Video Of The Week: A Documentary On The Ambush That Killed Fred Hampton Sr.

Black History Fact

On this date in 1980, "Zimbabwe gained its independence from the United Kingdom. Robert Mugabe became the first prime minister." [SOURCE: Page-a-Day Calendar]

Black History Fact

On this day in 1928, musical legend Fats Domino was born. He is said to be the first to sell over a million copies of a rock and roll record. He accomplished this platinum-selling feat in 1949 with his record, "The Fat Man."

At one point it was rumored that Domino had died in the Hurrican Katrina tragedy. However, although he lost his office and home, the music legend survived the historic disaster.

Dick Gregory On The Assassination Of Malcolm X

“I was not surprised at all by Malcolm’s murder. I knew it had been planned down to his last breath and that once planned nothing was going to stop the killers. The press gave me the same lie they would feed to the American public for the next thirty-four years. I disagreed then, and I still disagree. I knew that day U got the news that Malcolm’s assassination was a government hit. Even after Malcolm was shot, they had their men in place to make sure he was dead. The man who gave Malcolm mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was an undercover cop. When we finally got a copy of Malcolm’s autopsy report, it showed air bubbles in his lungs. It is fatal to give a person mouth to mouth when they have chest wounds, because you pull air bubbles into the lungs. Strangely enough, Malcolm’s autopsy report showed the same cause of death as Lee Harvey Oswald’s, showing gunshot wounds to the chest and air bubbles in the lung. Another key piece of evidence from Malcolm’s autopsy report clearly showed that the bullets in his body were fired from above him, yet the men who allegedly shot Malcolm were standing in the audience below him. So the brothers that the government paid to kill Malcolm were given blanks and they didn’t even know it. The government didn’t trust that they would do the job, so they had agents in the ceiling of that building to take care of him themselves. Under the Freedom of Information Act, we now know that the CIA rented the Audubon ballroom the week before Malcolm was murdered. Now people must ask themselves why would the CIA rent the Audubon Ballroom and what did they do while they were there? I know what they did and one day the world will know the truth.” -From, “Callus On My Soul” By: Dick Gregory

Video Of The Week

A decade old video of Bill Cosby talking about Black History facts. Very interesting...I wonder if this was actually aired on network television...


CLICK HERE for smart-phone viewers.

The Black History Fact Of The Day

On this day in 1921, writer and historian, Alex Haley, was born. Alex Haley is famously known for writing "Roots," and Malcolm X's autobiography.

Black History Fact Of The Day

"On this day in 1919, The Chicago Race Riot was ignited after a young Black man was stoned and drowned in Lake Michigan for swimming in an area reserved for Whites. This riot was the most severe of approximately 25 race riots in the 'Red Summer' following World War I." -From, Page-A-Day Notepad

What Happened To Addie Mae Collins?

Many people assume that belief in the theft of black bodies is paranoia born of a violent racist history. But Jamie Gaines and Sarah Cox know from experience that black cadavers tend to disappear. In January 1998, the sisters frowned as they surveyed the crumbling headstones, trash, and tangled weeds strangling Greenwood, the Birmingham, Alabama, cemetery in which their family had long ago laid their sister, Addie Mae Collins. Although most Americans do not know her name, Addie Mae Collins is a national icon of sorts. The thirteen-year-old was a martyr of the civil rights movement, one of four girls who were murdered in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church a few days after the city’s schools were integrated. Martin Luther King Jr., eulogized her, and her tombstone bears the rousing inscription ‘She Died So Freedom Might Live.’

It was thirty years before her sisters could bear to visit her grave, and when they saw its neglected state, they immediately arranged to have Addie Mae moved to another, better maintained cemetery. However, workers who opened the grave recoiled in shock: It was empty devoid of casket and corpse. Addie Mae’s body, like so many buried in black cemeteries throughout the South, is missing. No one can know with certainty who took the body or why, but many are convinced that her body joined the untold thousands of anonymous black cadavers on anatomists’ tables.” -From, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to The Present" By: Harriet A. Washington

[SIDEBAR: This book is a MUST read! Please go out and get it. It has superb information in it! It should be required reading in all educational institutions.]

Black History Fact Of The Day

Today is Ida B. Wells' Birthday. Wikipedia says his about her legacy: "On May 4, 1884, a Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company train conductor ordered Wells to give up her seat on the train and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. At the time, the Supreme Court had just struck down, in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations. Several railroad companies were able to continue legal racial segregation of their passengers.

Wells protested and refused to give up her seat 71 years before Rosa Parks. The conductor and two other men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an African American attorney to sue the railroad. Wells became a public figure in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article, for "The Living Way," a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train."

Ida B. Wells was a schoolteacher, writer, and activist. She vociferously spoke out against lynchings and other injustices.

Thomas Jefferson's Medical Experiments on Slaves

“In the best patrician tradition of his times, Thomas Jefferson was not only a country squire and leading politician but also a scientist. Eager to make his mark, Jefferson embarked on enthusiastic adventures in vaccination by gambling with the lives of his slaves. He wished to establish that Edward Jenner’s new technique of vaccination was superior to the technique of inoculation (or, as it came to be called a century later, variolation). Inoculation consisted of inserting or injecting infected material from a sick person directly into a well one to induce immunity. Vaccination in this era, referred to the process of injecting cowpox to provide immunity to smallpox, as Jenner first described in 1796. Jefferson obtained some cowpox vaccine indirectly from Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Boston, but it was known to be of dubious potency: The vaccine had failed to protect the subjects of an earlier trial. Jefferson spent that summer vaccinating two hundred of his family’s and his neighbor’s slaves. Only after they escaped illness did Jefferson inject his white family at Monticello.

The vaccinated persons remained well and the unvaccinated ones fell ill, but this did not convince Jefferson’s scientific peers, so Jefferson had a vaccinated slave injected with live smallpox material. When this slave remained well, Jefferson wrote his daughter Martha to proceed in order to ‘place our families and neighbors in perfect security.’

As a seasoned politician, Jefferson knew that his experiments on slaves would be criticized and that they seemed at variance with his sympathetic statements about blacks, so he slyly used language to deflect possible criticism, referring to conducting experiments ‘on some of my own family,’ without clarifying that the ‘family’ in question consisted of slaves owned by himself and his son.” -From, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to The Present" By: Harriet A. Washington

[SIDEBAR: This book is a MUST read! Please go out and get it. It has superb information in it! It should be required reading in all educational institutions.]

Black History Fact Of The Day

On this day in 1925, civil rights activist, Medgar Evers was born.

The African Constitution

The following is an excerpt from the book, “The Destruction of Civilization” By: Chancellor Williams. [SIDEBAR: I’m not certain which time period this came from.]

“Drawn from African Constitutional and Customary Laws. Different versions and modifications of the same laws occurred in different societies...

THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE AFRICAN PEOPLE

The following is a representative number of human rights, also drawn from customary laws or tradition constitutions:

Every Member had-

1) The right to equal protection of the law.

2) The right to a home.

3) The right to land sufficient for earning livelihood for oneself and family.

4) The right to aid in times of trouble.

5) The right to petition for redress of grievances.

6) The right to criticize and condemn any acts by the authories or proposed new laws. (Opposition groups, in some areas called “The Youngmen,” were recognized by law.)

7) The right to reject the community’s final decision on any matter and to withdraw from the community unmolested- the right of rebellion and withdrawal.

8) The right to a fair trial. There must be no punishment greater than the offense, or fines beyond the ability to pay. This latter is determined by income and status of the individual and his family.

9) The right to indemnity for injuries or loss caused by others.

10) The right to family or community care in cases of sickness or accidents.

11) The right to special aid from the Chief in circumstances beyond a family’s ability.

12) The right to a general education covering morals and good manners, family rights and responsibilities, kinship groups and social organization, neighborhoods and boundaries, farming and marketing, rapid mental calculation, and family clan, tribal and state histories.

13) The right to apprentice training for a useful vocation.

14) The right to an inheritance as defined by custom.

15) The right to develop one’s ability and exercise any developed skills.

16) The right to protect one’s family and kinsmen, even by violent means if such becomes necessary and can be justified.

17) The right to the protection of moral law in respect to wife and children- a right which not even the king can violate.

18) The right of a man, even a slave, to rise to occupy the highest positions in the state if he has the requisite ability and character.

19) The right to protection and treatment as a guest in enemy territory once one is within the gates of the enemy’s village, town or city.

20) And the right to an equal share in all benefits from common community undertakings if one has contributed to the fullest extent of his ability, no matter who or how many were able to contribute more.”

[SIDEBAR: How much would the greatness of our communities increase if we abided by the above stated rules.]

Black History Fact Of The Day

On this day in 1922; bassist, activist, composer, writer, and bandleader Charles Mingus was born. Here's a short biography on his life...[SIDEBAR: I love the quote that he recites towards the end of the video.]

Black History Fact Of The Day

On this day in 1898, the great Paul Robeson was born.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Word Pic Of The Week / Black History Fact Of The Day

The Greenwood Heights neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma was so prosperous and thriving with Black businesses it was referred to as "Black Wall Street." The historic community was destroyed by racist mobs who abhored the success of the African-Americans in the area...Google it!

Video Of The Week

Miriam Makeba discusses Nelson Mandela's release, her exile, and her return to South Africa...

Black History Fact Of The Day

On this date in 1932, legendary activist and singer Miriam Makeba was born.

Black History Fact Of The Day

Reginald Lewis was the first African American to build a billion dollar company.

The Importance Of Knowing Your History: Part 6

“When we get into social amnesia- into forgetting our history- we also forget or misinterpret the history and motives of others as well as our own motives. The way to know other people is to know one’s self. The way to learn of our own creation, how we came to be what we are, is getting to know ourselves. It is through getting to know the self intimately that we get to know the forces that shape us as a self. Therefore, knowing the self becomes a knowledge of the world. A deep study of Black History is the most profound way to learn about the psychology of Europeans and to understand the psychology that flows from their history.

If we don’t know ourselves, not only are we a puzzle to ourselves; other people are also a puzzle to us as well. We assume the wrong identity and identify ourselves with our enemies. If we don’t know who we are then we are whomever somebody tells us we are.” -From, "The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness" By: Amos N. Wilson

Black History Fact Of The Day

According to Wikipedia, on this day in 1820: "The first 86 African American immigrants sponsored by the American Colonization Society started a settlement in present-day Liberia."