#midlo

[alwaysbewoke]

1. “Angela Davis: An Autobiography” by Angela Davis 2. “Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)” by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò 3. “Digging our own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease” by Barbara Ellen Smith 4. “1919” by Eve L. Ewing 5. “Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives” by Donna Murch 6. “Finding my Voice” by Emerald Garner 7. “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor 8. “Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care” by Kelly E Hayes and Mariame Kaba 9. “An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries” by David Correia 10. “101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals who Changed US History” by by Michele Bollinger and Dao X Tran  11. “Class War, USA: Dispatches from Workers’ Struggles in American History” by Brandon Weber 12. “#SayHerNameBlack Women’s Stories ofPolice Violence and Public Silence” by Kimberlé Crenshaw and African American Policy Forum 13. “An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History” by Cathy Linh Che and Kyle Lucia Wu 14. “Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition” by Katherine Franke 15. “Haunted by Slavery: A Memoir of a Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle” by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

x

[sharl-leclair]

after almost a whole season of midlos fans lording his championship points above charles' he's finishing below his teammate in the last race ijbol

[gothhabiba]

More fun with Lazy Researcher Telephone leading to the circulation of completely false information:

A 1764 court document (re-discovered by Gwendolin Mildo Hall) is currently believed to be the oldest reference to gumbo (as in the okra-and-meat stew, not okra itself). Shane K. Bernard said in 2011 that Hall had mentioned the document in a lecture, but she presumably didn't give detailed information, since he ended up e-mailing her to get the actual citation.

She pointed him to the Louisiana Historical Center, who sent him a copy of the document in question, which he posted a small snippet from. You don't have to contact the LHC to get the full document--it's been digitised (look towards the bottom right of page 4/21 for the reference to "un gombeau"), along with other documents pertaining to the same court case.

That lecture wasn't the only place where Hall had elaborated. Earlier, in 2005, Hall had published Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links, which contains a passage talking about Comba / Julia, the woman whose testimony contains the reference to "gombeau" (Bernard didn't mention this book). She describes what led to the 1764 court proceedings--fugitive slave Louis dit Foy "had organized a cooperative network among slaves, runaways, thieves, seamstresses, and street vendors" and the group 'stole' food for their social gatherings. Hall says of two women who were members of this group:

Comba and Louison, both Mandingo women in their fifties, were vendors selling cakes and other goods along the streets of New Orleans. They maintained an active social life, organized feasts where they ate and drank very well, cooked gumbo filé and rice, roasted turkeys and chickens, barbecued pigs and fish, smoked tobacco and drank rum. (Slavery and African Ethnicities, University of North Carolina Press, 2005, p. 99)

Hall cites as the source of her information "Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana, May 6 and May 10, 1768, contract between Evan Jones of Pensacola and Durand Brothers; declaration by Captain Peter Hill. Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana, 1768.05.10.02, Louisiana Historical Center, New Orleans" (FN 36, p. 187).

It is unclear from Hall's text whether "gumbo filé" is specifically named or described in these court documents (if it is, I have not yet found it--and it also seems strange that Hall wouldn't have pointed Bernard to that location), or what other reason Hall might have for asserting this. It may just be an assumption of her's. As written, it sounds like the "gombeau" mentioned isn't even sure to be modern "gumbo" (as Bernard points out, a dish of stewed okra with butter was called "gumbo" at this time and later). Hall's research interests do not centre around food.

From this point, someone must have found Bernard's reference to this court document, and also found the paraphrasing of the case proceedings in Hall's book. They must have mentioned the court document without quoting or citing it; and they must have quoted the passage from Hall that I quoted above, also without citing it, and made it seem as though the Hall passage was in the court document. Whoever this unforgiveable bumbling can be traced back to, whether him or someone else, Lolis Eric Elie at least recreated it. In 2005, he wrote in a letter to the New York Times:

The first known printed reference to gumbo was made in reference to food eaten not by French immigrants, but by African maroons who had escaped slavery in Louisiana. This passage, from a 1764 court document, was uncovered by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, author of "Africans in Colonial Louisiana": "Comba and Louison, both Mandingo women in their 50's [sic], were vendors selling cakes and other goods along the streets of New Orleans. They maintained an active social life, organized feasts where they ate and drank very well, cooked gumbo filé and rice, roasted turkeys and chickens, barbecued pigs and fish, smoked tobacco and drank rum."

And then someone must have read that letter and believed Elie that that paragraph of Hall's was in the 1764 court document (it doesn't exactly sound like the kind of language I would expect to have been written as a summary of court proceedings in 1764, but I suppose they didn't think to check...)

So now, as a result of all of this jumbling of assumptions with evidence, and unwillingness to track down actual primary sources (even when someone has already digitised and quoted and translated them for you!), you have people confidently asserting that "gumbo filé" was specifically mentioned for the first time in 1764.

For example, Jonathan Olivier, writing for The Bitter Southerner in 2021, writes:

Looking back further at the historical record, there is more evidence of distinctions between types of gumbo. The first recorded mention of gumbo is from a 1764 court document involving escaped enslaved Africans, found by historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall [...]. “Comba and Louison, both Mandingo women in their 50s [sic], were vendors selling cakes and other goods along the streets of New Orleans. They maintained an active social life, organized feasts where they ate and drank very well, cooked gumbo filé and rice, roasted turkeys and chickens, barbecued pigs and fish, smoked tobacco and drank rum.” The entire term “gumbo filé” is mentioned, a deliberate effort to highlight a soup thickened with powdered sassafras, not okra.

Yes, Olivier, the term "gumbo filé" was mentioned... by Gwendolin Hall in 2005, not by Comba in 1764! What a mess! What an absolute disgrace of a mess. Lmao.

[brasiliangp]

All these Midlos fans in your asks when they should be trying to figure out where he's gonna go when Ferrari don't renew him

[pensivepeach]

midlos do something

[midesastremanifiesto]

Midlos Sainz

[childrensrightsrehumanrights]

Tw mentions of racism and child abuse

"At the Whitney Plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish the Allees Gwendolyn Midlo Hall includes the names of 107,000 enslaved Africans brought to or born inside Louisiana.  Interspersed between those names are first-hand accounts of what slavery was like according to those who experienced it.  "Sometimes I cried after I went to bed because of these whippin's," Hunlon Love reports. "Of course, it was necessary sometimes, but these overseers - gruesome men from the north - was brutal."

'Of course, it was necessary sometimes.'

If you want proof that today's black people talk about whuppins the same way slaves talked about whippings, well, there it is engraved in stone."

[jaycesirlgf]

MILO MORE LIKE MIDLO

UM.

[almackey]

The 1873 Colfax Massacre Was a Racist Attack on Black People’s Democratic Rights

I came across this article from the late Professor Gwendolyn Midlo-Hall and Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt on the 1873 Colfax Massacre. Depiction of African Americans gathering the dead and wounded from the Colfax Massacre in Louisiana, on April 13, 1873, originally published in Harper’s Weekly. (MPI / Getty Images) “The worst episode of Reconstruction Era violence occurred 150 years ago … in northern…

[roughonline]

#ROUGHONLINE presents newly released single ‘Get Away’ by @wearemidlo, a NYC-based pop duo. To premiere the new infectious and memorable single ROUGH had the opportunity to chat to the duo about the trending new single ‘Get Away.’ Check out the interview and listen to the new single on www.rough-online.co.uk #midlo #getaway #newsingle #greatvocals #lyrics #popduo creative #forcestobereckonedwith https://www.instagram.com/p/CGaZoqtBhDt/?igshid=1pdwrw738f0a4

[libraryofsports]

[crownlyrics]

MIDLO – Emotional Lyrics Emotional by MIDLO (Feat. Renata Baiocco) Only you know, only you know, what’s in my head…

[mystifiedmom]

The baby #graduates and I didn't make it through his entrance without tears. Love him. #classof2017 #midlo #rva

[luckyscuts]

That's my son #9 I'm super proud of the young man he is becoming. It was awesome to have the family there to watch his first game. I look forward to this season and excited about the future for him. Do work #9 love you son. #dadlife #soccer #soccerdad #soccerlife #score #midlo #midlothian #pathers #mhs (at Midlothian Stadium)

[matrixonvhsanddvd]

insane to me people will go out on a limb for madlo when it is literally a dogshit album and the worst thing car seat headrest has ever put out. midlo

[djmordecai]

Catch me SATURDAY 👻 HALLOWEEN 🎃 night at @casadelbarco Chesterfield (11500 Midlothian Turnpike, Suite 2021, Richmond VA 23235) as I stir a brew of spooky pop for your dining and drinking soundtrack! 8-11pm. Make reservations, wear a 👺 mask 😷, social distance and enjoy good food and 🎶 music! + @iamdjduffy at @islandshrimpco 📣 #casachesterfield #casadelbarco #cdb #casadelbarcochesterfield #chesterfieldtowncenter #midlothianturnpike #midlo #midlothian #rva #richmondva #halloween #halloweenrva #rvahalloween #djmordecai #events #djswhomix #eventdjs #rvadjs #richmonddjs (at Casa del Barco) https://www.instagram.com/p/CG0qqcJluDa/?igshid=rsmfcy1fku9n