10 Things You Should Know About Slavery and Won’t Learn at ‘Django’
Consequently, here’s my top-10 list of things everyone should know about the economic roots of slavery.
1) Slavery laid the foundation for the modern international economic system.
The massive infrastructure required to move 8 to 10 million Africans halfway around the world built entire cities in England and France, such as Liverpool, Manchester and Bordeaux. It was key to London’s emergence as a global capital of commerce, and spurred New York’s rise as a center of finance. The industry to construct, fund, staff, and administer the thousands of ships which made close to 50,000 individual voyages was alone a herculean task. The international financial and distribution networks required to coordinate, maintain and profit from slavery set the framework for the modern global economy.2) Africans’ economic skills were a leading reason for their enslavement.
Africans possessed unique expertise which Europeans required to make their colonial ventures successful. Africans knew how to grow and cultivate crops in tropical and semi-tropical climates. African rice growers, for instance, were captured in order to bring their agricultural knowledge to America’s sea islands and those of the Caribbean. Many West African civilizations possessed goldsmiths and expert metal workers on a grand scale. These slaves were snatched to work in Spanish and Portuguese gold and silver mines throughout Central and South America. Contrary to the myth of unskilled labor, large numbers of Africans were anything but.3) African know-how transformed slave economies into some of the wealthiest on the planet.
The fruits of the slave trade funded the growth of global empires. The greatest source of wealth for imperial France was the “white gold” of sugar produced by Africans in Haiti. More riches flowed to Britain from the slave economy of Jamaica than all of the original American 13 colonies combined. Those resources underwrote the Industrial Revolution and vast improvements in Western Europe’s economic infrastructure.4) Until it was destroyed by the Civil War, slavery made the American South the richest and most powerful region in America.
Slavery was a national enterprise, but the economic and political center of gravity during the U.S.’s first incarnation as a slave republic was the South. This was true even during the colonial era. Virginia was its richest colony and George Washington was one of its wealthiest people because of his slaves. The majority of the new country’s presidents and Supreme Court justices were Southerners.However, the invention of the cotton gin took the South’s national economic dominance and transformed it into a global phenomenon. British demand for American cotton, as I have written before, made the southern stretch of the Mississippi River the Silicon Valley of its era. The single largest concentration of America’s millionaires was gathered in plantations along the Mississippi’s banks. The first and only president of the Confederacy—Jefferson Davis—was a Mississippi, millionaire slave holder.
5) Defense of slavery, more than taxes, was pivotal to America’s declaration of independence.
The South had long resisted Northern calls to leave the British Empire. That’s because the South sold most of its slave-produced products to Britain and relied on the British Navy to protect the slave trade. But a court case in England changed all of that. In 1775, a British court ruled that slaves could not be held in the United Kingdom against their will. Fearing that the ruling would apply to the American colonies, the Southern planters swung behind the Northern push for greater autonomy. In 1776, one year later, America left its former colonial master. The issue of slavery was so powerful that it changed the course of history.6) The brutalization and psychological torture of slaves was designed to ensure that plantations stayed in the black financially.
Slave revolts and acts of sabotage were relatively common on Southern plantations. As economic enterprises, the disruption in production was bad for business. Over time a system of oppression emerged to keep things humming along. This centered on singling out slaves for public torture who had either participated in acts of defiance or who tended towards noncompliance. In fact, the most recalcitrant slaves were sent to institutions, such as the “Sugar House” in Charleston, S.C., where cruelty was used to elicit cooperation. Slavery’s most inhumane aspects were just another tool to guarantee the bottom line.7) The economic success of former slaves during Reconstruction led to the rise of the Klu Klux Klan.
In less than 10 years after the end of slavery, blacks created thriving communities and had gained political power—including governorships and Senate seats—across the South. Former slaves, such Atlanta’s Alonzo Herndon, had even become millionaires in the post-war period. But the move towards black economic empowerment had upset the old economic order. Former planters organized themselves into White Citizens Councils and created an armed wing—the Klu Klux Klan—to undermine black economic institutions and to force blacks into sharecropping on unfair terms. Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Warmth of Other Suns”, details the targeting of black individuals, as well as entire black communities, for acts of terror whose purpose was to enforce economic apartheid.8) The desire to maintain economic oppression is why the South was one of the most anti-tax regions of the nation.
Before the Civil War, the South routinely blocked national infrastructure protects. These plans, focused on Northern and Western states, would have moved non-slave goods to market quickly and cheaply. The South worried that such investments would increase the power of the free-labor economy and hurt their own, which was based on slavery. Moreover, the South was vehemently opposed to taxes even to improve the lives of non-slaveholding white citizens. The first public school in the North, Boston Latin, opened its doors in the mid-1600s. The first public school in the South opened 200 years later. Maintenance of slavery was the South’s top priority to the detriment of everything else.9) Many firms on Wall Street made fortunes from funding the slave trade.
Investment in slavery was one of the most profitable economic activities throughout most of New York’s 350 year history. Much of the financing for the slave economy flowed through New York banks. Marquis names such as JP Morgan Chase and New York Life all profited greatly from slavery. Lehman Brothers, one of Wall Street’s largest firms until 2008, got its start in the slave economy of Alabama. Slavery was so important to the city that New York was one the most pro-slavery urban municipalities in the North.10) The wealth gap between whites and blacks, the result of slavery, has yet to be closed.
The total value of slaves, or “property” as they were then known, could exceed $12 million in today’s dollars on the largest plantations. With land, machinery, crops and buildings added in, the wealth of southern agricultural enterprises was truly astronomical. Yet when slavery ended, the people that generated the wealth received nothing.The country has struggled with the implications of this inequity ever since. With policy changes in Washington since 1865, sometimes this economic gulf has narrowed and sometimes it’s widened, but the economic difference has never been erased. Today, the wealth gap between whites and blacks is the largest recorded since records began to be kept three decades ago.
Definitely didn’t know a bunch of this.
![pyrrhiccomedy:
thedorkages:
Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1280.
The maritime plan of most of human civilization during our period went as follows:
Get boats.
Put weapons on boats.
Conquer neighboring countries either by military force or by overwhelming trade dominance.
Instagram shots of you in front of London/Indrapura/Mogadishu.
Go home.
The Polynesians, on the other hand, appeared to have a different plan:
Build canoes.
Sail out into the open ocean for four thousand miles.
???
Sweet, Hawai’i!
As the world looked on in tolerant, baffled wonder for thousands of years [sidebar on Vikings], Polynesians repeated steps 1-4, especially step 3, which when you peeled off the little sticker with the question marks turned out to be “employ an array of sophisticated navigational techniques which remain in cultural transmission and even active use today. Also, when you reach an island, use an equally sophisticated array of terraforming techniques to make an unfamiliar landscape ecologically viable for human life. Also, eat a balanced diet, because scurvy is for white people.”
The Polynesians did their eastern Pacific exploration around our period, and may have settled Easter Island and Hawai’i around then, too, if not a little earlier. Polynesian colonies were set up on little stubs of volcanic rock, hideously isolated archipelagos, even sub-polar islands. They probably hung out with medieval Peruvians, or at least, they made enough American contact to get ahold of sweet potatoes. [Sidebar on sweet potatoes.] And they found New Zealand, and settled in, and those who stuck around became the Māori.
And then hundreds of years later the islands of the Polynesian triangle were conquered by Europeans and the Europeans did their damndest to put that little ??? sticker back on the four-part plan, because, you know, people without shirts could not possibly be world explorers. But we do not have to listen to them. When I said those navigational techniques are still in use today, I mean literally, today, because in August of this year a group of Maori sailors took off from New Zealand for Rapa Nui, the last leg of the Polynesian triangle that no one’s completed in the modern era, and according to their website they should be landing, in, like, twelve hours, if they haven’t already.
???](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me9ghrFW7K1qlf8m2o1_1280.jpg)
Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1280.
The maritime plan of most of human civilization during our period went as follows:
- Get boats.
- Put weapons on boats.
- Conquer neighboring countries either by military force or by overwhelming trade dominance.
- Instagram shots of you in front of London/Indrapura/Mogadishu.
- Go home.
The Polynesians, on the other hand, appeared to have a different plan:
- Build canoes.
- Sail out into the open ocean for four thousand miles.
- ???
- Sweet, Hawai’i!
As the world looked on in tolerant, baffled wonder for thousands of years [sidebar on Vikings], Polynesians repeated steps 1-4, especially step 3, which when you peeled off the little sticker with the question marks turned out to be “employ an array of sophisticated navigational techniques which remain in cultural transmission and even active use today. Also, when you reach an island, use an equally sophisticated array of terraforming techniques to make an unfamiliar landscape ecologically viable for human life. Also, eat a balanced diet, because scurvy is for white people.”
The Polynesians did their eastern Pacific exploration around our period, and may have settled Easter Island and Hawai’i around then, too, if not a little earlier. Polynesian colonies were set up on little stubs of volcanic rock, hideously isolated archipelagos, even sub-polar islands. They probably hung out with medieval Peruvians, or at least, they made enough American contact to get ahold of sweet potatoes. [Sidebar on sweet potatoes.] And they found New Zealand, and settled in, and those who stuck around became the Māori.
And then hundreds of years later the islands of the Polynesian triangle were conquered by Europeans and the Europeans did their damndest to put that little ??? sticker back on the four-part plan, because, you know, people without shirts could not possibly be world explorers. But we do not have to listen to them. When I said those navigational techniques are still in use today, I mean literally, today, because in August of this year a group of Maori sailors took off from New Zealand for Rapa Nui, the last leg of the Polynesian triangle that no one’s completed in the modern era, and according to their website they should be landing, in, like, twelve hours, if they haven’t already.
???
Wise words of the former world-famous professional boxer Muhammad Ali. In an era defined by endless war—when he was drafted and was told that he must fight the communists—his reply was, “No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger”. Consequently, Ali was stripped of his title, expelled from boxing and sentenced to five years in prison.
gonna quote ali more here because it’s some brutal fucking truth.
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”
Sandi Toksvig
I’m taking a class called The Archaeology of Sex and Gender (I’m an anthropology and art history major), and we were studying female figurines from the Neolithic era. Some girl in my class brought up the point that when male figurines with giant phalli were discovered, they were interpreted by academics as symbols of power. When female figures with giant vulvas were discovered, they were interpreted by academics as symbols of fertility. “Why can’t the giant vulva be a symbol of power too?” she asked.
It blew my mind and reaffirmed my decision to study anthropology and art history.
(via strugglingtobeheard)
This reminds me of a conversation a friend and I had recently about our work. She’s in the very early stages of writing her dissertation on scribes in early medieval England, specifically female scribes. One of the things we vented about was the universal assumption that men copied the vast majority of manuscripts in the period, when there’s actually very, very little evidence to suggest that level of exclusivity. There are very few manuscripts we know for a fact were copied by men, and most are anonymous. And if you look at the nature of religious institutions in England and the status of women between 700-1000ish,
1.) quite a few monasteries were founded by aristocratic women;
2.) many were dual houses, which housed both male and female religious, and some of those houses were politically influential—and also headed by women—and thus were likely to have access to good libraries;
3.) there is evidence that women in important institutions were reading and writing correspondence in Latin; and
4.) there is also evidence that noble women were patrons of book production and literate themselves (in the vernacular if not in Latin), because wills from the period survive in which women bequeath their libraries to various people. None of this is concrete, but I don’t think it’s a leap to argue that it’s almost just as likely any given anonymous copyist could as easily be a woman as a man. But in manuscript studies, the assumption is always that, unless the text might have some “obvious” interest to women, the copyist is a man. Which is pretty damn ridiculous, and just another reminder that the effacement of women’s contributions to civilization and the transmission (and generation!) of knowledge is an ongoing process of willful forgetting, as well as ignorance.
(via dr-wtfox)
I can relate to the statues of women with giant reproductive parts being labeled as “degrading” or “fertility” when I thought it represented power.
Basically not everything revolves around 1950’s middle class/Victorian period gender roles people.
(via sandwichocracy)
The same thing goes in my field (Theology and Biblical Studies) except maybe even more so, because the Bible openly acknowledges women who held a great deal of social and economic power in both the Old and New Testaments- and yet they are routinely glossed over by scholarship and indeed erased in official translations*. We know so comparatively little about Ancient Israel that there’s no overwhelmingly compelling reason to suggest women could not have played a role in the composition of the Tanakh, and the New Testament itself makes explicit the importance of women within the early Christian movement, especially older, educated and wealthy women- so what’s to stop a woman being behind some of the New Testament writings (especially given that so many are disputed in authorship)?
*Easy way to detect if the Bible translation you own has a sexist bias: look up Romans 16:1 and 1 Timothy 3:8. If the former calls Phoebe a “servant” of the church but the latter refers to regulations for “deacons”, congratulations! The translators of your Bible deliberately chose to erase evidence of the ordination of women in the early church! Both verses in fact feature exactly the same word, diakonos, which certainly can mean servant, but is also the word for deacon, an order of Christian ministry that exists to this day.
(via thesixpennybook)
(via aforaffort, learninglog)
(via homoerotics) (via escurochi) (via reesesearcandy)
(via wocsurvivalkit) (via missturdle)
Did you know that Egypt, has the fewest pyramids in Africa?
Did you know that Sudan, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe have more pyramids (225 pyramids in Sudan alone) then all of Egypt.
There are remains of pyramids in South Africa, all the way along the Eastern and Northern parts of Africa and archeologists now believe that they may have found the remains of pyramids in West Africa. Why are we only taught that what is now known as Egypt (that tiny strip of land) is the only place where pyramids are in Africa, when in fact the ENTIRE continent of Africa (nearly 400 pyramids not just the six in Egypt) And Archeologist now believe that the pyramids in southern Africa may be the OLDEST pyramids in the world, followed by The Sudanese and Ethiopian pyramids, the West African pyramid ruins, and the North African Pyramids of so-called Egypt. (And im not even going to get into the fact that there are younger pyramids stretching FROM Africa in China, Italy, Europe and South America) WOW Im Amazed
neffera tiy maat bringing one truth at a time Yaaaaaa
(Source: sarakstar)
March 3rd - On this day in 1857, Britain and France declare war on China, beginning the second Opium War that would last until 1860.
The War began when the Qing Dynasty court rejected the demands from Britain, France, and the US, which included the opening all of China to British merchants, legalising the opium trade, exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties, suppression of piracy, permission for a British ambassador to reside in Beijing and for the English-language version of all treaties to take precedence over the Chinese.
Britain declared war primarliy because of the Arrow Incident; Chinese authorities arrested the crew of the Arrow, a Chinese ship that flew the British flag, on suspicion of smuggling. The British authorities demanded their release, stating that the crew were protected under the Treaty of Nanking. The Chinese refused.
The British House of Commons on 3 March 1857 passed a resolution by 263 to 249 against the Chinese Government.
The Greatest Pirate Who Ever Lived
BY: JOE DORAN （杜乔）
In 1801, a pirate named Zheng Yi was busy raiding Canton. Aside from the prerequisite plundering and rum-drinking, he had given his men one specific order: to break into a local brothel and bring him the prostitute Zheng Yi Sao (郑一嫂), or “Zheng Yi’s wife”.
One might expect a sinister fate to have awaited Zheng Yi Sao upon her deliverance to the pirate captain (rape, swiftly followed by murder, being the most obvious). In actuality, Zheng Yi’s intentions were considerably more gentlemanly.
He intended to marry her. And recognizing that her current future prospects were rather limited, Zheng Yi Sao accepted.
But Zheng Yi Sao didn’t intend on spending the rest of her days as some plunder-hungry pirate’s eye candy. She wanted to become a pirate as well, and she did – one of the greatest pirates to have ever lived.
That first part doesn’t do justice, here read this:
Right from the get-go, Zheng Yi Sao displayed a staggering degree of cunning. She happily accepted Zheng Yi’s proposal, but only on the condition that he share his wealth and power with her, equally. Then, while her new husband went about his pirate duties – further plunder and rum-drinking, presumably – she focused on the business side of things. The result was that in six years, she had engineered an alliance between Zheng Yi and his former pirate rivals, amassed a force of some 1500 ships (called the Red Flag Fleet) and created a swashbuckling empire that extended all the way from Korea to Malaysia.
Zheng Yi certainly knew how to pick ‘em.
Unfortunately, Zheng Yi was killed in 1807 after a misunderstanding with a typhoon. Unfortunate for him, but extremely fortunate for Zheng Yi Sao. Refusing to step aside like a good, diligent widow, Zheng Yi Sao took charge of the Red Flag Fleet, convinced her late husband’s First Mate to support her and swiftly set about making herself the most respected and/or feared individual in all the East.
If films/books/video games have taught us anything, it’s that pirates were a rowdy bunch at the best of times, and their attitudes towards women were…less than progressive. Zheng Yi Sao, of course, was having none of that and quickly established a new pirate code to keep her peg-legged men in line. Anyone who looted a town that had already paid tribute had their head cut off and was dumped in the ocean. Anyone caught, or even suspected, of stealing from the treasury had their head cut off and was dumped in the ocean. Anyone who raped a female prisoner had their head cut off and was dumped in the ocean (there’s a pattern there somewhere).
Needless to say, Zheng Yi Sao was not messing around. Not all her laws were quite so decapitation-happy, though. Ugly female prisoners were to be set free, and when a crewmember purchased one of the prettier captives, he had no choice but to marry her.
But if he was unfaithful…head cut off, dumped in the ocean.
After just one year leading her pirate hegemony, Zheng Yi Sao had formed one of the largest navies on the planet, with some 17,000 men under her command. Extorted tributes from merchants across the Chinese seas and from the coastal towns between Macau and Canton swelled her treasury to staggering levels, and her power was so great that she became the de facto government of the region. No longer was she merely a pirate; she was an entire political entity.
Tomoe Gozen (1157?–1247), was a late twelfth-century concubine of Minamoto no Yoshinaka.
Tomoe was a rare female samurai warrior (onna bugeisha), known for her bravery and strength. She is believed to have fought and survived the Genpei War (1180–1185).
Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot. She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka sent her out as his first captain, equipped with strong armor, an oversized sword, and a mighty bow; and she performed more deeds of valor than any of his other warriors.
— The Tale of the HeikeImage
The shirt on the left belonged to a young man who walked into the CIW’s office in November, 1996. He had been picking tomatoes in a field near Immokalee when he stopped to take a drink of water. A field supervisor accosted him, shouted “Are you here to work, or to drink water?”, and launched into him, leaving him badly bruised and bloodied — and determined to find justice. The young worker walked back to Immokalee, headed straight to the CIW office, and sparked a nighttime march of nearly 500 workers on the crewleader’s house. The marchers brandished his shirt as a banner, declaring “If you beat one of us, you beat us all!”, and helped launch a movement that changed Immokalee forever.
The shirt on the right belonged to a young man who walked into the CIW’s office last week. He had been working at a vegetable packing house, packing eggplants, about 10 miles from Immokalee when a supervisor approached him. According to the worker, the supervisor criticized his work, and he, thinking the criticism unjustified, answered back. A discussion ensued when, according to the worker and a witness, the supervisor hauled off and punched him in the face. Staggered, he swung back, but was knocked to the ground by the supervisor before others in the area stepped in to pull them apart. The worker was told to go home, clean up, and return the next day. Instead, he went to the CIW’s office, and filed a police report. He then went to the hospital, where he learned that the supervisor’s punch had broken his nose.
Do you know where your produce comes from?
(Source: emeraldtriangleprincess)
Wedding Ensemble
c. 1878
The Met says: While white is now de rigueur for bridal attire, the fashion for white wedding gowns originated only in the late 19th century and was not commonplace until the 20th century. This dress is a good example of the more practical 19th century practice of brides wearing colored gowns for weddings. The wedding dresses could then be worn again for other receptions and social events. A well-made and finely-detailed example of the period, this dress would have been described as a “cuirass” or “cuirass style” at the time it was made, a term that refers to the form-fitted bodice. A steel-boned corset helped to achieve the ideal figure for the cuirass style in the 1870s and 1880s.
On Jan. 1, 1981 (when Democrat Jimmy Carter was President) the minimum wage went from $3.10 to $3.35. Nineteen days later, Republican Ronald Reagan became President and the minimum wage didn’t go up again until April 1, 1990.
The minimum wage went up twice under Daddy Bush & twice under President Clinton, but then we had another long-stall…from Sept. 1997 until July 2007, there was no raise.
If you look at the 30-year time period of 1981-2011, you see that 19 of those 30 years went by without an increase in pay for millions of Americans.
This has made the minimum wage no longer a “minimum wage”. And this problem is long overdue to be addressed.
We need a Living Wage in the USA.
![seriesofnonsequiturs:
Gordon Hirabayashi, 1918-2012
“[C]ivil rights hero Gordon Hirabayashi, best known for being one of the few people to openly defy the government’s unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has died. He was 93.
Hirabayashi was arrested, convicted and imprisoned, and eventually appealed his case to the Supreme Court (Hirabayashi vs. United States) — the first challenge to Executive Order 9066. The Court ruled against him, 9-0. However, his wartime convictions were successfully overturned forty years later.”
more](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxd2yiBq441qfk66bo1_250.jpg)
Gordon Hirabayashi, 1918-2012
“[C]ivil rights hero Gordon Hirabayashi, best known for being one of the few people to openly defy the government’s unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has died. He was 93.
Hirabayashi was arrested, convicted and imprisoned, and eventually appealed his case to the Supreme Court (Hirabayashi vs. United States) — the first challenge to Executive Order 9066. The Court ruled against him, 9-0. However, his wartime convictions were successfully overturned forty years later.”
![theillustratednerdgirl:
strugglingtobeheard:
ethiopienne:
steviemcfly:
fromonesurvivortoanother:
theoceanandthesky:
[tw: racism, bombs, explosions]
witchsistah:
queennubian:
socialsociety:
BLACK WALL STREET is not a record label started by The Game.
Black Wall Street was the most prosperous black community in America during the 1920’s located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was known as “Little Africa” or “Black Beverly Hills”, a prime example of racial nationalism. To put into perspective of how money flowed in Black Wall Street, a dollar took 365 DAYS to leave the community, now a dollar leaves an African American Community every 15 MINUTES. The community had hundreds of businesses all negro owned and their motto was “To educate every child”.
June 1, 1921 white supremacists bombed BLACK WALL STREET and killed over 3000 people and destroyed over 600 businesses. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, bank, post office, and most schools were destroyed. The dead were buried in unmarked graves. It wasn’t till 1997 that Oklahoma decided to pass the “1921 Race Riot Reconciliation Act” which provided decedents of that area a free college education.
SMH AT AMERICAN HISTORY
READ THIS. They for sure aren’t teaching this in school. Tell your babies. Share with your students.
For all those “BOOTSTRAPS” bastards.
reblogging for history that i was never taught
As many people were killed that day as on 9/11 and this is the first I’ve heard of it.
Reblogging again for that last comment because I’m in the same boat. I had NEVER heard of this before, and the numbers are the same. I wonder why that is.
And this isn’t the only place something like that happened.
I went to Booker T. Washington H.S. in Tulsa, OK, one of the few buildings that survived the riot, and I feel like this was mentioned maybe once, and incredibly briefly. Nobody wants to talk about this shit. If you try to look back and find old articles about it, you’ll find they’ve been expunged from those old (white-owned) newspapers. And the original reported death toll was something like 26 black people and 13 white people, which is ridiculous. They buried people in mass graves. They dropped bombs on them. They rounded up Greenwood residents at gunpoint and put them in detention centers, some say for protection, but not everybody believes that. Although, with white rioters out committing murder, burning every building in sight and looting businesses and homes, Greenwood was suddenly the least safe place ever to be a black person. Dr. A.C. Jackson was one of the most prominent black physicians in America at the time and he was shot outside his house.
And nobody wants you to know how many people died. The official death toll is still 39. But I’ve read 300, 3000, 3900. Thousands of people were rendered homeless. And the Greenwood district is still there, but it’s no thriving community.
And you know what started it? Aside from a white girl shrieking and a black guy running away? The newspapers ran a story about how there was gonna be a lynch mob outside the courthouse. And the shit of it is, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that there was going to be a lynch mob before the story ran.
But I guess the sick and disgusting truth of it is if hadn’t been that newspaper story it probably would have been something else. At the time of the riot, Tulsa had 3200 Klan members and a thriving black community who dared to succeed in life. Seriously, there were some black people in town who had more money than some white people that was what fueled so much of the violence and looting. How dare they.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx9bzn4iYn1r5d69eo1_500.jpg)
[tw: racism, bombs, explosions]
BLACK WALL STREET is not a record label started by The Game.
Black Wall Street was the most prosperous black community in America during the 1920’s located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was known as “Little Africa” or “Black Beverly Hills”, a prime example of racial nationalism. To put into perspective of how money flowed in Black Wall Street, a dollar took 365 DAYS to leave the community, now a dollar leaves an African American Community every 15 MINUTES. The community had hundreds of businesses all negro owned and their motto was “To educate every child”.
June 1, 1921 white supremacists bombed BLACK WALL STREET and killed over 3000 people and destroyed over 600 businesses. 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, a hospital, bank, post office, and most schools were destroyed. The dead were buried in unmarked graves. It wasn’t till 1997 that Oklahoma decided to pass the “1921 Race Riot Reconciliation Act” which provided decedents of that area a free college education.
SMH AT AMERICAN HISTORY
READ THIS. They for sure aren’t teaching this in school. Tell your babies. Share with your students.
For all those “BOOTSTRAPS” bastards.
reblogging for history that i was never taught
As many people were killed that day as on 9/11 and this is the first I’ve heard of it.
Reblogging again for that last comment because I’m in the same boat. I had NEVER heard of this before, and the numbers are the same. I wonder why that is.
And this isn’t the only place something like that happened.
I went to Booker T. Washington H.S. in Tulsa, OK, one of the few buildings that survived the riot, and I feel like this was mentioned maybe once, and incredibly briefly. Nobody wants to talk about this shit. If you try to look back and find old articles about it, you’ll find they’ve been expunged from those old (white-owned) newspapers. And the original reported death toll was something like 26 black people and 13 white people, which is ridiculous. They buried people in mass graves. They dropped bombs on them. They rounded up Greenwood residents at gunpoint and put them in detention centers, some say for protection, but not everybody believes that. Although, with white rioters out committing murder, burning every building in sight and looting businesses and homes, Greenwood was suddenly the least safe place ever to be a black person. Dr. A.C. Jackson was one of the most prominent black physicians in America at the time and he was shot outside his house.
And nobody wants you to know how many people died. The official death toll is still 39. But I’ve read 300, 3000, 3900. Thousands of people were rendered homeless. And the Greenwood district is still there, but it’s no thriving community.
And you know what started it? Aside from a white girl shrieking and a black guy running away? The newspapers ran a story about how there was gonna be a lynch mob outside the courthouse. And the shit of it is, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that there was going to be a lynch mob before the story ran.
But I guess the sick and disgusting truth of it is if hadn’t been that newspaper story it probably would have been something else. At the time of the riot, Tulsa had 3200 Klan members and a thriving black community who dared to succeed in life. Seriously, there were some black people in town who had more money than some white people that was what fueled so much of the violence and looting. How dare they.
![fyeahasianhistory:
Learning Asian History through Avatar: the Last Airbender - The White Lotus
[Image: A Screenshot from A:TLA - Iroh is standing in the foreground, with Jeong Jeong, Bumi, Pakku, and Piandao in the background, all dressed in ‘Order of the White Lotus Robes’]
While in the Show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Order of the White Lotus (or White Lotus Society) is a secretive all male “Master” group come to help restore balance to the world, that isn’t so far from the real history of the group known as “White Lotus.”
The actual White Lotus Society is (or was) a real Secret Society that led more than one rebellion in China. Obviously being a secret society leaves us with no comparison pictures, but we can paint a pretty interesting picture with what we do know.
The White Lotus is a type of Buddhist sectarianism,
The first signs of the White Lotus Society came during the late thirteenth century. Mongol rule over China, known also by its dynastic name, the Yuan dynasty, prompted small, yet popular demonstrations against its rule. The White Lotus Society took part in some of these protests as they grew into widespread dissent.[1]
The Mongols considered the White Lotus society a heterodox religious sect and banned it, forcing its members to go underground. Now a secret society, the White Lotus became an instrument of quasi-national resistance and religious organization.
From then on, the White Lotus was known to have participated in several different rebellions, one “revolution inspired by the White Lotus society, took shape in 1352” which was part of the Red Turban Revolt,
The 1352 Red Turban revolt, for example, was also linked to the White Lotus Society and drew upon Maitreya Buddhism as well as a mixture of Daoist and Confucian symbols and ideas. This rebellion came to be led by Zhu Yuanzhang, who is perhaps better known by his imperial name Taizu, the first Ming Emperor. Taizu rose through the ranks of the Red Turban forces and, after its leader died while a guest of Taizu, he himself took command. The Red Turban rebellion received widespread public support because it was aimed at the Mongol Yuan dynasty, through which China was governed by the heirs of Genghis and Kublai Khan. In the Yuan dynasty, high positions were mostly denied to ethnic Chinese and reserved for Mongols and others considered to be foreigners. Taizu seized Nanjing and made it his capital and, from there, was able to grasp control over the whole country. The Ming dynasty was vigorous and effective in many ways and certainly appeared to return the country to the will of heaven.
and another known directly as the White Lotus Rebellion:
The White Lotus Rebellion (Chinese: 川楚白莲教起义; pinyin: Chuān chŭ bái lián jiào qǐ yì, 1796–1804) was a rebellion that occurred during the Qing Dynasty of China. It broke out in 1796 among impoverished settlers in the mountainous region that separates Sichuan province from Hubei and Shaanxi provinces. It apparently began as a tax protest led by the White Lotus Society, a secret religious society that forecast the advent of Maitreya, advocated restoration of the native Chinese Ming Dynasty, and promised personal salvation to its followers.
At first the Qing administration, under the control of Heshen, sent inadequate and inefficient imperial forces to suppress the ill-organized rebels. On assuming effective power in 1799, however, the Jiaqing Emperor (reigned 1796–1820) overthrew the Heshen clique and gave support to the efforts of the more vigorous Manchu commanders as a way of restoring discipline and morale. A systematic program of pacification followed in which the populace was resettled in hundreds of stockaded villages and organized into militia. In its last stage, the Qing suppression policy combined pursuit and extermination of rebel guerrilla bands with a program of amnesty for deserters. Although the rebellion was finally crushed by the Qing government in 1804, it marked a turning point in the history of the Qing dynasty. Qing control weakened and prosperity diminished by the 19th century.
The Rebellion caused the deaths of some 16 million people.
As for the White Lotus Society of today, it has been suggested that a more modern incarnation of the White Lotus is taking place through the Falun Gong movement/religion, which is currently banned within China, although they do not appear to be directly related.
Texts via Wikipedia ‘White Lotus’ and ‘White Lotus Rebellion’; and The White Lotus Society Suite 101](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmjt1tH4bq1qh6o2ho1_400.png)
Learning Asian History through Avatar: the Last Airbender - The White Lotus
[Image: A Screenshot from A:TLA - Iroh is standing in the foreground, with Jeong Jeong, Bumi, Pakku, and Piandao in the background, all dressed in ‘Order of the White Lotus Robes’]
While in the Show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Order of the White Lotus (or White Lotus Society) is a secretive all male “Master” group come to help restore balance to the world, that isn’t so far from the real history of the group known as “White Lotus.”
The actual White Lotus Society is (or was) a real Secret Society that led more than one rebellion in China. Obviously being a secret society leaves us with no comparison pictures, but we can paint a pretty interesting picture with what we do know.
The White Lotus is a type of Buddhist sectarianism,
The first signs of the White Lotus Society came during the late thirteenth century. Mongol rule over China, known also by its dynastic name, the Yuan dynasty, prompted small, yet popular demonstrations against its rule. The White Lotus Society took part in some of these protests as they grew into widespread dissent.[1]
The Mongols considered the White Lotus society a heterodox religious sect and banned it, forcing its members to go underground. Now a secret society, the White Lotus became an instrument of quasi-national resistance and religious organization.
From then on, the White Lotus was known to have participated in several different rebellions, one “revolution inspired by the White Lotus society, took shape in 1352” which was part of the Red Turban Revolt,
The 1352 Red Turban revolt, for example, was also linked to the White Lotus Society and drew upon Maitreya Buddhism as well as a mixture of Daoist and Confucian symbols and ideas. This rebellion came to be led by Zhu Yuanzhang, who is perhaps better known by his imperial name Taizu, the first Ming Emperor. Taizu rose through the ranks of the Red Turban forces and, after its leader died while a guest of Taizu, he himself took command. The Red Turban rebellion received widespread public support because it was aimed at the Mongol Yuan dynasty, through which China was governed by the heirs of Genghis and Kublai Khan. In the Yuan dynasty, high positions were mostly denied to ethnic Chinese and reserved for Mongols and others considered to be foreigners. Taizu seized Nanjing and made it his capital and, from there, was able to grasp control over the whole country. The Ming dynasty was vigorous and effective in many ways and certainly appeared to return the country to the will of heaven.
and another known directly as the White Lotus Rebellion:
The White Lotus Rebellion (Chinese: 川楚白莲教起义; pinyin: Chuān chŭ bái lián jiào qǐ yì, 1796–1804) was a rebellion that occurred during the Qing Dynasty of China. It broke out in 1796 among impoverished settlers in the mountainous region that separates Sichuan province from Hubei and Shaanxi provinces. It apparently began as a tax protest led by the White Lotus Society, a secret religious society that forecast the advent of Maitreya, advocated restoration of the native Chinese Ming Dynasty, and promised personal salvation to its followers.
At first the Qing administration, under the control of Heshen, sent inadequate and inefficient imperial forces to suppress the ill-organized rebels. On assuming effective power in 1799, however, the Jiaqing Emperor (reigned 1796–1820) overthrew the Heshen clique and gave support to the efforts of the more vigorous Manchu commanders as a way of restoring discipline and morale. A systematic program of pacification followed in which the populace was resettled in hundreds of stockaded villages and organized into militia. In its last stage, the Qing suppression policy combined pursuit and extermination of rebel guerrilla bands with a program of amnesty for deserters. Although the rebellion was finally crushed by the Qing government in 1804, it marked a turning point in the history of the Qing dynasty. Qing control weakened and prosperity diminished by the 19th century.
The Rebellion caused the deaths of some 16 million people.
As for the White Lotus Society of today, it has been suggested that a more modern incarnation of the White Lotus is taking place through the Falun Gong movement/religion, which is currently banned within China, although they do not appear to be directly related.
Texts via Wikipedia ‘White Lotus’ and ‘White Lotus Rebellion’; and The White Lotus Society Suite 101
Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies, photographed by Camille Silvy, 1862
Sarah Forbes Bonetta Davies was a child born into a royal West African dynasty. She was orphaned in 1848, when her parents were killed in a slave-hunting war. She was around five years old. In 1850, Sarah was taken to England and presented to Queen Victoria as a “gift” from the King of Dahomey. She became the queen’s goddaughter and a celebrity known for her extraordinary intelligence. She spent her life between the British royal household and her homeland in Africa until her death in 1880.
