Black History

When Workers Resisted Labor Exploitation At Bronx ‘Slave Markets’

February 7, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Organize! Black History, Black Women, Great Depression, History, New York City (NYC), Racism, The Bronx, United States, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workers Exploitation

Following the Great Depression, Black working class women flocked to street corners in the Bronx, New York, forced to sell domestic labor for far below its value in order to make ends meet. “They come to the Bronx, not because of what it promises,” reads the renowned exposé by two Black radical activists, investigative journalist Marvel Cooke and civil rights leader Ella Baker. These informal domestic workers flocked to the infamous “Bronx Slave Market,” “largely in desperation,” Cooke and Baker wrote in 1935. Desperation did indeed characterize the circumstances at the so-called slave markets, in which impoverished women braved the elements for hours, waiting to be exploited by wealthy families for a few cents and hour and risking all manner of dangerous working conditions and potential sexual abuse.

DOJ Finds Tulsa Massacre Was ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack’

February 4, 2025 Aaryn Urell, Equal Justice Initiative. Educate! Black History, Black Wall Street, Civil Rights, History, Justice Department, Militarization, Oklahoma, Report, Tulsa, Tulsa Massacre, Tulsa Race Riot

The Justice Department issued a report Friday on the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when as many as 10,000 white Tulsans murdered hundreds of Black residents and burned businesses and homes to the ground in an attack that federal investigators found “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.” “The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

Celebrating Collective Courage

January 28, 2025 Malikia Johnson, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Black History, Book Review, Cooperatives, Economic Security

In 2014, the seminal book, Collective Courage: A History of African-American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice debuted, and with it a flame sparked in the cooperative movement. Slowly and then exponentially the book went viral by word of mouth throughout black and brown communities across the U.S. and beyond. It was a “how-to” for self-determination and making an impact in the world that was tangible. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard’s book gave us both the answer to a viable alternative outside of petitions and protests and provided a blueprint for how our ancestors, names both widely known and unknown, paved a path toward cooperative economics.

White Man’s Justice Is Black People’s Grief: A Black History Month Truth

February 4, 2024 Kevin Cooper, Scheer Post. Resist! Black History, Death Penalty, Legal System, Prisoner rights, Systemic Racism, White Supremacy

“It’s not whether you win or lose that counts, but how you play the game that matters.” That’s what my people are often told. But we are not told that this so-called game is rigged, and it’s rigged against us even before we are born. This “game” is life in the divided states of America. This is especially true in the system of criminal justice, a system that has been rigged against Black people since its inception. There Is no better example than this country’s morbid use and fascination with the cold-blooded and premeditated imposition of the death penalty against poor people and its disproportionate use on Black people.

Black History – Native History: Shared Connections

February 21, 2023 Wakíƞyaƞ Waánataƞ (Matt Remle), Last Real Indians. Educate! Black History, colonization, History, Indigenous History

A number of years ago, following an undoing racism workshop I was a panelist on, a participant approached me to further discuss a point I had made regarding the importance of maintaining cultural identity and reclaiming traditional languages in our decolonization efforts. The individual stated that as a person of African descent they wished they could know who they were and where they truly came from and that they deeply desired to know the traditional songs, ceremonies, and languages of their ancestors. He went on to say that we, Native peoples, were blessed to be able to have access to knowing who we are and where we come from.

The Problem With Juneteenth

June 18, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Black History, Black Liberation, Juneteenth

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere." General Order Number 3, June 19, 1865 *The fact that members of the United States Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday proved that the commemoration is of no political value.

Students Lead US Push For Fuller Black History Education

April 9, 2021 Mike Catalini, AP News. Create! Black History, Public Education, Public schools, Youth Activism

Trenton, NJ - Ebele Azikiwe was in the sixth grade last year when February came and it was time to learn about Black history again. She was, by then, familiar with the curriculum: Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a discussion on slavery. Just like the year before, she said, and the year before that. Then came George Floyd’s death in May, and she wrote to the administration at her school in Cherry Hill, in New Jersey’s Philadelphia suburbs, to ask for more than the same lessons. “We learned about slavery, but did we go into the roots of slavery?” Ebele, 12, said in an interview. “You learned about how they had to sail across, but did you learn about how they felt being tied down on those boats?”

Why We Say: Fuck Black History Month

February 5, 2021 Ready for Revolution, Hood Communist. Educate! Black History, Black Liberation, colonization, Education

Since its founding in 1920 as Negro History and Literature Week, Black History Month has served as an “annual celebration of achievements by ‘African Americans’ and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history.” Many of us share fond (and some unpleasant) memories of the yearly church programs, school assemblies, and essay contests all organized around that shared sense of identity and history of perseverance. But as critical and principled Africans that know what’s happenin’, the time has passed for us to engage with what this month has come to represent. We can look as recently as the liberalizing of “Black Lives Matter” to see an example of how Black political agendas can be stolen and repurposed.

Rockwool Pipeline Construction May Disturb African-American Cemetery

April 20, 2019 By John Zangas and Anne Meador, Dcmediagroup.us Resist! Black History, Pipelines, West Virginia

Ranson, W.Va.–Granny Smith Lane was until recently riddled with almost impassable potholes. If you navigated them successfully and wound your way to the end of the narrow, tree-lined roadway, you would reach a secluded corner of what used to be an apple orchard. Hardly noticeable, a few gravestones sit atop a small grassy knoll. More grave markers are jumbled among trees, vines and thorny bushes. Little effort has been made to clean up the trash strewn about or curb the groundhogs, who have constructed an elaborate burrow. A giant sinkhole warps the ground, and many graves are sunken depressions in the earth.

Sharing Black History One Story At A Time: Festival Reaches 27 Years

January 28, 2019 Niko Georgiades, Unicornriot.ninja Create! Black History, Minneapolis

Minneapolis, MN – The Black Storytellers Alliance (BSA) finished its 27th year of showcasing Black master storytellers from around the United States with a weekend of free events for the “Signifyin’ & Testifyin’” festival in late 2018. Vusumuzi Zulu, the director of the Black Master Storytelling Festival, told Unicorn Riot that storytelling is “one of the most powerful ways to transmit culture“, history, and traditions. Unicorn Riot livestreamed the grand finale event of the three day festival and spoke with the festival director and five master storytellers (videos further below).

22 Million Reasons Black America Doesn’t Trust Banks

March 6, 2018 Marcus Anthony Hunter, Theconversation.com Educate! Banks, Black Capitalism, Black History, New Economy, Racism

“This bank is just what the freedmen need,” remarked President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1865, as he signed the Freedman’s Bank Act, authorizing the organization of a national bank for recently emancipated black Americans. A little more than a month later he was killed, making the Freedman’s Bank Lincoln’s last act of emancipation. His assassination, however, did not impede its rapid growth. By January 1874, less than ten years after the establishment of the Freedman’s Bank, deposits at its 34 branches across the United States totaled US$3,299,201 ($65,200,000 in current dollars). Despite such successful expansion, the Freedman’s Bank closed on June 28, 1874 under a shroud of suspicion and accusation. The story of the rise and collapse of the Freedman’s Bank is an important and little known episode in black and American history in the years following Emancipation.

What You Don’t Know About Rosa Parks

February 4, 2018 Urana McCauley as told to Liz Dwyer, Shondaland. Educate! Black History, Civil Rights, Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks — my Auntie Rosa — was not just a tired old lady who sat down on a bus one day. With February 4 being (what would have been) my great aunt’s 105th birthday, I’m going to Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit to pay her my respects. But I also pay her my respects by refusing to let her legacy be turned into a caricature. I believe her story is more relevant than ever because she and people like her laid a foundation so that women today can be more vocal, can run for office, can demand equal rights and equal pay, and say we don’t have to be harassed.

Black History Month From Death Row

February 2, 2018 By Kevin Cooper, Truthdig.com Educate! Black History, Prison

Death Row, San Quentin Prison—From Dec. 17, 2003, to Feb. 9, 2004, the prison guards and administration at this modern-day plantation changed me, rearranged me, oppressed me, regressed me, repressed me, depressed me and undressed me in order to murder me. They had me bend over so that they could illuminate my bowels with their flashlight in order to look for some type of contraband that they knew I did not have. They watched me, clocked me, kept tabs on me, wrote notes about me and what I did and did not do. They questioned me, upset me, saddened me, distressed me, laughed at me, talked about me and searched my arms for good veins into which to insert their razor-sharp needles. They heckled me, pointed at me, stared at me, hated me, isolated me and lied to me by telling me everything was going to be all right because I would not feel any pain.

100 Years Ago African-Americans Marched Down 5th Ave To Declare: Black Lives Matter

July 27, 2017 Chad Williams, www.theconversation.com Educate! Black History, Black Lives Matter (BLM), US history

By Chad Williams for The Conversation - The only sounds were those of muffled drums, the shuffling of feet and the gentle sobs of some of the estimated 20,000 onlookers. The women and children wore all white. The men dressed in black. On the afternoon of Saturday, July 28, 1917, nearly 10,000 African-Americans marched down Fifth Avenue, in silence, to protest racial violence and white supremacy in the United States. New York City, and the nation, had never before witnessed such a remarkable scene. The “Silent Protest Parade,” as it came to be known, was the first mass African-American demonstration of its kind and marked a watershed moment in the history of the civil rights movement. As I have written in my book “Torchbearers of Democracy,” African-Americans during the World War I era challenged racism both abroad and at home. In taking to the streets to dramatize the brutal treatment of black people, the participants of the “Silent Protest Parade” indicted the United States as an unjust nation. This charge remains true today.

Unsung Black Heroines Launched Modern Domestic Workers Movement

June 17, 2017 Premilla Nadasen, www.yesmagazine.org Organize! Black History, Black Women, History, Labor

By Premilla Nadasen for Yes! Magazine - In the late 1990s, household workers around the country began to organize to address the exploitation and abuse in their occupation. These domestic workers, immigrant nannies, housecleaners, and elder-care workers from all over the world—the Philippines, Barbados, Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, Indonesia, and Nepal—used public shaming strategies to draw attention to particularly egregious employers, sued for back pay, developed support groups, organized training and certificate programs, and lobbied for statewide domestic workers’ bills of rights. In building a movement, domestic workers used storytelling to connect workers with one another. Barbara Young, for example, a former nanny and an organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, joined Domestic Workers United in New York City in the early 2000s. Young was in a park one day with the child she cared for when another household worker, Erline Brown, invited her to a DWU meeting in Brooklyn. “People were telling the stories about the work that they were doing, not getting vacation, not getting paid for holidays.,” she explained. “It was the first time I was hearing stories from workers coming together.”

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