February is almost over and I know I'm a little behind in my 28days 26 letter celebration of 365 days of recognition. These are some of the greats- letters P-L. Remember history was written in more than Black & White. Take the time to learn about the sacrifices of the people who have made life easier for the rest of us.

SENGBE PIEH (later known as Joseph Cinqué) born in 1815 in what is now Sierra Leone.  Cinqué was a West African man of the Mende tribe who was the most prominent defendant in the Amistad case, in which it was proved that he and 52 others had been victims of the illegal Atlantic slave trade.

RANDOLPH, ASA PHILIP born April 15, 1889 in Crescent City, Florida was a socialist in the labor movement and the US civil rights movement. Randolph emerged as one of the most visible spokespersons for African-American civil rights. In 1941, he, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste proposed a March on Washington to protest racial discrimination in the armed forces. The March was cancelled after President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the Fair Employment Act. Randolph's efforts on behalf of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters were portrayed in the Robert Townsend film "10,000 Black Men Named George". All the African-American workers in the Pullman Company were addressed as "George" after George Pullman.

 

Organizations

CHINESE AMERICAN CITIZENS ALLIANCE (CACA) is a Chinese American political organization founded in 1895 in San Francisco, California to secure equal rights for Americans of Chinese ancestry. It was originally named the Native Sons of the Golden State and changed to its present name in 1904. The Chinese Times, founded in 1924, became the official newspaper of the Alliance. The Chinese American Citizens Alliance La Lodge Youth Council (YC) was formed in August 2001 and is a subsidiary of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. It was created in response to the growing number of students seeking college entry counseling. Membership currently consists of high school students, college students, and recent college graduates residing in the West and East San Gabriel Valley.

THE STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC, pronounced "snick") was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It was founded to help organize the student sit-ins, to fight segregation in restaurants and other public areas. It emerged in April of 1960 from student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ella Baker had been the Southern Christian Leadership Conference director before helping form SNCC, but this did not mean SNCC was a branch of SCLC. Instead of being closely tied to SCLC or other groups such as the NAACP as a youth division, SNCC sought to stand on its own. Two hundred black students were present at the first meeting, including Stokely Carmichael from Howard University. He would later head SNCC's militant branch after the group split in two in the late 1960s. SNCC members were referred to as "shock troops of the revolution."

The SNCC eventually aimed to make changes in individual local communities rather than on a national scale, in the case of the SCLC. It was also the most militant of all of the black civil rights organizations which led to tensions with the peaceful SCLC despite its name including "Non-Violent". The SNCC was also committed, as were the other black organizations to convincing blacks to register to vote, as each organization realized that if the blacks didn't vote the government would not be representative of them. The SNCC ran a major campaign during the early 1960s in an attempt to get blacks to register to work.

SNCC played a leading role in the Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. In the later part of the 1960s, led by fiery leaders such as Stokely Carmichael, SNCC focused on Black Power, and then fighting against the Vietnam War. In 1969, SNCC officially changed its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee to reflect the broadening of its strategies. It passed out of existence in the 1970s.

GREENSBORO FOUR-- civil rights activists. On Feb. 1, 1960 four black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond, took seats at the segregated lunch counter of F. W. Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. They were refused service and sat peacefully until the store closed. They returned the next day, along with about 25 other students, and their requests were again denied. The Greensboro Four inspired similar sit-ins across the state and by the end of February; such protests were taking place across the South. Finally in July, Woolworth's integrated all of its stores. The four have become icons of the civil rights movement.

BLACK PANTHERS, U.S. African-American militant party, founded (1966) in Oakland, Calif., by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Originally adopting violent revolution as the only means of achieving black liberation during the late 1970s the party gradually lost most of its influence, ceasing to be an important force within the black community. The New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in Dallas, Tex., in 1989, is not related to the old group. The Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African American organization founded to promote civil rights and self-defense. It was active within the United States in the late 1960s into the 1970s.

The group was founded on the principles of its Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace," as well as exemption from military service that would utilize African Americans to "fight and kill for other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America." While firmly grounded in Black Nationalism and begun as an organization that accepted African American membership exclusively, the party reconsidered itself as it grew to national prominence and became an iconic representative of the counterculture revolutions of the 1960s.

The group's political goals are often overshadowed by its confrontational and even militaristic tactics, and their suspicious regard of law enforcement agents, whom the Black Panthers perceived as a linchpin of oppression that could only be overcome by a willingness to take up armed self-defense. The Black Panther Party collapsed in the early 1970s, but party membership had actually started to decline during Huey Newton's 1968 manslaughter trial.

AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT (AIM) spearheaded in 1969 was co-founded by Anishinaabe Dennis Banks established to protect the traditional ways of Indian people and to engage in legal cases protecting treaty rights of Natives. The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American activist organization in the United States.

 AIM burst on the international scene with its seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. AIM was cofounded in Minneapolis, MN on July 28, 1968 by Dennis Banks, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, and many others in the Indian community, almost 200 in total. Russell Means was another early leader. The original mission included protecting indigenous people from police abuse, using CB radios and police scanners to get to the scenes of alleged crimes involving indigenous people before or as police arrived, for the purpose of documenting or preventing police brutality. In the decades since AIM's founding, the group has led protests advocating Indigenous American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities and coordinated employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States.

 

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL (born 1974 in Chicago, Illinois) is a popular Asian-American award-winning poet and professor, best known for her jovial and accessible reading style and lush descriptions of exotic foods and landscapes. Nezhukumatathil regularly draws upon her Filipino and Keralan background to give a unique perspective on love and loss, and of course, the land. She is the author of the poetry collection, Miracle Fruit (2003, winner of the Tupelo Press Prize).

NANYE-HI ("One Who Goes About"), known in English as Nancy Ward was born 1738 - 1822 or 1824 in the Cherokee town of Chota, a member of the Wolf Clan) was a Ghighua, or "Beloved Woman" of the Cherokee nation, which meant that she was allowed to sit in councils and to make decisions, along with the other Beloved Women, on pardons. She believed in peaceful coexistence with white people. As a Ghighua, Nanye-hi had the power to spare captives. In 1780, following a Cherokee attack on a white settlement on the Watauga River, she used that power to spare a Mrs. William (Lydia Russell) Bean, whom she took into her house and nursed back to health from injuries suffered in the battle. Mrs. Bean taught Nanye-hi how to weave, revolutionizing the Cherokee garments, which at the time were a combination of hides and cloth bought from traders. But this weaving revolution also changed the roles of women in the Cherokee society, as they took on the weaving and left men to do the planting, which had traditionally been a woman's job. Mrs. Bean also rescued two of her dairy cows from the settlement, and brought them to Nanye-hi. Nanye-hi learned to raise the cattle and to eat dairy products, which would sustain the Cherokee when hunting was bad. The combination of weaving and raising of animals turned the Cherokee from a communal agricultural society.

 

FLOYD MCKISSICK (born March 9, 1922 in Asheville, North Carolina) became the first black student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Law School. In 1966 he became leader of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, taking over from James Farmer. A supporter of Black Power, he turned CORE into a more radical movement

MALCOLM X, born Malcolm Little, also known as Detroit Red and Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (born May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska was a Muslim Minister and National Spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He was also founder of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. During his life, Malcolm went from being a drug dealer and burglar to one of the most prominent Black Nationalist leaders in the United States; he was considered by some as a martyr of Islam and a champion of equality.

LUE GIM GONG (呂金功, pinyin: Lu Jingong) (born 1859 in Canton, China) was an immigrant from China and a horticulturalist. Known as "The Citrus Wizard," he is remembered for his contribution to the orange-growing industry in Florida.

THE LITTLE ROCK NINE, as they later came to be called, were the first black teenagers to attend all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. These remarkable young African-American students challenged segregation in the Deep South and won. Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in schools, many racist school systems defied the law by intimidating and threatening black students-Central High School was a notorious example. 

The students referred to as the Little Rock Nine were:

1) Ernest Green (born September 22, 1941),to Ernest G. Green, Sr. and Lothaire S. Green. Following his brush with national fame, Green attended Michigan State University as the beneficiary of a scholarship provided by an anonymous donor. While at Michigan State, he continued to engage in activism and protests supporting the Civil Rights movement. He later learned that the anonymous donor was John A. Hannah, the president of Michigan State, and ironically, an occasional target of protests by Civil Rights activists including Green. Green graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1962 and a Master of Arts in 1964. In 1965, he received an apprenticeship in building trades from the Adolph Institute, a program designed to help minority women in the South with career development issues. From 1968 to 1976, he served as Director of the A. Philip Randolph Education Fund. From 1977 to 1981, he served as an Assistant Secretary of Labor during Jimmy Carter's administration. Since 1981, he has been employed as a private consultant. From 1981 to 1985 he was a partner with Green and Herman; from 1985 to 1986 he owned E. Green and Associates from, since 1985 has been with Lehman Brothers.

2) Elizabeth Eckford- born 1942. In 1958 Elizabeth Eckford moved to St. Louis where she achieved the necessary qualifications to study for a B.A. in history. After graduating she became the first African American in St. Louis to work in a bank in a non-janitorial position. Eckford returned to Little Rock in the 1960s and worked in the public schools as a substitute teacher. In 1996, seven of the Little Rock Nine, including Elizabeth Eckford, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. They came face to face with a few of the white students who tormented them as well as one student who befriended them. On the morning of January 1, 2003, Elizabeth Eckford's son Erin Eckford was shot and killed by police in Little Rock.

3) Jefferson Thomas- born in 1942 was one of the Little Rock Nine. He graduated from Central High School in 1960. He is now an accountant with the U.S. Department of Defense.

4) Terrence Roberts- born 1941 in Little Rock, Arkansas gained national prominence as one of the Little Rock Nine. After one year at Little Rock Central High School, he moved to Los Angeles with his family and completed high school. He earned a doctoral degree and now teaches at University of California and Antioch University. He is also a clinical psychologist.

5) Carlotta Walls Lanier was the youngest member of the "Little Rock Nine" the nine African American students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. She returned her senior year in 1959. She now lives in Englewood, Colorado, and is involved in real estate.

6) Minnijean Brown-Trickey. On September 25, 1957, under the gaze of 1,200 armed soldiers and a worldwide audience, Minnijean Brown Trickey faced down an angry mob and helped to desegregate Central High. She was later expelled from Little Rock Central High School in 1958 for several reasons, among them an incident in which she allegedly dumped a bowl of chili on a white student in the cafeteria who had been harassing her. This seminal event in American history was just the beginning of Minnijean's long career as a crusader for civil rights. She has spent her life fighting for the rights of minority groups and the dispossessed. For her work, she has received the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the Wolf Award, the Spingarn Medal, and many other citations and awards. Minnijean Brown Trickey's life has been a powerful example of what one person can do to make the world a better place. Under the Clinton administration, she served for a time as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior responsible for diversity.

7) Gloria Ray Karlmark born Gloria Ray in 1942 was 15 when she attempted to enter Little Rock Central High School. During her life, Karlmark served as an executive officer for a Dutch company and publisher of a European computer magazine. She now resides in the Netherlands.

8) Thelma Mothershed-Wair was the youngest to begin going to Central High. She has a heart problem, which in turn made it harder for her to adjust. Wair graduated from Soutnern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill with a bachelor's degree in home economics and earned a master's in Guidance & Counseling and an Administrative Certificate in Education from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville in 1970 and 1985, respectively. Wair served as an educator in the East St. Louis School System for 28 years before retiring in 1994 from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.

9) Melba Pattillo Beals is a journalist.  Born December 7, 1941 was not yet 14 years old when in May, 1955, she volunteered to go to Central High, an all-white school. Two years later, she was enrolled as a student at Central High. At the age of fifteen, Melba Pattillo saw her life change drastically.

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A lot of things are said about the vindictive, vicious usage of words. Most are just excuses to justify crudeness, bigotry, ignorance and/or hate.Words can kill the spirit and sometimes a race.


'Like a knife, words should be handled carefully. They can cut deeply, the wound may never heal, and the scar can remain for an eternity.' ~Ey Wade

 Label My "Race" Human

The label of race in America was used as a way for the proponents of slavery to continue using humans as free labor, to keep the poor poor and make the rich richer while integrating the idea in the mind of the Caucasian that their 'race' was superior to that of the Indians and the African. Only society makes a difference between people. There is nothing in the law of nature that makes one color of person superior to another despite the fact that cultural differences, language barrier, and the color of skin all fused together to form a case set against another group of people.

The different physical traits of African Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences. The concept of race was developed and established by a study and thesis paper that was written by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. It is amazing how the mere words of another person can effect and change the course of history, and the wealth, health and well being of another. Mere words, whether based on truth, personal beliefs or delusion can make or break a world, a nation, a life, mere words.

 Blumenbach born May 11, 1752 was a German physiologist and anthropologist.   His thesis paper written about the difference in people and titled On the Natural Varieties of Mankind was considered one of the most influential papers of his time and basically established the way different races are seen in the world today. 

Blumenbach's theory was based on his study of 60 human skulls, with these skulls Blumenbach divided humans into five races, Caucasian (white), Mongolian (yellow), Malayan (brown), Ethiopian (black), and American (red). Later in life Blumenbach was in Switzerland when he came across a beautiful Negro woman who caused him to do further anatomical research and come up with the belief that Africans were not inferior to the rest of mankind. Unfortunately these later ideas were far less influential than his earlier assertions with regard to the perceived relative qualities of the different so-called races.

He believed that like skin color, cranial profile, etc., went hand in hand with declarations of group character and aptitude. The "fairness" and relatively high brows of Caucasians were held to be apt physical expressions of a loftier mentality and a more generous spirit. The epicanthic folds around the eyes of Mongolians and their slightly sallow outer epidermal layer bespoke their supposedly crafty, literal-minded nature. The dark skin and relatively sloping craniums of Ethiopians were taken as proof of a closer genetic relations to the apes. Despite the fact the skin of chimpanzees and gorillas beneath the hair is whiter than the average Caucasian skin and orangutans and some monkey species have foreheads fully as vertical as the typical Englishman or German.

Blumenbach’s analysis sealed the fate of every race other than Caucasian as inferior. Looking over the list of the awesome people that have made America the fantastic country it is today, it is has been proven time and time again that the 'inferior' label placed on many races is false. Basically what it all boils down to is the fact one set of people decided they were better than another, used the unknown about the Indians and Africans' culture to foster the belief further and spurred the lies and discrimination to  justify the psychological, and physical torture aimed at another group of people.
Mere words, easy to spit out, hard to erase. 
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I saw a tweet yesterday that kind of threw me into confusion. To paraphrase it said "I'm not tweeting anything about Black History Month....because we already know". I'm not sure what we as 'humans' already know. Many believe the struggle is over, history is history and should be left in the past. I'm over 50 and every day I learn something new when it comes to race and ethnicity. Without the struggles, deaths, atrocities, and successes of the African-American race many other minorities would be left in limbo still staring angrily at the White Only sign. Our history is American history and not a February story or a month long look back.

Our History

What we must remember and teach our children (the future) is that we did not succeed alone. It took many 'colored' hands to pull us up and we are thankful and not forgetful because we don't already know. If the past is forgotten, white-washed and politically corrected not to offend the lazy and ignorant, we stand a huge chance of repeating the past.
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“There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them are without signification.” 1 Corinthians 14:10

Oh, but to be free. Free in speeches and movement. To have the right to peace of mind, love, education, employment, extended to every neighbor regardless of age, race or sex. Through the steps of these individuals and organizations we are now able to stand freely. How sad it is that lives were lost for the flag and we now fight for the right to step on, spit on, tear up and burn that same flag, our symbol of freedom and unity.

The right for racial and social equalization continues and will continue as long as man breathes. We are a selfish entity believing we are better than another because of our race, religion or sexual orientation. Our unification should grow because of our differences and if we are honest with ourselves we would see our differences are only skin deep. In religion, anyone can choose which path to follow. In education, we can all go as far as we choose. In sexual orientation, again it’s a choice. In jobs or professionalism, whether or not to be a parent, or who to marry all are choices. So tension in the world boils down to the color of a person’s skin. Of all the races I believe the dark skinned are the least tolerated, especially the American Blacks. How many times have we been the scapegoat as kidnapper, murder, or thief without reason? How many times have we been judged as sell-outs or ignorant because of skin color?

In the history book Beads on a String-America’s Racially Intertwined Biographical History chapter three is titled Voices of Change it begins with the above  mentioned quote and has a section dedicated to activism and the people who stepped out to confront the injustices directed at people of specific ethnicities.  The author begins the chapter with a small bit of history pertaining to members of her family. These members (father and cousin) fought and succeeded in the desegregation of what is now Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. How many of us cannot find a single member of their family who has participated in the formation of history? It doesn’t matter the color of your skin or your belief system we have all voiced and accomplished a change.

Being part of a cause means more than marching and shouting for personal wishes to be met. It is a chance to make a change in behavior and thought patterns in areas from equal rights in housing, education, socialization, and sexual orientation. We need to practices tolerance. Tolerance is such a huge word to ponder. In order to tolerate someone or something we have to step out of our comfort zone. The hardest thing in man’s mind is to be tolerant of another or to keep an open mind. We judge without thought because something or someone is different. As long as we (Black) people have been in America you would assume we were a part of America. Though we strive to be like our White counterparts, accepted unconditionally we are still fighting. We fight for what to be called Colored, Black, Negro, African-American. When it comes to filling forms I write in ‘why’.  I’m not a label. I say, learn my name and call me by it or call me by the color of clothes I wear, or the location I’m standing until you find out my name.

I sometimes wonder if we fight a losing battle because the battle is not against ‘us’ per say, but against a sense of shame. Shame for an action is hard to wipe away. You can apologize for wrongs which have been done but as long as the object of shame is seen, the shame is still there. We, if only seen as a ‘casing’ or a vessel cannot change, as a thinking individual we can cause enormous changes.We just have to be tolerant of the differences and learn from history. Remember history was written in more than Black and White.

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The enhanced version can only be purchased through  Wade-In Publishing

A Circle of Reasoning--Chapter II Conversations

Pressing the buttons that would activate the intercom system on the telephone and the programmed number that would dial her sister, Catrine pulled the blankets up to her neck and pressed her back into the pillows. Swiping at her nose and closing her eyes against the pain in her head, she waited for the answer.

"Yes?" asked the cheerful voice on the other end of the phone line.

"Hey," Catrine croaked. "Whatcha doin'?" She coughed to clear the phlegm from her throat. "I thought that you would have been here by now. You could have called."

"Me, call!" Phae bellowed angrily. "I have been waiting for you to call and apologize."

Brushing her nose with a fresh Kleenex and clearing her throat again, Catrine pushed herself into a semi-sitting position and adjusted the straps to her gown.

"What do you mean 'apologize'? What do I have to apologize for? Brhin didn't tell that silly little thing I told him about Roadkill this morning did he? I was only kidding it was a joke."

"Brhin didn't tell me anything. I want you to apologize for having me drive twenty minutes across town to get your kid from that stupid, death trap of a...."

"I hate it when you call The P. S. Center by that name." Catrine broke into the tirade. "Brhin loves it there. The center is very pretty and well equipped."

"That's all it is. You know how I feel about it, and you know how Frank feels. It is not a good place. You can't just go by the name, The Perfect Solution, ha!" Phae's words sped out of her mouth in a tirade of irritation. Once she started on listing the faults of the center she was hard to stop. "None of the teachers have a clue as to why they are there. The place is run in total chaos. You of all people, the owner of your own security firm should be worried about the way that center handles its business. They are so darn careless.What I want to know is how could you have me drive all the way across town to the center and then have Brhin not be there? I had to rush all the way back to this end of town so that I could get my girls from school. I was barely on time for the Girl Scout meeting and now dinner will be late. You know…"

"What!" Catrine screeched and sat ramrod straight in the bed. The roughness in her throat caused her voice to rasp. "What are you saying? What do you mean he wasn't there? Where is Brhin, then?"

"Isn't he there with you?"

"No! Oh, my God! What are you saying?" Fear knotted Catrine's stomach and made her nauseas. "I wouldn't have asked you to get him if he was not going to be there. Are you playing a joke on me? I am not well Phae. My head is killing me and I don't find this in the least bit funny. Put Brhin on the phone."
"Oh, my God, Are you serious, Cat?" The anxiety in Phalene's voice was clearly heard through the phone line. "I thought that you had gotten someone else to get Brhin. He's not here."

Catrine looked at the small double heart picture frame that held a picture of Brhin in one heart and a picture of herself and Brhin in the other and her own heart skipped a beat. Dragging nerveless fingers through her already mused hair, Catrine swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up slowly. Her head felt as if it was about to burst and the pain behind her eyes made her want to lie back down.
"Who the hell else would I get?"