#african americans rights

[writinghistorylit]

[yourdailyqueer]

Chanelle Pickett (deceased)

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: 6 August 1972 

RIP: 20 November 1995

Ethnicity: African American

Occupation: Entrepreneur, activist

Note: Death helped inspire the creation of the Transgender Day of Remembrance

[mimi-0007]

For the ppl in the back!!

[alwaysbewoke]

Thomas Jennings was a free man born in 1791 in New York City. He was 30 years old when he was granted a patent for a dry cleaning process. In his early 20s Thomas Jennings became a tailor, and later opened a dry cleaning business in the city. As a tailor. Jennings' skills were so admired that people near and far came to him to alter or custom tailor items of clothing for them. Eventually, Jennings reputation grew such that he was able to open his own store on Church street which grew into one of the largest clothing stores in New York City. While running his business Jennings developed dry-scouring. He had many customers complain of their clothes being ruined by stains and so he began experimenting with cleaners and mixtures that would remove the stains without harming the material. He earned a large amount of money as a tailor and even more with his dry scouring invention and most of the money he earned went to his abolitionist activities. In 1831, Thomas Jennings became assistant secretary for the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia, PA. Thomas L. Jennings Dry Scouring technique created modern day dry cleaning. Jennings was fortunate that he was a free man at the time of his invention. Besides all the other indignities and cruelties slaves had to face, they were also ineligible to hold a patent. Under the US patent laws of 1793 a person must sign an oath or declaration stating that they were a citizen of the USA. While there were, apparently, provisions through which a slave could enjoy patent protection, the ability of a slave to seek out, receive and defend a patent was unlikely. Later, in 1858, the patent office changed the laws, stating that since slaves were not citizens, they could not hold a patent. Furthermore, the court said that the slave owner, not being the true inventor could not apply for a patent either. Thomas Jennings died in New York City in 1856.

[effeminateebony]

Civil Rights For All

All Black Lives Matter

[queerism1969]

[nickysfacts]

This makes Tiana the Princess of Creole Cuisine!

🍽️👩🏾‍🦱👑

[writinghistorylit]

[kemetic-dreams]

Anti-literacy laws in many slave states before and during the American Civil War affected slaves, freedmen, and in some cases all people of color. Some laws arose from concerns that literate slaves could forge the documents required to escape to a free state. According to William M. Banks, "Many slaves who learned to write did indeed achieve freedom by this method. The wanted posters for runaways often mentioned whether the escapee could write." Anti-literacy laws also arose from fears of slave insurrection, particularly around the time of abolitionist David Walker's 1829 publication of Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which openly advocated rebellion, and Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831.

The United States is the only country known to have had anti-literacy laws.

Significant anti-African laws include:

1829, Georgia: Prohibited teaching Africans to read, punished by fine and imprisonment

1830, Louisiana, North Carolina: passes law punishing anyone teaching Africans to read with fines, imprisonment or floggings 

1832, Alabama and Virginia: Prohibited Europeans from teaching Africans to read or write, punished by fines and floggings

1833, Georgia: Prohibited Africans from working in reading or writing jobs (via an employment law), and prohibited teaching Africans, punished by fines and whippings (via an anti-literacy law)

1847, Missouri: Prohibited assembling or teaching slaves to read or write

Mississippi state law required a white person to serve up to a year in prison as "penalty for teaching a slave to read."

A 19th-century Virginia law specified: "[E]very assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly. Any justice may issue his warrant to any office or other person, requiring him to enter any place where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro therein; and he, or any other justice, may order such negro to be punished with stripes."

In North Carolina, African people who disobeyed the law were sentenced to whipping while whites received a fine, jail time, or both.

AME Bishop William Henry Heard remembered from his enslaved childhood in Georgia that any slave caught writing "suffered the penalty of having his forefinger cut from his right hand." Other formerly enslaved people had similar memories of disfigurement and severe punishments for reading and writing.

Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee were the only three slave states that did not enact a legal prohibition on educating slaves.

It is estimated that only 5% to 10% of enslaved African Americans became literate, to some degree, before the American Civil War

[yourdailyqueer]

Monique Thomas (deceased)

Gender: Transgender woman

Sexuality: N/A

DOB: 30 March 1963  

RIP: 11 September 1998

Ethnicity: African American

Occupation: N/A

Note: Her death, along with the murders of other Black transgender women in Boston, led to the creation of International Transgender Day of Remembrance.

[mimi-0007]

[bitter69uk]

Q: Do you get off on being tempestuous?

A: “What do you mean “get off”? That’s just the way I am.”

Q: How would you like to be remembered?

A: “I want to be remembered as a diva from beginning to end who never compromised in what she felt about racism and how the world should be, and who to the end of her days consistently stayed the same.”

Q: But isn’t life about evolving and changing?

A: “Not for me.”

/ Brantley Bardin interviewing legend-with-an-attitude with Nina Simone in Details magazine, January 1997 /

Born on this day: lacerating, regal and fierce High Priestess of Soul Nina Simone (née Eunice Kathleen Waymon, 21 February 1933 – 21 April 2003). I’d argue Simone was at her artistic zenith between 1964 – 1966, when she recorded essential statements like “I Put a Spell on You”, “Work Song” (“I left the grocery store man bleeding …”), “Ne Me Quitte Pas”, “Wild is the Wind”, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, “I Hold No Grudge” and especially “Four Women” (“I’m gonna kill the first mutha I see …”). Pictured: portrait of Simone by Herb Snitzer, 1959.

[alwaysbewoke]

[commiepinkofag]

Take Action Against KOSA

EFF Comparison of House & Senate KOSA bills:

The House version of KOSA could still: 

Suppress search results for young people seeking sexual health and reproductive rights information; 

Block content relevant to the history of oppressed groups, such as the history of slavery in the U.S; 

Stifle youth activists across the political spectrum by preventing them from connecting and advocating on their platforms; and 

Block young people seeking help for mental health or addiction problems from accessing resources and support. 

Lawmakers know this bill is controversial. Some of its proponents have recently taken steps to attach KOSA as an amendment to the five-year reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, the last "must-pass" legislation until the fall. This would effectively bypass public discussion of the House version. Just last month Congress attached another contentious, potentially unconstitutional bill to unrelated legislation, by including a bill banning TikTok inside of a foreign aid package. Legislation of this magnitude deserves to pass—or fail—on its own merits.