{"id":7517,"date":"2023-02-16T18:57:16","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T18:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=7517"},"modified":"2023-02-16T18:57:16","modified_gmt":"2023-02-16T18:57:16","slug":"a-black-history-primer-on-african-americans-fight-for-equality-five-essential-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/16\/a-black-history-primer-on-african-americans-fight-for-equality-five-essential-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"A Black History Primer on African Americans\u2019 Fight for Equality \u2013 Five Essential\u00a0Reads"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Howard Manly,\u00a0The Conversation<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Special to The Truth<\/em><\/p>\n

As the father of Black history,\u00a0Carter G. Woodson\u00a0had a simple goal \u2013 to legitimize the study of African American history and culture.<\/p>\n

To that end, in 1912, shortly after becoming the\u00a0second African American\u00a0after\u00a0W.E.B. Du Bois\u00a0to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, Woodson founded the\u00a0Association for the Study of Negro Life and History\u00a0in 1915.<\/p>\n

More than 100 years later, Woodson\u2019s goal and his work detailing the struggle of Black Americans to obtain full citizenship after centuries of systemic racism is still relevant today.<\/p>\n

As dozens of\u00a0GOP-controlled state legislatures\u00a0across the U.S. have either considered or enacted laws restricting how race is taught in public schools, The Conversation U.S. has published numerous stories over the years exploring the rich terrain of Black history \u2013 and the never-ending quest to form what the Founding Fathers called\u00a0a more perfect union.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. From the Underground Railroad to Civil War battlefields<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"
    Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y., in the mid-to-late 1880s.
    Bettmann\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Armed with a deep faith, Harriet Tubman is most famous for her successes along the\u00a0Underground Railroad, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery along secret routes in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.<\/p>\n

    But Tubman\u2019s activities as a\u00a0Civil War spy\u00a0are less well known.<\/p>\n

    As historian and Tubman biographer\u00a0Kate Clifford Larson\u00a0wrote,\u00a0Tubman\u2019s devotion\u00a0to America\u2019s promise of freedom endured, despite suffering decades of enslavement and second-class citizenship.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI had reasoned this out in my mind,\u201d\u00a0Tubman once said. \u201cThere was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Juneteenth and the myths of emancipation<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      As\u00a0a scholar\u00a0of race and colonialism, Kris Manjapra wrote that Emancipation Days \u2013 Juneteenth in Texas \u2013 are\u00a0not what many people think.<\/p>\n

      \u201cEmancipations did not remove all the shackles that prevented Black people from obtaining full citizenship rights,\u201d Manjapra noted. \u201cNor did emancipations prevent states from enacting their own laws that prohibited Black people from voting or living in white neighborhoods.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Between the 1780s and 1930s, over 80 emancipations from slavery occurred, from Pennsylvania in 1780 to Sierra Leone in 1936.<\/p>\n

      In fact, there were 20 separate emancipations in the United States alone from 1780 to 1865.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. An image of a lynching found in a family photo album<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        \"\"
        Scene of the burnings of Johnny Cornish, Mose Jones and Snap Curry in Kirvin, Texas, on May 6, 1922. Jeff Littlejohn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

        As director of the Lynching in Texas project, historian\u00a0Jeffrey L. Littlejohn
        \nprovided the\u00a0very kind of analysis\u00a0that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican legislators in Texas want to ban from public schools.<\/p>\n

        Among the many documents and relics Littlejohn has received, one package stood out. Inside was a family album of photographs filled with the usual images of memories \u2013 a vacation, a wedding anniversary dinner \u2013 but also, one of the lynching of a Black man.<\/p>\n

        During the Jim Crow era,\u00a0lynchings occurred regularly\u00a0in Texas \u2013 with 16 in 1922 alone.<\/p>\n

        But in 2021, the GOP-controlled state Legislature in Texas\u00a0enacted a law\u00a0prohibiting K-12 educators from teaching that \u201cslavery and racism are anything other than deviations from \u2026 the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

        In other words, as Littlejohn wrote, \u201cthis interpretation holds that slavery, racism and racism\u2019s deadly manifestation, lynching, did not serve as systemic forces that shaped Texas history but were instead aberrations.\u201d<\/p>\n

        The photo album serves as a direct challenge to that interpretation.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Black soldiers fight racism and Nazis during World War II<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
          \"\"
          In this October 1944 photograph, Black soldiers are filling up gasoline tanks for the Red Ball Express.
          AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

          In\u00a0his book\u00a0\u201cHalf American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad,\u201d historian\u00a0Matthew Delmont\u00a0explored\u00a0the idea of Black patriotism\u00a0and how many Black soldiers saw their service as a way to demonstrate the capabilities of their race.<\/p>\n

          Prompted by the\u00a0Pittsburgh Courier, an influential Black newspaper during the 1940s, Delmont wrote that Black Americans rallied behind the Double V campaign during the war \u2013 victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home.<\/p>\n

          During the war, the Red Ball Express, the Allied forces\u2019 transportation unit that delivered supplies to the front lines, was one example of such exceptional performance.<\/p>\n

          From August through November 1944, the mostly Black force moved more than 400,000 tons of ammunition, gasoline, medical supplies and rations to battlefronts in France, Belgium and Germany.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. An NBA champion\u2019s cerebral fight for equal rights<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            In his biography of Bill Russell, \u201cKing of the Court,\u201d\u00a0Aram Goudsouzian\u00a0wrote that the NBA champion\u00a0sought to find worth\u00a0in basketball amid the racial tumult of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

            \"\"
            President Barack Obama presents NBA champion and human rights advocate Bill Russell the Medal of Freedom on Feb. 15, 2011.
            Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

            He emerged from that crucible by crafting a persona that one teammate called \u201ca kingly arrogance.\u201d<\/p>\n

            Russell, who died July, 31, 2022, was the NBA\u2019s first Black superstar, its first Black champion and its first Black coach.<\/p>\n

            As a civil rights activist, Russell questioned the nonviolence philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. and defended the militant ideas of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. He refused to accept segregated accommodations in the Deep South and recalled instances of police brutality during his childhood in Oakland, California.
            \n\u201cIt\u2019s a thing you want to scream,\u201d Russell wrote. \u201cI MUST HAVE MY MANHOOD.\u201d<\/p>\n

            Editor\u2019s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation\u2019s archives.<\/em><\/p>\n

            Howard Manly<\/a>, Race + Equity Editor,\u00a0The Conversation<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

            This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

             <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            By Howard Manly,\u00a0The Conversation Special to The Truth As the father of Black history,\u00a0Carter G. Woodson\u00a0had a simple goal \u2013 to legitimize the study of African American history and culture. To that end, in 1912, shortly after becoming the\u00a0second African American\u00a0after\u00a0W.E.B. Du Bois\u00a0to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, Woodson founded the\u00a0Association for the Study of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[162],"class_list":["post-7517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7518,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517\/revisions\/7518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7517"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=7517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}