The 'Real Life Mulan', Cathay Williams.

Cathay had to pose as a MALE to be enlisted as a union soldier during her time. She was part of the 38 Regiment Infantry Division and was called a Buffalo Soldier!

A THREAD Cathay was born and enslaved in 1850 in Jackson County, Missouri. In September 1861 Union troops impressed Cathay and she joined the Army to work as a cook and washerwoman for Union Army officers.

In 1847, Missouri banned education for black people.

John Berry Meachum went ahead and equipped a steamboat with a library, desks, chairs and opened a 'Floating Freedom School'.

A THREAD! John Berry Meachum was born into slavery in Virginia in 1789 but by the age of 21 he had earned enough money doing carpentry work to purchase his own freedom and then his father’s.

Successful black communities and towns. A THREAD!

Did you know that an entire Manhattan village owned by black people was destroyed to build Central Park.

The community was called Seneca Village. It spanned from 82nd Street to 89th Street.
Blackdom, New Mexico

It was founded by Frank Boyer and Ella Louise McGruder and it was the first black town in New Mexico. It was a safe haven for our people. It had a population of 300 residents by 1908.

In 1919, the town struck oil!

The 369th Infantry Regiment, The Harlem Hellfighters.

Though they spent more time in battle than any other regiment and were one of the most decorated, they never got the recognition they deserved.

—THREAD— Even as one of the most successful military regiments in WWI, they were denied their going away parade because they were a black regiment.

They were invited after the war due to their valor.

British exploiters displaying their loots after the punitive expedition of the Benin Kingdom, West Africa. The 1897 Benin Punitive Expedition saw Britain loot 4,000 artworks and massacre people. The invasion, driven by trade control, exiled Oba Ovonramwen(The Ruler)

A THREAD The Kingdom of Benin, often referred to as the Great Benin Empire, was one of the most powerful and influential African states in pre-colonial West Africa. It has no historical relation to the modern republic of Benin, which was known as Dahomey from the 17th century until 1975.

— The origin of Memorial Day—

The origin of Memorial Day trace back to 1865 when freed slaves started a tradition to honor fallen Union soldiers and to celebrate emancipation and commemorate those who died for that cause.

A THREAD In 1865, black people in Charleston, South Carolina, held a series of memorials & rituals to honor unnamed fallen Union soldiers and celebrate the struggle against slavery. One of the largest memorial took place on May 1st 1865.

On this day in 1920, The Elaine Race Massacre inquiry began, addressing the killing of 200+ Black sharecroppers. A blood-thirsty gang of white soldiers led the deadliest massacre in U.S. history in 1919.

-The Elaine Massacre-

A THREAD On September 30, 1919, Black sharecroppers gathered at a church in Hoop Spur, near Elaine, led by Robert L. Hill of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union. They sought better cotton payments from white plantation owners who dominated during the Jim Crow era.

On this day in 1863, Black Americans began fighting for the U.S. Army after the creation of Bureau of Colored Troops. Those who served and loved the country that did not love them back.

Military History of African Americans.

A THREAD Black Americans participated in every American war from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican–American War, the Civil War, the Spanish–American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.

One of the last survivors of the transatlantic slave trade, Cudjo Kazoola Lewis (1931). He was among 110 enslaved Africans aboard the Clotilda.

A THREAD!
Cudjo Lewis ( 1841-1935) was a founder of Africatown, established by a group of people who were brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard the Clotilda, the last slave ship to the United States.

(I’ve inscribed the AfricaTown board on the Last slide Incase the words are too small)

In May 1922, British South African troops killed 100+ Khoikhoi (indigenous group of people in southern Africa) for resisting taxes. They were rejecting steep tax and land grabbing, 95% of their territory was occupied.

The Bondelswarts Rebellion

A THREAD The Bondelswarts in Namibia faced a brutal tax hike in 1921, plus pass laws and forced labor. Leader Abraham Morris rallied them at Guruchas to protect their dwindling land. But with just 15 rifles, they stood no chance against British South Africans machine guns and war planes

On this day in 1896, the U.S Supreme Court delivered its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing the “separate but equal” doctrine and authorizing discrimination by states.

This marked the formal beginning of Jim Crow Laws.

THREAD In 1866, a year after the amendment that ‘abolished slavery’ was ratified, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina began to lease out convicts for labor.

On this day in 1875, Oliver Lewis won the 1st ever Kentucky Derby.

He and his horse, Aristides, won by a reported two lengths, setting a new American record time for a mile-and-a-half race.

BLACK JOCKEYS THREAD in 1892, Alonzo Lonnie Clayton became the youngest jockey to ever win the Kentucky Derby.

He won the race at the age of 15 & still holds the record as the youngest winning rider

Reckless Eyeballing—The Mack Ingram Case:

During Jim Crow segregation, a black person could be accused of “reckless eyeballing”, which was a perceived improper look at a white person, presumed to have sexual intent. Mack was convicted of this.

A THREAD! In Yanceyville, North Carolina, Mack Ingram, a black tenant farmer, was among the last convicted under this framework in 1951.

A 17 year old white woma, Willa Jean Boswell, testified that she was scared when her neighbor Ingram looked at her from an approximate distance of 65ft.

On this day in 1985, Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb onto a residential home occupied by the MOVE Organization.

The Fire Department let the fire burn out of control, destroying 61 homes over two city blocks. 11 people died including 6 children

THREAD MOVE short for “The Movement,” and it’s largely unclear when it began; however, some people have reported remembering the group as far back as 1968.

Enslaved Black people are mostly depicted as very docile and didn't fight back. However, this was not the case and there were numerous slaves rebellion.

A THREAD! The Stono Rebellion, the largest slave rebellion in South Carolina, on September, 1739.

In July of 1963, 15 black girls were arrested for protesting segregation laws at the Martin theatre. Aged 12-15, they were locked in an old, abandoned stockade for 45 days without their parents knowledge. They came to be known as The Leesburg Stockade Girls,

A THREAD The girls marched from Friendship Baptist Church to the Martin Theater, attempting to buy tickets at the front entrance, defying segregation laws. Police attacked with batons and arrested them, transporting them to a Civil War-era stockade in Leesburg, Georgia, 15 miles away.

Did you know Sesame Street was originally created for black and brown inner city kids?

A THREAD Children usually spend a lot of time watching a lot tv and technically it was sort of a babysitter. It was even worse for inner city children whose parents spent endless hours at work, thus their kids were usually exposed to long hours of mindless programs.

Did you know that the Oompa-Loompas In Roald Dahl's 1964 Charlie and the Chocolate were originally Black pygmies from "deepest, darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before" but was Revised in 1973 after the NAACP complained?

A THREAD Dahl described Oompa-Loompas as a tribe of 3,000 "amiable Black pygmies" starving on green caterpillars in Africa. Wonka lured them with cocoa beans, smuggled them in crates, and housed them in his factory. The text framed them as enslaved.

66 years ago today, Mack Parker was murdered by a white mob. It’s considered one of the last civil rights era lynchings.

THREAD Mack Charles Parker was a 23-year-old truck driver who had returned to his hometown of Lumberton, Mississippi, after receiving a general discharge following two years in the Army.

More than 8000 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’

—A THREAD— In 1961, Fannie Lou Hamer, a Black sharecropper and civil rights activist, entered a Mississippi hospital to remove a benign uterine fibroid tumor. She returned to her family’s shack on the Marlow plantation to recover, unaware of the life-altering procedure she endured.

In 1780, Paul Cuffee, his brother & 5 other Black men petitioned the Massachusetts legislature demanding the right to vote.

He won free black men the right to vote in Massachusetts on the basis of "No Taxation Without Representation."

THREAD
Paul Cuffee was born Paul Slocum on Jan. 17, 1759, Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, to Kofi Slocum, a farmer & freed slave, and Ruth Moses, a native American of the Wampanog nation.