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THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2022

DAY 17 — Oscarville & Lake Lanier

Death looms so large over Georgia’s Lake Lanier that people say it’s haunted.

Since it was filled in 1956, it’s estimated that nearly 700 people have lost their lives in its waters or at its banks in boating accidents, drownings, and unexplained events. Official reports list at least 24 people as “missing” there because what lies below the lake’s surface makes searching it nearly impossible.

Beneath those unrecovered souls, wrecked boats, discarded nets, and silty waters lie the charred remains of the Africa-American community of Oscarville, GA.

Before 1912, Oscarville’s people thrived as farmers, teachers, ministers and tradespeople of all sorts.

Harrison, Rosalee, Bertie, Fred, Naomi, and Minor Brown were among the thriving residents of Oscarville, in a photo taken in 1896.

Their world started to unravel on September 5th of that year, when a white woman accused a Black man of entering her bedroom and attempting rape. When a local preacher mentioned that perhaps the woman had not been entirely forthcoming in her account, suggesting the encounter may have been consensual, he was nearly beaten to death right in front of the Oscarville courthouse.

Tensions between the segregated populations of Forsyth County were so high that the Governor of Georgia activated the National Guard to stand patrol and keep the peace.

Just 4 days later, that fragile peace was shattered when another white woman was found dying in the local woods, an apparent victim of yet another sexual assault. 

The only evidence police turned up was a pocket mirror claimed to be property of a 16-year-old boy named Ernest Knox. Hardly a smoking gun, but enough to satisfy the white folks of Oscarville, especially when Ernest confessed to the crime and gave up the people who were going to help him dispose of the body. Suppose it didn’t matter much that Ernest made that confession from the bottom of a well just before he was nearly drowned in it.

Ernest and 3 supposed co-conspirators—Oscar Daniel, Oscar’s 22-year old sister Trussie, her boyfriend Big Rob—plus an alleged witness, were all transported to the county jail in Cumming, GA. But there was no point. A mob estimated in the thousands stormed the jail, killed Big Rob, and dragged his body into the street. He was hung from a light post and used as target practice while the others inside could only listen to their potential fate.

A newspaper photo depicts all of the suspects for the rapes of two white women were still alive in their custody.
Left to Right: Trussie Daniel, Oscar Daniel, Tony Howell (defendant in the first case), Ed Collins (witness), Isaiah Pirkle (witness for Howell), and Ernest Knox.

Trussie accepted a plea bargain in exchange for testifying against her brother Oscar and was forced to be his executioner (see the sub-headline in the article above). Charges were dropped against the witness. But Big Rob was already dead, and Ernest and Oscar were doomed to the same fate.

On October 25, 1912, Oscar Daniel and Ernest Knox were publicly lynched before a crowd estimated at as many as 8,000 spectators. People gathered around the gallows for picnics, and PBS reports that one of the boys was so small a special noose was created to ensure the momentum wouldn’t decapitate him and splash anyone’s Sunday dress with blood.

You don’t even have to imagine the scene. You’ve probably seen the images of vast crowds gathering under the feet of a Black man. Though these images are rarities now, in 1908, they were so frequently mailed, the U.S. Postmaster was forced to ban them. “Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz,” TIME Magazine’s Richard Lacayo writes. 

A postcard shows the sprawling crowd gathered for the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, TX.

But the terror didn’t end with two lynchings. Over the next few months, each sunset brought nightmares to Oscarville. 

“Night riders” went door-to-door demanding that Black people vacate the town. When some people didn’t comply, the threat escalated. Their homes were shot into, animals killed, crops destroyed. Anyone who remained after that fled their property in the middle of the night as it went up in flames. Nearly 1,100 African-Americans—around 98% of Forsyth County’s Black population—were forced out of Oscarville, some still paying on property they’d abandoned until it was foreclosed.

Of course, all of that land was immediately seized by you-know-who.

And nearly just as quickly, things started going wrong.

In 1915, a boll weevil infestation killed crops on Oscarville’s land that was illicitly seized by white farmers and banks. Though they ultimately survived the weevils, being one of the few regions in the state to escape total decimation made them eager to share their methods. (It was chicken poop. They got a bunch of chickens to poop in the soil.) Perhaps too eager. They gained the attention of the mayor of Atlanta, who was developing a dam to ensure the city’s water supply, hydroelectric needs, and flood control. He spent 2 years working with the Army Corps of Engineers to seize nearly all of that recovered farmland. What little was actually purchased was far undervalued, and left the handful of African-Americans left who owned their land through generations with nearly nothing.

When the dam was complete, the waters completely submerged charred buildings, cemeteries, bridges, and any trace left of those who lived and died in Oscarville. Then they named those waters after a Confederate soldier. Though Oscarville is the only Black community under Lake Lanier, it wasn’t the only one Black people were run out of. Towns, Union, Fannin, Gilmer and Dawson Counties all have a history of violently exiling its Black residents. Even today, only 4% of Forsyth County’s almost 250,000 residents are Black.

So is Lake Lanier haunted? No one can truly answer that question.

But is it filled with ghosts? Absolutely.

@indeskribeabull

Top 3 places NOT to visit in GA #fyp #lakelanier #folklore #hauntedlakes #tourguides #stayhome

♬ Lake Lanier – Jerrilyn Lake
Even Tiktok knows you don’t go on Lake Lanier.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

A diver captures footage of some of the structures lost under Lake Lanier, both visually and on sonar.
Local news coverage shows the efforts to keep African-Americans and their civil rights out of Forsyth County still alive and well in 1987.

Learn more about the tragic history of Forsyth County, GA in Patrick Phillips’ book, Blood at the Root, then pick up a copy from our friends at Marcus Books.

Get more local articles and historic sources from a story originally published by the Forsyth County News.

The terror in Oscarville and ongoing racial terrorism documented in Forsyth County and throughout the South is detailed at History.com

Read more about the taking of Oscarville and the forming of Lake Lanier at CNN.

Forsyth County church leaders took it upon themselves to create the Forsyth County Descendants Scholarship, “simply an act of love that will be helpful to some descendants whose families have suffered. Is it enough? Of course not. But it is a step.” Learn more & donate here.

Explore an interactive map and see the stories of documented racial terror lynchings throughout the States created by the Equal Justice Initiative.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2022

DAY 16 — Marcus Books

Writers, photographers, dancers, artists, musicians and so many others Black creatives are represented here at The American Blackstory.

Today, we recognize the keepers of all that Black magic.

Marcus Books is the nation’s oldest Black-owned bookstore, serving San Francisco, Oakland, and now, the world, for over 60 years.

For any small business to survive for that length of time is extraordinary.

For a humble bookstore to do so amidst government suppression, a number of foreign wars, several waves of American social sea change, San Francisco gentrification, technological advances, and many economic recessions is almost unbelievable.

And it all started by accident.

Julian and Raye Richardson met each other at Tuskegee University back in the 30s where Black creativity was thriving around them. Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver were among the university’s professors at the time, and Julian attended classes with Ralph Ellison. When the couple moved to San Francisco, Julian opened a print shop while Raye earned her doctorate in literature at UC Berkeley. Raye’s love for books spilled onto the Richardsons’ friends and neighbors, and soon they found themselves loaning her collection out from the back room of Julian’s print shop. The operation grew until Marcus Books, named for Marcus Garvey, was born.

“My dad in his print shop would want to share books with his friends and never got his books back so he said, ‘Let’s start selling books,’” the Richardsons’ daughter Karen Johnson said. “I asked him, ‘Will white people let you sell Black books?’ He said, ‘It’s not about them. This is what we need.’”

Blanche, another of the Richardsons’ daughters, explains the urgency behind that need. “They shared a love of reading Black books and found them difficult to find and purchase. They realized that for a Black community to be progressive, it must have its own bookstore as a source of information about itself.”

Blanche Richardson, daughter of Julian & Raye, manages the Marcus Books in Oakland.

A simple, admirable, and aspirational goal, no doubt, but some didn’t see it that way.

Hoover’s memo on “black extremist bookstores”

In October 1968, J. Edgar Hoover issued a COINTELPRO memo warning against “increase in the establishment of black extremist bookstores which represent propaganda outlets for revolutionary and hate publications and culture centers for extremism.” In response to the perceived threat, Hoover ordered every FBI office nationwide to “locate and identify black extremist and/or African-type bookstores,… determine the identities of the owners; whether it is a front for any group or foreign interest; whether individuals affiliated with the store engage in extremist activities; the number, type, and source of books and material on sale; the store’s financial condition; its clientele; and whether it is used as a headquarters or meeting place.” Marcus Books was absolutely one of those places, as within its walls organizations like the Black Firefighters Association, the Association of Black Policeman, the Black Nurses Association, and many more were formed to support the Black working class.

Proudly proclaiming that their “very existence was born out of an awareness of anti-Blackness plus a sense of duty to provide a space where we are not simply respected but affirmed” has always put Marcus Books squarely in the sights of American white supremacists. Marcus Books is a family-owned and operated business, and even the Richardsons’ granddaughter Jasmine Johnson says that the bookstore’s entire staff has been met with “white-only-water-fountain-level racism” often. When Marcus Books was supported in 2020 through a GoFundMe after they couldn’t raise the several million dollars to purchase the Fillmore Street location that housed their first official storefront, they were met with racial aggressions, including but not limited to people hiding behind Twitter profiles trolling and undermining their posts with comments like “Why can’t a Black owned bookstore save themselves?”

Kids from an Oakland school hold their selections donated by Marcus Books, in front of a mural on the shops building depicting Malcolm X armed next to a shelf of Black literature. It alludes to his quote: “Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.”

The folks at Marcus Books have an answer to both the question and the racism they face. ““It’s pretty deeply connected to what happens when you qualify anything as Black. You’re met with suspicion or dismissal. The publishing industry has had a history of framing us as a ‘diversity section,’” Jasmine explains. The African-American Literature Book Club listed over 200 Black-owned bookstores in the 90s. Today, that number is only 118. And Marcus Books’ experience in San Francisco is only further proof that America doesn’t truly value literary diversity. Though many other San Francisco bookstores have been listed as historical landmarks, despite all of the history and culture built there, Marcus Books has never been awarded that designation. 

But with authors like Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan, Walter Mosley, Muhammad Ali, Ishmael Reed, Michael Eric Dyson, Tannarive Due, Randall Robinson, Nikki Giovanni, E. Lynn Harris, and so many more who’ve passed through their doors and graced their shelves, Marcus Books isn’t just a Black bookstore; it’s an American treasure that celebrates Blackness, in a culture that’s actively censoring that celebration in literary spaces elsewhere. In times like these and many other tumultuous eras, Marcus Books endures, inspires, and encourages us to do the same, reminding us that the “call to write our own story, now more than ever, continues.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

A PBS short documents Marcus Books through a tour of the store, interview with the owner, and bits of the business’s history.

Support Marcus Books by shopping their website or their storefront on Bookshop.

Cozy up to all the latest releases, cultural literature and happenings at Marcus Books on Instagram.

The Marcus Books GoFundMe is still open if you’d like to contribute to keeping them alive for future generations.

Learn more about the Richardson family and their storefront’s legacy in a 2010 SFGate article celebrating the Marcus Books 50th anniversary here.

Learn more about “The FBI’s War on Black Bookstores” at The Atlantic.

The New York Times compiles some great infographics and more stats on the lack of diversity in the publishing industry here.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 10 — Sepia Magazine

Sepia Magazine - Putting Melanin in Print

In the spectrum of great black publications like JET Magazine and EBONY, there’s one often left out of the conversation: Sepia Magazine.

For almost 40 years, Sepia pushed the boundaries of design, content, and photography in black publications, positioning itself as a LIFE Magazine for black readers.

Where Jet covered a wide range of general interest topics, and Ebony documented current events in news, culture and entertainment, Sepia took a decidedly different tack, turning its pages into a in-depth, photojournalistic view into the lives of everyday black people and celebrities in arts, music and civil rights in particular.

First published one year after Ebony in 1946, Fort Worth, TX headquartered Sepia entered the black publishing landscape during a curious time for America. Although they’d suffered racism in their own armed forces, black soldiers and the valor with which they fought for a country that still hadn’t afforded them full civil rights had been recognized globally and back in the States. Those unexpected but significant gains in equality, and the fact that a newly enfranchised black populace naturally wanted to be more informed about its government, led to one of the biggest black publication booms in American history.

And while Ebony and later, Jet, had things covered on the national front, the pages of Sepia were where black Americans could feel seen and heard. Headlines like “The Black School That’s the Best in Los Angeles,” “The Ghetto Through the Eyes of Youthful Photographers,” and “The Black Chinese: How Africa and the Orient mixed in the U.S.” are just a small smattering of the diverse topics Sepia featured. So keenly were they attuned to the mindset of the middle-class black American that they soon became the highest selling magazine among that demographic. That targeting strategy paid off two-fold in that black soldiers still fighting wars abroad could browse its pages for a true temperature check on the state of affairs at home, and vice versa.

Sepia’s dual and rather polar audiences provided the opportunity to establish a dialogue unlike that of any American publication. Their column “Our Men in Vietnam” gave black soldiers a platform to sound off about their experiences in the United States military. Whether writing about the continued racism in their ranks, or having personal reservations about their role in white Western imperialism, black soldiers found a safe space in Sepia’s column that encouraged them to send their “experiences, heartaches and joys while fighting communism” and black Americans could sympathize with them like never before.

Although Sepia’s staff and content was primarily black, its original owner was a Jewish man, and that culturally rich start to the magazine led to content that eventually expanded to include Hispanic and Asian Americans as well, as their communities often faced the same institutional racism. It also gave Sepia an interesting new perspective from which they could tackle issues of racism – one they pushed to its absolute limit in their stunning exposé, “Life As a Negro.”

After controversially semi-permanently darkening his skin, a white Sepia contributor named John Howard Griffin traveled the Deep South for 6 weeks as a black man, and so eye-opening was the experience that when the magazine series ended, he expanded upon it in his iconic 1961 book, Black Like Me. John himself admitted that upon undertaking this “anthropological study” as he called it, he was embarrassed to find that even “[his] own prejudices, at the emotional level, were hopelessly ingrained in [him].” In response, one black reviewer wrote “since there are white people who doubt everything a Negro says, perhaps now they will hear us when we say the plight of the American Negro is a disgrace.” In the 1977 reprint of his book, John’s epilogue astutely and mournfully pointed out that in the years since that original printing, his “personal experience was that whites still didn’t hear.”

The 7-month long series further solidified and legitimized Sepia’s place in the American landscape and the black American experience it so richly captured. With its ambitious journalism alongside beautifully photographed moments, Sepia simultaneously shared the essence of black America and exposed a quintessentially American contradiction that John Howard Griffin himself articulated so well: “those who embrace the strangely shallow dream of white supremacy are the true killers of society based on freedom, equality and justice.” Sepia published its last issue in 1983 after being bought out by Ebony and quietly shut down, but in the 37 years that it graced newsstands, black households, and trenches worldwide, the magazine carved out a space where blackness had permission to be complex, curious, and most of all, authentic.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Read some of the letters from Sepia’s armed forces column in the essay “Our Men in Vietnam: Black Media as a Source of the Afro-American Experience in Southeast Asia”.

Read the Smithsonian’s chronicle of John Howard Griffin’s Sepia Magazine series-turned-book, “Black Like Me” here.

View a small selection of Sepia photos featured at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in their Flickr album.
Watch the Fort Worth Public Library’s brief vignette on their 2017 Sepia Magazine photography exhibit here.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 1 — The Sugar Land 95

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A single backhoe’s load of dirt in early 2018 was all it took to unearth 95 battered and discarded skeletons and a history that the Imperial Sugar Corporation, the State of Texas, and the entire southern United States might have preferred remain buried.

But they had been well-warned. Reginald Moore, a former prison guard and caretaker of the state’s Old Imperial Farm Prison Cemetery had spent over 25 years researching the history of prisons, plantations and slavery in the southeastern “Sugar Bowl of Texas,” and he’d pleaded with city officials to conduct archaeological surveys before continuing development. He cautioned them that eventually, the dark history of the region’s sugar economy would come back to haunt the town just outside of Houston so aptly named Sugar Land.

Sugar caning had a long-standing reputation of being such miserable, back-breaking work that farms couldn’t even pay people to work the fields. It didn’t take long for most of the local sugar plantations to go entirely bankrupt once their unwilling workforce found freedom in 1865 when Texas was emancipated.

But the enterprising owners of a successful plantation that would go on to become the Imperial Sugar Company had another gambit to play. Since 1844, their neighbors in Louisiana had engaged in a practice known as “convict leasing.” Despite its relatively unassuming name, convict leasing was state-sanctioned slavery that was mutually beneficial for both plantation owners AND southern states. The enactment of “Black Codes” in southern states ensured a constant supply of prisoners (and thus constant income) by frivolously jailing black men for things like failing to get their employer’s permission to change jobs or flirting with white women, and plantation owners now had hassle-free labor with an added bonus: unlike slaves, leased convicts were easily replaceable and didn’t need to be well-fed or particularly cared for at all. If they died, plantation owners buried them where they fell, chains and all, and simply requisitioned another.

Victims of the “Black Codes” at work as prison laborers. Children.

And so in 1878, just 13 years after slaves were freed in Texas, the Imperial Sugar Company became one of the largest convict lease owners in American history, buying rights to the ENTIRE state’s prison population, and gaining a brand new nickname that reflected the horrific conditions that convict leasing allowed them to inflict on workers: “The Hellhole on the Brazos.” One inmate wrote that Imperial’s prison guards routinely reminded them that “the men did not cost them any money and the mules did,” a mentality that led to treatment so bad that “nobody was relieved until he dropped in his tracks.”

The painful legacy that Reginald Moore had begged Sugar Land officials to face was now one that they couldn’t look away from.

“The Sugar Land 95” (94 men and 1 woman) unearthed that day ranged from 14 to 70 years old, all with significant trauma to their bones. Despite outcry by 225 Texas historians asking the Fort Bend county officials to “make choices that acknowledge the national significance of this discovery… a burial ground [like which none other] has been found,” after DNA collection and artifact cataloguing, the Sugar Land 95 were reinterred back at the Fort Bend ISD construction site where they were found, with a memorial ceremony planned for this Spring.

When he spoke to the school district on behalf of the Sugar Land 95 he’d long fought to see acknowledged, Mr. Moore mourned that they were “being treated today in death the way they were treated when they were alive,” but took comfort in knowing that finally their truth could not be denied: “They existed.”

“A contract for convict labor, used during the convict leasing system that forced thousands of African Americans to work as forced labor after slavery ended specifically asks for ‘Negro workers.’”
(Read on at USA Today)

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Read details of Reginald Moore’s campaign for justice for the Sugar Land 95 at Texas Monthly.

The Houston Chronicle dives into the dark history of contract labor surrounding the “Hellhole on the Brazos.”
Sam Collins of the Convict Leasing and Labor Project speaks about their purpose and the history of convict leasing and the Sugar Land 95 on the Texas State Capitol, built by convict laborers.

In 2009, Douglas A. Blackmon’s book “Slavery By Another Name” won the Pulitzer Prize, and it’s another excellent source should you want to learn more about the convict leasing system.

Caleb McDaniel, a historian at Rice University, has been one of the most vocal allies of preserving the entire site where the Sugar Land 95 were found. Find his official statement and petition (endorsed by the 225 historians referenced above) here.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 26 — Victor Green & The Green Book

Victor Green - The Black Guide to America

“Would a Negro like to pursue a little happiness at a theater, a beach, pool, hotel, restaurant, on a train, plane, or ship, a golf course, summer or winter resort? Would he like to stop overnight at a tourist camp while he motors about his native land ‘Seeing America First?’ Well, just let him try!”

That was the state of affairs according to the NAACP’s magazine in 1947, as they warned black people against buying into the Great Northern Railway & National Park Service’s ad campaign encouraging Americans to vacation close to home. And lest someone doubt it, they need only look to examples of the plain warnings posted just outside thousands of “sundown towns”:

“N—–, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On You.”

These weren’t just occasional backwoods towns. As late as the 1960’s there were still as many as 10,000 active sundown towns documented in the United States, some that were well-known and well-populated like Glendale, CA and over half of the incorporated towns in Illinois.

It was a difficult dilemma for black people who’d been encouraged to buy cars as soon as they could to avoid the humiliation of being forced to the back of public transportation vehicles, but couldn’t freely use those cars to travel beyond the relative safety of their immediate surroundings. If they did, they often packed extra food, gas and portable facilities to avoid being forced in dangerous situations for necessities.

Victor Hugo Green had done his share of getting around. As a postal worker, and later World War II soldier and music manager, he’d learned to navigate where he was welcome and would repeatedly visit those same establishments for both his own safety and to contribute to their continued success.

After some close calls himself and hearing stories from strangers and friends alike about running into racism whether traveling for business or pleasure, he decided that he’d curate a book to help “give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable.”

When he ran his inaugural 10-page issue in 1936, it was titled the “Negro Motorist Green Book,” and it primarily focused on lodgings, gas stations, restaurants and travel advice in New York, but by the very next year, it was popular enough to reach national distribution. By picking the brains of his fellow postal workers and offering to pay the Green Book’s readers $1 for providing new leads, Victor grew his publication annually until he left for the war in 1940, and when he returned in 1946, he began expanding the Green Book to include safe spaces in international destinations like Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas and Europe. By 1949, the Green Book was up to 80 pages including ads, many of which were from black female entrepreneurs who found freedom and greater personal wealth in running their own businesses and benefited from the word-of-mouth.

But what the Green Book omitted was as much a warning as inclusion was a welcome. Not a single restaurant was featured in Alabama in the 1949 issue. In Texas, only Austin and Waco were included in ANY Green Book. On the contrary, New Mexico was highlighted as a state that primarily practiced “cash over color.” The information contained (or not) within the pages of the Green Book was so extensive and reputable, a member of the Little Rock Nine even called it “one of the survival tools of segregated life.”

Recognizing that ultimately, black travelers just wanted to have positive experiences, Victor always ensured that the tone of the Green Book, while cautious was always uplifting, and he often featured travel quotes like his twist on Mark Twain’s “Travel is fatal to prejudice” to reassure black travelers that eventually things would change. In fact, at their peak of printing 15,000 copies annually, Victor himself once wrote, “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published… It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”

Victor passed away in 1960 and didn’t live to see the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing discrimination on the basis of race, but his hope was indeed realized. With the passage of the Act, the dire necessity for his guide slowly decreased, and after nearly 30 years in circulation, the Green Book was finally retired in 1966, having made a whole era of travel possible for black people who wanted to take their growing freedoms on the road too.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Explore the New York Public Library’s digital catalogue of Green Books published 1936-1967.

The Bitter Southerner created a really lovely featurette illustrating personal vignettes about using the Green Book.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 23 — Robert Abbott

Robert Abbott - Defender of Black Voices

Twice, Robert Abbott had risen to his full potential only to be thwarted by the color of his skin.

He’d studied the printing trade in college, but when he graduated, the only jobs he was offered were in unskilled labor for which he was overqualified.

He’d gone back to school and graduated with a law degree, but before he could build his own practice, an established Chicago lawyer informed him that he was “a little too dark to make any impression on a court.”

So Robert combined his talents and went to work for someone who’d never stand in his way: himself and the people who looked just like him.

In 1905, The Chicago Defender was established.

What started with a 25 cent investment and a 300-copy first run printed from Robert’s landlady’s kitchen grew to 250,000 copies per week and became the most highly circulated black newspaper in the country.

When Robert read white mainstream papers, he was disheartened that the primary news of black people revolved around their crimes, lynchings and the riots against them. He knew better.

His newspaper painted black people in a whole new light. He featured black successes, ran news of black interest, promoted black landlords and properties, rallied for black equality, and once his paper’s distribution reached over 100,000 with nearly two-thirds of that beyond Chicago, he created a whole campaign designed to improve the lot of black readers everywhere. Having noticed that a large number of the derogatory stories and negative events around black people were coming from Southern states where slavery (and thus its effects) had lingered, he appealed to those affected readers to move to Chicago where there was more freedom, a richly cultured and diverse black community and most importantly, personal opportunity.

The “Great Migration” as the surge of black Southerners to northern states was called, began in 1915, but Robert put an urgency to it, even calling for a “Great Northern Drive” on May 15, 1917 as a mass protest exodus of sorts. Between 1916 when The Defender’s campaign began and 1918, Chicago’s black population more than tripled from 40,000 to 150,000, a growth rate that many today and back then largely attributed to Robert’s successful advertising.

It’s no surprise that such a positive force for black people quickly drew the wrong kind of attention and in many southern states, The Defender became anathema. Just before World War I, the U.S. government investigated Robert on charges of sedition after he called for black servicemen to demand equal rights in the military. Klansmen began attacking anyone black seen reading the The Defender, news outlets refused to carry it, and for a very short time, the paper was in jeopardy.

But by then, Robert was a master at using his hustle to overcome adversity.

He bundled the paper in luggage and distributed it among black railroad porters who created a network that gained him an even greater readership than he’d had before. They’d deliver individual copies to riders covertly, redistribute weekly editions among themselves, or drop off whole stacks in local black barber shops, churches and community centers where they’d be seen and shared by up to 500,000 black readers per edition.

While the Defender had long grown from its kitchen production, its distribution eventually had such a high volume that it had to be moved to its own building entirely, becoming the first black newspaper with its own printing press, and in the early 1920’s, its founder who originally couldn’t break into the printing industry became one of America’s first self-made black millionaires.

Robert Abbott died in 1940, but by 1956, The Chicago Defender had become the largest black owned daily newspaper in the world. Although it’s circulation is much smaller now, (as are most newspapers) it’s still in print today, and the goals of its founding principles are just as relevant in 2019 as they were in 1905 when one man determined to overcome racism made a difference for millions.

“The Chicago Defender’s Bible”

1. American race prejudice must be destroyed;
2. Opening up all trade unions to blacks as well as whites;
3. Representation in the President’s Cabinet;
4. Hiring black engineers, firemen, and conductors on all American railroads, and to all jobs in government;
5. Gaining representation in all departments of the police forces over the entire United States;
6. Government schools giving preference to American citizens before foreigners;
7. Hiring black motormen and conductors on surface, elevated, and motor bus lines throughout America;
8. Federal legislation to abolish lynching; and
9. Full enfranchisement of all American citizens.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

The Chicago Defender continues its legacy of reporting on positivity in the Black community still today.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 11 — Seneca Village

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Seneca Village - Central Park’s Stolen Foundation

There’s a dark secret buried beneath the greenery of Central Park.

In the mid-1850s, New York was was just beginning to blossom into the global city it’s now become. Brimming with tourists, businessmen and immigrants from around the world, the city needed a grand outdoor space to rival those of London, Paris and other European metropolises, according to New York’s officials and prominent residents too.

Where they didn’t have space to build, city planners took what they needed from the nearby “shanty wasteland” inhabited by “insects, squatters, and bloodsuckers,” as the local papers characterized the small enclave of Seneca Village and its people.

But those descriptions couldn’t have been further from the truth. No one was more invested in the well-being and upkeep of their small corner of the Big Apple than Seneca Village’s own citizens – it had stood as New York’s first community of free black people for 30 years.

Despite the fact that the state of New York didn’t officially free slaves until 1827 and the United States didn’t follow until 1863, the free black men and women of Seneca Village established their middle-class settlement by purchasing adjacent plots of property in 1825. But so much more than pride bound them so fiercely to their estates. In those days, black men were only eligible to vote if they owned at least $250 of land. Of the nearly 14,000 black people documented in New York at the time, only 91 had voting rights and of those, 10 lived in Seneca Village. For their small town, preservation was power.

Albro and Mary Beth Lyons were two prominent abolitionists who were also known citizens of Seneca Village.

But unbeknownst to all of them, just two weeks before the church’s cornerstone was set, city officials had ordered the entire village, from 81st to 89th Streets between 7th and 8th Avenues (near what’s now Central Park West), condemned to make space for their vanity.

With 3 churches, 3 schools, 2 cemeteries and dozens of free-standing homes up to three stories tall, Seneca Village was a thriving community with nearly 600 total residents during the 3 decades it existed. And they had plans for greater longevity. When the cornerstone for their First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was laid in 1853, a time capsule was placed inside to preserve the significance for future residents. As a suspected Underground Railroad stop due to the presence of so many abolitionists and the constant influx of new residents, it had become a place of hope for all who passed through and a realized vision of what free black people could be.

An article from the New York Herald documents the coffins unearthed in 1871, noting that they had not been there just 5 years before when trees were planted in the park. Unlikely, as excavations later established it as the location of one of Seneca Village’s cemeteries. (Also note the coffin’s description.)

4 years later in 1857, it was all gone. Despite protests from the citizens and lawsuits that they brought against the city for failing to pay what the property was worth, if they paid anything at all, the then 300 or so men, women and children of Seneca Village didn’t stand a chance against New York’s elite.

It wasn’t just black history that was destroyed either. By the time it was razed, Seneca Village was a shining example of an integrated community, with as many as 30% of its residents having been Irish or German, all attending the same schools, churches and local gatherings.

Seneca Village was only one of many black communities, cemeteries and landmarks lost to the rise of New York, and the city has begun to address this shameful history through places like the African Burial Ground National Monument and historical markers. But some mistakes can never be undone. As signified on the plaque where Seneca Village once stood, after their property and voting rights were lost, Seneca Village was never rebuilt, and while remains have been unearthed there sporadically since 1871, not a single living descendant of the community’s black citizens has ever been found. to make something brand new.

Where Seneca Village would have stood today

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Explore the study & excavation of this historic community at Columbia University’s Seneca Village Project.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 19 — Greenwood, Tulsa

Greenwood District, Tulsa, Oklahoma - The Black Wall Street Massacre

In the early 20th century, black businessmen bought land in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and developed it into one of the most successful & affluent black communities ever built in America.

The Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma was once so self-sufficient & financially stable that it was known as “Black Wall Street” where black people lived, worked, bought, sold & traded with others, and everyone succeeded for it. Greenwood had its own banks, pharmacies, lawyers, doctors (including a Mayo Clinic endorsed surgeon), and published two newspapers. Large segments of the population lived with trappings of wealth that were rare even for black people in integrated northern states, like private planes.

But on May 31, 1921, it all literally burned to the ground. In a story that plays like a broken record, a rumor about a black man assaulting a white woman somehow justified genocide, and Tulsa’s racists, bolstered by the KKK, destroyed EVERYTHING in Greenwood. The community was bombed from the air & torched from below in a 2-day riot that no law enforcement official stopped & no one was ever held accountable for.

Over 800 people were injured, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless when 35 city blocks of over 1,256 residences were destroyed, more than a dozen churches and 600 successful businesses were lost, including 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, two movie theaters and a hospital. Greenwood’s founder alone lost over $200,000 in property assets. Archaeologists & historians estimate that as many as 300 died that day, and their bodies were dumped in a mass grave outside of the local cemetery. Known today as the Tulsa Race Riot, if estimates are correct, it ranks as the second deadliest attack on American soil behind 9/11.

Needless to say, Greenwood never recovered its original glory, and the story of what happened there only survived history because it destroyed a key milestone in black history. But it was hardly the only story of its kind. Between 1906 and 1923, notable mass murders of dozens of black people were carried out in Atlanta, East St. Louis, Rosewood, FL, and Slocum, TX. Similarly to the Tulsa Riot, ultimately, no one was held responsible for committing any of these crimes of murder, arson, kidnapping, rape, robbery and so on.

Today, when we point elsewhere to condemn senseless acts of terrorism, we should humbly acknowledge that our country has much to atone for to our own citizens in our not-so-distant past as well.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

The Tulsa Historical Society & Museum has preserved an incredible collection of images of the day of the massacre, but also of black life in Greenwood before it was stolen away.

CNN produced a very thorough 7-minute short featuring images of Greenwood & its citizens in their prime, more from the day of the massacre, newspaper articles, and an interview with an elderly survivor.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 16 — Wereth 11

Wereth 11 - Heroic Artillery Battalion

World War II’s 333rd Field Army Battalion was composed of some of the first black enlisted men trained in combat, rather than service positions.

The 11 men who were the 333rd’s Charley Battery quickly made names for themselves through their deadly accuracy with artillery, destroying a German tank 9 miles away in 90 seconds. But that fame also made them targets to a German army gasping for its last breath.

On December 16, 1944, Charley Battery was separated from their unit. They found safety in the tiny 9-house hamlet of Wereth, Belgium, just on the German border. The Nazi SS was tipped off & raided the village, demanding the soldiers’ surrender. To prevent any harm to the locals, Charley Battery surrendered peacefully.

Rather than being kept as prisoners of war or executed immediately, the 11 men were brutally tortured. Many were missing fingers, had broken legs, suffered bayonet & barrel stock wounds to the eyes & head, and suffered multiple, non-lethal gunshot wounds before they were finally killed & left in the snow, where their bodies remained until documented by the Army in February 1945.

These weren’t the only American soldiers the SS committed war crimes against. But they were the only soldiers whose sacrifice went seemingly ignored. The 1949 Senate Armed Forces subcommittee recorded a dozen similar SS atrocities, but omitted the massacre of Charley Battery. On the 50th Anniversary of the soldiers’ deaths, the son of the man who’d sheltered them erected the monument pictured here, memorializing them as the “Wereth 11.” It’s the only known monument in Europe that honors the black soldiers who fought in World War II.

In 2013, Congress passed a resolution reissuing the original 1949 subcommittee report to include the Wereth 11, awarding them with multiple combat medals, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Like many black soldiers who fought in American wars at home & abroad, the Wereth 11 bravely defended a country that didn’t defend them. Throughout our country’s history, but now more than ever, we’ve needed to be reminded that red-blooded Americans come in every color.

In honor of the sacrifices of:
Corporal Bradley Mager
Staff Sergeant Thomas J. Forte
Technical Corporal Robert L. Green
Technical Sergeant William E. Pritchett
Technical Sergeant James A. Stewart
PFC George Davis
PFC Jimmie L. Leatherwood
PFC George W. Moten
PFC Due W. Turner
Private Curtis Adams
Private Nathaniel Moss

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Read the resolution that finally officially recognized the Wereth 11.