Kodak’s Hidden History: Frankie Taylor Jones and the Black Appalachian Coal Camp Experience

By: Columnist and Scholar Dr. Emily Hudson

Name:                                   Frankie Taylor Jones         

Date of Birth:                       December 23, 1933                      

Place of Birth:                      Kodak, Kentucky

Date of Death:                    May 11, 2005

Parents:                                Frank and Cassie Taylor

Spouse:                                 Ralph Robert Jones, Sr.

PHOTO DESCRIPTION

Picture taken around 1944 in the Kodak, or Meem-Haskins Coal Camp. Pictured from right to left: Frankie Taylor (Jones), Charlene Jones, Emma Jean Hopkins, and Catherine Jones.

(From Billy and Deloris Jones collection)

I remember well the trips our family took to Kodak, Kentucky when I was a little girl to visit my Daddy’s brother who was a coal miner living in that community. It was always a day filled with adventure for my siblings and me. We looked forward to sailing paper-made boats down the creek, swinging across the creek on an old tire suspended from a rope tied to a branch far up in a tree, playing on the coal train cars, even when we knew better! It was always a treat to visit Uncle Ralph, Aunt Frankie and our cousins there in the coal camp.

Kodak, located near Vicco, Kentucky, was often referred to as Meem-Haskins when I was growing up. It is believed that Meem-Haskins was the last name of the owner of the coal company and was from Dayton, Ohio. According to my research, the Meem-Haskins Coal Company operated in Kodak from 1930 to 1955 and employed 150 workers.

I lived in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 80’s. For at least two summers I drove back home to Hazard and conducted oral history interviews from some of our elder members in the Black community, including Frankie Taylor Jones, Aunt Frankie. I sat down with her in 1983 to collect her story of growing up in Kodak, married life, and life as a coal-mining family. (Her interview is part of my larger article published in “Reshaping the Image of Appalachia”, edited by Loyal Jones, 1986, entitled “The Black American Family in Southeastern Kentucky: Red Fox, Kodak and Town Mountain”.) – Emily Jones Hudson

Frankie Taylor Jones shares her experience of going to school in the coal camp.

We had this one little, old-roomed school. Everybody went to school, and it was so full. Had one schoolteacher, we fought and scratched. We had John Willie Combs; he was teaching then. John Willie Combs taught me when I was in school. The school was a little old brown building... down the lower end, where the cemetery was, it set right there in that bottom.

Did Blacks and Whites go to school together?

No! The White kids had a school on down the road, they had different rooms. Their school wasn’t like our school, we had a little one-room shack.

Was there a name for the Blacks school?

No, didn’t have no name for it. Just Kodak Colored School is what everybody called it. Go up in the Colored holler is what they’d said. All the white people stayed on down below where we stayed. The White’s school, they had about five or six rooms. It was a big gray building on the left side of the road right before you get onto the dirt road going up into the holler. The bridge (right before the dirt road) separated the Blacks from the Whites.

Frankie Taylor Jones shares about family life.

Ralph’s mother (Mabel Allen Jones) taught Sunday school. Ralph’s family had chickens, cows, hogs... we didn’t have any of that... well, we had chickens.

How did Ralph’s family own so much?  I don’t know, I don’t know if Ralph’s father made more money or what, I don’t know. Ralph’s father, Will Jones, was a member of the Masons, if that had anything to do with it.

(Speaking about after marriage.) We had our own garden. We had our own hogs made our own lard. We didn’t have deep freezers, we carried water from a spring. There used to be a pump, but it broke so we used a well bucket and dropped it down there. The kids would go get water before going to school. Played football with milk cans, played Church.  

Ralph worked in the mines. Carl (Ralph’s brother) worked in the mines. Everybody worked in the mines but Billy (Ralph’s younger brother). But Billy was always building. He made all these little fancy chicken coops on the outside the house; they had an outside house, you know, where they stored all their hay for their stuff in the wintertime. Billy would build couches, but Carl and Ralph always worked in the mines. Ralph been in the mines before he went into the army. Ralph spent about three years in the army, then he went back in the mines.

Where the name “Meem-Haskin” came from?

Now I’m going to tell you what they told me. I don’t really know. But they said it was a man that owned all the land, and it was named after him. I don’t know whether it’s true or not. But that’s what they say, that’s where the company got its name from this man. And now they call it Kodak Coal Co. But we always got our mail in Kodak. Just the tipple and mines were mostly named after him, but the mail always came to Kodak. The houses and everything up in there belonged to the coal company. They just charged house rent. When they got their paycheck, the house, stores, everything belonged to the same company, they paid so much out of their paycheck. If it was $25, they took out $25 before they even got their check.

They sold the houses; we bought the house we stayed in, but they wouldn’t sell the land. That’s why everybody moved because they kept the land. I guess for coal and this kind of stuff, you know, and we paid $50 a year for the land the houses stood on. If you moved, you had to tear your house down (Ralph and Frankie moved out of Kodak- around 1972). There were only four houses left up there.

Was that all the Black families that lived up there?

Yeah me, Bobbi Jean, Winkie, Aunt ‘Dessa... all kin people.

There were no Black people who lived below the tipple?  Ms. Gussie stayed up on a little hill. The only reason we moved is because they (the coal company) wanted to truck the coal out of the holler. They were wanting to buy Ralph a trailer and set it down there in the flat on the side, but I said I wasn’t going to move down there. I liked it up there (the head of the holler in Kodak) because we could raise our own garden and stuff like that.

Did most of the white families live in trailers?

They had quite a few trailers but most of them, just like we did, owned the homes, but they didn’t own the land. Some of them are still like that up there. Their houses were better than ours; their houses, some were painted, they had nice porches, we didn’t have no big, beautiful houses, you know.

We had Church in the schoolhouse. Through the week was school and on Sunday was Church. We would get up and go to Sunday School and after that have 11:00 o’clock service, just like they do now. We used to have a preacher named Rev. Thomas, long time ago that lived on the camp, him and his wife. They were Baptist, we didn’t have nothing up there but Baptist, that’s all we knew.

Where did the White families go to church? They had their own church, you know where the bridge, where the store used to be up in the hollow? The other street that went the other way from the road that went up into the hollow, well they had church up there, they had a church house. It was quite a few more white people than black. They had a nice church.

Did you all (Black and White) have a hard time getting along?

We used to fight a lot, when we had to go to the store, we had to go down by the white camp to the commissary. Quite naturally they going to throw rocks at us and holler ‘nigger’ at us from their porch. But we used to fight all the time, the parents never bothered us, just the kids.

What kind of things could you get at the commissary?

Prices? They were cheap, we ‘drawed’ script, we didn’t trade with money. Like where Ralph worked at, they had an office that you put a script card in the window, and they’d give you maybe $25 or $30 and you take that in there and you can trade and get your groceries. They wasn’t high, you could buy clothes, we bought all our kid’s clothes at the commissary. They had groceries down one side then on the other side of the store, they had clothes, pants and other, you know, stuff like that. Not the good clothes like they wear now but back then they were pretty clothes. They were cheap, not high like they are now; you could buy cream for 8 cents a can.

Frankie Taylor Jones shares about the life of a miner in Kodak.

Did most of the Black miners who worked in the mines live in Kodak?

Some of them came up towards Breeding’s Creek, like John C. Clayton and his father. That was a long way to come, but they made pretty good money, and you could hardly find work unless you were working in the mines. So that’s why they came up there.

Did Black miners and White miners get along?

Ralph never had no problem. He said that one time he had this boss that was just bad to say nigger. When the big mines closed down- Kodak mines- they closed the commissary down. The mines that are up there now are not the same ones that were being worked during Ralphs daddy’s time. It’s not the same drift mine. The one Ralph and them worked in is closed in. When Ralph worked there, they had trains to come around, all that’s gone. They don’t have a drift mine now, they just take the coal up there and dump it into the tipple. Back then Ralph and them would hand-load cars with shovels. Been over 20-30 years since they closed Meem-Haskins mines. Other mines had contracts with the tipple and continued to truck coal to the tipple augar mines.

Ralph switched to night watching when the mine closed down. There were picketers, all the little tipples were picketing. They didn’t want anyone working the tipples. They were blowing up the tipples, they weren’t getting the price on coal they wanted. They didn’t want no trucks to come in. They blowed up the tipple and coal trucks. One night Ralph was night watching, the picketers came up and ran him off. They dynamite the tipple, and it burned and burned for a long time. Approximately 20 years ago, in the 60’s, they rebuilt the tipple. The mines even tore up the tracks, blowed them up, to keep coal from being bought in. Some of the mines were unrecognized. Some of them weren’t unrecognized; that is what they (the mines) were mad about. They set up there and let the contract run out. They wouldn’t sign it for a pretty good while and maybe they would just take in non-union coal. The union men that got paid good money, they would get mad and wouldn’t let ‘em bring this coal in like that. It was the union men that was picketing. Ralph was in the union, sometimes when they (the mines) come out picketing, they wouldn’t let them work for three or four months. Times really got hard.  

(“Times really got hard.” I can clearly remember how during those hard times, Billy Jones, my dad and Ralph’s brother, would grocery shop in Hazard and deliver those groceries to Ralph’s family in Kodak. Week after week until the mining dispute was settled.)

Here is a poem inspired by my childhood visits to my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Frankie’s home in Kodak, Kentucky. The trips were usually on a Sunday afternoon and that meant sitting down at a supper table prepared by Aunt Frankie.

AUNT FRANKIE’S TABLE

Kodak is filled with colorful memories
Sunday supper at Uncle Ralph’s
Coal wasn’t the only goal
A seat at Aunt Frankie’s table
Was the mouth-watering prize
Fried chicken fit for a king
Every part of that bird eaten
Including the liver, gizzard, and wing
Tomatoes so fresh they bled red
A mountain of mashed potatoes
Buttered from top to bottom
Sprinkled religiously with salt and pepper
Green beans snapped the night before
Seasoned with fatback
Cornbread fried brown in the skillet
A mean side of collard greens
Corn on the cob
Apple cobbler and fresh-squeezed lemonade
It was an honor to have a seat and feast
At Aunt Frankie’s table
On a Sunday afternoon
(Published in HOME, A Collection of Poetic Thoughts and Things, 2024)

Blues, Folklore, and Black Identity: A Legacy of Resistance and Revival

By: Lamont Jack Pearley

Furry Lewis c. 1927

On this day, March 6, we recognize significant moments in both blues history and the broader landscape of Black American folklore. From the birth of blues legend Furry Lewis to the infamous Dred Scott decision and the enduring legacy of folkloric themes in his lyrics, the cultural fabric of Black America is woven with resilience, artistry, and profound storytelling. The recently released film The Blues Society further deepens this narrative by documenting a pivotal moment in blues history, making this an opportune time to reflect on these interwoven legacies.

On March 6, 1893, Walter “Furry” Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. As a country blues guitarist and songwriter, Lewis was a key figure in the Memphis blues movement. His intricate fingerpicking, storytelling lyricism, and emotive performances captured the essence of the early blues. Though he stepped away from music for a time, he was rediscovered during the 1960s folk blues revival, showcasing the timeless nature of the genre and its ability to reach new audiences across generations.

Furry Lewis’s music is steeped in folklore and sacred symbolism, reflecting traditional Black vernacular and behavioral patterns passed down through generations. His lyrics often reference hoodoo, biblical allegory, and spiritual traditions that survived through oral storytelling. Songs such as John Henry and Kassie Jones recount legendary figures who represent strength, resilience, and the struggle for justice—motifs commonly found in Black American folklore. Additionally, Lewis’s frequent mention of trains, crossroads, and supernatural elements ties into the blues’ long-standing connection to spiritual journeys, transformation, and fate. These lyrical patterns reinforce the idea that blues music was more than entertainment; it was a vessel for sacred knowledge, communal identity, and cultural preservation.

The Dred Scott Decision: A Dark Moment in Black American History

On this same date in 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision, ruling that enslaved people and their descendants were not citizens and had no legal standing in court. This decision deepened the racial divides that would lead to the Civil War, underscoring the systemic oppression that blues music would later express. The blues was, in many ways, born from the suffering and injustices that cases like Dred Scott highlighted—a raw, emotive art form chronicling the struggles and triumphs of Black life in America.

The intersection of Black and Indigenous histories in America is deeply significant. The Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations, among other Southeastern tribes, had long histories of interactions with Black individuals—some through enslavement, others through kinship and resistance. However, it is also crucial to acknowledge that some Black individuals are not simply connected to Indigenous communities through external relationships but are, in fact, Indigenous themselves—full tribal members with ancestral ties predating European contact. Many Black Indigenous people maintain their distinct cultural traditions while contributing to the shared musical and storytelling practices that shaped the blues. This history reminds us that the Black American experience is multifaceted and includes deeply rooted Indigenous heritage that continues to shape identity, folklore, and artistic expression.

The Blues Society: A New Film Documenting Blues Revival

Amid this historical backdrop, the recently released documentary The Blues Society sheds light on the blues revival of the 1960s and the role of white enthusiasts in preserving and promoting the genre. It interrogates the complex relationship between race, ownership, and cultural appreciation in blues history. As much as the film acknowledges efforts The Blues Society to keep the blues alive, it also raises questions about appropriation and the erasure of Black agency in defining its own musical heritage.

In this episode of Jack Dappa Blues Radio, I sit down with filmmaker and scholar Augusta Palmer, daughter of Robert Palmer, a founding member of the Memphis Country Blues Society. Augusta and her team worked tirelessly to bring The Blues Society documentary to the public. Also joining the conversation is The American Songster, Dom Flemons, who is featured in the film. Together, we discuss the film’s journey, the legacy of the Memphis Country Blues Society, and the broader cultural significance of blues preservation.

The blues is not just a genre of music; it is a lived experience, a cultural expression, and a historical record of Black struggle and triumph. From Furry Lewis’s soulful performances to the folklore woven into his lyrics, from the injustices of Dred Scott to the contemporary discussions in The Blues Society, today’s date serves as a reminder of how deeply intertwined these narratives are.

As we reflect on these histories, we must continue to honor and amplify the voices that originated this art form. The blues belongs to the people who lived it, and it is our responsibility to preserve, contextualize, and celebrate it within its rightful heritage.

Join the Conversation

What are your thoughts on the legacy of the blues and Black folklore? Have you seen The Blues Society? Let’s discuss the intersection of history, culture, and music in the comments below!

What I Fight For - Change The Game!

By: Dhane Pearley

 A protest is the gathering of a group of people fighting for a shared belief. Depending on the group of people, it can be a peaceful protest, or it can be a violent protest. Most protests are usually peaceful because it is easier for people to hear someone talking than someone yelling at them. Nevertheless, there is always a group that thinks violence will fix the problem because their peaceful idea did not succeed. When a protest occurs, it is usually to help bring light to a situation that is not getting justice or the proper respect. I would protest against something I want to change for my generation and the upcoming generations. My son or daughter should not experience the struggles that I went through at their age. That is why I stand up for what I believe in to make a change. I am a young black man in this world protesting against POLICE BRUTALITY. The black community has been suffering from this for years, and we have not received justice. It is slowly improving but not enough to stop our protest. I will always stand tall when I am protesting against police brutality because WE ARE HUMANS, NOT ANIMALS. 

An example of being treated as animals is May 25, 2020, when George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis white police officer, Derek Chauvin. Officer Chauvin murdered Floyd by kneeling on his neck for 10 minutes until he took his last breath. He killed a black man. That could have been my father or uncles getting strangled to death like that, and there is nothing I would be able to do. So, I stand with my brothers and sisters to protest against police brutality, and I will continue fighting until our voices are heard. Will we ever be equal? Not sure, but fighting for what is right is something I believe. My parents always say to be an honest man and be passionate about my ideology. I will continue to stand with my people, walk with whoever believes in what I do, and change the game.

Shut Up and Play: A Brief History

BY: COREY HARRIS

You've taken my blues and gone —

You sing 'em on Broadway

And you sing 'em in Hollywood Bowl,

And you mixed 'em up with symphonies

And you fixed 'em

So they don't sound like me.

Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.

You also took my spirituals and gone.

You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones

And all kinds of Swing Mikados

And in everything but what's about me —

But someday somebody'll

Stand up and talk about me,

And write about me —

Black and beautiful —

And sing about me,

And put on plays about me!

I reckon it'll be

Me myself!

Yes, it'll be me.

– Langston Hughes

Shut Up and Play: A Brief History

Back in 2014, when Officer Daniel Pantaleo suffocated Eric Garner in a chokehold one long and hot summer  day in Long Island, New York, scores of professional athletes decided to express their frustrations. Some kneeled while others donned shirts bearing the words, “I cant breathe” as a way to silently but visibly protest the continual confluence of Black death, racism, poverty, and endemic police brutality in the US. Many Black sports fans welcomed this expression of solidarity while many White fans did the exact opposite. The reprisals came immediately: threats to end the athletes careers and public denunciation from the (mostly white) fanbase. “Shut up and play’ seemed to be the prevailing sentiment among a certain sector of the American populace. How dare these athletes ‘get political?’ They really should be thankful. Look at (insert a non-White, right-wing athlete or entertainer here)...why can’t you be more like him? Why do you guys make everything about race? If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go back to Africa?

As pro-football player (and disgraced welfare thief) Brett Favre confided to USA Today in 2021, “I know when I turn on a game, I want to watch a game. I want to watch players play and teams win, lose, come from behind. I want to watch all the important parts of the game, not what’s going on outside of the game, and I think the general fan feels the same way . . . I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, ‘I don’t watch anymore; it’s not about the game anymore.’ And I tend to agree.” Favre was speaking honestly. For a large majority of White Americans, the weekly gatherings of teams of well-paid Black people wearing uniforms should only be about the function that they are to serve for the fans and never about real problems of class division, poverty and police abuse. Pain is compartmentalized and then put on the shelf. Not now, not like this, not like that, this is not the time/how dare you. This thinking can be traced all the way back to slavery, during which the value of the enslaved resided solely in their labor and never in their ideas about freedom or anything else (even though Black ideas were stolen en masse for centuries to create White wealth). ‘The help’ was to provide a good experience for the paying public (to whom they owe so much) and nothing else should matter. Stop bleeding while you’re tap dancing boy; you’re spoiling my fun. 

Many Black blues players have also been told to ‘shut up play’. Considering the beginnings of the modern entertainment industry in blackface minstrelsy of the 19th century, it should not be surprising that blackness is viewed as a commodity that dare not speak for itself or yearn for freedom. Indeed, the first blackface performers were White men, and even later in the century, when Black actors began ‘blacking up’ their faces for their turn onstage they knew that they were embodying a caricature, a White fantasy that could not exist in real Black life. This meant that it would have been ridiculous for them to employ the minstrel platform to speak out on the real issues of Black folk. (They had their own churches, communities, associations and families for that.) In fact, seeing real Black people onstage without shoe polish or burnt cork was considered an anathema, a horrifying insult to the genteel audience. The White psyche simply could not accept black bodies occupying the same space. They demanded a scarecrow. Thus the minstrel, as a creation of the White mainstream, continued to serve as the foundational model for Black performance in the US. Much of our vocabulary in speaking about race has not changed since the days of enslavement: people routinely speaking of their job as ‘the plantation’; your co-worker might boast about being the ‘HNIC’ at the workplace, some jest about being ‘worked like a slave’, while a supervisor is called the ‘overseer’; off-code Black folk are dubbed ‘Uncle Tom’ or ‘Sambo’ (we should read Uncle Tom’s Cabin again to realize that Uncle Tom was actually true to his people and an honorable man while Sambo was the betrayer, an agent of the slave master, but I digress). This minstrel mode is still very much with us, in every video depiction of Hennessy swigging, Philly blunt stankin’, crotch grabbing and encrusted-grill-grinning, young Black male rappers on the corner as well as every trope of the twerking, oversexed, long-nails-and-lace-front-hair sister with the tweety bird eyelashes and the loud mouth from around the way (Cardi B and Glorilla…y’all good?). The circus is alive and well. Racism, like Malcolm X said, is like a car. Every year they come out with a new model. Seen in the light of history, our present entertainment industry is only the newest iteration of minstrelsy. The only major difference is the loss of the burnt cork and shoe polish. The outrageous spectacle of Black debasement remains.

So how does one invoke blackness without the blackface? Therein lies the challenge that all non-Black practitioners of Black music in every era have had to navigate. Once the pendulum of social opprobrium shifted and open displays of blackface were seen as relics of a bygone era, all of the behaviors and practices of the former industry continued. Where once the only method of distribution in the 19th century was sheet music, the much faster means of technological repetition (phonograph, radio) and product distribution (air mail) in the twentieth century meant that the minstrel behaviors persisted and multiplied. There was never any break with the minstrel era. This made it possible for an actor like Al Jolson to rise to the heights of fame as a cantor gone bad in The Jazz Singer and be taken seriously, and decades later for Elvis Presley to imitate a Black Memphis swagger (while stealing the songs of Arthur Crudup and Big MamaThorton) that made the girls swoon. To say that the careers of neither of these early and mid twentieth century century artists (and thousands more) would have been impossible without Black music is obvious. I am saying that White artists’ embodiment of various tropes of Black behavior continue to inform and influence the direction of popular music around the world. Moreover, minstrelsy enabled a conception of blackness as merely a learned behavior that can be separated from the people who produced it and transformed into a commodity. Unsurprisingly, as in the minstrel era when the actors onstage were rarely Black and didn’t associate with Black folk, the portrayal of blackness in entertainment has continued to function as a malleable commodity that does not depict a real spectrum of Black life but rather enacts a repetitive material caricature of Black life, a phat and fantastical realm where all the women have long nails and fly-away hair with a BBL and a Gucci purse, and the men rock unlaced Tims and big beards while pushing shiny whips with oversized rims while their pants hang far below their derriere. Indeed, today’s minstrelsy is the prescribed trap house circus that now masquerades as ‘the culture’, streamed endlessly on any device to feed the addiction. The online, mobile, and voracious consumer culture sets the ever quickening pace.

The opening poem by the great Langston Hughes is as much a product of his politics as the disdain expressed for black music by those who like Black expression but don’t like Black folk so much. His reference to Broadway and Hollywood Bowl reminds us that for more than a century, blues music has been employed to spice up the blandness of mainstream American life. The Blues, that Black folk song form of obscure 19th century origins, is nowadays a mere commodity, a product on the marketplace that is bought and sold with as much regularity as water, land or clothing. And like other prized commodities, it is subject to the politics of those who produce, curate, package and sell it. Just imagine what the recorded blues legacy would sound like if every bluesman had been allowed to simply record the songs he knew (and that the folks back home loved) instead of continually being forced to record ‘a blues’ to keep the industrial money mill that was the race records industry running smoothly. The curators of the race record industry in the 1920s decided that no Mississippi bluesman should be recorded playing his version of Broadway or Tin Pan Alley tunes because the segregation of sound dictated that these Black people were isolated and marginalized country folk with little awareness of the outside world (a nod to Karl Hagstrom Miller). Such performances would directly challenge this entrenched view. 

Besides, recorded music came on to the scene as a commodity and not an honest chronicle of Black musicking. These men ran a business to make money and not preserve Black folkways, so the question of ‘who would buy it’ determined their every decision. Even in the days after it could get a Black man swiftly lynched, mixing ‘politics’ with their entertainment was bad for the bottom line. This environment where White owned media, promotion and booking dominate is still the ever-present reality today. Business don’t give a damn about your culture…or your politics. This is a powerful sentiment in a country where Black political power has always been feared, thus it is violated, oppressed and controlled. What forms has Black political power assumed under the oppressive conditions of Jim Crow segregation in the US? As Dr. Greg Carr would remind us, this is an issue of governance. Who should govern Black people in America?

Google defines politics as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.”

In his classic work, In Search of the Black Fantastic, Black political theorist Richard Iton asserts that Black cultural expression is Black politics. He also has an answer for the question as to why Black culture is so endlessly creative:

Hyperactivity on the cultural front usually occurs as a response to some sort of marginalization from the processes of decision-making or exercising control over one’s own circumstances; what might appear to be an overinvestment in the cultural realm is rarely a freely chosen strategy. American blacks are not “different” in this respect because they have chosen to be but because of the exclusionary and often violent practices that have historically denied black citizenship and public sphere participation as problematic and because of the recognition that the cultural realm is always in play and already politically significant terrain. In other words, not engaging the cultural realm, defensively or assertively, would be, to some degree, to concede defeat in an important—and relatively accessible—arena. (9)

The organizing power of Black culture is precisely why Black political messaging that runs counter to the dominant political discourse is always suppressed or banned. Simultaneously, mainstream media and the political apparatus are not afraid of employing Black cultural tropes and stereotypes via mass entertainment to mobilize the Black vote. Witness the spectacle of Atlanta rappers Trina and Saucy Santana performing in a ‘no voting, no vucking’ video for the Democratic National Committee to understand the extent to which Black mass entertainment, stereotypes of Black promiscuity, and the over-sexualization of the Black body now drive how mainstream (liberal and conservative) Whites view Black folk. This is seen as a valid appeal to Black politics. There is no other constituency that is subjected to such messaging. This is by design. Thus political outreach to Black people assumes the minstrel form: it is portrayed as the White mainstream sees it, and to the benefit of the White mainstream. Like a grinning, shucking, and jiving blackface minstrel, it does not in any way align to real Black life nor real Black politics. The good news is that Richard Iton is here to tell us that the way Black culture is set up, we can do ‘politics’ (meaning address, discuss and creatively solve our own problems) even while we are suffering or having a good time. We don’t compartmentalize our trauma nor our joy. It infuses everything we do. This is in direct opposition to the European mind which goes to Africa and plucks sacred and everyday objects out of the fabric of everyday life, categorizes them as ‘art’, hangs them on the museum wall in the high-rent district back home and charges admission for ones to behold their ‘discovery.’ Such displacement renders the artifact mute. Extracted from context and meaning, it serves the function and meaning necessitated by those who control its new environment. Shut up and play all over again. 

The real sentiment behind ‘shut up and play’ is that Black people should not govern themselves nor exercise political power. Black struggle has always been fueled by culture, by song: the catalog is full of union songs, anthems, gospel songs and protest songs. Judging by the profound impact of Black cultural politics in American life, it is extremely effective. Black entertainment, to the White mainstream, is a respite from the reality that surrounds them, an escape from the banality of their everyday existence. The history of suppressed Black political power in America has determined the modes of its expression. Denied for so long the ‘normal’ avenues of political agency, Black people’s everyday culture necessarily became a legitimate avenue of political expression. The challenge is now who will control and define this culture and to whose benefit. Black blues players who oppose the dominant white construction of blackness (otherwise known as ‘authenticity’) must take heed…and keep infusing their everyday git-down with the political. Because if Black folk don’t speak up, then no one else will.

Charlotte Forten Grimké

Written By: Lamont Jack Pearley

“We confess that it was highly satisfactory to us to see how the tables are turned, now that “the whirligig of time has brought about its revenge” - Life on Sea Island, a quote from Charlotte as she and her companion toured the Beaufort, awaiting the connecting boat to St. Helena Island.

There is a deep and complex battle that hovers over Charlotte. In competition, being the first usually comes with celebration; however, in a racist society, being the first usually comes with sorrow, anger, rage, or plain sickness. I’m not necessarily saying Charlotte felt any of those emotions, though it’ll be hard to believe she didn’t. Nor am I telling her terrible illness later in life was caused by her being the first, though I think it contributed. What I am saying is, in a highly racist, aggressive, and violent nation, being the first Black Woman to…and that ‘to’ constitute schooling with all whites, while coming from free black wealthy families, one could wonder how she felt trying. Yet, I failed to connect with the newly freed slaves of Sea Island and other places in the south; I could only imagine Charlotte wondering how I could have so much in common yet be so different. 

On the other hand, I also wonder how it was to be educated around a majority white race and then connect with white educators more than those in your image during this perilous time. These things had to have weighed on Grimke. We often read or learn about prominent black scholars who traveled south to partake in the struggle. We read how they took affirming stances against slavery, oppression, Jim Crow, and the like, how they encouraged reading and education. We’ve also often heard about many of the conflicts and disagreements of our black leaders and scholars—different personalities, different principles, etc. But we never, better yet, I’ve come across too much literature that discusses the fact that some of our Black scholars didn’t have what could be considered the Black American Experience. That some of our history makers, W.E.B. DuBois, for example, came from a white town of freed blacks and was pretty much grandfathered into society by elite whites, prompting contempt and extreme disagreements by those in the fight for liberation that lived through the treachery, racism, and violence towards black society. 

I’m not saying free and intellectual blacks avoided racism, and I know Charlotte wasn’t void of racist treatments. What I am suggesting is, as the great Martin Luther King Jr. once uttered, could Charlotte have been a tad overzealous to give formal education to blacks with no prior education? And how did that affect her? Her family were influential abolitionists, who made a name saving and freeing blacks through and with the underground railroad. Furthermore, Charlotte taught young newly released blacks about Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution to sparking a revolutionary spirit against the oppressor. 

Charlotte Forten Grimke was a Northern African American school teacher to go south and taught former slaves. She was also the first to document the Black Spirituals of the Gullah people. Upon reaching Beaufort Island, Charlotte and her companion gracefully whisk into a world of newly freed negroes living under what seemed to be northern rules and structures.  It was evident that the excitement of the change and dynamics in this part of the Americas wasn’t shared by many white soldiers who were stationed or resided there. As Charlotte toured the area, she was hit with truths and changes that in her lifetime never thought possible. Watching all shades of Black children playing nearby what was at one time a slave auction, as soldiers who still had a deep hatred for Negroes, continued to voice their feelings through epithets that weren’t loving, especially when they found out that Charlotte and her companion arrived to educate the newly freed African Americans. 

The threat of disease and the fact that the rebels were known to attack made coffins the only prospering business at present. Amid this paradigm, Charlotte and the newly freed blacks native to the area were unscathed by this notion. Charleston still was auctioning enslaved people, the local library became a shelter for free blacks, and the thought of a progressive African American woman, born to a family of abolitionists, stands in affirmation of her mission and calling, to educate her people that are no longer enslaved. 

We must consider the courage of Charlotte and her travel mate, taking into account that hey could have been attacked and hung by rebels of the war who were against the freedoms of African Americans. The sheer willingness to omit the warnings from soldiers on the Beaufort Island awaiting the rowboat that crossed to St. Helena. Using the sounds of Blackness from the African American boatsmen, for Charlotte, her companion, and driver Harry singing John Brown loudly and proudly, there was an assertion of black freedom and progression in the air. They took their 3-mile excursion to their destination, forgetting fear and embracing the excitement of what lies ahead.

In her piece Life of Sea Island, Charlotte writes, “As we glided along, the rich tone of the negro boatmen broke up the evening stillness - sweet, strang and solemn: - 

 “Jesus makes de Blind see,

   Jesus make dthe e cripple walk, 

   Jesus make de deaf hear, 

      Walk inWalk-in, kind Jesus!

        No man can henderhinder me.”

She goes on to say, “They sang in rich, sweet tones, and with a peculiar swaying motion of the body, which made their singing more effective. They sang, “Marching Along,” with great spirit, and then one of their hymns, the air of which is beautiful and touching” -

 “My sister, you want to get religion, 

     Go down in de Lonesome Valley;

  My brudder, you want to get religion,

     Go down in de Lonesome Valley.

            Chorus

 “Go down in de Lonesome Valley, 

  Go down in de Lonesome Valley, my Lord

  Go down in de Lonesome Valley, 

        To meet Jesus dere!

 “Oh, feed on milk and honey, 

  Oh, feed on milk and honey, my Lord, 

  Oh, feed on milk and honey

         Meet my Jesus dere!

 “Oh, John, he brought a letter,

  Oh, John, he brought a note, my Lord

  Oh, Mary and Marta read them

         Meet my Jesus dere!

            Chorus

  Go down in de Lonesome Valley…(repeat)

Grimke documents, ‘They repeat their hymns several times, and while singing, keep perfect time with their hands and feet.’

What makes this part of her story filled with revolution is being the grandmother of folklorists and collectors alike in the history of South Carolina. She was stated to be one of the most violent states in America, towards themselves(whites) and especially towards African Americans. After the Civil War, South Carolina whites refused to accept Emancipation, especially in Edgefield. 

South Carolina writer  B.O.Townsend stated:

The old relations have not been forgotten. Everyone thinks, and every child is trained up in the belief, that the negro is meant for the use of white people, was brought here and should stay here for no other purpose…(pg 37 in Fox Butterfield’s book, All Gods Children)

What would give Charlotte so much courage at a time when blacks, let alone black women, had no rights? This not only starts with her grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles but her very own experience at the tender age of 16. Philadelphia being an incubator of abolition was still plagued by separatism. Charlotte, not being allowed into the tier-one schools by way of her father, made an excursion to Salem, Mass., to attend the Normal School, a high-end private school. She was the only black person in the 200-student body. She began her teaching career as the first African-American ever hired in the Salem schools. Grimke also furthered her family’s work by joining and aggressively participating in the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society, becoming affiliated with many leading black and white abolitionists. Her family history and the trial of Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave captured and returned to Virginia under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, would mold and prepare Charlotte for her many acts of activism, abolition, and this trip to Sea Island. 

The transition of becoming known as a folklorist or historian wasn’t that difficult, considering Charlotte was an avid writer and reader. She kept a daily journal, read the Anti-Slavery papers routinely, and documented her experiences as an educator and abolitionist. 

Excerpt from “Journal of Charlottes Forten, Free Woman of Color, selections from 1854-1859” - 

June 2, 1854. Our worst fears are realized; the decision was against poor Burns, and he has been sent back to bondage worse, a thousand times worse than death. Even a rescue attempt was utterly impossible; soldiers surrounded the prisoner with bayonets fixed, a cannon loaded, ready to be fired at the slighted sign.16 Today Massachusetts has again been disgraced; again she has shewed her submission to the Slave Power; and Oh! with what deep sorrow do we think of what will doubtless be the fate of that poor man when he is again consigned to the horrors of Slavery. With what scorn must that government be regarded, New York Public Library “Night attack on the courthouse.

Between Monday and Wednesday, when evidence was being heard in the Anthony Burns case, Boston was in a state of great excitement. Troops patrolled the streets and the public square before the Court House was roped off to keep back the mobs. As was usual in such cases, the testimony was conflicting; the government maintained that Burns had escaped on March 24, but several witnesses testified that he had been working in Boston between March 4 and March 10. On June 2, the court ruled that he was an escaped enslaved person and must be returned to his master. He was marched down State Street to a waiting Virginia-bound vessel through groaning, hissing lines of people. Federal troops, state militiamen, and the entire police force were on hand to prevent any rescue attempts. “

[Footnote continues.] National Humanities Center ♦ Journal of Charlotte Forten, Selections: 1854-1859. 4 

While on St. Helena’s Island, Charlotte seemed enamored by the singing of the local people. To her, their spirits rose through their singing. Grimke also took notice of their dress, behavior, and activities during Sunday service. She says, “ the attendees of the Church stilled lived with nature, only understanding time-based on the movement, rising and setting of the Sun and Moon.” The love and reverence she felt for her fellow black folk, her distance kinfolk, if you will, still brought her no closer to actually feeling close to or part of their folk group and folk communal. Today, Forten is best remembered for her diaries. From 1854-64 and 1885-92, she recorded the life of an intelligent, cultured, romantic woman who read and wrote poetry, attended lectures, worked, and took part in the most significant social movement of her time. She was determined to embody the intellectual potential of all black people. She set a course of philosophical exploration, social sophistication, cultural achievement, and spiritual improvement. She was, above all, dedicated to social justice. 

Charlotte Forten Grimke's dairies are significant documents that keep her name relevant in academic spaces.  During the years1854-64 and 1885-92, Grimke wrote about her feelings and experiences. She was invested in and took leading efforts to destroy racism, slavery, and the lack of education of her fellow black people.  She is the mother of collectors, folklorists, ethnographers, and ethnomusicologists. Even though she participated as an outsider of a particular folk group in some cases, she documented and preserved the story, traditions, and cultural expressions allowing us to take the baton. Class, resources, and affiliations play a significant role in writing black experiences and interactions. That didn't stop Charlotte; she made sure to make contributions that would be celebrated for generations to come. 

Listen to the Series on Grimke and her family @ The African American Folklorist Website for more on Charlotte and her family. 

Hair, Numbers, And History

By: DAVID S. ROTENSTEIN

Dolores Slater-numbers book.tif: Dolores Slater holds her mother’s last numbers book. The final entries were made in the summer of 1960s, shortly before Louise Harris died. Photo by David S. Rotenstein.

Michelle Slater loves history. That’s a good thing because her family’s story is woven into Pittsburgh’s Hill District’s history about as tightly as possible. Slater’s grandmother wrote numbers for some of Steel City’s best-known numbers bankers. Her father cut hair and eventually ran the Crystal Barbershop, one of the Hill’s most iconic third places and Black-owned businesses. Slater, 58, learned the hair trade by watching her father and she eventually became a licensed barber herself. That’s right, not a hairstylist, a barber. One wall inside her shop is dedicated to telling her family and community’s stories. There’s a lot to unpack inside Slater’s shop and her stories.

I met Slater while researching the social history of numbers gambling in Pittsburgh. Her father, Harold Slater (1924-2014), had cut the hair of a gregarious and well-loved numbers banker and nightclub owner, George “Crip” Barron (1924-2001). On Saturdays, Barron spent time with Angela James, whom he treated like a daughter. Barron would drop Angela off at the Hurricane bar next door to the Crystal Barbershop, where she would drink Shirley Temples while he tended to business and his hair. After I interviewed Angela James for the first time in January 2021, she connected me to Michelle Slater.

Before I get into Slater’s story, it’s important to underscore the significance of the two intersecting traditions that dominate it: numbers gambling and barbering. Invented in Harlem in the first decades of the twentieth century, numbers gambling was a street lottery that formed the economic engine sustaining many twentieth-century urban, rural, and suburban Black communities. The game enabled multitudes of small bettors to wager pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters on three-digit numbers derived from financial market returns published in daily newspapers. 

Deeply embedded in blues songs, African American literature, and oral tradition, numbers gambling employed thousands of African Americans and European immigrants in communities with high barriers to good jobs rooted in anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Catholicism. Runners, writers, and counting house employees worked for bankers who often became folk heroes: badmen who broke the rules and laws while also capitalizing Black businesses and providing economic support for people who lacked access to banking, insurance, and philanthropy.

Hair businesses — beauty salons and barbershops — were another pillar in Black social and economic networks. Inside these Black spaces, proprietors, patrons, and loafers told stories, swapped jokes, and did business — not all of it involved cutting hair and shaving. Writer Melissa Harris-Perry once described Black barbershops and beauty parlors as safe spaces where members of the Black community could speak and act freely, places “where nothing is out of bounds for conversation and where the ‘serious work of figuring it out’ goes on.”

Most hair businesses were — and are — gender-specialized: barbers cut men’s hair, and stylists cut women’s hair. The boundaries were rigid, but not impermeable. Like newsstands, bars, and other businesses with lots of foot traffic where folks tended to linger, barbershops and salons frequently fronted for profitable numbers racketeers. Folks could buy a number while also paying for tonsorial services.

William “Woogie” Harris opened his Crystal Barbershop in the 1920s. Harris and his friend and partner William “Gus” Greenlee became two of Pittsburgh’s most beloved and wealthy Black businessmen. Bootlegging and numbers gambling provided the capital for their successful enterprises. Greenlee’s nightclubs, restaurants, and Negro Leagues baseball team, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Harris’s barbershop provided them legitimate fronts and ways to launder racketeering money. It was a sublime Black space.

Harold Slater’s family arrived in Pittsburgh during the Great Migration. The men in his family had worked in barbering for a couple of generations back in Luray, Virginia, before moving up north. In Pittsburgh, they worked as Pullman porters and as barbers.

Michelle Slater’s grandmother, Louise Harris (no blood relation to Woogie Harris), also arrived in Pittsburgh during the Great Migration. Her family came to the city from Florida by way of Alabama and Georgia. Louise was barely 16 when she had her daughter, Dolores, Michelle’s mother. Louise’s grandparents ended up raising Dolores.

The Slater, Harris, Barron, and James families’ Pittsburgh timelines began intersecting in the 1920s. Louise Harris was working in Hill District restaurants when she struck up a relationship with Woogie Harris’s older brother, George. The pair lived together for about 12 years and they wrote numbers for Woogie. After a violent breakup in the early 1940s, Louise met another man, also in the numbers: Charles “Snotty” Lewis. They married in 1948 and split four years later. After Louise died in 1960, Charles Lewis married Eldora James, Angela James’s mother.

Yes, it’s complicated.

Harold Slater enlisted in the army during World War II. He served as an airplane mechanic with the Tuskegee Airmen. Though he didn’t fly the planes, he kept them in the air earning himself an honored position in the Western Pennsylvania Tuskegee Airmen Memorial installed inside Pittsburgh International Airport’s Concourse A.

After the war, Harold went to work in the Crystal Barbershop. In 1951, he married Woogie and Ada Harris’s daughter, Marion. The couple lived in the Harris’s spacious Victorian home known throughout Black Pittsburgh as the “Mystery Manor”; historic preservationists later dubbed it the National Negro Opera Company house for its brief time in the 1940s as the pioneering arts company’s headquarters.

Married and divorced once before, Marion was a free spirit and the marriage to Slater ended in divorce in 1958. By then, both had begun relationships with other people. Less than a month after an Allegheny County court issued the divorce decree, Harold married Dolores; their first daughter was born soon after that. Michelle came along five years later, in 1963.

Despite his divorce from Woogie’s daughter, Harold Slater remained close to Woogie and he continued working at the Crystal Barbershop. After Woogie died in 1967, Slater became the shop’s proprietor. He ran it until the 1980s when the city’s urban renewal machine caught up to the block.

At 93, Dolores Slater lives in a home that is less than 500 feet from the Crystal Barbershop’s final location, the block where it moved in the 1950s after urban renewal displaced it. “All my life,” is how long she says she has lived in the Hill. “I was born here and in fact I only moved one time. I moved to Homewood for one month and then I moved back. I love the Hill.” 

The city used eminent domain to take her family’s home in 1980. “We lived across the street from the Crystal Barbershop,” she recalled. “So they wanted me to move out and I wouldn’t move out until — I told them till they found something on the Hill for me.” 

Dolores worked for U.S. Steel and for Pittsburgh Public Schools. After her mother died, Dolores wrapped up her mother’s numbers business. A few years later, while pregnant with Michelle, she briefly worked at a Hill District “numbers station.” Her life story weaves in and out of the narrative that made Pitsburgh’s Hill District one of the nation’s most recognizable Black neighborhoods.

All of this history converges in Michelle Slater’s one-chair Pittsburgh shop. “I’m a barber-stylist,” Slater explained in July 2021. “I love it and when people post things or see me and they always tell me, ‘Your dad would be so proud of you.’”

Slater worked in several jobs after attending the University of Pittsburgh. She still works as a casino regulatory officer when not in her shop. Barbering, however, is in her soul and it’s the work she loves, along with talking about her family’s history. When she opened her own barbershop, Slater called it The Crystal Barber to honor her father.

“I’m big historian. In my house, I have another gallery … I just believe in old pictures and family and our family is rich — I mean we’re rich with history,” she explained standing in front of family photos and artifacts from her father’s barbershop, including his shaving cup, electric clippers, and his Associated Master Barbers of America membership plaque (member number 33213). She calls the space her “ancestry wall.” It includes one photo that she calls “Generations.” Shot in the Hill District outside the family home, it shows her great-great-grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother Louise Harris, mother Dolores Slater, and older sister, Kim.

Many of Slater’s pictures aren’t ordinary family snapshots. The family’s close ties to the Harrises meant that their lives were documented by Charles “Teenie” Harris, George and Woogie’s youngest brother, who was best known as a renowned Pittsburgh Courier photographer. His photographs chronicled Black life in Pittsburgh for more than half a century.

“This is our hustle,” says Michelle Slater. “This is what we do. My mother never wanted to leave the Hill.” Her whole family’s history is bound up with the Hill District’s history: the barbershops, numbers, and displacement. Yet, because of the stigma attached to urban renewal and the poverty induced by segregation, the Hill’s history is a lot like Black History Month: a tokenized and separate narrative. “The Hill District may have a bad name and nobody wants to reach back and see what the beauty of it all was in the beginning,” Michelle explains. “And so they put it to the back burner until someone wants to come and build something and it’s more commercial and industrial, but nobody’s reaching back for the history of it.”

I asked Michelle how she learns Pittsburgh’s Black history and her family’s role in it. “I wouldn’t know where to go,” she replied. “Like the only things we have are the Teenie Harris pictures.” A 2011 book documenting Teenie Harris’s career simply mentioned her grandmother in an endnote as George Harris’s “common-law wife.” Harold Slater’s name and time in the Harris family is absent from the 2007 City of Pittsburgh historic landmark nomination for the home he shared with Marion Harris Slater and her married name was misspelled. Like Black history throughout the United States, much of the Slaters’ story has been erased and forgotten. Though there are Black historians documenting Pittsburgh’s past, their work is built on a foundation laid by decades of Black history produced by whites. Big names and big men like Woogie Harris and Gus Greenlee have become tokens of a rich Black past once defined by people like Louise Harris and Harold Slater and Dolores Slater.

people were stolen

By: Corey Harris

We know that the majority of Black people in North America today are largely the descendants of people taken from regions now associated with the modern nations of Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia (aka upper Guinea); the southern regions of Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and eastern Ivory Coast (aka lower Guinea); and the western regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola (Central Africa).  When we consider the size of the continent, these areas represent only about 15% of Afrika's total area.  Each of these regions produced empires rich in cultural traditions as well as smaller kingdoms and city states.  

There is a common misconception that slaves were taken from Afrika.  No, people were stolen, sold and then later enslaved.  They were not dull brutes or blank slates lacking culture, waiting for white people to write upon them.  These were individuals skilled in arts and trades that colonial whites knew nothing about, such as brick making, rice cultivation.  Though a great number of slaves performed back-breaking manual labor on large and small plantations, many others were highly valued for their skills, even to the extent that they were often hired out by the slave master to work for other whites in the area.  (This was the status of the great skilled and literate revolutionaries of the 19th century such as Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner; this made them a real threat to the established order. 

Perhaps this explains why slave revolts were so common, and why travel was forbidden during slavery: white security and the maintenance of the system demanded it.)  Slavery was a system with a clear process on how to break, maintain, and breed free labor.  (Though the now famous 'Willie Lynch letter' has been exposed as a hoax, the practices it describes were most definitely part and parcel of the enslavement process.)  Those who survived the middle passage were then subjected to the brutal process of enslavement which began when they were chained in Afrika to be sold off to Europeans to be regarded as nothing more than livestock.  So we are talking here about people of diverse origins and trades, with differences in status and age.  These are people who were loved members of a community, parents, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins. 

They knew their family history and their cultural identity was intact.  In short, they were civilized peoples with their own languages, faiths, traditions, and concepts of law.  They were enslaved because of the need for cheap, skilled labor.  Their rich and highly developed cultures did not die out just because of a change of venue.  But it did bear the scars, the whips and the chains as it developed into a new branch of that same old Afrikan tree from which it sprung.  It was this Afrikan culture, taken from diverse groups from a relatively small area that is the soil from which Black culture grew into what it is today. 

The Copper-Colored Race

Why aren’t Black Indians part of black history month

Written By: Lamont Jack Pearley

Black History Month, also known as African American History Month was the brainchild of Carter G. Woodson an author, journalist, and historian, in 1925. Looking to bring attention to the contributions of African Americans in a Non- Black dominated American system, Woodson launched the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), which quickly lead to the conception and bringing forth of Negro History Week in 1926. Galvanizing the energies and excitement of black teachers, activists, and organizations, as well as white progressives and philanthropists, Black History Month in the course of 50 years grew from a one-week celebration to a nationwide week celebration, all the way to a full month extravaganza encouraged by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976. Since then it’s been a call for politicians to connect with the African American Community. Used to make black students of all ages and grade levels feel included within the school system, and presented as the one month out of the year to celebrate, honor and study black America. It’s a time where the nation reflects on the one-time battered slave who by some means learned to read and swindle their way into the good grace of the elite white power structure. It’s also the month every ethnicity and nationality remembers Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, and the few other documented black hero’s that made it into the mainstream textbooks. However, there is a group of black folk, that truly would be considered Black American, or even American Black that is rarely mentioned in the celebration of Black History Month. They are called “The Copper Colored People.” According to the American Dictionary of English, also referred to as Webster’s Dictionary 1828, the “Native American,” also called “Indians” were as described - “AMER'ICAN, noun A native of America; originally applied to the aboriginals, or copper-colored races, found here by the Europeans; but now applied to the descendants of Europeans born in America.” The latter part of that definition is telling, however, we’re discussing the copper-colored people. 

So who are the copper-colored people, and why are they important? There are documentaries and literature that makes the claim “Black Indians” are the offsprings of Africans and Natives intermingling, however, there is evidence that the term “copper-colored” is equivalent to “negro,” or “black,” as well as “brown,” and that these “copper-colored,” or “black people” are the original occupants of this land, hence the definition above. For me, knowing that my family story so far begins in Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as having confirmation that my mothers' parents are of Choctaw bloodline, inspires me to raise the question of Black Indians partaking in the annual Black History Month festivities. It also raises the question of who the Blues People of the delta are. Furthermore, being a dark skin man, my mother a dark skin woman, and my grandfather likewise of dark complexion, I still have to ask, why aren’t Black Indians more present in this celebration? Or, are they? Before we can address that, I believe a more pivotal conflict would be the description of Black Indians. Again, if we take the Webster’s Dictionary of 1828 as fact, it clearly states who is and how the aboriginal of this land looked, but when you read and research documents of academics and historians, Black Indians are described as mixed, or, essentially African converts. November 30, 2010, NPR’s the show "Tell Me More” conducted a month-long series that observed National Native American Heritage Month. This particular episode struck me based on its description; “Tell Me More’ concludes its observance of National Native American Heritage Month with a look at the struggle of some African Americans for acceptance by those whom they consider kin.” Usually, I love to listen to NPR’s audio podcasts, but this time I needed to read the transcripts. I had to see in black & white what were the thoughts, beliefs and supposed facts presented by the host and guests of this show. 

The show host Michel Martin spoke with guests William Katz, author of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage, and Shonda Buchanan, an English professor, who is of North Carolina and Mississippi Choctaw Indian ancestry. The show description further explained that they looked to explore shared black and Native American heritage. William Katz’s book, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage raises the case that runaway African slaves in America's initial place of asylum, so to speak, was to flee to Native Reservations. There, the African slave, (male or female) would be welcomed and build relationships that lead to interracial marriages and acceptance by the tribes. This is how he describes the origins of the Black Indians or the connection between African Americans with Natives. The interview begins like this: 

MARTIN: So, Mr. Katz, will you start with us and just tell us how the relationship between African-Americans and Native Americans began?

Mr. KATZ: Well, it began with the earliest colonial period. Soon after Columbus arrived, Africans were brought in. And so you have a pattern of Native Americans taking in African-Americans and the two people mixing and forming a kind of united front against the forces that were bringing slavery and colonialism to the Americas. So this has a long, long history.

This conversation sets up a false narrative that Indians weren’t black, to begin with. The language used in the description of the people infers the Indian and the African having different hues. The use of political terms like African American mixing with Native Indians gives a sense that the Natives weren’t black until they began to mix with Africans and their descendants. The way it’s presented is false, however, the Natives indeed helped those in bondage. 

Some would question why would it be important to make this distinction between political names, or even the actual color of the original American. I’d counter by explaining, if you were always told Indians looked like their portrayal in movies, and just excepted that without questioning it, then you would never find a red flag in Mr. Katz's description of the “Black Indian.” Nor would you be so inclined to investigate if there and what was the relationship between “African Americans” and “Natives.” Furthermore, which is the elephant in the room, one wouldn’t venture to investigate why most people who categorize themselves as African American are in fact descendants of Black Indians. To honestly and earnestly celebrate Black History Month, we should know, or at least want to know who a great percentage of Black people are, let alone where they descend. 

Many documented facts back up my claim. One, you can ask Black Indians, two, you can look up William Byrd. William Byrd was a white man of the Virginia Colony. He and others of the Colonial Council and the Commonwealth of Virginia committed colonial encroachment, economic suffrage and violations of their treaty’s with the Natives. If you read his report from his visit to the Cheroenhaka-Nottoway Indian Tribe of Southampton County, Virginia, in 1728 called the William Byrd Papers, you’d find some interesting facts. He states, “the young men danced to the beat of a gourd drum, stretched tight with a skin - the women wore Blue and Red Match Coats with their hair braided with Blue and White beads.” He also states about the women he sees, “these dark angels will make exceptional wives for the English planters. Their dark skin would bleach out in two generations.” In an interview on WHRO Public Media program called ‘Another View” Chief Walt “Red Hawk” Brown of the Cheroenhaka-Nottoway Indian Tribe states, “First Americans was a rich brown people! They were mahogany in color.” 

Even with that being said it still may be a far stretch to say majority, if not all African Americans are descendants of Black Indians, and not African converts or the children of Africans and Natives mixing. That’s where Walter Ashby Plecker comes into play. Plecker ran Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, which was established in 1912. Plecker, a practicing eugenicist, changed the birth certificates, marriage licenses and other documents of Black Indians. He even wrote letters to census takers giving them instructions on how to categorize Black Indians. His Racial Integrity act of 1924 further destroyed the identity of the Black Indian, by changing the categories on documents to simply “White and Black.” At this point, Black Indians in this region went from “Colored” to “Black,” which we know was followed by Afro- American and then, African American. 

Again, those are just a couple of examples. This article is the first in a series of articles on the Black Indian. So as we celebrate Black History Month, I would encourage you all to open your mind, question almost everything, and ask yourself, “Who are the Blues People?” Because with this research, as well as tracing back to the “Entire Delta Region,” one should begin to revisit, re-read and question a lot of the documentation that’s been presented and archived about the Blues People. 

Justice For James

Written By: Dhane Pearley

Stuck in a different world away from the truth, and confused about why people treat you the way they do. James, a teen from a small town called Point Place in Wisconsin was living in that world, stuck in an alternate universe. At the outset of our story, James was a strong young man, given his home life, James struggled a little bit because his mom was a single parent raising two kids.  But never lacked for anything, always got anything wanted and was grateful for everything he got. She worked twelve hours out of the day and still had the strength to come home and cook, help with homework, read stories and have some time for herself. She always told her kids to be good people no matter the circumstances they had been given, and that there  is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

   James was always a people person,he loved to make people laugh and feel good. He was respectful when dealing with teachers, friends, parents, older citizens and girls. James felt like doing someone wrong was such a weak and cowardly thing. So he chose to always do right by people and be the better person. 

One morning, James was on his way to school and he felt like something was off. He was walking down the block around the corner from school and outta nowhere cop cars start rushing the down block with sirens playing loud. James was a little nervous and confused about the situation so he decided to walk the opposite direction of the cops cars. As he was turning to head the other way, three white police officers started running in his direction yelling “stop walking or I will have to use force.” James slowly turned  around and put his hands up, he was scared, senseless, confused,  and worried. 

At that moment James did not know if he was going  to make it out alive, he had seen too many of these kinds of situations on social media.  The officers told him to ”put his hand behind his head and go slowly on the ground“, they put him in handcuffs and put him in the police car. The officers said “anything you say will be used against you in the court of law.” Later that night James was released ,the officers told James and his Mom that he was arrested for a crime he did not commit. In other words James was racially profiled by the police and was arrested for no reason!

The next morning James’ mom put him in an Uber to go to school, because she did not want to risk anything happening. When he got to school everyone treated him  like he was a criminal, they looked at him as if he was some type of monster. As the day went on more people treated James differently and were secretive when he was around. He tried to just be himself, but everyone made James feel like he was bothering them, so he just told the nurse he was feeling sick and went home early. 

Two weeks past and everyone was still acting the same, James was so confused on why everyone just changed up outta nowhere. Later on, James was in science class and is paired up with the new girl named Diana. He could not put his finger on but she was different from everyone else in the school, she actually talked and interacted with him. James asked “why did you choose to be my partner ?”Diana said “ I feel what you feel, and want to be there for you, no should go through what we’ve been through alone!”

While Diana and James were in class she started to break down what was going on with everyone in school. James didn’t know what to say, he felt what Diana felt and did not know what to do about it. He was so confused on why the world is the way it is, how young black children could be accused of a crime they did not commit,or how black men could get abused by police officers for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Diana told James, “we should try to make a change in the world and bring our stories to the world”. The only thing that had James confused was why she said that, and why she was feeling the same exact emotions he felt. James thought for a second and remembered what his mom always told him…”there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.”

After class James and Diana went to lunch together to talk more, she told him about how they should tell the world about what happened to them. But James did not feel the same way, he did not want to bring more attention to the situation. He just wanted everyone to go back to treating him equally, and he wanted everything to be normal. Diana was in shock, she never met someone like James. He was selfless and just wanted everyone to be happy. Diana felt bad because people like James deserve more respect and should be commended  for what they put into the world. 

From that moment on,Diana devoted all her time to make sure that the world knows what happened to a great young man named James, and to making sure he gets the justice he deserves. 

Daryl Davis - Interviewing The KKK, Traditional Black Music, and more

Daryl Davis, a musician, author, and race relations expert was assaulted with flying bottles during the Cub Scout parade in 1968 when he was 10. This was his first experience with racism. He spent years studying and researching to answer the question he had about racial hatred. It would be a chance encounter later in life that would birth a dangerously intriguing project, documenting his search for the answers. As an entertainer, Daryl is an international recording artist, actor, and leader of The Daryl Davis Band.

He is considered to be one of the greatest Blues & Boogie Woogie and Blues and Rock’n’Roll pianists of all time, having played with The Legendary Blues Band (formerly the Muddy Waters band) and Chuck Berry. As an Actor, Daryl has received rave reviews for his stage role in William Saroyan’s The Time Of Your Life. Daryl has done film and television as well and had roles in the critically acclaimed 5-year HBO television series The Wire.

As an author, lecturer, and race relations expert, Daryl has received acclaim for his book, Klan-Destine Relationships, and his documentary Accidental Courtesy from many respected sources including CNN, NBC, Good Morning America, TLC, NPR, The Washington Post, and many others. He is also the recipient of numerous awards including the Elliott-Black Award, the MLK Award, and the Bridge Builder Award among many others. Filled with exciting encounters and sometimes amusing anecdotes, Daryl’s impassioned lectures leave an audience feeling empowered to confront their own prejudices and overcome their fears. More on Daryl Here:

https://www.daryldavis.com/

SOUNDTRACK OF AMERICA

My plans for Tuesday night, the 9th of April, was to watch the premiering 1st episode of “Reconstruction, America After The Civil War” by Dr. Louis Henry Gates Jr. on PBS. Considering my work and platform speaks of and presents the reconstruction era often, I had planned to take notes then address my audience with my thoughts. However, that didn’t happen. As I was editing my next episode of Jack Dappa Blues Podcast, which featured sound bites from the Georgia Bluesman himself Jontavious Willis, as I raise awareness of the obscure African American Traditional Musician Elijah Cox, I received a phone call from The American Songster, Dom Flemons.

Dom called to invite me to a concert series he was performing in at The Shed Hudson Yard, located in the Heart of New York City. This was no ordinary concert series, and the Shed is no average venue. The Shed is a new creation, new construction, new idea grounded in the mission to be a civically engaged institution to commission artists in all disciplines to push boundaries and take creative risks. The Shed looks to produce, develop and present new works from tenured artists and emerging. To quote Alex Poots, the Artistic Director and CEO, “You,(the audience and artists) are an essential part of what it means to create a 21st-Century center for the arts in New York City. We’ll strive to be a stimulating creative hub and a home for all audiences.” The outside and the inside of this newly erected establishment reflects Alex’s statement. More so, the concert series I attended, which is the inauguration of the establishment, had extreme artistic energy. The series is dedicated to The Shed’s Founding Chair, Dan Doctoroff, and it was a presentation that is indeed up my alley.

I was truly amazed as I arrived at The Shred to see the world premiere of the 5 part concert series titled “Soundtrack of America” conceived and Directed by Steve McQueen. Best known for his Oscar Award-winning film, “12 Years a Slave,” McQueen steps on stage to share with the audience how he came up with this concept, and the questions he asks himself that ignited the passion for bringing such a concert series to fruition. He asked, “What would a timeline of African American music sound like? How would it evolve from slave spirituals to Motown, or even Badboy and WuTang? How would you demonstrate its breadth and global impact?” These questions led to a team of brilliant minds that put together an excellent work. For instance, Maureen Mahon, Chief Academic Adviser, and Professor put together the timeline, or family tree so to speak, that mapped the beginnings and progressions of what you all know I refer to as African American Traditional Music. Of course, and the highlight for me, you can’t have or produce anything of this magnitude without The Q himself Quincy Jones, who is on the project as Chief Music Advisor. Quincy attended the night I was there, sat in the balcony during the show, and greeted as many people as he could after.

The concert I attended was the third of the five-part series, and the performers were all Great! The night opened with the American Songster Dom Flemons who gave an entertaining musical history lesson of the early stages of African American Music. With a pan flute, harmonica and banjo, Dom go into a deep and rich musical performance that floored the audience. He even sang his Black Cowboy negro Spiritual tune “Black Woman” that presented the vernaculars and vocal inflections of Field Hollers and Black Spirituals of old, graciously explaining to the very diverse audience the true meaning and origins of Field Hollers, as he gave a vocally impressive example. His multi-instrument performance enamored the audience, and he wooed them with an instrumental with just a harmonica and many harmonica tricks. Immediately following Dom’s performance was the Fantastic Nigreto. He electrified the stage with his rendition of country blues as well as his socially and politically crafted original tunes that were doused in inspirations of blues, rock, funk, and soul. His interaction and engagement with the audience impressed me and reflected the Black musicians of yesterday that not only gave you a great show but left you feeling as if they came just to talk and play for you. A big part of African American Traditional Music is entertainment. Being an entertainer is no small matter, especially for working artists. Negrito’s musicianship, band lead, and vocals were well above the bar, added to his knack to keep the audience involved was a true homage to black music history.

By this point, my feet were tired, and I wanted to find a seat. The venue was an open standing space surrounding the stage. Behind and around the standing area, was more standing space that was set up like seating rows. I found a space on one of the stairs to rest, as the next act was called on stage by the legendary Greg Phillinganes, who was the Chief Music Director and lead keyboard player for the night. He and his band lit up the stage and backed up every artist on a level most bands dream of. So, as I sat, and the techs set up the stage, Greg approaches the microphone. I wondered who and how the next artist would approach this performance. As I drifted into thoughts about how I would start this article, I missed the last part of Greg’s introduction of the upcoming artist. I was aggressively awakened out of my self induced trance when the powerful voice and stage presence of Judith Hill engulfed the entire location. Her blackness, her vocal inflections, the way she controlled the stage and sang was the blackest performance I’ve seen and felt in some time. It was the black church, it was Beacon Theater Black Church Play, it was down-home blues, it was Motown, Stax and that Philly Sound we love. It was soul, blues, rhythm & blues. It was the pain we felt when we heard our favorite classic blues singer. It was the reminiscence of a time when women vocalist dominated the Blues scene. To top it off, after her piano blues performance or Dr. Feelgood, she then pays tribute to her inspiration, Ella Fitzgerald! After which, she turns around and walks off, a very seductive version of dropping the mic.

Moreover, that was just the third act. From that point, we had soft rhythm and blues, to REAL LYRICAL HIP HOP ( something that’s been missing for a while) to a young Nigerian man from London who sang a Smokey Robinson and the Miracles song, with a voice like David Ruffin. Remember, this was the third night. They were rocking for two shows already, and there were two more to go! Of course, I may have done things a little different; however, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the performances. The entire concept of the series is critical, and I hope it begins to open up doors for all of us who have been yelling, playing, belting and preaching African American Traditional Music for a while now. Not to mention, if the Shed lives up to its purpose, great traditional black music practitioners like Piedmont Blūz Acoustic Duo, Jontavious Willis, Marquise Knox, Christone King Fish Ingram, Veronika Jackson, Tito Deler (The Original Harlem Slim), Shelton Kotton Powe and many more will have the opportunity to play there. It’s worth checking out!

An American Hero & Anti-Hero Talks Reparations – The Story of Ari Merratazon

Published by: The African American Folklorist Newspaper (Lamont Jack Pearley Editor) Story and podcast producer Courtland W. Hankins, III (aka The President of Hip Hop) 

An American Hero & Anti-Hero Talks Reparations – The Story of Ari Merratazon

Most of you are familiar with the movie Dead Presidents starring Larenz Tate. I bet you don’t know that Tate’s character was inspired by the real-life story of decorated war hero and Vietnam Blood, Haywood Kirkland – now known as Ari Merratazon. According to Mr. Merratazon, the heart of his life story actually began where the movie ended. If you remember the movie, it ended with Larenz Tate’s character being sentenced to prison after being convicted of robbing an armored truck. Mr. Merratazon did serve time in prison for armed robbery, however, it was to raise money for the Black liberation movement which he became a part of shortly after leaving the military.
Here is part two of Courtland W. Hankins, III (aka The President of Hip Hop) sit down with Mr. Merratazon to talk about his life and the reparations movement.

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Ari Merratazon,Dead Presidents,Reparations,Vietnam,War Hero

The Avery Alexander Story

Published By: Lamont Jack Pearley, video produced by WDSU News Project Community

Avery Alexander

Avery Caesar Alexander was a Louisiana civil rights leader and politician. He graduated from Union Baptist Theological Seminary and was ordained into the Baptist ministry in 1944. He was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1975 and served in that office until his death.

Alexander participated in several marches with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and in sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters. In a well-publicized and videotaped incident in the basement cafeteria at City Hall on October 31, 1963, he was arrested and dragged upstairs by the heels. In a similar incident in 1993, police used a chokehold to subdue Alexander when he participated in a protest against former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke at the Battle of Liberty Place Monument ceremony in New Orleans after Alexander repeatedly crossed police lines separating protesters and celebrants.

The City of New Orleans did not remove the Liberty Place Monument, which celebrated white supremacy, from the public space it occupied near the foot of Canal Street until nearly two decades later.

After becoming an ordained Baptist minister of the Union Baptist Theological Seminary, the Rev. Alexander joined the NAACP to become an activist within the historic Civil Rights Movement. Throughout his duration as an activist, Alexander performed many political stances upon segregation and racial discrimination in New Orleans. For instance, leading bus boycotts against racial discrimination of African-American employees. As well as his “lunch-counter sit-in,” in 1963, aimed to integrate public cafeterias. Continually, Alexander was even known to throw out wooden barriers used to racially separate whites from Blacks in streetcars.

Read more HERE

Chief Warhorse has worked with and was mentored by Reverand Alexander. According to the report of WDSU, “Alexander gave a voice to people with no voices as a legislator in Baton Rouge”

The article goes on to say, “That included Chief Elwin Warhorse Gillum, who is the chief of Tchefuncta Nation and the Chahta Tribe.”

Chief Warhorse is quoted saying, “Alexander stood alongside her in her fight to have Martin Luther King Jr. Day recognized as a holiday in St. Tammany Parish in 1983.”

Gillum continues “He made me feel that I could conquer the racism of St. Tammany as a woman because they had my back, I’m standing in front of this monument and it just gets me because he has always had my back.”

Avery Alexander,Black History