant Gothic Revival bell tower,” per the Landmarks Preservation Commission Designation from 2011.

Today’s building has been re-clad in faux brick siding, but has retained its original form and exterior layout. Although the original church building no longer stands (evidence suggests that it was likely demolished during the 1930s), its cemetery still exists, with more than 30 grave stones dating back to the community’s earliest days.

During its late-19th-century heyday, Sandy Ground contained more than 50 homes, some of which are now New York City landmarks. One of these, the Reverend Isaac Coleman and Rebecca Gray Coleman House, may date back to 1859. The house was purchased by Reverend Isaac Coleman, the sixth pastor of the AME Zion Church, in 1864; yet, he would only live here for one year before relocating to Williamsburg, Brooklyn (but his wife and his descendants stuck around).

Although this house originally resembled the style of an 18th century Dutch-American farmhouse, it is difficult to discern this now—it’s gotten many updates and alterations. The Baymen’s Cottages, built between 1887 and 1898, are another landmark; these nearly identical homes were built to house workers in the oyster trade during Sandy Ground’s heyday.
Reverend Isaac Coleman and Rebecca Gray Coleman House Peter Greenberg/Wikimedia Commons

Yet that commodity, which made many in Sandy Ground prosperous, would eventually lead to its decline. Several factors led to the demise of the oyster trade in Staten Island: depletion due to overfishing, heavy pollution, the effects of localized industrialization, and so on. But an outbreak of typhoid due to consuming polluted oysters led to the closure of the oyster beds in 1916. The area suffered treacherous fires in 1930 and 1963 that destroyed much of the property in the community, leading to a downturn.

And yet, despite these hardships, Sandy Ground still boasts a thriving community—many of whom are descendants from those who inhabited the area a century before. The Rossville church is still an active part of the community, providing Sunday services, community services, classes, and an annual barbecue.

In addition, the Sandy Ground Historical Museum offers a glimpse into the history of the area through guided tours, exhibits, activities, and lectures. On display are artifacts from the early history of the area, including art, quilts, letters, photographs, and rare books. Operated by the Sandy Ground Historical Society, the museum’s most popular event is its annual festival which brings together residents, visitors and descendants of Sandy Ground to celebrate black history and culture.

Given the amount of destruction and construction that has taken place on Staten Island’s south shore, it’s truly lucky that Sandy Ground still exists today. Through concerted preservation efforts and continued involvement from the community, it seems likely that Sandy Ground’s lasting legacy will continue to endure for generations to come.




Joseph Mitchell wrote an amazing piece about this community in 1956 called 'Mr Hunter's Grave" in the New Yorker in 1956. I am reading a book called 'The Bottom of the Harbor' where its included. When I'm done sometime this week, I'd be glad to send it to anyone who would like to read and pass it on to someone else.


First four paragraphs:

hen things get too much for me, I put a wild-flower book and a couple of sandwiches in my pockets and go down to the South Shore of Staten Island and wander around awhile in one of the old cemeteries down there. I go to the cemetery of the Woodrow Methodist Church on Woodrow Road in the Woodrow community, or to the cemetery of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on the Arthur Kill Road in the Rossville community, or to one on the Arthur Kill Road on the outskirts of Rossville that isn’t used any longer and is known as the old Rossville burying ground. The South Shore is the most rural part of the island, and all of these cemeteries are bordered on at least two sides by woods. Scrub trees grow on some of the graves, and weeds and wild flowers grow on many of them. Here and there, in order to see the design on a gravestone, it is necessary to pull aside a tangle of vines. The older gravestones are made of slate, brownstone, and marble, and the designs on them—death’s-heads, angels, hourglasses, hands pointing upward, recumbent lambs, anchors, lilies, weeping willows, and roses on broken stems—are beautifully carved. The names on the gravestones are mainly Dutch, such as Winant, Housman, Woglom, Decker, and Van Name, or Huguenot, such as Dissosway, Seguine, De Hart, Manee, and Sharrott, or English, such as Ross, Drake, Bush, Cole, and Clay. All of the old South Shore farming and oyster-planting families are represented, and members of half a dozen generations of some families lie side by side. In St. Luke’s cemetery there is a huge old apple tree that drops a sprinkling of small, wormy, lopsided apples on the graves beneath it every September, and in the Woodrow Methodist cemetery there is a patch of wild strawberries. Invariably, for some reason I don’t know and don’t want to know, after I have spent an hour or so in one of these cemeteries, looking at gravestone designs and reading inscriptions and identifying wild flowers and scaring rabbits out of the weeds and reflecting on the end that awaits me and awaits us all, my spirits lift, I become quite cheerful, and then I go for a long walk. Sometimes I walk along the Arthur Kill, the tidal creek that separates Staten Island from New Jersey; to old-time Staten Islanders, this is “the inside shore.” Sometimes I go over on the ocean side, and walk along Raritan Bay; this is “the outside shore.” The interior of the South Shore is crisscrossed with back roads, and sometimes I walk along one of them, leaving it now and then to explore an old field or a swamp or a stretch of woods or a clay pit or an abandoned farmhouse.

The back road that I know best is Bloomingdale Road. It is an old oyster-shell road that has been thinly paved with asphalt; the asphalt is cracked and pocked and rutted. It starts at the Arthur Kill, just below Rossville, runs inland for two and a half miles, gently uphill most of the way, and ends at Amboy Road in the Pleasant Plains community. In times past, it was lined with small farms that grew vegetables, berries, and fruit for Washington Market. During the depression, some of the farmers got discouraged and quit. Then, during the war, acid fumes from the stacks of smelting plants on the New Jersey side of the kill began to drift across and ruin crops, and others got discouraged and quit. Only three farms are left, and one of these is a goat farm. Many of the old fields have been taken over by sassafras, gray birch, blackjack oak, sumac, and other wasteland trees, and by reed grass, blue-bent grass, and poison ivy. In several fields, in the midst of this growth, are old woodpecker-ringed apple and pear trees, the remnants of orchards. I have great admiration for one of these trees, a pear of some old-fashioned variety whose name none of the remaining farmers can remember, and every time I go up Bloomingdale Road I jump a ditch and pick my way through a thicket of poison ivy and visit it. Its trunk is hollow and its bark is matted with lichens and it has only three live limbs, but in favorable years it still brings forth a few pears

In the space of less than a quarter of a mile, midway in its length, Bloomingdale Road is joined at right angles by three other back roads—Woodrow Road, Clay Pit Road, and Sharrott’s Road. Around the junctions of these roads, and on lanes leading off them, is a community that was something of a mystery to me until quite recently. It is a Negro community, and it consists of forty or fifty Southern-looking frame dwellings and a frame church. The church is painted white, and it has purple, green, and amber windowpanes. A sign over the door says, “AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL ZION.” On one side of the church steps is a mock-orange bush, and on the other side is a Southern dooryard plant called Spanish bayonet, a kind of yucca. Five cedar trees grow in the churchyard. The majority of the dwellings appear to be between fifty and a hundred years old. Some are long and narrow, with a chimney at each end and a low porch across the front, and some are big and rambling, with wings and ells and lean-tos and front porches and side porches. Good pine lumber and good plain carpentry went into them, and it is obvious that attempts have been made to keep them up. Nevertheless, all but a few are beginning to look dilapidated. Some of the roofs sag, and banisters are missing on some of the porches, and a good many rotted-out clapboards have been replaced with new boards that don’t match, or with strips of tin. The odd thing about the community is it usually has an empty look, as if everybody had locked up and gone off somewhere. In the summer, I have occasionally seen an old man or an old woman sitting on a porch, and I have occasionally seen children playing in a back yard, but I have seldom seen any young or middle-aged men or women around, and I have often walked through the main part of the community, the part that is on Bloomingdale Road, without seeing a single soul.

For years, I kept intending to find out something about this community, and one afternoon several weeks ago, in St. Luke’s cemetery in Rossville, an opportunity to do so presented itself.

I had been in the cemetery a couple of hours and was getting ready to leave when a weed caught my eye. It was a stringy weed, about a foot high, and it had small, lanceolate leaves and tiny white flowers and tiny seed pods, and it was growing on the grave of Rachel Dissosway, who died on April 7, 1802, “in the 27th Yr of her Age.” I consulted my wild-flower book, and came to the conclusion that it was either peppergrass (Lepidium virginicum) or shepherd’s-purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris), and squatted down to take a closer look at it. “One of the characteristics of peppergrass,” the wild-flower book said, “is that its seed pods are as hot as pepper when chewed.” I deliberated on this for a minute or two, and then curiosity got the better of me and I stripped off some of the seed pods and started to put them in my mouth, and at just that moment I heard footsteps on the cemetery path and looked up and saw a man approaching, a middle-aged man in a black suit and a clerical collar He came over to the grave and looked down at me.

“What in the world are you doing?” he asked.

I tossed the seed pods on the grave and got to my feet. “I’m studying wild flowers, I guess you might call it,” I said. I introduced myself, and we shook hands, and he said that he was the rector of St. Luke’s and that his name was Raymond E. Brock.

<snip>

February 9, 2019

Black History: day 9 - Kigeli IV Rwabugiri

Kigeli IV of Rwanda
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kigeli_IV_of_Rwanda



Kigeli IV Rwabugiri was the king (mwami) of the Kingdom of Rwanda in late 19th century. He was a Tutsi with the birth name Rwabugiri. He was the first King in Rwanda's history to come into contact with Europeans. He established an army equipped with guns he obtained from Germans and prohibited most foreigners especially Arabs from entering his kingdom.

Rwabugiri held authority in 1853–1895.

By the end of Rwabugiri's rule, Rwanda was divided into a standardized structure of provinces, districts, hills and neighborhoods administered by a hierarchy of chiefs predominantly Tutsi at the higher levels and with a greater degree of mutual participation by Hutus.

He defended the current borders of the Rwanda kingdom against invading neighboring kingdoms, slave traders and Europeans. Rwabugiri was a warrior King and is regarded as one of Rwanda's most powerful kings. Some Rwandans see him as the last true King of Rwanda due to the tragic assassination of his successor son Rutarindwa and coup by his stepmother Kanjogera who installed her son Musinga.[2] By the beginning of the 20th century, Rwanda was a unified state with a centralized military structure.

https://cdn.britannica.com/s:190x500/85/37785-004-F43D3092.jpg

February 8, 2019

Black History month: Day 8 - Taking on the Luftwaffe

Pilots of the 15th USAF in Italy





https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-L83EAimcP3E/TzNxi8xh55I/AAAAAAAADUA/n5na4TJBOYg/s1600/Tuskegee+Airmen.jpg

Tuskegee airmen

THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN – FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, IN THE AIR AND ON THE GROUND

http://zmblackhistorymonth2012.blogspot.com/2012/02/tuskegee-airmen-fighting-for-freedom-in.html

<snip>

The Tuskegee Airmen

First known as the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps, The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American military aviators in the United States armed forces. During World War II, African-Americans in many U.S. States still were subject to the Jim Crow laws. The American military was racially segregated, as was much of the Federal Government. The Tuskegee Airmen were subject to racial discrimination, both within and outside the army. Despite these adversities, they trained and flew with distinction. Primarily made up of African-Americans, there were also five Tuskegee Airmen who were of Haitian descent. Although the 477th Bombardment Group "worked up" on North American B-25 Mitchell bombers, they never served in combat; the Tuskegee 332nd Fighter Group was the only operational unit, first sent overseas as part of Operation Torch, then in action in Italy, before being deployed as bomber escorts in Europe, where they were particularly successful in virtually all their missions.

Before the Tuskegee Airmen, no African-American had become a U.S. military pilot. In 1917, African-American men had tried to become aerial observers, but were rejected. However, Eugene Bullard, who was actually the first African-American fighter pilot, served as one of the members of the Franco-American Lafayette Escadrille. Nonetheless, he was denied the opportunity to transfer to American military units as a pilot when the other American pilots in the unit were offered the chance. Instead, Eugene returned to infantry duty with the French.


The racially-motivated rejections of World War I African-American recruits sparked over two decades of advocacy by African-Americans – led by civil rights leaders – who wished to enlist and train as military aviators. Finally, on April 3, 1939, Appropriations Bill Public Law 18 was passed by Congress containing an amendment designating funds for training African-American pilots. Tuskegee Airmen refers to all who were involved in the so-called Tuskegee Experiment, the Army Air Corps program to train African-Americans to fly and maintain combat aircraft. The Tuskegee Airmen included pilots, navigators, bombardiers, maintenance and support staff, instructors, and all the personnel who kept the planes in the air. The military selected Tuskegee Institute, in Tuskegee, Alabama, to train pilots because of its commitment to aeronautical training. Tuskegee had the facilities, and engineering and technical instructors, as well as a climate for year round flying. The first Civilian Pilot Training Program students completed their instruction in May 1940.

A further series of legislative moves by the United States Congress, in 1941, forced the Army Air Corps to form an all-black combat unit, despite the War Department's reluctance.

The Tuskegee Program began officially in June 1941 with the 99th Pursuit Squadron at the Tuskegee Institute. The unit consisted of 47 officers and 429 enlisted men, and was backed by an entire service arm. After basic training at Moton Field, they were moved to the nearby Tuskegee Army Air Field.


The budding flight program at Tuskegee received a publicity boost when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt inspected it in March 1941, and subsequently flew with African-American Chief Civilian Instructor, C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson. Anderson, who had been flying since 1929, and was responsible for training thousands of rookie pilots, took his prestigious passenger on a half-hour flight in a Waco Biplane. After landing, she cheerfully announced, "Well, you can fly, all right!"

In May 1943, the 616th Bombardment Squadron was established as the initial subordinate squadron of the 477th Bombardment Group. The squadron was activated in July 1943, only to be deactivated six weeks later. By September of that year, the number of washed-out cadets on base had surged to 286, with few of them working. In January 1944, the 477th Bombardment Group was reactivated.

In all, 996 pilots were trained in Tuskegee from 1941 to 1946, approximately 445 were deployed overseas, and 150 Airmen lost their lives in accidents or combat.The casualty toll included 66 pilots killed in action or accidents, and 32 fallen into captivity, as prisoners of war.

The Tuskegee Airmen were credited by higher commands
with the following accomplishments:

15,533 combat sorties, 311 missions

112 German aircraft destroyed in the air, another 150 on the ground

950 railcars, trucks and other motor vehicles destroyed

One destroyer sunk

A good record of protecting U.S. bombers, losing only 25 on hundreds of missions.



After segregation in the military was ended in 1948, by President Harry S. Truman, with Executive Order 9981, the veteran Tuskegee Airmen found themselves in high demand throughout the newly-formed United States Air Force. Some taught in civilian flight schools, such as the black-owned
Columbia Air Center in Maryland.


On November 6, 1998, President Clinton approved Public Law 105-355, which established the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama, to commemorate and interpret the heroic actions of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. The new site contains a museum and interpretive programs at the historic complex at Moton Field, as well as a national center based on a public-private partnership.

Today, Tuskegee Airmen Inc. (TAI), which is a non-profit organization, with 55 chapters in the United States, works to introduce young Americans to the world of aviation and science, through local and national programs such as Young Eagles and TAI youth programs and activities. It also provides educational assistance to students and awards to deserving individuals, groups and corporations whose deeds lend support to TAI's goals. TAI also supports the Tuskegee Airmen Award presented to deserving cadets in the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Program.

Tuskegee, Alabama is small town, with a population of approx. 12,000. Yet, its fame is great. Some of its famous sons, daughters and institutions are: Rosa Parks, Lionel Ritchie and The Commodores, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and the aforementioned, Tuskegee Institute – now Tuskegee University, which was founded by Booker T. Washington.

February 7, 2019

Black Hisory Month: day 7 Pulling the mask off the Lone Ranger

One in four cowboys was Black, despite the stories told in popular books and movies.

http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/10-black-history-little-known-facts/

In fact, it's believed that the real “Lone Ranger” was inspired by an African American man named Bass Reeves. Reeves had been born a slave but escaped West during the Civil War where he lived in what was then known as Indian Territory. He eventually became a Deputy U.S. Marshal, was a master of disguise, an expert marksman, had a Native American companion, and rode a silver horse. His story was not unique however.

In the 19th century, the Wild West drew enslaved Blacks with the hope of freedom and wages. When the Civil War ended, freedmen came West with the hope of a better life where the demand for skilled labor was high. These African Americans made up at least a quarter of the legendary cowboys who lived dangerous lives facing weather, rattlesnakes, and outlaws while they slept under the stars driving cattle herds to market.

While there was little formal segregation in frontier towns and a great deal of personal freedom, Black cowboys were often expected to do more of the work and the roughest jobs compared to their white counterparts. Loyalty did develop between the cowboys on a drive, but the Black cowboys were typically responsible for breaking the horses and being the first ones to cross flooded streams during cattle drives. In fact, it is believed that the term “cowboy” originated as a derogatory term used to describe Black “cowhands.”



Image: Bass Reeves, The first African-American US Deputy Marshal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Reeves

Bass Reeves (July 1838 – January 12, 1910) was the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River. He worked mostly in Arkansas and the Oklahoma Territory.[a] During his long career, he was credited with arresting more than 3,000 felons. He shot and killed 14 outlaws in self-defense.

Bass Reeves was born into slavery in Crawford County, Arkansas, in 1838.[4][5] He was named after his grandfather, Basse Washington. Reeves and his family were slaves of Arkansas state legislator William Steele Reeves.[4] When Bass was eight (about 1846), William Reeves moved to Grayson County, Texas, near Sherman in the Peters Colony.[4] Bass Reeves may have served William Steele Reeves' son, Colonel George R. Reeves, who was a sheriff and legislator in Texas, and a one-time Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives until his death from rabies in 1882.[6]

During the American Civil War, Bass beat up George Reeves to get out of slavery[5][6][7] Bass fled north into the Indian Territory. There he lived with the Cherokee, Seminole, and Creek Indians, learning their languages, until he was freed by the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, in 1865.[6]

As a freedman, Reeves moved to Arkansas and farmed near Van Buren. He married Nellie Jennie from Texas, with whom he had 11 children.[8]
Career

Reeves and his family farmed until 1875, when Isaac Parker was appointed federal judge for the Indian Territory. Parker appointed James F. Fagan as U.S. marshal, directing him to hire 200 deputy U.S. marshals. Fagan had heard about Reeves, who knew the Indian Territory and could speak several Indian languages.[8] He recruited him as a deputy; Reeves was the first black deputy to serve west of the Mississippi River.[5][8] Reeves was initially assigned as a deputy U.S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas, which had responsibility also for the Indian Territory.[9] He served there until 1893. That year he transferred to the Eastern District of Texas in Paris, Texas, for a short while. In 1897, he was transferred again, serving at the Muskogee Federal Court in the Indian Territory.[9]

Reeves worked for 32 years as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory, and became one of Judge Parker's most valued deputies. Reeves brought in some of the most dangerous criminals of the time, but was never wounded, despite having his hat and belt shot off on separate occasions.[5]

In addition to being a marksman with a rifle and pistol, Reeves developed superior detective skills during his long career. When he retired in 1907, Reeves claimed to have arrested over 3,000 felons.[5][8] He is said to have shot and killed 14 outlaws to defend his own life.[8]

Once, he had to arrest his own son for murder.[5] One of his sons, Bennie Reeves, was charged with the murder of his wife. Deputy Marshal Reeves was disturbed and shaken by the incident, but allegedly demanded the responsibility of bringing Bennie to justice. Bennie was eventually tracked and captured, tried, and convicted. He served his time in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas before being released, and reportedly lived the rest of his life as a responsible and model citizen.[5]

When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Bass Reeves, then 68, became an officer of the Muskogee Police Department.[5] He served for two years before he became ill and retired.[8]
Personal life and final years

Reeves was himself once charged with murdering a posse cook. At his trial before Judge Parker, Reeves was represented by former United States Attorney W.H.H. Clayton, who was a colleague and friend. Reeves was acquitted.[10]

Reeves' health began to fail further after retiring. He died of Bright's disease (nephritis) in 1910.[8]

He was a great-uncle of Paul L. Brady, who became the first black man appointed as a federal administrative law judge in 1972.[11]
Legacy

In 2011, the US-62 Bridge, which spans the Arkansas River between Muskogee and Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, was renamed the Bass Reeves Memorial Bridge.[12]

In May 2012, a bronze statue of Reeves by Oklahoma sculptor Harold Holden was erected in Pendergraft Park in Fort Smith, Arkansas.[13]

In 2013, he was inducted into the Texas Trail of Fame.[14]

February 6, 2019

Regarding blackface ...

Well, then there'd be no blackface anymore. Blackface is about trivializing the black experience. Its about making people into cartoons images.