Black women are routinely erased from public memory and historical narratives of resistance.
Black women powered the civil rights movement, but rarely became its stars. #BlackHistoryMonth
A THREAD!
Aunt Polly Jackson, was an escaped slave who worked as an agent on the Underground Railroad helping others escape.
She was known for fighting off slave catchers with a butcher knife and a kettle of boiling water
By the early 70s, women made up the majority of members in the US Black Panther Party
Mae Mallory was an activist during the Civil Rights Movement and a leader in the Black Power movement. Mallory was most-known as an advocate of following desegregation and Black armed self-defense.
Claudia Jones; Journalist and activist. Author of the seminal piece 'Ending the Neglect of Black Women' and original founder of Notting Hill Carnival. Founder of Britain's first major newsletter, the West Indian Gazette
Sojourner Truth was an evangelist, abolitionist, women’s rights activist and author who was born into slavery before escaping to freedom in 1826. After gaining her freedom, Truth preached about abolitionism and equal rights for all
Daisy Bates, civil rights activist and newspaper publisher. Through her newspaper, Bates documented the battle to end segregation in Arkansas
Sarah Rector became a multi-millionare oil baron and the richest black child at just 12 years old.
She was so rich that Oklahoma legislature legally declared her to be a white person. #BlackHistoryMonth
A THREAD!
Sarah Rector was born in 1902 in Oklahoma to Joseph Rector & Rose McQueen. They were African descendants of the Creek Nation Creek Indians before the Civil war which became part of the Creek Nation after the Treaty of 1866.
As such, they and their descendants were listed as freedmen thus entitled to land allotments under the Treaty of 1866 made by the United States with the Five Civilized Tribes.
American medicine has been built upon the abuse of black people with no oversight.
I'll revisit a few cases of how Black people were abused in the field of medicine. #BlackHistoryMonth
A THREAD!
J. Marion Sims "the father of modern gynecology" purchased Black women slaves and used them as guinea pigs for his untested surgical experiments.
He repeatedly performed genital surgery on Black women WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because according to him, "Black women don't feel pain."
More than 8000 post black women in Mississippi and S. Carolina were given involuntary hysterectomies (removal of uterus) between 1920s and 80s when they went to see white doctors for other complaints.
These came to be known as 'Mississippi Appendectomies'
1 in every 4 cowboys was believed to be a Black man released from slavery despite the stories told in popular books & movies although the most famous cowboys of the old west were white
Many of the slaves were familiar with cattle herding from Africa #BlackHistoryMonth
A THREAD!
Bill Pickett (1871-1932), rodeo performer.
World famous black cowboy Bill Pickett "Dusky Demon" invented the rodeo sport, bulldogging (steer wrestling).
This is the actual man on which the movie D'Jango Unchained is loosely based.
His name is Dangerfield Newby, and he was a member of the John Brown raiders. He joined the gang to save his wife, Harriet and children from slavery.
Did you know that it was once against the law for black women to show their hair in public?
The Tignon laws of the 18th century banned black women from exposing their natural hair in public and to cover their hair with a headwrap called a tignon. #BlackHistoryMonth
A THREAD!
This headdress was the result of laws passed in 1786 under the administration of Governor Esteban Rodriguez Miró. It aimed to prohibit women of color from displaying excessive attention by their dressing in the streets of New Orleans'.
A tignon (tiyon) is a headdress used to conceal hair. It was worn by free and enslaved Creole women of African ancestry in Louisiana in 1786. The regulation was meant as a means to regulate the style of dress and appearance for people of color.
The Virginia Calculator: Thomas Fuller, the slave with remarkable calculation power who was used by antislavery campaigners as a demonstration that blacks were not mentally inferior to whites. #BlackHistoryMonth
A THREAD!
Thomas Fuller was an African, stolen from his native home at 14 and shipped to America as an enslaved man in 1724. He was sold to a planter in Virginia.
When he was about 70, two gentlemen, natives of Pennsylvania, William Hartshorne and Samuel Coates, men of probity and respectable characters, having heard of his extraordinary powers in arithmetics sent for him.
On this day in 1946, Isaac Woodard, WWII veteran, hours after being honorably discharged, was attacked by South Carolina police while still in uniform when taking the bus home & left permanently BLIND
Isaac enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C, and served in the Pacific Theater as a longshoreman in a labor battalion. In February 1946, the decorated soldier received an honorable discharge at Camp Gordon, which is located near Augusta, Georgia.
Along with other discharged soldiers, Woodard boarded a Greyhound bus on February 12 to travel home. A conflict was triggered when the white bus driver belittled the army veteran for asking to take a bathroom break.