The Official Black History Thread!!!! (GREAT READ)

SamoneLenior wrote: PurpleHaze wrote: There was no slavery in the NORTH. The idea that the Northern states were against slavery is a complete falsehood. The newspapers are filled with ads buying and selling African people. The only reason that slavery was more widespread in the South was not because Northern Whites loved Black people, but because the warmer climate and flatter terrain in the South allowed for more varieties of produce to be grown in a much larger area. Simply put: the farther South one goes, the higher the concentration of Black slaves. The early Massachusetts legislature was the first to officially welcome the African slave trade; in fact, many “proper Bostonians” built their fortunes upon that despicable enterprise. Massachusetts became America’s leading slave-ship builder and sent one expedition after another into Africa to rape, pillage, and plunder her Black humanity. Gangs of chained Africans were landed on the docks of Boston and Salem by white Massachusetts merchants and auctioned alongside hogs, lumber, and casks of cheese, destined for a life of hopeless bondage. Slaveholders in the North were exceedingly brutal and in New York “inappropriate and disruptive kindness” was actually against the law. Any master “forgiving, making up, or compromising” with slaves was severely fined in New York. Wall Street (which has now enslaved ALL of America) was notorious in the 1600s for its African and Indian slave auctions. Source: The Reclamation Project, The Hidden History of Massachusetts (2003); The Hidden History of New York (1998); NOI, Jews Selling Blacks, pp. 46-48 (RI & CT), 58 & 59 (RI), 109-111 (NY), 36-37, 57, 106 & 107 (PA). my white 9/10th history teacher told us this I did like her for that lol

Largest Mass Execution in US History: 150 Years Ago Today

December 26, 1862: thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in US history–on orders of President Abraham Lincoln. Their crime: killing 490 white settlers, including women and children, in the Santee Sioux uprising the previous August.

The execution took place on a giant square scaffold in the center of town, in front of an audience of hundreds of white people. The thirty-eight Dakota men “wailed and danced atop the gallows,” according to Robert K. Elder of The New York Times, “waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them.” A witness reported that, “as the last moment rapidly approached, they each called out their name and shouted in their native language: ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ ”

Lincoln’s treatment of defeated Indian rebels against the United States stood in sharp contrast to his treatment of Confederate rebels. He never ordered the executions of any Confederate officials or generals after the Civil War, even though they killed more than 400,000 Union soldiers. The only Confederate executed was the commander of Andersonville Prison—and for what we would call war crimes, not rebellion.

Minnesota was a new frontier state in 1862, where white settlers were pushing out the Dakota Indians—also called the Souix. A series of broken peace treaties culminated in the failure of the United States that summer to deliver promised food and supplies to the Indians, partial payment for their giving up their lands to whites. One local trader, Andrew Myrick, said of the Indians’ plight, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass.”

The Dakota leader Little Crow then led his “enraged and starving” tribe in a series of attacks on frontier settlements. The “US-Dakota War” didn’t last long: After six weeks, Henry Hastings Sibley, first governor of Minnesota and a leader of the state militia, captured 2,000 Dakota, and a military court sentenced 303 to death.

Lincoln, however, was “never an Indian hater,” Eric Foner writes in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. He did not agree with General John Pope, sent to put down a Sioux uprising in southern Minnesota, who said “It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so.” Lincoln “carefully reviewed the trial records,” Foner reports, and found a lack of evidence at most of the tribunals. He commuted the sentences of 265 of the Indians—a politically unpopular move. But, he said, “I could not afford to hang men for votes.”

The 265 Dakota Indians whose lives Lincoln spared were either fully pardoned or died in prison. Lincoln and Congress subsequently removed the Sioux and Winnebago—who had nothing to do with the uprising—from all of their lands in Minnesota.

Mankato today is a city of 37,000 south of Minneapolis, notable for its state university campus, which has 15,000 students. In Mankato, which has heretofore neglected its bloody past, a new historical marker is being erected at the site of the scaffold, at a place now called Reconciliation Park. The marker, a fiberglass scroll, displays the names of the thirty-eight Dakota who were executed.

The Minnesota History Center in St. Paul is currently featuring an exhibit titled “Minnesota Tragedy: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.” “You can’t turn your head from what is not pretty in history,” said Stephen Elliott, who became the director of the Minnesota Historical Society last May after twenty-eight years at Colonial Williamsburg. He told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “Whatever we do, it’s not going to somehow heal things or settle it.” The impressive state-of-the-art exhibit includes the views of both white settlers and Indians, voices from the past as well as the present. “Visitors are encouraged to make up their own minds about what happened and why,” the official guide declares. The website and online video are particularly impressive.

The mass execution of the Dakota Indians isn’t the only fact missed in the Lincoln biopic

PurpleHaze wrote: Lincoln freed the slaves. False Steven Spielberg may believe it but it just ain’t true. A careful reading of Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation proves that it freed NOT A SINGLE SLAVE! In the surprisingly short document only the slaves of “rebellious” states are ordered to be freed; those states who were loyal to America got to keep their Africans—as slaves! Thanks, Lincoln. The “Emancipation Proclamation” lists a whole slew of places to be “left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.” At that time in history, Lincoln actually had no authority over the states where he “freed” the slaves. They were part of another country—the Confederate States of America—with an altogether different president, Jefferson Davis. Lincoln himself was never hesitant to express his hatred of Black people, like when he said: “As the negro is to the White man so is the crocodile to the negro and as the negro may rightfully treat the crocodile as a beast or a reptile so may the White man treat the negro as a beast or a reptile.” It is White historians and Hollywood mythmakers who so desperately needed to find an American Jesus to die for America’s racial sins. It is they who have made Lincoln into something he never was or wanted to be—a martyr on behalf of Black people. Sources: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory (2007); NOI Research Group, “Lincoln, Lies, and Black Folk,” Pts. 1 and 2, The Final Call, Nov 27 & Dec. 6, 2012.

Yep, I learned this in 10th grade, and I live in the South. But then again I took AP. We specifically learned that the Emancipation Proc. was for the Confederacy, and the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

February 7, 1791


Benjamin Banneker, inventor, surveyor, mathematician, and astronomer, began to help lay out Washington, DC, under the supervision of Major Andrew Endicott, IV on this date.