Thread by @michaelharriot

Some outlets say Zaila Avante-Garde is the first Black woman to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but she’s the 1st AFRICAN AMERICAN

Jody-Anne Maxwell from Jamaica won in 1998

Others say she’s won the NATIONAL SPELLING BEE, which is an interesting story…

A thread

The National Spelling Bee that we watch started in 1925. But it was the SECOND one.

The first National Spelling Bee one was held in 1908 but something crazy happened.

Now, to understand how big this was, you gotta remember, there was no NBA, NFL, baseball was all-white and Netflix had very little content so people used to get together and do boring shit like make blankets or husk corn.

I’m 100% serious. I thought a “bee” was a euphemism for smoking weed or having sex but apparently, people actually had “sewing bees” and “corn husking bees”

(Y’all should be SO GLAD Black people invented Jazz & Blues because we’d be SO BORED)

You know how there are 8,283,484 rappers now, dropping a new album every week? Well it used to be like that for books.

EVERYBODY had a book. Some authors would go plantimum and some just have a few hit books.

In 1871, Edward Eggleston dropped “The Hoosier Schoolmaster.”

Y’all, this dude had a hit book about a girl who falls with a dude BECAUSE HE CAN SPELL! How does she know he can spell so well? From his love letters? His tattoos?

Nah, in this book, they pass the time in rural Indiana having a thing called a “spelling bee”

Of course white folks ran with the idea like it was a Black person dancing on TikTok.

Spelling bees go viral. They have them in…Wait… y’all think I’m playing about spelling bees being bigger than sports?

Ok, here’s what a little known outlet called the @nytimes said in 1875

Anyway, in 1908, when the National Education Association had its 1908 convention in New Orleans, they decided to hold the first National Spelling Bee.

Since the organization was made up of teachers, it was a really good idea.

But something unexpected happened

See, most people think segregation always existed or that it was a Southern thing. But it’s not true. Segregation STARTED in the North in trains, restaurants etc. but many schools in the North and South were integrated

After the civil war, the South copied northern segregation

In fact a Black activist in NY tore up a train car when they kicked him out of the white section. But you probably don’t know him. He was wild AF.

Some dude named Frederick Douglass.

So when Jim Crow started Black folks were MAD AF!

Now, New Orleans was different. They had as many free people of color before the Civil war as they did white people. I’m fact, the creole population wasn’t considered Black or White.

But after the Civil War, they started getting kicked out, too!

2 dudes decided to do something

So now I have to tell you about Louis Martinet & Rodolphe Desdundes, two actual superheroes.

Martinet, an Afro-Creole man, was a lawyer AND a doctor, served in the Louisiana State House of Representatives, owned a newspaper and ran businesses

Desdondes made Marinet look lazy

He was a bilingual historian and poet who wrote in French, taught school, wrote for Martinet’s newspaper, opened a school for Black orphans, served as a police officer, and fought white supremacists in his spare time. They got some of their homeboys together & came up with a plan

They got Desdunes’s son to get on a train and PAID an officer to write up a warrant. arrest him. They took it to court and won. But judge Ferguson said it only counted in Louisiana so they did it again. They couldn’t use Desdunes’ son again, so they asked their homeboy, Homer

Homer lost the case with THE SAME JUDGE FERGUSON! but fought it all the way to the Supreme Court

On May 18, 1896, the SCOTUS ruled that white people could force “separate but equal” accommodations, citing NORTHERN LAWS in Homer Adophus Plessy v. Judge Ferguson & the State of La.

Segregation and second-class cisitizenship was constitutional. Soon, NORTHERN schools that were integrated began segregating.

Jim Crow was NOT a Southern thing.

Of course, separate wasn’t equal. But, To justify it, white folks said Black folks couldn’t keep up academically

So when the LARGEST TEACHERS ORGANIZATION announced this National Spelling Bee in 1908, Black educators saw an opportunity.

The spelling bee was a TEAM competition. Each school administered a written test and the highest scores represented their city.

In Cleveland, a 13-year-old Black girl named Marie Bolden made the team.

They knew Cleveland had integrated schools but they literally said that a Black kid making the was “not a serious possibility.”

Remember, the bee was in NEW ORLEANS, home of Plessy!

During the planning, someone asked: Seriously, tho, what if a Black kid makes it?

And in the meeting, a school board member gave offered a solution:

“Go ahead and knock the ni**er out.”

But Marie went. 6,000 spectators attended. She had to spell “negroes, prejudice, separate, etc.” Now, in this spelling bee, you could miss a word and still win because it was a TEAM COMPETITION.

And guess what the fuck happened?

CLEVELAND WON!
(Why the hell do you think I’m telling this story?)

Not only did they win, But Marie… wait for it…

She didn’t miss a goddamned word.

Of 510 students, she was 1 of only 3 who had perfect scores. because of her team’s performance she won the gold medal.

Black folks EVERYWHERE were happy! She was a celebrity who had proven her intellect on the National stage.

There were celebrations honoring her all over the country… well, not in New Orleans

New Orleans and Southern Cities BANNED the celebrations. Why?

They said there might be “race riots!”

Come on, Don’t act like you didn’t know that Black people can’t control ourselves after a good spelling bee!

The year before this spelling bee, Black teachers were fed up with the NEA and formed the National Association of Colored Teachers

But the organization grew by leaps and bounds the next year, partly because of the NEA response to a Black girl winning the National Spelling Bee.

Even though its was the NEAs most popular event EVER and got coverage in EVERY newspaper, how did they respond?

They never held a National Spelling Bee again.

It would be another 18 years before Scripps held the first spelling bee.

Because theirs was a conglomeration of local spelling bees, Black children could be excluded before the national contest.

A Black girl made the top 5 in 1936 but was eliminated after her appeal was denied arguing that she was asked to spell a proper noun.

But in the 1960s the NAACP was curious why so few Black children made the nationals & discovered local bees across the South were segregated

Why the hell would the NAACP be looking into spelling bees in the 1960s? Maybe they didn’t have anything to do.

Actually they were investigating a letter that was received by Black schools in Lynchburg Va correcting an error that said:

“Spelling test materials were distributed to Negro schools through the error of a new secretary in the office … Negro participation is not expected.”

And that’s partly why Zaila Avante Garde is the first African American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee