News — black history

Africa feeds the World with it's abundance of Natural Resources! The reason the African Continent was carved up like cake at the Berlin conference was predominantly for it's rich resources. I put together a few of the resources that always has the West chomping at the bit for it's control of it.
(Via GLITTERATIEENT)

Some of the world’s greatest cultural and historical treasures are housed in London’s British Museum, and a significant number of them were taken during Britain’s centuries-long imperial rule. In recent years, many of the countries missing their cultural heritage have been asking for some of these items back. Benin City in Nigeria is one of those places. They've been calling for the return of the Benin Bronzes, hundreds of artifacts looted in 1897 when British soldiers embarked a punitive expedition to Benin. Many are now housed in the British Museum. And it's just the beginning. As the world reckons with the damage inflicted during Europe’s colonial global takeover, the calls for these items to be returned are getting louder and louder. (Shared via Vox)

How did ancient Africans get colonized/conquered? This is a question most of us have asked ourselves. In this video, the many ways ancient Africans were defeated and overall conquered to the point we are at in modern day time is explained. This video is for educational purposes and is made with the intent of sparking healthy dialogue and research. It offers some insights into some of the limitations that led to the conquering of Africa. Based on this, it seems to be a combination of several factors. What do you think led to the conquering of Africa?

Nicole had been in prison for four years, where she has been in a relationship with Daonte. Despite warnings from his family, 33-year-old Daonte spent more than $30,000 on Nicole while incarcerated. He was ready to take their relationship to the next level. However, when Nicole is released, she claims not to be ready to have an intimate relationship with Deonte; she is interested in someone else. Doente, who is not aware of this, is willing to give Nicole some space The dynamics of their relationship represent most that develop with inmates. What do you think?

In 1939 during the Jim Crow era, baritone Clarence Fountain, bass Johnny Fields, baritone and guitarist George Scott, baritone Ollice Thomas, and tenor Velma Trayler, all elementary school students attending the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind and singing in its glee club, formed an ensemble, The Blind Boys of Alabama. All of the members were blind except for Fountain, who was visually impaired. They were first called the “Happyland Jubilee Singers.”

In addition, to their required basic academics at the Institute, they were taught to read Braille, make brooms, chairs, and shelves. During their early teens, in 1944, they left school and began singing and making money in local churches and community activities. However, they did not record until 1948, releasing their debut single, “I can see everybody’s mother but mine,” on the Veejay label.

In 1953, Blind Boys of Alabama signed a contract with Art Rupe’s California-based Specialty Records. However, the relationship dissolved after five years as they refusal to sing secular music. After leaving Specialty Records in 1957, the group briefly signed with a few small labels before joining the Chicago-based Vee-Jay label. The group recorded extensively for the Vee-Jay label, coming out with “Can I get a witness” in 1964. 

In 1982, they recorded the album I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord, with the Philadelphia producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff. And the following year, 1983, they received national acclaim for their performance in the Off-Broadway stage production of Gospel at Colonus, a contemporary musical adaptation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles but set in a black Pentecostal church. The production received two OBIE Awards and nominations for a Pulitzer Prize as well as a Tony Award. 

In 1992, the Blind Boys received their first Grammy nomination for the album Deep River.  A decade later, in 2001, The Blind Boys of Alabama released Spirit of the Century on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label and won the first of their Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album. In addition, they won consecutive Grammys for “Higher Ground” in 2002, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” in 2003, and “There Will Be a Light” (a collaboration with Ben Harper) in 2004 which peaked at #81 on Billboard 200 and was six weeks on the chart.

In 2014 the Blind Boys released Talkin’ Christmas, a collaboration with Taj Mahal. Three years later in 2017 the Blind Boys released Almost Home on the band’s own BBOA Records label in collaboration with Amazon Music.

Velma Trayler died in 1947 at 24, George Scott died in 2005 at the age of 75. Johnny Fields died in 2009 at 82; Clarence Fountain died in 2018. He was 88. Ollice Thomas died in 2020 at 94.

The Blind Boys of Alabama, one of the most extended ongoing gospel groups, remains active with new members and relevant with its gospel legacy extending into 21st century music.

Lydia Fedorovna Arkhipova was a prolific painter who achieved fame in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and abroad. She also developed her original style which challenged the major trends in Soviet-era art.

Arkhipova’s father was Frederick Bruce Thomas, widely known before the Russian Revolution (1917) in bohemian circles in Russia, Europe, and the United States as a wealthy member of Moscow society because of his ownership of the Maxim Club, a major nightlife venue in pre-1917 Russia. Her mother, Arkhipova Lydia, came from a wealthy merchant family. Thomas had a business relationship with Vasiliy Arkhipov, the father of Arkhipova and introduced him to daughter, Lydia.

When Frederick Bruce Thomas had to flee Russia during the Revolution, Lydia Fedorovna Arkhipova was forced to grow up with her mother. She was quickly recognized as a gifted child. She painted, played the piano, and composed music. In her youth she studied at Moscow State University.

In 1941 mother and daughter left for Central Asia. Two years later in 1943, Lydia Arkhipova at age 29, became a student at the Surikov’s Art Institute, which was moved to Samarkand (Uzbekistan) at that time. There she studied with Director of Arts Sergey Gerasimov and painting professor Alexander Osmyorkin. Her long-term friendship with the artist Robert Falk and her acquaintance with a representative of the Russian avant-garde art, Nadezhda Udaltsova, as well as her love for the impressionists (especially Matisse) and the study of ancient Russian painting had a great influence on her artistic handwriting.

In 1950, after graduating from the art institute, Lydia Arkhipova began to take an active part in exhibitions of young artists across Soviet Russia under the pseudonym “Archi. LF.” In 1953 she became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. She has traveled around the country but she especially loved to visit Central Asia and small towns where she wrote numerous works that reflected her search for an awareness of her own identity. During this period her painting were noted for their portrayal of festivity and freedom.

By the early 1960s, notes of nonconformism began to play in her work. Her paintings increasingly became modernist in character and were based on idealistic philosophical theories and aesthetic trends of the twentieth century not always favored by the Soviet government or major Soviet artists.

In 1977, Lydia Arkhipova, then 63, gave her first personal exhibition at Moscow’s Hall of the Union of Artists, a belated recognition of her contribution to the world of Soviet Art. After the exhibit she continued to work producing different types of art including portraits, still life, landscapes, architectural sketches and everyday scenes of religious and symbolic subjects. Regardless of the type of art produced, her paintings were always distinguished by decorativeness, bright, hot, sunny colors in a range of red-yellow-orange strokes.

Few Soviet artists were allowed to travel abroad. Lydia Arkhipova, however, over her long career frequently visited India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and traveled to Italy, Spain, France, and North Africa, where was she awarded prestigious art diplomas. Her works today are displayed in many museums of the former USSR as well as in private collections in Western Europe, the United States, and India.

Lydia Arkhipova died in Moscow in 1997. She was 83 at the time of her death.

Gustavia is the capital and main seaport of the island of Saint Barthélemy, also known as “St. Bart’s.” The Caribbean island is said to have been discovered by explorer Christopher Columbus in 1493, who named it after his brother Bartolomeo. The Taino Indians were the indigenous residents of the island.

The island was first claimed by French colonists in 1648 who arrived with enslaved Africans from the island of St. Kitts. In 1651, the island was sold to the Knights of Malta, an 11th-century Italian religious order. Despite European claims of discovery and ownership, the Taino Indians destroyed both the French and Italian settlements. The Taino placed the heads of their victims on poles lining the beach to warn any further intruders, a tactic that worked for several decades.

French mariners were the next invaders. They successfully settled on the island in 1763. French buccaneers, commonly known as pirates, boosted the economy by trading their plunder of gold from Spanish Galleons for food, liquor, and enslaved Indians and Africans held captive on the island. There was a brief British military takeover of the island in 1758, but it quickly returned to the French until 1784 when they sold it to Sweden in exchange for trading rights in the Swedish port of Gothenburg.

Island traders and local dwellers flourished under Swedish rule. As a free port, one could trade and sell wares and people, purchase supplies for the next voyage, all while avoiding any punishment for otherwise illegal activities. Gustavia first appears in archival records in December 1786, named after the Swedish King Gustav III. The capital city currently takes up about 1.3 square miles of the nine-square-mile island. France repurchased the island in 1878.

Gustavia sits on the Oscar (formerly Gustav Adolf) harbor. Its landmarks include the Gustav Adolf Harbor lighthouse, the Saint Bartholomew Anglican Church, built in 1855, a Royal Swedish Consulate, and numerous shops, boutiques, upscale hotels, and restaurants.

All citizens and residents of Gustavia and Saint Barthélemy as well as the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, regardless of race, were given legal status by the Department of France in 1946. The status meant all island residents are French citizens and French is the official language.

In 2007 Saint Barthélemy became an Overseas Collectivity of France which meant local residents could elect a nineteen-member territorial council. That council in turn elected Bruno Magras as its first president. Gustavia remains the capital of this island of approximately 10,000 permanent residents.

Yamoussoukro is currently the de jure capital of the nation of Cote d’Ivoire. The city had a population of 242,744 people in 2010. Yamoussoukro is located 274 km, or 170 miles, from the country’s de facto capital, Abidjan, where most of the government offices and foreign embassies remain. Although Yamoussoukro has some government agencies, most of its economy revolves around nearby fishing and forestry industries and the manufacture of perfumes. The city is divided into four different divisions: Attiégouakro, Didiévi, Tié-diékro, and the surrounding Commune of Yamoussoukro, which contains 169 villages and hamlets.

The history of Yamoussoukro dates back to 1901 when Yamousso, the son of the regional political leader Kouassi N’Go, ran the village of N’Gokro at the time of French colonization. The village had 475 residents and was one of the 129 Akoué villages in the region.  In 1909 the Akoué revolted against the newly installed French colonial administration.  They burned a French outpost called the Bonzi station which was located seven kilometers, or 4.35 miles, away from N’Gokro. Simon Maurice, a French administrator at the Bonzi station, was spared from death by the personal intervention of Kouassi N’Go.

After the revolt was put down Simon Maurice transferred the French military outpost to N’Gokro.  In gratitude, the French built a pyramid as a memorial to Kouassi N’Go and the town of N’Gokro was then renamed Yamoussoukro to pay homage to its political leader.  In 1929 the French named Félix Houphouët-Boigny who was born there, in 1905, the chief administrator of the town.  Over the next four decades, Yamoussoukro remained a small commercial center for a surrounding agricultural region.

When France granted Cote d’Ivoire independence in 1960, Félix Houphouët-Boigny became the nation’s first president, serving until his death in 1993.  Beginning in 1964, Houphouët-Boigny sponsored the city’s rapid growth, building a modern highway from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro ostensibly to encourage economic growth in the interior of the nation, but mainly because of his long connection with the area.  In 1977 he gave his private plantation to the state to enlarge the city’s boundaries.  Because of his influence developers built hotels and other facilities that increased Yamoussoukro’s prestige over surrounding communities. In March 1983 Houphouët-Boigny persuaded the Cote d’Ivoire National Assembly to make Yamoussoukro the administrative and political capital of Cote d’Ivoire.  Despite this new designation, the transfer of government functions has proceeded slowly as most major government offices remained in Abidjan.

Nonetheless Yamoussoukro has structures that reflect its importance as a national capital.  The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, which is physically the world’s largest Christian Church, was modeled after St. Peter’s in Rome, Italy and was constructed between 1985 and 1989. The Basilica was consecrated by Pope John Paul II on September 10, 1990.  Other important buildings around the city include the Yamoussoukro Mosque, the Félix Houphouët-Boigny National Polytechnic Institute, and the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Foundation. The Kossou Dam is also nearby as is the local airport, one of only two in Africa that were large enough to accommodate the French Concorde jet.

Balladeer and Lyric Baritone Lenny Welch was born Leon Welch on May 15, 1938, in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He was reared by godparents Eva and Robert Richardson and attended Asbury Park High School but left in the 10th grade in 1956. In 1957, when he was 19, Welch he cut the first recordings with Decca, where he began developing a style similar to that of Johnny Mathis. 

In 1962, Welch joined the New Jersey National Guard, at which point he was on duty once per week. Then in the summer, he would go away for two weeks for training for the next six years.  In 1963 while still in the National Guard, Welch recorded on the Cadence label, “Since I Fell for You,” a pop ballad that reached number 3 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart in the latter part of 1963. It hit #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 early in 1964 and by that point had sold over one million copies.  The success of the ballad led to an appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.   Welch followed his hit with “If You See My

Love,” in 1964, which peaked at # 92 on the Billboard Hot 100. “If You See My Love” would be his last record with Cadence Recordings which closed later that year.

Welch landed with Kapp Records shortly after Cadence closed and charted with “Darling Take Me Back” in 1965. The song peaked at 61 and remained on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks.  Welch did not record from 1965 to 1968 while he completed his time as a National Guard reservist.  When finally released from military service in 1968 Welch fared poorly with a series of recordings for Kapp Records which did not sell well. He was forced to perform at high school record hops and weekend club dates to promote his new releases on Kapp Records, but nothing significant happened.

In 1969, Welch then took another break from recording and performing to research and practice his music skills and promote a new image.  While often compared to Johnny Mathis in musical style and vocal qualities, Welch was uninterested in performing in Las Vegas or Lake Tahoe. And, of course, his recordings did not sell like those of Mathis.  In 1972 he recorded the single, “To Be Loved/Glory of Love” which was a modest success.  “To Be Loved/Glory of Love” was his last record. In the 1980s Welch sang on T.V. commercials for Subaru, Coca-Cola, M&Ms candy and Oreos Cookies.  Welch obtained his high school diploma in the mid-1980s and graduated from the College of New Rochelle in 1987.

In 1991, Welch joined The Royal All-Stars, a Doo-Wop group, and became interested in theatre. The following year he traveled to California to audition for an acting role \on the ABC-TV soap opera General Hospital. He made it and played the part of a detective in various episodes through the 1990s. 

Lenny Welch has four children with Pamela Beck whom he married in 1983 in Brown County, Texas. They also have six grandchildren.  Welch continues performing at age 83.

Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church established 1864 was the first African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E. church) in the state of Mississippi. It was also the site for T.W. Stringer Grand Lodge of Freemasonry for the State of Mississippi headquartered in Vicksburg and founded by Rev. T.W. Stringer in 1867. The church is located at 805 Monroe Street in Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the corner of Monroe and First East streets. While the building that houses the church was built in 1828, a demolition took place in 1912 to build the present building. The most famous of the church’s early pastors was Rev. Hiram Revels who on February 25, 1870 took the oath of office to become the first Black U.S. Senator in the history of the United States. He was also the first president of Alcorn University.

Bethel AME Church was first organized and founded by Rev. Page Tyler, a missionary from Missouri. As the congregation grew, in 1868 the current church property was purchased at a cost of $28,000 from a white Presbyterian congregation that had built the church building on this site in 1828.

At one point in 1912 as the new building was being constructed, the congregation, then led by Rev. W.L. Anderson, met in a small chapel in the rear of a three-story hall on the campus of Campbell College. At that point the congregation numbered 550 parishioners.

Over time the congregation decreased due in part to the passing of its members. Nonetheless, the church community exhibited a strong desire to ensure the history of the church is preserved and continued to be shared. To that end, the city of Vicksburg and the state of Mississippi supported the successful effort to add the church to the National Register of Historic Places. On July 30, 1992 Bethel AME Church was added to the Register.

The Bethel AME congregation is currently led by Pastor Arnita Spencer who continues to share the message of God’s love and services to the community as well as the church’s historical legacy. Besides Senator Revels, prominent church members have included Isaiah Thornton Montgomery, the only African American member of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890, also the founder of the town of the all-Black town of Mound Bayou in 1887 and Campbell College in 1890, John Lynch, the first African American Congressman from Mississippi, L.J. Bowman, Alcorn State University President, and William H. Jefferson, co-founder with his wife, of Jefferson Funeral Home, Mississippi’s oldest-black owned business and oldest registered black funeral home in the state. Lucy C. Jefferson, William Jefferson’s wife, was a prominent civic organizer who invited Booker T. Washington to come to the state. She also organized the Mississippi Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs.

Zhou Enlai’s first tour of Africa, popularly known as Zhou’s “Safari,” was a series of state visits to ten independent African countries, undertaken between December 1963 and February 1964 by the Chinese Premier. These visits, which occurred during a period when many countries were gaining independence from colonial power, marked the first time any high-ranking Chinese Communist leader had traveled to Africa.

Zhou’s original plan was to visit every country on the continent that had established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing. He traveled at the head of a delegation of more than fifty people, including China’s foreign minister, Chen Yi. The delegation began its tour in Egypt, which in May 1956 had become the first African country to recognize the Communist government of China. During the journey, the itinerary was amended several times to add Tunisia, whose government planned to recognize Communist China; remove Tanganyika, which was in the midst of the Zanzibar Revolution; and add Ethiopia, despite the fact that it did not recognize the Beijing regime until 1970.

In the end, the ten countries visited were as follows: Egypt (The United Arab Republic: December 14–21, 1963), Algeria (December 21–27), Morocco (December 27–30), Tunisia (January 9–10, 1964), Ghana (January 11–16), Mali (January 16–21), Guinea (January 21–26), Sudan (January 27–30), Ethiopia (January 30–February 1), and Somalia (February 1–4).

Zhou’s primary goal in Africa was to raise China’s profile on the continent at a time when it was beginning to challenge the Soviet Union openly over the direction of the global Communist movement. While Zhou received a warm reception in countries with left-wing governments, such as Algeria and Mali, he faced more hostile encounters with leaders who were adamantly anti-communist, especially in Tunisia and Ethiopia.

In response, Zhou consistently asserted that countries with different “political systems” could maintain friendly relations. Rather than focus on the affairs of postcolonial governments, he largely restricted himself to calling for African countries still under colonial rule to win independence. Zhou did, however, employ potentially inflammatory Marxist rhetoric in several of his speeches in Africa. In a farewell address in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, before returning to China, for example, he pledged that China would support “revolutionary struggles” throughout the continent and oppose both foreign intervention and native “reactionaries.”

Another important goal of Zhou’s trip to Africa was to drum up enthusiasm for holding a second Asian–African Conference in Algiers in 1965, a decade after the first Asian–African Conference had been held in Bandung, Indonesia. Zhou was especially concerned to ensure that the Soviet Union not be invited to send a delegation to the conference, since it would make it more difficult for the Chinese government to present itself as the only truly anti-imperialist Marxist power. Zhou made a second, shorter trip to Africa in June 1965 to lobby several African leaders to support his vision for the second Asian–African Conference, but the conference was canceled soon thereafter in the wake of the overthrow of Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella.

The Haitian Revolution has often been described as the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere. Slaves initiated the rebellion in 1791 and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony. The Haitian Revolution, however, was much more complex, consisting of several revolutions going on simultaneously. These revolutions were influenced by the French Revolution of 1789, which would come to represent a new concept of human rights, universal citizenship, and participation in government.

In the 18th century, Saint Dominigue, as Haiti was then known, became France’s wealthiest overseas colony, largely because of its production of sugar, coffee, indigo, and cotton generated by an enslaved labor force. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 there were five distinct sets of interest groups in the colony. There were white planters—who owned the plantations and the slaves—and petit blancs, who were artisans, shop keepers and teachers. Some of them also owned a few slaves. Together they numbered 40,000 of the colony’s residents. Many of the whites on Saint Dominigue began to support an independence movement that began when France imposed steep tariffs on the items imported into the colony. The planters were extremely disenchanted with France because they were forbidden to trade with any other nation. Furthermore, the white population of Saint-Dominique did not have any representation in France. Despite their calls for independence, both the planters and petit blancs remained committed to the institution of slavery.

The three remaining groups were of African descent: those who were free, those who were slaves, and those who had run away. There were about 30,000 free black people in 1789. Half of them were mulatto and often they were wealthier than the petit blancs. The slave population was close to 500,000. The runaway slaves were called maroons; they had retreated deep into the mountains of Saint Dominigue and lived off subsistence farming. Haiti had a history of slave rebellions; the slaves were never willing to submit to their status and with their strength in numbers (10 to 1) colonial officials and planters did all that was possible to control them. Despite the harshness and cruelty of Saint Dominigue slavery, there were slave rebellions before 1791. One plot involved the poisoning of masters.

Inspired by events in France, a number of Haitian-born revolutionary movements emerged simultaneously. They used as their inspiration the French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” The General Assembly in Paris responded by enacting legislation which gave the various colonies some autonomy at the local level. The legislation, which called for “all local proprietors…to be active citizens,” was both ambiguous and radical. It was interpreted in Saint Dominigue as applying only to the planter class and thus excluded petit blancs from government. Yet it allowed free citizens of color who were substantial property owners to participate. This legislation, promulgated in Paris to keep Saint Dominigue in the colonial empire, instead generated a three-sided civil war between the planters, free blacks and the petit blancs. However, all three groups would be challenged by the enslaved black majority which was also influenced and inspired by events in France.

Led by former slave Toussaint l’Overture, the enslaved would act first, rebelling against the planters on August 21, 1791. By 1792 they controlled a third of the island. Despite reinforcements from France, the area of the colony held by the rebels grew as did the violence on both sides. Before the fighting ended 100,000 of the 500,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 whites were killed. Nonetheless the former slaves managed to stave off both the French forces and the British who arrived in 1793 to conquer the colony, and who withdrew in 1798 after a series of defeats by l’Overture’s forces. By 1801 l’Overture expanded the revolution beyond Haiti, conquering the neighboring Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic). He abolished slavery in the Spanish-speaking colony and declared himself Governor-General for life over the entire island of Hispaniola.

At that moment the Haitian Revolution had outlasted the French Revolution which had been its inspiration. Napoleon Bonaparte, now the ruler of France, dispatched General Charles Leclerc, his brother-in-law, and 43,000 French troops to capture L’Overture and restore both French rule and slavery. L’Overture was taken and sent to France where he died in prison in 1803. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of l’Overture’s generals and himself a former slave, led the revolutionaries at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803 where the French forces were defeated. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared the nation independent and renamed it Haiti. France became the first nation to recognize its independence. Haiti thus emerged as the first black republic in the world, and the second nation in the western hemisphere (after the United States) to win its independence from a European power.