Tag Archives: PERPETUAL

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 6 — Mae Walls & Antoinette Harrell

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Bloodied and desperate, 14-year-old Mae fled into the woods under the cover of darkness.

It wasn’t the first time one of the Walls children had run. The time before, they’d tracked down 9-year-old Annie and begged her to please come back to prevent one or all of them from being killed as punishment. They had good reason to think that’d be the case. When Mae’s father tried to run, he was nearly beaten to death in front of his family to discourage any of them from doing it again.

So when Mae determined that she wasn’t going to pick cotton or clean houses anymore, drink from the same creek where cows bathed anymore, fight the owners’ dogs for leftovers anymore, and above all, wasn’t going to endure being raped alongside her mother anymore like she had since she was 5 years old, it was her father who tearfully beat her so that their owner wouldn’t kill her instead.

And that was how Mae Walls found herself shaking in the bushes in the dead of night on the side of a country road. A lady passing on a cart noticed and rescued the Wall family from their plantation that night… only to put them right back to work in the lady’s own home. When Mae turned 18, she bravely stood up to her masters once again and her obstinance landed her whole family in homelessness… but for the very first time, it was freedom.

And it hadn’t come to the Walls family until 1962.

They were 20th century slaves.

Mistakenly signing a contract he couldn’t read had indebted her father, mother and their 7 children to white landowners. Even though this practice had been outlawed 4 years after slavery was, the Walls family had been so isolated in rural Mississippi they never knew that black people had been emancipated in the first place, let alone that a Civil Rights movement had ever existed. In fact, it wasn’t until 2001 when Mae attended a public meeting on slavery reparations that she even learned that what her family had endured was illegal all along.

From Louisiana to Florida, historian and genealogist Antoinette Harrell, dubbed “The Slavery Detective of the South,” has discovered too many stories like Mae’s in her decades long research that began when she scoured for clues about her own family’s past in historical records. “Seeing my ancestors’ perceived value written on a piece of paper changed me. It also set forth the direction of my life. It was terribly painful, but I needed to know more,” Antoinette said.

That desire to know more led other Southern black families to entrust her with the stories they knew about their pasts, and those they hoped she’d uncover. In her 25 years searching the US National Archives Archival Recovery Program, The Library of Congress, state and local records, Antoinette Harrell has uncovered more than 30,000 case records, accounts from enslaved people, now-sealed FBI files, and even letters to sitting presidents documenting slavery in the South as late as the 1970s.

Even though she lived her early life hidden away from the world, before her death in 2014, Mae Walls’s story touched millions through her appearances and interviews everywhere from ABC News to People Magazine, and talk shows to civil rights rallies.

Standing on the same property where she once suffered unspeakable abuses, Mae whispered to Antoinette, “I told you my story because I have no fear in my heart.” It’s with that same fearless spirit that Antoinette continues uncovering the slave stories of the South today “because it needs to be done.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

There’s no comparison and no words for seeing & hearing the work Antoinette does for yourself. This video is 21 minutes long, heartbreaking and necessary.

Read Antoinette’s firsthand account of meeting Mae and how her work as the “peonage detective” began.

People Magazine’s “The Last Slaves of Mississippi?” from 2007 is one of the most extensive accounts of Mae & the Wall siblings’ stories. It is graphic.

“The Untold Story: Slavery in the 20th Century,” winner of the Audience Award at the 2009 PATOIS New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, tells Mae’s story alongside the circumstances that allowed slavery to continue in sixteen states and sixteen counties throughout Mississippi well after it was abolished.

Antoinette & others scholars highly recommend Douglas Blackmon’s “Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II” as the most extensive reference on post-Civil War slavery. Read an excerpt and buy the book here.

Or watch the 90-minute PBS documentary based on the book that “tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality.”

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 28 — Rosanell Eaton

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Before she cast her very first vote in 1939, 18-year-old Rosanell Eaton had to correctly recite the entire Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. And then she had to take a literacy test. Much to everyone’s surprise but hers, she did both.

White voters could simply show up, sign in and cast their vote. But not black people like Rosanell. They had to prove their fitness to vote by taking math, government and logic tests that were designed to fail.

But Rosanell, like a handful of other black voters, passed and she became the first black female voter in her county in North Carolina.

Rosanell understood that in the United States, the right to vote is the power to create change, and if she wanted to change the Jim Crow laws that allowed racist governmental structures to exist, she had to help other black people vote as well.

Over the course of her lifetime, Rosanell single-handedly registered over 4,000 black voters before she lost count. So when voting restrictions began passing in North Carolina again in 2013, Rosanell recognized them for exactly what they were. Because after voting religiously for over 70 years, she too was being denied the privilege all over again.

North Carolina’s new voting laws required identification that, as the granddaughter of a slave, she simply didn’t have. Because records, especially those on black people, were kept much more loosely back then, Rosanell had 3 different forms of government ID, each with a slightly different name. In 2015, she started her journey to reconcile her past. 11 trips to state agencies, 200 miles and 20 hours later, she was official.

And then she fought back and became the lead plaintiff in the historic North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory Supreme Court case, challenging the state’s restrictive voting laws as violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Having seen firsthand that the fight she thought she left behind is not yet won, the now 95-year-old Rosanell is back to work for the civil rights of the citizens of North Carolina as a speaker, activist, registrar, and of course, an inspiration.

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If this lady doesn’t move you in her Moral Monday rally speech to the North Carolina General Assembly, check your pulse.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 22 — Tom Burrell

Tom Burrell - Advertising copywriter

When Tom Burrell became the first black man to break into Chicago advertising (which is to say, national advertising), he introduced the entire ad world to a novel concept:

“Black people are not dark-skinned white people.”

It was 1961. Seriously.

Tom started in Wade Advertising’s mailroom as a college student & within 6 months he was their first black copywriter. He went on to work as a copywriter & creative director for some of the biggest agencies in the world until he later started his own.

Before he broke into the industry, brands were placing ads in Ebony Magazine praising how the 1800s were a great time for beer. Which is wonderful, except that apparently, back then, beer had it better than black people. Makes for a hard sell. Marlboro was trying to sell cigarettes to black consumers using a brooding, white cowboy with a lasso at his side. Not exactly the most historically trustworthy figure for brown-skinned people, you know?

And that’s where Tom got his biggest break. When Philip Morris approached Tom, they needed a way to do better with black consumers. So he introduced them to black culture. He showed the world what it was to be black, cool, communal, relevant and hopeful but with a history.

And when he did, EVERYONE came calling. First, it was McDonald’s in 1972. And then more of the world’s biggest brands followed — Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company, and P&G. And it was all because for the first time ever, black people were seeing versions of themselves on tv, in print, on billboards, and everywhere else that Tom could get them, portrayed as positive, intelligent, talented, diverse, family-oriented, worthy, and in short, REAL.

After decades of success in advertising, Tom’s retired now, but he serves as chairman emeritus for his agency, Burrell Communications, and is still active in the advertising community. Because of Tom’s work, today’s brands have recognized the value in speaking to EVERYONE in their own voice. In short, you COULD say that what Tom did changed the face of advertising, but considering how many people are only exposed to others by what they see on TV, I think there’s an argument to be made that Tom’s work actually changed the world.

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Burrell Advertising won their first Clio for this classic 1978 Coca-Cola TV ad featuring hallmarks of the black community.
And I know y’all remember McDonald’s Calvin! That commercial was created under Tom’s direction too.

Tom’s book, Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority, details the “greatest propaganda campaign of all time.”

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 21 — Dr. Rick Kittles

For many black Americans with longstanding roots outside of Africa, their genealogy’s paper trail ends at a bill of sale, if the trail even goes that far.

(PAUSE. Let the historical, social, economic & personal implications of that sink in. Then you may continue.)

Dr. Rick Kittles is changing that.

He’s the world’s leading African-American DNA geneticist, and his work has lead to incredible breakthroughs in sickle cell disease, colon cancer, prostate cancer and more. He’s also the geneticist behind the PBS series Finding Your Roots.

When Dr. Kittles studied West African genes & noticed that his own chromosomes (he has a Nigerian heritage) differed, he started connecting the dots. He built databases of African-American men around the United States and was able to identify not only those men’s African lineage down to the tribe, but also the European colonial control of those countries & their distribution of slaves throughout the United States. Through DNA alone. The differences he observed were from the significant European contributions, sometimes upwards of 35%, present in every African-American man’s strands.

But his breakthrough meant more than ancestral lineage for a community. It meant present discovery for EVERYONE. With such a huge database of complex Caucasian and African-American DNA distributions, he’s been able to read genetic data for how certain diseases present in a lineage, what links and/or triggers those diseases might have (like vitamin D deficiency’s link to prostate cancer), and what environmental factors might impact diseases in affected DNA. Dr. Kittles’ method of using specific genetic markers to decipher ancestry was once rejected by the scientific community. Now, it’s the standard in biomedical research.

In his “free time,” Dr. Kittles is also the director of AfricanAncestry.com, using his database of over 30,000 indigenous African samples to help black Americans establish a history for themselves that goes beyond enslavement and into empowerment.

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Dive deeper into the implications of Dr. Kittles’ work in his TED talk, “The Biology of Race in the Absence of Biological Races.”
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 7 — Ruby Bridges

Norman Rockwell’s painting of Ruby Bridges being escorted to school and the real photograph.

You might recognize little Ruby Bridges from her depiction in this iconic Norman Rockwell painting, or you might even recognize her by name as the first black child to attend an all-white public school in the South.

Neither of these things tells her entire truth. Because truthfully, that day, Ruby didn’t desegregate anything.

When 6-year-old Ruby Bridges went to William J. Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960, she thought the rowdy crowd gathered nearby was there for Mardi Gras. In her innocence, she didn’t realize they were there because of her.

Ruby’s first day of school was spent in the principal’s office because no one else came to school that day. Ruby’s second day, a woman in the crowd threatened to poison her & federal marshals warned her to only eat food from home. By the end of the first week, Ruby’s school, which had an enrollment of almost 1,000 at the beginning of the year, had dwindled down to just three: Ruby and two white girls.

Ruby & her two schoolmates didn’t attend class or recess together, and only one teacher would even accept her as a student. Each of the girls were taught in a separate classroom, and although she could hear the others playing sometimes, Ruby wasn’t allowed to join them. It wasn’t until her second year that Ruby attended a single class with another child.

Although public schools were desegregated on paper in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, many schools in the South technically remained segregated for much longer. In fact, the Texas Legislature fought integration until 1965 under threat of losing federal funds. My own school district in Beaumont, Texas didn’t fully integrate until court-ordered by the Justice Department in 1975, a task they were still trying to achieve through the 80s.

As for Ruby, she’s currently in the process of doing the work she was first sent to Frantz Elementary to do – she’s converting it into the Ruby Bridges School to “educate leaders for the 21st century who are committed to social justice, community service, equality, racial healing and nonviolence.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Take 3 more minutes to actually hear & see the things Ruby experienced on her way to school through a PBS short featuring real footage from 1960, and a present-day interview with Ruby too.

In 2013, the school Ruby “desegregated” reopened as her very own Akili Aademy of New Orleans created to “prepare scholars to excel in rigorous high schools, to succeed in college, and to strengthen their community-oriented character.”