Black History Month 2023

Huh?

February is Black History Month. Every year for Black History Month people go “February is Black History Month” and I go “yeah” and they go “yeah” and then I go the entire month without learning any black history. Honestly, I don’t think I even talk to a black person for the entire month. That’s more of a social anxiety thing, by the way, I mostly don’t talk to any people. It’s probably not a racism thing… probably… I hope. Anyway… this year, I thought I’d actually try learning some teeeny tiny amount of Black History every day for the entire month.

What does Black History Month even mean, and why is it an entire month? Will Black History Month make me less racist, or much much more? Hopefully not the latter, but I’m pretty dumb so we’ll see.

Every day, I’m going to read up on some black history facts, and I’ll post them here in reverse chronological order. I know elsewhere on my site I said this wasn’t a blog. But this page is.

Questions

Questions I have for this month. I’ll try filling them out and adding more questions. If these questions are obvious to you, I’m so sorry.

Dates

2023-02-28

  • Watching more Black History in Two Minutes
    • Watching Marcus Garvey: Leader of a Revolutionary Global Movement - YouTube
      • Garvey was born in Jamaica
      • Founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association
      • Wanted to build a special nation in Africa
      • Black Star Line was going to be a ship line to bring black people back to Africa
      • J. Edgar Hoover strikes again! They hire black agents to subvert Garvey. Garvey is tried, arrested, jailed, deported (in 1927).
    • Watching The 15th Amendment - YouTube
      • 15th amendment allowed black men to vote
      • Here's an official version of the 15th amendment
      • Ratified in 1870
      • Mentions Hiram Revels (first black senator [see also here]), John Willis Menard, Rev. Richard H. Cain
      • 15th amendment excluded women, and didn't prevent other types of voting restrictions
      • 1880s, 1890s, states use literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clause to prevent black men from voting.
      • From 1901 to 1929 there were no black people in congress
      • Needed the Voting Rights Act of 1965
    • Watching The GI Bill of Rights - YouTube
      • Was supposed to help WWII vets get back into civilian life, but excluded black people
      • Benefits: Mortgages, job training, student loans
      • John Rankin made individual states responsible for implementation, allowing states to discriminate
      • Banks discriminated against black people
    • Watching Chicago Sound (The Birth of Modern Gospel) - YouTube
      • Talks about the Great Migration
      • Gospel sound
      • Thomas Dorsey credited as father of gospel
      • Talks about cross-fertilization between jazz, blues, and churches
      • Reverend Clarence Cobbs pioneered use of Hammond B-3 Organ
    • Watching Jackie Robinson Integrates Baseball - YouTube
      • Jackie Robinson was court marshaled for refusing to sit at the back of a military bus. Was acquitted and honorably discharged. Had a sense of justice.
      • Branch Rickey signed Robinson to Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947
      • He committed not to fight back to racist attacks
      • Led the Brooklyn Dodgers to their first and only World Series championship

2023-02-27

  • Watched Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
    • Mentioned in The Best of Blaxploitation.
    • Is it “baadasssss” or “baad assss”? The title card seemed to imply the latter.
    • Much weirder than I expected. Like, I felt like the soundtrack was really discordant. There’s a bunch of interesting cuts and overlays are used a lot. Though, maybe this was just a style of the 1970’s.
    • The main character helps a guy who’s getting beaten by cops by beating them with handcuffs. For the rest of the movie, he’s on the run.
    • There’s a lot of sex in the movie. The Best of Blaxploitation mentions that the character is brought up in a brothel. It seems like there’s a theme of women kind of just using him for sex? The amount of sex kind reminds me of The Room
    • Sweetback is a pretty cool character, though. He doesn’t really talk much in the movie. He’s heroic in that he sacrifices himself for others: first for Mu-Mu and then for another guy also Mu-Mu who needs a motorcycle ride more than he does (saying something like, “He’s the future”).

2023-02-26

  • Watched the rest of Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
    • His family has to have a white family buy the house for them. My partner mentions that her uncle had to do the same.
    • Link to the website is thewhoweareproject.org
    • I think there was a good point about reparations that’s convinced me a bit. Abraham Lincoln paid like $300 to slave owners who lost slaves due to the Emancipation Proclamation. So those slave owners got reparations.
    • There are a lot more interesting points in the film, but I didn’t write them down in time. I’ll try to remember some ideas:
      • Francis Scott Key’s national anthem has some part about killing escaped slaves?
      • Talks about removing a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, who I think basically starts the KKK.
      • Edmund Pettus Bridge named after a KKK member.
      • There was a black businessman who was basically just killed by jealous white people. The wife put a fenced off memorial in the spot where he was killed.
      • Andrew Jackson would pay people $10 for every 100 lashings given to his escaped slaves, up to $30.
  • Watched the first episode of Amend: The Fight for America
    • Mentions Frederick Douglass
    • Abraham Lincoln said some messed up stuff, but now I can’t remember what.
    • Dred Scott was the worst supreme court decision. Or the debate is whether it’s the worst or second worst.

2023-02-25

  • Watched some of Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America

2023-02-24

  • Watching Elite Black Public High Schools by Black History in Two Minutes
    • Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, first black public high school
    • Dunbar High set high standards
  • Watching a James Baldwin interview
    • “White people know they would not like to be black here. They know that.”
    • One of his friends jumped off a bridge at the age of 24, he was sure he was next.
    • A lot of Baldwin’s theater draws upon gospel/church experiences?
    • Why did he move to Paris? He wanted to find out where being black ended, where he began. Find out if we was treated a certain way because he was black or because he was Jimmy.
    • Baldwin writes Giovanni’s Room, but his publishers won’t publish it because the explicit homosexuality would offend the sensibilities of his new, middle-class white audience. It was published in England.
    • Paraphrase: “The American sense of reality is shaped by what Americans are trying to avoid”
  • Watching James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show
    • Another guest, Professor Paul Weiss, disagrees with Baldwin.
    • Weiss thinks Baldwin is exaggerating the problem of race
    • Baldwin went to Paris on the theory that nothing worse could happen to him there that already happened to him in the US.
    • By going to Paris, Baldwin realized his fear was not paranoia but real.
    • Baldwin points out that churches are segregated, which he says was also pointed about by Malcolm X.
    • “I don’t know whether the labor unions and their bosses really hate me. That doesn’t matter but I know I’m not in their unions.”

2023-02-23

  • Watched Drunk Black History | Little Rock Nine - YouTube
    • Don’t know that he was that drunk, guy just said the word “musty” a lot.
    • I’ve seen the picture of one of the Little Rock Nine before, but I totally forgot the name.
    • Man, the sheer will of those students. Can’t believe that the governor used the National Guard and that Eisenhower had to make an executive order to get the National Guard to assist them.
  • Watched 60 Years On, A Look Back at the Little Rock Nine - YouTube
  • Also read some of the Wikipedia article.
  • Watching How an FBI Poster Became a Black Power Symbol about Angela Davis.
    • She was fired from UCLA for inflammatory rhetoric and association with communism.
    • FBI’s poster didn’t really work. Her poster made it look like a mugshot?
    • A lot of people associate the afro with Angela Davis.
  • Watching a video about the Baldwin-Buckley race debate
    • Baldwin came from a poor background, Buckley from wealth and went to Yale
    • Buckley argues that “the South must prevail”
    • The motion debated: “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro”
    • Baldwin asks ‘what is one’s system of reality’?
    • Baldwin: I picked the cotton, and I carried it to market, and I built the railroads, under someone else’s whip, for nothing.
    • Buckley will treat Baldwin as a white man, essentially “taking him seriously”.
    • Baldwin gets 544 votes, Buckley 164.

2023-02-22

  • Looking at Huey P. Newton’s Wikipedia article.
    • Started support programs/“survival programs” like the Free Breakfast for Children program
    • Was murdered in Oakland by a member of the Black Guerrilla Family
    • Early in his life his family migrated from Louisiana to Oakland to escape violence/lynchings
    • Was influenced by Plato’s Republic
    • Read a bunch of communist authors during college
    • Met Bobby Seale while at Merritt College, founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in 1966. Bobby Seale was the chairman and Newton was the minister of defense. BPP influenced by Malcolm X.
    • Would go to pool halls, bars, campuses to recruit people and teach them about their rights, which he learned from taking Criminal Evidence in school.
    • Shootout with OPD officer John Frey, who later dies. Newton gets convicted of voluntary manslaughter, but this conviction is later reversed.
    • Newton’s birthday is February 17th.
    • Visited China, met with North Korean ambassador. Later incorporated juche into BPP ideology.
    • Sounds like he was pretty violent, and hated being called “baby”.
    • Murdered in 1989 by Tyrone Robinson of the Black Guerrilla Family, a Marxist-Leninist narcotics prison gang. Not sure how that helped the Black Guerrilla Family, if at all.

2023-02-21

  • Watched A Brief History of West Oakland | KQED News - YouTube
    • Says that a lot of African Americans moved during World War II
    • Eminent domain and revitalization had a negative impact
  • Watching African American Oakland, 1852-1940 - YouTube by the Oakland Public Library
    • People have this misconception that African-Americans only came to Oakland during World War II, but they’ve been there before that.
    • Pullman Porters were only allowed to live west (?) of Adelaide street. West Oakland was originally very multicultural, but eventually became predominantly African-American as people moved out, but the porters had to stay in the same location.
    • Pullman Porters originally had no salary and relied on tips. Wow, didn’t know that was legal back then.
    • Delilah Beasley was Oakland Tribune’s first black columnist. Had a column called “Activities Among Negroes”. Advocated for a California anti-lynching bill.
    • C.L. Dellums was a labor activist for the Pullman Porters, later the NAACP president for the Oakland branch.
    • Black Barbers & Beauticians joining forces to unionize?

2023-02-20

2023-02-19

2023-02-18

  • Watched Within Our Gates through Wikipedia, which got it through Library of Congress.
    • The earliest surviving major movie of an African American director (see 2023-02-17)
    • Plot

      Sylvia Landry is an educated black woman who is engaged to be married, but a jealous woman interferes such that her fiancé believes her to be cheating and leaves her. She then goes to the South and tries to help a school for black children, which is struggling financially.

      She goes back to the North to try to get money, gets hit by a car, and the wealthy woman philanthropist inside later agrees to help her. This woman’s other woman friend, however, hates the idea of black people voting, and instead tries to convince the philanthropist to just donate to a black preacher. The black preacher tells his parish that black people, being less sinful than whites, will go to heaven. But white people have pressured this preacher into making sure black people are content with heaven and will not try to vote. The preacher later regrets that he’s sold out his own race. The philanthropist eventually disagrees with her friend, saying that instead of donating $5,000 she’ll donate $50,000.

      Oh, I totally forgot to mention the part about the cheating gambling dude Larry. He’s also trying to get with Sylvia, and has killed a man who discovered he was cheating at cards by using a mirror while dealing.

      Dr. Vivian is some dude in the South. I forget what he’s studying. But eventually he falls in love with Sylvia. Goes back to the North for her.

      The jealous woman (who is also Larry’s stepsister) admits to Dr. Vivian about how she split up Sylvia and her ex-fiancé Conrad. Also tells the story of Sylvia’s past. She was adopted by the Landry’s, who eventually get lynched when they’re falsely blamed for killing a white man named Gridlestone. Gridlestone’s black servant, Efrem, who rats them out eventually also gets lynched, even though he thought that white people liked him. Gridlestone’s brother finds Sylvia and intends to rape her, but finds a scar on her chest that reveals he’s actually her daughter from a relationship he had with a black woman.

      Dr. Vivian accepts all this, tells Sylvia to be proud of her country. Mentions something about the great job America did in Cuba? And they get married. The end.

    • Throughout watching I thought, “Man, a lot of these facial expressions would make pretty good GIF images.”
    • Noticed that a police officer in the film uses the same kind of police call box you occasionally still see in San Francisco.
    • I also totally forgot that Western Union was originally a telegram company, not a way to send money.
    • There’s kind of a theme where some black people end up selling out their own kind, eventually regretting it.
      • The black preacher tries to appease white people by keeping his parish preoccupied with religion and not the right to vote. One of the white men he talks to kicks him in the rear, and he realizes he’s not actually liked by them.
      • Efrem, the black house servant of Gridlestone, is a “tattletale” and sees Gridlestone shot while talking to Landry (though it’s actually another white guy that kills him by shooting through the window). Efrem tells all the white people that Landry did it, and they form a lynching mob. The mob, however, is initially unable to find the Landry’s, and in their restlessness they basically go, “Well, since we can’t find them, why don’t we hang this black guy?” And Efrem’s like, “Me? But I was the one that told you about the Landry’s in the first place!” (And earlier he was also like, “these white people sure do like me”.) Anyway, they hang him. Eventually they find the Landry’s and hang them too.
    • I liked the ending where Dr. Vivian tells Sylvia “Be proud of your country!”
      Though there’s racial conflict, everyone’s still American, and people win when they cooperate and when they’re educated.
    • The moral of education is important. Sylvia’s education helps her do the accounting for her adopted father, so he’s not cheated by Gridlestone. A farmer signs up his children for school so they can do more with their lives. Religion is used to placate people and distract them from the struggle of the right to vote.

2023-02-17

  • Looking at African American cinema - Wikipedia
    • Something Good – Negro Kiss (Wikipedia) from 1898 is the earliest on screen kiss with African Americans. Not stereotypical, but the director, William Selig, did do minstrel shows.
  • Looking at Jim Crow (character) - Wikipedia
    • Jim Crow was a blackface character made by Thomas D. Rice
    • The character was a trickster, eventually “Jim Crow” becomes an offensive term for black people
    • Eventually lends name to “Jim Crow laws”
  • Looking at Uncle Tom - Wikipedia
    • Offensive term usually means a black person who is subservient or tries to win approval from white people
    • However, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Wikipedia) is an anti-slavery novel.
      • In the section “Tom sold to Simon Legree”, it sounds like Tom forgives the people who beat/kill him, which causes them to become Christian
    • Uncle Tom’s character is a Christian that seems to always turn the other cheek.
  • Oscar Michaeux
    • NAACP article
      • First major Black filmmaker
      • Makes a film The Homesteader (Wikipedia) in 1919. Lost film.
    • Within Our Gates (1920, Wikipedia)
      • “the oldest known surviving film made by an African-American director”. Can watch the whole thing on Wikipedia. It’s 79 minutes.
      • (Watched it on 2023-02-18.)
    • Body and Soul (1925, Wikipedia) also selected by Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
  • Looking up more African American cinema. Chain from Oscar Michaeux → Body and Soul → Pioneers of African-American Cinema (2015) → The Blood of Jesus/Spencer Williams → Amos ‘n’ Andy → Black sitcom
    • I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of Amos ‘n’ Andy. Seems like it started as a minstrel show, but the television production had black actors. It eventually got pulled and there weren’t any black sitcoms until the 1970s.
    • 1970’s had Sanford and Son with Redd Foxx, who was a friend of Malcolm X

2023-02-16

  • Read a little bit of African Americans in San Francisco - Wikipedia
    • So SF actually now has one of the lower population of African Americans in the Bay Area, similar to San Jose at 4%
    • A lot of African Americans got jobs in naval/shipyard stuff and there were naval docks at Hunters Point.
    • The article doesn’t explain much about the urban renewal that forced a lot of the Black population
  • Skimmed How ‘Urban Renewal’ Decimated the Fillmore District, and Took Jazz With It (KQED)
    • Also mentions jobs in shipyards, which also explains the large Black population in Richmond
    • Truman signs the 1949 Housing Act which redevelops low-income areas that were also not white.
    • In the 1970’s the Black population was 10%, now it’s around 4% (from Wikipedia)

2023-02-15

2023-02-14

  • Watching The Murder of Fred Hampton
    • There’s a scene where Fred Hampton explains how important it is to get education. Without education, the revolutionaries will just becomes the new oppressors. Mentions something about a Papa Doc in Haiti? This is where that quote “we don’t hate the motherfuckin’ white person, we hate the oppressor, whether he be white, black, brown, or yellow”
    • Fred Hampton on trial for robbing an ice-cream truck.
    • Fred Hampton mentions that the new state attorney wants to get rid of people with different political beliefs, especially Fred Hampton who wants to organized oppressed people.
    • “We are not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism but with socialism”. Racism is used to divide the oppressed.
    • “You’ve got pigs that are white, you’ve got pigs that are black, you’ve even got pigs that are black and white” (paraphrase)
    • Bobby Rush gives a speech. Seems like he and Fred Hampton were good friends/partners.
    • For the ice cream trial, the jury finds Fred Hampton not guilty? I’m confused, because he gets sentenced, so who said he was not guilty?
    • There’s a song that happens that sounds like “Huddle Formation” by “The Go! Team”, but that’s probably where the latter got it from.
    • 🎵Piggy wiggy, ooh oh, I say you gotta go now. Oink, oink, bang, bang. Dead pig!🎵
    • By the way, this documentary is just clips it seems. There’s no narration.
    • News describes the assassination was a 15 minute “gun battle”.
    • Anyone who would try to kill Chairman Fred is not a person, but a pig.
    • Bobby Rush says Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were the victims of premeditated murder.
    • Police claim they were fired upon.
    • A reporter asks the police officer, “Witnesses who have seen the apartment say there is no evidence of bullets from the direction where the, uh, Panthers supposedly were to be.”
    • Holes that police officer claims were from Black Panthers were from nail heads.
    • Reporter asks Hanrahan why they didn’t use tear gas, even though they usually do.
    • Police also went to Bobby Rush’s apartment, but he wasn’t there. Bobby Rush says he would’ve been murdered if he was home.
  • Looking at Bobby Rush - Wikipedia
    • He was in office from 1993-2023
    • Only person to have beaten Barack Obama in an election
  • Other things indirectly related to Fred Hampton
    • Fred Hampton’s murder prompted the radical far-left domestic terrorist organization the Weather Underground (Wikipedia) to declare war on the US.

2023-02-13

  • Watching the last episode of Who Killed Malcolm X?
    • Since there were 9 informants in the Audubon Ballroom during the assassination, the FBI had a different record than what the New York prosecutor had.
    • The FBI’s description of the man with the shotgun was different than the man charged. The shotgun assassin was dark skinned, Johnson was light skinned.
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad gets info through a FOIA request.
    • Shotgun assassin was a lieutenant at Muhammad’s Mosque #25. The FBI knew that William Bradley was a lieutenant in the mosque.
    • The FBI’s note says to withhold info from the NYPD.
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad tries to go see William Bradley, but Bradley basically died the day (or the day before) he went to confront him. Fuuuuuck.
    • Muhammad A. Aziz (formerly Norman 3X Butler) lost so much from incarceration, doesn’t know his grandchildren, great grandchildren. Says he’s a father in name only.
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad goes to Al-Mustafa Shabazz’s (Bradley’s) funeral.
    • “masjid” means “mosque”?
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad talks to Sheila Oliver, asks her if it’s an open secret that Al-Mustafa Shabazz was the shotgun assassin, she says it is.
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad talks to Wali Muslim about Al-Mustafa Shabazz. Doesn’t dwell on the past.
    • Qasim Nathari says Al-Mustafa Shabazz’s “thinking was not that of a Muslim” when he killed Malcolm X.
    • Wasn’t in the best interest of the FBI to reveal the true killer of Malcolm X.
    • Thomas 15X Johnson (aka Khalil Islam) died before he could be exonerated
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad goes to Muhammad Abdul Aziz to get him to agree to reopen the case. Abdur-Rahman Muhammad wants to submit something to get them to contest the case.
    • “Hamduillah” means “all praise is due to Allah”?
    • “There’s only one way to be independent. There’s only one way to be free. It’s not something that someone gives to you. It’s something that you take… If you can’t take it you don’t deserve it. Nobody can give it to you…”
      – Malcolm X
  • Looking at the Wikipedia page for Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
    • First African American to be elected to Congress for New York? https://history.house.gov/baic/ says Hiram Revels (Wikipedia page) was the first African American to be elected to serve in U.S. Congress (as a senator). Joseph Rainey (Wikipedia) was the first African American elected to the House of Representatives.
    • Mixed race, but born with hazel eyes, light skin, and blond hair. White passing.
    • Organized some civil rights actions. Tried to put pressure on businesses to hire black employees. Organized rent strikes.
    • Scandal for misappropriating some public travel budget?
    • Mentions Powell v. McCormack (Wikipedia)
      • H.Res. 1 stripped Powell of his seat, even though he was reelected?
      • Holds that the house of representatives can’t exclude a duly-elected representative except for a reason in the Qualification of Members Clause

2023-02-12

  • Watching episode 5 of Who Killed Malcolm X?
    • William Bradley name is now Al Mustafa Shabazz
    • It's a pretty touchy topic. People kind of know that he's the shotgun man.
    • Al Mustafa Shabazz shows up in a Cory Booker reelection ad campaign.
    • Muhammad A. Aziz formerly known as Norman 3X Butler
    • Benjamin Karim (maybe security) was never called to testify.
    • A. Peter Bailey interviewed revisiting the Audubon Ballroom, they were able to find the lectern (?) with bullet holes, kind of proving the police never intended to investigate.
    • NYPD thinks Malcolm X firebombed his own house.
    • NYPD did offer Malcolm X security, knowing he would refuse, even though he needed it.
    • Basically only two officers at the Audubon Ballroom.
    • Gene Roberts was the bodyguard, but also an undercover officer for Bureau of Special Services. Even the prosecution didn't know about him, so he wasn't called to testify. Gene Roberts gave Malcolm X mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
    • 9 informants in the Audubon Ballroom that day.

2023-02-11

  • Watching Who Killed Malcolm X? episode 4.
    • Malcolm X tries to keep his house, Elijah Muhammad evicts him
    • Malcolm X talks about Elijah Muhammad’s teenage wives (16, 17, 18)?
    • Nation of Islam’s Muslim Mosque #25 (James Shabazz) was known to be militant?
    • Sounds like a lot of people didn’t like how Malcolm X “betrayed” Elijah Muhammad.
    • People saying Elijah Muhammad wouldn’t assassinate Malcolm X.
    • Elijah Muhammad were wiretapped for years. A wiretap from his home in Phoenix says something about “cutting heads off”. No one needed a direct order to kill Malcolm X.
    • Junior (Elijah Muhammad’s son) spoke at armory in front of the FOI. Basically says it’s okay to kill Malcolm X.
    • All 4 men Hayer mentioned were from Muslim Mosque #25.
    • It was the shotgun that killed Malcolm X. According to Hayer the guy who fired it was William X. Hayer said William X was 27. Hayer said William’s last name was Bradley.
    • Word was Bradley changed his name to a Muslim name. Sounds like an open secret, almost just accepted in that area? People discouraging him from looking things up or digging up the past. “If you see some dry dung in the roadway, don’t kick it.”

2023-02-10

  • Watched Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches
    • Frederick Douglass was a slave in Maryland.
    • Sophia Auld started teaching him to read, but his master disapproved saying essentially that it was dangerous to teach a slave to read. From that point on Frederick Douglass decides to educate himself/learn to read. He traded bits of bread with poor white kids for reading lessons. Read bits of the bible.
    • Disguised himself as a sailor, used identification of a free man to escape.
    • Joined abolitionists, but was actually able to give the perspective of a slave. Became a lecturer.
    • Met with Lincoln. Didn’t have an appointment, he just walked up and asked to speak to him.
    • Second wife was a white woman

2023-02-09

Weird tangent today.
  • Watched the first episode of the animated Black Dynamite TV series.

    Yeah, I know this isn’t black history, but I started typing “black” and it was the first thing that showed up. I also really like the movie.

  • Watched The Best of Blaxploitation
    • Also had Michael Jai White and Scott Sanders from Black Dynamite
    • Also called “soul cinema”
    • Blaxploitation films mostly happened between 1971-1977. Disco kind of made it go away?
    • Apparently Shaft was written for a white lead?
    • Bunch of movies I should watch:
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song Looking at Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song - Wikipedia right now.
        • The soundtrack was written by Earth, Wind, & Fire?
        • Huey P. Newton praised it and made it required viewing for the Black Panthers?
      • Black Belt Jones
      • Superfly
      • The Mack
      • Dolemite
    • They mentioned a movie where kid grows up in a brothel, and apparently Richard Pryor also grew up in brothel?
    • A lot of pimp heroes.

2023-02-08

  • Watched the third episode of Who Killed Malcolm X?
    • FBI trying to cause schism between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.
    • Malcolm X comments on President Kennedy’s assassination, which causes him to be silenced by Elijah Muhammad
    • Malcolm X tries to recruit Cassius Clay to Nation of Islam but Elijah Muhammad wins him over, giving him the name Muhammad Ali. “Muhammad” means “worthy of all praise” and “Ali” means “Most high”.
    • Elijah Muhammad had more surveillance by the FBI than Martin Luther King Jr.
    • FBI tries to make Malcolm X and informant. Malcolm X secretly records the conversation, doesn’t give up any info.

2023-02-07

  • Watching the second episode of Who Killed Malcolm X?
    • All three of accused assassins were members for the Fruit of Islam.
    • Talmadge Hayer said there were 4 other accomplices besides himself, and said two other accused had nothing to do with it. But he never revealed the accomplices.
    • Hayer later made an affidavit stating the others were: Benjamin Thomas, Leon Davis, William X, Wilbur or Kinly. All people from Newark mosque.
    • salam alaikum is an Islamic greeting for “Peace be upon you”
    • Nation of Islam teaches that Jesus was a black man, black men were the original man.
    • Elijah Muhammad was part of the Great Migration
    • Rev. Al Sharpton talks about the strictness/structure of the NOI
    • Malcolm X’s father was found run over by a streetcar. Believes it was the KKK.
    • Malcolm X went to an all-white school in 8th grade. Wanted to be a lawyer, but a teacher told him that white people won’t hire him as a lawyer and that he should instead be a carpenter. At that point, he basically just started doing crime, selling drugs, prostitution.
    • Malcolm X found out about Elijah Muhammad around the time he was 21 in prison.
    • Elijah Muhammad treated Malcolm X like a son, and in fact he had it better than some of Elijah Muhammad’s own children.
    • I liked the quote Malcolm X says that his father didn’t know his last time, since he got it from his father who got it from the slave master.
    • Malcolm X was a better orator than Elijah Muhammad.
    • Elijah Muhammad’s children thought of Nation of Islam as a cash cow. If Malcolm X became the leader, he might have stopped that.
  • While reading Malcolm X’s Wikipedia page
    • Malcolm X befriended John Elroy Sanford, aka the comedian Redd Foxx.
  • Shabazz (name) - Wikipedia
    • Name of claimed black architect who founded populations in Africa?

2023-02-06

  • Watching the first episode of Who Killed Malcolm X?

    Huh, is it even a question? I thought it was pretty much solved. The main person in this series, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, believes the official account is not true.

    • Malcolm X knew he was a marked man.
    • The night before his assassination, he stayed at the Hilton Hotel, trying to avoid telling anyone his location. He got a phone call that morning, and it sounds like the person on the other end suggested he could be gotten anyway.
    • None of his invited speakers showed up the day he was assassinated?
    • Somebody had already thrown firebombs inside his house.
    • When he left the Nation of Islam, he had a lot of enemies.
    • A burly dark-skinned man pulled a sawed-off shotgun from his coat. Two other men also started shooting?
    • Malcolm X helped to popularize the phrase “by any means necessary”.
    • 3 guns. Shotgun, M1911 .45, and a Ruger.
    • Talmadge Hayer was arrested, but the other gunmen got away.
    • Police didn’t secure the scene of the crime. A dance at 7pm in the Audubon Ballroom happened as scheduled.
    • Abdur-Rahman Muhammad goes to NYC Municipal Archives. Sees some color photographs of the ballroom after the assassination.
    • Fruit of Islam were the bodyguards/security of Elijah Muhammad/Nation of Islam.
    • An interviewee claims Elijah Muhammad said not to lay a hand on Malcolm X.
    • The burly, dark-skinned man in a certain kind of coat was described way differently than the man (men?) convicted.

    Looking at Assassination of Malcolm X - Wikipedia.

    • Muhammad Abdul Aziz (formerly Norman 3X Butler) and Khalil Islam were exonerated in November 2021.
  • Tried looking at The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University

    The video links say they require Real Player, but they point to some rtsp:// URLs that no longer work.

2023-02-05

  • While watching Would You Fall for It? [ST08]
    • Need to check out the channel “segregation_by_design” (webpage, Instagram) which talks about how highways were built on places that disproportionately affected black people.
  • Looked a little bit at A Conversation with David Blackwell

    David Blackwell was a statistician (Bayesian!) that was one of the first African Americans to receive a PhD in mathematics.

    • He got a PhD around 22.
    • Discrimination against blacks “never bothered [him]” since he assumed he would never teach at a major university, but instead would teach at one of the 105 black colleges.
    • Grew up in Centralia, Illinois, which had one completely black school, one completely white, and five mixed schools. He went to a mixed school.
    • Had a “very, very supportive” family that “just sort of assumed that [he] would go to college”.

2023-02-04

  • Watched The massacre of Tulsa's “Black Wall Street”
    • The Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma was considered a “Black Wall Street” due to its successful black businesses.
    • An unknown incident between a 19-year-old black man and a 20-year-old 17-year-old white woman in an elevator was the catalyst for the massacre. See Tulsa race massacre - Wikipedia.
    • It was portrayed as a “race riot”, but really white people came to burn down the city. In fact, they made souvenir postcards depicting the burning neighborhood.
    • Newspaper records were destroyed.
    • Around 300 black people killed. It’s not known where there bodies are. Theories are that they were dumped and buried in 3 different cemeteries.

2023-02-03

  • Watched the first episode of High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America
    • In this episode, the main guy Stephen Satterfield travels to Benin, which I embarrassingly didn’t even know was a country. Also, in reference to my earlier question about where African-American slaves came from it sounds like the answer is also Benin (or at least partially).
    • Africans participated in the enslavement of other Africans, basically trading them in exchange for something. I don’t recall if it was money or power or what.
    • Slaves on the ships were fed slabber sauce, which was flour, palm oil, and pepper.
    • I didn’t realize that okra is associated with African food, because I see it a lot in Filipino food. Come to think of it, I do remember a Key & Peele sketch mentioning okra.
    • Also reminding me of the Philippines is the water village of Ganvie in Benin. And also eating fish with tomatoes. And also eating with one’s hands.
    • Another thing I embarrassingly learned today is that Voodoo is actually a religion, and it’s still practiced. I only ever heard of things like Voodoo dolls in cartoons, or Zapp’s Voodoo chips, or Voodoo doughnuts in Portland, or the song “Southwest Voodoo” off ICP’s The Great Milenko album.

2023-02-02

  • Read a bit of the Wikipedia article about Angela Davis
    • Marxist, also argues against the prison-industrial complex.
    • Some of the guns used in the Marin County Civic Center attacks were bought by Angela Davis, so she was charged essentially with murder. Targeted by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Arrested. A large movement made about freeing her. Found not guilty by an all-white jury formed via scientific jury selection.
  • Read a little bit about Malcolm X’s assassination. Also MLK’s assassination.
  • Civil Rights Act o 1964 had longest filibuster in American history
  • Found out about TechActivist while looking into the Black Panther’s tenth point about “community control of modern technology”

    I probably should read The Black Panthers Speak which has a chapter on “The Technology Question”. It’s available at the library, so I should check it out.

  • Watched Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History Some people I learned about:
    • Henry Brown - Mailed himself in a box to escape slavery. Later became a magician.
    • Matthew Henson - First person to reach the North Pole
    • George Speck - Popularized the potato chip, mythologized as its creator
    • Frederick Douglass never smiled in portraits to prevent the stereotypical image of a “happy slave”

    It was a pretty entertaining and informative special. Basically it gives several brie stories of Black Americans many people might not have otherwise known about. I certainly didn’t know about most of them.

2023-02-01

  • Watched Why Black History Month Shouldn’t Exist Talks about “disingenuous empathy among woke whites”, which, you know, probably applies to this very page (minus the “woke”). The only history taught is the stuff that doesn’t make white people feel uncomfortable.

    People and events that aren’t taught

    • Huey Newton
    • Angela Davis
    • Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
    • Assassination of Fred Hampton
    • Lynchings from 1882 to 1968
    • Terrorist attack on black wall street in Oklahoma
    • The assassination of MLK Jr. (not just his life)

    All right, so I should definitely shut the fuck up this whole month. I’m going to keep doing this page, but I won’t talk about it (not like I would have anyway).

  • Watching Why the US government murdered Fred Hampton
    • Fred Hampton was a Black Panther chairman.
    • Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton formed the Black Panthers after the police killing of an unarmed black teen in San Francisco.
    • Black Panthers ten point program
    • Black Panthers had social programs (called “survival programs”). Did food, clothing drives. Free breakfast for children.
      Dang, I didn’t know that much about their socialism. Cool.
    • Fred Hampton created an alliance across racial lines against corrupt city government. All groups suffered from poverty. One group was The Young Patriots - poor white migrants.
    • Fred Hampton didn’t hate white people:
      We don’t hate the motherfuckin’ white people we hate the oppressor, whether he be white, black, brown, or yellow.
    • FBI COINTELPRO? Maybe see this PDF about “prevent the rise of a messiah”.
      FBI did illegal things like assassination. BPP cofounders assassinated?
    • 14 police officers went to Fred Hampton’s apartment. Shot a sleeping 18-year-old named Brenda Harris. Police shot Fred Hampton. Someone said “He’s barely alive, he’ll barely make it” cop said “he’s good and dead now”. Police fired nearly 100 shots.
    • Narrative shaped was that it was a “gunfight”, “shoot-out”, “battle”. Fictional account. What really happened was that the police fired unprovoked. Proof: Only one possible shot could have been from a Black Panther’s gun. FBI assisted Chicago Police with the raid Need to find the COINTELPRO files on this.
    • William O’Neal, Hampton’s bodyguard, acted as an informant to the FBI. O’Neal had drugged Hampton.
    • There’s a 1971 documentary called “The Murder of Fred Hampton” from Chicago Film Archives (link: https://chicagofilmarchives.org/pres-projects/the-murder-of-fred-hampton-1971). Also “American Revolution 2” (link: https://chicagofilmarchives.org/pres-projects/american-revolution-2).

2023-01-31

It’s not Black History month yet, but I’m setting up.

I’m gonna take a quick gander at Wikipedia’s page on Black History Month.

Wikipedia says the precursor to Black History Month is “Negro History Week”, which started with “Douglass Day” as a way to set aside time to teach about Frederick Douglass. February was chosen for Abraham Lincoln’s birthday (February 12th) and Frederick Douglass’s birthday (February 14th). Oh, cool, Frederick Douglass’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day. That makes it easy to remember. I guess I should also learn about Frederick Douglass.

Wikipedia has a good quote from Carter G. Woodson on his motivation for Negro History Week.

The quote
If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. The American Indian left no continuous record. He did not appreciate the value of tradition; and where is he today? The Hebrew keenly appreciated the value of tradition, as is attested by the Bible itself. In spite of worldwide persecution, therefore, he is a great factor in our civilization.

(I’ve highlighted some parts)

This is short for today, but I’m gonna leave it here.