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Crispus Attucks was the first casualty in the American Revolutionary War. He was killed on Friday, March 2, 1770 in a bar fight that escalated into what is commonly referred to as the Boston Massacre. Four others were killed that night and they were remembered as martyrs for the cause of liberty. Crispus Attucks was born around 1723. His father was believed to be a slave named Prince Younger and his mother was thought to be a Natick Indian named Nancy Attucks. It is believed that Attucks escaped from slavery early in his twenties. Little else is known about his early life. After he was killed, Attucks's body was placed in Faneuil Hall where it lay in state until March 8, 1770. He has been immortalized as "the first to pour out his blood as a precious libation on the altar of a people's rights."

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A lock of hair said to be Frederick Douglass's

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thebkcircus:

MOS DEF + BKc Mustard Chinos=Classic!

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vintageblack2:

Benjamin “Pap” Singleton: Following the Civil War, former fugitive slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, who actively helped other runaways, returned to his native Tennessee intent on helping other black people. White Tennesseans’ refusal to sell the land at fair prices prompted Singleton, along with partner Columbus Johnson, to stake out land in Kansas for black people. Part of the Black Exodus or the Exoduster Movement of 1879, Singleton, known as the “Father of the Exodus,” personally facilitated the relocation of hundreds of black Tennesseans to the Midwest. At least 50,000 African Americans left the South for the Midwest from 1879 to 1881 in response to the federal government pulling the plug on Reconstruction.

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vintageblack2:

New York’s famous 369th regiment arrives home from France, 1919. Nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, the 369th Regiment was the first all-black regiment to fight in World War I. They arrived in France in 1918 and fought on the front lines for six months, longer than any other American unit during the war. Source: ca. 1919, Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, MD. 

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Burundi Family 1908

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Unidentified Black family

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Protten Family portrait

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I just picked up the book "Dark Victorians" by Vanesa D. Dickerson. I'm doing research for a virtual exhibit I'm working on and I can't wait to delve into this book. Here is a summary of it from Amazon:

"Dark Victorians illuminates the cross-cultural influences between white Britons and black Americans during the Victorian age. In carefully analyzing literature and travel narratives by Ida B. Wells, Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Carlyle, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others, Vanessa D. Dickerson reveals the profound political, racial, and rhetorical exchanges between the groups. From the nineteenth-century black nationalist David Walker, who urged emigrating African Americans to turn to England, to the twentieth-century writer Maya Angelou, who recalls how those she knew in her childhood aspired to Victorian ideas of conduct, black Americans have consistently embraced Victorian England. At a time when scholars of black studies are exploring the relations between diasporic blacks, and postcolonialists are taking imperialism to task, Dickerson considers how Britons negotiated their support of African Americans with the controlling policies they used to govern a growing empire of often dark-skinned peoples, and how philanthropic and abolitionist Victorian discourses influenced black identity, prejudice, and racism in America."

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I felt this blog was getting a little serious so here is some comic relief from Funny or Die :)

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I'm not sure what to think about this children's book. Its from 1895 and is titled "The Little Injuns". The thing is, all of the children look Black. Are these supposed to be representations of Indians or Blacks? They do appear to be caricatures of Blacks and the digital collection I pulled them from has it listed under the African American category. The story itself is very weird. the children are dying off and you can see the dead ones on top of the page wearing wings. The last page shows the last one alive marrying a White child which I'm almost positive was illegal back then for Indians and Blacks. All in all its not the sort of book I would ever show to a kid!

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"In 1839, the Spanish slave ship Amistad set sail from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba. The ship was carrying 53 Africans who, a few months earlier, had been abducted from their homeland in present-day Sierra Leone to be sold in Cuba. The captives revolted against the ship’s crew, killing the captain and others, but sparing the life of the ship’s navigator so that he could set them on a course back to Africa. Instead, the navigator directed the ship north and west. After several weeks, a U.S. Navy vessel seized the Amistad off the coast of Long Island. The Africans were transported to New Haven, Connecticut, to be tried for mutiny, murder, and piracy. These charges later were dismissed, but the Africans were kept in prison as the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. In a trial in Federal District Court, a group of Cuban planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the Amistad all claimed ownership of the Africans. After two years of legal battles, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately ordered that the captives be set free. Thirty-five of the former captives returned to their homeland; the others had died at sea or while awaiting trial. New Haven resident William H. Townsend made drawings (and in most cases recorded the names) of the Amistad captives at the time of their trial."

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There is something so great about African barbershop signs. The artists are so talented and its so sad that a lot of the artists are unidentified.

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"This engraving of Equiano is probably based on the frontispiece of his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, which was published in 1789 and immediately became a bestseller. In his autobiography, Equiano describes not only how he was kidnapped into slavery but also how, many years later, he gained his freedom. His master, a merchant named Robert King, had promised freedom if Equiano could raise the £40 he had paid for him. Working on one of King’s ships, Equiano was able to do a little trading on his own account and by July 1766 he had accumulated sufficient funds:

‘When I got to the office and acquainted the Register with my errand, he congratulated me on the occasion, and told me he would draw up my manumission for half price, which was a guinea. I thanked him for his kindness; and, having received it and paid him, I hastened to my master to get him to sign it, that I might be fully released. Accordingly he signed the manumission that day; so that, before night, I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was become my own master, and completely free. I thought this was the happiest day I had ever experienced; and my joy was still heightened by the blessings and prayers of many of the sable race, particularly the aged, to whom my heart had ever been attached with reverence.’