It took 10 brief years for “His-Story” to recalibrate the stalwart civil rights backstop, Black Lives Matter (BLM). It was created on July 13th, 2013 after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. Three heroic ladies, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, ignited this online grassroots protest vehicle. The momentum of this juggernaut movement had to be stopped. The New York Times titled a lengthy article describing the inertia as, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History.” That article described the intensity after the George Floyd murder this way, “Four recent polls — including one released this week by Civis Analytics, a data science firm that works with businesses and Democratic campaigns — suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks.”
Browsing: Lost Black History
Ocoee, next to Orlando, witnessed these tools combined to instigate the notorious 1920 “Voting Day Massacre.” Moses Norman, a prominent man in the Black community, went to exercise his 15th amendment right to vote. White poll workers promptly turned him away, informing him that he had failed to pay a $1 poll tax. He consulted Orlando Judge John Cheney, who advised him of his rights and he returned. The members of the Klan were incensed and a menacing crowd stopped his attempt.
Since our Union began in 1776, the advocates of slavery recited the argument that Slavery was beneficial for Blacks. The current refrain is the Florida educational system positing that slavery was a vocational asset for Blacks. South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun was one of the most vocal politicians advocating the benefits of slavery. In his 1837 anti-abolitionist speech he said, “Never before has the Black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.”
The 130 year history of Sears and Roebuck was a burden and a blessing for Blacks. America’s leading retailer for much of the twentieth century was founded in 1893 by Richard Sears, who quickly partnered with Alvah Roebuck.
Pictures of interracial students wading into the Atlantic to be arrested by the police were an embarrassment for the Johnson administration. Civil Rights travel.com recounted, “…white activist, Al Lingo, checked into the hotel, and invited Black protesters to join him in the pool. The site of an integrated swimming pool so outraged the hotel manager, that he ran around the pool, pouring acid into the water. It became known as “The Splash Heard Around The World.” The global shame forced LBJ to sign the act a few days later.
The idiom “Stay Woke” is the popular phrase du jour. Lost in the banter between the Right and Left is the Black history story of these words. The words began as a cautionary Negro warning in the post Emancipation, Jim Crow era. Succinctly defined, it was a warning to be mindful of every detail going on when you were amongst White folks.
President Biden is clearly proud of these accomplishments and one more accolade of President Obama that is omitted from the resume is his fierce loyalty. Biden, in a poignant CNN interview said, “His love of family and my family, and my love of his family … it’s personal. It’s family.” Biden made a decisive announcement to the global press in that CNN piece.
Elmore “Buddy” Bolling, at the young age of 39, was killed with a barrage of shotgun blasts and pistol shots from White assailants. The Montgomery Advertiser described how brazen it was. “The shooters didn’t even cover their faces; they didn’t need to. Everyone knew who had done it and why. ‘He was too successful to be a Negro,’ someone who knew Bolling told a newspaper at the time.”
We all have heard the cliche “The real McCoy!” This trope means authentic or genuine – “The real deal.” Most people don’t know that the phrase comes from the pristine workmanship of a Black man named Elijah McCoy.
Thanks to our Black Press we can read about the history of the Black town of Langston Oklahoma. Langston was founded in 1890. The website: https://www.blackpast.org/ details the town’s principal founders as William Eagleson, a prominent newspaper editor, Edward McCabe, a former Kansas state auditor, and Charles Robbins, a White land speculator. The two Black men helped lead a migration of Black settlers from the South. The settlers came in a desperate search for solace from the “Jim-Crow” brutality. Mr. McCabe proposed creating a majority-Black state in the Oklahoma territory. He named the town for John Mercer Langston, a Black member of Congress from Virginia.