Rhiannon Giddens’ Black History Month Profiles

For 2023 Black History Month, Rhiannon Giddens posted a series Facebook profiles of overlooked or underappreciated figures in Black history. I found these profiles informative and appreciate Rhiannon’s comments with links for further research. I don’t know if these profiles are collected anywhere else…so I’m capturing them here for my own sake and for friends that are not on Facebook. Each profile is a direct copy from Rhiannon’s posts, in her words. The only thing I’ve added is a link to the Wikipedia profile (where there is one) for each person, just because I couldn’t resist. I hope I’m not violating any copyrights or crossing any boundaries by collecting these posts in one location. I only hope to promote Rhiannon’s good work and help spread knowledge of these remarkable historical characters.

So it begins – Black History Month. Full disclosure – I hate that we need something called Black History Month. I hate that it’s the shortest month of the year. I hate that it has been in the past the only time people talked about black people in history. All that being said, I also DO think year round focus is increasing (well maybe everywhere but Florida) and hopefully soon this will be a relic of the past. Until then! **edited to add** –

1. Yasuke, The African Samurai

It’s not a well-known truth that the first non-Japanese person to be made into a Samurai was African. Yasuke was brought to Japan (by way of India) as part of the Portuguese slave trade, but he became a feared and respected warrior under the legendary warlord Nobunaga Oda. This is the beginning of my month-long crusade to remind people that 1) Globalism isn’t new; 2) the slave trade had long, long arms; and 3) it wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that black=bad/subhuman/subservient. As Smithsonian Magazine writes:

“Though Yasuke was the only Black samurai in Nobunaga’s army, he was by no means the only African present in Japan at the time. “Several hundred African people lived in Japan during the 16th century,” says Doan. “[They] worked as interpreters, soldiers, entertainers” and more. She says that Kyoto’s Japanese residents would have been surprised by Yasuke’s “foreignness” but likely wouldn’t have exhibited prejudice based on his skin color. According to Lockley, Nobunaga was a powerful man whom few were willing to challenge, so his decision to employ Yasuke wasn’t controversial. In fact, the samurai proved to be quite popular among locals, who flocked to catch a glimpse of him.”

I just learned about this guy from one of my favorite podcasts, Our Fake History (link below and HIGHLY recommended) and was fascinated with his story. My daughter is currently in a manga/anime obsession and I’m excited to show her the manga inspired by Yasuke called Afro Samurai by Takashi Okazaki; there’s also a new Netflix anime called Yasuke (English version voiced by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.)

Podcast: https://ourfakehistory.com/…/episode-171-who-was…/…

Website: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/…/who-was-yasuke-japans…/

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41884982-african-samurai

2. Jeremiah G. Hamilton, The first Black American millionaire

At this point much has been made of Madame C. J. Walker, who in the early 1900s became a self made millionaire (probably not the first female, and as we will see shortly, not the first black millionaire period) marketing her hair products to the African American community. She is nestled very comfortably in a FUBU mentality (‘for us, by us”) which has always been easier for the world at large to recognize and approve of.

Today’s subject, however, made his money the true blue American way – ruthlessly and craftily, and he did it by operating in the almost entirely white Wall Street of post-Civil War New York, something almost impossible to fathom. He has not been written about very much, despite his remarkable life, and I suspect the Black community hasn’t resurrected him because not only was he in no way interested in being of service to his race, but…well, he’s pretty dispicable. But so were many other rich people lauded from those times – Vanderbilt, et. al. Racial equality means the opportunity to be seen not as a Black scoundrel, but just a scoundrel, full stop.

“No one will ever erect a statue honoring Jeremiah G. Hamilton. As an African American broker in the mid-1800s, Hamilton was part of no one’s usable past: Wall Street in that time was completely white, and New York’s black leaders disdained him for his brashness. But his death, in 1875, attracted national attention, and scores of newspapers reported that Hamilton was the richest non-white man in the country and that his estate was worth about $2 million, or about $250 million today.

“Hamilton worked in and around Wall Street for 40 years. Far from being some novice feeling his way around the economy’s periphery, he was a skilled and innovative financial manipulator…

“He may have been successful, but he was not well-liked. “The notorious colored capitalist long identified with commercial enterprises in this city,” one obituary spat, “is dead and buried.” Rumors of counterfeiting and scams against insurance companies dogged him until he died. Not that the ethics or business practices of many of his antebellum contemporaries could bear too much scrutiny, but Wall Street was never going to be a level playing field for a trailblazing African American. His forays soon earned him the nickname of “The Prince of Darkness.” Others, with even less affection, simply called him “Nigger Hamilton.”

“Yet for all that, brokers and merchants generally were more interested in the color of the man’s money than his skin. Not that Hamilton gave a damn one way or the other. In general, he simply carried on amassing his fortune whenever an obstacle arose.”

— Shane White, from Prince of Darkness, The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Millionaire

Podcast: https://backstory.newamericanhistory.org/…/who-wants…/3/

Website: https://www.theatlantic.com/…/wall-street-first…/411622/

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/23848268-prince-of-darkness

*no verifiable photo has been found of Hamilton, even though he married and had between 8 and 10 children; I have to wonder, since his wife was white (another shocker from that time!) if there was a vested interest in descendants downplaying his (and therefore their) blackness.

3. Dido Elizabeth Belle, the mixed-race English gentlewoman

So you may not know this about me but I am a rabid Regency romance novel reader – instead of watching reality TV to relax I read impossible stories about countless numbers of impossibly handsome and beautiful aristocrats finding impossible love in early 1800s Britain (I tend to favor the ones that more closely hew to Jane Austen’s style of gentile, restrained cleverness rather than the torrid ones). It’s my escapist fare and I shall not apologize for it.

So. Bridgerton. I had already read all of those books when the Netflix series came out – and even if I wanted to watch a show based on romance novels (which I really don’t, to be honest) when I saw that how they cast it I was completely out. I sit at a crossroads when it comes to representation in the media – I think we have a lot of catching up to do, and It’s exciting to see so many properties centered on black and brown characters and stories. I also have no problem with black Jedis, elves, mermaids and what have you. It. is. Fantasy. But when it comes to historical fiction, there’s times when I agree, especially when it has been contextualized and thought through, and there’s times when I certainly do not. I just can’t suspend my disbelief enough to watch Bridgerton, knowing what I do about that time period. There were lots of Black people in Britain! They just weren’t rich aristocrats. And until we get a fun multicultural series about the British working class from that time, we will console ourselves with Dido.

As is so often the case in these stories, Dido Elizabeth Belle’s tale begins with slavery. Her mother was a 15 year enslaved African woman named Maria, and her father was an officer in the Royal Navy named Sir John Lindsay, and Dido ended up eventually in the keeping of her great-uncle, the first Earl of of Mansfield, in London. Her life is interesting because she exists in a liminal space – as a Black person, she was seen as other; as the daughter of a wealthy nobleman who recognized her as such, she had value and opportunity; but because she was illegitimate that had firm limits.

‘Dido’s exact position within Lord Mansfield’s household is unclear, but the evidence suggests that she was brought up as a lady alongside her cousin Elizabeth Murray. We know that she was taught to read, write, play music and was graceful and at ease in the presence of invited guests. She also received an annual allowance. In John Lindsay’s obituary, which confirmed him as Dido’s father, the London Chronicle noted that ‘[her] amiable disposition and accomplishments have gained her the highest respect from all his Lordship’s relations and visitants’.’

—English Heritage org.uk

She grew up adjacent to wealth, but after her great-uncle died she didn’t have a lot of money herself, although far more than the average working class person at that time. She ended up in comfortable, middling obscurity, married to an upper servant. It’s not as exciting as the movie Belle, perhaps, but a real life well lived.

Website: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/…/women…/dido-belle/

Podcast: https://lnns.co/s1DQlaROdAx

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21102911-belle

Movie: Belle https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404181/

Warning: this movie takes pretty big liberties with events in Belle’s life, but all fictionalized biographies do. I will say it’s a bit unrealistic, but not nearly as much as Bridgerton.

edited to add: PS Fun fact: Dido is the name of the founder of Carthage, in modern day Tunisia in North Africa, and would have been well-known to readers of the Greek and Latin classics, as all aristocratic men of this time were.

4. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, The first Black General of the French Army

So this amazing guy gave inspiration for two of the most famous novels in the world literature cannon – The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Christo – to one of the most famous writers in the world – Alexandre Dumas. Who happened to be his son. It constantly amazes me how hidden yet incredibly influential Black people are in world history. There will be this towering figure who was famous in his day and then he’s completely erased from the history books thanks to…well, racism. And in this case, an insecure megalomaniac named Napoleon. And then we don’t learn about the General in school and then certain people say “well you know black people never did nothing (Except for MLK)”. Frustrating is an understatement.

Tom Reiss, author of The Black Count, talks about him best:

“HE WAS the son of a black slave and a renegade French aristocrat, born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) when the island was the center of the world sugar trade. The boy’s uncle was a rich, hard-working planter who dealt sugar and slaves out of a little cove on the north coast called Monte Cristo—but his father, Antoine, neither rich nor hard-working, was the eldest son. In 1775, Antoine sailed to France to claim the family inheritance, pawning his black son into slavery to buy passage. Only after securing his title and inheritance did he send for the boy, who arrived on French soil late in 1776, listed in the ship’s records as “slave Alexandre.”

I would just like to reiterate that his feckless father the Marquis literally funded his trip back to France using the body of his son. And then when said son wanted to go into the military his father forbid him to use his name- last laugh’s on him, I suppose, as now it’s the surname of an enslaved woman in Haiti that is known round the world.

5. Sarah Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus

Sometimes you are famous because of what you do; sometimes you are famous because of what you survive. Sarah Baartman (1789-1815), was a woman with the unlucky combination of right body, right place, wrong time. She had what is known as steatopygia, which is a dryland adaptation* where large stores of fat build up on the backside. Many other women from around Africa have been known to have it, and, in general, no ‘race’ has the monopoly on big hips and buttocks, but Sarah was unfortunately put in a position to be considered a freak, anatomic spectacle, missing link, and cause célèbre for those obsessed with the faux science of Biological Racism.

After her husband was killed by Dutch colonisers, Sarah was taken in her teens to London to be gawked at, sniggered at, poked, prodded, and pretty comprehensively degraded. She was then taken to Paris, where her conditions became even worse; she was eventually sold to an animal trainer and ended up prostituted and dying of disease in her mid twenties. Her body was dissected, discussed, and dismembered, and her skeleton and a cast of her body was a popular exhibit in France until 1974. 1974.

As in many of these stories, we don’t know a lot about HER, just what was done to her. She spoke multiple languages and knew how to survive. She had a childhood. She had private thoughts, feelings and emotions; we can imagine what she felt when she was poked by an old lady’s umbrella (to see what was real), or examined by a bunch of men (and really, do you call that an examination or sexual assault?), or laughed at by children – but we will never know. The best way to honor her spirit is to tell her story the best we can and learn from it.

website: (short) https://www.blackpast.org/…/baartman-sara-saartjie…/

(long) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Baartman

pocast: https://www.abc.net.au/…/stuff…/not-your-venus/13572994

book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/58647433-the-hottentot-venus

movie: Venus Noire (Black Venus) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1401643/

P.S. I’ve seen on several websites that the development of the bustle in women’s dresses was inspired by Sarah, but it’s hard to believe, as Sarah died in 1815 and the bustle wasn’t patented until 1857, and not widely worn until the 1870s. At the time of Sarah’s brief life, English, American and European fashion for women was inspired by Revolutionary France, with a Grecian influence of high waists and flowing, diaphanous skirts. The stiffer, more stifling modes of dress, with the big bell skirts and etc, followed that in the late 30s, 40s, and 50s. So….I’ll have to see firm documentation for that claim.

P.P.S. I also made a conscious decision NOT to lead with the more famous images of a nearly naked Sarah with her attributes in full display; I liked seeing her face better. But those images are linked in the resources.

*edited due to comment

6. Hosea Easton, the Famous Black Banjo player – Down Under

We tend to think we have the market cornered on world travel – we jet set to places unknown at the drop of a hat, and are back within the month to the tell the tale. Well, folks have been doing that for untold centuries – the difference is in degree. People travelled slower, and they travelled less, but they still went unimaginable distances.

I travelled to Sydney, Australia, some years ago to play my banjo, unaware that an African-American banjo player had made that journey over a hundred years before me – his name was Hosea Easton.

The son of a well known early civil rights activist and preacher, Hosea Easton was a very talented musician and performer, joining the extremely popular group the Georgia Minstrels, active around his home town of Hartford, Connecticut. This is a great opportunity to talk about the complicated layers of minstrelsy for a second – it’s becoming better known the massive impact that black-face minstrelsy has had on American culture, but what is never talked about is the offshoot of actual black minstrelsy. After Emancipation, many black musicians could not at first find entertainment work except through minstrelsy; first in black face makeup like their white peers (the thought of which still makes me smh), but gradually in their own faces, and without the grotesque caricature of African-Americans. As the century wore on there were many groups of black artists, from minstrel bands and vaudeville dancers to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, that travelled all around the world – in the late 1800s! The Georgia Minstrels in particular were well-known in the Pacific circuit – Australia, New Zealand, and CHINA. Yep. China. Of course there was still plenty of racism, shady dealings, and etc but it’s mind boggling to think of the countries, cultures and people these artists saw.

Hosea Easton would have been playing most likely a gut string banjo, in the Classic 3-finger style (an ancestor to but not very like the Earl Scruggs twist that became known as Bluegrass style); there are reams of music of this kind of banjo playing; it was very popular at the time but is virtually forgotten today.

“Quickly, Easton became an audience favourite, entertaining with “clever banjo solos riffed on popular airs” which “earned frequent encores.” Crowds flocked, requiring special trains to bring fans into urban venues from the outlying countryside.

Hosea Easton spent the rest of his life in Australia, an extraordinarily beloved figure, until his death. When he required hospitalization in 1899, other performers staged a benefit concert to help pay his medical costs. After Easton succumbed to cancer, his funeral became a parade as hundreds of admirers and musicians marched with his casket down the street to the Waverley Cemetery. His grave is still an attraction there.”

—connecticuthistory.org

I found the article advertising the concert:

MR. HOSEA EASTON’S CONCERT.

A banjo, guitar, and mandolin concert will be given at Quong Tart’s Elite Hall to-night as a benefit to that brilliant banjoist, Mr. Hosea. Easton, who has recently been ill. Mr. Harry Rickards and the American Banjo Club, headed by Mr. W. J. Stent, will appear, as well as Misses Nita Clarke, Cleary, Kathleen Pardon, Sara Burrell (juggler), Messrs. Ernest Hoskins, Howard Chambers. George Hellings, Tod Callasay, H. Whitehead, and Hosea Easton.

website: https://connecticuthistory.org/early-civil-rights-and…/

podcast: https://www.abc.net.au/…/brother-artist-hosea…/13585476

book: I couldn’t find one but suggestions are welcome.

7. Abraham Petrovitch Gannibal, the Afro-Russian General

Abraham (sometimes Abram) Gannibal was a general-in-chief, respected military engineer, royal favorite and well-known figure of the Russian elite during the 18th-century; described by Voltaire as the “dark star of the enlightenment”, this remarkable African man lived to the ripe old age of 85, having lived through 8 tsars/tsarinas and left behind at least 10 children. One of those children produced a world famous grandchild – the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. More about him in a minute.

The true origins of Gannibal are shrouded in mystery – exactly where he was born, how old he was and even what he looked like is up for debate. But we can safely say he was born on the continent of Africa around 1690 (some have said Eithiopia/Eritrea but more recent (and less racist*) scholarship has him from sub-saharan Africa, possibly Cameroon) and sold into slavery to the Ottoman Empire before he was a teenager. He ended up in Peter the Great’s court as the tsar’s page. This practice of taking young African children and making them elite servants was very common across Europe; the kammermohr in a subservient position next to the noble indicated wealth and global influence to the viewer. In Gannibal’s case, he was freed and baptized with non other than Peter the Great himself as godfather.

“Recognising Gannibal’s great aptitude for mathematics and engineering, Peter gave him a liberal education and brought the young man with him on trips to the west. Having arrived in court as an exotic oddity, Gannibal’s rise was impressive: he served as a spy in Paris, where he befriended Voltaire and Montesquieu; he oversaw the construction of fortifications stretching from the Arctic to China; and in 1742 the Empress Elizaveta made him a member of the landed gentry.”

Eventually he married the daughter of a Swedish army captain and settled down to having children, and a life. No tragic end. His fascinating life and peaceful death alone would be enough to merit him a place during this Februaral procession of lesser known Black figures, but it is a descendent of his that brings him even further to the top of the list. His great-grandson was Alexander Pushkin, considered the father of modern Russian literature, and someone who was fully aware of his African ancestry. He even wrote an unfinished historical novel about his great-grandfather – the first attempt at prose by this celebrated poet – called “The Negro of Peter the Great.”

“In the fragment, which draws on the author’s own experience of prejudice, Ibrahim finds himself admired by many women in France, but “this curiosity, though hidden behind an appearance of benevolence, offended his self-esteem”. He envies “people whom nobody noticed, regarding their insignificance as happiness”. He expects “mockery”. And when he falls, it is for Countess D, who “received Ibrahim courteously, but with no special attention. This flattered him.” Simply and engagingly written – it is easy to imagine it developing into a rollick – the fragment is nevertheless extremely subtle. The irony can be Austenian in its suppleness, as when Pushkin imagines the Countess finding “something appealing in that curly head, black amidst the powdered wigs in her drawing room”, or explores Ibrahim’s own prejudice about the sexual motives of the women around him.

“This ambiguity was central to Pushkin’s identity. Sometimes he used his African heritage to position himself as a Byronic outsider hero, as when speaking of “my Africa”, in Onegin, as if he’d been there. He called American slaves “my brothers” while owning Russian slaves of his own and insisting – as Nabokov’s translation of his 1830 poem My Genealogy has it – Gannibal was: “The emperor’s bosom friend, not a slave.” At other times, he reproduced stereotypes of the day, as when he pictures Ibrahim with “jealously [beginning] to seethe in his African blood” – a trope that society gossips applied to Pushkin himself after his tragic duel.”

—Jonathan McAloon, The Guardian

Where’s the movie, folks? Or the Netflix limited series? Shonda?

p.s. As much as I wanted to include the nifty painting of a black-looking man in military uniform that is often attributed to being Hannibal, I could not as it has been recently discovered to be a white guy and had just been discolored because of improper storage. The portrait of his son is beautiful though!

p.p.s. He gave himself the name “Gannibal”, after the legendary Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and requested an elephant in his coat of arms.

8. The Nicholas Brothers, the Tap Dancing Geniuses

Some call it the greatest dance sequence ever filmed; for me it’s also a moment to look on the genius of Fayard and Harold Nicholas and think of why they aren’t as as well known today as Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire.

“Their last major Hollywood film was The Pirate (1948), an underrated movie musical starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. Both of these stars worked hard to get the Nicholas Brothers’ in the film, but the studio decided to cut the brothers’ acting roles in the final version, and their exceptional performance with Gene Kelly in the “Be A Clown” sequence was cut for audiences in the South. This was their first on-screen dance with a Caucasian actor, and it is said that because of this they were essentially blackballed in Hollywood. After this film, the brothers would move to Europe where they found success performing for worldwide audiences. They made a return to Hollywood on the variety show The Hollywood Palace in 1964.

“With their extraordinary talent and dedication, they should be more widely known and remembered. Unfortunately, they had to fight systemic racism throughout their career and while they worked consistently through it, it must have been so discouraging to be overlooked for lead roles. Yet despite that, they are revered by their peers and their fans and are recognized as masters of the art. They have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an honorary doctorate from Harvard University, and were honored at The Kennedy Center Honors.” — Medium.com

website: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nicholas-Brothers

podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/the…/id1616829371…

book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/1466114.Brotherhood_in…

that famous dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8yGGtVKrD8

9. Mwene Njinga Mbande of Ngongo, the Warrior Queen

Men do not hold a monopoly on bravery nor ruthlessness; our subject today stood toe-to-toe with the brutal forces of the 17th century as a woman, a mother, and a Queen. In terms of intelligence, political machinations, and longevity, this warrior is up there with Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great – except we never, ever talk about her.

The tactic that usually works for a nation looking to conquer a foreign land is to play off the local groups against each other; it also helps to not consider those people as human and therefore not worthy of honor. Diplomacy is therefore rarely in good faith, treaties are routinely broken and alliances ignored. It works pretty well – except when there’s one stubborn woman defying you at every turn.

by Achille DevÈria, printed by FranÁois Le Villain, published by Edward Bull, published by Edward Churton, after Unknown artist, hand-coloured lithograph, 1830s

Njinga (sometimes Nzinga) of Ndongo and Matamba (modern day Angola) had, by any account, an extraordinary life. Born in 1581, she came into a world that was chaotic and rapidly changing. The Portuguese had already targeted her people for conquest by the time of her birth, and the political situation was highly dangerous. Her father, the King, doted on her and gave her attention and military training; as a woman (and the daughter of an outsider) she was not seen as a threat so this was allowed. That training came in very handy later after her father’s death and her brother’s inept handling of the Portuguese encroachment. She became the ambassador to Portugal, and upon her brother’s death, Queen to her people. For the next 37 years – 37 years!) she fought off the Portuguese, alternatively allying with the Dutch and the Mbangala, had to retrench and create a new military-based society, regained land, lost land, conquered other people’s land, and managed to hold her position til the end. She died (in her sleep!!) at around 80, and within 10 years of her death, her nation was swallowed by the Portuguese- not to be independent again until 1974.

She left a complicated legacy; a fierce fighter and a shrewd negotiator, she was also religiously intolerant in her later years and funded her nations survival with the poor souls of the slave trade. In other words, just as problematic as every other military ‘hero’. In an ultra-violent society, the peaceful do not inherit the earth, they just die.

She defied the norms of her own society and European expectations, was a main player on the world stage, and inspired generations of freedom fighters – she deserves to be talked about in the same breath as her white and male counterparts. Either we talk about all of them, or none of them.

website: https://www.africanfeministforum.com/queen-nzinga-angola/

podcast: http://thehistorychicks.com/episode-80-queen-nzinga/

book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/show/32336656-njinga-of-angola

TV: https://www.digitalspy.com/…/netflix-jada-pinkett…/

10. Robert Smalls, the man who stole a Confederate ship (from right under their noses)

Enslaved people weren’t just on plantations, singing and picking cotton, in an obsolete and inefficient ‘on-the-way-out’ form of indentured servitude, as my childhood history textbooks would like me to believe; enslaved people were EVERYWHERE. Their skills and knowledge, sometimes deliberately imported from Africa along with their bodies (knowledge of rice growing and cattle herding, for example, was highly prized), were inextricable to the economic success of all parts of the United States, the North and the South. In the South, particularly, there were these two ideas about black people that were bizarrely held by whites at the same time – one, that they were so necessary and ubiquitous to the running of society that they were entrusted with all sorts of important aspects of Southern life, and two, they were too brutish and childish to be an intellectual threat.

Robert Smalls was a brilliant sailor and pilot who was part of a black crew on the ship Planter during the Civil War (well, since he was black, they wouldn’t call him a pilot, he was given the title of ‘wheelman’…gotta keep those distinctions when you’re insecure). This was at a point in the conflict when Union ships were blocking Charleston harbor; continually in sight – infuriatingly close for the planter class, and tantalizingly close for their enslaved. Robert was married with two small children; he wanted to buy his family but didn’t have enough money; the fear of separation would have been constant.

On the evening of May 12, 1864 the white crew of the Planter decided to go on shore for reasons unknown; the most important thing is that they left an all black crew in charge of the ship. Robert Smalls seized his chance, and seized the ship. He brazenly sailed that Confederate ship past the sentries, impersonating the captain and trusting in the cover of darkness to keep him safe; he picked up his family and that of the crews on the way, and then came in sight of the Union boats, where he raised a white sheet his wife had brought for the purpose. If anything had gone wrong, the Union boats would have blown him and his countrymen from the water.

“Just as No. 3 port gun was being elevated, someone cried out, ‘I see something that looks like a white flag’; and true enough there was something flying on the steamer that would have been white by application of soap and water. As she neared us, we looked in vain for the face of a white man. When they discovered that we would not fire on them, there was a rush of contrabands out on her deck, some dancing, some singing, whistling, jumping; and others stood looking towards Fort Sumter, and muttering all sorts of maledictions against it, and ‘de heart of de Souf,’ generally. As the steamer came near, and under the stern of the Onward, one of the Colored men stepped forward, and taking off his hat, shouted, ‘Good morning, sir! I’ve brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!’ ” —James MacPherson, The Negro’s Civil War

Robert Smalls went successfully into politics after the war, in that brief window of hope called Reconstruction, before the planter class deconstructed it. He was a tireless fighter for African American rights for the rest of his life, and died at the ripe old age of 75 – and where did he die? In the house that he was born behind; the very house owned by the man who used to own him. Now that is poetic justice if ever I have heard it.

“My race needs no special defense for the past history of them and this country. It proves them to be equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.” -Robert Smalls

website: https://www.pbs.org/…/which-slave-sailed-himself-to…/

podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/episode-142…/id809264944…

book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/31451080-be-free-or-die…

11 David Fagan, Freedom Fighter for the Filipinos

America likes to pretend that it doesn’t have a colonial past, often pointing the finger at Britain, Spain and France (who admittedly are three of the worst in terms of acreage and longevity), but we have quite a track record in South America, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, among other places. By the end of the 1800s Spain’s empire was crumbling, and by 1898 they had ceded control of several of their territories to the United states as the loser of the Spanish-American war. One of those was the Pacific archipelago they called the Philippines. The people native to those lands had just declared the First Philippine Republic, and, after finding themselves ignored during the handover, had no recourse but to resort to fighting for their independence.

“President William McKinley’s administration cited the racial inferiority of the Filipinos as a primary justification for denying them sovereignty and engaging in a bloody war of conquest. Six thousand African-American soldiers, beginning with 2,100 of the famed buffalo soldiers, were sent to the islands at a time when the fortunes of blacks in America had hit rock bottom. This was the dawn of the Jim Crow era as the North capitulated to the doctrines of the extreme racists of the South. That many of the black soldiers sent to the Philippines felt conflicted in their loyalties should hardly be surprising. It was a time marked by lynchings and race riots, disenfranchisement, and the implementation of the degrading “separate but equal” regime in the South.” — Michael Morey

Some of these African-American soldiers started to realize that they were fighting on the wrong side and defected to the Philippine Army of Liberation – the most famous of these was David Fagan (or Fagen). From Tampa, Florida, this 21-year-old spitfire was a cunning and intelligent thorn in the US Army’s side.

“The army’s great concern, and the reason for suppressing word of Fagen’s activities in the field, was that he might inspire a revolt among his former black comrades in arms. And in fact, he was not alone in his decision to take up arms against his former countrymen. As many as fifteen of the buffalo soldiers decided that their place, rather than helping suppress the Filipinos’ struggle for independence, was in joining them in revolution. David Fagen would be by far the most successful and famous of the black deserters. For the next year and a half, he led ambushes and assaults, large and small. After eight months of censorship, the Manila newspapers finally began to report on his exploits and the news soon traveled to America. By the end of 1900, Fagen was virtually a household name, particularly among the African-American community.” —ibid

Towards the end of the war (spoiler alert, the Americans won, to the tune of thousands and thousands of Filipino civilian deaths) there was an account of Fagan being killed; but there is skepticism around that story, and there were also multiple Fagan sightings after that…we will never know what happened to him, so I choose to believe he lived out his days with the Filipina woman he is known to have married, amongst his new comrades-at-arms and thumbing his nose at his former nation.

website: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/…/19th…/ideas/essay/

podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/apushing…/id1482164010…

book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37952333-david-fagen…

P.S. Oh.my.goodness. I got a spelling lesson today…Philippines. One L, two P’s, and NO H. Gesu. Also, archipeligo. archepeligo. arche… oh for goodness sake i’ll just paste it from above (which is pasted from wiki) archipelago.

P.P.S Oh yes, and the folks from the Philippines? No PH. Filipinos. If i’ve gotten any of this wrong, please let me know in the comments.

12. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Every nation-state is actually made up of multiple ethnic and regional groups; those groups themselves are the product of hundreds of generations of people moving, mixing, and making new names, divisions, and boundaries for themselves. America is no different…except it is! There are so many different ethnicities represented in America but with our mercantile and grotesque rendering of race and the whitewashing of our cultural narrative, there are a lot of complicated layers that seem to be uniquely American. One is the one-drop rule – in an effort to maintain a permanent slave class in order to continue the incredible economic strides transforming the nation state, we implemented a rule that meant if you had even one drop, one ancestor, even way on back, who was Black, so, in turn, were you. Even if that defied your cultural mix, language or languages, and experience in the world. Being black is about being Black, and also so many other things.

So we have the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture – name for Arturo Alfonso Schomburg – son of a Puerto Rican man of German descent and a Black woman from St Croix.

“Schomburg grew up in Puerto Rico. He remembered a teacher telling him as a schoolboy in San Juan that there were no notable people of African descent and that Black history held no achievements. The incident sparked what would become his lifelong interest in collecting materials about the Black experience around the world.

“Schomburg spent much of his life acquiring books, documents, pamphlets, artwork and more tied to Africa’s diaspora in the Americas and Europe. His aim was “to preserve the historical records of the race, arouse race consciousness and race pride, inspire art students and give information to everyone about the Negro.”

“Through 1926, Schomburg accumulated more than 10,000 items demonstrating the breadth of Black and African achievements. These included slave narratives, poems by Phillis Wheatley, correspondence from Toussaint L’Ouverture and music composed by Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Schomburg also researched the African antecedents of people like John James Audubon and Ludwig van Beethoven. — Biography.com

He also worked with the Fisk University library, and his own collection., which he sold to the New York Public Library and which became the nucleus for the center eventually named after him. We are indebted to Schomburg for his curiousity, his determination to save history that wasn’t being otherwise valued, and for inhabiting that curiously and uniquely American multicultural space and letting it guide him to jewels of the past.

website: https://www.biography.com/schola…/arturo-alfonso-schomburg

podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/arturo…/id283605519…

book: somebody needs to get on it!

13. Fisk Jubilee Singers, World Famous Choir Who Saved School

Everyone knows of Nashville’s reputation as Music City, USA – but few know that it started to garner that reputation far before the creation of the Grand Ol’ Opry and the explosion of Country Music. In 1871 a small group of singers set out from Fisk University on a tour that eventually put Nashville on the map.

Fisk University was first called the Fisk Free Colored School; opened in 1866, it was one of the many missionary-based schools for the formerly enslaved people being organized in different places around the south; the newly freed were hungry for education across the board. Still around today, it was the first African American school accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and is the oldest institute for higher learning in Nashville. Read that again. But a few years after its founding it was facing major financial woes – it was often tough to raise funds for these schools, they were opposed by the recently defeated planter class and were often sabotaged and even occasionally burned down.

At Fisk, a choir had been formed soon after the creation of the school and it unexpectedly led the way to salvation. In 1871 they went on a tour of the United States to raise funds and interest in Fisk; christened the Fisk Jubilee Singers by their founder G.L. White, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They raised over $40,000 for the school with those first tours, funded the first permanent building on campus (eventually called “Jubilee Hall” and still around today), and raised awareness of their school, and by extension, the town of Nashville. They performed for the President, the Queen, and dignitaries all over the US, the UK and Europe – and they did something further. They exposed the world to a heretofore secret mode of music we now the Negro Spiritual – passed down in an oral tradition, these songs had been largely only known within the Black community. But as sung by the formerly enslaved Fisk Jubilee Singers (and arranged by director White), they astonished audiences wherever they went. Up until this point, the world’s idea of African American music was firmly rooted in the black face minstrel show – music, dance and comedy routines performed by whites in burnt cork (and blacks after Emanciapation), and they were amazed to hear music by actual black people that sounded nothing like minstrelsy.

They were lauded, they saved their institution from bankruptcy, they introduced Negro Spirituals to the world, they spawned countless imitators, and … they disbanded in 1878. The original 9 never earned their diplomas because of the grueling touring schedule, and the racism, abuse, and poor traveling conditions they faced were exhausting, demoralizing, and traumatic. This is the saddest part of the story for me, as a performer, and one that I put to the forefront of my mind whenever I have a minute of grousing about a late airplane or a cramped hotel room.

But the Fisk Jubilee singers quickly rose again, and are still around today. A little heralded but absolutely incredible chapter of their story happens from 1886 to 1890 when a version of the group, led by former member Frederick Loudin, travelled all over Australia, New Zealand, India, and other points in South Asia, to great acclaim. Find more about that here: https://fiskmusicmusiceverywhere.omeka.net/…/overview…

Oh yes, and about that city nickname: As per the Nashville paper The Tennessean: “Queen Victoria was so impressed with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the story goes, that she said they must be from a ‘city of music.’”

And 50 years later, when the Grand Ol’ Opry started to take off on WSM, the nickname became firmly established. Once again, we laid the groundwork and then got forgot. But people are restoring the narrative, and it’s great to see.

website (2): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/…/the-fisk-jubilee…

podcast: https://wpln.org/radio-special-three-castles-and-the…/

book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1586242

This is from a wonderful author who also wrote “The Slave’s War”, where I found inspiration for my song Juile.

on screen: https://www.kpbs.org/…/american-experience-jubilee…

14. William and Ellen Craft – Valentines Through Thick and Thin

I think it’s pretty safe to say America has a unique relationship with the color of people’s skins. In/out group prejudice has existed since the dawn of human kind, but color prejudice really starts cranking up around the 13th and 14th centuries in the western world, and gets supercharged around the 17th. When your economic progress is tied to the subjugation of people of a certain appearance, you are going to be wholly invested in being able to police that, and America makes it into a fine art with the one drop rule. If you had one drop of African blood, you were black. Even if it belonged to an ancestor 3 generations back, even if you crisped in the noon day sun, even if you looked just like your master. You could have two folks standing side by side, both looking white as can be, and would could be a slave and one could be free. This meant that really pale black folks (“light, bright and damn near white” as we sometimes say) could pass as white, if they dared. And some did, living their lives in the fear of being found out; not having children in case the genes ‘told’, and in general leading pretty conflicted lives. In contrast some really light folks doubled down on their blackness, using their privilege to help out the race. And some people just used the tools they had to change a really crappy situation.

Ellen and William Craft were an enslaved married couple living in Macon, Georgia, owned by different men. William was a carpenter who had seen each of his sisters and mother sold off to different owners, and Ellen was the daughter of an enslaved woman and that woman’s owner. She looked so much like her white father, her stepmother gave her to her half-sister to get her out of the house. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. Ellen and William both knew that they, and any children they had together, would always be in danger of being separated; so they resolved to escape.

Ellen and William hit upon the idea of using her light skinned appearance to pose as a master and his slave – where she would play the role of master. They cut her hair and put her in a fine suit of clothes; she fashioned a sling for her arm to have an excuse not to sign any paperwork, as she was illiterate, and then they wrapped bandages around her face and jaw so that she wouldn’t have to talk. She had the appearance of a sickly, injured planter whose slave was helping him travel. And it worked! they had a couple of close brushes but the sheer audacity of the plan worked in their favor – the planter class really took care of itself.

They ended up in the north, free people, but had to flee to England after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. They lived there 20 years, having 5 children and giving talks on the evils of slavery. After emancipation, they returned to the United States, bought land, and opened up schools for the newly freed population, having previously learned to read and write themselves.

Unfortunately they were in the crosshairs of the newly deposed and furious planter class that were determined to destroy the gains of Reconstruction, and their schools were burned down and their reputation maliciously tarnished. They ended up living with one of their daughters in Charleston – no matter what happened to their enterprises, Ellen Craft died in the arms of her child, which was the entire reason they escaped in the first place. Mission accomplished.

“…I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent.” — Ellen Craft

websites: https://www.history.com/…/slavery-escape-william-ellen…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/…/the-great-escape-from…/

podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/william…/id1566891848…

book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/23282377-love-liberation…

tv: https://www.cbsnews.com/…/master-slave-husband-wife…/

15. Frank Johnson, the Most Famous Fiddler You’ve Never Heard Of

Until fairly recently, the image of a black violinist, or fiddler on the other side of the deep divide, has seemingly been accompanied by a “well isn’t that nice.” The attitude was of observing someone stepping into a tradition that is not their own; but almost as soon as the enslaved African stepped foot on the land on this side of the Atlantic, he was playing a violin, either for the Europeans who hired him to play their music and their dances, or the creolized music he was creating out of multiple African traditions (it is a vast continent, after all, and there were one-string fiddle traditions in multiple places) combined with what he was witnessing and needing to learn from Europe to survive.

The dance music itself that was coming over with white settlers was what we would call classical in nature, descended from composed pieces played in courts all over Europe – and of course that’s a lecture all its own, how vernacular and what we call ‘classical’ music was once much closer together, and constantly were influencing each other – in fact, a popular dance form called the ‘ciaccona’, inspired by the syncopated African influence shifting the music in South America, made its way back across the ocean and influenced a lot of 17th century Italian music, not to mention that sexy dance from central and South America that became the sarabanda. All of the European music coming over was starting to undergo the “American” treatment – that unique combination of African and European that lies at the heart of every genre of music emanating from both South and North America. The black violinist was there in the midst of it all.

Frank Johnson (not to be confused with Francis “Frank” Johnson, a black composer from the North) was an enslaved man from North Carolina born in the late eighteenth century who had renowned skill on the fiddle; he used that skill to buy his freedom, and that of his family – and he went on to form a band that became famous across the south. He was so well known and his band (made up of not just banjo and fiddle but also winds and brass) was so influential that the music it played became known as “Frank Johnson music”. John Jeremiah Sullivans states:

“His music was so woven into the social life of the South that it would not be an exaggeration to describe it as a kind of ever-present soundtrack. Plantation balls, picnics, barbecues, sporting events, Renaissance-style “tilting” tournaments (they were big for a while), random town ceremonies (think cornerstone-layings), university commencements (for many years, he performed at Chapel Hill, and for at least some years at Wake Forest), state fairs, agricultural fairs, firemen’s balls, military “muster days,” moonlight excursions on trains and boats, extended summer bookings at resort hotels, society weddings, holiday parties (including an annual Christmas party in Wilmington, where his band performed for mixed audiences, “thereby creating a warmer fellowship between the races,” according to the Wilmington Star), funeral processions, and political rallies. In 1840, “when the new Capitol building was completed in Raleigh,” according to an item in an 1873 issue of the Hillsboro Recorder, there were “two successive nights” of dancing, with “the well-known Frank Johnson . . . furnishing the music.” During the Civil War, his band often marched at the head of regiments and was called in to play at recruitment parties. According to a story recounted by Woodson, Johnson accompanied a Confederate brigade into battle, but turned around when the shooting started.”

When he died thousands attended his funeral, and as of a few years ago, was completely forgotten. I am, it turns out, musically descended from Frank Johnson in an unbroken oral tradition from my mentor and teacher Joe Thompson, and it is only to the tenacity and open-mindedness of the writer John Jeremiah Sullivan that I have that information, at all.

website: https://www.newyorker.com/…/rhiannon-giddens-and-what…

podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017khq

book: someday….

p.s. There are no known photos of Frank Johnson.

16. Malik Ambar, from Slave to Indian Prime Minister

Slavery, as I have mentioned, has been a part of the human condition for a very long time now; it has had myriad incarnations in diverse regions and those under its yoke can have widely varying experiences. Many folks today tend to see all slavery through the narrow and particularly horrific lens of the trans-atlantic slave trade but a few centuries ago and thousands of miles away, it occupied a different space. Caveat to say – slavery of any kind is abhorrent, full stop. But people had different degrees of opportunities depending on where and when they were enslaved. Such is the case of Malik Ambar. His story is complicated, situated as it is within medieval India at a time of heavy warfare and rococco political intriuges. But here’s an outline, as best as I can decipher without 107 years of study.

He was born Chapu in Ethiopia in 1548 and sold into slavery by his own parents because of extreme poverty; he changed hands multiple times and travelled evermore east over the course of the early part of his life, and ended up in the Deccan region of India. Ambar (who had by this time converted to Islam and had his named changed) was now in a place where, for a moment in time, a slave could turn into a king. There were other Africans bidding for power in the region before and after him – they were called Siddis. In fact, his last master, the prime minister of Ahmednagar, was a fellow Ethiopian who had once been enslaved himself! He recognized in the young man a keen intelligence and had Ambar trained and educated; he eventually came to look upon him almost as a son. Upon his death, Ambar was free at last and immediately began forging his power base with other Siddis and Arabs in the area – he formed a huge mercenary army that he grew to such a strength that he was eventually able to repulse the invading Mughals and hold on to Ahmednagar by aid of a puppet king. Folks could handle an African prime minister, but not an African king. But he was king in all but name.

“He then built his new capital, right at the Mughal border – Khadki, or Aurangabad as it is known today. From its multicultural citizenry and striking monuments to its sturdy walls, Khadki was perhaps the greatest symbol of its creator’s life and ambitions. Within just a decade, the city grew into a bustling metropolis. But its most remarkable feature wasn’t the palaces or walls, but the Neher.

The Neher resulted from a lifetime spent in pursuit of water. Whether in famished Ethiopia, Baghdadi deserts, or evading Mughals in dry Deccani highlands, an acute lack of water had shaped Ambar’s experiences. He had gained the ability to find water in the unlikeliest of places…

“His grand plans were treated with scorn, but through sheer determination, Ambar managed it. Through an intricate network of aqueducts, canals, and reservoirs, he managed to supply the needs of a city of hundreds of thousands, transforming the lives of the Ahmednagar citizens. The Neher survives to this day. Besides his capital, Ambar embarked on several other projects. Relative peace meant that commerce flowed freely across the land. This and his administrative reforms allowed him to become a great patron of art and culture. Dozens of new palaces, mosques, and infrastructure were built, bringing prestige and prosperity to Ahmednagar.” —thecollector.com

He lived to the ripe old age of 77 before being defeated by his enemies – and that canal he built? Had to be cleaned for the very first time – in 1931.

website: https://www.thecollector.com/who-is-malik-ambar-african…/

podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wy644

book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27431061

17. Joseph Emidy, the West African Violinist Who Ended up in Cornwall

I’m traveling to the states today, so the post will be courtesy of Blackpast.org:

“Afro-British musician, composer, and orchestra leader Joseph Antonio Emidy is believed to have been born sometime in the year 1775 in Guinea, West Africa. Enslaved at age 12, Portuguese traders brought him to Brazil, where Jesuit priests, recognizing his natural talent and intelligence, taught him to play the violin. While still enslaved, his owner transported him to Lisbon, Portugal, and provided him with formal music instruction. There Emidy entertained members of the city’s social elite and eventually earned the position of second violin in the Lisbon Opera Orchestra.

“In 1795…Emidy was captured [by an English captain], confined to [his] frigate for four years, and forced to play the type of music the British sailors enjoyed but which he came to detest. Noticing his distress Captain Pellew in 1799, relented and released Emidy in the port city of Falmouth, England. Since slavery had no legal basis in England, Emidy became a free man.

“To sustain his new life, Emidy advertised in the Royal Cornwall Gazette for jobs as a music teacher since, by this point, he had mastered the violin, mandolin, guitar, piano, cello, guitar, flute, and clarinet. Accepted by the local population in 1802, just three years after his arrival in Falmouth, a benefit concert was held for him at Wynn’s Hotel. Emidy, already head of the Falmouth Harmonic Society, debuted a violin concerto he had composed. That same year he married Jenefer Hutchins, the daughter of a merchant, with whom he had eight children. <interjection by me – 8 kids!!>

“Emidy moved his family to Truro, Cornwall, where he continued teaching music and playing instruments at parties, balls, and benefits. At one point, he performed with concert groups, including the Truro Philharmonic Orchestra, for which he also wrote compositions and which he led from 1816 to 1826. In 1824 he founded the Helston Philharmonic Society. It has been asserted that fearing rejection on account of his race, Emidy avoided composing and performing in London. Had he been accepted by musical circles in the largest city in Great Britain, there is a high likelihood that at least one of his compositions would have survived, and he would have had the opportunity to be appreciated by a much larger audience.”—www.Blackpast.org

Website: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-33211440

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Music…/dp/0859893596/ref=sr_1_1…

18. Fort Mose, the First Black Settlement in the United States

In our lovely history books growing up, the story of the creation of the nation state of the United States is usually reduced to a pretty simple narrative. It’s Jamestown to Plymouth Rock to the shot heard round the world and the writing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights by the English-descended founding fathers. There are usually mentioned some enslaved people who had no agency, some defeated natives (with a long detour into the Lost Colony and a horrendously false story about Pocahontas (or Mataoka) falling in love with John Smith) and then its on to the war of 1812. Often left out of this narrative are some important details – that different colonial powers, not just England, were constantly struggling for power in the new to them territory, neither blacks nor natives were monolithic, and were constantly rebelling, forming political alliances, and just trying to live a free life, and religion was always a piece of the puzzle.

Fort Mose is a remarkable place and has a remarkable story, and it’s one of those I didn’t learn in school- because it complicates things. From the very beginning the enslaved Africans (brought from many different regions on the continent) were constantly trying to escape, and often succeeded, especially in the early days. In the late 1600s present day Florida was under Spanish control, and the Spanish crown was offering asylum to newly self-emancipated Africans, if they would submit to baptism in the Catholic faith and renaming, and serve 4 years in the militia. By 1742 this community, situated within St Augustine, had grown into a thriving maroon settlement.

Captain Francisco Menendez was the head of the free black militia in St Augustine; born in the Gambian region of West Africa as a part of the Mandingo ethnic group he had formerly escaped from Carolina. He became a trusted military officer and when the Governor of St Augustine set up a fort two miles north, he was chosen to lead it. This Fort, originally called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, eventually just called Fort Mose, was not only the first legally sanctioned free black settlement in the US, it was also Spain’s first line of defense against the British in Florida. It’s not like the Spanish were offering sanctuary to runaways because they were nice guys. They needed skilled labour, and they needed fighters, as they weren’t getting much support from the Spanish crown.

When the Spanish ceded Florida to the English, Fort Mose was abandoned, most of the black community there moved to Cuba, and outside of a few more skirmishes fought there, its history was largely forgotten. In the 1980s this important site was finally explored, catalogued, and is now part of the National Park system.

“From 1986-1988 a team of specialists headed by Dr. Kathleen Deagan of the Florida Museum of Natural History carried out an archaeological and historical investigation at Ft. Mose. Their discoveries show that African Americans played important roles in the rivalry and confrontations between England and Spain in the colonial Southeast. The people of Mose were guerrilla fighters who made politically astute alliances with the Spaniards and their Native American allies, and waged fierce war against their former masters. The Black militia fought bravely alongside Spanish regulars to drive off the English and their allied Native American forces who attacked St. Augustine in 1740, and the Black troops also fought in the Spanish counter-offence against Georgia two years later.

The men and women who formed the community at Mose are no longer anonymous. Centuries-old documents recovered in the colonial archives of Spain, Florida, Cuba, and South Carolina by historian Dr. Jane Landers tell us who lived in Mose and something about what it was like to live there. We know that in 1759 the village consisted of twenty-two palm thatch huts which housed thirty-seven men, fifteen women, seven boys and eight girls. These villagers attended Mass in a wood church where their priest also lived. The people of Mose farmed the land and the men stood guard at the fort or patrolled the frontier. Most of the Carolina fugitives married fellow escapees, but some married Native American women or enslaved people living in St. Augustine.” —floridamuseum.ufl.edu

Again, waiting for the movie.

Website: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/…/st…/fort-mose/

Book: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p067532

19. Prince William Ansah Sessarakoo, From Slave Trader to Slave…and Back Again

What little I was taught about slavery when I was growing up left me with an extraordinarily simplified and false narrative about what actually happened during the Atlantic slave trade. The impression I was left with was that of English people docking their ships on the coast, marching into Africa and capturing a bunch of slaves, putting them on a ship and taking them straight to the New World. No where was I educated about the complicated history of the crowded European trading market, and I certainly didn’t know much about the African slave traders on the continent who were, particularly initially, providing the Europeans with so much human ‘stock’. It was ultimately a deal with the Devil, as many African leaders eventually found that after they had sold all their enemies away, the Europeans came for their people too.

Now I’m not here at all for people who like to say “black people were in the slave trade too therefore its all even! Let’s move on.” Nuance is important – as I’ve already mentioned once in this series, slavery meant different things to different people in different regions, and the smaller scale war-based slavery that a majority of African ethnic groups had participated in for years had already been supercharged by the advent of the Islamic slave trade that crossed the continent 1000 years before the events of this story- there is ALWAYS something that came before. But the turn slavery took when Europeans entered the trade en mass, when rapid technological and economic changes allowed for vast sums of money to be made combined with the access to a continent that had already had swaths of it emptied out by genocide and disease – well that is another story altogether. There are horrendously bad actors in every group, just as there are people of every color and background who stand up and say, “This Shall Not Stand.” Then there are the masses of people in the middle – folks who are truly people of their time and who don’t see the bad or the good of it; rather, they just see what’s in it for them.

During the 1700s the slave trade in the continent of Africa was a tangled web of alliances between different African tribal groups and empires and the European nations that were so eager for human cargo. William Ansah Sessearakoo was born into this world around 1736, the son of a prominent local official John Corrente, in what is now modern-day Ghana. John Corrente held a powerful position at the center of the slave trading empire on the Gold Coast, and as such was of much interest by the Europeans. He intended on having his sons educated in Europe – William was sent to be sent to England since he had already spent much time at the English Fort William and had already learnt the language.

However, the Captain he was entrusted to for his journey betrayed him and sold him into slavery in Barbados. After some years of being presumed dead by his father, and enduring the harsh slavery in the Caribbean, he was recognized by some of his ethnic group and ended up ransomed and sent to England, where he was welcomed as visiting Royalty. How much of this was because the English believed in his Royalty and how much they just needed to court the good favor of his powerful father, is up for debate. However, his visit to Britain, commemorated in the painting below, did add to the growing idea that race-based slavery was maybe not a great or fair thing. As far as Sesserakoo himself, he was not at all against slavery- just against slavery for people of his caste. When he returned to Africa he took up his father’s career as a slave trader before he disappeared into the mists of time. No halos here.

Website: https://aaregistry.org/…/william-ansah-sessarakoo…/

Book: https://news.tulane.edu/…/book-portrays-people-enmeshed…

20. Ona “Oney” Judge, who Self Emancipated from the Father of Our Country

It is a fact becoming better known and talked about that the majority of the group of men we call “The Founding Fathers”, who have enjoyed a wonderful reputation for securing “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the newly made nation state of the United States, owned enslaved people. The hypocrisy inherent in touting a free democracy while owning somebody body and soul is staggering. We can laud the achievements of these men while also not forgetting their degradations – as humans, we are able to hold those two truths at the same time, contrary to what the popular narrative will have us believe.

Ona “Oney” Judge Staines was a woman owned by the Father of the country himself, George Washington, one of 12 US presidents to own people. During this time in the country there were varying degrees of service; indentured servitude, and the rapidly ossifying race-based slavery. She was a product of intermixing between the two, and was of mixed-race, but given that her mother was an enslaved black person, then so was she. The legal term was partus sequitur ventrem, and it also meant that any child Ona had would also be enslaved, no matter the status of her future husband.

Ona Judge was one of the enslaved people Martha Custis brought to her marriage to George Washington as part of her dowry; she became a trusted part of the Washington household. When they moved to New York, Ona saw free black people for the first time and realized that she had options. The households subsequent move to Philadelphia, a hotbed of abolition, was one step closer to freedom.

“Pennsylvania began to abolish slavery gradually in the 1780s but Washington was able to keep enslaved members of his household in Philadelphia by finding loopholes in the law. (For example, state law said that enslaved individuals brought to Pennsylvania and kept there would be free after six months, so Washington rotated people between Mount Vernon and Philadelphia every few months to ensure none of them could legally claim their freedom.)

Judge, in her early 20s, had learned that the Washingtons planned to transfer her to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis, as a wedding gift.” —The Zinn Project

Once our heroine got that news, she had had enough. One night during dinner she slipped away and never saw the Washingtons again.

The Washingtons response to this was the usual affrontery of the slave owning class – Martha wrote about how well Ona had been treated, and Washington was incredibly offended. When Ona was spotted, and a family friend approached her about returning to the Washingtons, Ona said only if she was promised to be freed upon the Washington’s deaths.

George Washington, all up in his feels, replied: “To enter into such a compromise with her, as she suggested to you, is totally inadmissable [sic], & it would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference [of freedom]; and thereby discontent before hand the minds of all her fellow-servants who by their steady attachments are far more deserving than herself of favor.”

I’d like to think that he didn’t feel some petty relish when he signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 – overwhelmingly passed by Congress – which made it a federal crime to assist an escaped slave, but I’m not gonna bet on it.

Ona was never freed, and lived a life of considerable hardship and poverty, but she never looked back. She married a free black sailor, had 3 children, and lived into her 70s.

“I am free, and I have, I trust, been made a child of God by that means.” – Ona Judge Staines

Website: https://www.nastywomenwriters.com/ona-judge-i-am-free…/

Podcast: https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/uncivil/z3hdrm

Book: https://www.zinnedproject.org/mat…/never-caught-ona-judge/

This is absolutely incredible, it crossed my FB yesterday and I decided to post it in full today, as I’m taking the day off of original posts – read the whole thing!

21. Jimmy Winkfield, the jockey who won the Kentucky Derby twice – and that’s just the beginning

This is an original 1902 photo of Jimmy Winkfield the last African-American jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. He rode back to back winners of the Derby in 1901 and 1902.

Winkfield was born in Chilesburg, Kentucky and began his career as a jockey in 1898 at age sixteen. He was suspended for one year after just one race for his involvement in a four-horse accident at the starting gate.

However, he returned in 1900 to ride Thrive in the Kentucky Derby, finishing third. He rode in the race again in 1901 and 1902, winning on His Eminence and Alan-a-Dale. He won 220 races in 1901.

He was only the second jockey to ride back to back winners of the Kentucky Derby. The first to accomplish it was Isaac Murphy. The feat would not be duplicated until 1967 when Bobby Ussery rode Proud Clarion and then Dancer’s Image the following year.

In 1903 with the advent of Jim Crow Laws in the United States, Winkfield emigrated to Russia riding for Tsar Nicholas II and competing at racetracks all over Europe. He won the Russian Oaks five times, the Russian Derby four times and the Warsaw Derby twice. Arriving in Russia, Jimmy knew not a bit of Russian, but would later become fluent in four languages.

Of Tsarist Russia, Winkfield said:

“Before the revolution that was a good country and I never had to pay no income tax,” he said. “There was no prejudice in Russia, not a bit. I would have stayed but for the revolution.”

After the Bolsheviks implemented their reign of terror Jimmy stated:

“I got to thinking this ain’t no longer a fit place for a small coloured man from Chilesburg, Kentucky, to be.”

In 1918, with the Bolshevik army moving into Odessa and burning down the racetrack, Wink led a rag tag band composed of: Russian Nobility, Polish soldiers, his fellow riders, trainers and owners and drove over 250 thoroughbreds across the Transylvanian Alps to Poland – a harrowing thousand-mile odyssey – eating horseflesh to survive.

He left Poland and settled in France where he resumed riding. His numerous wins included the Prix du Président de la République, Grand Prix de Deauville, and the Prix Eugène Adam. He retired as a jockey at age fifty having won more than 2,500 races then began a second successful career as a horse trainer.

Winkfield lived on a farm near the Hippodrome de Maisons-Laffitte (racetrack) in Maisons-Laffitte on the outskirts of Paris. He remained there, even defending his home with a pitchfork against the Nazis, until fleeing the German occupation of France during World War II.

During World War II Winkfield returned to the United States and worked as a groom. In 1953 he went back to France and opened a school for training jockeys with his son, Robert. Wink lived in France until his death in 1974.

While being treated with respect in Europe, segregation still ruled American society. Sports Illustrated invited Winkfield in 1961 as a two-time winner, to a Kentucky Derby banquet. But when he and his daughter arrived at Louisville’s historic Brown Hotel, they were told they couldn’t use the front door; after a long delay they were let in, but most people at the banquet ignored them. Except for an old competitor. Jockey Roscoe Goose, who rode Donerail to victory in 1913, recognized Jimmy even though he hadn’t seen him since their Derby days sixty years earlier, came over, introduced himself, and sat down next to him.

One of the last public photos of Jimmy, was taken at the Kentucky Derby the following day. He was sitting next to his old rival Roscoe, both in suits and hats, smoking cigars, smiling and telling stories to incredulous reporters. Wink had not only outrun his competition on the racetrack but he’d outrun racism once again.

Jimmy Winkfield was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2004. The following year, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Jimmy Winkfield. A race is named in his honor and is run at Aqueduct Race Track.

There are two excellent books on Jimmy Winkfield. One is Wink by Ed Hotaling and the other is Black Maestro by Joe Drape.

22. Mansa Musa, the Richest Man in the World. Ever.

Sorry to be late guys! They are keeping me busy here in Chapel HIll

I know I’m being provocative with that Ever up there in the title, but the truth is Mansa Musa was unimaginably wealthy. We so often equate the continent of Africa with poverty that it’s important to remember before its mineral wealth and resources were in large part extracted by European colonial powers, there existed fabulously wealthy empires that rose, traded, and fell as every other world empire has.

Musa I was the ruler of the Mali Empire in the 14th century; he was a devout Muslim, a lover of architecture and scholarship, and is well known in medieval African history for making a remarkable pilgrimage to Mecca, or hajj. By the metric of any western ‘civilization’ he was wildly successful as a ruler; he expanded the borders of his land, established centers of learning such as at Timbuktu, and had built important and long lasting construction projects.

His hajj was long, majestic, and left quite an impression at the time. He was extraordinarily wealthy and showered gold wherever he went during his pilgrimage; he gave away so much gold in Egypt that he caused a dip in economy. I mean, a little different form the billionaires nowadays! Elon, whaddya say?

Illustration by Peter Brathwaite

Website: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Musa-I-of-Mali

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/youre-dead…/id1479973402…

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/…/18286341-mansa-musa-and-the…

23. Thomas Day, Master Carpenter

Today’s subject is an excellent example of the complexity of antebellum Southern life, particularly in Virginia and North Carolina. White, free and enslaved often lived side-by-side, and their interactions were often baffling to our modern sensibilities and knowledge.

Thomas Day was a free man of color from Virginia, who moved to North Carolina and set up a carpentry shop with his brother. His skills were quickly apparent, and in no time at all he was becoming known in the region as an excellent and artistic craftsman. His brother eventually left the business, becoming a missionary and leader in the new colony of Liberia, but Thomas Day went from strength to strength, eventually having to enlarge his shop and take on apprentices. His work was prized for its style and became a status symbol of the planter class – he had steady stream of orders for furniture of all stripes. He was known as an excellent hardworking man, and, rarely for the time, had the acceptance and approbation of the white community. He even got to sit with them at church, a space usually completely segregated. So far, so good.

The story gets complicated when he gets married – he wants to bring his new bride Aquila to North Carolina (she was from Virginia, and they had gotten married there.) But there was a new law on the books that forbid free people of color from migrating to the state; Thomas Day had to get a petition signed by his white neighbors and patrons asserting that he was worthy of an exception, and a special act was eventually passed to allow him to bring his wife home.

NC Attorney General R.M. Saunders wrote “I have known Thomas Day for several years…he is an excellent mechanic, industrious, honest, and sober in his habits and in the event of any disturbance amongst the Blacks, I should rely with confidence upon a disclosure from him as he is the owner of Slaves as well as real estate.”

Record scratch.

His acceptance amongst the white community came, in part, because he owned slaves. He was hardly alone – there were small numbers of free people of color AND indigenous folks who owned enslaved people throughout American history- it’s a pretty well documented phenomenon. What is unknown in his case is the reason.

“Some scholars believe that Day’s ownership of slaves was to a large extent a “cover” or “camouflage” for his anti-slavery activities. The best way for a free black person to demonstrate support and solidarity with the pro-slavery norms of the South was to own slaves themselves.

“Another explanation that some have arrived at is more economically focused. According to this theory, Thomas would train white craftsmen in his shop and after they learned his process and techniques, they would open a competing shop. While they benefitted from enslaved labor in their shops, Thomas wasn’t able to keep up with their prices unless he did the same.” —theforgottensouth.com

So…talented man, slave owner, still had to ask permission to bring his wife home…boy its complicated. The brief window free blacks had in North Carolina to seek economic parity with whites, while also engaging with the enslavement practices that made those economic successes possible, closed as the century marched on and Thomas Day eventually went bankrupt and died unheralded. His life and craft have recently been the focus of much more attention, and his pieces have long been collectors items.

Website: https://theforgottensouth.com/thomas-day-freed-craftsman…/

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Day-Craftsman…/dp/080783341X

24. Mary Ellen Pleasant – activist, millionaire…housekeeper?

As the story about Thomas Day has shown, people of color in this country have had to navigate complicated racial waters in order to succeed. Today’s subject took that navigation to a fine art – and had the additional vector of gender to deal with on top of it all.

May be a black-and-white image of 1 person

Mary Ellen Pleasant was born in 1814 and had a childhood spent in Nantucket, Massachusetts among a Quaker family, whom she worked for as a clerk. There she learned the rudiments of business, and also got involved in the abolitionist movement – this would set the pattern for her life. She was extremely intelligent with a brilliant mind for facts, figures, and common sense, and even as she became a most sought-after slave rescuer, which necessitated moves to New Orleans and then California, she was engaging in and learning the art of trading and business.

She became established in San Francisco around 1852 as cook and housekeeper, where she organized and presided over many dinners of wealthy white men. She kept her mouth shut and her ears open, and used the knowledge she gleaned to develop her business sense; she invested her money and diversified her portfolio, lent money, and opened businesses situated to take advantage of the Gold Rush boom.

She was very good at making money, and equally good at giving it away – she became well known for her philanthropy, and her financial support for escaped and illegally enslaved people, as well as help for women of any color.

She became known as The Mother Of Civil Rights in California for her work in multiple legal cases trying to better the cause of the African American, and very few women had the kind of wealth and influence she did at that time in San Francisco.

“Later, in collaboration with her secret financial partner—a white banker by the name of Thomas Bell—she became a highly regarded capitalist and philanthropist, including having a role in the establishment of the Bank of California.“ –www.libertarianism.com

So the thing with Thomas Bell is confusing to me, and will require more research – you’ll have to check it out. The best I can figure out is that she was his housekeeper for the next couple of decades, in a house she is said to have designed and paid for. The question of why Pleasant saw the need to play housekeeper for years, when she herself was so wealthy she was helping other people remains- was it a cover to maintain good public opinion? Whatever the reason, it backfired spectacularly when Bell died after a fall from an upstairs window and White public opinion, already suspicious of her boarding houses, began to turn against Mary. Bell’s widow began to accuse Mary of pushing Bell, and successfully sued her for the property, which left Mary destitute in her 80s. Dang. She almost made it.

“You know my cause well. My cause was the cause of freedom and equality for myself and for my people and I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.” – Mary Ellen Pleasant

She was pretty remarkable and left behind an incredible legacy of helping her people with the very tools of capitalism that in other corners were keeping them down.

Website: https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/…/mary-ellen-pleasant…

Book: https://www.abebooks.com/Making-Mammy-Pleasant-Black-Entrepreneur-Nineteenth-Century/31271263264/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade_20to50-_-product_id=COM9780252027710USED-_-keyword=&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIq7WCprCu_QIVjC2tBh13EgqwEAQYAiABEgICC_D_BwE

25. Abdul Rahman Ibrahim bin Sori, the Prince Who was Enslaved

I am here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina today, on the occasion of the NC premiere of my and Michael Abel’s opera, Omar, about the life of Omar ibn Said – a Koranic scholar sold into slavery to the antebellum South, where he lived for over 50 years and died enslaved. He left a remarkable document, the only one we have of its kind – an autobiography written in Arabic. I’ve talked a lot about Omar, and partly because of the opera, and because of the dedicated scholarship that has been created from his life, he is having a moment, which is wonderful and absolutely right.

But it’s important to remember that he was not unique – the fact that he left behind such written evidence of his life is unique. Writer and academic Sylviane Diouf reminds us that were many other enslaved Muslims brought over to the Americas – in much larger numbers than we realize. I’ve linked to her website at the bottom of this post as an extra – it’s a fantastic gathering of sources on this.

May be an illustration of one or more people

Abdul Rahman Ibrahim bin Sori was born in the Kingdom of Fouta Djallon, (modern day Guinea) where he spent the first 26 years of his life as a highly educated aristocrat and son of a powerful leader. He was captured by an enemy tribe and sold into slavery; he ended up in Natchez, Mississippi, which was about as far away from his sophisticated homeland as you can imagine. His new owner, a man named Foster immediately set about breaking him as quickly as possible, shearing his long hair (a mark of nobility at home) and putting him to backbreaking work in the fields. Sori ran away but quickly realized he was alone in this new land, with none of the advantages of his royalty.

“Faced with no good options, Sori returned to Foster and set about making himself indispensable. An uneducated man who grew tobacco and herded cattle, Foster knew little about cotton—a crop of growing consequence in North America. Sori did though, as cotton was grown in Fouta Jallon.

With Sori’s help, Foster became one of the region’s leading cotton producers. As his plantation swelled, so too did Sori’s influence. He became a foreman and met 25-year-old Isabella, a midwife also enslaved by Foster that Sori would go on to marry.

The two had five sons and four daughters and Sori’s relative freedom meant he could grow vegetables and sell them at a local market. One market day, in 1807, a chance encounter would, once again, radically alter his life.” — History.com

Sori was recognized by an Englishman, John Cox, who had met him years before in Africa; the royal family had helped him when he had been ill. Cox made it his life’s work to free Sori – he spread his story and helped Sori, at this point in middle age, come to the notice of President Adams and other influential figures who made him into an emblem for the abolitionist movement. He was expected to have converted to Christianity and was asked to write out the Lord’s Prayer as proof – this was important to the movement to humanize enslaved people (as only Christians are human, I suppose) and stoke up opposition to the institution.

Sori was also mistakenly thought to be Morroccan royalty (a claim he encouraged to foster support for him and the hopeful eventual freedom of his wife and 9 children) which eventually unraveled and made things more difficult. Side note – enslaved Muslims at this time were often thought to be North African, even when they were not, as a racist assumption that Subsaharan Africans were clearly not equipped with the brains to be educated or literate. So many (horrific) layers.

“…Sori set sail across the Atlantic––this time joined by his wife and with the U.S. government footing the bill––desperately hoping their children would be able to follow. When he arrived in Monrovia, Liberia in March of 1829 the first thing he did was unroll his prayer mat and bow to the earth.

“Sick and weakened by the journey, Sori would contract a fever just four months later and die at age 67. He would never return to Fouta Djallon or see his children again.

Years later, Gallaudet would find out that Sori had not, in fact, written the Lord’s Prayer when proving his commitment to Christianity. He had instead copied the first chapter of the Quran—sometimes, history isn’t written by the victors.” —history.com

Website: https://www.history.com/…/african-prince-slavery…

Podcast: https://music.amazon.com/…/everything-everywhere-daily…

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/547587

Extra information: https://www.sylvianediouf.com/works.htm

A Final Note From RG

I have to apologize for the abrupt termination of my BHM posts – i just got overwhelmed with life, and as you know, I couldn’t just fling things up there – they take focus and time. I’m proud of what I managed to do tho! And will continue thinking how I can keep contributing in like fashion throughout the year.

Recent laws passed in Florida and Tennessee have just struck down my soul and I’m trying to figure out what my best response can be as an artist…when i figure that out I’ll let you know. Meanwhile I continue to struggle with the usual questions of tradition, definitions of folk, and what is culture, anyway?

I wanted to post this quote by my good friend Michael Newton because he’s so good at putting things smartly, smart guy that he is.

edited to add: you guys keep me going. Thanks for all the kind words and I have SO enjoyed all the amazing conversations, debates, information, education, and big hearts evident on this page during the month of January. I learned so much!