Thread by @michaelharriot

If you think Moses Dickson’s story is crazy, there is a lot I couldn’t include because it was tew much.

A thread:

https://twitter.com/theGrio/status/1494114375686242314

For instance, around 1856, there seems to have been an increase in the number of uprisings by enslaved people. There are historians who wonder if this increase was just people reporting more uprising of if Dickson’s secret national network had a part in this.

Dickson was basically a traveling barber on a steamship which allowed him to see almost every part of the south & meet a bunch of board certified RNs (please don’t be in the comments explaining what that means). A Barbershop is basically every hood’s central intelligence agency

Then there’s the fact that Dickson was so proud of the fact that only three white men knew about the Knights and two were from England.

William Wilberforce, who ONE of the first HBCUs (trust me, you don’t wanna get in thr middle of that debate) is named after, sent him money.

And apparently, the Knights basically took over the funding & organization of the Underground Railroad for about a decade in parts of the country.

But they were really smuggling guns and people. Bruh was a whole international arms dealer

If you think that’s crazy to believe that British were arming slave revolts, some dudes named James Madison & Thomas Jefferson were OBSESSED with the idea.

So we’re slave owners

In 1812, we fought a whole war over it (I forget the name of that war). There’s a song about it. (Something about a banner and stars)

I’m convinced Dickson was successful for the same reason his story sounds so absurd:

They didn’t think Black people were smart enough to do it.

Another thing is, we rarely discuss the influence of Black fraternal organizations like the Prince Hall masons, Black fraternities and sororities.

The Knights of Tabor built a whole-ass hospital in one of the Blackest cities in America. They didn’t “help build it…” they did it.

Have you ever wondered why there are a lot of Black owned insurance agencies? Well the whole Black owned insurance business sprung, in part, out of mutual aid societies & fraternal orders, according to Booker T Washington.

One of the things that makes me laugh is when Dickson said his code name back in the day was “Blue Dick” and he repeatedly refers to the Knights as the “Child of Destiny”

I wonder if he knew Beyonce?

Another thing we don’t talk about is Black newspapers. If you want to know what Black people thought about anything in history, big or small, you can just read the Black newspaper of that time

Usually…

Every now & then, you’ll read:

“The __ Daily was destroyed by a white mob”

Bruh, it was a thing. White people used to get mad & attack inanimate objects!

On every HBCU there’s always a building that was “rebuilt after an 18xx fire.”

White mob.

Someone smarter than me need to do an analysis on how much Black history has been lost due to white mobs.

Anyway, when you search newspapers, you’ll find little mentions of the Knights of Tabor or the Knights of Twelve sprinkled throughout the country.

They really did some good things.

But their origin story goes back to one plan: