Something a Little Different (Video)

I've seen a few of this type of video, and I always find myself getting so angry at 

society.I'm disappointed in human-kind and amazed because the attitudes displayed 

here actually  exist in this day and age. 

Then I wonder, what would I do? Would I say anything? Would I get angry at the person doing the discriminating? 

Would I stand up for the rights of the person being discriminated against?

It brings me to tears to see how grateful these women are. These are women born in the 

USA, women who (rightfully) expect to be treated just like anyone else in the store, but 

who are instead singled out for harsh verbal abuse which they have done nothing to 

warrant. 

This was a set-up, an experiment to see how people would react to someone else 
displaying such bigotry, but sadly it actually does happen in this country. For a country 
that is supposed to be so progressive and forward thinking, there are certainly some very 
closed-minded people displaying some cruel beliefs. How would those same bigots feel 
if they went to another country and were treated the same way on a daily basis that 
Blacks, Muslims, Hispanics,  Ethiopians, Asians, and all those of a different 
race/culture/sexual identity are treated here? 

It is sad that in a country which has made so much progress, a country which has been 
soadmired by other countries the world over that now, when we should be more united 
than ever before, we are instead headed right back to where we were in the days of slavery....




This article is the opinion of the author only, and is not representative of Blogspot.

Jul. 29, 1910: Slocum Massacre in Texas

Another small town (like Rosewood) in the South (like in Florida); this time in Slocum, Texas, that a lot of us are just learning about. Massacred blacks, murdered for nothing more than being black. This is what we're heading for, if you can call it 'heading'. What we're actually doing is going backwards, and it's not voluntary. We're not choosing to return to a time when a young boy can get lynched for looking at a white woman, but that's exactly the way this country is headed. 14 year old boys will be kidnapped off the street, and their killers will be acquitted. (Sound familiar?) Wrap your head around this little known black history fact:                                                                                                                       Descendants of the Slocum Massacre victims                                                                                                                      attending a Texas House ceremony in 2011

On July 29, 1910, citizens in the small, predominately African American town of Slocum, Texas were massacred.

That morning, hundreds of white citizens from the surrounding community converged on Slocum. Over the following days terror reigned for the African American citizens as individuals were gunned down working fields and seeking shelter in their homes.

Even those who tried to leave town were not safe. Many bodies were found shot in the woods, with their travel packs at their sides. While there has never been a clear figure of how many died, estimates range from 8 to 25. Many suspect the toll was much higher.

This was one of many towns, such as Rosewood and Tulsa, where a successful, self-sufficient African American community was the subject of a terrorist attack designed to maintain economic white supremacy.

In each town, the incident that sparked the attack was relatively insignificant and often fabricated. In Slocum, there were various trigger incidents such as a disputed debt between a well-regarded black citizen and a white citizen as well as anger from some whites when an African American man was put in charge of local road improvements.

The aftermath? As E.R. Bills explains in The Dissident Voice:

[After the massacre], the personal holdings of many Slocum area Anglo citizens fortuitously increased.

The abandoned African-American properties were absorbed or repurposed as the now majority white population saw fit. The standard southern Anglo-centric world order was restored, and this order has endured, even to the present day.

According to recent demographic statistics, most of the communities around Slocum have an African-American population that ranges between 20-25%. Grapeland’s is 35%, Rusk’s is 30% and Palestine’s and Alto’s is 25%. Slocum’s African-American population is just under 7%.

Today, Slocum is still an unincorporated community and that’s probably wise. If there was an elected civic leader or assembly in Slocum, they might be asked to apologize for the massacre or explain why there are no placards acknowledging the event or the American citizens who were slaughtered there and covered up in unmarked graves in the woods and creek bottoms.

To learn more, read the following articles and book by E. R. Bills:

• “A Forgotten Slaughter of African-Americans in Texas: The Slocum Massacre” in Dissident Voice
• “Town’s 1910 racial strife a nearly forgotten piece of Texas past” in the Statesman
• The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas, a book from History Press 

LEATHER SHOES MADE FROM BLACK PEOPLE'S SKIN

Originally printed: [Philadelphia News.]
Printed in The Mercury, Saturday March 17, 1888

I remember that two or three years ago I incidentally referred to a prominent physician of this city wearing shoes made from the skin of negroes. He still adhered to that custom, insisting that the tanned hide of an African makes the most enduring and the most pliable leather known to man.

Shoes made from Big Nose George Parrott

Only last week I met him upon the street with a brand new pair of shoes. I looked at his foot wear, as I always do - his pedal coverings have an irresistible fascination for me - and said, with a smile:
"Is the down trodden African still beneath your feet?" In the most matter of fact way, and without the shadow of a smile, he answered: " I suppose you mean to inquire if I still wear shoes made of the skin of a negro. I certainly do, and I don't propose changing in that respect until I find a leather that is softer and will last longer and present a better appearance. I have no sentiment about this matter. Were I a Southerner - in the American sense of the word - I might be accused of being actuated by a race prejudice. But I am a foreigner by birth, although now an American citizen by naturalization. I fought in the rebellion that the blacks might be freed. I would use a white man's skin for the same purpose if it were sufficiently thick, and if any' one has a desire to wear my epidermis upon his feet after I have drawn my last breath he has my ante mortem permission."

The doctor's shoes always exhibit a peculiarly rich lustrousness in their blackness. He assures me that they never hurt his feet. The new pair he was using when I last saw him emitted no creaking sound and appeared as comfortable as though they had been worn a month. Their predecessors, he told me, had been in constant use for eight months. He obtains the skins from the bodies of negroes which have been dissected in one of our big medical colleges. The best leather is obtained from the thighs. The soles are formed by placing several layers of leather together. The skin is prepared by a tanner at Womseldorf, 16 miles from Reading. The shoes are fashioned by a French shoemaker of this city, who knows nothing of the true character of the leather, but who often wonders at its exquisite smoothness, and says that it excels the finest French calf-skin.

Do not for a moment think that this doctor presents an exceptional case of one who puts the human skin to a practical use. Medical students frequently display a great variety of articles in which in the skin or bones of some dissected mortal has been gruesomely utilized, and in bursts of generosity they sometimes present these to their friends, who prize them highly. One of the dudest dudes in town carries a match-safe covered with a portion of the skin of a beautiful young woman who was found drowned in the Delaware river. It still retains its natural colour. Another young man with whom I am acquainted carries a cigar case made of negro skin, a ghastly skull and crossbones appearing on one side in relief. One of the best known surgeons in this country, who resides in this city, has a beautiful instrument case, entirely covered with leather made from an African's skin. A young society lady of this city wears a beautiful pair of dark slippers, the remarkable lustrousuess of whose leather invariably excites the admiration of her friends when they see them. The young doctor who presented them to her recently returned from an extended foreign tour, and he told her that he had purchased them from a Turk in Alexandria, and that he did not know what sort of leather they were made of, but he supposed it was the skin of some wild animal. As a matter of fact, the skin came from a negro cadaver, which was once prone on a Jefferson College dissecting table, and the leather was prepared in Womseldorf. The rosettes on the slippers were deftly fashioned from the negro's kinky hair.

The Mercury, Saturday March 17 1888

For more information on this subject:
http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/apr13/index.htm
http://knowledgefullcircle.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/is-black-skin-being-used-and-sold-and-made-into-leather-products-today/

Retrieved from Facebook page Black Thought

A Little Known Black History Fact

On this day in black history in 1959, the first play written by a woman of color premiered on Broadway. A Raisin in the Sun was the story of a black family living in a time of racial segregation in a large American city, in this case Chicago.  Lorraine Hansberry, the author, knew what it was like to grow up in an atmosphere of racism and segregation, as her family, in an attempt to move into a ‘better’ neighborhood, came up against a ‘racially restrictive covenant’ which stated that  people of color could not purchase or lease land in that community. The Hansberrys had challenged the restrictive covenant which led to the Supreme Court case of Hansberry v Lee. 

The name of the play came from a poem by author Langston Hughes in which he wrote: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" (Wikipedia)

On March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway.

 

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Lorraine Hansberry. Retrieved March 11, 2014, from Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Hansberry