#antebellum u.s.

[claudia1829things]

TIME MACHINE: Mary S. Peake

TIME MACHINE: MARY S. PEAKE

One of the least known historical figures from the 19th century an American educator and humanitarian named Mary S. Peake. Along with her husband, Mrs. Peake was a member of the African American elite community from Hampton, Virginia before the U.S. Civil War.

In 1823 Norfolk, Virginia; Mary Peake was born as Mary Smith Kelsey to a light-skinned free woman of color and an Englishman. Her mother sent Mary to live with her aunt in Alexandria (then part of the District of Columbia), so that she could attend school. Mary spent another eight years attending a primary school operated by Sylvia Morris. Since Alexandria was part of the District of Columbia until 1846, when it was retro-ceded to Virgina. A new U.S. Congress law prohibited free people of color in Virginia and several other Southern states from being educated. This prohibition came as a result from the Nat Turner Rebellion in 1831. When Alexandria was retro-ceded back to Virginia in 1846, all schools for free people of color were closed due to this law. However, Mary had completed her education at age sixteen by 1839 and returned to her family in Norfolk.

Not long after her return to Norfolk, Mary secretly taught some of the city's slaves and free blacks to read and write in defiance of the law that prohibited African Americans from receiving an education. Her widowed mother married a free man of color named Thompson Walker in 1847 and the family moved to Hampton, Virginia, where they purchased a house. In 1850-51, Mary married Thomas Peake, a freed slave who worked in the merchant marine. The couple had a daughter named Hattie, whom they nicknamed "Daisy". As she had done in Norfolk, Mary began teaching some of the neighborhood's slaves and free blacks in defiance of the law prohibiting their education. Kelsey also founded a women's charitable organization, called the Daughters of Zion, whose mission was to assist the poor, the sick and enslaved fugitives who managed to reach Hampton. She supported herself and her family as a dressmaker and continued to teach in secret. Among her adult students was her stepfather Thompson Walker, who became a leader of Hampton's black community.

A few weeks following the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, Union forces assumed control of the nearby Fort Monroe. The fortification became a place of refuge for enslaved fugitives seeking asylum. The Union defined them as "contraband", a legal status to prevent their being returned to Confederate slaveholders. They built the Grand Contraband Camp near, but outside the protection of Fort Monroe. Her classes moved inside Fort Monroe, after Confederate forces torched Hampton in August 1861. After Mary Peake began teaching the fugitives' children, the American Missionary Association (AMA) hired her as its first paid black teacher. Mary taught her first class and many others under a large oak tree on September 17, 1861; in Phoebus, a small town nearby in Elizabeth City County.

Eventually, the AMA provided Peake with Brown Cottage, which is considered the first facility of Hampton Institute (and later Hampton University). Mary's school taught more than fifty children during the day and twenty adults at night. Due to her classes being held at Brown Cottage, Mary became associated with the AMA’s later founding of Hampton University in 1868. However, Mary never enjoyed this distinction during her lifetime. Before the war, she had contracted tuberculosis. The illness struck her again in February 1862. And on February 22, 1862 - George Washington's birthday - Mary Peake died of tuberculosis.

For more details on Mary S. Peake, I recommend the following book:

"Mary S. Peake, The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe" by Rev. Lewis C. Lockwood

[fatehbaz]

In fact, far more Asian workers moved to the Americas in the 19th century to make sugar than to build the transcontinental railroad [...]. [T]housands of Chinese migrants were recruited to work [...] on Louisiana’s sugar plantations after the Civil War. [...] Recruited and reviled as "coolies," their presence in sugar production helped justify racial exclusion after the abolition of slavery.

In places where sugar cane is grown, such as Mauritius, Fiji, Hawaii, Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname, there is usually a sizable population of Asians who can trace their ancestry to India, China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. They are descendants of sugar plantation workers, whose migration and labor embodied the limitations and contradictions of chattel slavery’s slow death in the 19th century. [...]

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Mass consumption of sugar in industrializing Europe and North America rested on mass production of sugar by enslaved Africans in the colonies. The whip, the market, and the law institutionalized slavery across the Americas, including in the U.S. When the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791 and Napoleon Bonaparte’s mission to reclaim Saint-Domingue, France’s most prized colony, failed, slaveholding regimes around the world grew alarmed. In response to a series of slave rebellions in its own sugar colonies, especially in Jamaica, the British Empire formally abolished slavery in the 1830s. British emancipation included a payment of £20 million to slave owners, an immense sum of money that British taxpayers made loan payments on until 2015.

Importing indentured labor from Asia emerged as a potential way to maintain the British Empire’s sugar plantation system.

In 1838 John Gladstone, father of future prime minister William E. Gladstone, arranged for the shipment of 396 South Asian workers, bound to five years of indentured labor, to his sugar estates in British Guiana. The experiment with “Gladstone coolies,” as those workers came to be known, inaugurated [...] “a new system of [...] [indentured servitude],” which would endure for nearly a century. [...]

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Bonaparte [...] agreed to sell France's claims [...] to the U.S. [...] in 1803, in [...] the Louisiana Purchase. Plantation owners who escaped Saint-Domingue [Haiti] with their enslaved workers helped establish a booming sugar industry in southern Louisiana. On huge plantations surrounding New Orleans, home of the largest slave market in the antebellum South, sugar production took off in the first half of the 19th century. By 1853, Louisiana was producing nearly 25% of all exportable sugar in the world. [...] On the eve of the Civil War, Louisiana’s sugar industry was valued at US$200 million. More than half of that figure represented the valuation of the ownership of human beings – Black people who did the backbreaking labor [...]. By the war’s end, approximately $193 million of the sugar industry’s prewar value had vanished.

Desperate to regain power and authority after the war, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters studied and learned from their Caribbean counterparts. They, too, looked to Asian workers for their salvation, fantasizing that so-called “coolies” [...].

Thousands of Chinese workers landed in Louisiana between 1866 and 1870, recruited from the Caribbean, China and California. Bound to multiyear contracts, they symbolized Louisiana planters’ racial hope [...].

To great fanfare, Louisiana’s wealthiest planters spent thousands of dollars to recruit gangs of Chinese workers. When 140 Chinese laborers arrived on Millaudon plantation near New Orleans on July 4, 1870, at a cost of about $10,000 in recruitment fees, the New Orleans Times reported that they were “young, athletic, intelligent, sober and cleanly” and superior to “the vast majority of our African population.” [...] But [...] [w]hen they heard that other workers earned more, they demanded the same. When planters refused, they ran away. The Chinese recruits, the Planters’ Banner observed in 1871, were “fond of changing about, run away worse than [Black people], and … leave as soon as anybody offers them higher wages.”

When Congress debated excluding the Chinese from the United States in 1882, Rep. Horace F. Page of California argued that the United States could not allow the entry of “millions of cooly slaves and serfs.” That racial reasoning would justify a long series of anti-Asian laws and policies on immigration and naturalization for nearly a century.

---

All text above by: Moon-Ho Jung. "Making sugar, making 'coolies': Chinese laborers toiled alongside Black workers on 19th-century Louisiana plantations". The Conversation. 13 January 2022. [All bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[odinsblog]

One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement’s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: “I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,” Falwell writes, “growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court’s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.” Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti- Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves “new abolitionists,” invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.

When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”

Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

So what then were the real origins of the religious right? It turns out that the movement can trace its political roots back to a court ruling, but not Roe v. Wade.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero.

In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case, now Green v. Connally (John Connally had replaced David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury). The decision upheld the new IRS policy: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.”

Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening.

In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes.

“The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” Weyrich believed that the political possibilities of such a coalition were unlimited. “The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated,” he wrote. “If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.”

But this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990.

The Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. Falwell was furious. “In some states,” he famously complained, “It’s easier to open a massage parlor than a Christian school.”

One such school, Bob Jones University—a fundamentalist college in Greenville, South Carolina—was especially obdurate. The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans.

Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation. For decades, evangelical leaders had boasted that because their educational institutions accepted no federal money (except for, of course, not having to pay taxes) the government could not tell them how to run their shops—whom to hire or not, whom to admit or reject.

The Civil Rights Act, however, changed that calculus.

(continue reading)

[allthatglittersisnotgoldrush]

The Road So Far: A Brief Summary of the Gold Rush AU (Part I, by TolkienGirl)

Recently a reader brought to our attention the need for a succinct narrative summary of the events of the AU. In addition to compiling that (please see Part I, covering the "pre-series" timeline through Maedhros' capture), we refer you to our Wordpress, which includes a timeline and an organization of our first four "Series"... that is, the order of chapter fics and one-shots, vignettes and flashbacks etc., into plot arcs that could roughly provide the basis for "All That Glitters," the prestige TV show.

EVENTS OCCURING PRE-1851

 [Stories detailing these events are sprinkled throughout the chronological timeline]

The pre-canon timeline begins in the late 1700s/early 1800s when Finwe, a talented metalworker, emigrates from Ireland, settles in Philadelphia to work in the steel-business, and marries Miriel (whose mental and physical health are precarious). Feanor is born in 1807, when Miriel dies in childbirth. Finwe, a Catholic, marries Indis, an Anglican woman (whose family disapproves of the match) in 1808. Thereafter, Fingolfin (1809) and Finarfin (1810) are born.

When Feanor is going on eighteen, Finwe relocates to New York, where Manwe Sulimo is a rising politician. Finwe is interested in locally representing Irish interests. Feanor is apprenticed in Boston to Aule, a blacksmith, and meets Nerdanel (b. 1809), then a lonely girl in finishing school.

They are married in 1827, despite the disapproval of Nerdanel’s Scottish father (Mahtan), settle in the Hudson Valley on Formenos farm, and have seven sons: Maedhros (b. 1828), Maglor (b. 1829), Celegorm (b. 1832), Caranthir (b. 1835), Curufin (b. 1836), and twins Amrod and Amras (b. 1837).

Meanwhile, Finarfin elopes with Earwen in Ulmo’s Bridge (Missouri) in 1828, temporarily earning Finwe’s disapproval. Finrod is born in 1829, Angrod in 1833, Aegnor in 1834, and Galadriel in 1836.

Fingolfin marries Anaire (of French descent) in NYC in 1830. Fingon is born in 1831, Turgon in 1833, Aredhel in 1834, and Argon in 1837.

In 1832, Manwe’s older brother Melkor Bauglir (who inherited the family plantation in the antebellum South) visits New York, taking an interest in influencing politics. At a dinner hosted by Manwe, Finwe and Feanor encounter Melkor, and Feanor (being an abolitionist, naturally) helps Melkor’s slave Rumil, an accomplished mapmaker, escape.

Following his encounter with Melkor, Feanor’s paranoia increases, which leads him to be stricter with his children (especially Maedhros) and to secretly abuse Maedhros as a way of trying to teach him to endure pain. When Nerdanel discovers this, she puts a stop to it, but Maedhros develops an early understanding that he is to serve as a protector of his family, including his father, if need be.

In 1835, Finwe is elected to City Council in New York. In 1837, Feanor buys an additional home in the City to keep tabs on his half-family. In 1841, Rumil, who has relocated to California, has met a land-holder and cattle-rancher, Elu Thingol (a Spaniard, married to a Chinese woman, Melian). Rumil and Thingol have negotiated for Rumil to take over a property called Mithrim, which contains a diamond mine that Rumil thinks Feanor would be best able to help access and harvest. Feanor conducts a secret mission to California, reconnecting with Rumil, building the Mithrim bridge, and finding a large diamond. Suspicious of Feanor’s activity, Melkor visits Formenos in April (shortly after Feanor’s departure) and takes an interest in 13-year-old Maedhros. Without Feanor to manage the farm or provide for the family, Nerdanel and the boys endure a hard winter. Maedhros begins to develop a tendency towards disturbing premonitions.

Feanor returns in 1842, gifting the diamond to Finwe. Melkor, intrigued by the happenings out west, visits Doriath but is turned away after showing lecherous attentions to 13-year-old Luthien. He begins to explore the continental U.S. more broadly, and, in doing business with a former nautical mapmaker, takes an interest in his 18-year-old daughter Estrela (Arien). After Estrela refuses his proposal of marriage, Melkor has his protégé Mairon capture and torture her. Renamed “Belle,” she is then enslaved as part of a workforce that Melkor uses to advance his westward projects, supervised by a former plantation overseer of his, Cosomoco Gothmog.

In 1843, Morgoth’s steel manufacturing enterprise (one of his eastern ventures) is found to be corrupt and rife with worker abuse. He is recalled from his western travels and sanctioned. He is confined to house arrest rather than being imprisoned. Meanwhile, Feanor sends Maedhros and Maglor to be educated in the city, though he chooses not to send any of the younger boys, which negatively contributes to Celegorm’s self-perception. For the next several years, Maedhros struggles against the temptations of high society while Maglor begins a promising musical education/career. There is increasing unrest between Feanor and his half-family, but Fingon and Maedhros form a very strong mutual friendship.

In 1847, Finwe retires from City Council (with a ceili/party at Formenos). Maedhros meets Finrod’s friend Esther Landau, a young Jewish woman. Feanor and Finwe intend to have Maedhros fill Finwe’s seat on City Council, while Maedhros is more interested in proposing to Esther. In the end, neither event comes to pass: at the end of 1848, Maedhros rejects his grandfather and father’s plans, quarrels with Feanor, and privately breaks off his relationship with Esther without ever introducing her to his family. Just before this, Finrod departs on a solo western adventure.

Meanwhile, Melkor has been quietly released from his imprisonment. In addition to his frontier developments, which he has been remotely managing, he now advises Manwe and other council members. Feanor is aware enough of this to wish for Maedhros to help him investigate Melkor’s doings.  By 1849, Maedhros has sunk into a debauched lifestyle, which Fingon (studying to be a doctor under Olorin the physician) is largely unaware of but which Fingolfin notices and is dismayed by. Increasingly paranoid, Feanor threatens Fingolfin’s life after a tense spring and growing conflicts. This creates a rift between Fingon and Maedhros for a time.

In 1850, Melkor has Finwe murdered on the front steps of his home and steals the diamond. Feanor is convinced that Melkor had a hand in the murder, but is unable to completely convince Fingolfin. Maedhros and Fingon reconcile to an increased degree, although both still feel uncertain.

EVENTS OCCURRING 1851 – mid-1852 (“SERIES ONE”)

The timeline for the story officially begins in 1851, in New York. Finrod has recently returned from his western exploration, during which he befriended Beren, whose (now-extinct) tribe is indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, and who, some years before, met and fell in love with Luthien in Doriath. Still unable to seek justice for Finwe’s death, Feanor now wishes to move out west and join Rumil at Fort Mithrim. Feanor and Maedhros gain information from Finrod about the gold prospects in California.

Manwe selects Melkor as the spearhead of the western railroad expansion. Disgusted by this assignment of power, Fingolfin agrees to join Feanor in relocating. Finrod intends to go as well. Finarfin and the rest of his family stays behind, but Galadriel (Artanis) secretly stows away with Fingolfin’s train. Feanor, who is leaving first, has been entrusted with the money to procure wagons at Ulmo’s Bridge in Missouri, where Finarfin’s father-in-law Olwe lives. Nerdanel initially opposes the plan to go west, but is persuaded by the inevitable.

On the road, Feanor and his family encounter Gothmog, who taunts them with Melkor’s rising power and the diamond taken from Finwe’s body. Gothmog injures Nerdanel, which increases Feanor’s resolve to move quickly and trust nobody. In early July 1851, Feanor double-crosses Fingolfin and the townspeople at Ulmo’s Bridge, stealing enough wagons for himself and destroying the res, then killing a number of the town’s militia. He then escapes by burning the titular bridge behind them, knocking Maedhros unconscious when he (Maedhros) refuses to cooperate. Nerdanel, having refused to join in this plan, remains behind.

Now wanted, Feanor, Maedhros, and the other boys continue west, collecting new allies along the way, largely through Maedhros’ recruiting efforts. Celegorm engages in a skirmish that ends with a man being killed and a new manhunt being launched. Maedhros also barters sex for information with a string of barmaids and prostitutes along the way, including Melkor’s spy Thuringwethil, who assaults and scars him by way of claiming a “trophy” for Bauglir.

Rumil tries and fails to communicate to Feanor that increased hostility in the vicinity of Mithrim means it is no longer a safe place for them to join forces. Mairon has insinuated himself as a spy within Mithrim, for a time, and then massacred several of Rumil’s best men. An increased number of militia-men of unknown allegiance are also patrolling the countryside and harassing Mithrim’s inhabitants (who include natives tribespeople and former slaves).

Meanwhile, Fingolfin and his family arrive at Ulmo’s Bridge to find themselves betrayed. After seeing Nerdanel, who intends to return east to Indis, Fingolfin chooses to advance his course with a northward river-crossing. Turgon’s wife Elenwe gives birth to their daughter Idril on the trail, which causes the family as a whole to stop for a time (as autumn closes in). After leaving Elenwe and Idril with a settler family, Fingolfin’s company continues onward. They encounter a posse seeking to revenge Celegorm’s kill, which results in Argon’s death. Fingolfin’s company flees farther north and is caught in a Nebraska blizzard which takes Anaire’s life. While the rest starve, snowbound, they are rescued by Haleth (a native leader who works cooperatively with Thingol, and, unbeknownst to Thingol, with Beren) and her company, which includes Beren and Wachiwi, another native woman who forms a close relationship with Fingon.

Shortly before arriving in Mithrim (between Christmas and New Year’s 1852), Feanor and company encounter Mairon spying on them. After being taunted and questioned by Maedhros, he escapes.

At Mithrim, Rumil is somewhat reluctant to assimilate Feanor’s company. It is revealed that Feanor’s interventions in Mithrim’s development a decade past led to a falling out with Thingol of Doriath, specifically with respect to the diamond mine and the diamond that Feanor gave Finwe. Feanor returns to mining, and also begins to launch attacks on the railroad. Maedhros and Celegorm, on an exploratory mission, discover that the nearby Mount Diablo is being excavated.

Amid growing tensions within Mithrim in the late spring of 1852, Amrod decides to write to Nerdanel. Rumil attempts to mail the letter for him, but returns seriously injured/poisoned. Amrod then rides out himself. Urged by Maedhros and Amras, Feanor and his sons go to find him, but end up embroiled in a standoff with Gothmog at the Utumno headquarters of the railroad project. Feanor is mortally wounded by Gothmog. Maedhros leads the return to Mithrim, but after Feanor dies, rides out without his brothers to attempt to track Amrod down. Mairon and then Gothmog surround and capture Maedhros. Gothmog reveals that Amrod’s horse slipped down a riverbank, and he is presumed dead.

Maedhros is delivered to Melkor in “Angband,” the fortress built within “Thangorodrim” (Mount Diablo).

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Voters in three states approved ballot measures that will change their state constitutions to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime, while those in a fourth state rejected the move. The measures approved Tuesday curtail the use of prison labor in Alabama, Tennessee and Vermont. In Oregon, “yes” was leading its anti-slavery ballot initiative, but the vote remained too early to call Wednesday morning.

In Louisiana, a former slave-holding state, voters rejected a ballot question known as Amendment 7 that asked whether they supported a constitutional amendment to prohibit the use of involuntary servitude in the criminal justice system.

The initiatives won’t force immediate changes in the states’ prisons, but they may invite legal challenges over the practice of coercing prisoners to work under threat of sanctions or loss of privileges if they refuse the work.

The results were celebrated among anti-slavery advocates, including those pushing to further amend the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits enslavement and involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. More than 150 years after enslaved Africans and their descendants were released from bondage through ratification of the 13th Amendment, the slavery exception continues to permit the exploitation of low-cost labor by incarcerated individuals.

“Voters in Oregon and other states have come together across party lines to say that this stain must be removed from state constitutions,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, told The Associated Press.

“Now, it is time for all Americans to come together and say that it must be struck from the U.S. Constitution. There should be no exceptions to a ban on slavery,” he said.

Coinciding with the creation of the Juneteenth federal holiday last year, Merkley and Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Georgia, reintroduced legislation to revise the 13th Amendment to end the slavery exception. If it wins approval in Congress, the constitutional amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states.

After Tuesday’s vote, more than a dozen states still have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude for prisoners. Several other states have no constitutional language for or against the use of forced prison labor.

Voters in Colorado became the first to approve removal of slavery exception language from the state constitution in 2018, followed by Nebraska and Utah two years later.

The movement to end or regulate the use of prison labor has existed for decades, since the time when former Confederate states sought ways to maintain the use of chattel slavery after the Civil War. Southern states used racist laws, referred to as “Black codes,” to criminalize, imprison and re-enslave Black Americans over benign behavior.

Today, prison labor is a multibillion-dollar practice. By comparison, workers can make pennies on the dollar. And prisoners who refuse to work can be denied privileges such as phone calls and visits with family, as well as face solitary confinement, all punishments that are eerily similar to those used during antebellum slavery.

“The 13th Amendment didn’t actually abolish slavery — what it did was make it invisible,” Bianca Tylek, an anti-slavery advocate and the executive director of the criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises, told the AP in an interview ahead of Election Day.

She said passage of the ballot initiatives, especially in red states like Alabama, “is a great signal for what’s possible at the federal level.”

“There is a big opportunity here, in this moment,” Tylek said.

[tragedycoded]

Why is Royston short

Anon! Hello!

So for the first three drafts, all the main characters were six feet tall. I must have been trying to make a joke about Western protagonists or smth. Or they were just lumps of clay in my brain. IDK, man. I smoke a lot of weed.

Remember this is set between 1872-1874, and the main characters were born between 1828 and 1835. Everyone is 37-45 years old, excepting Hofer's children. Not important.

I learned about something called the Antebellum Puzzle, which was where the male U.S. population's height began declining in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Farmers weren't making enough to keep up with industrialization, and a lot of farmers were focusing more on non-food production (cotton and tobacco) so the price of food went up. Between 1840 and 1870, the American diet fucking sucked. I haven't taken an economics course since Bush Jr. was in office, don't ask me to explain this in any great detail.

So I decided to adjust the men's heights.

The average height in the late 19th century for a man was 5'7". I believe. Give or take a couple inches. I don't have my notebook open.

Hofer stayed 6' tall, because he comes from an affluential family who wouldn't have been affected by the rising cost of food and would have been able to afford actual nutritious ingredients. Still would have been unusually tall for the time.

Sullivan got knocked down to 5'9", which is still slightly above-average but respectable for a man with his background. (He's from Kentucky.)

Royston grew up in poverty, was subjected to severe neglect when he was a small child, was sent to work in a glass factory instead of receiving an education, and ran away from home when he was 13 because Reasons. Children who don't eat don't tend to grow. After discussing it with The Squad (there was a post about it on my old blog but LOL that got nuked) I decided fuck it. Make him 5'4".

TLDR: Representation.

[xtruss]

Adan Salazar, a member of the cabalgata (a parade of horseback riders), travels 20 miles from the neighboring town of Múzquiz to celebrate Juneteenth in 2018 in Nacimiento, the generational home of the Black Seminoles who escaped the threat of slavery in the United States.

Just Across The Border, This Mexican Community Also Celebrates Juneteenth

The “Southern Underground Railroad” helped formerly enslaved people reach freedom in northern Mexico. One village here has observed Juneteenth or “Día de los Negros” for 150 years.

— By Taryn White | Photographs By Luján Agusti | June 17, 2021

In northern Mexico’s Coahuila State there’s a village where locals celebrate Juneteenth by eating traditional Afro-Seminole foods, dancing to norteña music, and practicing capeyuye—hand-clapped hymnals sung by enslaved peoples who traveled the Southern Underground Railroad to freedom.

It may seem unlikely that this holiday would be honored in a small village at the base of the Sierra Madre range, but Nacimiento de los Negros—meaning “Birth of the Blacks”—became a haven for the Mascogos, descendants of Black Seminoles who escaped the brutality of the antebellum South and settled in Mexico.

Now, long after the group came to Nacimiento in 1852, a new challenge remains for the Mascogos: Keeping their culture and traditions alive. In a country of approximately 130 million people, where 1.3 million identify as Afro-descendants, there are only a few hundred Mascogos. Decades of navigating ongoing drought conditions in Mexico, currently affecting 84 percent of the country, have devasted the village’s agriculture-based economy. Younger community members have little choice but to seek new opportunities elsewhere.

A young girl dons on the Traditional Attire—Polka-Dot Dress, Apron, and Handkerchief—worn by Mascogos Women during Juneteenth celebrations in Nacimiento.

But there is hope—both in the strength of Mascogo identity and in the growing recognition of Juneteenth (June 19), a day that marks the freedom of enslaved people in Texas at the end of the United States Civil War and is considered by some to be America’s “Second Independence Day.” On June 17, President Joseph Biden Signed a Bill that recognizes Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Such recognition could also strengthen the visibility of this historic community nearly 2,000 miles from Washington. D.C.

Juneteenth Becomes A Federal Holiday! President Joe Biden signs the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. Evan Vucci/AP, June 17, 2021

The Southern Underground Railroad

Hundreds of enslaved people fled from southern plantations to live among the Seminoles in Florida Territory during the mid-to-late 18th century. Spain granted freedom to enslaved people who escaped to Florida under their rule, but the U.S. did not recognize this agreement.

In 1821, the Spanish ceded Florida to the U.S., sending the Seminoles and their Black counterparts farther south onto reservations near the Apalachicola River. Andrew Jackson, territorial governor of Florida, ordered an attack on Angola, a village built by Black Seminoles and other free Blacks near Tampa Bay. Dozens of escaped slaves were captured and sold or returned to their previous place of enslavement; many others were killed.

From left to right: Jose, Aton, and Sebastian, members of the horseback parade, arrive in Nacimiento’s nogalera (a Park Surrounded by Walnut Trees) as part of Día de Los Negros.

Nearly a decade later, Jackson, now president, signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 into law, which required Native tribes in the southeast to relocate to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. Seminole and Black leaders opposed the forced removal, later leading to the Second Seminole War (1835–42). Halfway through the confrontation, the Seminoles called for a truce and agreed to move—if their Black allies were allowed to move safely as well.

The negotiations quickly fell through, and the war resumed, but the relocation of nearly 4,000 Seminoles and 800 Black Seminoles, also known as the Trail of Tears, had already begun.

Southern Underground Railroad

As many as 5,000 enslaved African Americans escaped to freedom in Mexico, after that country outlawed slavery in 1829. While most traveled on their own or in small groups, some were helped by an informal network of free African Americans, Mexicans, Tejanos, and German settlers. Motivations for assisting the refugees were complex—some did so out of sympathy, while others were paid to transport them across the border.

Katie Armstrong, NG Staff. Source: Thomas Mareite, Abolitionists, Smugglers and Scapegoats: Assistance Networks for Fugitive Slaves in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1836–1861, Cahiers du MIMMOC; National Park Service, National Trails Intermountain Region

By 1845, most Seminoles had been relocated to Indian Territory, where many Black Seminoles who joined the journey were kidnapped and sold into slavery in Arkansas and Louisiana. Faced with continuous hardships in Indian Territory, members of the Black Seminoles, Seminole Indians, and Kickapoo tribe left Indian Territory in 1849 for Mexico, where slaves could live freely.

Mexico officially abolished slavery in September 1829, and in 1857, Mexico amended its constitution to reflect that all people are born free.

Alice Baumgartner, assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California, says that the Seminoles’ and Black Seminoles’ move to Mexico was part of a much longer history of Mexican authorities recruiting Native peoples who had been forced from their homelands to help defend Mexico’s northern border. In exchange for fighting, they would receive 70,000 acres of land in northern Coahuila as well as livestock, money, and agricultural tools.

“That alternative was far from perfect,” she says, “but it was an alternative nonetheless.”

Juneteenth—In Mexico And The U.S.

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in the Confederacy free on January 1, 1863, word had not fully spread to geographically isolated Texas, where slaveholders refused to comply with the federal orders.

It wasn’t until the last battle of the war when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas—a full two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed—that many enslaved people knew they were free.

One year later, freedmen in Texas organized “Jubilee Day” to commemorate the date, initially holding church-centered gatherings that provided oral history lessons on slavery. Today, the holiday, which is officially recognized in more than 47 states and the District of Columbia, typically includes barbecues, street festivals, parades, religious services, dancing, and sipping red drinks—the last to symbolize the bloodshed of African Americans.

Left: Josue, who is of Mascogo descent, honors the traditions of his community for Juneteenth, which now a federal holiday in the U.S. Right: Jennie Hidalgo was crowned the Queen of the Jineteada (the town’s pageant) for Nacimiento’s 2018 Juneteenth celebration.

Left: Gustavo wears the traditional dress for men during Juneteenth. Right: Jennifer celebrates Juneteenth with her community. After the parade of horseback riders arrives into town, Mascogo descendants gather under shade trees to barbecue and boil ears of corn over wood fires.

María Esther Hammack, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, believes the first Juneteenth celebrations in Nacimiento may have been held as early as the 1870s due to military families traveling back and forth from Nacimiento to Fort Clark in Brackettville, Texas. From 1870 to 1914, Black Seminoles were enlisted by the U.S Army as Seminole Indian “scouts” to defend against other Native American tribes as the U.S. Government expanded into West Texas.

“People in el Nacimiento had already been enjoying freedom for many years, since their arrival in Mexico in 1850,” says Hammack. “[But] Juneteenth celebration in Coahuila, Mexico began as a means to show solidarity with their brethren in the U.S.,” says Hammack. Black Seminoles still living in Brackettville drive 160 miles south to celebrate Juneteenth with the Mascogos in Nacimiento.

While many details of the earliest celebrations have been lost to time, today’s traditions are a vibrant testament to Mascogo culture. On “Día de Los Negros,” women wearing traditional polka-dot dresses, aprons, and handkerchiefs assemble at the nogalera (a park surrounded by walnut trees) at dawn to begin cooking the communal meal. The cabalgata (a parade of horseback riders) begin their 20-mile journey from the neighboring town of Múzquiz, while the elders lead the community in clap-accompanied spirituals such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Dancing to live music and playing bingo, a popular pastime in the town, are also musts.

By noon, the cabalgata arrives at the nogalera, and the townspeople enjoy traditional Afro-Seminole and Mexican dishes, such as corn on the cob, tetapún (sweet potato bread), pumpkin empanadas, pan de mortero (mortar bread), soske (corn-based atole), and asado (slowly cooked pork in hot peppers).

After a quick rest, the Mascogos reconvene at night for a party in the town’s plaza, where they dance the night away.

Threats To The Mascogo Culture

With more and more Mascogo descendants leaving Nacimiento for other parts of Mexico and the U.S., Dulce Herrera, a sixth-generation Mascogo and great-granddaughter of Lucia Vazquez Valdez—one of the last surviving negros limpios (pure Blacks)—fears the traditions of her culture will be lost.

She hopes to preserve them by teaching the younger generation of Mascogos the traditional songs and gastronomy of the community. Herrera is also working with her mother, Laura, and great-grandmother to raise the awareness of Mascogo heritage in Mexico.

Joseph stands with his horse’s whip. Currently, around 70 families live in Nacimiento and are dedicated to farming and cattle and goat ranching.

“Negros Mascogos is one of the most invisible Afro-descendant communities in Mexico,” she says, citing incidences in which community members were asked for official identification when visiting neighboring towns because “they think we are not Mexican.”

Her efforts have not been in vain. In May 2017, the governor of Coahuila signed a decree recognizing the Mascogos as Indigenous people of Coahuila.

As a result, Herrera and Valdez were able to secure federal funding for huertos familiares (community gardens) to assist community members with planting and selling their crops.

Travelers to Nacimiento can visit the small Museo Comunitario Tribu Negros Mascogos, which contains local artwork and exhibits related to Mascogo history. In 2020, the community also opened a restaurant, El Manà de Cielito, which serves local cuisine, and a hostel, Hospedaje Mascogos. Future plans include boosting cultural tourism by teaching community members to sell embroidered textiles, traditional handicrafts, and organic food as well as developing trails for walking, hiking, and horseback riding.

[ausetkmt]

Most people recognize that there are first names given almost exclusively by black Americans to their children, such as Jamal and Latasha.

While fodder for comedians and social commentary, many have assumed that these distinctively black names are a modern phenomenon. My research shows that’s not true.

Long before there was Jamal and Latasha, there was Booker and Perlie. The names have changed, but mycolleagues and I traced the use of distinctive black names to the earliest history of the United States.

As scholars of history, demographics and economics, we found that there is nothing new about black names.

Black Names Aren’t New

Many scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights movement, perhaps attributable to the Black Power movement and the later black cultural movement of the 1990s as a way to affirm and embrace black culture. Before this time, the argument goes, blacks and whites had similar naming patterns.

Historical evidence does not support this belief.

Until a few years ago, the story of black names depended almost exclusively on data from the 1960s onward. New data, such as the digitization of census and newly available birth and death records from historical periods, allows us to analyze the history of black names in more detail.

We used federal census records and death certificates from the late 1800s in Illinois, Alabama and North Carolina to see if there were names that were held almost exclusively by blacks and not whites in the past. We found that there were indeed.

For example, in the 1920 census, 99 percent of all men with the first name of Booker were black, as were 80 perecent of all men named Perlie or its variations. We found that the fraction of blacks holding a distinctively black name in the early 1900s is comparable to the fraction holding a distinctively black name at the end of the 20th century, around 3 percent.

What Were the Black Names Back Then?

We were interested to learn that the black names of the late 1800s and early 1900s are not the same black names that we recognize today.

The historical names that stand out are largely biblical such as Elijah, Isaac, Isaiah, Moses and Abraham, and names that seem to designate empowerment such as Prince, King and Freeman.

These names are quite different from black names today such as Tyrone, Darnell and Kareem, which grew in popularity during the civil rights movement.

Once we knew black names were used long before the civil rights era, we wondered how black names emerged and what they represented. To find out, we turned to the antebellum era – the time before the Civil War – to see if the historical black names existed before the emancipation of slaves.

Since the census didn’t record the names of enslaved Africans, this led to a search of records of names from slave markets and ship manifests.

Using these new data sources, we found that names like Alonzo, Israel, Presley and Titus were popular both before and after emancipation among blacks. We also learned found that roughly 3 percent of black Americans had black names in the antebellum period – about the same percentage as did in the period after the Civil War.

But what was most striking is the trend over time during enslavement. We found that the share of black Americans with black names increased over the antebellum era while the share of white Americans with these same names declined, from more than 3 percent at the time of the American Revolution to less than 1 percent by 1860.

By the eve of the Civil War, the racial naming pattern we found for the late 1800s was an entrenched feature in the U.S.

Company E was the fourth U.S. Colored Infantry during the Civil War. Credit:  Everett Historical / Shutterstock.com.

Why Is This Important?

Black names tell us something about the development of black culture, and the steps whites were taking to distance themselves from it.

Scholars of African American cultural history, such as Lawrence W. Levine, Herbert Gutman and Ralph Ellison, have long held that the development of African American culture involves both family and social ties among people from various ethnic groups in the African diaspora.

In other words, people from various parts of Africa came together to form black culture as we recognize it today. One way of passing that culture on is through given names, since surnames were stolen during enslavement.

How this culture developed and persisted in a chattel slavery system is a unique historical development. As enslavement continued through the 1800s, African American culture included naming practices that were national in scope by the time of emancipation, and intimately related to the slave trade.

Since none of these black names are of African origin, they are a distinct African American cultural practice which began during enslavement in the U.S.

As the country continues to grapple with the wide-ranging effects of enslavement in the nation’s history, we cannot – and should not – forget that enslavement played a critical role in the development of black culture as we understand it today.

Trevon Logan is the Hazel C. Youngberg Distinguished Professor of Economics at The Ohio State University

[blueiight]

people DO NOT see pimping impoverished black women as bad as being a slave owner and I blame neoliberalism (and misogyny of course) for it.

its also cuz some ppl want to ‘debunk’ / anticipate a nb or white chara ‘debunking’ lying ole lou… [everyone is biased here] i think misogynoir is the primary motivator, with the tropes of the ‘slutty jezebel’ being a lot of the cultural messaging ppl receive and internalize about black women.. even in louis’s eyes miss lily is just the friendly hoe that literally has to listen to his problems cuz thats what hes paid her to do. i needs miss lily. n i likes miss lily. he stumbles in the fairplay toe up suicidal saying that. ok but what do u like about her? shes putting on a friendly , supportive face bc u paid her dawg... theres no interest on louis’s end, much less the real world audience on the interiority of miss lily’s character. bricktop’s fate post-ep3 is unknown to us bc after ep3, we dont need to ‘see’ bricktop in the story louis intends to tell from then on. i think chattel slavery + the glorification of the antebellum period in the original vampire chronicles is even more nauseating, and in terms of realworld views, chattel slavery and sex trafficking are inextricable from one another… its not a matter of which is worse, ppl’s entire perceptions of each situation is throwed off to where they implictly believe bc ‘mainly men’ was impacted by slavery that its ‘worse’ [or hold up complete myths about gender dynamics in that time] but like.. u look up how the u.s. black pop went from 400k to millions, u see chattel slavery also entailed disgusting amounts of rape & sex trafficking. anyways the showrunners r pretty explicit in the moral dredges of the situation louis starts off in. the alderman fenwick is introduced amidst his attempted rape of bricktop.. its not the showrunners fault some people cant see the evil in louis facilitating the sexual exploitation of bw to racist powerful men in the city when its all right there for us on the tv screen ykwim

[3rdeyeblaque]

On Feb 3rd, we venerate Hoodoo Saint, Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange on the 144th anniversary of her passing. 🕊

Born in Santiago de Cuba, Mother Mary traveled to the States with her family seeking refuge following the Haitian Revolution and landed in Baltimore, MD as a young Black Woman in a Slave State decades before Emancipation. Fellow Caribbean refugees, particularly children, in need of education, drew her focus paired with her pursuit of religious service. Living independently off of her father's small fortune, she opened the first Catholic school for Black children in her home & taught refugee adults how to read/write. When later presented with the unprecedented challenge of launching a catholic school for girls, Mother Mary soared above & beyond the call of duty. First, founding St. Frances Academy. From there she went on to found the Oblate Sisters of Providence as the 1st Mother of Superior of the 1st African religious congregation in the U.S.

All the while, she committed her life to poverty, chastity, & obedience beneath the watchful eye of the Roman Catholic Church. She nursed the sick & shut in during the Cholera Epidemic from the early 1830s- mid1840s. During which, and in the years following, she suffered violence & prejudice on 2 fronts - Antebellum South racism & extreme poverty. After the Civil War, she gathered 60 Black war orphans beneath her wings to care for. In 1991, an Archbishop petitioned Rome to see Mother Mary canonized into Sainthood; if so, she would be the 1st Woman of African descent to hold the title. "Our sole wish is to do the will of God " - Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange.  Her Major Shrine can be found at Our Lady Of Mount Providence Convent in Baltimore, MD. May she bless those who would commit their life to Spirit & the selfless work of educator, protector, & faithful servant. We give her libations & extra 💐 today. Honor her for her deep faith, courage, loving kindness, & strong intellect.🕯

🌟 FINAL copies of The2023 Hoodoo's Calendar are available for purchase (once sold out, that's it)! Subscribe to the official e-newsletter for the latest updates & exclusive content access. https://thehoodoocalendar.square.site 🌟

[lkkuntuoasare]

NOT ONLY IN FEBRUARY (POEM)

We don't need the government to tell U.S. that only in February

The birth month of, Frederick Douglas, one of greatest abolitionists, in memory

That it will reluctantly and hesitantly teach U.S. a watered-down version of our glorious Black History.

The only history books about Black folks in which the joke of a Governor, Ron Desantis, would approve of, is a history that's "anti-woke".

Like the Rage Against The Machine song-Bulls On Parade:

"They don't gotta burn the books, they just remove em"

Not just because the books make their "snowflake" children feel guilty, about the harsh realities of slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow, red lining , and for-white-profit and black-agony penitentiaries, where like cattle, inmates are kept behind barb wire fences and are kept in check by armed sentries

The books are removed to control the minds of the youth and future policy makers for another century.

Forgot about black history lessons that will inspire the adolescences

No true stories of how Harriet Tubman , like a black woman Moses, spread justice through treacherous enemy lines, like it was the red sea and freed her fellow woman and man from white brutality, chains , whips , and rapes of Antebellum southern slavery, Or how she became a union spy who risked her life behind crimson soaked bloody earth to bring clandestine information to the union to help save northern army lives.

I'm sorry, but in American public pre-schools to universities, in deeply and devilishly red states run by makers of political policies like "anti-woke" lady Arkansas Governor, Sarah Huckabee, in class your babies, young men and ladies will never learn about great men like Pan-Africanist and black freedom fighter, Marcus Mosiah Garvey .

No information on Egypt's 25th Dynasty, that's when in 744 BC Nubian King, Piye, conquered Egypt, and reunited the two African lands of splendid gold jewelry and granite stone pyramids into one Nile Valley Monarchy .

No revolutionary history from the year 1804, that's when a bunch of poorly treated and trained, self-freed maroons, brought black doom and apocalyptic misery upon the Napoleon's Imperial navy and Army in Haiti

This defeat forced the Empire of France to sell its remaining remaining 15 states in "louisiana purchase" territories for for a meager 15 million dollar fee

Creating much of the land in the country of the land of the free that you currently see from sea to shining sea.

At an "anti-woke" elementary, high school, or university, they might let you hear about MLK's "I Have A Dream", but you never hear that that the dream was also anti-Vietnam war or that the dream included reparations for the descendants of the blacks who suffered the world’s worst froms of brutality, lynchings, Jim Crow and slavery.

No student research paper inquiries on how in 1999, in a court in Tennessee, the King family won civilly against Jowers, and several U.S. government agencies, for their part in the Dr.King assassination conspiracy.

If we leave it to the Alt-Right, Matt Walsh and the Ben Shapiro types to rewrite black history, it will read and only in February:

Blacks were put in Antebellum slavery due to their mental inferiority, and kept in modern slavery (mass incarceration) due to their criminality.

No mention of systematic white supremacy, mis-education, and over-policing and poverty.

#Poetry #BlackHistory

[mariacallous]

From President George W. Bush’s tepid response to the 2008 invasion of Georgia to the Biden administration’s antebellum halfhearted gestures of support for Ukraine, U.S. policies left the perception that the United States was not willing to make a renewed assault painful for Russia. The result was yet another war and a tremendously costly one at that.

...

In the run-up to the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin thought that his forces would march into Kyiv in a matter of days with few losses. After all, the international community did little when he annexed Crimea in 2014. Washington’s muted reaction to previous Russian provocations signaled an unwillingness to incur any costs to prevent Russia from doing what it wanted. U.S. intransigence toward providing lethal aid seemed to confirm that Ukraine lacked the capacity to resist, further reinforcing the Russian belief that the invasion would likely be easy and quick. The recent war in Ukraine is, therefore, a direct result of the West’s lack of resolve and failure to credibly deter Russia. Moscow thought it could get away with murder—as it had in the past.

U.S. Deterrence Failed in Ukraine

[sharonisthebettercarter]

Chile anyways, if homelander was so smart that the fans and himself claim him to be, why didn't he just took that opportunity of freedom and ditch it all behind when sent to his first mission?? Also, since the loser learned u.s. history, you'd think he'd learn a thing or two about the slaves who fled from their prisons in the antebellum south and the members of the black panthers party fleeing to Cuba from being prosecuted. Like...there are narcissists in real life who would take that chance at freedom immediately, they want a taste of that too. Also, to learn in a new environment is to learn from the locals.

*sigh of the long suffering*

i wanna be fucking mad at this, i do. i am a little and i won't lie about that because this is FUCKED anon.

but i know (sincerely fucking hope) it comes from a place of genuine ignorance and not truly understanding what it is many abuse victims go through--or, perhaps not realizing that you have been through abuse and have fallen on any one of many many many reasons to not leave, so you rationalize your situation as tolerable (because in your mind there are no other alternatives) or you might have a weird fucked up version of survivor's bias which is pretty typical in this society.

the short answer is this:

and this:

and these also fit the bill:

but to address the question more directly and seriously.

a victim's intelligence and victimhood have nothing to do with one another. someone does not "become" a victim because they are stupid or smart. anyone can be conned. ANYONE. this is a gross oversimplification and assumption that is extremely dismissive to victims of abuse.

because he didn't realize he was a victim? because he didn't know where else to go? because vought promised him things would get better and he could finally be their 'special god boi' and believed that if he could just pull it together that maybe, just maybe vought, his only 'parental' entity and the only thing he had known his entire life to 'take care of him' and 'promise him the world', would be happy and proud of him. *and then things wouldn't have to hurt anymore*

see any of the above attached resources for more information. PLEASE. there are a number of reasons a victim will not leave an abusive situation, and they all amount to: THEY DO NOT BELIEVE THEY HAVE A CHOICE. and. THIS DOES NOT INVALIDATE THE EXPERIENCE OF A VICTIM OR THE SYMPATHY WE SHOULD FEEL FOR THEM.

okay, this bit about u.s. history is just silly to me, cause... just wut??? do you... i mean, do you honestly believe they taught him a wholly accurate take on u.s. history and gave him perfect examples of the oppressed fighting back against abusers or escaping them????? like HONESTLY, *you* think they taught him *THAT*??????????????? a NAZI made company.... teaching *accurate* history?????????????????????????????????????vogelbaum said it himself. "he loved MANIFEST DESTINY". a SUPER FUCKED UP concept that proudly proclaims white america as a "chosen people" that must "conquer the american continents"... really? REALLY??????? just that bit in itself should tell you what and how they were teaching him. take a wild guess how they teach about slavery in the deep south of the states and i can guaranfuckingtee you IT AIN'T ACCURATE.

bear in mind. vought was a company founded with nazi cult origins.

i think that should say enough on it's own but i'll elaborate, homelander was raised in a fucking cult. if you genuinely think escaping one is a 'simple and easy' thing and people INDOCTRINATED IN A CULT can just up and 'RuN aWaY', YOU ARE WRONG. plain and simple.

***ESPECIALLY for the fucking kids raised as the """"MESSIAH""" FOR THE CULT, REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH ABUSE THEY FACE, THAT IS HOW BRAINWASHING WORKS.***

well good for those narcissists i guess?? i'm sure their situations weren't anywhere near half as bad as homelander's and i don't say that to dismiss anything they may have gone through, i say it just from a standing realistic point of view. homelander has LITERALLY been through worse that anything any human could ever go through and also more than a whole lot of comic characters out there have been through. vought was basically granny fucking goodness.

their situations are also... not relevant. AT ALL.

and i need to reiterate this:

being a victim and staying in an abusive situation is not a choice. victims do not choose to be victims.

victims. do not. choose. to be victims.

VICTMS. DO. NOT. CHOOSE. TO. BE. VICTIMS.

saying they do, and i want to be clear in no uncertain terms what so fucking ever:

IS VICTIM BLAMING.

see any of the above resources if you need to understand a bit better about human psyche and why victims do not simply 'rUn AwAy' from abusive situations.

and if it's not clear enough with that, it's because their brain, logic, belief, heart, whatever and every fucking fiber of their being tells them that they

*CAN'T*

the brain has fucked up ways of coping that don't always simply 'work out' in our favor, especially when it comes to extremely stressful environments like the one homelander was in. he was brought up to *believe* in vought. AND ONLY VOUGHT. was pretty much fucked before he was even born. forced to be trauma bonded to his motherfucking jailers.

and then never, nada, zip, zilch, NOT ONCE. has he EVER been presented with a viable alternative. or someone who genuinely cared for him.

this does not invalidate the fact that he is a victim of vought.

if anything? it only makes his whole situation worse because he still does not even realize that he is a victim.

here's to gotdamn HOPING s4 gives us at least some semblance of that understanding peaking through and brutal slaughter of the scientists or other responsible for that bullshit<3 (what i hope that scene of him covered in blood is~!)

the reason people have so much trouble seeing this and understanding it is:

we still live in a culture/society which is heavily veered towards victim blaming, especially imperfect victims. once a victim fights back or even if they choose not to, regardless of what happens actually, they are still somehow at fault for their situation, right? RIGHT? wrong... please see above resources for better understanding.

homelander is STILL stuck in the cult. he's trying lead it even (of course he fucking is, he was the raised 'messiah' and still has a childish mindset that believes in what he was taught), because that is what he was made for, and he is what VOUGHT made him... JUST as much as he a VICTIM of them.

homelander is an adult. at least physically. yes seriously, that is a factor. although i see this as something that makes his whole situation much much WORSE *because* of his stunted growth *because* of VOUGHT, his adult body and general presentation is enough for people to deny his victimhood if not outright blame him for it. (*HINT* STILL NOT HIS FAULT!), people keep calling him an immature 'manchild' which... sure, whatever sometimes i guess. but more *accurately*, we should be calling him a *CHILD* trapped in an *adult body*.

'manchild' implies the dude at least had an honest opportunity to grow the fuck up, and *chose* not to.

homelander had neither of these things. his growth was deliberately stunted so that he could be *controlled*.

and here's where i might differ from certain parts of fandom on homelander.

the show has actually done a relatively good of showing us that homelander is as much a victim to his circumstance as he is an asshole, and the trump/***cult messiah*** comparisons (while obviously satire and a bit on the nose) are actually... mm... not necessarily vital but actually pretty fucking important on providing an accurate representation of what he really is AND understanding how society reacts to it.

it is NOT the show that does a bad job presenting these characters intricately, whether showcasing victimhood, complexity, hypocrisy, critique, etc. they can do BOTH. and that is the point, that none of what's being presented is 'mutually exclusive' in one form or another because *society and people are fucking complex and nothing is black and white*. the point being, they at least make the effort and it is... profoundly ignorant to deny these details when they are presented.

they *present* homelander as a victim AND an asshole. *that* is why ANYONE in fandom is able to see that fact. no, that's not to say everything is hunky dory and perfectly written (because it's still written by ordinary *human* people, not abstract entities of perfection or imperfection)

it is to say that there is a factor fans seem to keep forgetting about this whole ass show built upon and centered entirely 1000% fucking percent on *CHALLENGING TRIBALISM AND HUMAN POLARIZATION WHICH DECENSITIZES US TO ALLEGED OPPOSING SIDES*.

it is the FANS that take what they are given, and *choose sides* from it. NOT THE SHOW.

this is very natural to society in some ways, the winners of wars get to write history, but it's also... not. or i should say, it's extremely fabricated and promoted because it's a means of 'divide and conquer' used against us.

this show gave us an entire segment with one chubby bastard who went down the right wing internet radicalization rabbit hole, and came out shooting an innocent man over his own *fear*.

you wanna know what the show did?

HUMANIZED that motherfucker AS WELL AS HIS VICTIM. very well i might add, i really felt for that bastard. he was a bastard for what he did, but i understand why people go the route of violence and hostility when they are *afraid*, especially of things they don't understand. (as much as i have faced it and as much as it pains me, I UNDERSTAND BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN THERE.)

you wanna know what the fans did?

COMPLETELY IGNORED THIS VERY EXTREMELY OBVIOUSLY PRESENTED LESSON.

homelander and butcher, comic AND show, are (whether abstractly interpreted or modernized) representees of the dangers of political dichotomy brought to extreme ideologies, to the point of *dehumanizing* the *other* side.

this is clear. the show *presents* the hypocrisy from *both* sides, as well as both being *wrong*, as well as both being *human*. AS WELL AS vought (and other horrendous systems in place) being the TRUE villain. everyone else might as well be pawns on a fucking chess board.

and still, the FANS... are the ones who take what is presented and interpret... pretty much what they want to conform to their own selective bias so that the cognitive dissonance doesn't come bubbling to the surface.

i don't have that ability. i know why people do it because i'm sure and i have seen that it makes things hella easier. never been able to pull the wool over my own eyes myself tho. call it compulsion. it's a real problem because people fucking HATE when you can't just 'go along' with them no matter how you do it.

but the way that i know this?

the genocide apologism... it's almost too fucking perfect given the state of the world right now. genocide under no circumstance is a forgivable or excusable crime.

no circumstance. ever.

doesn't matter what side it is and if you have to justify it with sides, you have completely missed the fucking point.

the show *DOES NOT* present genocide as justifiable in ANY form.

and *still* we have FANS choosing sides, and justifying genocide. whether deliberately ignoring what the story is presenting before them or not fully grasping it.

homelander is a major part of that, even billy to some (if much lesser and also greater) degree. the framing is intentional. homelander is a piece of shit. billy is an EQUAL if not worse, opposing piece of shit.

but the story gives us a *framework* to understand that 'this one side is bad', then *learn* 'oh this other side that we've been following is bad too, actually', and finally 'OH, it's the SYSTEM that's the real problem', and even now this shit is pretty damn clear to me, and i don't think it's necessarily relevant to reading the comic (altho i do feel this helps people see it better)

homelander and billy are both fucking problems, but neither are *the* true problems, they're both victims and symptoms of a greater issue, and we could all do well to remember that

even if society is fucked enough that they want to forget, WE shouldn't and we should keep at fighting back against status quo brain rot bullshit while maintaining empathy for those that suffer because of it.

including the imperfect victims that might still be stuck in the cult.

[spectre-ship]

Thing that drives me completely insane in the news, on social media, and generally in the way people discuss age groups, is how unquestioningly we accept the idea of "generations" as sequential statistical cohorts with distinct cultures and mindsets.

The idea of understanding generations as things that are Named and which follow each other in sequential blocs entered popular culture as what Wikipedia terms "Strauss-Howe Generational Theory", which was cooked up in the 1990s by the aforementioned William Strauss and Neil Howe, for a series of pop-science books. Their books had the, bluntly, extremely shoddy hypothesis that you can trace generations' mindsets in the United States as a repeating four-part hundred-year cycle back to the early modern period, with each generation forming a mindset due to growing up in the conditions created by the previous one.

The premise barely even resembles coherent historical or sociological scholarship, and could at most be generously described as "vibes-based". It's U.S.-centric as all hell; following it out would suggest that the history of Anglo-American generational mindsets is the singular axis on which the world turns, and they themselves essentially argued that the Great Depression and World War II were a "Crisis" produced by American cultural cycles. There is a built-in hole by the authors' own admission in 1844-1860, where they couldn't quite explain how the goddamn antebellum period, i.e. one of the singularly most-studied periods in American history, slots into their narrative. It's broad enough to make Victorian political theorists who saw history as the story of technological and moral progress look nuanced and discerning by comparison.

The real reason for their hypothesis was to pitch the idea that millennials* would grow up to be conservatives and to affirm turn-of-the-millennium conservative fears, claiming that there would be a world-historical crisis on the scale of World War II around 30 years after they published their books, which the emboldened conservative youth would then heroically overcome.† To give you an idea of how cartoonishly obviously these guys were working backwards from the thesis "things are looking up for social conservatism", this is an excerpt from a review of their book Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, from NEA Today in 2000:

Millennials are returning to conservative family values, emphasizing cooperation rather than creativity, and showing a new respect for rules. [...] And today's young people have stricter attitudes about sex than their elders, with virginity being a cool new trend.

In other words, it is at this point objectively bullshit.

All this nonsense might sound wildly disconnected from how the terms are used today but Strauss and Howe have been insanely successful at shaping how people think of generations more broadly--the commentariat is to this day obsessed with talking about "This Hot New Gen Z Trend" and "What Millennials Are Doing Differently Than Their Parents" I think this broader reshaping of how generations are understood is also related to why people argue about these things online so much, why there's constant discourse on what generation things are "nostalgia" of, and people cooking up weird subterms like "elder millennial" and "zillennial". Fundamentally, putting aside the concept's methodological and ideological original sins, breaking people up into these artificial 20 year chunks and erecting walls between them is a really poor way to understand the fluid way age and culture interact. Which is, incidentally, one of the many reasons why practically nobody in the academic historical or sociological communities considers it an accurate or useful way of understanding history or culture.

*addendum: you know how the start and end years of "generations" are frequently wildly unclear, say, how depending on who you ask gen z starts anywhere from 1995 to 2005? according to strauss and howe the last millennials were the people who graduated high school in 2000 lmao

†addendum 2: i have seen some places, including the incredibly credulous Wikipedia page, characterize the COVID pandemic or the russia-ukraine war as the predicted "crisis" formative to gen z, which is both obviously stupid and also pretty on track for the theory that posits a central historical cause of World War II to be World War I's psychological effects on the children of the Americans who served in it

[hisredvelvetqueen]

Who's Who in Hoodoo History: Guinea Sam Nightingale

Well, I tell you what, Guinea Sam Nightingale is one ancestor that takes us to unexpected places: the intersection of Conjure and communism, Petro magick, and flying Africans. And that is what I love about studying the lives of the OGs of Hoodoo and conjure. The gifts just keep coming. Their lives have us learning about things we never even thought of, or if we did, they have us looking at things in completely different ways. That's the beauty of getting to know the ancestors - our worlds open up, our minds become sharper, we become curiouser and curiouser, we grow, and our own stories seem to become a little more important when we think in terms of legacy. How will our descendants speak of us? What lessons do we have intwined in our lives for others to learn? Do you have a story to tell?

Sam Nightingale was born in Guinea sometime between 1787 and 1810, brought to the U.S. as a captive at some point after a ban on the importation of slaves had gone into effect in 1808. According to legend, he manifested here by Petro Vodou inspired, explosive means, shot from a canon in Guinea all the way to Boonville, Missouri. This makes him a mighty powerful ancestor. If you need an ancestor who will literally blow shit up, get to know Guinea Sam. He was one of those African-born healers, resistance fighters, and workers of magick who played central roles in the slave uprisings in the Americas, just like Nat Turner and Gullah Jack. He became a widely respected healer and conjuror in Central Missouri and a local celebrity in the city of Boonville.

In 1845, Guinea Sam was sold into the expanding cotton and sugar plantation slave economy of the Deep South in Louisiana, where he stayed for about a decade. By the time he was forty, Nightingale was working along with more than sixty other slaves on a sugar plantation in Assumption Parish. He would be so well remembered in the state that a New Orleans African American newspaper ran an obituary of him when he died almost forty years later.

In Boonville, Guinea Sam was a respected figure and well-dressed man, known for his distinctive attire and community roles. He was renowned for his conjuring and healing abilities, curing illnesses, and performing remarkable feats like conjuring snakes and frogs for purposes of luck and protection. He adopted the name "Guinea" to connect to Voudou traditions and as a way to signify a connection to his origins. His encounters with people who could "fly" in Georgia added to his mystique, connecting Africa to political thought.

Guinea Sam’s story intersected with the political landscape of antebellum Missouri, where German émigrés with radical ideologies were active, contributing to the struggle against slavery and the emergence of international communism. According to Lucy Broaddus, who grew up in slavery in Boonville, conjure men like Sam Nightingale had been more important than the Union leadership in ending slavery: “It was them that freed the slaves," she explained. "They give a hand to Lincoln and them other big emancipator men so that they could bring it about a gift from the colored people of conjuration and power.” Now I don't know if "they give a hand to Lincoln" means they assisted him or gave him a mojo hand (hand is another term for mojo bag) and I guess it doesn't really matter because either way they made an impact. They extended their support to figures like Lincoln and other prominent emancipators, contributing through the unique powers and conjurations they possessed. Healers in these traditions treated not only individual diseases but also social ailments, including those brought about by slavery, capitalism, and imperialism. Their approach to addressing the challenges faced by working people in the capitalist Atlantic world differed from European revolutionary doctrines, offering an alternative perspective on healing and empowerment.

After the Civil War, Guinea Sam continued practicing Conjure in Boonville, often alongside his wife, Maria, who was the widow of a U.S. Colored Troops veteran.

Nightingale died in 1887, during the early August festivities with which African Americans had long celebrated the end of slavery. In Boonville each year, thousands of African Americans participated in a parade, a picnic, and a festival in Thespian Hall, the main theater in the city. On the day of the 1887 August emancipation celebrations, Sam Nightingale died “peacefully . . .while the streets were crowded with his brethren celebrating the anniversary of freedom, a fitting time for the true and wearied soul to secure that freedom and peace he so well deserved."

If you enjoyed this lesson in Hoodoo history, please consider supporting my efforts with the greater project at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/denisealvarado

You might also be interested in the course at Crossroads University:

https://www.crossroadsuniversity.com/courses/who-s-who-in-hoodoo-history

[reasoningdaily]

I’ll take my reparation payment in the form of Boone Hall Plantation, please.

Boone Hall is a sprawling plantation located in Charleston County, South Carolina. Today, it offers tours so the curious can get a glimpse of what it was like during antebellum days when Black people were enslaved and white people got richer than Midas from their free labor.

Small Town Horror: The Story of the Largest African Burial Ground in the U.S.

The place is so scenic Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively got married there. Not sure how they didn’t know about the beatings and rapes that likely took place there during slavery, but they’ve since said they’re very, very sorry for using a place of horror as a wedding venue.

I grew up not far from Boone Hall, and it’s likely that ancestors on my father’s side of the family were enslaved there.

I’d like the current owners of the plantation to give it to me. After all, how much would it ever have been worth without the back-breaking labor of my ancestors?

I figured I’d just throw out my pitch for Boone Hall because there are murmurs in the country about trying to find a way to make reparations for that bad slavery thing.

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri has legislation that would give $14 trillion to Black Americans to compensate them for the brutal enslavement of their ancestors. Bush and other backers of that legislation want the country to at least discuss reparations - and it’s a discussion I and many other Black Americans would welcome.

But just as awarding Boone Hall to me isn’t quite workable, neither are cash payments to Black Americans to pay for the enslavement of their ancestors.

It’s not that $14 trillion isn’t a lot of money. It is. But it’s only about two-thirds of this country’s annual GDP.

Let’s see...246 years of slavery helped make the United States the most powerful and one of the wealthiest nations on Earth and me and the roughly 40 million other native-born Black Americans split two-thirds of the economic output from a single year.

That does not compute.

Indeed, there is no credible way to compute what would be owed if the country was serious about reparations. (And there is no indication that it is serious.)

How much is a life of enslavement worth in today’s dollars? The calculations can’t simply measure work output based on an eight-hour day. Slaves, we all know, worked ever so slightly longer than that each day.

And then there are the rapes. And the beatings. And the selling of a slave’s children.

How do you calculate centuries of forced illiteracy?

There is a real need for some national acknowledgement of the horrors of slavery and the economic impact it has to this day.

Since 1865, when the end of the Civil War brought emancipation, the economic head start white Americans had over their Black countrymen hasn’t been erased.

Research from the Rand Corporation shows that white Americans hold 10 times more total wealth than Black Americans. I dare say not all of that can be attributed to rap music or wearing your pants too low.

Something structural is at play here, and any solution would likely need to be far more systemic than a check. Think vastly expanded educational opportunities, expanded land and business ownership opportunities - AND a check.

I’m not sure what that reparations system needs to look like, but it needs to be broad and long-lasting.

Meanwhile, while we’re coming up with what could work, I’ll take Boone Hall. Washington Place has a much better ring to it, don’t you think?

Wayne Washington is an investigative reporter based in Florida.