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Now let's talk about an actual Black Loyalist. Meet Boston King, born enslaved in (or around) 1760 in South Carolina. Significantly, King's parents were first-generation slaves (meaning, kidnapped and brought over from Africa). Both were literate and ensured that their son would also become so. Ostensibly apprenticed as a carpenter, as King would later tell it, his particular owner was so harsh and cruel with his punishments (floggings) that one instance left him unable to work for three weeks. During the Revolution, King stole ("borrowed") a horse and slipped away from his owner, pledging loyalty to the British near Charleston, undertaking dangerous missions on behalf of Captain Grey of the New York Volunteers, which was a Loyalist regiment from Nova Scotia. King later made his way to New York --the last American port to be evacuated by the British-- and while there he met Violet, another former South Carolina slave who had also joined the British side with the promise of freedom. After the Revolution, Boston and Violet were given certificates of freedom for their service to the British crown. Along with nearly 3,000 other Black Loyalists who had risked severe punishment and even execution during the war, they were evacuated and resettled in British-held Birchtown, Nova Scotia.

(This was neither a smooth nor a guaranteed process --Gen. George Washington had been negotiating firmly with the outgoing British commander-in-chief over the fate of Loyalist slave refugees, perhaps mindful of the vulnerability of his own "assets." [See Lesson #123 in this series!] Persistent eleventh-hour rumours that negotiations might fail and that the former slaves might yet be deported back to their former owners brought considerable anxiety; in King's words, "For days, we lost our appetite for food and sleep departed from our eyes.")

Now married to Violet and resettled in Birchtown, King honed his trade as a master carpenter and was also ordained as a Methodist minister. Unfortunately farming conditions in Nova Scotia were notoriously poor those years --in some instances bordering on outright famine-- and in 1792 the Kings decided to take advantage of a long-standing British offer to move to the newly-founded Province Of Freedom (later Sierra Leone), an established community for freed Blacks. The Kings were among the first (of approx. 1,200) settlers in what would become known as Freetown, although Violet died of malaria soon after they had arrived.

At the behest of the Sierra Leone Company, King was trained in London for two years as a teacher and missionary, and then returned to Freetown in 1796 to dust off his preaching skills --language barriers be damned. At some point during his time in London he penned his autobiography, Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, which would eventually see publication in serial form in 1798 in Wesleyan Methodist Magazine. The publication is significant because it was one of the very first written narratives of American slave life to see print --preceding Frederick Douglass's seminal work by nearly 50 years. At one point while in London King preached to a white congregation and reflected upon this in his memoir: "I found a more cordial love to the White People than I had ever experienced before. In the former part of my life I had suffered greatly from the cruelty and injustice of the Whites, which induced me to look upon them, in general, as our enmies (sic): And even after the Lord had manifested his forgiving mercy to me, I still felt at times an uneasy distrust and shyness toward them; but on that day the Lord removed all my prejudices."

King married again in 1802 but his second wife, Peggy, also passed. His narrative continued to be republished in successive new editions, with the most recent iteration being The Life of Boston King, Black Loyalist, Minister, and Master Carpenter (2003).

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I figure we may as well keep going with the established mid-1770's theme, inasmuch as it is possible to do so. In the previous lesson we touched on Black Loyalists and their oft-overlooked role during the American Revolution; for this entry we'll upend that very subject, with a look at the life of James Armistead (later Lafayette). Born enslaved in 1760 Virginia, James Armistead actually enlisted into the Continental Army in 1781 (with the consent of his then-owner). Of all the luminaries to which he could have been attached, it transpired that James was detailed to a unit under no less than the Marquis de Lafayette himself. While the details of the conversations are not recorded, at some point Lafayette persuaded James to work as a spy; his cover would be to pose as a runaway slave who had been hired by the British to spy on the Americans. (Which wouldn't have been the slightest bit unusual!)

During his time in this dangerous dual role, James gained the confidence of British General Charles Cornwallis; to the point where Cornwallis entrusted James to guide British troops through local roads and thoroughfares. James overheard many conversations amongst the British officers, many of whom who had no compunction about openly boasting about their plans in his presence. James surreptitiously handed off his written notes to other American spies and remained undercover in Cornwallis's camp for nearly two years. While there were other spies operating in Cornwallis's purview, none were able to deliver nearly as much tactical intelligence as James --a detail that was even noticed by Gen. George Washington. James's last field report of July 31, 1781 helped Lafayette trap the British at Hampton, which is widely accepted as the lead-in to the eventual British surrender at Yorktown.

After the war Lafayette had made a point of publicly praising James Armistead for his bravery and dedication, but he had already returned to his life as a slave as, due to fine-print quibbles, was not eligible for emancipation as he had not technically served as a soldier. To his credit Lafayette spent the next two years seeking out information on Armistead, and finally found him in 1784. Disappointed to learn James had returned to enslavement, Lafayette again spoke out on his behalf, this time directly to the Virginia General Assembly, who eventually emancipated him --a full two years later. Armistead took on the surname Lafayette and moved to New Kent County, where he was not only able to collect a postwar pension, but to eventually obtained 40 acres of farmland and raised a family. He died at home in 1832, at the remarkable age of 72.

In support of this lesson, for James's likeness I am drawing upon a remarkable sculpture by Kinzey Branham of the University of Georgia, rather than the very few poor (and insultingly stereotypical) depictions offered by history.

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I'm guessing your elementary school (or even high school) American Revolution curriculum didn't conspicuously mention James Somerset, but it's important to understand his life and the pivotal role he played in the legal underpinnings of just how American slavery came to be defined, and moreover how it was set apart from English case law. Born in West Africa sometime in 1741, Somerset was captured by British slave traders in 1749, and sold in the then-colony of Virginia, to one Scottish merchant named Charles Stewart. In 1764 Stewart moved to Boston to take a position as a Customs official, and brought Somerset with him. In 1769 Stewart moved to London and again brought Somerset with him.

Significantly Somerset was baptized on February 10, 1771 into the Church of England; legally recorded, and with witnesses and three specifically-named godparents. This specific detail is key to the broader legal understanding, as baptism was commonly associated with manumission --though in England it was more of a time-honored custom than it was any legal precedent or framework. Nevertheless in October of that same year, Somerset declared himself free and left Stewart's service.

Somerset's liberty was short-lived; a mere year later in 1771, he was kidnapped and forced aboard a slave trading vessel, to be sold in Jamaica. This is where his legal godparents stepped in and filed a habeas corpus case, which led into Somerset v. Stewart, 98 ER 499. Somerset was transported back across the Atlantic and presented before the King's Bench Court, and after a year of legal wrangling from a number of then-well-known lawyers like Granville Sharp (and a great deal of public attention, on both sides of the Atlantic!), in May of 1772 Chief Justice Lord Mansfield ruled that: the act of bringing a slave to England but then shipping that slave elsewhere for resale, represented a "high act of Dominion" that "must be recognized by the laws of the country where it is used." Essentially Mansfield's reasoning was that since there never had been a legal basis for slavery, neither in English common law nor in statutory law, that the practice was therefore unlawful and that Somerset must therefore be freed. In fact Lord Mansfield even took it an unexpected step further when he pronounced the institution of slavery "is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reason, moral or political, but only positive law which preserves its Force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from once it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law."

The case was ultimately a narrow ruling and had truly been decided entirely on legal technicalities, fine print, and precedent... but it also constituted a considerable moral victory, particularly in light of Mansfield's opinion that the entire practice was based on flimsy precepts that should have frankly been dumped centuries ago. While the ruling certainly did not end the practice of slavery in England outright --nor did it affect the status quo of any English colony or territory, nor the actual slave trade itself-- it was the first case of its kind to recognize slavery's inherent wrongness: clearly signalling that this was not an issue that could be deferred indefinitely.

The decision is also widely considered to be a precursor to Dunmore's Proclamation of 1775, and certainly laid sufficient groundwork for the role of Black Loyalists during the Revolution. Yet at the same time, the Somerset ruling also more comfortably brought the subject of abolition into everyday American colonial discourse, which gained further traction over the course of the Revolution (and may have even informed Thomas Jefferson's own famously-deleted slavery abolition clause from the Declaration of Independence (see Lesson #15 in this series). And after ratification, four of the new U.S. states (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and newcomer Vermont) promptly encoded abolition directly into their respective state constitutions, again citing Somerset v. Stewart as the underlying framework.

(Once again I am stymied by having no real pictorial reference of my subject; instead I present to you my own humble study based off of John Singleton Copley's Head Of A Man, (also sometimes referenced as Head Of A Negro), painted between 1777 and 1778. As for what happened to Somerset himself: unfortunately history is largely silent on his life after 1772. I would steer you to this poem by Toastingfork as the best coda I can offer.)

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Jesus Christ in the berry bushes, people. Stop giving in. It. Doesn't Work.

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Not sure I yet know what to make of this post-Ozzy, post-Lehrer world that has now come into being. But I do know that an awful lot of musicians, composers, and performers now must accept a terrifying responsibility.

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"If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while." --Tom Lehrer

Rest in snark you mad genius.

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@fantasniar

some highlights from my students’ romeo and juliet modern interpretation projects:

- someone made a username for friar laurence with 420 at the end - the same kid who put 69 in romeo’s username like i wouldn’t know what either of those things mean - the girl who added ‘clean’ at the end of all the songs on her juliet playlist like lmao girl i know spotify doesn’t have the clean version - the kid who said romeo and juliet killed each other - the weird dichotomy of kids who put love story on their playlist vs the kids who choose bad blood - the kid who wrote ‘get a room’ as tybalt’s comment on romeo’s couple pic - the kid who said ‘romeo is probably one of those douches who follows a ton of people so they follow him back and then he unfollows all of them’ - the one who legitimately used the word ‘alrighty’ do kids say this in their text messages???? i thought i was the one talking like an elderly person but okay - the one who made romeo’s username ‘montagoose’ - the only kid who acknowledged that posting about your secret relationship on instagram was a bad idea - the girl who wrote that romeo would unironically say ‘#blessed’. she’s right. - the one single solitary girl who wrote mercutio as gay as shakespeare did (she’s also the only one who used mercutio at all which is a tragedy but whatever) - the one who wrote romeo’s insta bio as ‘thus with a kiss i die… LOL RIP ME 😂💀’ - the one who made benvolio’s username benvoliYO

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Continuing with the theme of Black Americans from the mid-1770's who definitely aren't talked about enough: today we examine the fascinating life of early Colonial-era businessman Paul Cuffe (sometimes also listed as Cuffee). Born free in 1759 Gosnold, Massachusetts (specifically Cuttyhunk Island), Paul's mother Ruth was in fact Native American (Wampanoag), but his father Kofi was himself enslaved, having been brought over to Massachusetts from West Africa as a child. Kofi had been able to earn his freedom as a skilled tradesman, and Paul, their youngest child, ultimately took his own surname Cuffe for himself as a variation on his father's first name. During the years of the Revolution, Paul made use of his evangelical talents (he was a devout Quaker) and capitalized on the popular "no taxation without representation" sentiment, eventually delivering a petition to the still-coalescing Massachusetts colonial/state legislature demanding that it either grant Black and Native Americans full voting rights --or to cease taxing them altogether. This proposal of course failed in 1780, but its underlying language persisted and eventually found its way into the state constitution in 1783, granting free Black men the right to vote.

Cuffe's reputation (and his church connections) put him in touch with a great many other emancipated Black Americans, and he eventually accumulated enough capital to first found one of the very first racially integrated schools in the U.S., then a smallpox hospital, acquired additional coastal properties, and then to donate handsomely to other educational institutions. In the waning years of the Revolution, his interests had turned to seafaring, and after a short stint as a whaling ship captain, he eventually built one --and then multiple-- merchant ships. By 1811, at the still-relatively young age of 52, he was quite literally the wealthiest Black man in America (telling, as there are actual paintings of his likeness from the time, such as the portrait by Chester Harding that I use as the basis for my illustration), running multiple shipping businesses all up and down the East Coast and as far south as the West Indies; employing hundreds, and continuing to make generous philanthropic donations, including the construction of the Westport Friends Meeting House (which still stands today).

However Cuffe had also become frustrated with the snails' pace of progress for enslaved Black Americans and rather than continue to push for abolition, he began to seriously explore the idea of repatriation --that is to say, resettlement. His earlier seafaring role had taken him to Sierra Leone on multiple occasions, and in 1811 he financed and launched his own expedition there, sailing with an all-African, all-free crew to Freetown, and establishing connections with an eye towards encouraging a larger-scale emigration; enabling greater trade (and improved education) in West Africa. In 1812 Cuffe was welcomed to the national capital by President James Madison and Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin --the White House's very first Black guest. Madison, himself a proponent of recolonization, had intended to make use of Cuffe's expertise but the War of 1812 interrupted any further potential progress. Another voyage in 1815 further solidified Cuffe's project, but the following year his efforts were eclipsed by a much larger and better-funded project: the American Colonization Society (ACS), which would ultimately lead to the founding of Liberia. While Cuffe himself opted not to support the ACS, his efforts nonetheless mark a significant shift in public sentiment, and it may be argued that the "Back To Africa" movement began with him.

Why have we never heard about this man? "Because he blows up the Helplessness Narrative; the idea that all Black people were powerless before emancipation. Cuffe knew that freedom was about more than status; it was about access. It wasn't about abandoning the U.S.; it was about expanding what freedom could look like." (You following Ashley The Baroness, by the way? Well, you should be.)

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Yeah, yeah, happy fourth of July and all that. For some reason I'm just not in much of a celebratory mood this year --can't imagine why. Maybe I'll set aside some time this weekend to re-read the Declaration of Independence and meditate anew upon its words (see Lesson #15 in this series), but who knows? Anyway, I thought it important to tell you a bit about a name from the 1770's that you almost certainly hadn't heard of: Violet Thayer. Born enslaved into the family of Ephraim and Elizabeth (Heywood) Hartwell in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Violet worked in the family tavern (most of which still stands today); a site perhaps most famous as the location where, on the morning of April 19, 1775, rider Samuel Prescott would evade capture from British patrols and spread the alert to the locals, before then proceeding ahead to Concord. The Hartwells had many children and were in fact among the largest landowners in Lincoln --the tavern and the nearby house sat on a plot of 30 acres. The three eldest sons had already joined the local "minute men" militia and saw action in Concord later that day. According to local lore, Violet was in fact the first person alerted by Prescott, and who in turn alerted the Hartwells and nearby neighbors that morning, though some elements of this tale may be apocryphal.

What is concretely known about Violet, however, happened after the Revolution. In 1783 the still-new Massachusetts State Supreme Court ruled that slavery would no longer be enforceable in that state, as per the Declaration Of Rights in the freshly-ratified state constitution. However this may have been seen as a mere technicality, as the state legislature never actually formally banned slavery until 1790; the reality being that, just as with their neighbors in the South, the hotly-contested question had arisen as to whether or not former slaveowners might in fact somehow be entitled to compensation for their "loss of property." For his part Ephraim Hartwell did not consider Violet to be free, and in fact willed Violet's service to his wife Elizabeth upon his death. Though when he actually did pass away in 1793, an inventory of the estate listed Violet under a category of "All other free persons," which was at the time understood to mean "paid servant." With only a few scraps of surviving financial paperwork available to study, Violet's actual legal standing at the time really does remain unclear, but regardless she set out on her own in 1800. Rather than keep the surname Hartwell, she took the name Thayer for herself, though what prompted this decision is also not known.

Earning money as a seamstress, Violet ultimately accrued enough savings to be able to make interest-bearing loans to several of Lincoln's more prominent citizens --significant in a time when the town itself did not yet have any banks. Also significantly for a single Black woman of the time, she accumulated a fair amount of wealth and possessions for herself, though she never appears to have put down roots of her own at any fixed address ...and that's where things again get complicated. After seven weeks of prolonged illness, Violet is believed to have died in February 1813, having never married nor bore children. Which is where Ephraim's eldest son John Hartwell and his wife Hepzibah, stepped in and petitioned a probate court to appoint them as Violet's administrators. Legally this responsibility should have fallen to Violet's still-living mother, but she was blind and Hartwell was able to make the case. In short order, Hartwell inventoried the full account of every possession, loan, and dollar Violet had to her name --and then reimbursed himself for all of it (a total of $114) for "boarding, nursing, fuel, and candles" for the full seven weeks of Violet's illness. And as a final indignity, Hartwell meticulously calculated that even after having helped himself to literally everything, that he was somehow still owed $4.74.

Violet's lifetime of unpaid servitude to multiple generations of the Hartwell family, is today prominently recorded and described at the still-standing Hartwell Tavern, along the famed Battle Road in Minute Man National Historical Park. Once again I am stymied by the disappointing reality that no visual depiction of my chosen subject exists (not even by another artist!), and so rather than poke away at a meaningless pen-and-ink drawing of the tavern, I humbly present something from my own imagination: a little more abstract... but hopefully a little more respectful. Unfortunately Violet's story has no real triumph in it, no heroic accomplishments nor a happy ending --and that is a stark reality that one must cope with, when studying such histories. For every "uplifting" tale of Black American triumph, there are a hundred unsung, mundane stories of people whose lives were ultimately unelevated. We Americans and our fierce addiction to Heroic StorytellingTM need to be more cognizant of this... particularly on a disappointing day such as today.

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To wrap up Pride Month 2025, I did want to spend at least a couple of minutes talking about Norris B. (Bumstead) Herndon, a name you almost certainly haven't heard of. Born in 1897 Atlanta, Georgia, Norris was the only child of Alonzo Herndon, himself a former slave and then sharecropper who had risen out of poverty to become the founder of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company --literally one of the richest Black men in America at the time, already setting Norris very much apart, as a person of colour born into such relatively high status and to such a 'legend-in-his-own-time' figure. His mother Adrienne was likewise a successful and popular actress, instilling in her son a love of the theater and artistry. At the age of seven Alonzo brought his son along to an early organizational meeting of the Niagra Movement --a precursor to what would eventually become known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Norris was by all accounts an extremely introverted and private man, even though his father was intent on encouraging him to follow a "straight and narrow" path through life, with an eye towards eventually inheriting his role as president of Atlanta Life Insurance. Herndon graduated from Atlanta University in 1919, and then attained a Master's from Harvard University's Business School in 1921 (one of only two Black Americans in that year's graduating class). Alonzo rebuked his son for his "lifestyle choices" during his years at Harvard, which may have been a veiled code for behaviours that could have potentially jeopardized his upcoming succession. More or less on cue, after his father's death in 1927, Herndon did indeed assume leadership of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company; at the same time his stepmother, Jessie Gillespie, became the company's vice president. Over the tenure of his stewardship, Atlanta Life Insurance's assets would grow from $1 million to $45 million. Among the company's clients included Martin Luther King, Jr., who was considered too "high risk" for mainstream life insurers.

What Norris was perhaps best known for, was the scale of his philanthropic donations. Over the years he donated to many civil rights advocacy movements, to include the United Negro College Fund, Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, the National Urban League, and of course the NAACP. His notoriety landed him on the cover of Ebony magazine in 1955, under the headline "The Millionaire Nobody Knows." Despite his unparalleled generosity, his reclusive nature was always something of a talking point --he disdained large-scale public events and deeply disliked the necessity of having to meet with famous or other wealthy people as a routine part of his own charitable giving. Norris never married nor fathered any children, and died in 1977. In 2002 it was first theorized that Herndon's sexual orientation may have been something of an "open secret" in his day, given the social circles in which he moved and his status --not to mention his strikingly good looks and his naturally sweet disposition. Despite never having come out the closet in his lifetime, the still-extant Herndon Foundation (which today controls 73% of Atlanta Life Insurance), acknowledges Norris's probable orientation.

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"A lot of people relate to politics as a kind of intellectual exercise. They are knowledgeable about the major issues oppressed people face; they follow current events; they may express opinions or write about injustice. What they are less likely to do is to get involved in the day to day work of organizing to make fundamental political change. They do not put themselves in situations of learning from and being led by those who are most directly targeted by systemic oppression. My observation is that all of our major leaps forward toward liberation come from the grassroots, not from the top down."

This Pride Month I have been (at the insistence of several dear friends) reading and studying the writings of Barbara Smith; author, educator, and activist. Smith was born (along with a twin sister, Beverly) in 1946 Cleveland, Ohio, to a family that prioritized education --her mother Hilda was the first generation in her family to graduate from college. Though Hilda sadly died when her daughters were only nine, her maternal grandmother then took up the responsibility, and in 1969 Smith earned a B.A. from Mount Holyoke, and then in 1971 attained her Master's from the University of Pittsburgh. She promptly took a faculty position at Emerson College.

Activism would seem to have been baked into Smith's very soul; besides being a part of the some of the earliest boycotts and protests of the 1960's, one of her earliest and still most significant accomplishments was in 1974; the founding of the Combahee River Collective in Boston, Mass. Its mission statement (co-authored with her sister Beverly and Demita Frazier) stated, in part, a commitment to exploring the intersection of multiple social oppressions within the wider feminist movement; not just racism but also heterosexism. The Collective and its published analyses encouraged more women to identify as lesbian or transgender, or in fact any other sexual orientation in the context of their social justice work. Over the course of her burgeoning lecturing and publishing career, Smith's orbit intersected with that of Audrey Lorde (see Lesson #12 in this series); and in 1980 they developed Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, significant as the first U.S.-based publisher of books for women of color. In 1983 one of Smith's projects, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, became the first publication to consciously integrate Black lesbian authors with those of other Black writers.

In 1994 Smith received the Stonewall Award for Service to the Lesbian and Gay Community, and in 1995-1996 served on the advisory council of the Arturo Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (see Lesson #131). In 2005 she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and that same year briefly entered politics when she was elected to the Albany, NY city council.

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Everybody raise a glass to activist Opal Lee, one of the driving forces behind how we even got a Juneteenth in the first place.

Born Opal Flake in 1926 Texas, her home burned down when she was a small child and the family moved to Fort Worth. In 1939 the family purchased a home in a south side Fort Worth neighborhood --the first Black family to do so, which didn't sit well with some of the neighbors, and after only a few weeks an angry mob burned the house down. Despite these dual childhood traumas, Opal graduated from high school in 1943, and then eventually from Wiley College in 1953. She took a job teaching at an elementary school in Fort Worth, married fellow educator Dale Lee, and ultimately earned a Master's in counseling in 1968, from the North Texas State University (today the University of North Texas). She retired from her career in education in 1977 at the age of 51... and was clearly just getting started.

Beginning with a post-retirement career supervising a local food bank and its adjacent 13-acre farm, expanding it to a 33,000 sq. foot facility that today serves upwards of 500 families a day. More recently she also founded Transform 1012 N. Main Street, a coalition of Fort Worth area nonprofits and arts organizations aiming to reconstruct a former Ku Klux Klan auditorium into the Fred Rouse Arts Center (named for a Black man who was lynched by a Fort Worth mob in 1921). But Lee's greatest passion was always aimed toward preservation of local Black history, leading into the founding of the Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society. It was from this starting point that June 19th began to be more widely acknowledged and celebrated as a yearly event. Each year Lee and other members of the society made a point of walking two and a half miles, symbolically covering the number of years between the formal end of enslavement (i.e., the Emancipation Proclamation) and the time most Texans found out about it.

In 2016, now at the age of 89, Lee took the advice of the society to "go bigger," and walked from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. (a distance of roughly 1,360 miles), taking more than five months to complete and collecting enthusiastic signatures along the way, in support of the premise of at last elevating Juneteenth to the status of a national holiday. On June 17, 2021, Lee was present at the White House when then-President Joe Biden signed the bill officially marking Juneteenth as an annual federal holiday. Today Lee is the oldest living member of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF), and is both a board member --and Honorary Chair-- of the National Juneteenth Museum. She was named by the Dallas Morning News as 2021's "Unsung Hero of the Pandemic," has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2024 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

This past year, Habitat For Humanity built and gifted Opal a new house on the very Fort Worth lot where a racist mob burned down her family's home 85 years prior.

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Adama On Police States

It's astonishing just how many times I've seen this quote drift past my Tumblr, these past few days.

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"Intersectionality asks us to examine the places where we are marginalized but it also demands that we examine how and why those of us who are marginalized can in turn exercise marginalization over others. It demands that we do better by one another so that we can be more powerful together."

At the five-year mark of the start of this project, and also at the start of Pride Month, I can think of no-one more appropriate to talk about than organizer, author, and activist Alicia Garza, one of the original coiners of the phrase Black Lives Matter.

Born in 1981 Oakland, Garza grew up hyper-aware of social injustice issues and became actively involved in activism at the age of twelve, beginning with promotion of improved sex education and better access to birth control. She graduated from University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2002 with a degree in anthropology and sociology; in her final year at that institution she founded the first Women of Color Conference. She would later become a member --and eventually serve on the board of directors of-- the Oakland-based School of Liberation and Unity (SOUL).

On July 13, 2013, after the heartbreaking acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murderer, Garza took to Facebook and posted an essay titled A Love Letter to Black People. In it she opines: "I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter... stop giving up on Black life." She added, "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter." A mutual friend, Opal Tometi, reshared the essay with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, and the phrase quickly grew into a national call to action, arguably becoming the most well-known civil rights refrain since Black Power. Instances of the hashtag spiked in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, again after Eric Garner's murder in New York, and of course in the wake of George Floyd's death. Garza, along with cofounders Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, formally launched the Black Lives Matter Movement, with its stated aim of addressing violence towards Black Americans --particularly by law enforcement-- and pushing back against the inherent, embedded racism that lies at the core of such issues as generational poverty and mass incarceration.

Today Garza is a director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), an advocacy organization for the rights and working conditions of domestic housekeepers. She has written countless articles for many magazines and periodicals on the subjects of queer activism and social justice, and is the author of The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (October 2020, One World publishing). In 2016 she was included in Fortune magazine's prestigious "50 of the Most Influential World Leaders" list. Among the many awards Garza has received for her work include the Local Hero award from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the Harvey Milk Democratic Club's Bayard Rustin Community Activist Award (which she has in fact now won twice).

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"One of the five bravest American soldiers in the war."      --Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

This Decoration Day/Memorial Day we remember the heroic career of U.S. Army Sergeant (William) Henry Johnson. This particular trading card will be the last (for now) of my series-within-a-series of "mysteriously" absent biographies that aren't showing up on .mil and .gov websites anymore.

Born in 1892 North Carolina, Henry Johnson moved to Albany, New York and worked a number of jobs --including as a redcap porter at Union Station -- before enlisting in 1917. Signing on with the famed all-Black 369th Infantry ("Harlem Hellfighters," previously covered in Lessons #36, #60, #143, and #151 of this series); Johnson saw front-line action almost immediately in 1918.

At the time the 369th was brigaded with a French army colonial unit in the Champagne region, along the notorious western front. On the night of May 15, 1918, Pvt. Johnson and fellow Pvt. Needham Roberts were attacked in the Argonne forest by a German raiding party of approximately 12 soldiers. Roberts was wounded and very nearly made prisoner, but Johnson fought back in close-quartered combat with a French bolo knife, killing four of the enemy and managing to get Roberts to safety, though sustaining many wounds himself.

In the aftermath of his heroic actions, France awarded Johnson and Roberts the Croix de guerre with star and bronze palm; making them the first-ever American soldiers in World War I to receive such an honor. Pvt. Johnson's valor was even publicly praised by Gen. Pershing in an article in The Saturday Evening Post, and he was discharged in 1919 at the rank of Sergeant, complete with a victory parade in New York City. Unfortunately Johnson's notoriety would be of little use to him upon his return to civilian life; due to his wounds he was unable to return to work, even to his old porter job. For a time Johnson conducted a brief series of lecture tours but these soon became unpopular as he was unwilling to stick to many of the established fictions (such as the notion that white and Black American soldiers harmoniously fought side-by-side in the trenches), and he died in relative obscurity in 1929... though he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

On June 2, 2015, Johnson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama. On June 5, 2023, the former Fort Polk in Leesville, Louisiana was formally renamed to Fort Johnson in his honor.

(A glimmer of encouragement this Memorial Day --mind you, it is only the merest glimmer): the army.mil biographical page about Sgt. Johnson, at least as of this month, includes a prominent banner that reads: "We have deliberately taken some of our webpages offline in order to comply with Executive Orders and OSD Policy. The intent is to preserve our history, and we are working to re-publish content as soon as possible." While this is still a far cry from undoing actual censorship of Black history, it is at least a tacit acknowledgement from the U.S. Army's policymakers that there are some problematic regulations currently getting in the way of an honest historical reckoning. Whether or not anything more decisive is to happen in the coming months, is of course still an unknown. But when I pair this development along with this week's announcement that the U.S. Naval Academy library has restored most of the 400+ books that had been yanked from its shelves because of "DEI," there is cause for minuscule amounts of optimism.

Heaven knows it is certainly a far more appropriate --and respectful-- way of honoring U.S. military service than staging an expensive Third World dictator-style military parade through the streets of Washington, D.C.)

[petervintonjr]

Another conspicuously-absent biography that is no longer locatable on the usual .mil addresses; today we take a brief look at the remarkable achievements of Patricia ("Pat") White: not only the first Black woman Air Force Academy graduate who would then go on to complete pilot training, but in the bargain to also be the first Black woman to graduate from Vance Air Force Base's famed pilot training program (1987). A Gulf War veteran, White is today a 787 pilot for United Airlines.

Read some inspiring first-person accolades by White's cousin, Valerie Lawson, who now also aspires to be a pilot: https://www.ethelwalker.org/middle-school-student-achieves-her-dream-of-flying/ This one's been pretty thoroughly scrubbed, folks --even the mighty Wayback Machine isn't returning a whole lot: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.aetc.af.mil/News/Article/3509976/patricia-white-vances-first-black-female-pilot-training-graduate/*) Anyone have better sources/info? Let me know what you find. Ambitious girls like Valerie Lawson deserve to know more.

[petervintonjr]

"I decided to focus on something I could do every day versus maybe going to the moon one time... which would be awesome, but it's just one time. So I started to looking at the jets and flying fighters."

Back to my ongoing mini-study-within-a-study of Black heroes of the U.S. Armed Forces, whose biographies that somehow just don't seem to be popping up on the usual .mil and .gov websites any more. Today we celebrate the achievements of Lt. Col Shawna Rochelle Kimbrell, the first-ever Black fighter pilot in the history of the U.S. Air Force.

Born in 1976 Indiana, Shawna Ng A Qui made the decision to become a pilot early (as so many pilots seem to do!); in her case at the age of nine. She took her first flight lesson at the age of fourteen, joined the Civil Air Patrol, earned a private pilot's license. She received her commission from the U.S. Air Force Academy, graduating in 1998 with a BS in Engineering, and from there attended the famed Undergraduate Pilot Training at Laughlin AFB. She earned her pilot's wings a year later and then moved on to Fighter Fundamentals at Randolph AFB, and finally attained operational proficiency on the F-16 fighter jet in 2000 --making her the first-ever Black woman fighter pilot in that branch of service.

Kimbrell's first deployment was to the 13th Fighter Squadron in Misawa, Japan (2001 - 2003); where she served as an F-16 fighter pilot. During that time she flew missions in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, in support of Operation Northern and Southern Watch. While in Operation Northern Watch, Kimbrell notched another milestone as the first Black woman to fly in a combat mission for the 35th Fighter Wing, and to employ ordnance in combat. Between 2004 and 2007 while deployed to Iraq, took over as the 2nd Brigade Air Liaison Officer (Operation Iraqi Freedom). After that tour, she was reassigned to the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano Air Base in Italy where she served as Aircrew Flight Equipment Flight Commander, and then as Assistant Director of Operations for the 555th Fighter Squadron. She then became an instructor and course manager for the Air Liaison Officer Qualification Course with the 6th Combat Training Squadron at Nellis AFB (Nevada). Lt. Col. Kimbrell has since retired from active duty (effective 2013) and is now in the Air Force Reserves; she is currently a member of the 78th Attack Squadron and serves as an MQ-9 pilot and Mission Commander at Creech AFB (Nevada).

Lt. Col. Kimbrell has logged over 2,100 flight hours and has been awarded numerous awards throughout her career, to include five Aerial Achievement Medals, two Air Force Commendations Medals and the National Defense Service Medal.

"I literally see the lights turn on in kids' eyes when I talk to them when they realize that someone like me can go do something as cool as being a fighter pilot."