Category Archives: OUR COMMON GROUND NOTES

Brothers in the Movement ::: The Protest Psychosis :::: Recommended Reading

by

An account of how cultural anxieties about race shaped American notions of mental illness

The civil rights era is largely remembered as a time of sit-ins, boycotts, and riots. But a very different civil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American protesters at Ionia—for political reasons as well as clinical ones. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents, Metzl shows how associations between schizophrenia and blackness emerged during the tumultuous decades of the 1960s and 1970s—and he provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions in our seemingly postracial America.

A recommended read on the history of how the medical field responded to the civil rights/Black power movements by diagnosing Black men as schizophrenic.

Secret Societies and the Fight for Black Freedom :: JStor

by

Secret Societies and the Fight for Black Freedom

Dating to the pre-Revolutionary era, mutual aid and benevolent societies supported Black Americans and the fight for civil rights and justice.

The United Order of the Tents in Brooklyn, 2023

Jonathan Aprea

Secret Societies and the Fight for Black Freedom

By: Ashawnta Jackson 

February 3, 2023

 Share Tweet Email Print

The United Order of the Tents, a secret society for Black women dating back to the nineteenth century, has been in the news lately as its members fight to save their Brooklyn headquarters. Though often obscured in history, organizations like the Tents served an important role, supporting (and in many cases, continuing to support) powerful systems for organizing and fighting for civil rights. As historian Paul Lawrence Dunbar writes, “Because there were few opportunities for blacks to participate in the wider society; political, social, and educational goals found an outlet in the institutions of the black community.”

As Dunbar explains, Black people in North America began organizing as early as 1693. People enslaved in Massachusetts united in the Society of Negroes, which, although an organization for Black people, was created under the leadership of Cotton Mather, a minister and slave owner. As such, the group was less concerned with freedom than benevolent societies that would follow it. For example, its rules strictly prohibited providing shelter or aid to those who escaped from slavery.

Groups that were established by and for free Black people had other ideas.

Historical Marker at 6th and Lombard Sts. Philadelphia PA
Historical Marker at 6th and Lombard Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania via Wikimedia Commons 

The Free African Society of Philadelphia and the African Free School of New York were both established in 1787. The former provided mutual aid, while the latter “was founded to educate New York City’s black children.” Both of these organizations chose to include “African” in their names, signaling something new as well.

“The names given to these early black organizations and institutions illustrate the importance places on maintaining their African heritage,” Dunbar explains.

Though not strictly religious groups, many of these early organizations were associated with churches, some more closely than others.

Though many of these societies required membership dues, so not all Black people could afford to participate, because of the number of them, “membership was possible for a substantial number of [B]lacks because of the large number of groups and the different levels within the groups.”

Even so, the cost could be prohibitive, Dunbar acknowledges. “During the 1830s, the initiation fees to join an organization ranged from one to eight dollars, and the monthly membership dues were from 12 to 25 cents, which was somewhat excessive for some [B]lacks.”

Though not strictly religious groups, many of these early organizations were associated with churches, some more closely than others. The Union Traveller’s Association, for example, functioned as a church, so much so that the mayor of Richmond cautioned its members against holding religious services “without the presence of a white minister.” Another, the African Union Society in Rhode Island, operated out of a church and “recorded births, marriages, and deaths as well as provided decent burials for blacks.”

In post-Civil War America, benevolent societies also found a foothold aiding people freed from slavery. As Dunbar writes, after the war, black people were “left to fend for themselves.” Benevolent societies were able to help those that the newly created Freedman’s Bureau could not. Groups like the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and Prince Hall Masons saw their membership numbers soar, explains historian Joe W. Trotter, with some having “quite large memberships by the early twentieth century: Odd Fellows (304,000), Pythians (250,000), Masons (150,000).” These organizations “not only [aided] in the transition of blacks from slavery to freedom, but also from farm to factory and from the South to the urban North and West.”

As both Dunbar and Trotter point out, for a long time, academic study of these societies was largely absent. Some of this can be attributed to the role of the church, Trotter explains, as the religious institution is “often portrayed as the incubator for other black institutions and organizations.” While there is a connection between secular societies and the church, influence went both ways. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, “actually emerged from the work of Philadelphia’s free African Society,” Trotter notes.

Another reason for their historical absence is likely due to the reason that many other parts of history have been understudied— bigotry. Early scholars saw these groups as “child-like imitations of Euro-American culture,” Dunbar writes. They were referred to as “ape lodges,” and their work discounted.

In more modern times, researchers have seen these societies in a different light, noting how vital they’ve been in the fight for equality. These societies, Trotter writes, were instrumental in shaping Black identity, “[they] protected members against poverty and other misfortunes; and supported movements for social change.”

Privacy Policy   Contact Us
You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today.

 Share Tweet Email Print

Have a correction or comment about this article?
Please contact us.

Black Historywomen’s historyJournal of African American StudiesSocial Science History

JSTOR logo

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

How Oppressive Systems Work :: Jason Lefkowitz

by

from Jason Lefkowitz

You may be asking tonight how five Black cops could beat a Black man to death.

I can’t answer that. All I can do is tell you a story.

During the Holocaust, at every stage of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, there were some Jews who were willing to help them along. Nazi rule in the ghettos of Eastern Europe was enforced by Jewish police. Forced labor gangs in the concentration camps were worked to death by Jewish overseers.

These collaborators worked under a range of titles, but in the history books one, in particular, has come to stand for all of them: “kapo.” And that label has stuck. To this day, 80 years later, one of the worst insults you can hurl at a Jew is to call them a kapo.

Why did they do it? In a system rigged against them, collaboration was a way to suffer less. If you collaborated, you got better food, warmer clothes. You got beaten less. You got to live another day. And you got a little bit of power — power that you could wield however you wanted, as long as you only wielded it against your fellow Jews.

The kapos would have told you they had other reasons, of course. Some would tell you that they were trying to be a buffer between their people and the system that oppressed them. Some may even have thought they could change the system from the inside. But in the end, the justifications didn’t matter; when the kapos stopped being useful to their masters, they were just as disposable as their justifications.

If you are wondering how a system can get to a point where people are oppressing their own, all I can tell you is: that is how oppressive systems work.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapo

About Jason Lefkowitz

Amid global hellscape, full of modern recreational flavor. Founder, president and cruel intergalactic tyrant of Rogue Repairman Productions. Web developer for 25 years now (oh god). Writer that nobody reads; leader that nobody follows. #fedi22 #writing #movies #cycling #kayaking #programming #php #python #wordpress #history #military

Follow Jason Lefkowitz @jalefkowit@octodon.social

Join him on the web: YE ANCIENT WEBBESITTE

The Police Have Been Spying on Black Reporters and Activists for Years :: ProPublica

by

The police surveillance wasn’t conducted just with wiretaps and long lenses, but with snitches planted within local organizations, including spies planted by then-Mayor Henry Loeb, an anti-union segregationist, among sanitation workers who wanted to join a union.

I Know Because I’m One of Them.

Wendi C. Thomas is a black journalist who has covered police in Memphis. One officer admitted to spying on her. She’s on a long list of prominent black journalists and activists who have been subjected to police surveillance over decades.

by Wendi C. Thomas, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism June 9, 2020, 6 a.m. EDTWendi C. Thomas learned during a police surveillance trial that the Memphis Police Department spied on her and three other journalists. (Andrea Morales)

RACIAL JUSTICE

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article was produced in partnership with the MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — On Aug. 20, 2018, the first day of a federal police surveillance trial, I discovered that the Memphis Police Department was spying on me.

The ACLU of Tennessee had sued the MPD, alleging that the department was in violation of a 1978 consent decree barring surveillance of residents for political purposes.

I’m pretty sure I wore my pink gingham jacket — it’s my summer go-to when I want to look professional. I know I sat on the right side of the courtroom, not far from a former colleague at the city’s daily newspaper. I’d long suspected that I was on law enforcement’s radar, simply because my work tends to center on the most marginalized communities, not institutions with the most power.

One of the first witnesses called to the stand: Sgt. Timothy Reynolds, who is white. To get intel on activists and organizers, including those in the Black Lives Matter movement, he’d posed on Facebook as a “man of color,” befriending people and trying to infiltrate closed circles.

Projected onto a giant screen in the courtroom was a screenshot of people Reynolds followed on Facebook.

My head was bent as I wrote in my reporter’s notebook. “What does this entry indicate?” ACLU attorney Amanda Strickland Floyd asked.

“I was following Wendi Thomas,” Reynolds replied. “Wendi C. Thomas.”

I sat up.

“And who is Wendi Thomas?” Floyd asked.

She, he replied, used to write for The Commercial Appeal. In 2014, I left the paper after being a columnist for 11 years.

It’s been more than a year since a judge ruled against the city, and I’ve never gotten a clear answer on why the MPD was monitoring me. Law enforcement also was keeping tabs on three other journalists whose names came out during the trial. Reynolds testified he used the fake account to monitor protest activity and follow current events connected to Black Lives Matter.

My sin, as best I can figure, was having good sources who were local organizers and activists, including some of the original plaintiffs in the ACLU’s lawsuit against the city.

In the days since cellphone video captured white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin squeezing the life out of George Floyd, a black man, residents in dozens of cities across the country have exercised their First Amendment rights to protest police brutality.

Here in Memphis, where two-thirds of the population is black and 1 in 4 lives below the poverty line, demonstrators have chanted, “No justice, no peace, no racist police!”

The most recent protests were sparked by the killings of Floyd and of Breonna Taylor, a black woman gunned down in her home by Louisville, Kentucky, police in March. But in Memphis, like elsewhere, the seeds of distrust between activists and police were planted decades ago. And law enforcement has nurtured these seeds ever since.

A Long History of Spying

In the mid-1960s, the MPD launched a domestic intelligence unit to spy not just on activists, but also on teachers’ meetings, a college black student union and labor organizers. That included Martin Luther King Jr., who came to Memphis in the spring of 1968 to stand in solidarity with underpaid and mistreated black city sanitation workers.

The police surveillance wasn’t conducted just with wiretaps and long lenses, but with snitches planted within local organizations, including spies planted by then-Mayor Henry Loeb, an anti-union segregationist, among sanitation workers who wanted to join a union.

In the iconic photo taken just moments after a gunman shot King on the Lorraine Motel balcony, several people are seen pointing in the direction from which the bullet came. Crouched over King’s body is a man holding a towel to the gaping wound on King’s face. The man, rarely identified in photos, is Marrell “Mac” McCollough, a Memphis cop who was assigned to infiltrate a militant activist group hated by Memphis police. There’s no evidence he was involved with King’s assassination.

Some, including members of King’s family, have long speculated that the assassination was not the work of a lone gunman but orchestrated by federal law enforcement agencies (the FBI famously monitored and harassed King). Both a U.S. House committee independent review in 1979 and a Department of Justice review in 2000 found no basis for this. Still, in 2002, the National Civil Rights Museum, which sits where the motel was, added to its permanent exhibits “Lingering Questions,” which contains hundreds of pieces of evidence, including the bullet plucked from King’s body. One of the questions (that the exhibit does not definitively answer): “Was the Memphis Police Department part of the conspiracy?”

Read More

On the Minds of Black Lives Matter Protesters: A Racist Health System

Black lives are being lost to COVID-19 at twice the rate of others. For protesters we talked to, that’s one more reason to be on the street. “If it’s not police beating us up, it’s us dying in a hospital from the pandemic,” one said.

In 1976, the ACLU of Tennessee sued the city, alleging it had violated residents’ First Amendment rights by maintaining records that “contained unverified information and gossip which related exclusively to the exercise of lawful and peaceful activities,” and, according to the complaint, “served no lawful or valid law enforcement purpose.”

A judge agreed and in 1978 signed the Kendrick consent decree, the first such decree in the country, which barred law enforcement from surveilling protesters for political purposes.

Many of today’s protesters know about that ruling, because in 2017 the ACLU of Tennessee sued the city, alleging that police were violating the consent decree by again illegally spying on residents who were exercising their First Amendment rights.

In 2016, protesters had a series of high-profile demonstrations including a May protest at the Memphis Zoo, a spontaneous protest against police brutality in July in which hundreds blocked traffic on the Interstate 40 bridge and a December “die-in” in the mayor’s front yard. After those, according to the lawsuit, the city started a blacklist of residents barred from City Hall without an escort.

It contained the names not just of those who had been arrested at demonstrations, but many who had not, including the mother of Darrius Stewart, a black teen police shot and killed in 2015 following a traffic stop, and a white grandmother who’d made it through a security blockade outside Graceland while black protesters were held back.

Reynolds’ sleuthing made up a good part of the joint intelligence briefings, which were shared with law enforcement agencies and some of the city’s largest corporations, such as FedEx and AutoZone, at the businesses’ request. (Facebook told the MPD it violated the social platform’s terms of service by creating fake accounts and impersonating others.)

In court, the city argued that the surveillance — videotaping demonstrations, using social media collators to sweep up posts about police and Black Lives Matters supporters — was necessary to protect public safety.

But while joint intelligence briefings and internal reports were ostensibly to keep track of potential threats, they were littered with unfounded rumors, misidentified photos of activists and surveillance reports of events that posed no clear threat, such as a black food truck festival.

And while it’s true that the pen is mightier than the sword, there’s nothing about me that screams threat, unless critical reporting on public policy and public officials, including Mayor Jim Strickland, counts.

In 2017, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism covered the anniversary of the bridge protest, but when I tried to get an interview with the mayor, I was rebuffed.

“Objectivity dictates if the mayor does one on one interviews,” wrote Ursula Madden, the city’s chief communications officer in an email. “You have demonstrated, particularly on social media, that you are not objective when it comes to Mayor Strickland.”

I replied that I was disappointed and asked her to point me to any errors of fact I’d made in my coverage. She did not respond.

Nagging Suspicions

I’ve worked as a journalist in Memphis for the last 17 years. I’ve never been a victim of police brutality, but few of my interactions with police have inspired confidence.

In 2014, while I was at The Commercial Appeal, a reader threatened by email to rape me after a column I wrote about Confederate Gen. Nathan B. Forrest. I reluctantly reported the threat to police, but the investigation felt lackluster and no suspect was ever identified.

It nagged at me, and years later, when I tried to learn more about what steps the detective assigned to my case had taken, department officials refused to share any information, even the details of their interview with me.

In July 2015, I covered the demonstrations that followed Stewart’s death by police. I interviewed the teen’s father and posted the video on Instagram.

A few days later, a cousin I hadn’t seen in years stopped by. He wanted to take a quick tour through downtown Memphis. It was dark and rainy. He’s black with long locks and a beard.

I wanted to be a good host, but before I left the house, I tweeted my hesitation: “My cousin is in town for work, leaving tomorrow. He wants to see Downtown. My 1st thought: Do I want to risk an encounter w/ police?”

My fear was not without cause: Less than two weeks earlier, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman, had been forced out of her car by an aggressive Texas cop who’d stopped her for failing to signal while changing lanes. A dashboard camera video caught her arrest and three days later, she was found dead in a jail cell. Authorities said she died by suicide.

I was thinking about what happened to Bland and what had happened to Stewart, who had been shot to death by police following a traffic stop the same month.

Just a few miles from home, flashing lights filled my rearview mirror. I pulled over, heart pounding.

I hit record on my cellphone and placed it on the dashboard. You can’t see the officer’s face in the video, which I still have, but you can hear our voices over the windshield wipers. The officer, who was black, asked for my license. I handed it to him and asked why I’d been stopped.

He said my driver’s side headlight was out, but when he leaned over to tap it, he said it was back on.

“I’m not trying to be Sandra Bland tonight,” I told the officer.

The Memphis officer said he was trying to be a nice guy. “You think I want to stand out here in the rain?” he can be heard saying on video.

“Ms. Thomas,” he said, reading my license. “Ms. Wendi Thomas.” I wondered if he recognized my byline. I offered to show him what I had just tweeted but he declined. “Your headlights are working now,” he said. “You be safe, OK?”

“Yeah, but what happens when somebody else pulls me over?” I asked.

“I don’t know what somebody else is gonna do,” he said, “but I know that if you do the right things, if you’re doing the right things, then nothing else can happen but good.”

I now wonder if the police had been following me. The police department did not answer questions for this story.

But at the time, I was paralyzed by fear and wanted to avoid being pulled over again.

I took side streets home.

Why Were You Following Me?

After Reynolds left the stand after naming me as someone he had followed, the judge took a short recess. I headed outside the courtroom and saw Reynolds headed to the elevator.

I followed him. When the doors closed, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. I asked: Why were you following me on social media?

Although it was chilly in the courtroom, Reynolds was sweating. He said he couldn’t talk about it.

Two days after Reynolds’ testimony, I filed a public records request with the city of Memphis, asking for all joint intelligence briefings, emails or other documents that referenced me or any of the three other journalists that the MPD was following on social media.

Four hundred and thirty three days later, the city produced the records — and I still don’t understand what would make police see me as a threat worthy of surveillance in the name of public safety.

Contained in the documents: A screenshot of a Facebook post that I made on Jan. 28, 2016, while I was on a fellowship at Harvard University. I’d shared a notice about a grassroots coalition meeting to be held that day.

In a joint intelligence briefing was a screenshot of a tweet I’d been tagged in. The original tweet, which at the time police captured it had 11 likes and one retweet, was itself a screenshot of an offensive image a Memphis police officer had allegedly posted on Snapchat.

Read More

Police Brutality, COVID-19 and Overdoses in Chicago Follow the Same Deadly Pattern

Our country’s long history of structural racism stands at the center of why police brutality, COVID-19 and the opioid crisis are disproportionately killing black Americans, including in Chicago.

In another police email was a February 2017 tweet I sent about an upcoming protest, which had been announced on Facebook. It got two likes.

The city of Memphis is pushing back against the judge’s ruling. Its lawyers have asked the court to modify the consent decree, contending that the city can’t participate in a Trump administration public safety partnership if it isn’t allowed to share intelligence with federal agencies.

My battles with the city of Memphis didn’t end with the lawsuit, unfortunately.

In 2018, I was trying to figure out which corporations had answered the mayor’s call to financially subsidize police operations by funneling $6.1 million to the city through a secretive nonprofit, the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

Strickland wouldn’t divulge the companies’ identities, but he realized that public records I’d requested would. So the mayor’s staff, in conjunction with the Crime Commission and another secretive nonprofit, came up with a plan to release the companies’ names to local journalists before releasing the records to me, I learned through emails released in conjunction with a 2018 public records lawsuit against the Crime Commission.

And this year, I was forced to sue the city after it refused to include me on its media email advisory list despite repeated requests.

The city of Memphis did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

My experiences have shaped the way my newsroom has covered more recent protests, including those in Memphis since Floyd’s death.

A guide on covering protests from the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy notes, “Understand how police use news coverage to surveil black communities. Don’t allow police to use you, or your coverage, to do their jobs.”

We applied these principles to our recent coverage of a civil disobedience training that drew more than 350 people. While we know the names of the people we talked to, if participants weren’t comfortable using their whole name or showing their entire face, we protected their identity.

After all, I know how it feels to know that the police are watching you.

Support the Work and Subscribe to ProPublica

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK Day 2023

by

For his service to our people and to this nation, be Grateful and Thoughtful on this MLK Day

It is not a day of service, it is a day of reflection, renewal, and re-engineering. A day to tell the story and lift up a most righteous demand for freedom. This man, through the power of our lived history, colored America and its infractions in 3D.

“For the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists. Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization.”

 ‘The Three Evils of Society’ Speech – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – August 31, 1967

I for one, trust my struggle for justice and a reparative future for Black people in this country. Consequently, I do not fall for the “a day of action” distraction about what this day means. Pausing and re-assessment are the ways I spend the hours of this day. How I spend my MLK Day. It is a day that I remind my history recall that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who stepped up in history for a different future was assassinated. It is a day that I remind myself that you cannot serve the people, without loving the people. I am also reminded of my obligation to step out of the shadow and look back on the stenciling of Jim Crow across this country, in the heart of our children, in our government, and in these laws. I have an obligation. On this day, I review them, reprioritize and recognize all the shortcomings that can be found at the intersection of a double-consciousness existence that formed both the fracture and the power in me. I am not the child of some Founding Father. I come up from a place where I have been required to create my own country, voice, and place. MLK, Jr. added a very critical layer to that foundation.

Celebrate and remember the Father, Husband, Leader, Writer, Orator, Justice Interlocutor, Civil, and Human Rights Warrior.

Listen here to our 2022 Broadcast to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume VII: To Save The Soul of America, January 1961 – August 1962

Preserving the legacy of one of the twentieth century’s most influential advocates for peace and justice, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., was described by one historian as being the “equivalent to a conversation” with King. To Save the Soul of America, the seventh volume of the anticipated fourteen-volume edition, provides an unprecedented glimpse into King’s early relationship with President John F. Kennedy and his efforts to remain relevant in a protest movement growing increasingly massive and militant.

Following Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961, King’s high expectations for the new administration gave way to disappointment as the president hesitated to commit to comprehensive civil rights legislation. As the initial Freedom Ride catapulted King into the national spotlight in May, tensions with student activists affiliated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were exacerbated after King refused to participate in subsequent freedom rides. These tensions became more evident after King accepted an invitation in December 1961 to help the SNCC-supported Albany Movement in southwest Georgia. King’s arrests in Albany prompted widespread national press coverage for the protests there, but he left with minimal tangible gains.

During 1962 King worked diligently to improve the effectiveness of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) by hiring new staff and initiating grassroots outreach. King also increased his influence by undertaking an overcrowded schedule of appearances, teaching a course at Morehouse College, and participating in an additional round of protests in Albany during July 1962. As King confronted these difficult challenges, he learned valuable lessons that would later influence the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

Remembering Zora Neal Hurston

by

Born on this day in 1891, Zoe’s Neale Hurston. On this 132nd anniversary of her birth, check out this incredible resource from the Library of Congress , audio recordings of Hurston talking about her research. Just amazing stuff:

Library of Congress Audion Collections

ABOUT ZORA NEALE HURSTON

VISIT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

About Zora Neale Hurston

“I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.”

     – Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Countee Cullen

© Carl Van Vechten
© Carl Van Vechten

Zora Neale Hurston knew how to make an entrance. On May 1, 1925, at a literary awards dinner sponsored by Opportunity magazine, the earthy Harlem newcomer turned heads and raised eyebrows as she claimed four awards: a second-place fiction prize for her short story “Spunk,” a second-place award in drama for her play Color Struck, and two honorable mentions.

The names of the writers who beat out Hurston for first place that night would soon be forgotten. But the name of the second-place winner buzzed on tongues all night, and for days and years to come. Lest anyone forget her, Hurston made a wholly memorable entrance at a party following the awards dinner. She strode into the room–jammed with writers and arts patrons, black and white–and flung a long, richly colored scarf around her neck with a dramatic flourish as she bellowed a reminder of the title of her winning play: “Colooooooor Struuckkkk!” Her exultant entrance literally stopped the party for a moment, just as she had intended. In this way, Hurston made it known that a bright and powerful presence had arrived. By all accounts, Zora Neale Hurston could walk into a roomful of strangers and, a few minutes and a few stories later, leave them so completely charmed that they often found themselves offering to help her in any way they could.

© Barbara Hurston Lewis, Faye Hurston, and Lois Gaston
© Barbara Hurston Lewis, Faye Hurston, and Lois Gaston

Gamely accepting such offers–and employing her own talent and scrappiness–Hurston became the most successful and most significant black woman writer of the first half of the 20th century. Over a career that spanned more than 30 years, she published four novels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous short stories, and several essays, articles and plays.

Born on Jan. 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was still a toddler. Her writings reveal no recollection of her Alabama beginnings. For Hurston, Eatonville was always home.

Established in 1887, the rural community near Orlando was the nation’s first incorporated black township. It was, as Hurston described it, “a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse.”

© Estate of Zora Neale Hurston
© Estate of Zora Neale Hurston

In Eatonville, Zora was never indoctrinated in inferiority, and she could see the evidence of black achievement all around her. She could look to town hall and see black men, including her father, John Hurston, formulating the laws that governed Eatonville. She could look to the Sunday Schools of the town’s two churches and see black women, including her mother, Lucy Potts Hurston, directing the Christian curricula. She could look to the porch of the village store and see black men and women passing worlds through their mouths in the form of colorful, engaging stories.

Growing up in this culturally affirming setting in an eight-room house on five acres of land, Zora had a relatively happy childhood, despite frequent clashes with her preacher-father, who sometimes sought to “squinch” her rambunctious spirit, she recalled. Her mother, on the other hand, urged young Zora and her seven siblings to “jump at de sun.” Hurston explained, “We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.”

Hurston’s idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end, though, when her mother died in 1904. Zora was only 13 years old. “That hour began my wanderings,” she later wrote. “Not so much in geography, but in time. Then not so much in time as in spirit.”

After Lucy Hurston’s death, Zora’s father remarried quickly–to a young woman whom the hotheaded Zora almost killed in a fistfight–and seemed to have little time or money for his children. “Bare and bony of comfort and love,” Zora worked a series of menial jobs over the ensuing years, struggled to finish her schooling, and eventually joined a Gilbert & Sullivan traveling troupe as a maid to the lead singer. In 1917, she turned up in Baltimore; by then, she was 26 years old and still hadn’t finished high school. Needing to present herself as a teenager to qualify for free public schooling, she lopped 10 years off her life–giving her age as 16 and the year of her birth as 1901. Once gone, those years were never restored: From that moment forward, Hurston would always present herself as at least 10 years younger than she actually was. Apparently, she had the looks to pull it off. Photographs reveal that she was a handsome, big-boned woman with playful yet penetrating eyes, high cheekbones, and a full, graceful mouth that was never without expression.

Zora also had a fiery intellect, an infectious sense of humor, and “the gift,” as one friend put it, “of walking into hearts.” Zora used these talents–and dozens more–to elbow her way into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, befriending such luminaries as poet Langston Hughes and popular singer/actress Ethel Waters. Though Hurston rarely drank, fellow writer Sterling Brown recalled, “When Zora was there, she was the party.” Another friend remembered Hurston’s apartment–furnished by donations she solicited from friends–as a spirited “open house” for artists. All this socializing didn’t keep Hurston from her work, though. She would sometimes write in her bedroom while the party went on in the living room.

By 1935, Hurston–who’d graduated from Barnard College in 1928–had published several short stories and articles, as well as a novel (Jonah’s Gourd Vine) and a well-received collection of black Southern folklore (Mules and Men). But the late 1930s and early ’40s marked the real zenith of her career. She published her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937; Tell My Horse, her study of Caribbean Voodoo practices, in 1938; and another masterful novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, in 1939. When her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was published in 1942, Hurston finally received the well-earned acclaim that had long eluded her. That year, she was profiled in Who’s Who in America, Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948.

Still, Hurston never received the financial rewards she deserved. (The largest royalty she ever earned from any of her books was $943.75.) So when she died on Jan. 28, 1960–at age 69, after suffering a stroke–her neighbors in Fort Pierce, Florida, had to take up a collection for her February 7 funeral. The collection didn’t yield enough to pay for a headstone, however, so Hurston was buried in a grave that remained unmarked until 1973.

That summer, a young writer named Alice Walker traveled to Fort Pierce to place a marker on the grave of the author who had so inspired her own work. Walker found the Garden of Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery at the dead end of North 17th Street, abandoned and overgrown with yellow-flowered weeds.

Back in 1945, Hurston had foreseen the possibility of dying without money–and she’d proposed a solution that would have benefited her and countless others. Writing to W.E.B. Du Bois, whom she called the “Dean of American Negro Artists,” Hurston suggested “a cemetery for the illustrious Negro dead” on 100 acres of land in Florida. Citing practical complications, Du Bois wrote a curt reply discounting Hurston’s persuasive argument. “Let no Negro celebrity, no matter what financial condition they might be in at death, lie in inconspicuous forgetfulness,” she’d urged. “We must assume the responsibility of their graves being known and honored.”

As if impelled by those words, Walker bravely entered the snake-infested cemetery where Hurston’s remains had been laid to rest. Wading through waist-high weeds, she soon stumbled upon a sunken rectangular patch of ground that she determined to be Hurston’s grave. Unable to afford the marker she wanted–a tall, majestic black stone called “Ebony Mist”–Walker chose a plain gray headstone instead. Borrowing from a Jean Toomer poem, she dressed the marker up with a fitting epitaph: “Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South.”

— By Valerie Boyd

Remembering the Rosewood, FL Massacre

by

January 7, 2023

100 years ago, a white mob completely destroyed the primarily Black town of Rosewood, Florida. The death toll is unknown and the story was erased from history for 70 years. No one was ever prosecuted for the crimes.

We cannot continue to allow the erasure of Black history. The Governor of FL is waging a war against the knowledge of Black history and of Black people. Banning books and restricting scholastic offerings related to Black studies and history. If he can, he will continue.

ABOUT THE ROSEWOOD, FL MASSACRE

MLK Day 2022 :: “King Day: To Forget Is to Forfeit

by
1-15-22 King Day

This Week at OUR COMMON GROUND

Saturday, January 15, 2022 ::: 10 pm ET

“King Day: To Forget Is to Forfeit”

Tune In LIVE : http://bit.ly/OCGTruthTalk

Call In ::: Listen Line: (347) 838-9852

The establishment of a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., marked the culmination of a long campaign that began soon after King’s assassination on April 1968 and ended on 2 November 1983, with the signing of legislation by President Ronald Reagan. Public Law 98–144 designated the third Monday in January as an annual federal holiday in King’s honor, and the first official celebration took place on 20 January 1986.

15 years later. The campaign to mark the holiday over those 15 years is strewn with vicious, racist pushback in and out of government. Over those years, there were many opportunities to question just what had really been achieved/transformed in America during the civil rights movement.

Since 1983, communities and organizations have celebrated King Day through various, creative and serious celebrations and forums. A national monument in Washington has been erected in Dr. King’s honor. However, there seems to be a diffusion in what we teach, remember and understand about Dr. King’s contribution to this country. The holiday seems to have become somewhat less deliberative in our celebrations. Taking for granted our responsibilities to keep his guidance and ideologies alive. We mention it, we attend the various luncheons, dinners. Yet, we now have generations of Black children, a new scholarship that tends to marginalize the power of his transformative power in our own communities. We read and quote his words outside the context and the import of the history he ignited.

Parades, luncheons, dinners alone cannot sustain the movement’s progress. We must organize, teach, educate, and practice the philosophy of King each and every day.

Can we keep KING ALIVE ? 

  • We should all ask yourselves: How many times this year, did I activate the liberation philosophies of Dr. King?
  • Other than social latitudes, how did you practice/use-share the language of King’s movement?
  • Just how did I “King” in the past year?
  • How did I lift ‘democracy’?

“King Day: To Forget Is to Forfeit”

I Hope Everyone Is Prepared for Kyle Rittenhouse to Go Free | The Nation

by

Wisconsin state judge Bruce Schroeder has presided over the Rittenhouse case from the beginning and has done nearly everything he can to tilt the scales of justice in Rittenhouse’s favor.

The trial of teenage gunman Kyle Rittenhouse begins next week, but the fix is already in. Rittenhouse, who is being tried as an adult, shot two people dead in the street in Kenosha, Wis., during the protests that followed the shooting of Jacob Blake in 2020. That he killed two people is undisputed, but Rittenhouse claims the homicides were justified acts of self-defense.

Rittenhouse is not from Kenosha. He went there, with other armed men, allegedly to defend a place called “Car Source,” which I point out just to emphasize that he wasn’t even trying to protect his own property in his own town. Once there, he began patrolling the streets with an assault rifle illegally gifted him by an older friend. I find the claim that Rittenhouse subsequently murdered two unarmed people in self-defense to be unconscionable. In a just world, Rittenhouse would go to jail for a double homicide and illegal gun possession.

But we do not live in a just world; we live in a white one. Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre among white supremacists and their media sympathizers, who have proudly defended Rittenhouse’s decisions to kill. Rittenhouse is the very definition of an “outside agitator” who came into somebody else’s community armed to do violence, but because he murdered-while-white, he will probably walk free.

That reality is almost assured because, even if Rittenhouse somehow draws an impartial jury, he has already won the white people’s lottery and landed a very partial white judge.

Wisconsin state judge Bruce Schroeder has presided over the Rittenhouse case from the beginning and has done nearly everything he can to tilt the scales of justice in Rittenhouse’s favor. This week, in the last pretrial conference, Schroeder declared that prosecutors are not allowed to refer to the people Rittenhouse murdered as “victims” during the trial. He said “victims” is too “loaded” a term, as if there were some other word we should use for unarmed people who were shot to death.

Now, there is a progressive argument for not calling victims of homicide “victims” at trial. I can absolutely see the argument that using the term in a case where the defendant claims self-defense lacks neutrality. It’s a choice other judges have made, though I doubt that this kind of neutrality would be given to a Black teen who gunned down people at a MAGA rally. Still, I wouldn’t call Judge Schroeder biased for this ruling alone. I call Schroeder biased because at the same conference at which he decided to prohibit the prosecution from using the word “victims” to describe the people Rittenhouse shot, he said he would allow the defense to use words like “rioters,” “looters,” and “arsonists” to describe those same people.

That’s bullshit. The (ahem) victims are not on trial. Rittenhouse is. Refusing to allow prosecutors to use linguistically accurate terms for people who did not voluntarily attempt to catch a bullet with their face at the same time as allowing the defense to use prejudicial language to characterize what those people were doing at the time is the very definition of bias. There is and never will be a trial to determine whether Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum were arsonists, looters, or rioters, because Rittenhouse killed them in the street. Indeed, the sole surviving victim of Rittenhouse’s gunfire, Gaige Grosskreutz, has not been charged with rioting, looting, arson, or any crime whatsoever arising out of the protests in Kenosha. (The judge did say that the prosecutors could call Rittenhouse a “cold-blooded killer” if they could “back it up with evidence”—as if the presence of two unarmed dead people at Rittenhouse’s feet didn’t make the fact that he was a killer self-evident.)

At the same time, Schroeder announced that he will not allow prosecutors to introduce evidence of Rittenhouse’s prior disposition to shoot people to death. There is video of Rittenhouse watching from a car as people leave a CVS: He calls them “looters” and says that he wishes he had a gun to shoot them. The video was taken in August 2020, about two and a half weeks before Rittenhouse shot up the streets of Kenosha. There are also photos from January 2020 of Rittenhouse posing with members of the Proud Boys. Both the video and the photos will be excluded, but the police patting Rittenhouse on the head like a good little white supremacist will be included.

And these are just the biased decisions Schroeder has made before the trial starts. Once it gets going, once he gets to rule on objections and jury instructions, there’s no telling how much worse he’ll get. Schroeder’s actions suggest he has predetermined the case in favor of Rittenhouse, and at trial the prosecution will be fighting against that as well as against Rittenhouse’s actual defense lawyers.

All of this suggests that Rittenhouse will walk free. Schroeder appears to believe that the shooting of “rioters,” “looters,” and “arsonists” by a white teenager is a “victimless” crime. All the defense has to do is find one juror who agrees with the judge.