Saturday, September 26, 2015

Maggie Lena Walker's Grave.

I don't know if this is still like this but if it is, something has to be done.

Friday, September 25, 2015

"Secret Daughter" by June Cross

June Cross tells the very moving personal story of her mixed race experience in this youtube video.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Frances E. W. Harper, born September 24, 1825

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, African American lecturer, author, and suffragist, was the best known Black poet since Phillis Wheatley. Her antislavery verse, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), sold thousands of copies and  “The Two Offers”(1859) was the first short story published by an African American. Touring Southern Freedmen’s communities, she lectured on education and morality as racial uplift, and denounced white racial violence. Her suffrage work was long-standing. In the split among suffragists over the 15th Amendment, Harper favored voting rights for Black men; she affiliated with the American Woman Suffrage Association, and delivered speeches at its conventions.

Born in Baltimore of free Black parents, she was orphaned before she was 3. Reared by an uncle, whose school for free Blacks she attended, Harper was first a teacher, then a lecturer for the Maine Anti-Slavery Society. She married Fenton Harper in 1860, but was widowed within 4 years and returned to lecturing. Her Southern travels resulted in several narrative poems. She became head of the African American department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She helped organize the National Association. of Colored Women’s Clubs and became vice-president. She died in Philadelphia at 85.



Published on Jan 27, 2015
"LibriVox recording of Iola Leroy by Frances E. W. Harper. Read in English by James K. White This is the story of Iola Leroy, a free-born, mixed-race woman who passed as white. Her true racial identity eventually discovered, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Later freed by the Union Army, she journeyed to find others of her family who had been disunited from each other and strewn across the south by the forces of slavery. In the process she also struggled to improve the economic and social station of African Americans. Iola Leroy is a story about race and gender roles during the antebellum and post-Civil War eras, "passing" and the associated socio-political consequences. (Summary by James K. White)"

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Cecile Emeke is still at it. The Young Black Voice.

 The Strolling series by the young producer Cecile Emeke is, in my opinion, one of the best things to happen in Black media in recent years. Ms Emeke is in the act of combining the power of social media with her knack for video storytelling and presenting the voices of young artculate and efflorescent Black people from various localities (so far in Europe). She is giving them the opportunity to freely express their feelings with regard to the various cultures that they find themselves at once immersed in and excluded from. The series is not only one of the few outlets that allows these young people to vent their feelings but at the same time it demonstrates clearly their diversity. Each subject has his or her own unique story about their impressions and experiences in their particular society which, I feel, were very well told.
 I see that this is a work in progress and I hope we will all recognize and support this effort for the valuable service that it brings to the people of the African diaspora wherever we find ourselves. I also hope that the series will stimulate others to share their talents with us while creating works that unify us to the same degree as Cecile Emeke is doing.
I am so impressed with the work this young woman is doing. I hope we are sharing these videos to the max.


Click here to visit Cecile Emeke's Youtube channel

Monday, September 21, 2015

Black Wall Street & Domestic Terror

Oklahoma is the location of the worst two acts of domestic terrorism in US history.
The worst took place in the Greenwood district of Tulsa.