Category: Uncategorized

By Kendra Soler freedom in destruction. Favela community in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty It's 2015, approximately a year until the Rio Olympic Games commence. There's nothing but excitement in the air. Only a block away from the new stadium, in the center of one of the world's most-watched events. Fresh new faces line the streets, appearing hopeful for what Brazil may provide. As you watch these new bodies walk up and down the area you've always known, there is a knock at the door. Curious as to what could be at your front step, you spring up to answer, only to find your parents cautiously peeking out. You back away to hear their faint conversation with whoever is behind the door. And eventually, the sound of your…

By Peter Everett The Massacre River today. The Fateful Day Rushing water separates the Dominican Republic from Haiti, water that ran red for seven days in October 1937. It is known as the Massacre River. The water holds memories - it remembers the screams, the bullets, the bayonets - but most of all, it remembers the rise and fall of machetes. It tastes the blood, Haitian blood. Rafael Trujillo, the dictator ruling the Dominican Republic, ordered his soldiers to use machetes (a traditional farming tool) to make the killings appear to be justified, simply Dominican farmers on the border defending themselves from a Haitian incursion. However, the brutality of the massacre belied such a story. At least 12,000 Haitians were killed, and in horrific fashion: babies' heads were dashed against…

By Nevin Coyne The Untold Story of Asian Labor in Cuba starting in 1847 and lasting until 1874, began a mass migration of Chinese laborers as both forced and willing participants were taken by ship to ports around Cuba and the Caribbean to replace the dwindling African slave labor. Of the 125,000 Chinese trafficked to Cuba, there were 2,841 who left behind testimonies that described their descent into a hellish system of bondage. One group came together to write a lengthy testimony of their experience, which opened with: “We are sinking in a strange place and living in a hell on earth” (Yun, 36). Many people forget or overlook that Chinese indentured laborers were essentially a replacement for African slave labor and were treated nearly identically. In Chinse in Cuba,…

Spencer McClure “I, Juan Garrido, black resident of this city, appear before Your Mercy and state that I am in need of making a probanza to the perpetuity of the king, a report on how I served Your Majesty in the conquest and pacification of this New Spain… I was present at all the invasions and conquests and pacifications which were carried out, always with the said Marques, all of which I did at my own expense without being given salary or allotment of natives or anything else… in all these ways for thirty years have I served and continue to serve Your Majesty – for these reasons stated above do I petition Your Mercy. And also because I was the first to have the inspiration to sow maize here…

Matthew Reich "My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet my end. If I stay here and fight, I shall not return alive but my name will live forever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will be long ere death shall take me. To the rest of you, then, I say, 'Go home,"- Achilles, in The Iliad by Homer, Translated by Samuel Butler Statue of Achilles in Hyde Park, London, from researchgate.net Who is Antonio Maceo? Antonio Maceo was a general in the Cuban revolutionary army and fought against the unjust oppression of his home, Cuba, by the Spanish. He became a powerful leader, fighting for autonomy, not for control or conquest, maintaining a moral and ethical stance.…

Nyanna Williams | May 5, 2021 Beatriz Nascimento c.1980 "When I returned again to my studies, I found myself on the familiar soil of an obsolete territory. Obsolete not because this territory has ceased to exist, or has been surpassed—in truth it is continuously in flux—but because it has been reduced to a status of minority, with all that implies: the slight, the inferior, the preliminary, the impotent and the infantile. This territory is both the path already taken, and the one that lies ahead."1— Beatriz Nascimento, “For a (New) Existential and Physical Territory”, 1988 The way that we perceive history is often influenced by who has the power to tell its stories. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade, centuries of racial oppression, systems of white supremacy, and patriarchy have historically silenced…

By Gretchen Blackwell Black Members of the 1868 Louisiana Constitutional Convention.1 In 1861, Eduoard Tinchant left his family home in Antwerp to begin a new life in the Americas. Tinchant, who was of Afro-Haitian descent, had been born and raised in Pau, France, where he was exposed to the volatile French politics of post-Revolution and Napoleonic era. In 1857, his family moved to Antwerp to begin a transatlantic cigar business in partnership with his brothers living in New Orleans. Then, at 21 years old, Tinchant decided to join his brothers, ending up in New Orleans in 1862 amid the Civil War. Tinchant, charged with the revolutionary energy of the opportunity to shape a new way of governance in Louisiana, and the United States as a whole, took up both arms…

By Fielding Lewis Afro-Argentines enjoying mate From Colonization To Maradona At the 2018 World Economic Forum Mauricio Marci, who was president of Argentina at the time, declared that Buenos Aires was “the Paris of South America.” It was not the first time that a state official used language to deny African influence in Argentina. Oddly enough, in a 1993 speech at historically black Howard University, former president Carlos Menem use similar erasures to encourage economic investment in the country. Menem said: "We don't have blacks… that's a Brazillian problem." (Goñi, 1) Whether they were conscious of it or not, Marci and Menem's remarks added to a false narrative about their country's history. This false national narrative can be contradicted at every stage of the nation's development from independence to when…

Matthew Oscarson What time to be alive. When you think of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1900s to 1930s, the image that comes to mind is a resurgence in African American culture, art, music, and literature. These realms have influenced the history of the neighborhood, the city of New York, and the United States. The transformations that occurred for thirty years radically altered notions of race, art, and culture across the country. I delve into this fascinating era to discuss the extraordinary impact of jazz, its influential musicians, and the songs that helped the people of Harlem cope with everyday life. However, that story leads us to Harlem's vibrant nightlife. Where did Black people listen to music? How they partied, danced, and sang? What was the meaning of spending the…

By Raymond James It is a blessing for a man to have a hand in determining his own fate. --Edward Teach aka Blackbeard 2F5HCMFDownload Rendering of the Queen Anne's Revenge aka the Le Concorde Stage 1 | The Initial Encounter On a wooden ship sailing through the tropical Caribbean, the water strikes against the hull. You are not a passenger on this vessel; you are cargo to be sold and exploited in the reaping of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and many other foodstuffs. You are a slave who was forcefully removed from your home to a land you had no idea of its existence. This is a journey to place yourself in that role as a slave. It is a truism that you cannot understand someone until you have walked in…